1 . Born in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan province, 30-year-old Dong Yaxue, a Chinese researcher working for NASA is currently a member of NASA's MAVEN(Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) team.
On Nov 5, Dong was invited to speak at a NASA news conference, in which the organization said the atmosphere on Mars can be stripped by solar winds. She is the first Chinese female scientist to participate in a NASA news conference.
Dong graduated from Chengdu's Shishi High School in 2003 and was later admitted by University of Science and Technology of China. She got her master's and doctor's degree in astrophysics from Rice University in the United States.
Last year, Dong joined the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado and began working for MAVEN after handing in her resume and taking part in a phone interview. Now her main job is to analyze satellite data and compare the results to theoretical predictions.
“The findings released during the new conference are very important and may change the content of school textbooks.” Dong told Chengdu Business Daily.
“It has also provided new information and guidance for future Mars exploration.”
Interested in technical work, Dong said she was never bored at work and will continue focusing on data analysis next year.
“This is the first time that my job got so much attention.” She also added that she found great pleasure in both exploring Mars and eating hot pot.
He Jianming, Dong's high school teacher, said that physics is difficult for many girls but not for Dong Yaxue. As a middle school student, she won first prize in the national physics contest.
He said Dong was not the top student in her school. “she never got first in the class, usually ranking tenth to twentieth. But her scores of all subjects were even.”
1. Which of the following statements is NOT right according to the passage?| A．Dong is the first Chinese scientist who appeared in a NASA news conference. |
| B．Dong devotes herself to analyzing data and comparing the theoretical predictions. |
| C．The findings released are landmarks, which may change what we are learning. |
| D．Dong's outstanding performance does great credit to his mother school. |
| A．Entertainment. | B．Military. | C．Politics. | D．Sci-Tech. |
| A．excellent | B．embarrassing | C．balanced | D．unstable |
2 . Many college students turn to ADHD（注意缺陷障碍）medicine during the exam week, which is regarded as “smart drugs” that will help their academic（学术的）performance. The thinking is that if the drugs help students with ADHD improve their focus, they should provide the same benefit for people who don’t have the disorder.
But a new study shows that drugs can actually damage brain function of healthy students who take the drug hoping to boost their intelligence. “It’s not a smart drug which will suddenly improve their ability to understand information they read,” said Lisa Weyandt, a professor at the University of Rhode Island.
To test whether this effect is real or not, researchers organized 13 students to take part in two five-hour study sessions（一段时间）in the lab. The students took the standard 30mg ADHD drugs before one session, and a sugar pill before the other. Students on ADHD drugs did experience an increase in their blood pressure and heart rates. “The medicine was having an effect on their brain,” Weyandt said. The students also showed an improvement in their ability to focus, the researchers found.
However, students on ADHD drugs experienced no improvement in reading comprehension, reading fluency or knowledge reviews, compared to when they’d taken a sugar pill. “We read aloud stories to them and asked them to recall information from the stories, ”she said. “That didn’t improve.”
Worse, the ADHD drug actually harms students’ memory. It’s often misused because people pull all-nighters and they’re tired, and they think it’s going to keep them awake. Maybe it does, but it’s certainly not going to help their academic work. The brain is still developing until the mid to late 20s. It’s important to keep it healthy. There’s also a chance that ADHD drugs could endanger a student’s heart health.
1. Why do some college students take ADHD drugs?| A．To improve their sleeping. | B．To get higher marks. |
| C．To make them feel relaxed. | D．To treat brain disorder. |
| A．Analyze. | B．Affect. |
| C．Improve. | D．Understand. |
| A．They became more focused. |
| B．Their blood pressure was reduced. |
| C．Their reading fluency was greatly raised. |
| D．They could remember better and more quickly. |
| A．In a drug instruction. | B．In a biology textbook. |
| C．In a travel magazine. | D．In a news report. |
3 . Home to 8.2 million people, 36 percent of whom were born outside the United State, New York, known as the Big Apple, is the biggest city in America. Nearly twenty times bigger than the capital, Washington DC, you might expect New York to be twenty times more dangerous, actually, it’s safer. Recent figures show that New York now has fewer crimes per 100,000 people than 193 other US cities. It's also healthier than it used to be. For example, the smoking rate has gone down from 21.5 percent a few years ago, to 16.9 percent today.
New Yorkers should be delighted, shouldn't they? In fact, many feel that New York is losing its identity. It used to be the city that never sleeps. These days it's the city that never smokes, drinks or does anything naughty (at least, not in public). The Big Apple is quickly turning into the Forbidden Apple.
If you decided to have a picnic in Central Park, you'd need to be careful—if you decided to feed the birds with your sandwich, you could be arrested. It's banned. In many countries a mobile phone going off in the cinema is annoying. In New York it's illegal. So is putting your bag on an empty seat in the subway. If you went to a bar for a drink and a cigarette, that would be OK, wouldn't it? Er ... no. You can't smoke in public in New York City. In fact, you can't smoke outdoors on the street or in parks either. The angry editor of Vanity Fair magazine, Gray don Carter, says, “Under New York City law it is acceptable to keep a gun in your place of work, but not an empty ashtray.” He should know. The police came to his office and took away his ashtray.
But not all of New York's citizens are complaining. Marcia Dugarry, seventy-two, said, "The city has changed for the better. If more cities had these laws, America would be a better place to live."
The new laws have helped turn the city into one of the healthiest—and most pleasant places to live in America—very different from its old image of a dirty and dangerous city. Its pavements are almost litter-free, its bars clean and its streets among America's safest. Not putting your bag on subway seats might be a small price to pay.
1. The author writes Paragraph 1 mainly to tell the reader that New York is________.| A．bigger than Washington D.C. | B．the best place in the world |
| C．safer and healthier | D．the most dangerous city |
| A．quite popular | B．not allowed in law | C．very impolite | D．quite common |
| A．Some of New York's new laws are not reasonable. |
| B．A gun is much easier to get than an ashtray. |
| C．The police had no right to take away his ashtray |
| D．there should be a law to keep guns away from people. |
| A．The writer supports them. | B．The writer is against them. |
| C．The writer is not interested in them. | D．The writer's attitude is not clear. |
4 . As reported in JAMA Surgery, the researchers discovered that e-scooter (电动摩托车) injury rates had increased dramatically in just four years, rising from 6 per 100,000 in the population to 19 per 100,000. Of the estimated 14,651 e-scooter-related injuries in 2018, 4,658, or 32%, involved the head. “While most people recover from head injuries, there is going to be a subset with long-term disability and life changes,” said Dr. Benjamin Breyer.
Dr. Benjamin Breyer of the University of California, Los Angeles, pointed to a 2019 analysis of the data from two hospitals in Southern California, which found just 4.8% of injured e-scooter riders were wearing helmets.
Dr. Joann Elmore, a professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, believed that most e-scooter users are probably unaware of the risks. To make the point, she described a photo taken by a colleague. “There were two riders on an e-scooter,” she said. “No one had shoes on. There were no helmets. And the woman in front had a baby in a baby carrier.”
The new report highlights the need for more research on new technologies, said Dr. Guohua Li, a professor of epidemiology (流行病学).
“Just as there is a global network of experts working on infectious diseases, there needs to be a similar program devoted to the surveillance (监视) and prevention of injuries caused by merging technologies products and lifestyles, such as e-scooters, e-sports, etc.,” Li said in an email.
“The challenge for researchers and policymakers is to keep up with the ever-changing society and protect the public from unnecessary harm caused by new technologies and products without hindering innovation,” he added.
1. What can we know from the passage?| A．E-scooter injury rates had increased due to speeding. |
| B．32% of injured e-scooter riders weren’t wearing helmets. |
| C．There is a program devoted to the prevention of injuries caused by advanced technologies. |
| D．Both protection and innovation are of great importance. |
| A．Preventing. | B．Limiting. |
| C．Developing. | D．Making progress. |
| A．To arouse people’s awareness of the risks and self-protection. |
| B．To introduce a new way of transport — e-scooters. |
| C．To ask people not to ride e-scooters any more. |
| D．To urge policymakers to make laws as soon as possible. |
5 . Malaria(疟疾) is a mosquito-borne disease caused by a parasite (寄生虫). People with malaria often experience fever, and flu-like illness. Left untreated, they may die. A new study suggests that some homemade soups might help fight malaria.
Jake Baum of Imperial College London led the research. He asked children at a London school to bring in home-made clear soups that their families would make to treat a fever. The children were from many different cultural backgrounds. And the soups were then given to the parasite that created 99.7 percent of malaria cases in Africa.
Of the 56 soups tested, five were more than 50 percent effective in containing the growth of the parasite. Two were as effective as one drug now used to treat malaria. And four soups were more than 50 percent effective in preventing parasites from aging to the point when they could infect (感染) mosquitoes that spread the disease. The soups came from families from different places, including Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. They had several main ingredients (成分), including chicken, beef and green vegetables. Baum said the vegetarian soups showed similar results to the soups with meat.
Baum and his team reported their results recently in the publication Archives of Disease in Childhood. “When we started getting soups that worked - in the lab under very limited conditions - we were really happy and excited,” Baum said. Baum also added that it was unclear which foods made the soups effective against malaria. “If we were serious about going back and finding the ingredients, like good scientists, we’d have to do it in a better way,” he said.
Baum said his aim was in part to show children that scientific research can turn a herbal (草本的) cure into a man-made medicine. Now the drugs that treat the disease are becoming useless for more and more people, and about 400,000 people are killed by the disease every year. That means scientists will have to find new drugs.
1. What can we learn about malaria from the passage?| A．It can be easily recognized. |
| B．It can be a very serious disease. |
| C．It doesn’t always require treatment. |
| D．It is a big problem in many countries. |
| A．To figure out their ingredients. |
| B．To learn about different cultures. |
| C．To see if they could help cure fevers. |
| D．To see if they could help fight malaria. |
| A．Improving. | B．Proving. | C．Preventing. | D．Showing. |
| A．They can be harmful to people’s health. |
| B．They have no effect on many people. |
| C．They just work in certain countries. |
| D．They are very difficult to get. |
6 . Have you ever thought of taking a train and having an adventure? Riding the train can be a real adventure. That is how I feel every time I take Amtrak. I often take a four-hour trip to visit my children. Every time I take this trip I never know what will happen.
Last week when I was on the train and over an hour into the train ride, there was a man sitting by himself in the back of the train carrying on a mobile phone conversation — in another language. It was loud and disturbed most of the people on the train. I think it was annoying.
Fortunately I sat next to a wonderful old lady who was taking a two-day trip by train. She said her two daughters were distraught at the thought of her driving for three days to reach her home, although she had no trouble driving. The train ride was the only choice for her. She loved to look out of the window and watch the world go by on the train.
She was fun to talk to and asked me when my children started being parents. That is a very good question. Both of us are old and have children. She asked that same question from time to time.
There are always many people on the train from all walks of life, different countries, and many languages. Riding the train is a great way to increase your knowledge and take in all kinds of cultures. If you get hungry, you can buy food in the food car at any time. If you need to use the restroom there is always one available.
It sure beats driving the car, which has to stop for food and restrooms. And it is better than taking the bus.
1. According to the passage, the purpose of the author's train ride was .| A．to do business |
| B．to see her children |
| C．to visit places of interest |
| D．to see her old friends |
| A．Disappointed. | B．Satisfied. | C．Worried. | D．Pleased. |
| A．the services are quite good |
| B．the food is terribly expensive |
| C．all the passengers are polite |
| D．all the passengers are American |
| A．A wonderful lady |
| B．The history of Amtrak |
| C．A painful experience on the train |
| D．Train ride—a cultural experience |
7 . Saving Money
Where you save your money often depends on what you are saving for. If you are saving to buy a dictionary or to go to a concert, then you probably keep your money somewhere in your room.
If you are saving for a big purchase like a mountain bike or a school trip, where would you save your money?
One place to save money is the bank. Putting your money in a savings account will help your money earn more money. If you put your money in a piggy bank (猪形储蓄罐子), one year later you'll still have the same amount of money you put in. If you put your money in a savings account, one year later, you'll have more money than you put in. Why?
When you keep your money in a bank, your money earns interest. Interest is the amount of money a bank pays you to use your money. The bank uses your money (and the money of other people, too) to loan money to people and businesses.
The bank will send you a statement several times a year. A bank statement tells you how much money there is in your account. It also tells you how much interest you have earned. If you leave your money in the bank, you can watch it grow!
Another way you can save money is to buy a certificate of deposit or CD. If you have some money that you don't need to use for a long time, this is a good way to make your money grow.
You can buy a CD at a bank. You agree not to use the money for a certain period of time. That period might be from six months to five years. You can't touch your money during that time. If you do, you must pay a penalty, or fee.
Since the bank is using your money for that time period, it will pay you interest. You will earn more interest with a CD than in a savings account. Can you guess why? It's because you promise to leave your money in the bank for a certain period of time. Banks pay different rates of interest. So, you may want to compare rates in newspaper ads before buying a CD.
1. Which way will help your money earn more money?| A．Putting your money in your room. | B．Putting your money in a piggy bank. |
| C．Putting your money in your pocket. | D．Putting your money in a savings account. |
| A．a bank lends to people | B．a bank loans to businesses |
| C．a bank pays you | D．a bank uses |
| A．the amount of money you have in the bank |
| B．the current rates of interest |
| C．the current rates of exchange |
| D．the best way to save your money |
| A．"deposit" | B．"borrow" |
| C．"use" | D．"cash" |
8 . What are dreams for? Sigmund Freud famously claimed that they reveal hidden truths and wishes. More recent research suggests that they may help us process intense emotions, or perhaps classify(分类) and consolidate(巩固) memories, or make sense of random neuron(神经) activity, or rehearse(排练) responses to threatening situations. Other believe that dreams have no evolutionary(进行的) function, but simply dramatize personal concerns.
Despite being largely unsupported by evidence, Freud’s view maintains a strong following around the world. Researchers found that students in the U.S., South Korea, and India were much more likely to say that dreams reveal hidden truths than to endorse better-substantiated(证实的) theories. In the same study, respondents said that dreaming about a plane crash would cause them more anxiety than an official warning about a terrorist attack.
Even if dreams can't foretell(预知) the future, they seem to expose our shared fascinations. The majority of dreams occur during REM sleep cycles(快速动眼期), of which the average person has four or five a night. A study of Canadian university students found the most common dream topics to be school, falling, being chased, and arriving too late for something.
For all the commonalities dreams exhibit, they vary across time—people who grew up watching black-and-white TV are more likely to dream in black and white—and culture. A 1958 study determined that compared with Japanese people, Americans dreamed more about being looked up, losing a loved one, finding money, being inappropriately dressed, or encountering an insane person. Japanese people were more likely to dream about school, trying repeatedly to do something, being paralyzed with fear, or "wild, violent beasts."
But even negative human dreams can have positive effects. In a study of students taking a French medical-school entrance exam, 60 percent of the dreams they had beforehand involved a problem with the exam, such as being late or leaving an answer blank. But those who reported dreams about the exam, even bad ones, did better on it than those who didn't.
So the next time you dream about an education-related experience in which you are both falling and being chased, don’t worry: It’s probably totally meaningless. Then again, your brain might be practicing so you’ll be ready if such an event ever comes to pass.
1. According to different theories mentioned in the passage, dreams may help people in various aspects EXCEPT ________.| A．healing the body | B．memory classification |
| C．preparation for a dangerous situation | D．understanding random neuron activity |
| A．check | B．advertise |
| C．support | D．measure |
| A．People all dream in black and white without any other color. |
| B．Humans have the longest REM sleep cycles among all animals. |
| C．Our dreams often reflect our emotions or anxieties in many forms. |
| D．People feel more stressed when encountering emergencies in reality than in dream. |
| A．what you experience in dreams usually turns out to be the opposite |
| B．bad dreams can help us prepare beforehand to perform better in reality |
| C．it is a kind of comfort and relief to think dreams are usually meaningless |
| D．dreaming about bad things enhances(提高) our bravery and helps to drive away our fears |
9 . Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at —nothing — at nothing, simply.
What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you suddenly feel happy — absolutely happy.
Oh, is there no way you can express it without being “drunk and disorderly"? How stupid civilization is! Why should you be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle (小提琴)?
"No, that about the fiddle is not quite what I mean," she thought, running up the steps and feeling in her bag for the key—she'd forgotten it, as usual—and rattling the letter-box. "It's not what I mean, because—Thank you, Mary"— she went into the hall. “Is nurse back?”
“Yes, M’m."
"I'll go upstairs." And she ran upstairs to the nursery.
Nurse sat at a low table giving Little B her supper after her bath. The baby looked up when she saw her mother and began to jump.
“Now, my lovey, eat it up like a good girl," said nurse, setting her lips in a way that Bertha knew, and that meant she had come into the nursery at another wrong moment.
“Has she been good, Nanny?”
“She's been a little sweet all the afternoon," whispered Nanny. "We went to the park and I sat down on a chair and took her out of the pram(婴儿车) and a big dog came along and she pulled its ear. Oh, you should have seen her."
Bertha wanted to ask if it wasn't rather dangerous to let her pull a strange dog's ear. But she did not dare to. She stood watching them, her hands by her side. like the poor little girl in front of the rich girl with the doll.
The baby looked up at her again, stared, and then smiled so charmingly that Bertha couldn't help crying.
“Oh, Nanny, do let me finish giving her supper while you put the bath things away.
“Well, M’m, she oughtn't to be changed hands while she's eating,” said Nanny, still whispering. “It unsettles her, it's very likely to upset her.”
How absurd it was. Why have a baby if it has to be kept—not in a case like a rare, rare fiddle—but in another woman's arms?”
“Oh, I must!” said she.
Very offended, Nanny handed her over.
Now, don't excite her after her supper. You know you do, M'm. And I have such a time with her after!"
Thank heaven! Nanny went out of the room with the bath towels.
"Now I've got you to myself, my little precious," said Bertha, as the baby learned against her.
She ate delightfully, holding up her lips for the spoon and then waving her hands. Sometimes she wouldn't let the spoon go; and sometimes just as Bertha had filled it, she waved it away to the four winds.
When the soup was finished Bertha turned round to the fire. "You're nice—you're very nice!" said she, kissing her warm baby. "I'm fond of you. I like you."
And indeed, she loved Little B so much—her neck as she bent forward, her pretty toes as they shone transparent in the firelight that all her feeling of happiness came back again, and again she didn't know how to express it—what to do with it.
“You’re wanted on the telephone," said Nanny, coming back in victory and seizing her Little B.
1. In paragraph 3 and 15, a “rare, rare fiddle" is used to show that ______| A．Bertha is frustrated by not feeling free to express her musical talents |
| B．wealthy mothers are not allowed to look after their children |
| C．Bertha considers her baby girl an extraordinary child |
| D．people of a certain age are expected to follow a certain code of behavior |
| A．a vain attempt to hide her joy at seeing Bertha |
| B．fear of dismissal from her job for untidy nursery |
| C．dislike for Bertha's ill-timed visits to the nursery |
| D．a relief as she can at last eat her supper |
| A．Bertha wishes to have care-giving time with her baby. |
| B．Bertha lacks emotional and psychological strength. |
| C．Bertha desires a closer relationship with Nanny. |
| D．Bertha suffers from an unrealistic hope of having more babies. |
| A．Bertha feels that Nanny is a competent nurse and will do anything liberate her from chores. |
| B．Nanny considers herself the baby's primary caregiver and Bertha just an occasional visitor. |
| C．Bertha prefers to leave the child in Nanny's care so that she can fulfill her inappropriate fantasies. |
| D．Nanny is tired of working hard for Bertha and would like to find other pleasant employment. |
| A．She is a kind employer but a strict mother. |
| B．She is a thoughtless person and inexperienced mother. |
| C．She is excited and is always lost in her overactive imagination. |
| D．She is forgetful and has no sense of class distinctions in society. |
10 . “Serena, don’t forget your promise to me that you will mow (割) Mrs Matin’s yard this weekend,” said Dad, “Don’t let me down.” Serena was the oldest child in the family, and one of her chores was to mow their yard. Mrs Martin, their elderly neighbor, was unable to take care of her yard, so Serena’s dad had volunteered Serena for this job. Since Mrs Martin’s yard was not very big, Serena knew the job would go quickly.
However, she still resented her dad’s promise.
“Why didn’t you ask me first?” Serena had complained.
“Did you ask me first when you volunteered me to be in the school festival last fall?” asked Serena’s father.
“Well, no, I didn’t ask you first, but you would have done those things anyway. You’re always willing to help.”
“I try when I can,” Dad answered.
“Serena, we have known Mrs Martin for a very long time. She has often helped our family. Now we can do something for her. Besides, the feeling you get from helping someone makes you wonder who is really helping whom.”
“I don’t know, Dad,” said Serena. “The only feeling I get from mowing our yard is tired.”
“Just you wait and see,” said Dad.
After breakfast, Serena made her way to Mrs Martin’s yard. She was good at her job and soon had Mrs Martin’s yard looking tidy. Mrs Martin came outside with a big glass of orange juice and offered it to her. Serena stopped her work and gratefully enjoyed the drink, while Mrs.Martin talked to her about all of the flowers in her yard. Seeing the joy in Mrs Martin’s eyes, Serena began to understand how much the yard meant to Mrs. Martin.
After finishing her drink, Serena returned to work with a new attitude. A warm feeling began to spread through her body. Her dad was right. It was hard to tell who was helping whom!
1. The underlined word “resented” (Paragraph 2) means___________.| A．understood | B．welcomed |
| C．broke | D．disliked |
| A．Through Dad’s words. | B．Through Serena’s actions. |
| C．Through Mrs Martin’s behaviour. | D．Through the author’s statement. |
| A．Annoyed. | B．Surprised. |
| C．Guilty. | D．Pleased. |
| A．Serena likes the job of mowing her family’s yard. |
| B．Mrs. Martin and Serena did the work together. |
| C．Mrs Martin shared her love for the yard with Serena. |
| D．Dad volunteered himself to take part in the school festival. |
