1 . As humanity sets their sights on deep space exploration, the moon becomes a stepping stone, with countries hoping to build lunar bases to support such missions. To solve the “lunch” problem, scientists have been exploring the possibility of growing plants on the moon. A new study by Chinese scientists has found that bacteria in soil from Earth could offer a solution.
Researchers from China Agricultural University tested five species of bacteria on a material that simulated (模拟) lunar soil. Within a period of 10 to 21 days, three of the bacteria species had doubled their amount of phosphorus (磷) content, a key element for plant growth.
They then grew model plants in the lunar soil containing these three bacteria species. They observed that the plants had longer stems and roots after six days of growth compared with those grown without the bacteria. The plants also had heavier and wider leaves after 24 days of growth. Besides, levels of chlorophyll (叶绿素) — responsible for harvesting energy from light — in the model plants were about double that of those grown without bacteria.
“The study results have important implications for future long-term stays on the moon,” the study’s lead researcher, Sun Zhencai, told Xinhua. Earth bacteria may help astronauts make better use of lunar resources, such as creating lunar greenhouses. In their follow-up research, they hope to experiment with real lunar soil samples and grow crops like rice, com and potatoes.
Since the duration of space missions is increasing, carrying all food supplies to space becomes unsustainable. Hence, “space farmers” becomes critical.
During the Shenzhou XI mission, astronauts managed to grow lettuce, from sowing to harvest. In the later missions, the “space farmers” have successfully grown wheat, rice and thale cress (拟南芥), according to CCTV News.
The most recent visitors to China’s space station, the Shenzhou XVII astronauts, are now growing lettuce, scallion and cherry tomato. These “space farmers” not only provide astronauts with food but also more oxygen and water.
1. What do scientists hope the bacteria in soil from Earth can do?| A．Change lunar soil. into Earth soil. | B．Remove pollutants in lunar soil. |
| C．Help cultivate crops on the moon. | D．Get nutrients from the lunar soil. |
| A．plant species | B．bacteria species |
| C．the growth rate of the plants | D．the presence of the bacteria |
| A．Future missions. | B．Recent achievements. |
| C．Planting methods. | D．Production processes. |
| A．Bacteria from: Earth May Help Grow Crops on the Moon |
| B．Bacteria Play a Key Role in Growing Crops Nowadays |
| C．China Has Made Many Achievements Regarding Crop Harvest |
| D．The Origin and Development of Space Exploration Worldwide |
China is known as Xia for its grand etiquette (礼仪) culture, and known as Hua for its beautiful attire (衣裳). With the
“In ancient China, emperors like Huangdi. Yao, and Shun brought peace to the world through their clothing.” Clothing holds
What is the Chinese style? It is something that makes people think of China as soon as they see it. For example, the horse-face skirt, which
A brief meeting about the “China-France Year of Culture and Tourism in 2024” was held at the Palace Museum in Beijing on Thursday,
2024 marks
The rare objects will introduce visitors
Compared to
Besides shows in China, more than 10 programs will be
4 . The news industry has had a rough decade. Print readership is steadily declining, newspapers are closing, and journalists with decades of experience are being laid off. In response, major newspapers have made significant changes. They’re attempting to combat declining reader interest by shortening stories, creating clickbait (诱饵性标题), and most especially, using social media to their advantage.
With the rise of social media sites, many people have claimed that we are entering a new age in which news must be delivered in 140 characters or fewer. People’s ability to focus on long-form content and engage in deep reading has also been declining due to the endless distractions and excessive information in today’s world. This change in reading habits has led to a preference for short, easily-understood news pieces that can be quickly consumed. To interest a more specific and generally younger readership, newspapers have revised content, prioritizing articles that are visually appealing instead of having depth.
But, in reality, there is still a demand for in-depth reporting. In this era of misinformation and clickbait, readers are seeking reliable sources of news that provide context, analysis, and accountability. Depth reporting explores the fundamental causes, involves multiple perspectives, and uncovers the hidden truths that shape our world, helping readers get a more comprehensive understanding of complicated matters.
While social media have changed the way we consume news, the quality of news remains essential for public. It’s crucial for the news industry to achieve a balance between catering to changing reader preferences while also maintaining the integrity (完整性) of news. This means providing both quick updates and in-depth analysis, and using social media to promote their content, but not at the expense of accuracy or integrity. By doing so, news organizations can ensure that they remain relevant and trusted sources of information in a rapidly changing media environment.
1. What problem does traditional news industry face?| A．The decline of readership. | B．The lack of long-form stories. |
| C．The spread of unreliable information. | D．The shortage of experienced journalists. |
| A．People’s need for in-depth reporting is decreasing. |
| B．Social media has played a key role in promoting hidden facts. |
| C．Clickbait greatly increases readers’ interests in exploring truths. |
| D．In-depth reporting can improve readers’ comprehension of complex issues. |
| A．providing quick updates and focusing on popular topics |
| B．stating matters in multiple perspectives and shortening articles |
| C．satisfying readers’ preferences and ensuring the quality of news |
| D．widening news sources and maintaining the accuracy of contents |
| A．An advertisement. | B．A daily newspaper. |
| C．A diary entry. | D．A story book. |
5 . Do you have any travel plans for 2024? Tour agencies like Contiki in New Zealand and Booking, one of the largest online travel agencies, have provided their predictions for travel trends in 2024.
Embracing the unknown
While many people like to make a perfect plan for their trips, more travelers are interested in booking trips where the destination remains a mystery until later, according to a global study of Booking involving 27,000 travelers across 33 countries and regions. By doing it this way, they seek a chance to escape from their everyday lives and explore places that few people have been to. A majority want to go on trips without any set plans, enjoying the spontaneity (自发性). Surprisingly, 34 percent are even open to traveling with strangers.
AI travel
With the rise of AI, especially with services like ChatGPT becoming accessible to people, there’s been a growing interest in AI-assisted travel. According to Contiki, both tour companies and travelers are increasingly turning to AI. For companies, AI serves as an efficient tool to plan trips based on clients’ preferences, such as the duration of their vacation, preferred hotel types and budget. Similarly, travelers are showing a willingness to let AI select their next holiday destination, particularly if it comes with discounts on travel and hotels.
Mouth feast
Regarding food exploration, most travelers prefer experimenting with new and fresh flavors rather than sticking with familiar dishes, according to Booking’s study. They also love to discover the origins of well-known local specialties. Additionally, technology is transforming our dining experiences. A significant number of people are drawn to eating experiences that combine the physical and digital realms, using technologies like virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR). There’s also a growing curiosity in creative plant-based alternatives, such as 3D-printed vegan steaks.
Sustainable (可持续的) trip
The travel industry is ready for a sustainable revolution. According to Contiki, a substantial majority of travelers now actively look for accommodations that offer both comfort and innovative sustainability features. There’s a growing desire for natural peace even indoors, with many seeking green spaces and plants in their lodging. Adam Armstrong, CEO of Contiki, noted, “People are traveling closer to home to reduce their carbon footprint. They are using alternative transportation such as coach rides and train trips, and traveling off-season to avoid large and potentially destructive crowds. ”
1. Why do more travelers book unknown destinations for their trips?| A．To meet new friends. | B．To reduce the cost of travel. |
| C．To escape from daily routine. | D．To discover more about themselves. |
| A．Buying special local products. | B．Making videos of familiar dishes. |
| C．Learning to cook plant-based foods. | D．Mixing real and virtual experiences. |
| A．Traveling during busy seasons. | B．Using eco-friendly transportation. |
| C．Growing some green plants indoors. | D．Taking away the garbage they produce. |
6 . Catherine Krestyn furnished (布置家具)her home mainly with hard rubbish, such as the chairs, doors and lamps, which have been collected from the street where she lives. And it’s a way of life she’s sharing with her community in the hope of making a difference.
Catherine leads a 6,000-strong online group called Boroondara Hard Rubbish Rehome, where members upload pictures of their hard rubbish piles for eager locals to find. She started the group in 2022 with her childhood friend Jennie Irving, hoping to build a community of thrift (节俭)where they lived. The pair have stopped more than 7,000 kg of hard rubbish going to landfill since they founded the group.
Some items are ready as they are, like chairs and lamps, and others take a bit of effort to clean up, like the old, wooden doors.
Local teacher Ruth Polgar discovered the group while surfing the Internet and has since decorated her classroom with second-hand items, including artwork she has rehomed from a neighbour. “We regularly take unneeded items from the group and use them for our school projects,” she says.
Running the group can be really challenging for Catherine. But she doesn’t resent those who have to let go of their possessions because of stressful circumstances. “If you’re downsizing or if you’re clearing an old house, quite often you’re desperate for access to easy options,” she says. “Hard rubbish piles are often that option.”
All Catherine wants to do is give her community a way to reduce their waste, and to send a message to those in charge that things need to urgently change.
“The government has big targets around sustainable development leading into 2030. We want to start speeding that up even sooner,” she says. “We’re suffering from our own waste really, so anything that we can all do on a practical level helps. We should first make lifestyle choices and be prepared to go second-hand.”
1. Why did Catherine set up Boroondara Hard Rubbish Rehome?| A．To create a community of thrift. | B．To donate her collection to charity. |
| C．To collect hard rubbish for locals. | D．To decorate the houses for the homeless. |
| A．She prefers second-hand items. | B．She buys items on the Internet. |
| C．She supports Catherine’s cause. | D．She teaches art at a local school. |
| A．Feel angry about. | B．Feel pleased with. |
| C．Show sympathy for. | D．Show interest in. |
| A．Setting ourselves a big goal. | B．Giving throwaways a second life. |
| C．Meeting the government’s requirements. | D．Replacing old furniture regularly. |
7 . Summer Badminton Camp
Our annual badminton camps are back this June holidays! Come and join us for some fun and action! All camps will be held at the Chestnut Sports Hall. There are a total of 4 fun-filled camps lined up for this amazing holiday. The aim is to allow them to understand and lift their game to the next level or just for recreation, at the same time adding fun elements in training to build a strong interest in the sport.
Camps Available
| Beginner: For those who want to learn basic badminton skills. Date: 12 to 14 June 2024 Time: 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. Fees: $80 Ages: 5-8 years old only | Intermediate: For those who know the basics of playing badminton and want to improve their skills further. Date: 15 to 17 June 2024 Time: 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. Fees: $100 Ages: 7-12 years old only |
| Advanced: For those who want to take up badminton as a competitive sport. Date: 19 to 21 June 2024 Time: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Fees: $150 Ages: 11-12 years old only | Recreation: For those who want to make new friends while staying active. Date: 12 to 14 June 2024 Time: 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Fees: $60 Ages: 13-16 years old only |
| Guest Speaker Badminton world champion, Adrian Goh, will address the participants at the start of each camp. He will share invaluable tips and his experience of playing badminton competitively. |
| Special Camp Present All participants will receive our summer badminton camp sweater and water bottle. |
| Early Bird Special First 20 participants to register will be given a pair of Yinex badminton bats. For more information, call Mr. Tan at 67892111 or visit our website at www. sbssummer camps. com |
| A．The beginner camp. | B．The advanced camp. |
| C．The intermediate camp. | D．The recreation camp. |
| A．A summer badminton camper. | B．The badminton camp organizer. |
| C．A badminton world champion. | D．A sponsor for the summer camp. |
| A．To give away free badminton bats. |
| B．To promote the special camp bottles. |
| C．To invite people to attend Mr. Goh’s talk. |
| D．To encourage people to sign up for the camps. |
The Qingming Festival by the Riverside, which
The painting features magnificent and complex scenes with a rigorous structure, which can
9 . Hiring processes can be thought of as a battle between integrity and dishonesty. You might imagine this is a simple fight between truth-seeking firms and self-promoting candidates, and to a certain extent it is. But companies themselves are prone (有倾向的) to bend reality out of shape in ways that are self-defeating.
Start with the obvious wrongdoers: job applicants. When it comes to writing the resume (简历), they tend to massage (美化) reality into the most appealing shape possible. Everyone beyond a certain level of experience is a transformational leader personally responsible for generating millions income; the world economy would be about 15 times bigger than it actually is if all such claims were true. The average British spends four and a half hours a day watching TV and online videos. But each average job candidate is an enthusiast for public welfare, using their spare time only for worthy purposes, like volunteering in soup kitchens.
But the tendency to stretch the truth infects companies as well as applicants. The typical firm will write a job description that invariably describes the work environment as fast-paced and innovative, and then lays out a set of improbable requirements for the “ideal candidate”, someone who almost by definition does not exist. Sometimes, the requirements include an ability to go back and change the course of history.
Too few firms offer an accurate account of what a position actually involves in their job previews, which are supposed to give prospective employees a genuine sense of the negatives and positives of the job, as well as a clear idea of the company’s corporate culture. One effective strategy is to lay out in text or video, what a typical day in the role would look like.
Such honesty can be its own reward. Research has long suggested that realistic job previews lead to lower turnover and higher employee satisfaction. A paper in 2011 by David Eamest of Towson University and his co-authors concluded that favourable perceptions of the organisation’s honesty are the best explanation for why. So a process designed to uncover the truth about job applicants would run a lot more smoothly if firms were also honest about themselves.
1. Why are “leader” and “enthusiast” mentioned in paragraph 2?| A．To present a rule. | B．To clarify a fact. |
| C．To make a comparison. | D．To explain a phenomenon. |
| A．Overstate. | B．Overturn. | C．Overlook. | D．Overestimate. |
| A．They show a position as it is. | B．They are made either in text or video. |
| C．They are favorable for bigger firms. | D．They mainly contain negatives of a job. |
| A．Pains and gains of employees. | B．How to get the lying out of hiring. |
| C．How to be more appealing in hiring. | D．A wrestle between applicants and companies. |
10 . People have come to understand the enormous impacts-beneficial as well as harmful- plastics have on human lives and the environment. As polymer (聚合物) scientists committed to inventing sustainable solutions for real-world problems, we set out to tackle the issue of plastic waste by rethinking the way polymers are designed so we could make plastics with recyclability built right in.
Everyday items including milk jug, grocery bags, and takeout containers are made from a class of polymers called polyolefins. These plastics are really durable (耐用的) because the chemical bonds in those polymers are extremely stable. In a world set up for disposable (一次性的) items, durability is no longer a design feature but rather a design drawback. Imagine if half the plastics used today were recyclable through twice as many processes as they are now. Also conventional recycling requires careful sorting of all the collected materials, which can be challenging with so many different plastics. For example, separating paper from metal doesn’t require complex technology, but sorting a container from a milk jug of a different polyolefin is difficult to do without the occasional mistake.
In a study published in Science in October 2023, we described a series of polymers with only two building blocks-one soft polymer and one hard polymer-that behave like polyolefins but could be chemically recycled. Connecting two different polymers multiple times until they form a single, long molecule (分子) creates what’s called a multiblock polymer. By changing how much of each polymer type goes into the multiblock polymer, our team produced a wide range of materials with properties that covered all polyolefin types.
Using the same strategy but by adding hydrogen, we could disconnect the polymers back into their building blocks and easily separate them to use again. When we made new polymers out of these recycled plastics, they performed just as well as the original materials even after several rounds of chemical recycling. So we were able to create materials with similar properties of the plastics the world relies on. We believe this work is a step toward more sustainable plastics.
1. What is paragraph 2 mainly about concerning plastics?| A．Their multiple uses. | B．Their chemical properties. |
| C．Their recycling challenges. | D．Their classification criteria. |
| A．mixing building blocks with long molecules |
| B．integrating chemicals into the two polymers |
| C．combining two different multiblock polymers |
| D．adjusting the percentage of the two polymers |
| A．They are made from sustainable materials. |
| B．They can be recycled by adding hydrogen. |
| C．Their reliability outperforms traditional plastics. |
| D．Their properties change with rounds of recycling. |
| A．Designing for Recycling | B．Classifying Plastic Waste |
| C．Replace Plastics with Polymers | D．Technology Creates the Future |
