1 . A new drug-delivery system could replace needles with puffs (股) of air. Gassensmith studies bioengineering at the University of Texas. His team’s new tech goes beyond patient comfort, though. The device quickly delivers drugs without touching the bloodstream. And that could reduce the risk of spreading disease. He tested it out on his own arm. “I could feel it, but it wasn’t painful,” he reports.

The technology works by blowing in a puff of air through the skin. That gas carries a powder made of tiny bits of vaccine (疫苗) wrapped in metallic crystals (晶体). The crystal coating is really strong, Gassensmith says. As a result, the vaccine powder does not have to be refrigerated while stored. The air contains carbon dioxide, or CO₂. Once in the body, the CO₂ that carries the powder will mix with water. It creates a weak acid that breaks down the crystal cover. Released, the vaccine bits are then able to enter the bloodstream.

This gas-based drug-delivery system is an upgrade over previous ones. For instance, adjusting the gas that carries the vaccine powder can customize how fast the tiny crystal capsules release the drug. Testing showed that the drug released fastest when delivered with carbon dioxide. Plain air led to a slower, gentler release. Vaccines work best when released slowly. That allows them longer contact with the immune(免疫) system. But the team hopes the device could work for other medicines too. And some medicines must be released quickly. One such example is insulin, a crucial drug for many people with diabetes.

Fear of needles keeps many people from getting vaccinations. Gassensmith is optimistic that this new system might get around that. Future research must ensure that gas-delivered vaccines build immunity to disease as expected, said Weniger, a doctor, who studied vaccine technology for 30 years for the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

1. What can we learn about the new drug-delivery system from paragraph 1?

A．It causes the loss of feeling.	B．It improves the use of needle.
C．It cares about patient comfort.	D．It blocks the spread of disease.

2. What is the function of the crystals?

A．To create a weak acid.	B．To absorb carbon dioxide.
C．To clean the bloodstream.	D．To contain the vaccine.

3. What is the advantage of the upgraded drug-delivery system?

A．Flexibility.

B．Durability.

C．High speed.

D．Gentle release.

4. What should the future study focus on according to Weniger?

A．The effectiveness of gas-based vaccines.	B．The acceptance of getting vaccinations.
C．The influence of vaccine on disease control.	D．The operation of the new drug-delivery system.

2 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。

Hettie’s eyes fell on a magazine she hadn’t noticed before in her bag. She took it out and read the Post-it note her mom had stuck to the cover.

Page 8! So Cool!

Love, Mom

Hettie smiled. Mom always slipped a little surprise into her bag. Hettie jumped onto her bed and wrapped herself in the blanket, opening the magazine to page eight straight. There was a huge ad: “DO YOU WANNA BE CALIFORNIA LEE’S BEST FRIEND FOREVER? Make a video telling us how much you love her and you could win a day with Pop Teen’s rising star CALIFORNIA LEE!”

Hettie tried to see the Cally she had known through the makeup and the fancy clothes. Her eyes sparkled (闪烁) the same emerald green as they had in Hettie’s backyard when Cally told her the big news. “I got the part!” She sang out as she bounced up and down on the swing. Hettie had been excited, too. Cally had really wanted this part. It was in Rock Club, a TV musical on Pop Teen. It was, she said, how all of Pop Teen Channel’s stars started out.

Then the musical came out and Cally, now California Lee, was busy all the time. The last time the two girls had seen each other was at Cally’s birthday party. Even in her best dress and new shoes, Hettie felt out of place. Most of the kids at the party were actors. Big boxes with massive bows covered the birthday present table. Overwhelmed and feeling shy, Hettie took her gift—a flashlight, and sat in a corner. No one came to look for her until her mom arrived to pick her up. Soon after, Cally moved to Los Angeles with her family.

The next day, Hettie arrived at school earlier than usual, with the magazine under her arm, her book bag over her shoulder. After making sure that no one in the schoolyard was watching, Hettie dropped her bag on the ground and pulled out her phone.

注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。

She held the phone as far as she could from her face and pressed record.

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Hettie’s heart sank as she realized that she wasn’t the winner.

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3 . The Surprising Strength of “Weak” Social Ties

It’s long been known that a community of supportive relationships improves our quality of life and can even help us recover from illness.     1    . Regularly interacting with a wide variety of social ties, both “weak” and “strong”, enhances our satisfaction. A rich diversity of ties provides more significant benefits to well-being, and “weak” social ties can prove just as important to life satisfaction as core, or “strong” ties.     2    . There you can find the people who cheer, serve, support, comfort, educate, motivate, and entertain you.

Claire gets cheered up by going to the library and chatting with her favorite librarian every week. Sherry gets great joy from her Sunday breakfasts at a local diner because the manager and her favorite waitress are nice to her.     3    . I remember discussing Anna Karenina on an airplane with a wise economics professor, and finding meaningful moments of joy with street musicians and performers.

    4    . When you show kindness to a stranger, your seemingly small act might stay in their memory as a source of support and positivity. Everyone needs to feel significant in the eyes of another. You could be that person for someone in your extended circle. That’s why it’s so important to reach out to people around you, especially when they’re going through hard times.

When we feel blue or lonely, we tend to turn down social engagements, either to avoid the imagined embarrassment of being the only sad person in a group or because socializing with people we don’t know well can be awkward at first.     5    . Being open to both our strong and weak ties allows us to benefit from the comfort, connection, and community they provide.

A．All of those connections matter — and so do you

B．Harvard researcher Hanne Collins discovered something new

C．Even those we meet only once can leave a lasting impression

D．Our shared kindness and familiarity offer me a sense of community

E．Interacting with the weak ties encourages us to behave more professionally

F．But saying yes, despite the hesitation, offers an opportunity to feel less lonely

G．So notice, pay attention to, and be grateful for your big, wide world of loose social ties

4 . When you try a new restaurant or book a hotel, do you consider the online reviews? Do you submit online reviews yourself? Do you pay attention if they are filtered (过滤)? Does that impact your own online review submissions?

In 2010, Yelp shared a video to help users understand how its review filter works and why it was necessary. In recently published research, T. Ravichandran, Ph. D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and his team compared reviews of over 1,000 restaurants on Yelp to those same restaurants on TripAdvisor, which did not openly share its review filter policies. They found that the number of reviews submitted to Yelp decreased. Those submissions were increasingly negative and shorter in length compared to TripAdvisor. Also, the more positive a review, the shorter it was.

“Platforms are pressured to have content guidelines and take measures to prevent fraud (欺诈) and ensure that reviews are reliable and helpful,” said Ravichandran. Platforms use advanced software to flag and filter reviews. Once a review is flagged, it is filtered out and not displayed, and it is not factored into the overall rating for a business. “However, most platforms do not openly disclose their policies, leading consumers to suspect that reviews are controlled to increase profit by filtering so-called dishonest content,” Ravichandran added.

Whether or not to disclose review filters is a critical decision for platforms with many considerations. Users may put less time and effort into their reviews if they suspect that they have a significant chance of being filtered, or they may do the opposite to make their reviews less likely to be filtered. Since most false reviews are overly positive, users may assume that positive reviews are most likely to be filtered and act accordingly.

“Review moderation(审核) openness comes at a cost,”said Ravichandran. “Although openness helps to position a platform as fair toward advertisers, the resultant decrease in the number of reviews submitted impacts the platform’s usefulness to consumers.” Online reviews pose great opportunity for firms, but also raise complex questions. Platforms must earn the trust of users without sacrificing engagement.

1. What did Ravichandran’s research find?

A．Positive submissions to Yelp went up.

B．TripAdvisor adopted better filter policies.

C．Reviews on TripAdvisor dropped in number.

D．Yelp’s practice discouraged longer reviews.

2. Why do platforms use advanced software for reviews?

A．To increase net profit.	B．To protect user privacy.
C．To guarantee review reliability.	D．To improve business reputation.

3. What does the underlined word “they” in paragraph 4 refer to?

A．Users.

B．Reviews.

C．Considerations.

D．Platforms.

4. What is the best title for the text?

A．Enhance User Trust Through Review Moderation

B．To Filter Online Reviews? Think Before You Start

C．How Review Moderation Openness Shapes User Conduct

D．Online Reviews: Filter the Fraud, But Don’t Tell Us How

5 . Scientists looking to uncover the mysteries of the underwater world have more valuable information thanks to an international team that has produced a list of species confirmed or expected to produce sounds underwater.

Led by Audrey Looby from the University of Florida, the Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds working group collaborated with the World Register of Marine Species to document 729 mammals (哺乳动物), fishes, and invertebrates (无脊椎动物) that produce active or passive sounds. In addition, the list includes another 21,911 species that are considered to likely produce sounds.

“With more than 70% of the Earth’s surface covered by water, most of the planet’s habitats are aquatic, and there is a misconception that most aquatic organisms are silent. The newly published comprehensive digital database on what animals are known to make sounds is the first of its kind and can revolutionize marine and aquatic science,” the researchers said.

“Listening to underwater sounds can reveal a lot of information about the species that produce them and is useful for a variety of applications, ranging from fisheries management, invasive species detection to assessing human environmental impacts,” said Looby, who also co-created FishSounds, which offers a collection of fish sound production research records.

The team’s research was published in Scientific Data and involved 19 authors from six countries. “Understanding how marine species interact with their environments is of global importance, and this data being freely available is a major step toward that goal,” said Kieran Cox, a member of the research team.

“Most people are familiar with whale or dolphin sounds but are often surprised to learn that many fishes and invertebrates use sounds to communicate, too,” Looby said. “Our database helps demonstrate how widespread underwater sound production really is across a variety of animals, but we still have a lot to learn.”

1. Why is the data listed in paragraph 2?

A．To show the types of biological sounds.

B．To show the sum of documents on animals.

C．To show the species of underwater animals.

D．To show the number of the sound-producing species.

2. What is people’s misunderstanding according to the text?

A．Many mammals can live in water.	B．Most fishes cannot make sounds.
C．Different species can communicate.	D．Ocean animals can’t get onto the land.

3. What is the goal mentioned by Kieran Cox?

A．To document ocean animals’ sounds.

B．To set up a free database for scientists.

C．To learn how ocean animals communicate.

D．To publish the team’s research in Scientific Data.

4. What is the main purpose of the text?

A．To call on people to protect ocean animals.

B．To introduce the finding of a research team.

C．To list the animals that can produce sounds.

D．To describe the mysterious underwater world.

6 . Next time you’re with a loved one, consider trying an awkward experiment: Take a moment of silence and gaze into each others eyes. By the time you reach about four seconds, things will probably start to feel uncomfortable. Yet the precise reason why is tricky to pin down with a scientific lens.

“There’s something in that looking that has meaning, sustainable meaning,” says Joy Hirsch, a neuroscientist at Yale School of Medicine, “The mechanism for connection has never really been understood.”

Several years ago, her team figured out how to adapt an existing neuroimaging (神经成像) tool called functional near-infrared spectroscopy(fNIRS), for the purpose of analyzing the brains of two people during natural interactions. With these brain imaging tools, Hirsch is expanding the social neuroscience field into what she refers to as “the neuroscience of two.”

In the research, her teams have revealed a powerful region of the brain that is associated with eye contact. Specifically, fNIRS experiments have demonstrated that in-person eye contact seems to be connected to a brain part associated with language production and reception, as well as the primary sensory cortex (额叶), which is fundamental to processing sensations like physical touch, pain and temperature. In simple terms: “The eyes have privileged access to large parts of the brain,” says Hirsch.

Hirsch’s experiments have also revealed the unique tendency for two brains to synchronize (同步) during eye contact and communication. A research of Dartmouth College has similarly highlighted how expansion of pupils (瞳孔) can synchronize during a conversation to indicate “shared attention” between two people, according to a 2021 study. Interestingly, those researchers found that precise moments of shared eye contact actually decrease the pupil synchrony between two people, perhaps in a beneficial way.

Ultimately, each of these studies sparks just as many new questions as it answers - a reality that is perfectly fine with Hirsch.“Yes indeed, the old philosophers were right.” she says. “Faces and brains work together like locks and keys.”

1. What do we know about the awkward experiment from the first two paragraphs?

A．It will be a long time before you feel comfortable.	B．You can sense something from each other’s eyes.
C．Scientists have explained the reason for it clearly.	D．There is no link between eye contact and feelings.

2. What is Paragraph 4 mainly about?

A．Why the brain responds to eye contact easily.	B．How the language is produced in the brain.
C．What the function of primary sensory cortex is.	D．How the regions of the brain are shaped.

3. What does the synchronization of pupils mean during a conversation?

A．The interaction is fun.	B．The conversation is interrupted.
C．The two feel connected.	D．A new conversations to start.

4. Why does Joy Hirsch quote the philosophers’ words at the end?

A．To further prove her findings are quite true.	B．To emphasize the importance of their research.
C．To show the complexity of the phenomenon.	D．To stimulate people’s interest in further study.

7 . 读后续写

Mr. Thompson dragged his feet slowly down the hallway, burdened with the weight of a hundred ungraded papers on his shoulders. It was Teacher’s Day, and colorful posters were pasted around. Despite scattered (零散的) “Happy Teacher’s Day” greetings from some students along the way, Mr. Thompson felt a familiar emptiness settle in his heart. Teacher’s Day usually meant an apple and a chorus of “thank yous” from his own class. Today, he expected nothing different.

The morning had been quite tough, filled with a host of math problems and forgotten homework excuses. One troublemaker in the class had again “accidentally” set his biology project on fire(thankfully contained). By the time the lunch bell rang sharply in the air, Mr. Thompson felt like a deflated (泄气的) balloon, the air of enthusiasm slowly leaking out of him.

After lunch, he entered his classroom. The whole class was in chaos. The usual pre-class chatter sounded like a dull roar in his ears. All of a sudden, a scream cut through the air. Mr. Thompson’s heart was in his mouth. Fights were a rare, but terrifying occurrence in his classroom. He cast his worn leather briefcase onto his desk, the forgotten pack of papers scattering like frightened pigeons.

“What in the world is going on here?”

His voice hoarse (嘶哑的) from shouting, Mr. Thompson rushed forward, envisioning images of black eyes and bloody noses. He struggled to make his way through the desks, the classroom suddenly deathly quiet.

“Break it up! Now!” he shouted, trying to control the situation.

Finally, he reached the center of the apparent fight, only to find himself staring at...a far more delicate, fragrant affair. Ethan, the class clown, was on one knee with a bunch of sunflowers and smiling at him.

Para 1: The whole class looked at Mr. Thompson excitedly.

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Para 2: By the end of the day, Mr. Thompson’s voice was hoarse from laughter.

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8 . 语法填空

Zanhua Wei, known as “the garden on the head”, is a kind of flower headwear     1     (wear) by local women in Xunpu, a fishing village in Quanzhou, Fujian Province.

The production of it needs to go through multiple     2     (process), including cutting, laying, inlaying, coloring and so on. Main materials for making hair-pinned flowers are metal wires, jewelry stones and colored pearls,     3     (delicate) combined to form a variety of flower patterns.

Opinions vary about the origin of Zanhua Wei, with some saying     4     originated from the custom of Central Asian women wearing flowers and was brought back through the maritime Silk Road during the Song and Yuan dynasties,     5     Quanzhou served as one of the few leading trading ports on the southeastern coast of China. The ships carried spices and all kinds of     6     (value) goods to Quanzhou for trade, notably countless jewelry stones and pearls.

In 2008, the custom    7     (include) in the national intangible cultural heritage list. Besides    8     (use) as hair accessories (配饰), head-pinned flowers play     9     undeniable role in traditional Chinese culture. Zanhua Wei carries the emotions and memories of the fisherman’s family, reflecting the diligence and simplicity of Xunpu, as well as the    10     (expect) for a better life.

9 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。
1. What is the talk mainly about?

A．A campaign for healthy life.

B．A fundraising event for charities.

C．A volunteer program in the neighborhood.

2. When will Challenge Week come to an end?

A．On Wednesday.

B．On Friday.

C．On Sunday.

3. What is one challenge mentioned by the speaker?

A．Giving up sugar for five days.

B．Speaking 20 words a day for a month.

C．Disconnecting from social media for a week.

4. What should Challenge Week participants do?

A．Donate as much as possible.

B．Find sponsors for their challenges.

C．Complete challenges with others together.

10 . 听下面一段较长对话，回答以下小题。
1. What is the new product used to do?

A．Do some housework.

B．Settle family problems.

C．Manage money matters.

2. What is the robot programmed to do?

A．Cleaning and washing.

B．Shopping and figuring.

C．Repairing and guarding.

3. How does the woman think about the product?

A．It is safe enough.

B．It is worth buying.

C．It is too expensive.

4. What is the probable relationship between the speakers?

A．Reporter and manager.

B．Customer and salesman.

C．Housewife and shopkeeper.