As a centuries-old art form, the popularity of Yingge dance on the streets of London during the Spring Festival was
Literally
Based
With its high compatibility (共存) with various art forms and years of inheritance and innovation, this Chaoshan-born dance art has spread to neighboring countries and
Yingge dance
2 . Smart accessories are increasingly common. For example, recently researchers introduced the Thermal Earring (热耳环), a wireless wearable device that continuously monitors a user’s earlobe (耳垂) temperature.
The smart earring model is about the size and weight of a small paperclip. A clip attaches one temperature sensor to a wearer’s ear, while another sensor hangs about an inch below it for estimating room temperature. The earring can be personalized with fashion designs in the shape of a flower, for example, without negatively affecting its accuracy.
“I wear a smartwatch to track my personal health, but I’ve found that a lot of people think smartwatches are unfashionable or uncomfortable,” said co-lead author Shirley. “I also like to wear earrings, so we started thinking about developing smart earrings.”
Creating a wearable device small enough to pass as an earring, yet robust (耐用的) enough that users would have to charge it only every few days, presented an engineering challenge.
“It’s a tricky balance,” said Shirley. “Typically, if you want power to last longer, you should have a bigger battery. But then you sacrifice size. Making it wireless also demands more energy.”
The team made the earring’s power consumption as efficient as possible, while also making space for a Bluetooth chip, a battery and two temperature sensors. Instead of pairing it with a device, which uses more power, the earring uses Bluetooth advertising mode—the transmissions a device broadcasts to show it can be paired. After reading and sending the temperature, it goes into deep sleep to save power.
In a study of six users, the earring outperformed a smartwatch at sensing skin temperature during periods of rest. It also showed promise for monitoring signs of stress, eating and exercise. But they need more data to train their models for each use case and more thorough testing before the device might be used by the public.
For future versions of the device, Shirley is working to integrate heart rate and activity monitoring. She’s also interested in potentially powering the device from solar or kinetic energy from the earring swaying.
1. What can be learned about the smart earrings from paragraph 2?| A．Its target users. | B．Its design. |
| C．Its energy consumption. | D．Its application. |
| A．Selecting a light material. |
| B．Testing out wireless connection. |
| C．Charging the smart earring quickly. |
| D．Balancing the size and the energy capacity. |
| A．How the earrings read and send the temperature. |
| B．What the researchers did to save energy of the earrings. |
| C．How the researchers paired the earrings with bluetooth. |
| D．What principles the researchers used in the invention. |
| A．Putting the smart earrings into market. |
| B．Testing the smart earrings on the patients. |
| C．Adding more functions to the smart earrings. |
| D．Comparing smart earrings with other smart products. |
3 . As dawn breaks over the Rockies, the streets of Colorado awaken, walkers and cyclists moving through the city’s streets. But beneath this lies a growing concern: the safety of these road users is increasingly under threat.
Recent statistics reveal a reality, with fatalities (死亡) rising, casting a shadow over Colorado’s busy streets. Among these fatalities is the story of Nick Cordova, a cyclist whose life was cut short, becoming a catalyst for change and a symbol of the urgent need for safer streets.
In the wake of these accidents, the community has found a discomforting way to remember and advocate: the “ghost (幽灵) bike”. Painted white and chained near the site of fatal accidents, these bikes are used to remind people of the lives lost and the critical need for change. The recent rescheduling of a “ghost ride” memorial for Nick Cordova emphasizes the community’s resolve.
Janice Jim, vice president of CycleWR, emphasizes that while some cities have excellent bicycle infrastructure (基础设施), the battle is far from over. Areas like Victoria St in Kitchener, known for accidents, are in great need of attention and improvement. Jim’s words mirror a view shared by the majority: the infrastructure can and must be better, for the sake of all who share the road.
The concept of Vision Zero, an initiative aimed at getting rid of all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, fair mobility for all, has found a foothold in Colorado. However, the journey towards this ambitious goal is faced with challenges. Funding and policy changes are the foundations upon which this vision rests.
Advocates argue that investment in cyclist safety isn’t just a matter of public health; it’s an investment in the very fabric of the community, an acknowledgment that every life is precious and deserving of protection. As Colorado stands at this crossroads, the push for more funding and policy changes continues, fueled by stories like Cordova’s and the unyielding spirit of those left to carry the torch.
1. Which word can best replace the underlined word “catalyst” in paragraph 2?| A．Barrier. | B．Fuel. | C．Fear. | D．Link. |
| A．To serve as a reminder. | B．To mark dangerous areas. |
| C．To add to shared bikes. | D．To prove the government’s action. |
| A．It is put forward by Cordova. |
| B．Its realization needs policy support. |
| C．Its aim is to get rid of all traffic accidents. |
| D．It has been achieved in Colorado. |
| A．The Story of Cordova | B．The Concept of Vision Zero |
| C．Colorado’s Ghost Bikes | D．Colorado’s Call for Street Safety |
4 . Phil Gibson didn’t set out to revolutionize how seniors record their life stories. He was just having a dinnertime conversation.
In the summer of 2006, Gibson’s mother-in-law Jane mentioned that she had recently visited a friend in a rest home. She was disappointed that the woman had faded so much.
“People didn’t recognize how active this woman had been when she was healthy,” Gibson recalls. “My mother-in-law told me she wished there was a board attached to her friend’s bed that could display her poems, stories and artwork so people could realize the passion this woman had had when she was younger.”
Shortly after this conversation with his in-laws, Gibson, 48, made another unexpected discovery.
“I was at dinner with a group of business friends and was shocked by the fact that every one of us had experienced a major life-changing event with one of our parents or in-laws passing away in the last three months,” Gibson said. “In conversations, it was clear that none of us had prepared for losing that valuable connection to our histories and these very important people in our lives.”
So Gibson began to create a new, easy-to-use website to collect senior and family stories. After nearly a year of development and testing, he launched a free online service called GrearLifeStories.com. The site guides anyone through the process of capturing, sharing and preserving the life stories of previous or current generations before they are lost forever.
These new technologies are the latest developments to give seniors, family members, and caregivers tools to help improve the mental, emotional, and physical health of older adults. As tools, they offer seniors a structured way of telling their life stories and passing their legacies along to future generations. And they often enable family members to be more compassionate, informed and effective in providing care.
Recording the life story of a senior can often be an activity that benefits both the young and the old and actually, everyone can benefit from the process of helping a senior recall treasured life memories.
1. What made Gibson’s mother-in-law feel let down?| A．Her friend couldn’t recognize her. |
| B．Her friend went to live in a rest home. |
| C．Her friend’s health condition was worsening. |
| D．Her friend lost talent for literary creation. |
| A．To prove how valuable friendship is. |
| B．To indicate anyone is likely to experience loss. |
| C．To show friends’ attitude toward the changes in life. |
| D．To explain how he got the idea of collecting stories. |
| A．It teaches the old advanced technology. |
| B．It provides a tool for the old to earn money. |
| C．It promotes the general well-being of the old. |
| D．It offers seniors a platform to interact with each other. |
| A．Society. | B．History. | C．Literature. | D．Technology. |
1. In which country did the necktie first appear?
| A．China. | B．The US. | C．Croatia. |
| A．To protect themselves. | B．To look pretty. | C．To keep warm. |
| A．Cool. | B．Protective. | C．Unnecessary. |
1. What is the woman skilled at?
| A．Cooking meals. | B．Do the cleaning. | C．Organizing activities. |
| A．Kathy. | B．Ben. | C．Lindsay. |
| A．Dance. | B．Sing. | C．Tell jokes. |
| A．For one hour. | B．For two hours. | C．For three hours. |
7 . The Eden Project, an educational charity in Cornwall, England, is committed to connecting people with each other and their environment. Here is the basic information about the Project.
Outside Gardens
Exploring miles of paths in the Outside Gardens, you’ll discover landscapes featuring beautiful sculptures and plants used for medicine, fuels, materials and food. These gardens are particularly child-friendly places for children to learn and play.
Rainforest BiomeFollow the path deep into the Rainforest Biome to feel the heat of the largest indoor rainforest environments in the world: Tropical Islands, Southeast Asia, West Africa and Tropical South America.
Walk across the Rope Bridge that stretches across the forest between two of the tallest trees in the 50-metre-high Biome to learn how the rainforests help regulate the climate. Travel through floating clouds on the Cloud Bridge to get a sense of how rainforests reflect sunlight and help cool the planet. Stop by the Carbon Platform to see how the growing rainforest takes in CO2 and stores it in wood, leaves, roots and soil. Visit the Biodiversity Platform to explore how plants eat, drink, reproduce and protect themselves from danger without moving.
Mediterranean Biome
Take an unforgettable journey through the landscapes of the Mediterranean Europe, South Africa and California and discover the amazing variety of plants growing in these regions.
Explore the diverse and fantastical plants in the Western Australia Garden in this biome. This garden, created in cooperation with Kings Park and Botanic Garden in Perth, Western Australia, features the wonderful plants native to the Mediterranean region of Australia.
Annual Pass
Our Annual Pass gives you unlimited-entry for a whole year!
Adult | Senior (60+) | Student | Children (5—16) | Children (5-) |
£29.50 | £27.50 | £24.50 | £10 | Free |
| A．Enjoy rainforests. | B．Have picnics. |
| C．See beautiful artworks. | D．Carve sculptures. |
| A．The Rope Bridge. | B．The Carbon Platform. |
| C．The Cloud Bridge. | D．The Biodiversity Platform. |
| A．£60. | B．£55. | C．£29.50 | D．£24.50. |
Thundering drums, yelling crowds and energetic, boatmen, such scenes of excitement
Although tales of its origin differ, the two-thousand-year-old festival is widely celebrated
When Qu realized his country’s decline was beyond recovery, he became so unhappy that he killed
A host of other practices are also associated with Duanwu. The fifth day of the fifth month is considered unlucky and
9 . With her first song on social media in 2019 and her first Grammy win in the best African Music Performance category four years later, Tyla has become the new face of African pop.
For many listeners, Tyla’s 2023 hit song “Water” was their first taste of the sound of amapiano, which is a new musical movement that started in the towns of South Africa in the 2010s. Roughly translated from Zulu to mean “the pianos” or “piano people,” amapiano is a mix-up of a few different types of music: jazz, deep house, kwaito and log drum percussives. “Amapiano is the mainstream music of South Africa’s party scene,” says Moma, a Sudanese-American DJ. “And it has become a lifestyle there.”
Moma first heard amapiano in 2016 when he hopped in a taxi in South Africa. He tipped his driver $50 to let him download the music and took the sounds back to the US. As the music started to move around America, Tyla was perfecting her own version of it back home in South Africa.
She started singing on TikTok and dropped her first song, “Getting Late” in 2019, to show her parents that she was serious about pursuing a career in music after high school. Based on the track, they agreed to give her one year to make it happen.
It took a few months for Tyla and her team to shoot the video for “Getting Late”, with no backing, no budget. But when they finally uploaded it to TikTok in early 2021, labels noticed.
In the video, Tyla’s taken the building blocks of amapiano and added elements of pop made by stars like Rihanna (to whom critics and fans are now comparing her) and Justin Bieber. Her signature sound has been called “pop-iano”.
After publishing “Water” in July 2023 and noticing it had become a piece of trending audio on the app, Tyla and her team created a dance challenge in August. Tyla’s performance during the competition really made a splash. “It introduced me to a wider audience than I had ever imagined,” Tyla says. “It has positively changed my life.”
1. What can we say about Moma?| A．He is a famous music writer. | B．He introduced amapiano to the US. |
| C．He helped Tyla study amapiano. | D．He created a different type of music. |
| A．Unconcerned. | B．Supportive. | C．Doubtful. | D．Unclear. |
| A．African pop. | B．Jazz. | C．Deep house. | D．Kwaito. |
| A．Ended in a disaster. | B．Took plenty of time. |
| C．Was sharply criticized. | D．Attracted a lot of attention. |
10 . Digital reading appears to be destroying habits of “deep reading”. Amazing numbers of people with year of schooling are in effect illiterate (不识字的). Admittedly, some people have been complaining about new media since 1492, but today’s complaints have an evidential basis, Ljubljana Reading Manifesto says, “The digital area may lead to more reading than ever in history, but it also offers many attractions to read in a shallow and scattered (碎片化的) manner — or even not to read at all. This increasingly endangers higher-level reading.”
Digital literacy has changed reading. When you read a book on paper, you can be entirely inside the experience, absorbing hundreds of pages to capture the world’s complexity. Online, says Maryanne Wolf of UCLA, we are “skimming, scanning, scrolling”. The medium is the message: doing deep reading on your phone is as hard as playing tennis with your phone. Recently, a bright 11-year-old told me I was wasting time on books: he absorbed more information faster from Wikipedia. He had a point. But digital readers also absorb more misinformation. And they seldom, absorb nuanced (微妙的) ideas.
In the white paper that underlies the Ljubljana Reading Manifesto, experts catalogue the passive parts of digital reading: “Recent studies of various kinds indicate a decline of... critical and conscious reading, slow reading, non-strategic reading and long-form reading.” In the 2021 international PISA survey, 49 percent of students agreed that “I read only if I have to”, 13 percentage points higher than in 2000.
As professors from Northwestern University foresaw in 2005, we are returning to the days when only an elite (精英的) “reading class” consumes long texts — despite more people spending longer in education and book sales remaining robust.
People who lose higher-level reading skills also lose thinking skills. That’s horrible, because “higher-level reading” has been essential to civilization. It enabled the Enlightenment, and an international rise in sympathy for people who aren’t like us.
1. What is the advantage of the digital reading?| A．It makes more people start to read widely. |
| B．It makes more people begin to think deeper. |
| C．It helps the young to make use of the Internet. |
| D．It helps people take advantage of their spare time. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Opposed. | C．Objective. | D．Unconcerned. |
| A．Teens should change the critical and conscious reading. |
| B．Nearly half of the teens never read at all. |
| C．They don’t believe what the experts indicate. |
| D．The trend of reading books is increasingly declining. |
| A．More and more books are purchased. |
| B．It’s unnecessary for people to buy books. |
| C．More and more people like to visit the bookstores. |
| D．The sales of books keep still for a really long time. |
