1 . AQ, or Adversity Quotient (逆商), refers to an individual’s capacity to effectively navigate and overcome adversities. It shares similarities with concepts such as resilience (应力) and persistence. Those with a high AQ have the ability to bounce back after facing setbacks.
Adaptability to shifting circumstances
Similar to how creatures in the natural world must adapt to survive, individuals in the professional realm must also embrace change. Individuals with high AQ understand that change is constant and inevitable, and instead of resisting it, they embrace it as an opportunity for growth and development.
Emotional stability is a crucial quality when facing adversity. Individuals with a high AQ possess the capacity to manage their emotions effectively, ensuring that they do not get overwhelmed by negativity or despair. They remain calm under pressure and approach problems with a clear and rational mindset.
Positive Mindset
High AQ individuals maintain a positive and optimistic outlook on life. They usually view adversities as temporary hurdles and believe in their ability to overcome them.
Problem-Solving Skills
| A．Ability for self-management. |
| B．Capacity for emotional regulation. |
| C．Cultivating AQ is essential for personal growth. |
| D．Such individuals often exhibit the following qualities. |
| E．High AQ individuals excel at finding effective solutions. |
| F．They actively pursue growth through challenging situations. |
| G．Their ability to adapt enables them to overcome diverse challenges. |
2 . Winners of the Broadcom MASTERS
Girls took the top prizes at the Broadcom MASTERS, a science competition for middle school students.
Alaina Gassler
Alaina won the $25,000 Samueli Foundation Prize for the project of reducing blind spots in cars. She was inspired to solve this issue by her mother who didn’t like driving her vehicle because its large A-pillar (A柱) design made her feel in danger. “I started to think about how blind spots were a huge problem in all cars,” said Alaina. So she worked on and solved it.
Sidor Clare
Sidor won the $10,000 Marconi/Samueli Award for Innovation, an honor made by Samueli’s generous donation of his 2012 Marconi Society Prize Award. She developed bricks that could one day be made on Mars, so that humans wouldn’t be required to carry building materials with them in order to build there.
Alexis MacAvoy
Alexis won the $10,000 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Award for Health Advancement, which recognized the student whose work and performance showed the most promise in health-related fields and demonstrated an understanding of the many social factors that affect health. She designed a water filter (过滤器) by using carbon to remove heavy metals from water.
Rachel Bergey
Rachel won the $10,000 Lemelson Award for Invention, awarded by The Lemelson Foundation to a young inventor creating promising solutions to real-world problems. She developed a trap made of tinfoil (锡纸) and netting for the spotted lanternfly, an invasive species causing damage to trees.
1. What is the purpose of Alaina Gassler’s invention?| A．To beautify vehicles. | B．To improve the safety of driving. |
| C．To decorate the sidewalk for the blind. | D．To reduce the carbon released from cars. |
| A．Alaina Gassler’s. | B．Sidor Clare’s. |
| C．Rachel Bergey’s. | D．Alexis MacAvoy’s. |
| A．Art. | B．Sport. | C．Technology. | D．Education. |
3 . There are some new inventions in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Let’s have a look.
Invention 1: A system to identify Parkinson’s diseaseThe system works by measuring a person’s breathing patterns during sleep. The researchers noted that early signs of Parkinson’s disease are not easy to discover. But the team said the experiments showed that with just one night of sleep, the AI system can correctly identify Parkinson’s disease up to 86% of the time.
Invention 2: A tool to interpret pig emotionsThe scientists developed an AI-driven algorithm to identify a series of emotions the pigs could be experiencing. The study centered on more than 7,000 audio recordings of pigs in different situations. The researchers said the tool can lead to further systems farmers can use to improve the productivity and well-being of their animals.
Invention 3: A system to identify and predict smellsThe scientists built on past research to produce a brain-like technology model to create a “principal odor map” to identify molecules related to smells. The team said such a system can be used across many different fields, including the healthcare, food and fragrance industries, The researchers reported that the system can be used to help fight one of the world’s biggest health problems--diseases spread through insects.
Invention 4: A tool to fill in missing words in ancient writingsThe tool, called Ithaca, is designed to help historians repair the writings and identify when and where they were written. The team said that when historians worked on their own, the success rate for repairing damaged inscriptions was about 25%. But when humans teamed up with Ithaca to assist in their work, the success rate jumped to 72%.
1. Which invention can help farmers increase income?| A．Invention 1. | B．Invention 2. | C．Invention 3. | D．Invention 4. |
| A．They are good for people’s health. | B．They should be used during sleep. |
| C．They can cure people of many diseases. | D．They focus on the research on smells. |
| A．By recovering their health. | B．By improving their accuracy. |
| C．By identifying their writings. | D．By stimulating their emotions. |
4 . Scientists have designed a tiny, shape-shifting “spider-robot” that can passively use its body as it navigates its environment. The robot is a pioneer that could one day perform surgery or hunt for survivors in a disaster zone, its inventors say.
The robot, mCLARI, is 0.8 inch long, weighs less than 0.03 ounces and can scurry at a maximum speed of 2.4 inches per second, according to the research. The tiny robot is the smaller, faster successor to CLARI, which was designed by the same team. It also passively changes its shape in multiple dimensions to fit through gaps.
“In the long term, we believe such robots to be effective at navigating through human bodies and performing automated surgery such as clearing blocks in blood or removing a tumor (肿瘤). Because of the robot’s small size and the ability to shape change, we foresee applications of this technology in the following four major domains of socioeconomic importance.” Study lead author Kaushik Jayaram, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Colorado, told Live Science in an email. These include disaster response, high-value possession inspection, environmental monitoring and precision medicine.
With mCLARI, Jayaram’s team is inching closer to creating robots that can navigate complex environments — just like the organic creatures they’re inspired by. mCLARI robot has four leg modules that can move in two different dimensions. The robot can move in tight spaces by switching between running forward and side-to-side and can adopt multiple poses and rushing speeds. Its legs fasten to its body through passive joints, which enables mCLARI to alter its body shape based on the environment it encounters. For instance, its legs can stretch up to 50% in certain spaces.
As follow-up work, the scientists want to give mCLARI more power and sensing ability. “We are also excited about understanding the effect of shape change on enhancing motion ability,” Jayaram said.
1. Why does the author use numbers to describe mCLARI?| A．To illustrate its importance. |
| B．To explain its high speed. |
| C．To show its beautiful shape. |
| D．To highlight its advancement. |
| A．Move. | B．Change. | C．Transform. | D．Leap. |
| A．Replacing doctors. |
| B．Helping out in surgery. |
| C．Predicting natural disasters. |
| D．Evaluating family property. |
| A．Unclear. | B．Demanding. | C．Promising. | D．Dismissive. |
5 . Gather together a couple of good friends and take a leisurely stroll through the streets — this is what many youngsters in China enjoy doing when they visit a new city.
To them, Citywalk means “roaming around the city” on foot. Participants can follow a distinctive urban route, soaking up the atmosphere, exploring old buildings, browsing boutique shops, sipping a cup of coffee, or indulging in authentic local snacks.
Citywalk can be a special guided trip for a small group of people, or simply a leisurely stroll for one or two to explore new areas, sticking to the key point: avoiding famous scenic spots and big crowds to gain a more inclusive experience of the places you visit. Besides interacting with a city, Citywalk provides young people with a new social scene, where they who share the same interests and ideas can easily make friends.
In China, the Citywalk trend is spreading from first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai to second and third-tier cities, encouraging more participants and event organizers to get involved. Some organizers invite folk culture researchers and enthusiasts to act as tour guides. Xiao Yiyi, a young entrepreneur in Changsha, recently launched six Citywalk routes in different cities on her social media account, with the aim of providing experiences for visitors to “walk in open-air museums”. Her Changsha route features more offbeat sights like historical architecture from the 19th century, artsy old alleys, and even a stop-off to sample the local spicy crayfish specialty.
Even though Citywalk is a relatively new phenomenon, it is offering a positive change to urban travelers as they can better choose the experiences based on their interests and needs. At the same time, Citywalk represents an opportunity for tour guides and travel service providers to offer a more tailored, professional service to meet with ever-changing market demands.
1. Why do young people choose Citywalk?| A．To enjoy a guided tour. |
| B．To cut down expenses. |
| C．To dig deeper into a city. |
| D．To make new friends. |
| A．Doing sightseeing on foot. | B．Avoiding hot scenic spots. |
| C．Taking a local tour guide. | D．Keeping a fixed urban route. |
| A．A tour guide | B．A culture researcher. |
| C．A Citywalk enthusiast. | D．An event organizer. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Dismissive. | C．Doubtful. | D．Unclear. |
6 . Starting in the mid-2010s, the success of streaming services like Spotify, Tencent and Apple Music led the music industry into a period of steady income growth. But the rise of streaming hasn’t just transformed the business of music; it has changed the music as well.
In 1972, the Temptations hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, winning three Grammys, with a seven-minute version of the song “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone”. Before the Temptations sing a word, an instrumental introduction plays for more than four minutes. If the group were in the studio today, the title chorus (副歌) would most likely have been featured much earlier in the song. That’s because music streaming services pay artists based on the number of plays each month, and to count as a play, a user must listen to the song past the 30-second mark. If a song you’ve never heard before takes a long time to get to the hook (旋律最好的部分), there is a good chance that you may simply hit the button to go to the next song. To keep the “skip rate (跳过率)” as low as possible, musical artists are increasingly moving a song’s hook to that initial 30-second sweet spot.
Every track that is listened to for more than 30 seconds counts as a play, but whether a listener makes it all the way through a song helps to determine whether a streaming service like Spotify will recommend similar songs in the future. For a musician, getting a song on Spotify’s popular Today’s Top Hits playlist means real money. A study by researchers at the University of Minnesota and the European Joint Research Centre found that songs on the list gained an average of 20 million streams, worth up to $163,000 in royalties (版税).
As a result, according to an analysis by blogger Michael Tauberg, the average length of hit songs has dropped by more than 30 seconds since 2000, when it was over four minutes. Nearly two-thirds of the songs that achieved the number one spot in the first half of 2021 were under three minutes long.
1. Why is the Temptations mentioned in paragraph 2?| A．To explain what made a song special in the past. |
| B．To show admiration for their musical achievements. |
| C．To illustrate the structure of popular songs in the past. |
| D．To introduce the changes in song structure brought about by streaming. |
| A．The artists will receive higher royalties. |
| B．The listeners are more likely to skip it. |
| C．It will be recommended to more users. |
| D．It will be more popular among listeners. |
| A．Advance in music production technology. |
| B．The change in listeners’ musical preference. |
| C．The desire for higher streaming-based income. |
| D．Increased competition among streaming platforms. |
| A．How streaming changes the length of music. |
| B．How streaming services produce hit songs. |
| C．How streaming promotes the development of music. |
| D．How streaming influences our preference for music. |
I taught English as a Second Language (ESL) at a school. One particular sixth grader, Pablo, was struggling with fluency in reading, so after class I suggested that he get extra practice by reading aloud to his mom while she prepared dinner each evening. This was something I routinely encouraged my struggling students to do. Imagine my surprise when Pablo responded by starting to cry. He said, “My mom can’t cook dinner!” Then he cried harder. Eventually, he calmed down enough to tell me that his mom was only able to “cry in her bed” when he got home every afternoon. He said that he was caring for his six-month-old baby brother by himself from the time he got home each day. His mother, it seemed, had a bad tooth and was in extreme pain. He said that his father didn’t have enough money to get it fixed, and that there was no way for her to go to a dentist. This child’s heart was broken for his mom.
I was speechless! He was still crying when he left me that day, and I promised him I would try to help. I kept asking myself how I could help this student. How could I help his mother when we didn’t even speak the same language?
The next day, I sent a note, which a friend helped me translate, to Pablo’s mother asking if she would like me to find someone to help her. The following day, Pablo brought me a note from his mom accepting my offer to help.
Meanwhile, I had been doing some networking among my friends asking if anyone knew a dentist who might do some free work for this lady. At the time, I was not able to pay for the work to be done myself. Several friends suggested a dental office that had recently opened up in the area, thinking that they might be willing to provide the services. I didn’t want to waste a lot of time going to several dentists, so I prayed that this would be the one.
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。
Stopping by the dental office, I went to the reception desk.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Pablo’s mother came to meet the dentist at the appointed time.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________8 . I found a wonderful picture of Maolan karst cones online and presented it to the innkeeper. “You can’t go there,” the innkeeper
Despite our disappointment, we
The next morning, we set off with a local
Our guide, in his 50s, behaved like a botanist, introducing the locally specific plants to us, but I was hardly in the
Sinkholes and entrances to underground rivers kept popping up along our
Wandering in a green chaos without any obvious landmarks is also breathtaking.
1.| A．answered | B．told | C．followed | D．favored |
| A．news | B．matters | C．concerns | D．conclusions |
| A．worked out | B．took in | C．set down | D．ruled out |
| A．unwilling | B．surprised | C．calm | D．inspired |
| A．forgotten | B．promoted | C．interpreted | D．noticed |
| A．shortly | B．lately | C．eventually | D．suddenly |
| A．taste | B．tone | C．smile | D．sigh |
| A．botanist | B．keeper | C．farmer | D．guide |
| A．managed | B．decided | C．planned | D．agreed |
| A．visitor | B．mixture | C．log | D．stranger |
| A．eagerness | B．mood | C．humor | D．pity |
| A．contact | B．energy | C．activity | D．challenge |
| A．prediction | B．line | C．deal | D．secret |
| A．route | B．landmark | C．platform | D．rock |
| A．guarantee | B．ignore | C．doubt | D．appreciate |
9 . Never Think You’re Too Old to Become a Beginner
As we head into a new year, there is one thing from the outgoing disastrous year we should carry forward and even deepen: the spirit of the beginner.
Many people, in the face of such disorder, decided that they wanted to learn new things. But there’s a warning: The older you are, the harder you’re going to have to work. There’s a happy twist (扭转), however:
How, then, to prepare ourselves to become better beginners? We can draw crucial guidance from a group of research subjects:
For adults, the lessons are clear.
Babies also remind us that progress is often not a straight process. Babies seem to learn best when operating near the limits of their current skill level. In other words:
| A．None of this is easy |
| B．Babies learning to walk |
| C．One problem is that skills take time |
| D．Adults who have great achievements |
| E．The more older adults have experienced |
| F．The more learning that older adults take on |
| G．Always be at the edge of what you can’t currently do |
10 . Caviar (鱼子酱) is typically associated with sturgeons swimming in the Caspian Sea, but the Mexican version is made from the tiny eggs of ahuautle, an insect also known as “bird fly”. For Juan, a farmer, cultivating and collecting the tiny insect eggs known as ahuautle is a way of life. “It means tradition,” said Juan, one of the only six people known to still harvest ahuautle. They fear they may be the last.
The painstaking collection of “Mexican caviar” is threatened by the drying out of Lake Texcoco, development around the lakeshore and decreasing interest in the ingredient among younger generations. The dish’s survival is seen as an example of “community resistance”, similar to the way in which inhabitants around Lake Texcoco have managed to preserve other traditions, festivals and ceremonies.
For Juan, it’s hard. Dressed in shorts and rubber boots, Juan walks with an effort through the calf-high waters to collect pine branches he has pushed into the muddy lakebed the week before. The branches serve as an anchor for the bird-fly bugs to deposit their eggs. After about two hours, Juan has gathered a pile of sticks covered with thousands of bird-fly eggs. He returns to the edge of the lake to lay the sticks out to dry in the sun, which can take several hours or days, depending on the weather.
“Eating this is like revisiting the past,” said restaurant owner Guerrero, 61. He says the flavor of the ahuautle reminds him of his childhood. But Guerrero acknowledges that “Mexican caviar” is at risk of disappearing because younger generations aren’t familiar with the dish, and ever-fewer people harvest it in the scarce remaining lakes where it is found.
Edday, an entomologist (昆虫学家), said there are more than 430 species of eatable insects in Mexico. He said native people living around the lakes adopted the insect eggs as a source of protein because prior to the Spanish conquest of 1521, they had few domesticated (驯养的) animals. But now, Edday said, the dish “is associated with the countryside, perhaps with poverty, as if it were an undesirable protein.”
1. What is a cause of the decline of the dish in Mexico?| A．Expansion of the lakeshore. | B．Difficulty in cooking the dish. |
| C．Young diners’ lack of interest. | D．Overexploitation of the ingredient. |
| A．To help collect ahuautle. | B．To help dry sticks in the sun. |
| C．To protect the edge of the lake. | D．To be an anchor for farmers working there. |
| A．Why ahuautle is a good source of protein. |
| B．Why Mexicans should give up eating insects. |
| C．Why ahuautle was popular in the past but not now. |
| D．Why Mexicans prefer to eat insects rather than animals. |
| A．A popular traditional pet in Mexico. | B．A way of harvesting ahuautle easily. |
| C．A current social phenomenon in Mexico. | D．An attempt to preserve Mexican tradition. |
