1 . Sandhya Sriram is impatient. The stem-cell (干细胞) scientist wanted to put her knowledge to use, developing cultivated seafood. Yet no one was doing that in Singapore. So four years ago, she set up a company to create lab-grown crustacean (甲壳纲动物) meat. ______, she registered her company, Shiok Meats in August 2018. “Nobody was doing crustaceans,” says Sriram, Shiok’s Group CEO and co-founder. “What do Asians eat the most? Seafood. It was a simple answer. And they’re so delicious.” A lifelong ______, she had never tried real shrimp, but she sampled it the week she registered the company.

Today, the results of her ______ can be seen at the headquarters of her company. During a fall 2022 visit, a bio-process engineer looked into a microscope carefully. He had taken samples from a bioreactor in the room next door, where the company is   ______ crustacean cells. Under the lens, he was checking to see if the cells were ready to harvest.

Shiok Meats has already revealed shrimp, lobster, and crab prototypes (最初形态) to a select group of tasters, and it plans to   ______ regulatory approval to sell its lab-grown shrimp by April 2023. That could make it the first in the world to bring cultivated shrimp to diners, putting it at the leading position of the cultivated-meat   ______. As of this writing, only one company has gained regulatory approval to sell lab-grown animal-protein products: Eat Jus’s cultured chicken is ______ but only in Singapore. Shiok Meats still needs to submit all the paperwork necessary and get regulatory approval, but the company hopes to see its products in restaurants by mid-2024, offering foodies a more environmentally friendly option free of ______ than crustaceans from farms.

But even if that ambitious   ______ is met, it will likely be a while before the average person is eating cultivated crustaceans. It will require not just regulatory approval but also more funding and a bigger factory, along with ______ consumers and governments around the world to accept lab-grown seafood.

“We’re at an interesting stage of a startup; it’s called the Valley of Death,” says Sriram. “We are in the space where we haven’t submitted for regulatory approval yet, but we’re looking to commercialize in the next two years.” Nevertheless, the impatient entrepreneur is   ______. Sriram hopes to have the company’s next manufacturing plant ready by the end of 2023, where a 500-liter and a 2,000-liter bioreactor will be a major   ______ from its current 50- and 200-liter bioreactors. The goal is for her products to enter the mainstream in Singapore in five to seven years.

______ these products could help tackle some of the environmental impacts of crustacean production. Organic waste, chemicals, and antibiotics from seafood farms can pollute groundwater. Shiok Meats says the way it produces crustacean meat minimizes animal cruelty, as growing protein in a lab helps avoid ______ animals. And cultivating shrimp closer to where it’s ______ cuts emissions from fishing-boat fuel and shipping products around the world.

In a word, when science meets seafood, many wonderful things happen naturally.

1.

A．Eagerly

B．Hurriedly

C．Incidentally

D．Interestingly

2.

A．dieter

B．foodie

C．taster

D．vegetarian

3.

A．discipline

B．enthusiasm

C．discovery

D．mindset

4.

A．growing

B．investigating

C．increasing

D．targeting

5.

A．accept

B．adopt

C．grant

D．seek

6.

A．farm

B．race

C．section

D．line

7.

A．available

B．affordable

C．competitive

D．profitable

8.

A．additive

B．cruelty

C．meat

D．salt

9.

A．guideline

B．transformation

C．condition

D．timeline

10.

A．demanding

B．directing

C．persuading

D．training

11.

A．delightful

B．insightful

C．open-minded

D．optimistic

12.

A．difference

B．emergence

C．sacrifice

D．leap

13.

A．Tracking

B．Supervising

C．Popularizing

D．Sampling

14.

A．feeding

B．killing

C．mistreating

D．trapping

15.

A．captured

B．stranded

C．consumed

D．produced

2 . The number of American seniors is growing more quickly than any other portion of the population.     1    

This is, of course, good news. However, an aging population has needs that are not being met. One of these needs is public transportation.     2     There is a growing need for the benefits that public transportation can provide older Americans.

American’s older citizens require increased mobility. With better public transportation, seniors would have more options when choosing where to live. They would also have more choices when deciding how and where they would like to travel.    3    

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 35 million Americans were 65 years old or older on the year 2000. Because there was a baby boom-an increase in births-between 1946 and 1964, the senior population in America will grow much faster than the rest of the population. Many older people already live in suburban locations that lack transit options, and as the baby boomers age, the number of older citizens who live in these areas will continue to increase.

    4     Not only does it affect their ability to take care of their basic needs, it also affects their ability to make contributions to their neighbors and society as a whole. This kind of feeling is felt most by those who are over the age of 85 and who have medical conditions that prevent them from driving.

Many people think that the answer to helping mobility for an aging population is simple. They believe that public transportation systems must be upgraded and expanded so that seniors have the resources available to meet their transportation needs.

A．Better transportation could help America’s senior citizens lead more activities.

B．Better public transportation system must be changed in no time   to make the senior citizens’ dream come true.

C．Better eating habits, more exercise, and advances in medical care are helping American live longer and healthier lives.

D．Isolation is a growing problem for elderly Americans.

E．Travelling by car should not be a Senior citizens’ only position.

F．Mobility plays an important role in the elderly people’s life.

3 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word given in the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word that you do not need.

A. included                 B. promising                 C. achievements                 D. proved          E. transfer F. outstanding             G. sign                           H. appearances                  I. scoring          J. capture            K. referred

Ronaldo Luiz Nazario de Lima was born on 22 September 1976 in a poor suburb of Rio de Janeiro. Like most of his childhood friends, Ronaldo began his football (soccer) career playing barefoot in the streets of his neighbourhood. At the age of 14, he joined Sao Cristovao football club and only two years later became the star of Cruzeiro Esporte Clube in Belo Horizonte     1     a total of 58 goals in 60 matches and earning himself a reputation for his explosive pace and     2     finishing skills. His goal — scoring record and unusual quickness led him to be     3     in the Brazilian World Cup winning team the following year. After the World Cup, many top European football clubs were trying to     4     him. Many people, including Brazilian football legend Pele, considered him as the most     5     footballer of his generation.

Since his     6     to Dutch team PSV Eindhoven, Ronaldo’s biography has been one success after another. Two Copa America’s, a UEFA Super Cup, a Dutch Cup, a Spanish Super Cup, and two Player of the Year awards from FIFA, all in the space of two years, are some of Ronaldo’s impressive     7    . On arrival to Inter Milan in 1997, Ronaldo became the idol of the local fans who refer to him as “il Fenomeno (奇才)”.

Since the 1998 World Cup he has suffered serious knee injuries that have severely limited his     8    . Just when people began to wonder whether Ronaldo would be able to continue with his football career, he     9     to the world that he still could play. In the World Cup held in Korea and Japan, the magical striker won the Golden Shoe award and tied Pele’s Brazilian record for career World Cup goals with 12. He helped Brazil     10     its fifth World Cup championship on 30 June with a 2-0 win over Germany. It was the third time that Ronaldo had ever played in the World Cup.

4 . A baby born today will be thirty-something in 2050. If all goes well, that baby will still be around in 2100, and might even be an active citizen of the 22^nd century. What should we teach that baby to help them survive and flourish in the world of 2050 and beyond? What kind of skills will they need in order to get a job, understand what is happening around them, and navigate their tough life?

At present, too many schools across the world focus on providing pupils with a set of predetermined skills, such as writing computer code in C++ and conversing in Chinese. Yet since we have no idea how the world and the job market will look in 2050, we don’t really know what particular skills people will need. We might invest a lot of effort in teaching kids how to write in C++ or to speak Chinese, only to discover sooner or later that AI will have been able to code software far better than humans, and that a new translation app will have enabled you to conduct a conversation in almost flawless Mandarin, Cantonese or Hakka, even though you only know how to say ni hao.

So what should we be teaching? Many experts argue that schools should downplay technical skills and emphasize general-purpose life skills: the ability to deal with change, to learn new things, and to preserve your mental balance in unfamiliar situations. In order to keep up with the world of 2050, you will above all need to reinvent yourself again and again.

To succeed in such a demanding task, you will need to work very hard on getting to know your operating system better—to know what you are and what you want from life. This is, of course, the oldest advice in the book: know thyself. This advice was never more urgent than in the mid-21^st century, because unlike in the days of Laozi or Socrates, now you have serious competition. Coca-Cola, Amazon and Facebook are all racing to hack you.

Right now, the algorithms (算法) are watching where you go, what you buy, and who you meet. Soon they will monitor all your steps, breaths and heartbeats. They are relying on big data and machine learning to get to know you better and better. And once these algorithms know you better than you know yourself, they could control and manipulate (操纵) you. In the end, authority will shift to them.

Of course, you might be perfectly happy giving up all authority to the algorithms and trusting them to make decisions for you and for the rest of the world. If, however, you want to maintain some control over your personal existence and over the future of life in general, you have to run faster than the algorithms. To run fast, don’t take much luggage with you. Leave all your illusions (幻想) behind. They are very heavy.

1. What does the underlined word “downplay” in paragraph 3 most probably mean?

A．Give too much emphasis on something.

B．Make people think that something is less important.

C．Offer your reasons why something is right or wrong.

D．Decide something in advance so that it does not happen.

2. According to the article, ___________ plays a vital role in children’s bright future.

A．imagination

B．adaptability

C．self-discipline

D．a good sense of balance

3. It’s important to know our operating system because ___________.

A．if we don’t, algorithms will hack all our devices.

B．it is an essential skill for us to succeed in the world of 2050.

C．we need to learn how algorithms work and make full use of them.

D．we need to outrun algorithms to keep some control over our personal life.

4. The article mainly talks about _________.

A．the importance of knowing yourself

B．the threats and dangers of technology

C．what kind of skills we might need in the future

D．some potential benefits algorithms would bring to humankind

5 . It is Nobel Prize week, the one week every year when people from all corners of the globe celebrate science, read about ribosomes (核糖体), and give their best shot at trying to understand particle physics. It is also the one week when science is guaranteed some prime headline space on mainstream news outlets. And yet the science Nobels (in medicine, physics, and chemistry) present a(n) _______ view of science.

The problem starts with the _______ of prize-winners selected every year. The rules governing the Nobel Prize _______ it to just three winners in each category. This means that for every discovery that is awarded a Nobel, the majority of contributing scientists end up being _______.

As a matter of fact, science has never been a(n) _______ effort. Isaac Newton stood on the “shoulders of giants”; Neil Armstrong’s “one small step” was a dream realized by hundreds of thousands of engineers and scientists. Science is, and always has been, and repetitive process where individuals draw on discoveries made by others to _______ advance the boundaries of human knowledge. Yes, Albert Einstein famously won the Nobel Prize all by himself for a paper he alone authored, but he could not have made his discoveries without _______ work by Max Planck, James Maxwell, and several others.

To make matters worse, typical of the Nobel Prizes, none of the _______ was a first author on any of the publications cited by the prize announcements. The first author of a scientific paper is typically the person who did the hands-on laboratory work, usually a graduate student or young post-doctoral researcher. It is precisely these _______ researchers who are in greater need of the Nobel Prize money than their generally tenured (终身的) supervisors.

More basically, awarding the prizes to only three scientists spreads a vision of science as an individual enterprise. By ensuring that graduate students are not given ________ recognition, the prizes reinforce (加强) the mistaken image of a scientist as an old white man in a lab coat. This can only ________ gender and racial inequalities in science, especially further along in an academic career.

Any one of these reasons is sufficient to ________ the Nobel Prizes. Here is one idea: Award the Nobel Prizes not to ________ but for discoveries; donate the prize money to an international science fund to promote further exploration in each year’s prize-winning field of research.

A science-oriented Nobel, rather than a scientist-oriented one, would educate the public in the most important scientific developments and, ________, stimulate new scientific progress by using the prize money to fund the next generation of researchers. Science works best when the________ of one generation of scientists are paid forward to drive the next to even greater heights. That is to say, scientists of different generations work with joint efforts to support future scientific advancements for the betterment of society as a whole.

1.

A．strange

B．outdated

C．all-round

D．advanced

2.

A．quality

B．diversity

C．discipline

D．figure

3.

A．restrict

B．extend

C．relate

D．apply

4.

A．employed

B．ignored

C．respected

D．nominated

5.

A．terrific

B．constant

C．intellectual

D．individual

6.

A．naturally

B．rapidly

C．gradually

D．personally

7.

A．previous

B．subsequent

C．physical

D．commercial

8.

A．employees

B．addressees

C．awardees

D．refugees

9.

A．chief-position

B．early-career

C．senior-management

D．academic-world

10.

A．due

B．immediate

C．literary

D．governmental

11.

A．turn down

B．level off

C．take away

D．step up

12.

A．claim

B．reform

C．present

D．announce

13.

A．organizers

B．researchers

C．sponsors

D．supervisors

14.

A．in fact

B．in comparison

C．in theory

D．in turn

15.

A．legends

B．spirits

C．achievements

D．mysteries

6 . 听下面一段独白，回答一下小题。1.

A．About 150.

B．About 12.

C．About 15.

D．About 5.

2.

A．They have limited access to friends’ updates.

B．They get pressure from their friends in real life.

C．They make virtual friends with their employers.

D．What they post online may offend their friends.

3.

A．Online friendship is of significance for teenagers.

B．Teenagers interact with their friends mostly on line.

C．Teenagers’ online friendship is superior to that in real life.

D．A majority of teenagers prefer to make new friends online.

8 . I Am Not a Robot

An annoyance, an important security feature, an uncomfortable request: however you feel about being asked to prove you are not a robot, it has become a daily occurrence for most of us, but perhaps not one we would miss if it were to suddenly go away.

A new feature in the latest versions of iOS and macOS, Apple’s operating systems for smartphones and computers, promises to give the boot to “captchas” once and for all.     1    

“Sometimes a captcha is just a button to press,” said Apple engineer Tommy Pauly. “But other times it can be a challenge to fill out.”

The term captcha is in fact an acronym (首字母缩略词) for   “completely automated public Turing test (图灵测试) to tell computers and humans apart.” To help stop fraud (欺诈), these little tests often pop up when you’re signing up for or onto a website.

    2     If you get it wrong, it may ask you to start again, leading you to wonder if you really know what a traffic light looks like—or if you might really be a robot after all.

But captchas are now fast becoming unusable, making the Internet a wasteland of difficult puzzles. Users must struggle to do the most basic things. “We’ve literally all found ourselves at one time or another complaining: ‘Those were all the pictures with traffic lights,” said Effie Le Moignan, a researcher in social computing at Newcastle University.

Internet users struggle to tell the difference between a wear of paint on a sidewalk and a formalized crosswalk that’s often requested in a traditional captcha, and worry that one wrong answer may lock them out of an account.     3    

“You likely don’t enjoy being interrupted by these,” said Apple’s Tommy Pauly. “I certainly don’t. The reason these experiences exist is to prevent dishonest activity. If you run a server, you don’t want it to be defeated by fraud.     4    ”

The company worked with Fastly and Cloudflare to build the new feature. It works by allowing your device to send a statement confirming it is being used by a human to the requesting website.

A．This is becoming a bigger issue as captchas have grown increasingly confusing.

B．Therefore, when faced with something really confusing, many people simply give up.

C．Most attempts to create accounts or to buy products come from common users, but some attempts can also come from attackers.

D．Called “automatic confirmation,” the technology will allow sites to confirm you are not a robot without you having to do anything at all.

E．These tests may ask you to spot all the traffic lights in a picture or to type out some special letters and numbers.

F．Although the service is tied to Apple’s iCloud network, the requesting site will not receive any personal information about the user or their device.

9 . Venus (金星) has long played second to its redder, smaller and more distant neighbor. Given how inhospitable (不宜居住的) Venus has appeared to be, we have spent the majority of the last century pinning some of our biggest hopes of finding signs of life on Mars.

That all changed on September 15, 2020. It was announced that a strange gas called phosphine had been spotted in the clouds above Venus. The gas is produced by microbes, extremely small living things, here on Earth, so the discovery has renewed hopes that there might be life on Venus. Now we need to know for sure.

There is, after all, only so much we can do with ground-based instruments. Venus is extremely bright. This brightness, caused by the intense reflection of sunlight from its thick clouds and highlighted because of its closer distance to Earth, basically blinds our instruments from making more detailed observations of the planet. It is like trying to look at the road while another car’s high beams (远光灯) are pointed in your direction.

“To really get to the heart of this question, we need to go to Venus,” says Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at North Carolina State University. But of course, that is easier said than done. Temperatures at the surface reach 464℃, and pressures are 89 times higher than on Earth. Only the Soviet Union has successfully landed on the Venusian surface—its Venera 13 lander functioned for 127 minutes before succumbing to the bad weather in 1982. It is not easy to justify spending hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars on a mission that could be over in a matter of hours without giving us what we need.

An orbiter is the most sensible start. Unlike ground-based observations, orbiters can peer into the atmosphere and would have a better time observing how phosphine levels change over time or over what regions they are most concentrated. An orbiter also presents the opportunity to complete more challenging projects by potentially venturing directly into the planet’s atmosphere. A sample return mission could be possible, in which a spacecraft flies into the atmosphere and bottles up some gas to bring back to Earth for laboratory analysis.

Trying to find life on another planet, however, is not simply a walk from point A to point B. No single mission to Venus will be able to finish all the work necessary to answer the question. It might be time to think not just about what the next mission to Venus should be, but what a whole new era of Venus exploration would look like: a group of multiple missions that explore Venus in joint efforts—the way we currently do with Mars.

1. Venus is considered inhospitable to humans mainly because ________.

A．the pressure of the planet is too low

B．the surface of the planet is too bright

C．the density (密度) of the clouds is too low

D．the surface temperature of the planet is too high

2. The underlined phrase “succumbing to” in paragraph 4 is closest in meaning to “________”.

A．giving in to	B．keeping away from
C．making up for	D．putting up with

3. According to the article, scientists will be better able to reveal the secret about Venus by ________.

A．sending astronauts to the planet

B．using a more advanced space telescope

C．launching an orbiter to the planet

D．redesigning their ground-based instruments

4. What can we infer from the article?

A．We have little hope of successfully finding life on Venus.

B．We have a firm determination to discover life on other planets.

C．We have spent much time studying phosphine in the past century.

D．We have attempted to land on the Venusian surface in the last century.

10 .

People with fixed mindsets believe that: ●Skill, intelligence and talents are natural. ●Failure is shameful and should be avoided. ●Some people are naturally good at things while others not. ●You are not in control of your abilities.	People with growth mindsets believe that: ●You have the capacity to learn and grow your skills. ●Failure is a valuable lesson. ●People who are good at something are good because they build that ability. ●You are in control of your abilities.
have a desire to look smart, so tend to: —Avoid challenges. —Give up easily. —See effort as fruitless or worse. —Ignore useful negative feedback. —Feel threatened by the success of others.	have a desire to learn, so tend to: —Embrace challenges. —Persist in the face of setbacks. —See effort as the path to mastery. —Learn from criticism. —Find lessons and inspiration in the success of others.
As a result, they may stay at the same level early and achieve less than their full potential.	As a result, they reach ever-higher levels of achievement.
Change can be tough, but I’ve never heard anyone say it wasn’t worth it. Did changing to a growth mindset solve all my problems? No. But I know that I have a different life because of it—a richer one.

1. The book “mindset” is intended to ________.

A．tell readers that two different mindsets lead to different results

B．illustrate that people with different mindsets hold different beliefs

C．help readers believe people act differently when facing challenges

D．persuade people to learn to change so as to enjoy a more fruitful life

2. Generally speaking, people with fixed mindsets are mostly ________.

A．successful	B．straightforward
C．intelligent	D．narrow-minded

3. A person with a growth mindset is likely to say ________.

A．“If I win, I’ll be somebody; if I lose, I’ll be nobody.”

B．“To be good at sports, you need to be naturally gifted.”

C．“Learn techniques and skills and practice them regularly, and you will always improve.”

D．“You have a certain level of ability in sports and you cannot really do much to change it.”