1 . Shining just 12 light-years from Earth, the star Tau Ceti so resembles the sun that it has appeared in numerous science- fiction stories and was the first star astronomers ever searched for signs of intelligent life, half a century ago. In 2012 Tau Ceti grew still more interesting when astronomers reported five possible planets somewhat larger than Earth circling closer to the star than Mars orbits (围绕……运动) the sun—one of which is in the star’s habitable zone. Newly released images taken by the Herschel Space Observatory provide even more insight about Tau Ceti’s solar system: greater detail about its dust belt.

Dust arises when asteroids and comets (小行星和彗星) crash into one another, so its location reveals where these dust- creating objects—which are too small to be seen directly—orbit a star. In Tau Ceti’s case, “it’s quite a wide dust belt,” says Samantha Lawler of the University of Victoria in British Columbia. As her team reported in November, the belt’s inner edge is roughly two to three astronomical units (AUs) from the star, which is the position of our own sun’s asteroid belt. (An AU is the distance from Earth to the sun.) Tau Ceti’s dust belt extends out to 55 AU, which would be just beyond our system’s main Edgeworth-Kuiper belt, the zone of small bodies whose largest member is probably Pluto. Presumably full of asteroids and comets, Tau Ceti’s dust belt most likely lacks a planet as large as Jupiter, Lawler says. The gravity of such a massive planet would have driven away most small space rocks.

Within a year a new series of radio telescopes in Chile called ALMA should provide a sharper view of the disk, especially of its inner edge. The ALMA images will help astronomers confirm whether the star’s five proposed planets are indeed real. If the disk overlaps the planets’ hypothesized (假设的) orbits, then they probably do not exist; they would have kept away most asteroids near the star, removing the source of dust.

If those planets do exist, however, Lawler’s team suggests that Tau Ceti’s planetary system may resemble what our solar system would have looked like had the four giant planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune- never formed: small planets orbiting close to the star, and nothing but asteroids, comets and dust beyond.

1. According to astronomers, the five possible planets of Tau Ceti________.

A．resembled Earth in size

B．functioned like a solar system

C．were located in Tau Ceti’s habitable zone

D．were nearer to Tau Ceti than Mars to the sun

2. Which of the following is true of Tau Ceti’s dust belt?

A．It is narrower than the asteroid belt in our system.

B．The bodies inside it are all smaller than Jupiter.

C．The gravity of Tau Ceti makes it get denser.

D．It is over 55 astronomical units in width.

3. According to the passage, the five planets are most likely to exist if________.

A．they don’t move into the dust belt while orbiting Tau Ceti

B．they have kept away most asteroids and comets

C．they don’t crash into any asteroid or comet

D．they can be seen clearly by ALMA

4. It can be inferred from the passage that Tau Ceti’s dust belt________.

A．is useful because it stops asteroids or comets crashing into the star

B．makes Tau Ceti different from the sun because it extends farther

C．is interesting because it keeps other planets away from Tau Ceti

D．plays a role in helping decide whether the five planets are real

3 . This era of “Industry 4. 0” is being driven by the same technological advances that enable the capabilities of the smartphones in our pockets. It is a mix of low-cost and high-power computers, high-speed communication and artificial intelligence. This will produce smarter robots with better sensing and communication abilities that can _________ different tasks, and even adjust their work to meet demand without the input of humans.

In the manufacturing industry, where robots have arguably made the most headway of any division, this will mean a(n) _________ shift from centralized to decentralized cooperative production. _________ robots focused on single, fixed, high - speed operations and required a highly skilled human workforce to operate and maintain them. Industry 4. 0 machines are flexible, cooperative and can operate more independently which _________ removes the need for a highly skilled workforce.

For large-scale manufacturers, Industry 4. 0 means their robots will be able to sense their environment and communicate in an industrial network that can be run and _________ remotely. Each machine will produce large amounts of data that can be _________ studied using what is known as “big data” analysis. This will help _________ ways to improve operating performance and production quality across the whole plat, for example by better predicting when repairing is needed and automatically _________ it.

For _________ manufacturing businesses, Industry 4. 0 will make it cheaper and easier to use robots. It will create machines that can be rearranged to perform __________ jobs and adjusted to work on a more diverse product range and different production volumes. This part is already beginning to benefit from robots designed to cooperate with human workers and analyse their own work to look for __________.

While these machines are getting smarter, they are still not as smart as us. Today's industrial artificial intelligence operates at a __________ level, which gives the appearance of human intelligence exhibited by machines, but designed by humans.

What's coming next is known as “deep learning”. Similar to big data analysis, it involves processing large quantities of data in real time to __________ what is the best action to take, The __________ is that the machine learns from the data so it can improve its decision making. A perfect example of deep learning was __________   by Google's Alpha Go software, which taught itself to beat the world's greatest Go players.

1.

A．compare with

B．adapt to

C．pick out

D．hold on

2.

A．extensive

B．accidental

C．convenient

D．dramatic

3.

A．Traditional

B．Removable

C．Fashionable

D．Potential

4.

A．temporarily

B．thoroughly

C．eventually

D．initially

5.

A．arranged

B．evaluated

C．monitored

D．composed

6.

A．gradually

B．collectively

C．similarly

D．approximately

7.

A．identify

B．reserve

C．exploit

D．indicate

8.

A．dominating

B．imposing

C．eliminating

D．scheduling

9.

A．high-speed

B．mass-produced

C．small-to-medium

D．multi-cultural

10.

A．multiple

B．feasible

C．profitable

D．independent

11.

A．promotions

B．improvements

C．highlights

D．resolutions

12.

A．separate

B．peculiar

C．narrow

D．mysterious

13.

A．come up with

B．account for

C．give way to

D．make decisions about

14.

A．difference

B．commission

C．phenomenon

D．expectation

15.

A．introduced

B．described

C．prepared

D．demonstrated

4 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct.

Pedigree Matters Less

The Exciting Offer, a reality show     1     is now well into its second season, has gained in popularity recently because it vividly portrays     2     new college graduates compete for their dream job.

Two participants in particular have attracted a great deal of attention: Wang Xiao, who graduated with a master’s degree in law from Stanford University, and Ding Hui, who     3    (not start) his law studies East China University of Political Science and Law until he turned 25.

Many Viewers imagined that Wang     4     (have) a big advantage over his opponents because of his outstanding educational qualifications. However, Wang turned out to be impatient with his fellow interns, often     5     (interrupt) them when they were sharing their opinions. Ding, on the other hand, presented determination and the attitude of a life-long learner.

You     6     be wondering, “Shouldn’t the student at the ‘better’ university automatically be the better learner and the better intern?”

Well, I hate to rain on your parade (泼冷水),    7     being able to go to a top university is nothing more than a testament to one’s hard work at a certain stage in his or her life. It does not automatically transform them into a better, smarter person     8     their making continuous efforts. Even top university graduates should always keep on working instead of resting on their laurels (不思进取).

More importantly, no amount of prestige can make up for being an arrogant know-it-all.     9    , many Harvard or Peking University degrees you hold, if you do not have regard     10     other people, you won’t earn respect from them in return.

In a word, respect is earned by becoming a worthy role model for others rather than through an excellent pedigree (历史).

6 . I recently had the unique honor of returning to my university, as a guest lecturer, to talk about opinion and fact in news media and how to tell the two apart. During my class, I quizzed the students using 10 statements which they had to decide were either opinion or fact. Some students did a good job while others failed.

A Pew Research poll conducted among Americans in 2018 showed that only 26 percent of adults could identify the five factual statements, and only 35 percent could identify the five opinion statements.

This is possibly because, according to a recent report by the RAND Corporation — a non-profit, non-partisan think-tank based on Los Angeles — “US-based journalism has gradually shifted away from objective news and offers more opinion-based content that appeals to emotion and relies heavily on argumentation and advocacy.”

Their study looked at US news reporting over a 28-year period and found that “journalism in the US has become more subjective and consists less of the detailed event or context-based reporting that used to characterize news coverage,” according to Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior political scientist and lead author of the report.

This will probably come as a surprise to no one, or at least no one outside the United States where subjective and emotive reporting has clearly hampered the population’s ability to separate fact and opinion and deal with each with a healthy amount of skepticism.

So, what is opinion?

Opinion is someone’s subjective belief or view that cannot be proven as fact. Opinion will often feature adjectives like amazing, perfect, unbeatable, dreadful, grotesque, embarrassing.

As an opinion writer myself, you’ll often see those kinds of words here in my column, but since my weekly rants are clearly not news reports, you know to take whatever I say just as an opinion and form your own opinion if you so desire.

Here’s an example of an opinion-based statement: “Wes Anderson is an amazing filmmaker.” There’s no way of proving that statement as fact, because it’s subjective.

What is fact?

Fact is an objective statement or account of something real which can be proven. Factual accounts should not include adjectives like amazing, perfect, unbeatable, dreadful, grotesque or embarrassing. Here’s an example: “Wes Anderson won the Silver Bear for Best Director in 2018.”

Sound easy? Well, it really is, apart from the fact that news media in-the United States often purposefully or subconsciously mix opinion and fact, effectively blurring the line between the two so much that now many Americans can’t tell the difference.

Spotting deception

You can improve your news reading skills by keeping an eye out for the common markers of opinion in news reporting. The easiest is to look for adjectives, which are usually always markers of opinion and will sometimes be hidden inside news reporting to nefariously affect the reader’s understanding.

Here’s a quick example using a headline: “Impressive crowd of 10,000 turn out for march.” Can you see the adjective in that headline? The word “impressive” is the writer’s own opinion mixed in with a factual statement about the number of people who turned out for a march. By using that adjective, the writer is pushing you to see the march as a success and to feel that the cause behind the march has a lot of public support. That isn’t necessarily the case, and similarly a writer with another opinion could pen this headline: “Only 10,000 turn out for march.” See the difference?

Improve your news eye

I hope this short foray into a tiny aspect of news media has helped a little and that now you’re just a little bit more apt at separating fact from, well, fiction. In today’s world, that skill is more important than ever.

1. Which of the following statements about US-based journalism is true?

A．It is characterized by the detailed event or context-based reporting.

B．It fails to appeal to people’s emotion when reporting news events.

C．It results in people’s inability to distinguish facts from opinions.

D．It helps to cultivate a healthy amount of skepticism in people.

2. What is a good way to spot deception when one is trying to separate fact and opinion?

A．Turning to opinion writers for help.

B．Looking for specific adjectives.

C．Reading as much news as possible.

D．Figuring out the hidden meaning.

3. Which of the following statements are facts?
①Increasing the federal minimum wage to US$15 an hour is essential for the health of the US economy.
②Health care costs per person in the US are the highest in the developed world.
③Immigrants who are in the US illegally have some rights under the Constitution.
④Democracy is the greatest form of government.
⑤Immigrants who are in the US illegally are a very big problem for the country today.
⑥President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

A．①②③

B．④⑤⑥

C．②③⑥

D．①⑤⑥

4. What is the writer’s purpose in writing the passage?

A．To attract more readers for his column.

B．To call for joint efforts by news agencies to cooperate.

C．To warn the danger of lack of news reading skills.

D．To provide advice on how to distinguish facts from opinions.

7 . Hugely ambitious in scope, The Lord of the Rings occupies an uncomfortable position in 20th century literature. This book of J.R.R.Tolkien’s poses a challenge to modern literature and its defenders. (Tolkien on his _______: “Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, ridiculous, or annoying; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently _________.”) Yet The Lord of the Rings has enjoyed massive and enduring popularity. It would seem that Tolkien’s work supplied something that was _________ among the formal innovations of 20th century fiction, something for which readers were hungry. But what was it, and why was it important?

It seems that the key point lies in Tolkien’s wholehearted rejection of modernity and modernism. This is what so powerfully _________ some readers, and just as powerfully drives away others. In his book J.R.R.Tolkien: Author of the Century, T.A. Shippey expands on this idea by arguing that Tolkien saw his story of Middle-earth not as fiction or invention, but as the _________ of something genuine that had become buried beneath the fairy tale and nursery rhythm.

“However fanciful Tolkien’s creation of Middle earth was,” Shippey writes, “he did not think that he was entirely _________. He was ‘reconstructing’, he was harmonizing conflicts in his source-texts, sometimes he was supplying entirely new concepts, but he was also reaching back to an imaginative world which he believed had once really _________, at least in a collective imagination.”

The book is also deeply grounded in Tolkien’s linguistic expertise （语言专长） —he _________ whole languages for his characters. Sometimes he became so absorbed in the creation of languages, in fact, that he _________ the story itself for months or years at a time, believing he could not continue until some inconsistency（不一致）in his invented world had been resolved. But Tolkien’s great intellect and knowledge is not the source of his ____________; without his storytelling gift, The Lord of the Rings would be little more than a curiosity. And this gift seems to originate straight from his ____________ to break from classical and traditional forms.

Tolkien himself often spoke of his work as something ‘found’ or ‘discovered’, something whose existence was ____________ of him. It’s wise to be careful with this sort of interpretation, but it seems ____________ that he believed his work to be something given, something revealed, which contained a kind of truth beyond measure. ____________, his details have the weight of reality, and because of this his great sweep of story feels real as well; you might say that his ____________ castles are built with a certain amount of genuine stone.

1.

A．books

B．critics

C．readers

D．ambitions

2.

A．dislike

B．challenge

C．review

D．prefer

3.

A．common

B．possible

C．missing

D．funny

4.

A．annoys

B．influences

C．attracts

D．concerns

5.

A．recovery

B．designing

C．analysis

D．questioning

6.

A．taking it down

B．making it up

C．turning it down

D．looking it up

7.

A．remained

B．struck

C．moved

D．existed

8.

A．spoke

B．invented

C．neglected

D．recalled

9.

A．put aside

B．set up

C．look into

D．get along

10.

A．style

B．tension

C．success

D．tradition

11.

A．decision

B．request

C．struggle

D．refusal

12.

A．representative

B．independent

C．conscious

D．thoughtful

13.

A．clear

B．weird

C．unfair

D．pitiful

14.

A．As a result

B．On the contrary

C．Even so

D．What’s worse

15.

A．ancient

B．broken

C．imaginary

D．foreign

9 . Science may never know what memories play on the mind of the California sea hare, a foot-long marine snail, when it eats algae — a sea plant — in the tide pools of the Pacific coast.

But in a new study, researchers claim to have made headway in understanding the simplest kind of memory a creature might form.

David Glanzman, a neurobiologist at the University of California, believes the kinds of memories that trigger a defensive reaction in the snail are encoded not in the connections between brain cells, as many scientists would argue, but in RNA molecules (分子) that form part of an organism’s genetic machinery.

In an experiment to test the idea, Glanzman implanted wire into the tails of California sea hares, and gave them a series of electrical shocks. The procedure sensitized the animals so that when they were prodded (戳) in a fleshy spout called a siphon, they contracted their gills (鳃状呼吸器官) in a strong defensive action.

After sensitizing the sea snails, Glanzman extracted RNA from the animals and injected it into other sea snails to see what happened. He found the recipient sea snails became sensitized, suggesting the “memory” of the electrical shocks had been transplanted. When Glanzman repeated the experiment with RNA from sea snails that had been hooked up to wires but not shocked, the reaction behavior did not transfer.

Despite the result, the work has not found widespread acceptance. “Obviously further work needs to be carried out to determine whether these changes can happen without failure in a wide range of conditions,” said Prof Sherilynn Vann, who studies memory at Cardiff University. “While the sea hare is a fantastic model for studying basic neuroscience, we must be very cautious in drawing comparisons to human memory processes.”

Tomas Ryan, who studies memory at Trinity College Dublin, is firmly unconvinced. “It’s interesting, but I don’t think they’ve transferred a memory,” he said. “This work tells me that maybe the most basic behavioral responses involve some kind of switch in the animal and there is something in the liquid that Glanzman extracts that is hitting that switch.”

But Ryan added that different thinking about memory was badly needed: “In a field like this which is so full of accepted beliefs, we need as many new ideas as possible. This work takes us down an interesting road, but I have a huge amount of skepticism about it.”

1. Why were the sea hares given electrical shocks?

A．To rob them of their memory.

B．To see how they defend themselves.

C．To break the connection between nerves.

D．To make them sensitive to external stimulations.

2. What conclusion may Glanzman draw from the experiment?

A．Memory can be encoded and changed by people.

B．Only with strong stimulation can sea snails form reaction.

C．The memory giving rise to sea snail’s sensitization is held in RNA.

D．The sea snail’s defense is probably enabled by connectivity of brain cells.

3. According to the passage, the limitations of Glanzman’s experiment involve the following EXCEPT ________.

A．The recipient sea snail’s response may require further confirmation.

B．Variables (变量) in the experiments may not have remained the same.

C．Something else other than RNA in the extract may lead to the recipient’s reaction.

D．The sea snail “memory transplant” may not apply to more complex memory process.

4. The underlined word “skepticism” in the last paragraph is closest in meaning to ________.

A．criticism

B．doubt

C．relief

D．optimism

10 . When your home becomes a tourist attraction

Have you ever looked at a beautiful little news house in London and thought “It must be so amazing to live there?”    1     But for the people who actually do live in those homes, social media photography has changed what it means to live in a picturesque place.

Alice Johnston is a longtime resident of Notting Hill, the London neighborhood famous for pastel-painted row houses and for being the setting of the movie of the same name. Johnston, a journalist, has complicated feelings about her Instagram-beloved neighborhood. She lives on Portobello Road, one of the capital’s most famous streets.     2    

Once, she and a friend were walking his French bulldog when a tourist asked if they could “borrow” the pup for a quick photo. The friend and the dog agreed, the Instagrammer posed with the Frenchie in front of a bright blue door and then handed over five pounds as a thank you. In that story, everybody had a good time.     3    “I was once woken up at 6 a.m. on Easter Sunday by French teenagers taking pictures outside,” Johnston says.

    4     Johnston tries to be sympathetic to travelers coming to her hometown, recalling how she loved taking pictures of historic neighborhoods like the Marais in Paris and Alfama in Lisbon. In fact, she recently found photos of herself as a teenager hanging out at the Notting Hill Carnival, years before she moved to the capital herself. “I love to travel, so I have to be pretty understanding when people travel to where I live, and I feel lucky that it’s cool enough that people want to come where I live.”

A．And she has witnessed all kinds of crazy behavior committed in the pursuit of the perfect snapshot.

B．But there can be a darker side to living inside what some people think is a movie set.

C．“For us it’s a tremendous pleasure to be able to share the house and see so many people happy and excited about it.”

D．If so, you’re not the only one.

E．When private homes become tourist attractions, conflicts can occur.

F．When it comes to living in a much-photographed place, some people try to take the good with the bad.