1 . Investors probably expect that following the suggestions of stock analysts would make them better off than doing the exact opposite. _________, recent research by Nicola Gennaioli and his colleagues shows that the best way to gain excess return s would be to invest in the shares least favored by analysts. They compute that, during the last 35 years, investing in the 10 percent of U. S. stocks analysts were most _________ about would have yielded on average 3 percent a year. _________, investing in the 10 percent of stocks analysts were most pessimistic about would have yielded a surprising 15 percent a year.

Gennaioli and colleagues shed light on this _________ with the help of cognitive sciences and, in particular, using Kahneman and Tversky's concept of representativeness. Decision makers, according to this view, _________ the representative features of a group or a phenomenon. These are defined as the features that occur more frequently in that group than in a baseline reference group.

After observing strong earnings growth—the explanation goes—analysts think that the firm may be the next Google. “Googles” are in fact more frequent among firms experiencing strong growth, which makes them _________. The problem is that “Googles” are very _________ in absolute terms. As a result, expectations become too optimistic, and future performance_________. A model of stock prices in which investor beliefs follow this logic can account both qualitatively and quantitatively for the beliefs of analysts and the dynamics (动态变化) of stock returns.

In related work, the authors also show that the same model can _________ booms and busts in the volume of credit and interest rate spreads.

These works are part of a research project aimed at taking insights from cognitive sciences and at __________them into economic models. Kahneman and Tversky's concept of “representativeness” lies at the heart of this effort. “In a classical example, we __________ to think of Irishmen as redheads because red hair is much more frequent among Irishmen than among the rest of the world,” Prof. Gennaioli says. “However, only 10 percent of Irishmen are redheads. In our work, we develop models of belief formation that show this logic and study the __________ of this important psychological force in different fields.”

Representativeness helps describe __________ and behavior in different fields, not only in financial markets. One such field is the formation of stereotypes about social groups. In a recent experimental paper, Gennaioli and colleagues show that representativeness can explain self-confidence, and in particular the __________ of women to compete in traditionally male subjects, such as mathematics. A slight prevalence of __________ male math ability in the data is enough to make math ability un-representative for women, driving their under confidence in this particular subject.

1.

A．Consequently

B．Furthermore

C．Nevertheless

D．Meanwhile

2.

A．curious

B．controversial

C．concerned

D．optimistic

3.

A．In brief

B．By contrast

C．In addition

D．Without doubt

4.

A．engagement

B．concentration

C．puzzle

D．definition

5.

A．memorize

B．prioritize

C．modernize

D．fertilize

6.

A．representative

B．argumentative

C．executive

D．sensitive

7.

A．harsh

B．adaptable

C．crucial

D．rare

8.

A．cheers

B．disappoints

C．stabilizes

D．improves

9.

A．account for

B．count on

C．suffer from

D．hold up

10.

A．pouring

B．admitting

C．integrating

D．tempting

11.

A．pretend

B．afford

C．offer

D．tend

12.

A．effects

B．delights

C．intervals

D．codes

13.

A．companions

B．scales

C．expectations

D．findings

14.

A．necessity

B．involvement

C．perseverance

D．reluctance

15.

A．equivalent

B．exceptional

C．mysterious

D．distressing

2 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passages coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Japan’s robot revolution in senior care

Japan’s artificial intelligence expertise is transforming the elder care industry, with     1     (specialize) robotic care accomplishing more than just taking pressure off the critical shortage of caregivers. Senior care facilities across Japan are testing out such new robots     2     deliver a collection of social and physical health care and the government-backed initiative has been met with positive reviews by elderly residents.

The rapidly graying population     3     (eye) by the government as a potential market for medical technology now. Disappointing government predictions show that by 2025, Japan's first baby boomers will have turned 75 and about 7 million people are likely to suffer from some form of dementia (痴呆). The nation won't be able to avoid a dementia crisis     4     an additional 380,000 senior care workers.

The long-standing shortage of professional care workers has encouraged the Japanese government     5     (simplify) procedures for foreign caregivers to be trained and certified. The current Technical Intern Training Program between Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia, under     6     Economic Partnership Agreement, was extended to include nursing care as well as agriculture, fishery, and construction sectors.

    7     the government made efforts to increase the numbers of senior care workers, the target number of foreign graduates has still fallen flat, with the national caregiver examination proving a major obstacle to pass. The success rate for foreign students was a merely 106 students last year,     8     has slightly improved to 216 students this year. Another depressing reality is that 19 to 38 percent of foreign nurses who pass the exam opt to leave the industry and return home,    9     (cite) tough work conditions and long hours. Given the challenges, this is     10     the government believes care robots will be able to step in.

3 . Scientists know that the internal forces that generate Earth’s magnetic field (磁场) can change and that the strength of the field swings over time. This can lead to gradual shifts in the intensity and location of Earth’s magnetic north and south poles and even reversals where Earth’s magnetic poles trade places.

But are these geomagnetic events responsible for extreme weather, extinction, and even disasters? Claims that Earth’s magnetic field is responsible for climate change are widespread online, but scientists say the theory has no basis. “At this time there aren’t any credible mechanisms that could make it a possibility,” says Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist in New York.” It’s not that we’re ruling out magnetic effects on climate without thinking about it, we collectively have thought about it, and it’s been found devoid.

There are three north poles on Earth: true north, geomagnetic north, and magnetic north. True north is a fixed position on the globe that points directly towards the geographic North Pole. But geomagnetic north, currently located over Canada’s Ellesmere Island, is not a fixed point — it represents the northern axis (轴) of Earth’s magnetosphere and shifts from time to time. Magnetic north corresponds to magnetic field lines and is what your compass locates.

During a pole reversal, Earth’s magnetic north and south poles exchange locations. This happens on average every 300,000 years or so, but the last reversal occurred around 780.000 years ago. Some scientists have assumed that reversals and the corresponding decrease in strength of the magnetic field could cause a big problem that increased solar radiation was able to enter Earth’s atmosphere, altering ozone levels and driving global climate shifts and extinctions.

Kirk Johnson, a director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, has spent much of his career studying the extinction of dinosaurs. While analyzing fossil records and timelines surrounding his research, Johnson zeroed in on the magnetic reversal that occurred around 66.3million years ago.

Deep ocean samples revealed significant climate change around 66.3 million years ago. But this also coincides with a large volcanic eruption in India called the Deccan volcanism, which produced some of the longest lava (熔岩) flows on Earth. “We’ve always owed that transition to the carbon dioxide released by the Deccan volcanism and the increase of greenhouse gases,” says Johnson. “There are two things happening: The magnetic field is changing, the Deccan volcanism is happening, and there’s climate warming. So that would be an example of coincidental climate change.”

1. The underlined word “devoid” in paragraph 2 probably means        .

A．fruitless

B．obvious

C．reasonable

D．misleading

2. Which north pole on earth is involved in the pole reversal?

A．True north.

B．Geomagnetic north.

C．Magnetic north.

D．Geographic north

3. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

A．The geomagnetic events are to blame for the climate change.

B．The decrease in strength of the magnetic field resulted in extinction.

C．The magnetic field is changing all the time with the climate warming.

D．Internal forces which produce Earth’s magnetic field can alter over time

4. Which of the following statements does Kirk Johnson most probably agree with?

A．A magnetic reversal doesn’t necessarily cause climate change.

B．A magnetic reversal is accompanied with significant climate change

C．The extinction of the dinosaurs is due to the magnetic reversal.

D．Climate change is not relevant to the carbon dioxide emission.

4 . Social Masking

Amanda is always an expert at working the room. She would adopt the manner of the people around her to fit in while hiding her true personality. This is social masking, the process of hiding your natural way of interacting with others so you can feel accepted.     1    Instead, they are hoping to fit in with everybody else. Social masking is a set of learned pattern-matching behaviors, movements and actions where you try to be normal to fit in rather than stand out.

    2    People all wear certain social masks in order to get through some tricky life situations with confidence, according to Dr. Tara Quinn-Cirillo. And some experts even think social masking is built in all human beings at a physical level, adding that something in our brain gives indications of how to essentially stay safe and not stick out.

In a world that often tells us to just be ourselves, you might wonder why we are still dependent on these social masking behaviors. “Social masking happens because we as a species want to be included,” says Tara. “It has been a tribal thing of being together rather than being on our own, from a historical perspective.     3    ”

There is a huge difference between naturally identifying with someone and consciously social masking.    4    Social masking, on the other hand, involves a conscious effort to change your personality to suit your surroundings. It typically involves depressing your natural urges and changing your personal interests to fit the crowd.

A．Social maskers do not try hard to match other people in pace and tone.

B．Social masking is something we all engage in to some extent.

C．Social maskers are not trying to fox anyone.

D．When we are in natural identification with someone, it happens naturally, and there is very little effort involved.

E．It’s adopted by people unable to naturally act in a way considered socially acceptable.

F．That is, it’s an ancient part of our evolution to socialize, rather than be anti-social or a misfit.

5 . Antibiotics, which can destroy or prevent the growth of bacteria and cure infections, are vital to modern medicine. Their ability to kill bacteria without harming the patient has saved billions of lives and made surgical procedures much safer. But after decades of overuse, their powers are fading. Some bacteria have evolved resistance, creating a growing army of superbugs, against which there is little effective treatment. Antimicrobial (抗菌的) resistance, expected to kill 10 million people a year by 2050 up from around 1 million in 2019, has been seen as a crisis by many.

It would be unwise to rely on new antibiotics to solve the problem. The rate at which resistance emerges is increasing. Some new drugs last only two years before bacteria develop resistance. When new antibiotics do arrive, doctors often store them, using them only reluctantly and for short periods when faced with the most persistent infections. That limits sales, making new antibiotics an unappealing idea for most drug firms.

Governments have been trying to fix the problem by channeling cash into research in drug firms. That has produced only limited improvements. But there is a phenomenon worth a look. Microbiologists have known for decades that disease-causing bacteria can suffer from illnesses of their own. They are supersensitive to attacks by phages, specialized viruses that infect bacteria and often kill them. Phages are considered a promising alternative to antibiotics.

Using one disease-causing virus to fight bacteria has several advantages. Like antibiotics, phages only tend to choose particular targets, leaving human cells alone as they infect and destroy bacterial ones. Unlike antibiotics, phages can evolve just as readily as bacteria can, meaning that even if bacteria do develop resistance, phages may be able to evolve around them in turn.

That, at least, is the theory. The trouble with phages is that comparatively little is known about them. After the discovery of penicillin, the first antibiotic, in 1928, they were largely ignored in the West. Given the severity of the antibiotic-resistance problem, it would be a good idea to find out more about them.

The first step is to run more clinical trials. Interest from Western firms is growing. But it is being held back by the fact that phages are an even less appealing investment than antibiotics. Since they are natural living things, there may be trouble patenting them, making it hard to recover any investment.

Governments can help fun d basic research into phage treatment and clarify the law around exactly what is and is not patentable. In time they can set up phage banks so as to make production cheaper. And they can spread awareness of the risks of overusing antibiotics, and the potential benefits of phages.

1. We can learn from paragraphs 1 and 2 that        .

A．doctors tend to use new antibiotics when the patients ask for them

B．antimicrobial resistance is developing more rapidly than predicted

C．new antibiotics fail to attract drug firms due to limited use of them

D．previous antibiotics are effective in solving modern health problems

2. What is phages’ advantage over antibiotics?

A．They can increase human cells when fighting bacteria.

B．They are not particular about which cells to infect and kill.

C．They can evolve accordingly when bacteria develop resistance.

D．They are too sensitive to be infected by disease-causing bacteria.

3. According to the passage, the obstacle to phage treatment is that        .

A．there is little chance of patenting phages in the future

B．governments provide financial support for other research

C．the emergence of superbugs holds back drug firms’ interest

D．over-dependence on antibiotics distracts attention from phages

4. What is the main idea of the passage?

A．Governments fail to stop the use of antibiotics.

B．Phages could help prevent an antibiotics crisis.

C．Development of antibiotics is limited by phages.

D．Antimicrobial resistance calls for new antibiotics.

6 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Buy Now, Pay Later Spending

Buy now, pay later(BNPL) spending is expected to rise to record levels this holiday season. With so many young “buy now, pay later” shoppers already in debt from this short-term financing tool not requiring interest, questions emerge: Why do these shoppers use such a tool? And what risks does it pose to their budgets in the months     1     (come)?

The many Generation Z and millennials (typically around 40 years and younger) tend to use this short-term financing,     2     allows them to buy items and pay for them over time. Offered mostly by financial technologies, BNPL allows these customers to pay back their purchases     3     interest and with the first payment usually made at checkout. The most common “buy now, pay later” plan is     4     customers make four equal payments and pay off the debt in six weeks. It’s been a lifeline for some people, such as a university student     5     weekly income is not big enough. “BNPL provides consumers with flexible payment options so they     6     manage spending,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights. That is of great importance for many consumers, especially     7     with a tendency to purchase higher-cost items.

However, since BNPL     8     (appear), warnings from experts have come into our view. They have been indicating that it’s financially unhealthy to form such a spending habit. According to New York Federal Reserve economists, BNPL may encourage debt to increase over time,     9     (influence) a consumer’s ability to meet non-BNPL commitments, or users to over extend themselves. Users should also note that     10     interest is not charged on the loan, they’ll be hit with late fees for missed payments, which can add up quickly, says the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

9 . Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

Will Plant-based Protein Continue to be an Appetizer in Food World?

A good vegan milk needs to look like milk and taste like milk, whether it’s a fatty version, preferred by bakers, or a skimmed one, favored by the health-conscious. For years, manufacturers of plant-based protein have had trouble hacking this delicate imitation game and it seems that they are winning back a bit. The global revenues (收益) from alternative proteins could reach $290 billion by 2035 and that is a cautious estimate. However, can it last?

Unlike those early products, which were neither terribly tasty nor particularly nutritious, cleaver (剁肉刀) processing improves textures, additives boost taste and a pinch of specially engineered peas and beans adds nutrient in the latest products. Still, ultra-processed substitutes seldom match animal proteins in nutritional value. Animal products, including milk, are better for children’s bone development, though lab- grown versions of meat or dairy are becoming more nutritious. Meanwhile, green-minded consumers are realizing that plant-based does not necessarily mean sustainable in that it still takes a lot to obtain raw materials. Farming almonds (杏仁) to make a milk-like drink, for example, uses huge quantities of water.

Plant-based proteins are also a tough sell in giant markets like India, where diets are already rich in plants and vegetables, or Nigera, where meat-eating is a sign of wealth. That limits their global appeal.

All these suggests that alternative proteins have far to go to replace the animal kind. The limitations may be weighing on the firms involved. Oatly’s market value has fallen by about 80% since its listing, partly because of production difficulties. That of Beyond Meat, whose burgers feature in McDonald’s latest menu, is down by 90% from its peak. Plant-based foods may no longer be only an appetizer in diets, but their maker remain one in food business.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

10 . Back in 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that with technological change and improvements in-productivity, we’d only be working 15 hours a week by now. But while working hours have _______ by 26%, most of us still average 42.5 hours a week.

One of the things Keynes underestimated is the human desire to _______ with our peers — a drive that makes most of us work more than we need to. “We don’t measure productivity by how much we’ve harvested anymore,” says Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, visiting scholar at Stanford University. “Overworking has been part of Western society since the Industrial Revolution. When some predicted that automation would create an extra amount of _______ time, needless to say, that didn’t happen.

Thanks to computerization and globalization in the 1980s, managers could demand more of employees under the _______ that jobs could be given to someone else. So the _______ piled on. And we took it exhausted, but asking up the burden all the same. The psychologist Barbara Killnger writes in Workaholics: Te Respectable Addicts about how we _______ sacrifice our own well-being through overwork for “success”.

But far from delivering productivity, value, or personal fulfillment, overwork has been proven to lead to burnout, stress, greater risk of heart disease and even shorter lifespans. _______ we carried on — until COVID-19 came along.

Besides making us work longer hours from home, COVID-19 has also _______ the move towards the adoption of automated machine, especially tor jobs requiring much interpersonal contact-from Amazon developing delivery drones (无人机) to self-driving cars. By 2050, Michael Osborne, a professor of machine learning at the University of Oxford, predicts that at least 40% of current jobs will be lost to _______.

There are ________. Jobs that involve complex social interactions are beyond current robot skills: so teaching, social care, nursing and counselling are all likely to ________ the AI revolution. As are jobs that rely on creativity. The same also goes for ________ jobs, according to Osborne, due to the large number of different objects cleaners encounter and the variety of ways those objects need to be dealt with. Interestingly, areas of the workplace traditionally dominated by women won’t be so easily adopted by AI. Robots are unlikely to ________ in the “work” of taking care of children, preparing lunchboxes and doing the laundry.

Those whose work falls outside the caring, cleaning or creative field will still work in future, just ________. In about 60% of occupations, it is estimated that a third of the tasks can be automated, meaning changes to the way we work. A large-scale study has predicted that over the next 20 years, although 7 million jobs will be taken over by AI. 7.2 million new ones will be ________ as a result. So we will work in future: we just don’t know what we’ll be doing yet.

1.

A．declined

B．increased

C．continued

D．kept

2.

A．disagree

B．compete

C．cooperate

D．identify

3.

A．working

B．tough

C．leisure

D．active

4.

A．fantasy

B．influence

C．threat

D．impression

5.

A．joy

B．cash

C．ambition

D．pressure

6.

A．excitedly

B．willingly

C．dramatically

D．hopefully

7.

A．Otherwise

B．Still

C．Furthermore

D．Therefore

8.

A．speeded up

B．followed up

C．prepared for

D．planned for

9.

A．overwork

B．labour

C．automation

D．science

10.

A．dreams

B．models

C．expectations

D．exceptions

11.

A．cause

B．cease

C．survive

D．undergo

12.

A．caring

B．cleaning

C．curing

D．coaching

13.

A．assist

B．exist

C．believe

D．understand

14.

A．hardly

B．differently

C．unfortunately

D．probably

15.

A．lost

B．recovered

C．substituted

D．created