1 . Heads or Tails?
Careful: It’s not 50-50
The phrase “coin toss” is a classic synonym for randomness. But since the 18th century, mathematicians have
František Bartoš, currently a Ph.D. candidate studying the research methods of psychology at the University of Amsterdam, became interested in this
With one side initially upward, the flipped coin landed with the same side facing
The leading theory explaining the
For day-to-day decisions, coin tosses are as good as random because a 1 percent bias isn’t
It isn’t difficult to prevent this bias from influencing your coin-toss matches; simply
| A．confirmed | B．denied | C．recorded | D．suspected |
| A．therefore | B．however | C．for example | D．vice versa |
| A．nightmare | B．context | C．intervention | D．delay |
| A．coinage | B．discipline | C．challenge | D．phrase |
| A．cooperate with | B．round up | C．shrug aside | D．count on |
| A．analysis | B．race | C．interview | D．session |
| A．upward | B．evenly | C．downward | D．uniformly |
| A．volunteers | B．gamblers | C．psychologists | D．statisticians |
| A．accidental | B．dominant | C．subtle | D．prejudiced |
| A．mechanics | B．relativity | C．geometry | D．chemistry |
| A．moreover | B．instead | C．likewise | D．initially |
| A．insignificant | B．accessible | C．inclusive | D．perceptible |
| A．reversing | B．integrating with | C．backing up | D．rejecting |
| A．concealing | B．shifting | C．perceiving | D．anchoring |
| A．favourable to | B．opposed to | C．unaware of | D．suspicious of |
2 . Facing AI extinction
In a recent White House press conference, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre couldn’t suppress her laughter at the question: Is it “crazy” to worry that “literally everyone on Earth will die” due to artificial intelligence?
While AI pioneer such as Alan Turing cautioned that we should expect “machines to take control”, many contemporary researchers
Before the deep-learning revolution in 2012, I didn’t think human-level AI would emerge in my lifetime. I was familiar with arguments that AI systems would insatiably seek power and resist shutdown — and obvious
Yet after 10 years in the field, I believe the main reasons are actually cultural and historical. By 2012, after several hype cycles that didn’t pan out, most AI researchers had stopped asking ‘what if we succeed at replicating human intelligence’,
When concerns resurfaced outside their community, researchers were to quick to dismiss outsiders as
One basic argument is by analogy: humans’
But wouldn’t it be humans wielding AIs as tools who end up in control? Not necessarily. Many people might choose to deploy a system with a 99 per cent chance of making them phenomenally rich and powerful, even if it had a 1 per cent chance of
Because no safe experiment can definitively tell us whether an AI system will actually kill everyone, such concerns are often dismissed as unscientific. But this isn’t an excuse for ignoring the risk. It just means society needs to reason about it in the same way as other complex social issues. Researchers also emphasize the difficulty of predicting when AI might
Attitudes are changing, but not quickly enough. AI x-risk is admittedly more
Big tech sponsors AI ethics research when it doesn’t hurt the bottom line. But it is also lobbying to exclude general-purpose AI from E. U. regulation. Concerned researchers recently called for a(n)
This brings us to the ugliest reason researchers may dismiss AI x-risk: funding. Essentially every researcher (myself included) has received funding from big tech. At some point, society may stop believing reassurances from people with such strong conflicts of
| A．Comfortingly | B．Unfortunately | C．Accidentally | D．Luckily |
| A．express | B．feel | C．downplay | D．highlight |
| A．threat | B．boost | C．disgrace | D．contribution |
| A．extinction | B．health | C．resource | D．exposure |
| A．abandoning | B．cherishing | C．frustrating | D．narrowing |
| A．arrogant | B．irresponsible | C．ignorant | D．biased |
| A．cognitive | B．physical | C．linguistic | D．emotional |
| A．deliberately | B．abstractly | C．frequently | D．fundamentally |
| A．tightening | B．exercising | C．maintaining | D．escaping |
| A．assist | B．surpass | C．collect | D．evaluate |
| A．obvious | B．urgent | C．questionable | D．private |
| A．legal | B．financial | C．professional | D．ethical |
| A．investment | B．pause | C．research | D．initiative |
| A．take place | B．grow up | C．sink in | D．go away |
| A．interest | B．religion | C．taste | D．law |
| A．Nervous. | B．Excited. | C．Sleepless. | D．Frustrated. |
| A．High requirements. | B．Flexible schedules. | C．High frequency. | D．Opposite rules. |
| A．The man held a childhood dream of being a professional player. |
| B．The man had taken it for granted that he would be a basketball star sooner or later. |
| C．The man felt uncomfortable when he first received so much attention from others. |
| D．The man relieved himself by adjusting the focus of his attention in time. |
| A．We should not take it seriously. |
| B．We should compete with each other. |
| C．We should enjoy ourselves in it. |
| D．We should never miss a game. |
4 . At first, the grains of rice that Ingo Potrykus held in his fingers did not seem at all
For more than a decade Potrykus had
At that point, he tackled an even greater challenge. The golden grains
The debate began the moment genetically engineered crops (GM crops) were first sold in the 1990s, and it has
The hostility is
The benefits did seem small
Many people
| A．typical | B．special | C．local | D．white |
| A．dreamed of | B．come in handy | C．been reminded of | D．broken up |
| A．attempt at | B．effort to | C．resistance to | D．majority of |
| A．But | B．And | C．While | D．Since |
| A．surprise | B．obstacle | C．norm | D．opposition |
| A．achieved | B．stressed | C．overlooked | D．contained |
| A．was caught in | B．was alive with | C．be conscious of | D．was honored by |
| A．announced | B．maintained | C．escalated | D．applied |
| A．brilliant | B．understandable | C．discharged | D．rewarding |
| A．introduced | B．reminded | C．respected | D．overlooked |
| A．toss and turn | B．give and take | C．produce and sell | D．demand and supply |
| A．until | B．after | C．although | D．when |
| A．feature | B．mark | C．build | D．benefit |
| A．worried about | B．ashamed of | C．filled with | D．admired for |
| A．terror | B．misery | C．starvation | D．crisis |
Instagram Concerns
Although the popular social media APP Instagram can be used in many positive ways, there are significant risks to your child that all parents should be aware of.
Many Instagram users are known for their perfectly posed and edited photos of delicate life. The line between reality and what is posted on social media is often vague. Teens often find it impossible not to compare their appearance, belongings, status, and lifestyle to the lives of those they follow. It is so easy for a child to become consumed by this constant comparison. If your child has gathered a large Instagram following or does not have proper settings turned on, shared information may be public for all to see. Although content showed in your child's Instagram feed is tailored toward their browsing history and interests, it is possible they could encounter potentially inappropriate subject matter.
Feeling concerned or worried? Rather than banning your child from the platform entirely, you might consider the following:
When a child spends too much time viewing life through the images of others, they can forget to take the time to truly live their own life. Encourage your child to incorporate plenty of screen-free and Instagram-free time into their daily lives. One way you can influence your child to develop a healthy relationship with social media is by demonstrating one yourself. Set aside your own screen-free time each day. Also, it is crucial that, as a parent, you understand your child's social media presence and have open and honest conversations about the dangers of self-comparison and oversharing on Instagram. If you notice your child is constantly experiencing the side effects of Instagram-despite your best efforts-take the steps necessary to protect your child. For some, this may mean locking the app on your child's phone until a compromise can be reached.
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6 . Why isn’t science better? Look at career incentives.
There are often substantial gaps between the idealized and actual versions of those people whose work involves providing a social good. Government officials are supposed to work for their constituents. Journalists are supposed to provide unbiased reporting and penetrating analysis. And scientists are supposed to relentlessly probe the fabric of reality with the most rigorous and skeptical of methods.
All too often, however, what should be just isn’t so. In a number of scientific fields, published findings turn out not to replicate (复制), or to have smaller effects than, what was initially claimed. Plenty of science does replicate — meaning the experiments turn out the same way when you repeat them — but the amount that doesn’t is too much for comfort.
But there are also ways in which scientists increase their chances of getting it wrong. Running studies with small samples, mining data for correlations and forming hypotheses to fit an experiment’s results after the fact are just some of the ways to increase the number of false discoveries.
It’s not like we don’t know how to do better. Scientists who study scientific methods have known about feasible remedies for decades. Unfortunately, their advice often falls on deaf ears. Why? Why aren’t scientific methods better than they are? In a word: incentives. But perhaps not in the way you think.
In the 1970s, psychologists and economists began to point out the danger in relying on quantitative measures for social decision-making. For example, when public schools are evaluated by students’ performance on standardized tests, teachers respond by teaching “to the test”. In turn, the test serves largely as of how well the school can prepare students for the test.
We can see this principle—often summarized as “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”—playing out in the realm of research. Science is a competitive enterprise. There are far more credentialed (授以证书的) scholars and researchers than there are university professorships or comparably prestigious research positions. Once someone acquires a research position, there is additional competition for tenure (终身教授) grant funding, and support and placement for graduate students. Due to this competition for resources, scientists must be evaluated and compared. How do you tell if someone is a good scientist?
An oft-used metric (标准，度量) is the number of publications one has in peer-reviewed journals, as well as the status of those journals. Metrics like these make it straightforward to compare researchers whose work may otherwise be quite different. Unfortunately, this also makes these numbers susceptible to exploitation.
If scientists are motivated to publish often and in high-impact journals, we might expect them to actively try to game the system (钻空子). And certainly, some do—as seen in recent high-profile cases of scientific fraud (欺诈). If malicious (恶意的) fraud is the prime concern, then perhaps the solution is simply heightened alertness.
However, most scientists are, I believe, genuinely interested in learning about the world, and honest. The problem with incentives is that they can shape cultural norms without any intention on the part of individuals.
1. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?| A．Scientists are expected to persistently devoted to exploration of reality. |
| B．The research findings fail to achieve the expected effect. |
| C．Hypotheses are modified to highlight the experiments’ results. |
| D．The amount of science that does replicate is comforting. |
| A．The public. | B．The incentive initiators. |
| C．The peer researchers. | D．The high-impact journal editors. |
| A．Good scientists excel in seeking resources and securing research positions. |
| B．Competition for resources pushes researchers to publish in a more productive way. |
| C．All the credentialed scholars and researchers will take up university professorships. |
| D．The number of publication reveals how scientists are bitterly exploited. |
| A．High-impact journals are encouraged to reform the incentives for publication. |
| B．The peer-review process is supposed to scale up inspection of scientific fraud. |
| C．Researchers are motivated to get actively involved in gaming the current system. |
| D．Career incentives for scientists are expected to consider their personal intention. |
| A. network B. specify C. traditionally D. ingredient AB. uneasy AC. additional AD. culturally BC. block BD. determine CD. requirement ABC. critical |
A multicultural person is someone who is deeply convinced that all cultures are equally good, enjoys learning the rich variety of cultures in the world, and most likely has been exposed to more than one culture in his or her lifetime.
A multilingual salesperson can explain the advantages of a product in other languages, but a multicultural salesperson can motivate foreigners to buy it. That’s a(an)
No one likes foreigners who are arrogant (自大的) about their own culture. The trouble is, most people are arrogantly monocultural without being aware of it. Foreigners sense monocultural arrogance at once and set up their own cultural barriers, which may effectively
Multiculturalism is a(an)
For 20-odd years, I’ve run an executive-search firm from Brussels. When clients ask us to find the right person for a new pan-European sales position, I start by asking them to
Of course, it’s far more difficult to
8 . As the sun set he remembered, to give himself more confidence, the time in the tavern at Casablanca when he had played the hand game with the great negro from Cienfuegos who was the strongest man on the docks. They had gone one day and one night with their elbows on a chalk line on the table and their forearms straight up and their hands gripped tight. Each one was trying to force the other’s hand down onto the table. There was much betting and people went in and out of the room under the kerosene lights and he had looked at the arm and hand of the negro and at the negro’s face. They changed the referees every four hours after the first eight so that the referees could sleep. Blood came out from under the fingernails of both his and the negro’s hands and they looked each other in the eye and at their hands and forearms and the bettors went in and out of the room and sat on high chairs against the wall and watched. The walls were painted bright blue and were of wood and the lamps threw their shadows against them. The negro’s shadow was huge and it moved on the wall as the breeze moved the lamps.
The odds would change back and forth all night and they fed the negro rum and lighted cigarettes for him. Then the negro, after the rum, would try for a tremendous effort and once he had the old man, who was not an old man then but was Santiago El Campeon, nearly three inches off balance. But the old man had raised his hand up to dead even again. He was sure then that he had the negro, who was a fine man and a great athlete, beaten. And at daylight when the bettors were asking that it be called a draw and the referee was shaking his head, he had unleashed his effort and forced the hand of the negro down and down until it rested on the wood. The match had started on a Sunday morning and ended on a Monday morning.
Many of the bettors had asked for a draw because they had to go to work on the docks loading sacks of sugar or at the Havana Coal Company.
Otherwise everyone would have wanted it to go to a finish. But he had finished it anyway and before anyone had to go to work.
For a long time after that everyone had called him The Champion and there had been a return match in the spring. But not much money was bet and he had won it quite easily since he had broken the confidence of the negro from Cienfuegos in the first match. After that he had a few matches and then no more. He decided that he could beat anyone if he wanted to badly enough and he decided that it was bad for his right hand for fishing. He had tried a few practice matches with his left hand. But his left hand had always been a traitor and would not do what he called on it to do and he did not trust it.
Quoted from The Old Man and the Sea
1. Since the old man is the main character, in the hand game, why does Hemingway put more efforts in describing his opponent the negro?| A．Because Hemingway himself is an anti-racist who wants to support the colored race. |
| B．By doing so, he indirectly shows how strong and determined the old man is to readers. |
| C．He shifts readers’ attention to a new character to neutralize the nervous atmosphere. |
| D．There is no need to describe the old man because he is well-known to all readers. |
| A．spare | B．restrict | C．reduce | D．loose |
| A．Many bettors were afraid of losing their money so they wanted to call the game a draw. |
| B．The old man had owed his victory over the negro more to his will than to his strength. |
| C．The referee had been convinced by the bettors that the game be considered a draw |
| D．Regular hand games should be a good practice to enhance the old man’s fishing skills |
| A．The old man defeated the negro more than once in the matches with his will power |
| B．Many workers working on the docks had showed no respect towards the old man. |
| C．The old man had to self-feed himself a lot so as to stay competitive in the game. |
| D．The negro was not as strong and athletic as the old man had expected him to be. |
9 . Thanks to in-depth reporting by the Wall Street Journal, we now know that Facebook has long been aware its product Instagram has harmful effects on the mental health of many adolescent users. Young girls, in particular, struggle with their body image thanks to a constant stream of photos and videos showing beautiful bodies that users don’t think they can attain.
While the information the Journal covered is essential and instructive, it does not tell the whole story. Deep down, this is not an Instagram problem; it’s a people problem. Understanding that distinction can make the difference between a failed attempt to contain a teen’s interest in an addictive app and successfully addressing the underlying problem leading to mental distress induced (诱发) by Instagram.
Critics were quick to shame Facebook for sitting on the data and not releasing it to researchers or academics who asked for it. Others criticize the social media giant for not using the research to create a safer experience for its teen users. The anger, while understandable, is misplaced.
While I’m reluctant to defend Facebook, I’m not sure it’s reasonable to blame the company for withholding data that would hurt its business. Have you ever binge-watched (狂看) a Netflix series? I assure you it wasn’t a healthy endeavor. You were in active, likely did nothing productive, mindlessly snacked and didn’t go outside for fresh air. It is an objectively harmful use of time to stare at a TV or laptop for a full weekend. Should we respond by shaming Netflix for not alerting us to how damaging an addictive product can be?
While it’s reasonable to say Instagram makes esteem issues worse, it strains credulity (夸张到难以置信) to believe it causes them in the first place. You create your own experiences on social media. For the most part, you choose which accounts to follow and engage. If you’re already vulnerable to insecurities and self-sabotage (自损) — as many teens are — you will find accounts to obsess over. And this isn’t a new phenomenon.
Before social media, there were similar issues fueling self-esteem issues. Whether the target be magazines, movies or television shows depicting difficult-to-attain bodies, there has been a relatively steady chorus (异口同声) of experts nothing the damage new media could cause young viewers.
Self-esteem issues have an underlying cause — one that’s independent of social media use. Instagram merely enhances those feelings because it provides infinitely more access to triggers than older forms of media. It’s more worthwhile to address those underlying factors rather than to attack Facebook.
1. The author thinks the criticisms against Instagram __________.| A．are successful attempts to change teens’ interest in addictive apps |
| B．address the Instagram - induced mental pain |
| C．are only based on the data released by Facebook |
| D．are not directed at the fundamental problem |
| A．compare the criticisms against it and Facebook |
| B．defend why Facebook is to blame |
| C．suggest the critics’ remarks are not to point |
| D．show Netflix does more harm to teens |
| A．it is human nature to get addicted to social media |
| B．users decide on their experiences on social media |
| C．people have a tendency to feel insecure online |
| D．people are keen on fabricating their self - profile |
| A．the unprecedented criticism facing Facebook |
| B．the alarming online habits of teenagers worldwide |
| C．the root cause of Instagram - induced mental strains |
| D．the harmful impact of Instagram on teenagers |
10 . No Guts, No Glory? The Fear and Attraction of Risky Winter Sports
Once I went flying off the side of a mountain on skis. Certainly, I didn’t mean to. Before I
The Winter Olympics are here, and I’ll be astonished with my heart in my mouth, watching ski-jumping and people hurtling downhill at
It
Eric Brymer and Robert Schweitzer asked people who had been doing an extreme sport for many years, to reflect
For me, reading what the research participants said was
I have an almost total lack of mastery of winter sports. The contrast between my enthusiasm and lack of skill
Perhaps the best
| A．left | B．hit | C．flew | D．lost |
| A．short-lived | B．mind-numbing | C．break-neck | D．long-drawn-out |
| A．turns | B．hangs | C．takes | D．bursts |
| A．applauded | B．prohibited | C．recommended | D．challenged |
| A．interest | B．respect | C．priority | D．price |
| A．simple | B．straightforward | C．complicated | D．close |
| A．swiftly | B．deeply | C．intensely | D．temporarily |
| A．identify | B．dread | C．treasure | D．conduct |
| A．experience | B．society | C．fear | D．environment |
| A．enlightening | B．distressing | C．entertaining | D．confusing |
| A．Hence | B．Furthermore | C．Rather | D．However |
| A．scene | B．picture | C．odds | D．straw |
| A．stands for | B．accounts for | C．checks out | D．points out |
| A．belt | B．helmet | C．protection | D．blade |
| A．take-away | B．carry-out | C．take-off | D．try-out |
