1 . During the COVID-19 pandemic (疫情), US citizen Elizabeth Hulanick has turned to toys from her childhood to deal with worry and stress. She started bringing Lego toys to work to build things out of the colorful blocks with her colleagues. She also started playing with Silly Putty, a toy made of special rubbery material that changes colors. She said it brought her comfort.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, many adults turned to toys to recall feelings from their childhood. The stresses from the worldwide health crisis only made that trend grow.
Many toy makers see adults’ interest in toys as a durable thing, even after the pandemic fully ends. This so-called “kid-adult” market is a big part of the toy industry. The market is the second-fastest-growing group after customers aged 12 to 17.
Some toy companies are creating new products, services and websites designed for adults. For example, Mattel’s American Girl Cafe recently added alcoholic drinks to their menu after seeing adults show up without children. American Girl makes popular, costly dolls. Last year, the company Build-a-Bear started a website called Bear Cave for customers aged 18 and over. Products include a toy rabbit holding a bottle of wine. Even the fast-food restaurant McDonald’s is marketing to toy-loving adults. It started its adult Happy Meals in October. McDonald’s President and CEO Chris Kempczinski said the company sold half its supply of collectible toys in the first four days of the special deal. The Lego Group has been increasing its products for adults since 2020. It now has 100 toys designed for adult customers. Among the most popular toys for adults are Star Wars and Harry Potter-linked Lego sets.
Genevieve Cruz is senior director at Lego. She said, “The pandemic certainly served as a catalyst (催化剂) for this trend as adults found themselves stuck at home with nothing else to do and a lot of time on their hands. We do believe the trend goes beyond the pandemic.”
1. What’s the author’s main purpose in mentioning Elizabeth Hulanick in paragraph 1?| A．To recommend a fun way to handle stress. |
| B．To prove the benefits of playing with toys. |
| C．To introduce the topic to be discussed in the text. |
| D．To show the popularity of toys among US adults. |
| A．Long-lasting. | B．Far-reaching. |
| C．Time-consuming. | D．Brand-new. |
| A．They keep improving service quality. |
| B．They aim more products at grown-ups. |
| C．Their marketing direction remains unchanged. |
| D．Their adult toys sell better than child ones. |
| A．Opposed. | B．Doubtful. | C．Optimistic. | D．Tolerant. |
2 . Restaurants, farmers, and food businesses are turning to chemistry and physics to address the problem of food waste. Some companies are testing coverings to slow the ripening process in fruit and packets to keep food fresh. Others are developing digital sensors that can tell when meat is safe to eat.
Experts say growing awareness of the costs of food waste has led to more efforts to deal with the problem. ReFed is a group that studies food waste. It says new businesses raised $300 billion in 2021, double the amount raised in 2020, to solve the problem. The group says that in 2019, around 35 percent of food available in the US — worth about $418 billion — went unsold or uneaten. The US Environmental Protection Agency says that food waste is the largest kind of material placed in local waste areas. And the agency notes that rotting food gives off methane, a gas that is not good for the environment.
ReFed says 225,000 kilograms of food could be kept out of waste areas each year with special, high-tech coverings. Many companies are working on ways to help reduce food waste. Swedenbased Innoscentia is developing a sensor that can show if meat is safe to eat by measuring the buildup of microbes (微生物) inside its container. And Ryp Labs, based in the US and Belgium, is working on a sticker for fruits and vegetables that would give off gas to slow ripening. SavrPak has developed a plant-based packet that can fit inside a container and take in moisture (水分), helping the food inside stay crispy.
“The science is promising, but it’s only part of the solution,” said Yvette Cabrera, who is the director of food waste for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Most food waste happens at home. Reducing food sizes, buying smaller quantities, or improving the accuracy of freshness date could have even greater effects than new technology. Overall as a society, we don’t value food as it should be valued,” Cabrera said.
1. According to paragraph 2, food waste in the US has caused ______.| A．great economic losses | B．seasonal food shortages |
| C．growing awareness of food safety | D．serious water pollution |
| A．Maintaining the freshness of meat. | B．Keeping food from getting wet. |
| C．Freeing food from microbes. | D．Preventing fruits and vegetables from ripening. |
| A．Developing new technology. | B．Promoting Empty Plate Campaign. |
| C．Shortening the process of producing food. | D．Changing people’s consuming habit. |
| A．Dealing with Food Waste Calls for Combined Efforts |
| B．Public Awareness Is the Key to Handling Food Waste |
| C．Food Waste Remains a Hard-to-handle Problem Worldwide |
| D．Companies Develop Technologies to Deal with Food Waste |
3 . Elito Circa is a Filipino artist who rose to fame for using his own blood to create canvas (油画布) paintings, which has attracted both praise and criticism over the years.
Born in a poor family that couldn’t afford to buy proper art supplies, Elito Circa experimented with a variety of unusual mediums as a child, including tomatoes, but it was when he accidentally scraped (刮破) his hand that he discovered the art medium that would mark his artistic career—his own blood. He quickly realized that the blood was not only harder to erase from the canvas, but it also made his artworks his own in a way that he had never imagined before.
Every time he scraped his body, young Elito used the blood as paint, but as he grew older he realized that his “paint” needed to be supplied stably, so he started visiting a clinic in Manila to have it drawn periodically. Nowadays, he stops by the clinic about once every three months. He then stores his blood in a freezer in his studio.
Although Elito has been criticized for his use of blood as paint in the past few years, the Filipino artist has always made it clear that he wants to change people’s view of blood through his art. “People are afraid of blood, because in their minds, blood means death,” Elito said in an interview. “But I want to twist that belief. That’s why I’m addressing its use because I want people to think that it’s not death, but love and life.”
It’s unclear how much of his own blood Elito Circa has stored in his art studio, but it must be a lot, because he has announced a plan to create the largest ever “blood painting” on a 100-meter canvas next year, expecting to set a new world record.
1. Why did Elito Circa become well-known?| A．Great details were reflected in his artworks. |
| B．He used a special art medium in his artworks. |
| C．He showed extraordinary skills in his artworks. |
| D．Unique thoughts were expressed in his artworks. |
| A．His family’s economic conditions. | B．His great interest in experiments. |
| C．His strong desire to stand out. | D．His rich artistic imaginations. |
| A．By keeping himself in shape. | B．By scraping his body periodically. |
| C．By having his blood drawn regularly. | D．By collecting blood from a local clinic. |
| A．Practice makes perfect. |
| B．He who laughs last laughs best. |
| C．God helps those who help themselves. |
| D．Go your own way regardless of what people say. |
4 . Brightly—Raise Kids Who Love to Read
We believe reading has the power to improve kids’ lives and link members of a family by creating a space in which children and the adults in their lives can spend quality time together. But we also know how hard it can be to find the right book. That’s where Brightly comes in.
Editorial Mission
Brightly provides passionate parents, educators, and caregivers with the tools they need—such as tips and advice, book recommendations, and Brightly Storytime—to keep kids connected to books. We take pride in working with a diverse group of contributors, authors, and partners who cover a wide range of topics for readers of all ages in order to develop a love of books and reading in children.
Brightly Shop
Over the years, countless readers have come to us searching for gifts for the young bookworms in their lives. While it’s always been our mission to provide content that offers great book recommendations, your feedback has helped us realize the value of a more browsable, store-like experience.
The Brightly Shop helps to find exceptional book gifts for kids by offering a diverse collection of age-appropriate titles for kids ages 0–8. Whether you’re looking for a baby shower gift, birthday present, or just want to treat the child in your life to a great book, each title in the Shop is hand-selected by our editorial team—with more added every week—to bring you a satisfactory book buying experience.
We hope you’ll take a moment to browse our Shop and let us know what you think! Send us an email at shop@readbrightly.com.
Contact
We’d love to hear from you! Reach out by emailing hello@readbrightly.com—we’re listening!
1. What does Brightly think of reading?| A．It demands proper guidance. | B．It requires quality family time. |
| C．It helps to keep families connected. | D．It promises to interest people of all ages. |
| A．Leave their feedback. | B．Update its weekly book list. |
| C．Share their reading experiences. | D．Get a free book on their birthdays. |
| A．The power of reading. | B．A pretty useful website. |
| C．How to choose books for kids. | D．How to make kids love reading. |
5 . Recycling is a great way of doing your bit for the environment and helping to protect the earth’s precious resources. However, a new study has revealed that our desire to be sustainable maybe doing more harm than good. According to waste company Biffa, this is because of “wish-cycling” — assuming that items such as disposable coffee cup sand pizza boxes will be recycled if put in the recycling bin. In fact, pollution from those items or other non-recyclables can result in recyclable items that have been put in the correct bin going to landfill. David Heaton, a business director at Biffa, said: “Pollution happens when items are disposed of in the wrong bins or haven’t been cleaned before being recycled.”
Experts at Biffa analyzed the amounts of non-target and non-recyclable materials that entered UK material recycling facilities between 2016 and 2020. It was found that, in 2016, the average pollution rate of recycling waste was 13.4 percent, rising over four years to 17 percent by the end of 2020. This shows that, even as people are becoming more eco-conscious, wish-cycling is increasing both in households and businesses.
The Biffa experts say that one of the best ways to prevent pollution of recycling is to clean recyclable waste before putting it in the bin. They suggest cutting off the top of old pizza boxes and only recycling that part to avoid pollution from the grease (油脂). Check the on-packaging recycling label to check it can actually be recycled When it comes to plastics, Biffa recommends checking the resin code, the number in the plastic triangle, to know whether it should go in the recycling bin. In general, resin codes 1, 2, 4 and 5 are recyclable, while 3, 6 and 7 are not. Larger items, like electronics, furniture and batteries, can also be recycled but often can not go in household recycling bins as they need specialist separating. These will need to be taken to recycling centers or sustainable waste management companies.
“It’s vital as a nation that we get better at effective ‘pre-cycling’— sorting waste correctly before collection to reduce pollution rates,” added Mr. Heaton.
1. What’s the truth of “wish-cycling” according to the first paragraph?| A．The desire to lead a sustainable life. |
| B．The good intention to help recycling. |
| C．The habit of throwing items that end up in landfills. |
| D．The practice of recycling items that can not be recycled. |
| A．People are becoming more eco-conscious. |
| B．Wish-cycling is on the rise in recent years. |
| C．Pollution happens less frequently in recycling facilities. |
| D．People are used to cleaning recyclable waste before putting it in the bin. |
| A．Dispose of electronics together with household waste. |
| B．Skip the step of checking the on-packaging recycling label. |
| C．Check the resin code of plastics to see whether it is recyclable or not. |
| D．Cutoff the top of old pizza box and throw the rest to the recycling bin. |
| A．Recycling: a Big Project | B．Wish-cycling: a New Trend |
| C．Wish-cycling: a Growing Concern | D．Pre-cycling: an Effective Method |
6 . I’m a mother of three and a psychologist. Recently, I come to understand what makes childhood valuable in its own right.
One day, when I went to get my 7-year-old son from soccer
The traditional view of such a moment is that it is
| A．appointment | B．display | C．practice | D．experience |
| A．served | B．greeted | C．witnessed | D．treated |
| A．envied | B．criticized | C．promoted | D．forgiven |
| A．hanging | B．settling | C．putting | D．turning |
| A．shyness | B．weakness | C．loneliness | D．sadness |
| A．pick up | B．look for | C．stare at | D．bring out |
| A．ears | B．hands | C．mouth | D．face |
| A．biggest | B．simplest | C．strangest | D．dullest |
| A．eyes | B．arms | C．legs | D．feet |
| A．entertainment | B．delight | C．satisfaction | D．confusion |
| A．gather | B．play | C．sit | D．stay |
| A．practical | B．impossible | C．accessible | D．unnecessary |
| A．capacity | B．respect | C．effort | D．responsibility |
| A．experienced | B．absorbed | C．rich | D．skillful |
| A．seeking | B．studying | C．missing | D．denying |
1.活动时间和地点；
2.活动内容：清洁社区、看望孤寡老人等。
注意：1.词数80左右；
2.通知格式已给出，所给内容不计入总词数。
Notice
Community Service
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Student Union
8 June 2023
8 . Losing weight is difficult. For most people, it requires a change in diet, a change in exercise habits, and a change in attitude.
●Set healthy goals.
If you’re overweight and want to change that, the first step is deciding what your target weight is.
●Start small.
Making big behavior changes isn’t something that happens overnight.
●
The best way to stick to your diet and exercise rues is to track it. There are plenty of apps that allow you to do this. Or you can do it in an old way and keep a written food and exercise journal. Find what works for you and write down what you’ve achieved every day.
● Evaluate (评估) and adjust.
Every month you should take a look at your goal and see the progress you’ve made towards achieving it.
| A．Track your diet and exercise. |
| B．Here are some ways to help you. |
| C．You might as well start with playing music. |
| D．Do not run too much. |
| E．So start with 1-2 small things per week and work up from there. |
| F．If you’re not what you want to be, make small adjustments. |
| G．Write down your goal and set a date by which you want to achieve that goal. |
9 . Ever been hungry enough to eat a house? Now, you actually could.
Food waste is a big problem in Japan and globally. Japan produced around 5.7 million tons of food waste in 2019. The government plans to reduce that by around 2.7 million tons by 2030. Tokyo University researchers Kota Machida and Yuya Sakai have developed a way to transform food waste into cement(水泥) for construction use and more. This is the first-ever process created for making cement entirely from food waste. The researchers say their product is four times as strong as traditional concrete. This particular cement can be used to make things like tea cups or chairs as well. However, there’s one additional feature — it’s also edible(可食的).
Kota and Yuya are the intelligence behind the formation of Fabula Inc., a company with purposes of reducing food waste, and helping fight global warming.
As expected, something this unique took years to develop. It took a few attempts to find just the right process. Kota and Yuya created the unique technology while researching possible environmentally-friendly materials to replace cement-based concrete. Cement production accounts for 8% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.
After a few failures, they realized they could get the cement to bind(黏合) by adjusting the temperatures. “The most challenging part was that each type of food waste requires different temperatures,” Yuya said. So the researchers had to observe them and respond in time. In the experiments, Kota and Yuya have successfully made cement using tea leaves, coffee grounds, cabbage and even lunchbox leftovers.
Fabula Inc. is currently working to make tea cups and furniture, but Yuya is thinking a little bit bigger. Their product could provide relief in the form of edible emergency shelters in disaster ones. “For example, if food cannot be delivered to the people, they could eat makeshift beds made out of food cement,” he said. To eat the material, a person needs to break it apart and boil it.
1. Which is one of Kota and Yuya’s purposes in making use of food waste?| A．To handle climate change. | B．To offer Fabula Inc. more cement. |
| C．To warn how serious food waste is. | D．To extend concrete’s service life. |
| A．Its damage to the environment. | B．Its cost of recycling the cement. |
| C．Its difficulties they would face. | D．Its popularity among the public. |
| A．Making sure to make cement tasty. | B．Selecting correct food waste timely. |
| C．Getting cement broken apart easily. | D．Regulating the temperatures constantly. |
| A．Bendable. | B．Strong. | C．Temporary. | D．Commercial. |
10 . In a tiny, lab-grown garden, the first seeds ever sown in lunar dirt have come up. This small crop, planted in samples (样本) returned by Apollo tasks, offers hope that astronauts could someday grow their own food on the moon.
But plants planted in lunar dirt grew more slowly and were thinner than others grown in volcanic(火山的) material from Earth, researchers report 12 May in Communications Biology. That finding suggests that farming on the moon would take a lot more than a gardening skills.
“Ah! It’s so cool!” says a botanist (植物学家) Richard Barker. “Ever since these samples came, back, there’s been botanists that wanted to know what would happen if you grew plants in them,” says Barker, who wasn’t involved in the study. “But everyone knows those precious samples are priceless, and so you can understand why NASA was unwilling to publish them.”
The team planted seeds in tiny pots that each held about a gram of dirt. Four pots were filled with samples returned by Apollo 11, another four with Apollo 12 samples and a final four with dirt from Apollo 17. Another 16 pots were filled with earthly volcanic material used in past experiments to copy moon dirt. All were grown under LED lights in the lab and watered with nutrients.
“Nothing really compared to when we first saw the seedlings as they were coming up in the lunar dirt,” says Anna-Lisa Paul, a plant biologist. “That was a moving experience. We could not speak when we watched the very first plants growing in unique materials.”
Plants grew in all the pots of lunar dirt, but none grew as well as those planted in earthly material. “The healthiest ones were just smaller,” Paul says. The moon-grown plants were tiny. Faced with that, explorers need to do more research to let plants grow strongly on the moon. I believe we will succeed in time.
1. What does the research on plants grown in the lunar dirt show?| A．Growing foods on the moon is necessary. |
| B．Skills are the key to farming on the moon. |
| C．Farming’ on the moon needs many factors. |
| D．Astronauts want to grow food on their own. |
| A．Some plants need planting in special soils. |
| B．Botanists are interested in studying new things. |
| C．It is a selfish action for NASA to keep the secret. |
| D．The samples brought from the moon are valuable. |
| A．It is practical. | B．It is hopeful. |
| C．It only attracts astronauts. | D．It challenges most experts. |
| A．The First Plant Has Been Grown in Moon Dirt |
| B．Astronauts Have Brought Things Worth Spreading |
| C．Botanists Have Found a New Kind of Plant Lately |
| D．Farming on the Moon Has Been Accepted by People |
