1 . It is a question people have been asking for ages. Is there a way to turn back the aging process?
For centuries, people have been looking for a “fountain of youth”. The idea is that if you find a magical fountain, and drink from its waters, you will not age.
Researchers in New York did not find an actual fountain of youth, but they may have found a way to turn back the aging process. It appears the answer may be hidden right between your eyes, in an area called the hypothalamus (下丘脑). The hypothalamus is part of your brain. It controls important activities within the body.
Researchers at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine found that hypothalamus neural (神经的) stem cells also influence how fast aging takes place in the body.
What are stem cells(干细胞)? They are simple cells that can develop into specialized cells, like blood or skin cells. Stem cells can also repair damaged tissues and organs.
Dongsheng Cai is a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He was the lead researcher in a study on aging in mice. He and his team reported their findings in the journal Nature, Cai explained when hypothalamus function is in decline, particularly the loss of hypothalamus stem cells, and this protection against the aging development is lost. it eventually leads to aging.
Using this information, the researchers began trying to activate, or energize, the hypothalamus laboratory mice. They did this by injecting the animals with stem cells, Later, the researchers examined tissues and tested for changes in behavior. They looked for changes in the strength and coordination (协调) of the animals muscles. They also studied the social behavior and cognitive ability of the mice. The researchers say the results show that the treatment slowed aging in the animals, Cai says injecting middle-aged mice with stem cells from younger mice helped the older animals live longer.
But these results were just from studying mice in a laboratory. If the mice can live longer, does that mean people could have longer lives? The next step is to see if the anti-aging effects also work in.
1. In Paragraph 2 a “fountain of youth” is mentioned to ________.| A．introduce the main topic |
| B．show a hidden secret. |
| C．describe scientists research |
| D．recommend a way to stay young |
| A．stem cells develop into specialized cells |
| B．there are important activities within the body |
| C．hypothalamus neural stem cells fail to protect against aging |
| D．the hypothalamus fails to repair damaged tissues and organs |
| A．They did experiments to see how stem cells work. |
| B．They studied mice to find their connection with humans. |
| C．They have found a possible way to slow the aging progress. |
| D．They have found no changes in mice s behavior during the experiment |
| A．They will help some animals live longer. |
| B．They will announce the fountain of youth doesn’t exist |
| C．They will develop products to help people live a longer life immediately |
| D．They will do research to see if what they have found in mice will apply to humans. |
2 . Kemira Boyd’s 12-day-old daughter, Ryleigh, was choking after being fed 10 minutes earlier. The 24-year- old new mother began patting her daughter on the back, but she didn’t cry as she usually did. She knew Ryleigh needed to get to the hospital fast.
They had barely made it out of their neighborhood when the flash lights of a police car appeared behind them. Deputy（警官）Will Kimbro figured that the speeding driver was either too careless to notice him or simply unconcerned. Once she’d stopped to his call, Kemira jumped out and handed the baby to Kimbro, exclaiming that her daughter had stopped breathing. He put a hand on her little chest. Ryleigh’s heart was barely beating. Kimbro radioed for an ambulance－it was seven minutes out, and the hospital was even further away. That was seven minutes Ryleigh didn’t have.
Kimbro is an officer who usually spends his days going around the halls of a middle school ten miles away. But he travels farther when school is out in the summer. He had recently completed a CPR class. “Shocked as I was, my training kicked in, and I went to work to keep that baby alive,” says Kimbro. The deputy checked for a pulse and began tapping her chest, hoping to bring her heart back into action. Kimbro used one finger to clear the airway. That was a magic touch; 20 seconds later, there came her crying. Until the ambulance arrived, Kimbro continued with delicate chest pressure and regularly clearing her airway. “The whole time I was thinking: Do not let this baby die in front of her mother,” he later told Inside Edition.
At the hospital, Ryleigh recovered quickly－thanks to a determined school officer who was in the right place at the right time.
1. Why did Deputy Kimbro call to stop the car?| A．He wanted to help the young mother. |
| B．He was eager to give first aid to the baby. |
| C．He would punish the driver for speeding. |
| D．He was angry that the driver didn’t notice him. |
| A．started to work. | B．calmed me down. |
| C．woke up the baby. | D．made some progress. |
| A．A policeman’s first aid skill. |
| B．A mother’s love for her baby. |
| C．An officer’s duty for road safety. |
| D．A timely and lifesaving traffic stop. |
3 . I’m a talker. I am keen on debating, gossiping and teasing when I have people to talk to. Under lockdown, however, I’ve only had my partner, Peter.
We not only lived, worked and travelled together, we mostly socialized together, too. Under the first UK lockdown, our already closeness began to feel uncomfortable. While talking to Peter, I could see his attention drift.
For the first time in our 10 years together, we needed to be alone. I tried to manufacture this by going on walks on my own, but a short walk wasn’t doing the job. I had hiked in remote spaces all over the world but always in a pair or group — for safety reasons. I considered my options and hit upon an idea: the semi-solo hike.
Could we do a circular hike but walk in different directions? This would give us the space and peace of a solo hike — done by a person alone. It felt like a promising way out, and he agreed to give it a try.
We started with a four-mile loop (环路) from Reeth. At the start, we parted ways. At first, I was aware of how close we were, which lessened the appeal. As I gained ground, however, I found myself very much alone. I set my own pace, and I decided to take my time.
I sat on a rock and breathed out. That moment — with the weak sun through the clouds and the breeze blowing — felt extraordinary to me. I was born and raised in London and had never imagined leaving until I met an outdoorsman. Now, my former life as a city girl felt crazy. In remembering what I had gained, I felt the tension leave me. There, in the chilly air, I no longer needed to talk. The semi-solo hike gave us a shared experience with added room to breathe.
I didn’t see Peter on the way but reunited back where we started, both pleased.
The semi-solo hike is admittedly silly in theory, but for me it has been a lifeline. It has given me the gift of time alone and, in a year of constant closeness, the joy of reuniting.
1. What motivated the author to adopt the semi-solo hike?| A．Peter’s disinterest in her words. |
| B．Her habit of venturing into the wild. |
| C．The lack of privacy under lockdown. |
| D．Her desire to engage in outdoor exercise. |
| A．Their routes coincide sometimes during the hike. |
| B．They depart in a separate way to different destinations. |
| C．They hike in each other’s company throughout the journey. |
| D．They start and return to the same place by a different route. |
| A．Fearless and refreshed. | B．Free and relaxed. |
| C．Tense and depressed. | D．Upset and embarrassed. |
| A．An appropriate distance creates beauty. |
| B．There are more solutions than difficulties. |
| C．Access to nature is better than social circles. |
| D．Hiking helps improve interpersonal relationships. |
4 . Walk around the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and you may spot a green monster named Sluggo and a flying pig named Philomena. You might even see street artist David Zinn drawing them using only sidewalk chalk and charcoal.
“The things I draw are the things that I wish existed in real life,” says David, who loves hanging around the streets, letting his imagination wander free until new creatures appear in his mind.
At the age of 12, David began working as a freelance (自由职业) artist. His dad was writing a computer handbook and worried that it would be boring to read. So he asked David to draw pictures of turtles (the name of the software) to illustrate it. The publisher liked his drawings, and soon David had the job of drawing more turtles in action.
David worked for 20 years as a commercial artist, but he often felt cooped up sitting at a computer for 10 hours a day. Then, on a sunny afternoon about a decade ago, he grabbed some chalk and started drawing on the sidewalk. That’s when Sluggo came to life.
It takes David about two hours to complete one drawing. He uses a variety of sidewalk features in his street art, such as drainage gates, fences, acorns, and bits of gum. It can be tricky, he says, to draw on surfaces that are not flat. After all, he has to notice where shadows will land so they won’t spoil the 3-D illusions he creates.
Today, more and more people are recognizing and looking for his work, “Zinnart,” throughout Ann Arbor. As many as 30 people may be watching David as he draws. “It’s half visual and half performance art now,” he says, laughing.
1. How did David Zinn start his art career?| A．Publisher found his talent for drawing. |
| B．He replaced his father to illustrate a handbook. |
| C．After his works of Sluggo and Philomena became well-known. |
| D．He preferred to give up commercial drawing. |
| A．Bored. | B．Attracted. | C．Addicted. | D．Caged. |
| A．He has to combine drawing with performance. |
| B．He has to draw on rough roads. |
| C．He has to take shades into consideration. |
| D．He has to draw for a long time. |
5 . At some point in the near future, self-driving cars may become common on the roads. Self-driving cars have already been test-driven, but they are not yet available for the public.
Self-driving cars have already been test-driven thousands of miles.
Another issue is that self-driving cars have maps programmed into their memory, but these maps aren't always updated and accurate.
| A．Self-driving cars has disadvantages. |
| B．These cars had only passengers, no drivers. |
| C．The safety problems have almost been addressed. |
| D．New roads are built, and old roads are closed down. |
| E．So why aren't self-driving cars common on roads today? |
| F．The self-driving cars can react to things only once they actually occur. |
| G．Self-driving vehicles also have difficulty adjusting to weather conditions. |
6 . You are just waking up in the spring of 2030. Your Internet of Things (IoT) bedroom opens solar powered e-windows and plays gentle music while your smart lighting displays a montage (剪辑的) of beachfront sunrises from your recent vacation.
Your shower uses very little water or soap. It recycles your grey water and puts the extra heat back into your home’s operating system. While you dress, your artificial intelligence (Al) assistant shares your schedule for the day and plays your favorite tunes.
You still start your day with a coffee but it comes from your IoT refrigerator which is capable of providing a coffeehouse experience in your home. A hot breakfast tailored to your specific nutritional needs (based on chemical analysis from your trips to the “smart toilet”) is waiting for you in the kitchen.
When it’s time to leave, an on-demand transport system has three cars waiting for you, your wife (or husband) and your kids. On the road, driverless cars and trucks move with mathematical accuracy, without traffic jams, routine maintenance or road rage. Accident rates are near zero.
On the way, you call your R&D team, who are enveloping a day’s work in Shanghai. Your life-sized image is projected (投射) into the China Innovation Centre and your colleagues see you as if you were sitting in the room. It’s a bit strange for them to see you in the morning light because it’s dark on the Bund, Shanghai’s waterfront, though the novelty disappears after a few uses.
You review the day’s cloud- based data from your Shenzhen manufacturing center, your pilot project in San Diego, and your QA team in Melbourne. The large amounts of datasets were collected in real-time from every piece of equipment and have been beautifully summarized by your company’s AI. All these facilities are closely maintained and operated through an advanced predictive analytics platform.
Pleased with the team’s progress, you end the call and ease into a good book.
This is the future and it will be here sooner than you think.
1. How can we describe the life in the future?| A．Virtual | B．Romantic |
| C．Inspiring | D．Intelligent |
| A．We can have a bath without using water. |
| B．We can drive to work without concerning any accidents. |
| C．We can enjoy the coffeehouse experience without going there. |
| D．We can deal with all our work at home without turning to others for help. |
| A．To attract us to use the AI system. |
| B．To introduce the life in the future. |
| C．To teach us how to use the AI system. |
| D．To encourage us to study hard for the future. |
7 . People have many different ways to relax during break time at work or school. Smartphones are probably the number one choice for a quick mental vacation. Although it might seem like a good time, the result is opposite, according to a recent psychological study from Rutgers University.
For the study, more than 400 students were asked to finish a set of 20 words puzzles. Halfway through the task, the students were divided into three groups. One group was allowed to take a break and use cellphones to buy things online. The second group was asked to have a rest and buy things using a computer. The last group didn’t take any break at all.
Surprisingly, the group that used their cellphones during the break went back to work feeling the most tired and least motivated to continue. They also had the hardest time solving the remaining word puzzles.
Terri Kurtzberg, co-author of the study, explained that they assumed looking at cellphones during a break would be no different from any other break — but instead, the phone may cause increasing levels of distraction that make it difficult to return focused attention to work tasks.
“Cellphones may have this effect because even just seeing your phone activates thoughts of checking messages, connecting with people, and more, in ways that are different from how we use other screens like computers, and laptops,” Kurtzberg said.
This is echoed by a recent study from the US University of Chicago. It found that even if cellphones are turned off or turned face down their mere presence has a bad effect on a person’s cognitive (认知的) function.
1. What can we learn from the study?| A．The students were divided into groups at the beginning. |
| B．The last group had the hardest time solving the word puzzles. |
| C．Computers and laptops cause more distraction. |
| D．Cellphones may make people less focused on work. |
| A．Identified. | B．Confirmed. | C．Defined. | D．Ensured. |
| A．Try putting your smartphone away during your next break. |
| B．Using computers to shop online rather than cellphones. |
| C．Stop checking messages and connecting with people by cellphone. |
| D．Turning off your cellphone during work time. |
| A．Ways to relax for students. |
| B．The result from a word-puzzle game. |
| C．A study on using smart-phones to relax. |
| D．Effects brought by the smart-phone. |
8 . As humanity has got richer, animal’s roles have changed. People need their services less than before. Fewer wolves and thieves meant less demand for dogs for protection; the internal combustion engine（内燃机）made horses unneeded; modern sanitation（卫生设备）kept rats in check and made cats less useful. No longer necessities, domestic animals became luxuries. Pet-keeping seems to kick in when household incomes rise above roughly $5,000. It is booming.
The trend is not a new one. Archaeologists（考古学家）have found 10,000-year-old graves in which dogs and people are buried together. Some cultures -- such as in Scandinavia, where dogs have long been both working dogs and companions -- have kept pets for thousands of years. But these days the pet-keeping urge has spread even to parts of the world which have no tradition of sinking into a comfortable chair with a furry creature.
The pet business is growing even faster than pet numbers, because people are spending more and more money on them. No longer are they food - waste - recyclers, fed with the remains that fall from their masters’ tables. Pet - food shelves are full of delicacies crafted to satisfy a range of appetites, including ice cream for dogs and foods for pets that are old, diabetic or suffer from sensitive digestion; a number of internet services offer food, tailored to the pet’s individual tastes.
In the business this is called “pet humanisation” -- the tendency of pet owners to treat their pets as part of the family. This is evident in the names given to dogs, which have evolved from Fido, Rex and Spot to -- in America -- Bella, Lucy and Max. It is evident in the growing market for pet clothing, pet grooming and pet hotels.
People still assume that pets must be working for humanity in some way, perhaps making people healthier or less anxious. But the evidence for that is weak. Rather, new research suggests that dogs have evolved those irresistible “puppy - dog eyes” precisely to affect human emotions. It has worked. The species that once enslaved others now works very hard to pay for the care of its pets. Sentimenta（l 多愁善感的）Americans often refer to themselves not as cat-owners but as the cat’s “mommy” or “daddy”. South Koreans go one further, describing themselves as cat “butlers”. Watch an unlucky dog-walker trailing “his” hound（猎犬）, plastic bag in hand to pick up its mess, and you have to wonder: who’s in charge now?
1. We can learn from the passage that ________.| A．People no longer need animal services. |
| B．Both the pet number and the pet business are growing. |
| C．Pets are increasingly making their owners less anxious. |
| D．Pet foods are not so various and customized as before. |
| A．Pet’s roles as both working staff and companions. nowadays. |
| B．Pet’s inbuilt ability to affect emotions of their owners. |
| C．The names given to pets in American families |
| D．Human beings ever rising urge for pet-keeping. |
| A．Some pet owners spend too much money on their pets. |
| B．Pets should be treated as equals of their human masters. |
| C．Pet-keeping is still restricted within certain parts of the world. |
| D．Human beings are getting much benefit from their pets. |
| A．Who Owns Whom |
| B．The Urge for Pet-keeping |
| C．The Changing Roles of Animals |
| D．Love Me, Love My Dog |
9 . A new study suggests that identical(同卵的) twins are not exactly the same genetically. Scientists in Iceland examined DNA from 387 pairs of identical twins, their parents, children, husbands or wives. The examinations led the team to find “early mutations that separate identical twins,” lead researcher and geneticist Kari Stefansson said.
Mutations are small changes in DNA that can happen when a cell divides in an attempt to copy itself. These small changes can influence a person’s physical appearance or control a person’s ability to fight a disease.
The newly-discovered mutations show that identical twins do have genetic differences. On average, identical twins have 5.2 of these early genetic differences, the researchers found. These differences represent a small part of each twin’s genetic material. But they could influence why one twin is taller or why one is at greater risk for some cancers than the other.
In the past, many researchers believed physical differences seen in identical twins were related mostly to environmental influences, such as nutrition or lifestyle behaviors.
Jan Dumanski is a geneticist at Sweden’s Uppsala University. He was not involved in the study. He praised the findings as “a clear and important contribution” to medical research. “The implication is that we have to be very careful when we are using twins as a model” for examining the influences of genetics or the environment, Dumanski said.
A 2008 paper in The American Journal of Human Genetics found some genetic differences between identical twins. The new study, however, goes beyond earlier work by including the DNA of parents, children, husbands and wives of identical twins. Studying family members permitted the researchers to examine when genetic mutations happened in two different kinds of cells: those present in only one individual and those passed on to the person’s children.
Stefansson said his team found twins where a mutation is present in all cells of the body of one twin, but not in the other twin at all. However, “sometimes the second twin may show the mutation in some cells, but not all cells,” he added.
1. What is a function of mutations?| A．Change people’s DNA. |
| B．Help a cell to copy itself. |
| C．Influence people’s physical appearance. |
| D．Increase people’s ability to fight diseases. |
| A．To check when the mutations happened. |
| B．To identify the results of former research. |
| C．To find out where the mutations happened. |
| D．To examine the influence of the environment. |
| A．Cautious. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Concerned. | D．Positive. |
| A．A Breakthrough in Identical Twins Study |
| B．Identical Twins: Not Genetically Exact Copies |
| C．Genetic Differences Caused by Family Members |
| D．DNA Decides the Difference between Identical Twins |
10 . I was 15 years old the day I skipped school for the first time. It was easily done: Both my parents left for work before my school bus arrived, so when it showed up at my house on that cold winter morning, I simply did not get on. The perfect crime!
And what did I do with myself on that glorious stolen day, with no adult in charge and no limits on my activities? Did I get high? Hit the mall for a shoplifting extravaganza (狂欢)?
Nope. I built a warm fire in the wood stove, prepared a bowl of popcorn, grabbed a blanket, and read. I was thrilled and transported by a book—it was Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises—and I just needed to be alone with it for a little while. I ached to know what would happen to Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley and Robert Cohn. I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting in a classroom taking another exam when I could be traveling through Spain in the 1920s with a bunch of expatriates (异乡客).
I spent that day lost in words. Time fell away, as the room around me turned to mist, and my role—as a daughter, sister, teenager, and student—in the world no longer had any meaning. I had accidentally come across the key to perfect happiness: I had become completely absorbed by something I loved.
Looking back on it now, I can see that some subtle things were happening to my mind and to my life while I was in that state of absorption. Hemingway’s language was quietly braiding itself into my imagination. I was downloading information about how to create simple and elegant sentences, a good and solid plot. In other words, I was learning how to write. Without realizing it, I was hot on the trail of my own fate. Writing now absorbs me the way reading once did and happiness is their generous side effect.
1. Why did the author skip school on that day?| A．Because her parents left home early. |
| B．Because it was a biting cold winter morning. |
| C．Because she was fascinated by a novel. |
| D．Because she was anxious to take the exam. |
| A．Reading a fiction by the fire. | B．Travelling with a bunch of expatriates. |
| C．Breaking the rules and regulations. | D．Being occupied by one’s passion. |
| A．I was tired of his roles in the real-life. |
| B．Hemingway's style influenced me a lot. |
| C．Becoming a writer was my childhood dream. |
| D．I learnt how to write on the internet. |
