1 . The latest in cat research reveals that the lovely animal seems to have a basic grasp on both the laws of physics and the ins and outs of cause and effect.
According to a newly published study, cats seem to be able to predict the location of hiding prey (猎物) using both their ears and an inborn (天生的) understanding of how the physical world works.
In a recent experiment, Japanese researchers taped 30 domestic cats reacting to a container that a team member shook. Some containers rattled (发出响声); others did not. When the container was tipped over, sometimes an object fell out and sometimes it didn’t.
It turns out that the cats were remarkably smart about what would happen when a container was tipped over. When an object did not drop out of the bottom of a rattling container, they looked at it for a longer time than they did when the container behaved as expected.
“Cats use a causal-logical understanding of noise or sounds to predict the appearance of invisible objects,” lead researcher Saho Takagi says in a press release. The researchers conclude that cats’ hunting style may have developed based on their common-sense abilities to infer where prey is, using their hearing.
Scientists have explored this idea with other lovely creatures: babies. Like cats, babies appear to engage in what’s called “preferential looking”—looking longer at things that are interesting or unusual than things they perceive as normal.
When babies’ expectations are not met in experiments like the ones performed with the cats, they react much like their animal friends. Psychologists have shown that babies apparently expect their world to obey the laws of physics and cause and effect as early as two months of age.
Does the study mean that cats will soon grasp the ins and outs of cause and effect? Maybe, Okay, so cats may not be the next physics faculty members at America’s most important research universities. But by demonstrating their common sense, they’ve shown that the divide between cats and humans may not be that great after all.
1. What do we learn from a newly published study about cats?| A．They can be trained to understand the physical world. |
| B．They know what kind of prey might be easier to hunt. |
| C．They have a natural ability to locate animals they hunt. |
| D．They are capable of telling which way their prey flees. |
| A．Their inborn sensitivity (敏感) to noise. | B．Their unusual sense of direction. |
| C．Their special ability to perceive. | D．Their understanding of cause and effect. |
| A．They focus on what appears strange. | B．They view the world as normal. |
| C．They do what they prefer to do | D．They are curious about everything. |
| A．They rely on their instincts (本能) to hunt. |
| B．They interact with the physical world much like humans. |
| C．They display extraordinarily high intelligence in hunting. |
| D．They can aid physics professors in their research work. |
2 . Given how valuable intelligence and automation are, we will continue to improve our technology if we are at all able to. At a certain point, we will build machines that are smarter than we are. Once we have machines that are smarter than we are, they will begin to improve themselves. The concern is really that we will build machines that are much more competent than we are. And the slightest divergence (分歧) between their goals and our own could destroy us.
Just think about how we relate to ants. We don’t hate them. We don’t go out of our way to harm them. In fact, sometimes we take pains not to harm them. We step over them on the sidewalk. But whenever their presence seriously conflicts with one of our goals, we will kill them without hesitation. The concern is that we will one day build machines that, whether they’re conscious or not, could treat us with similar disregard.
The bare fact is that we will continue to improve our intelligent machines. We have problems that we desperately need to solve. So we will do this, if we can. The train is already out of the station, and there’s no brake to pull. If we build machines that are more intelligent than we are, they will very likely develop in ways that we can’t imagine, and transcend us in ways that we can’t imagine.
So imagine we hit upon a design of super intelligent AI that has no safety concerns. This machine would be the perfect labor-saving device. It can design the machine that can build the machine which can do any physical work, powered by sunlight, more or less for the cost of raw materials. So we’re talking bout the end of human labour. We’re also talking about the end of most intellectual work. So what would apes like ourselves do in these circumstances?
But the moment we admit that information processing is the source of intelligence, we have to admit that we are in the process of building some sort of god. Now would be a good time to make sure it’s a god we can live with.
1. Why does the author mention ants in Paragraph 2?| A．To compare intelligent machines to ants. |
| B．To show improved machines will get away from us. |
| C．To stress the presence of machines does conflict with our goals. |
| D．To explain future intelligent machines could treat us without mercy |
| A．Disable. | B．Inspire. | C．Disappoint. | D．Outpace. |
| A．By making comparisons. |
| B．By giving assumptions. |
| C．By showing valid evidence. |
| D．By analyzing statistics |
| A．Human beings will no doubt be destroyed by AI in the future |
| B．Super intelligent AI will put an end to human labour eventually. |
| C．We should keep the development of AI within humans’ control. |
| D．Human beings should stop the development of super intelligent AL. |
3 . Daniel Brush, an astonishing worker in gold, jewels and steel died on November 2022, aged 75. Students from a jewellery school once came to Brush’s studio, a loft in mid-Manhattan, awed to be meeting a figure who, to them, was a worker of miracles.
For 45 years in that loft, he had pursued his calling. His wife Olivia was the only company. He produced hundreds of objects of all sorts, most of them exquisite and many astonishingly small. Rather than use electricity, he laboured alone in a forest of antique machines and when tools frustrated him he made his own, displaying them in cupboards as art in themselves.
Above all else, he worked in gold. His obsession took fire when at 13 he saw an Etruscan gold bowl in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The ancient technique of applying gold beads as fine as sand-grains to a curved gold surface without solder (焊接), was stunning, but so was the lightness of spirit.
He resolved then that he would make such a bowl, and gold became the study of his life. Simply to watch it melt, turn to red-hot and white-hot, then glow purple, was magical. To hold pure gold grain and let it move slowly through his fingers restored his calm of spirit. His chief motivation, he said, was to understand the material and, through that, himself. He wondered why his heart had beaten so fast in the museum that day. Gold in particular had a message for him. His contact with this glorious metal might focus all his attention and help him to hear it.
He developed delicate craftsmanship, with each object virtually a museum piece. For Daniel Brush, he loved the idea that one might take a piece made by Brush out of a pocket, let its beauty pass from mind to mind, and smile. That too was what its maker was after.
1. What can we learn about Daniel Brush?| A．Students visited him regularly. |
| B．He began to live in his loft in 1975. |
| C．He tended to use ancient crafts to produce objects. |
| D．Most objects he produced were of a surprisingly small size. |
| A．He wanted to learn more about both gold and himself. |
| B．He wondered why his heart had beat fast in the museum. |
| C．His calm was restored when gold grain moved through fingers. |
| D．Gold had a particular message for him and he was eager to hear it. |
| A．Stubborn. | B．Wealthy. | C．Dedicated. | D．Lonely. |
| A．Brush’s valuable works. | B．The admirers Brush expected. |
| C．Brush’s desire for fame. | D．The artistic ideal Brush pursued. |
4 . It won’t sound like a big surprise when I tell you that kindness plays an important role in a person’s wellbeing. It can lead to changes like higher self-esteem(自尊心) and lower blood pressure. Even just witnessing acts of kindness can make us happier.
Many of us don’t have a real sense of our value. It’s been estimated that as many as 85 percent of people struggle with low self-esteem.
Unlike a conscience(良心), this inner critic doesn’t motivate positive behavior.
One wonderful way to fight against our critical inner voice is through acts of being kind to others.
| A．However, the work doesn’t stop there. |
| B．People may lower the value of their own kind comments. |
| C．We all carry around a “critical inner voice” that tends to put us down. |
| D．Instead of seeing what we have to offer, we may think of ourselves as a burden. |
| E．This misunderstanding suggests that people devalue their own actions in relation to others. |
| F．Instead, it turns us against ourselves, making us underestimate our beneficial effect on others. |
| G．Yet, people may not truly know the impact that even the smallest of kind acts can have on another person. |
5 . Humans evolved from apes. This is what we learned in biology class. But what came before apes? Chinese scientists have discovered fossils that could enrich the evolutionary story of how humans evolved from fish.
According to four articles published in the journal Nature in late September, Chinese researchers found fish fossils that provide the “missing link” about the origin of the jaw, a key feature that 99.8 percent of vertebrate (脊椎动物) species have.
Zhu Min, a lead researcher of the studies from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the findings drew a large amount of interest in the science world due to the importance of jaws in animal evolution.
However, the rise of the jaw had been a mystery due to a lack of sufficient fossil evidence to support that jawed vertebrates lived 450 million years ago.
The latest findings made by Zhu’s team presented a set of five surprisingly well-preserved fish fossils that included three whole-bodied fish, helping scientists paint a more accurate evolutionary picture of the origin of the jaw. The fish fossils were discovered at two sites in Chongqing and Guizhou, whose strata (岩层) date back to the Silurian Period that began around 440 million years ago.
These fossils show that jawed fish were already thriving (繁荣) in the world’s ancient oceans at that time. Later on, more diverse and larger jawed fish evolved and began to spread around the world, paving the way for some fish to eventually go on land and evolve into other animals — including humans.
“These fossils provide an unprecedented (前所未有的) opportunity to peek into the ‘dawn of fish’ and help scientists trace many human body structures back to these ancient fish thus filling some key gaps in the evolutionary history of how fish evolved into humans,” Zhu said.
1. In which column of a magazine will you most probably read the passage?| A．Your Voice. | B．Animals. |
| C．Science Study. | D．History. |
| A．Because jaws are a key trait of all vertebrate species. |
| B．Because jaws are significant in animal evolution. |
| C．Because the rise of the jaw had been a mystery. |
| D．Because there is a lack of sufficient evidence. |
| A．Around 440 million years ago. |
| B．Around 450 million years ago. |
| C．When jawed fish began to spread around the world. |
| D．When fish evolved into humans. |
| A．Who Are Our Ancestors? | B．What Came Before Apes? |
| C．The Origin of the Jaw | D．Key Gaps in Evolution |
6 . Searching the OED
How to use the quick search
The quick search bar can be found on the OED(Oxford English Dictionary)homepage and at the top of every entry page, and finds main dictionary entries, such as alphabet, break, xylophone. It also finds phrases and compounds listed within main entries, such as to look up or alphabet book, and different forms of spellings such as dictionaries.
Wildcard searches
A wildcard is a symbol which stands for any character. The question mark ? represents the occurrence of any one single character, and the asterisk*represents the occurrence of any number of characters (or no character at all). Wildcards are useful if you do not know how to spell a word, or if you want to lined several terms beginning with the same root.
How to use the advanced search
An advanced search is a full search of the entire dictionary text which is for readers who have logged in or subscribed to the dictionary. Advanced search can be especially useful for very specific searches. You can use the search area functionality to search by each section of an entry. You can also use filters to narrow your search to match certain criteria.
Browsing by categories
Categories allow you to explore the dictionary through groupings of words in, for instance. a subject or from a particular origin. If you want to find all the Caribbean borrowings in English, or find the first word related to friend to enter the dictionary, this is the function for you.
Further explore your search by using the options that appear on the right-hand side of the results page.
1. What will you use if you want to lookup some terms beginning with the same root?| A．The quick search. | B．The advanced search. |
| C．Wildcard searches. | D．Browsing by categories. |
| A．Registering for the dictionary. | B．Matching certain criteria. |
| C．Searching with specific words. | D．Searching with purpose. |
| A．A dictionary. | B．A website. | C．A handbook. | D．A magazine. |
7 . Are you interested in robot-science? What do you think robots are capable of? Let’s have a review of world-leading technology gathered at the World Robot Conference (WRC) 2022.
Technology in agriculture
A fruit-picking robot attracted visitors’ attention. With the help of various sensors and an AI system, the robot can collect fruit according to its ripeness, quality and size. The robot first locates the fruit and then uses sensors to decide whether it is ripe, with a robotic arm picking the fruit gently. The fruit is then categorized, ending up in a basket according to its size. It is said that more robotic technology will be used in agriculture in the future, including robots for daily inspection and weeding.
Robots fighting Covid-19
Medical staff conducting nucleic acid tests often find their work toilsome, especially under the summer heat. A nucleic acid test robot developed by Tsinghua University and a Chinese biotech company was presented at the WRC. It looks like a vending machine, but the robot can collect throat swabs (拭子), process samples, as well as produce and upload the results within 45 minutes. The whole process will not require the involvement of humans or laboratories.
Inventions of the youth
Those visiting the exhibit also witnessed the intelligence of a new generation. Wang Zirun, a junior student at the school, designed a three-dimensional parking facility model. Since there are usually too few parking spaces in older residential areas, Wang’s work aims to fit more cars into current parking spots. The facility works like a sky wheel with six parking spots. When cars need to be picked up, the facility rotates steadily, placing the car on the ground.
1. Where is the text probably taken from?| A．A travel brochure. |
| B．A technology textbook. |
| C．A science magazine. |
| D．A product advertisement. |
| A．To save building materials. |
| B．To prevent cars from being stolen. |
| C．To increase ground parking spaces. |
| D．To make the most of limited space. |
| A．Both the fruit-picking robot and the nucleic acid test robot can save manpower. |
| B．The WRC is intended to inspire the intelligence of a young generation. |
| C．All the inventions mentioned have been put into practical use. |
| D．Human can be replaced by the robot in the future. |
8 . It takes a lot of hard work and determination to achieve big goals. Many times, people must persevere in spite of obstacles to realize their dreams. Collette Divitto is a talented baker who managed to do just that. She used her bright personality, determination, and talent to become an entrepreneur.
Collette Divitto was born in Boston. Like many others, after graduating from college, she wanted to get a job. She went to many job interviews, but she kept getting rejected. Many employers said she was “not the right fit”. Divitto believed she was being rejected so often in that she was born with Down syndrome, which is a genetic disorder related to a person’s chromosomes. People with Down syndrome often have intellectual or physical disabilities.
Facing many job rejections, Divitto felt discouraged and hurt. She felt she wanted to open her own business and be her own boss. She thought about her hobbies and passions. Divitto knew she loved baking. She would always create delicious recipes to share with her family and friends. One of these recipes was for a chocolate chip cookie rolled in cinnamon sugar. Her mom tasted the cookies and urged her to write down the recipe to make them again. Divitto began baking and selling her chocolate cookies locally, calling her business “Collettey’s Cookies”. She took her cookies to a local grocery store named Golden Goose Market. Immediately after tasting the cookies, the market decided to sell Devitto’s cookies. Golden Goose Market became Divitto’s first client. Eventually, a television station shared the story of Divitto’s ccokie business. Her story went viral!
Divitto didn’t just create Collectey’s Cookies to sell delicious baked goods. She has a great ambition to expand her business so that she can hire as many people as possible. Currently, many of her employees have disabilities. Divitto also wants non-disabled business owners to see the strengths and talents of people with disabilities. The majority of disabled people who can work cannot find paying jobs. Even when they do get jobs, they are often paid less than the minimum wage. Divitto wants to change these statistics. She wants to make sure people with disabilities get jobs that pay fairly.
1. What did Collette think was the probable reason for her job rejections?| A．She wanted to run her own business. |
| B．She was not equal to these jobs. |
| C．She was not perseverant enough to face obstacles. |
| D．She was prejudiced for her disability. |
| A．She fully took advantage of social connections. |
| B．She turned her passion for baking into a thriving business. |
| C．She had her cookies promoted on television. |
| D．She employed a team of disabled people. |
| A．Divitto’s attitude to the disabled. |
| B．Divitto’s strategy of expanding the business. |
| C．Divitto’s quality of being an entrepreneur. |
| D．Divitto’s mission to empower the disabled with job opportunities. |
| A．Nothing seeks, nothing finds. |
| B．Success and rest don’t sleep together. |
| C．Sharp tools make good work. |
| D．Birth is much, but breeding (养育) is more. |
Aliens have attacked Earth twice and almost destroyed human beings. Humans couldn’t lose anymore. Therefore, the world government has started to train military geniuses in the arts of war. Ender Wiggin is taking part in this training. He wins all the games. He knows time is running out, but can he save the planet?It’s good science fiction for boys.
The Broken Earth Trilogy (三部曲) by N.K. Jemisin
Moving into more modern territory, each entry of N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth Trilogy won a Hugo Award when it was first published. It’s a science-fiction story married to fantasy elements that is one of the most famous pieces of literature.
The Expanse series by James S.A.Corey
This spectacular series consists of nine books. I know that looks like a lot of novels, but trust me, they are absolutely worth reading. The Expanse is easily one of the best sci-fi series in history, and now the TV adaptation has become one of the best sci-fi shows in history. The first book starts in our solar system and expands beyond it with a growing cast of characters that will feel like family after a dive into this fantastic series.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
This is the only stand-alone book on this list, so if you don’t feel like investing in 300,000 pages of content, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash is for you. This author of the book uses virtual reality as the setting, and the main character is a pizza deliveryman in one world and a warrior prince in another.
1. Which book is suitable for you if you favor award-winning ones?| A．The Broken Earth Trilogy | B．Ender’s Game |
| C．Snow Crash | D．The Expanse |
| A．They all have TV adaptations. |
| B．They are based on true stories. |
| C．They are best-sellers on shelf. |
| D．They are fiction worth reading. |
| A．To advertise. | B．To introduce. |
| C．To recommend. | D．To instruct. |
10 . In Japan, you are what your blood type is. A person’s blood type is popularly believed to decide his/her character and personality. Type-A people are generally considered sensitive perfectionists and good team players, but over-anxious. Type Os are curious and generous but stubborn. Type ABs are artistic but mysterious and unpredictable, and type Bs are cheerful but eccentric, individualistic, and selfish. Though lacking scientific evidence, this belief is widely seen in books, magazines, and television shows. Last year, four of Japan’s top 10 best-sellers were about how blood type determines personality, through which readers seemed to be able to discover the definition of their blood type or have their self-image confirmed.
The blood-type belief has been used in unusual ways. The women softball team that won gold for Japan at the Beijing Olympics is reported to have used blood-type theories to customize training for each player. Some kindergartens have adopted teaching methods along blood group lines, and even major companies reportedly make decisions about assignments based on an employee’s blood type. In 1990, Mitsubishi Electronics was reported to have announced the formation of a team composed entirely of AB workers, thanks to “their ability to make plans”.
The belief even affects politics. One former prime minister considered it important enough to reveal in his official profile that he was a type A, while his opposition rival was type B. In 2011, a minister, Ryu Matsumoto, was forced to resign after only a week in office, when a bad-tempered encounter with local officials was televised. In his resignation speech, he blamed his failings on the fact that he was blood type B.
The blood-type craze, considered simply harmless fun by some Japanese, may reveal itself as prejudice and discrimination. In fact, this seems so common that the Japanese now have a term for it: bura-hara, meaning blood-type harassment (骚扰). There are reports of discrimination leading to children being bullied, ending of happy relationships, and loss of job opportunities due to blood type.
1. What’s the main idea of paragraph 1?| A．The books about blood type are popular in Japan. |
| B．The Japanese attach great importance to blood type. |
| C．The Japanese confirm their personality totally through blood type. |
| D．The Japanese think blood type bestsellers are important to their self-image. |
| A．Type O. | B．Type A. | C．Type B. | D．Type AB. |
| A．Because he revealed his rival’s blood type. |
| B．Because he was seen behaving rudely on TV. |
| C．Because he was discriminated against by others. |
| D．Because he blamed his failings on local officials. |
| A．Negative. | B．Defensive. | C．Objective. | D．Encouraging. |
