1 . Why can’t penguins fly?
Even the very smallest penguin,the fairy penguin,weighs 1 kg,which is about as much as a herring gull (银鸥). But herring gulls have a 1.4-meterwingspan,compared with just 32 centimeters for the fairy penguin. Water is 784 times denser (密度较大的) than air,and around 62 million years ago,penguins began making adaptations for swimming underwater. Their bones are filled with heavy bone marrow (骨髓)rather than air and they have much larger stomachs for making long fishing trips away from the nest.
How do squirrels find buried nuts?
It was once thought that they just used their noses to sniff out buried nuts and that the majority were never actually located. But a study at Princeton University showed that squirrels actually have a good memory and can build a map of the route from one hidden nut to the next.
Why don’t horses have toes?
Early horses such as Hyracotherium, which lived 55 million years ago, did have toes, but they were much smaller animals. For taller animals, extra weight at the end of their legs has a much bigger influence on their speed. A recent study at Harvard University, the USA, found that one broad hoof (蹄) is almost as strong as many smaller toes, but much lighter.
Do animals have blood types?
Yes, they do! As long as the animals in question have blood (not all do)then they will have species-specific “blood groups”. As with humans, these groups are determined by the structure of the blood based on the presence or absence of antibodies along with the make-up of the proteins that sit on the outside of red blood cells.
Humans are usually one of four main blood types. Thirteen types have been identified for dogs, eight for horses and three for cats.
1. Why can’t penguins fly?| A．Because of their physical characteristics. | B．Because of their poor adaptation. |
| C．Because of their habits of swimming. | D．Because of their changing environment. |
| A．3. | B．4. | C．8. | D．13. |
| A．Squirrels find buried nuts by chance. | B．Horses are stronger without hooves. |
| C．All animals have their blood types. | D．An animal is a book with secrets. |
| A．Questions you may be interested in | B．Questions on the animal kingdom |
| C．Secrets to discover in nature | D．Knowledge around you |
2 . Jeni Stepanek’s home is an attractive four-bedroomed house. Had it been a one-roomed small house, however, Jeni would still have bought it. The only thing that mattered when she moved in four years ago was its location. It is near the 26-acre park in Rockville, near Washington, DC, created in honor of her son Mattie.
The park has play spaces, but at its heart is a memorial peace garden with a life-size statue of Mattie and his dog Micah. “Every day, I sit at my window and see mothers go over to the statue with their children,” says Jeni. “It is a terrible thing for a parent to bury a child, but I do see how Mattie has touched the world.”
Jeni is a mother who has experienced more sadness than most of us could imagine. All four of her children were born with a genetic disorder (遗传性疾病). The first three died before the age of four. Mattie survived until three weeks before his 14th birthday. In his short lifetime, he had sold more than two million copies of his poetry collections and given encouraging speeches to thousands of followers. His heroes—Oprah Winfrey, poet Maya Angelou, former US president Jimmy Carter became his best friends. At his funeral Carter said, “My wife and I have known kings, queens and presidents, but the most extraordinary person whom I have ever known is Mattie Stepanek.”
In the years after Mattie died, Jeni had been writing about his short but meaningful life. “I didn’t want my sadness to flow onto the pages and nor did I want people to think I was hanging on to Mattie’s coat tails. But I knew in the end I would tell the story because I was the only one who lived it with him,” she said. Jeni’s now published book Messenger is a celebration of Mattie’s achievements that were beyond his years.
1. Why did Jeni buy the house?| A．Because of its attractive four bedrooms. | B．Because of its special location. |
| C．Because of its low price. | D．Because of its excellent conditions. |
| A．An accident. | B．A mental disease. |
| C．A natural disease. | D．A natural disaster. |
| A．Appreciative. | B．Pitiful. | C．Patient. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．Jeni was still in deep sorrow. | B．Jeni wanted to be a writer. |
| C．Jeni continued her son’s writing work. | D．Jeni was proud of her son. |
3 . Most people associate space with silence. But the story of how we came to understand the universe is just as much a story of listening as it is by looking. And yet despite this, hardly any of us has ever heard space. How many of you could describe the sound of a single planet or star?
And you may wonder: How do we know what these sounds are? How can we tell the difference between the sound of the sun and the sound of a pulsar (脉冲星)? Well, the answer is the science of radio astronomy. Radio astronomers study radio waves from space using sensitive antennas (天线) and receivers, which give them precise information about what an astronomical object is and where it is in our night sky. And just like the signals that we send and receive here on earth, we can convert these transmissions into sound using simple analog techniques (模拟技术). And therefore, it’s through listening that we’ve come to uncover some of the universe’s most important secrets—its scale, what it’s made of and even how old it is.
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell worked with Thomas Watson on the invention of the telephone. A key part of their technical set-up was a half-mile long length of wire, which was thrown across the rooftops of several houses in Boston. The line carried the telephone signals that would later make Bell a household name. But like any long length of charged wire, it also inadvertently became an antenna. Thomas Watson spent hours listening to the strange crackles and hisses and whistles that his accidental antenna detected...
As he correctly guessed, some of these sounds were caused by activity on the surface of the sun. So while inventing the technology that would usher in the telecommunications revolution, Watson had discovered that the star at the center of our solar system emitted (发射) powerful radio waves.
1. How do the radio astronomers discover the universe’s secrets?| A．By watching. | B．By calculating. | C．By listening. | D．By measuring. |
| A．By chance. | B．On purpose. | C．In surprise. | D．On average. |
| A．Antennas and receivers. | B．Telephone signals. |
| C．Activities of the sun. | D．Radio waves. |
| A．Society. | B．Nature. | C．Culture. | D．Entertainment. |
4 . The term “social distancing” has been at the center of public conversation for a while. But it’s not “social” distance we are trying to promote. It’s physical separation. In fact, preserving social ties — even at a distance — is essential for both mental and physical health. The results of an analytic review done in 2017 indicate that a lack of social support is on a par with smoking cigarettes as a risk factor for health.
Given this fact, how might we best stay connected to others while maintaining physical distance? Would we be better off e-mailing a friend? Making a phone call? Setting up a video chat? In our study, Nick Epley and I tested whether the media through which people interact affects their sense of connection — and how expectations about certain technologies impact the communication media they choose to use.
In our experiment, we asked participants to reconnect with someone that they hadn’t interacted with recently, either through e-mail or over the phone. Participants first made predictions about what it would be like to get in touch if they reached out in these two ways. They generally believed that they’d feel more connected when interacting via the phone than over e-mail. But they also predicted that talking on the phone could be more uncomfortable than sending an e-mail. Although these participants believed that talking encouraged stronger bonds, most of them said they’d rather send an e-mail than call the person up. Fears about awkwardness, it seems, push individuals toward text-based methods for communicating.
In the next part of the experiment, we had participants actually reconnect using one randomly determined mode of communication and then followed up with them after they had done so. We found that people do form meaningfully stronger bonds when interacting over the phone than over e-mail. Importantly, though, there was no difference in the amount of discomfort when reconnecting on the phone.
The next time you think about how best to connect, consider calling or setting up a video chat. Feelings of social connection are preferably facilitated by voice rather than a keyboard.
1. How does the author support his view on the importance of maintaining social ties?| A．By stating a deep-rooted tradition. | B．By citing a published report. |
| C．By sharing public opinions. | D．By presenting official documents. |
| A．How technologies impact means of communication. |
| B．How social media choices affect feelings of connection. |
| C．Why maintaining social separation is bad for mental health. |
| D．Why reconnecting with friends over the phone brings awkwardness. |
| A．They changed the research objectives. | B．They provided insights for future studies. |
| C．They confirmed researchers’ expectations. | D．They contradicted participants’ predictions partly. |
| A．For stronger bonds, talk instead of typing. |
| B．Keeping in touch is key to a lasting friendship. |
| C．Think before you consider contacting an old friend. |
| D．Text-based methods for communication cause discomfort. |
5 . Whether you’re in the final research stages of a major paper, or on a Zoom (a calling app) call for work, a dropped WiFi connection at zero hour is something annoying.
The first and easiest fix is to disconnect unused devices from your WiFi. The easiest way to do this is to simply change your WiFi password, which will kick everyone off. Then, you can allow only certain devices to rejoin.
| A．What can you do about it? |
| B．Sometimes that’s all that’s required. |
| C．Finally, you may need to upgrade your connectivity. |
| D．People deal with this modern inconvenience all the time, |
| E．Cutting back on heavy WiFi use temporarily can also help. |
| F．In general, this is a very good solution to a dropped WiFi connection. |
| G．Back in the day, the average household had a computer or two to connect. |
6 . Eileen Gu got into extreme sports because of an overprotective mother. The older Gu hated seeing her daughter rush down California’s Tahoe ski slopes (斜坡), so she enrolled the 8-year-old in a free-skiing school, not knowing exactly what it involved. However, she was confident that anything would be safer than racing. Little did she know that she would one day watch her child perform death-defying flips, spins and jumps instead. And she never thought her daughter could be one of the sport’s top stars, with golds at X Games.
“I’ve probably been an adrenaline (肾上腺素) addict from day one,” Eileen Gu said. In February, that adrenaline took her all the way to the Winter Olympics in Beijing. It’s where her mom was born and a place she visited regularly during childhood. These are Gu’s first Games. She is just 18 years old.
In China, she is nicknamed “Snow Princess”. She is also academically gifted, graduating from high school a year early despite her punishing training schedule, and scoring 1,580 on her SAT and getting accepted into Stanford for 2022.
It’s a rapid rise that she hopes will inspire others. A speech, which she made to her seventh-grade class, urged her peers to “show the boys that girls are just as powerful as they are”. Naturally, you don’t soar to such heights without getting hurt. After cracking a finger and tearing a ligament (韧带) in her thumb, she was expected to miss last year’s world championships in Aspen. Gu certainly walks the talk: She instead chose to compete without ski poles and took home two gold medals and a bronze.
“Honestly, I’m a little nervous about getting the poles back, because I’ve gotten used to skiing without them.” she said after the event.
1. What caused Eileen Gu to be interested in extreme sports at first?| A．Her special talent. | B．Her strong interest. |
| C．Her experienced coach. | D．Her overprotective mother. |
| A．Take her daughter to skiing classes. | B．Watch sports program with her daughter. |
| C．Give her daughter some skiing equipment. | D．Travel around the world with her daughter. |
| A．She has grown up in Beijing. | B．She has graduated from Stanford. |
| C．She has been to Beijing many times. | D．She has won gold medals in other Olympics. |
| A．Fashion. | B．Technology. | C．Environment. | D．Figure. |
7 . Houston’s architectural personality
Exploring Houston, you would be forgiven for thinking that the city’s architectural identity is all over the map.
Texas’s Tallest Building
I. M. Pei is most famous for designing the Louvre in Paris. He is also the architect responsible for the tallest building in Texas: the JPMorgan Chase Tower in downtown Houston. The building is 75-storey tall and also boasts the distinction of being the tallest five-sided building in the entire world.
Houston’s Theater District
Houston’s Theater District occupies 17-blocks in downtown Houston and has an entertainment house for every type of art. Jones Hall is home to the Houston Symphony Orchestra. The symphony hall takes up an entire city block and features the outside made of white Italian marble (大理石).
Houston’s Historic Buildings
In 1890, Houston Heights was founded as one of Texas’s earliest planned communities. Today, 19th Street is a funky place where different shops provide endless entertainment for shoppers.
Houston’s unconventional Architecture
Head to 222 Malone Street in Rice Military to see the Beer Can House, a late 1960s home that has been covered with beer cans and bottle caps. It was created by John Milkovisch, who started the project as a way to cover his lawn to avoid cutting it. The Beer Can House is one of the most recognizable pieces of folk art in the Houston area. Today, the Orange Show Center For Visionary Art the Beer Can House is open for tours on weekends with advanced ticket purchases.
1. What information can you get about Texas’s Tallest Building?| A．It is 70-storey tall. | B．Its designer is from Paris. |
| C．It lies in centre area in Houston. | D．It is the tallest building in the world. |
| A．The JPMorgan Chase Tower. | B．Houston’s Theater District. |
| C．Houston Heights. | D．The Beer Can House. |
| A．To get together with military. | B．To provide a place for drinkers. |
| C．To make profits by selling tickets. | D．To protect his lawn from being cut. |
8 . Aging is often mentioned in relation to smart homes. Technology can help older people stay independent and safe, and avoid the difficult transition to institutional care. Cox Communications display their new smart home in which every device is “smart”. A strong internet connection is central to their product, and the company also provides a network for other service providers.
The smart home is not only controlled far away, this home—called Home Life—also features direct connections to family members and health professionals. For example, a person can perform their physiotherapy (物理疗法) far away from home with online live guidance from a physiotherapist. Or, their relatives who live in another state can pop in and out through their smartphone or tablet, so loved ones are always there if required.
This super smart home also includes a smart pill container, a smart pot to water your plants, and motion sensors for indoors and outdoors which are useful for fall detection, as well as an automatic barcode scanner (条码扫描仪) that is attached to the home’s trash can so that the packaging gets scanned when it is thrown and the consumed items are added to the user’s shopping list.
In a modern smart home, many activities that are important to independent living can be monitored, and assistance is provided on an as needed basis. If something is out of place for example, a person has a fall or doesn’t take their medicine—family can be informed immediately. However, the person living in the smart home maintains his or her autonomy (自主权) and sense of independence.
1. What is the advantage of Home Life?| A．It protects the house from danger. | B．It helps offer the guidance from health professionals. |
| C．It saves the time of going shopping. | D．It raises independence ability for the junior. |
| A．Make an order. | B．Make a difference. | C．Pay a visit. | D．Leave a message. |
| A．A teenage is late for school. | B．Seniors forget taking medicine. |
| C．A baby falls down with a babysitter. | D．Thieves are prevented from the smart house. |
| A．A smart home for seniors | B．A family-friendly product |
| C．Aging rises in the community | D．Smart home slows down the aging |
9 . While how attractive you are to mosquitoes (蚊子) depends on plenty of factors, new research has found the colors you’re wearing definitely play a role.
That’s the main conclusion from a new study published in the journal Nature Communications. For the study, researchers from the University of Washington tracked the behavior of female mosquitoes when they were given different types of visual and scent cues (气味信号). The researchers put the mosquitoes into small test rooms and exposed them to different things, like a colored dot or person’s hand.
“Mosquitoes first find that you re around by smelling carbon dioxide from your breath. That causes them to look for certain colors and visual patterns that could indicate food,” the researchers explained.
When there was no scent like carbon dioxide in the test rooms, the mosquitoes pretty much ignored the colored dot, no matter what color it was. But once researchers sprayed carbon dioxide in the room, they flew toward dots that were red, orange, black, or cyan. Dots that were green, blue, or purple were ignored.
“Light colors are regarded as a threat to mosquitoes, which is why many species usually avoid biting in direct sunlight,” researcher Timothy Best says. “Mosquitoes are more likely to die from dehydration (脱水). Therefore, light colors may represent danger and avoidance. In contrast, darker colors may represent shadows, which are more likely to absorb and keep heat, allowing mosquitoes to use their complicated antenna (触角) to locate a host.
If you have the option of wearing lighter or darker clothes when you know you’ll be going into an area with lots of mosquitoes, you’d better go with the lighter choice. “Dark colors stand out to mosquitoes,” he says.
1. How do mosquitoes sense a person around?| A．By using their eyes. | B．By using their antenna. |
| C．By identifying the color. | D．By smelling carbon dioxide. |
| A．Small test rooms are necessary. | B．Specific colors attract mosquitoes. |
| C．Mosquitoes like biting in sunlight. | D．Mosquitoes are interested in green. |
| A．Red. | B．Orange. | C．Black. | D．White. |
| A．Mosquitoes like to live in dark places. | B．Mosquitoes are more possible to die from dehydration. |
| C．The color plays a role in attracting mosquitoes. | D．Dark colors are seen as a threat to mosquitoes. |
10 . I’ve been into volunteer work since childhood. As a girl, I volunteered at animal shelters, played music at nursing homes, and helped with community cleanup. In college, I volunteered heavily at a large yearly conference, which is where I first met and fell in love with my husband Tom, who was on my team of co-volunteers. Since getting married in 2013, we’ve been living in Beirut, Lebanon. My husband works for a nonprofit organization. I have an online coaching business, so I’ve many opportunities to volunteer for youth education.
Volunteering has been a way of life for me and I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy it. Most of the time, you do feel that you’re making a difference. Once I led a project that provided food to Syrian families. When it was nearing Ramadan, the biggest holiday season in Islam, I filled the food package with nuts, olive oil, sweets... We took the package unannounced and arrived just as the Syrian family was sitting on their floor for breakfast. They had nothing but some bread and a pot of tea. The mother cried when seeing us, saying she would never forget our kindness.
Another time, some friends and I volunteered to a distant church with only a few elderly residents. The building was old and the churchyard needed attention. We spent the weekend in the home of one of these old ladies so we could clean and repair the church. I’ll never forget the new life in her eyes as she stayed with us. She couldn’t repair broken doors or pull weeds, but she loved us like nothing else. It breaks my heart to remember this old lady beaming with joy for such small efforts we made. Volunteer work is satisfying not because you have done some work, but because your presence has an effect on people around.
Volunteering makes me a better person because it puts my focus on others. It makes me grateful for what I have and gives me a chance to serve people, which gives a deep sense of meaning to my life.
1. When did the author meet her husband for the first time?| A．When she was a child. | B．When she was a college student. |
| C．When she worked in a company. | D．When she was a senior high school student. |
| A．Her children were ill. | B．Her husband was missing. |
| C．She had no food. | D．She was very moved. |
| A．Pleasant. | B．Frightened. | C．Impatient. | D．Disappointed. |
| A．She can hear many stories. | B．She has done much work. |
| C．She can help others. | D．She has met many people. |
