1 . When you have to cancel your Thanksgiving plans due to the spread of the COVID-19, you may find yourself craving companionship as much as that pumpkin pie. That’s because parts of the brain respond to loneliness much like they react to hunger, according to a study in Nature Neuroscience.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology scanned the brains of 40 healthy, social young adults after 10 hours of either fasting (禁食) or social isolation (隔离). They found that after being alone, participants’ neurological responses to social signals were similar to hungry people reacting to food — that is, certain areas of the brain linked to desire were turned on to start working.
For an isolated person, a picture of people laughing together caused the same areas of the brain to light up as when a hungry person looked at a big plate of pasta.
“Just like hunger is an unpleasant sensation that motivates us to seek out food and thirst motivates us to seek out water, loneliness is a biological need that motivates us to reconnect to others,” Holt-Lunstad told Insider.
Researchers were surprised to find that people who were prevented from socializing became much more focused on that need, and less reactive to hunger. As their loneliness increased, they became less responsive to images of food.
These latest findings suggest that the relationship between food and loneliness might be more complicated than we thought, despite the popular opinion of stress-eating to cope with social isolation. More research is needed to understand the complex ways people deal with loneliness.
Studies like this can help scientists understand how the brain processes loneliness, and possibly reduce the negative consequences. However, although loneliness may be similar to hunger, fixing it isn’t as easy as serving someone a hearty dinner because people are unique and they need varying levels of social interactions to meet their needs.
1. The underlined word “craving” in the first paragraph can be replaced by .| A．avoiding | B．desiring | C．preferring | D．ignoring |
| A．to find their brain responses to both loneliness and hunger |
| B．to provide explanations for their feeling lonely and hungry |
| C．to find how loneliness can have a negative impact on health |
| D．after they have been hungry and socially isolated for 10 hours |
| A．Hunger is an unpleasant sensation. |
| B．Hunger and thirst motivate us to feed ourselves. |
| C．Socializing is supposed to be basic human need as it is. |
| D．The effects of loneliness on health are comparable to other factors. |
| A．Loneliness may be fixed just as hunger is satisfied. |
| B．Situations of loneliness are complicated and hard to cope with. |
| C．Scientists have understood how the brain processes loneliness. |
| D．Loneliness is such a common and serious problem that we all have to suffer. |
2 . Towards the end of the 1985 sci-fi classic Back to the Future, the inventor Doc Brown announces “where we’re going, we don’t need roads as the car lifts into the air”. While flying cars aren’t yet filling our skies, many are in development. In October the Chinese XPeng X2 successfully completed the first public test flight of its two-seater flying car in Dubai.
The XPeng X2 lifts vertically off the ground using eight propellers (螺旋桨), without the need for a runway, and is therefore suitable for built-up city areas. The vehicle, designed to carry two passengers, is fully electric and its makers say it can rise through the air at around two meters per second and then reach speeds of up to 80 miles per hour. The XPeng X2 is equipped with AI automation — it can be set to self-drive. It learns how to avoid traffic, buildings and people. It does not produce any carbon dioxide emissions during flight and is a step forward in the pursuit of urban green transportation. It is suitable for future low-altitude city flights and is perfect for short-distance city journeys such as sightseeing and medical transportation.
Although the test flight lasted just 90 seconds, according to Dr. Liu, chief aviation specialist at Xpeng Aeroht, the technology is close to being ready for public use, but regulations on flying cars are still some way off. Liu believes that people will be able to use flying cars within limited regulated spaces in just five years. This lines up pretty well with the Chinese government’s plan to put flying taxis on the market by 2025. The self-driving function presents further difficulties with regulation and also throws into question public acceptance. Many people are worried about the safety issues around self-driving cars on the ground, let alone vehicles that are flying around above their heads. However, Peng says it is safer for its flying car to be self-driving than to be driven by a human.
There are lots of flying cars in development now around the world and many of them actually fly, like Opener’s “BlackFly”, SkyDriver’s “SD-03’’and Klein Vision’s “AirCar” — which made a successful 35-minute test flight between two cities in Slovakia in 2021.
1. Why does the author mention the 1985 sci-fi classic Back to the Future?| A．To introduce the topic | B．To recommend the movie |
| C．To provide background information | D．To make a prediction |
| A．The popularity of XPeng X2. | B．The advantages of XPeng X2. |
| C．The limitation of XPeng X2. | D．The prospect of XPeng X2. |
| A．XPeng X2 can carry two passengers at a speed of 80miles per hour. |
| B．XPeng X2 is close to finishing the first public test fight. |
| C．XPeng X2 has already been launched on the market at present. |
| D．XPeng X2 has been widely accepted by the public now. |
| A．Science fiction | B．Film review |
| C．Science & Technology | D．Historical events |
3 . Music is one of the most powerful forces in our lives. It can bring us joy, sorrow, or even inspiration. It can evoke emotions and memories that we didn’t even know we had.
Music can be a source of comfort. It can provide a refuge（避难所）from the troubles of the world and provide a sense of peace and solace.
Finally, music can be a source of joy and celebration.
Music has the power to change our lives in ways we may never have imagined. It can provide us with strength, courage, comfort, and joy. It can help us to find our inner voice and express ourselves in unique and creative ways.
| A．Poor people can live a happy life with music. |
| B．Music can also give us strength and courage. |
| C．Music can associate people with each other around the world. |
| D．Music can change a person’s life in ways that nothing else can. |
| E．Listening to music can help to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. |
| F．It can bring us closer together, helping us to appreciate and celebrate the beauty of life. |
| G．Music can truly be a life-changing force, and one that should never be underestimated. |
4 . It’s no secret that sleep is important to your overall health, but a lack of sleep could have great effects on your heart, a new study shows. The researchers said people with insomnia(失眠症)are more likely to have a heart attack.
Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder in the US, the researchers wrote in their report, noting that 10% to 15% of people in the US struggle with it. The meta-analysis of previously published research suggests that the potential association between insomnia and heart attack risk is strongest in women.
Dr. Martha Gulati, director of prevention at the Cedars-Sinai Smidt Heart Institute, said that most of her patients are women and that insomnia is a noted risk factor for women who have had any form of ischemic heart disease. “We see it probably in 1 in 10 patients in the United States,” said Gulati, who was not involved in the new research. “It is my impression that almost everyone experiences insomnia at some point in their life. The estimate is that 1 in 2 adults experience it at some point in their life, maybe in the short term because of stressful moments.”
For their analysis, the researchers defined insomnia as a sleep disorder with three main symptoms(症状): Difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep and waking early and being unable to fall back asleep.
The study also found an association between increased heart attack risk and how long a participant slept each night. Those who slept five hours or less had the highest association with heart attack risk and were 1.56 times more likely to have a heart attack than people who slept seven or eight hours. Longer sleep duration wasn’t always more protective. The study found that people who slept six hours a night had a lower risk of a heart attack than those who slept nine hours or more. “A lot of studies have pointed somewhere between seven and eight hours of sleep being the magic number for us,” another researcher said. “There is obviously variability for everyone, but too much sleep is rarely the issue.”
1. What’s the function of the first paragraph?| A．To list a fact. | B．To warn the readers. |
| C．To introduce the topic. | D．To draw the readers’ interest. |
| A．Insomnia is unavoidable in the short term. |
| B．Insomnia is a common phenomenon in life. |
| C．Heart attack often happens during insomnia. |
| D．Women are less experienced in dealing with insomnia. |
| A．Put quality before quantity. | B．Too much is as bad as too little. |
| C．Bite off more than one can chew. | D．Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. |
| A．Pessimistic. | B．Indifferent. | C．Objective. | D．Positive. |
5 . A solar tree is a structure like a tree that generates solar energy using photovoltaic panels (太阳能光伏板). It helps solve an urgent global challenge: Replacing greenhouse gas-emitting energy sources like oil and gas with renewable energy. But the power generation potential of solar trees is relatively limited, and their primary purpose is to raise public awareness about renewable energy by getting people to notice and interact with solar energy in new ways.
Solar trees generally have a firm metal, plastic, or stone base that extends up and out into “branches” on which solar panels are mounted. Beyond this basic structure, there is great diversity in the design of solar tree units. The solar tree’s photovoltaic “leaves” absorb sunlight, converting it into electricity that is conducted down through the trunk-like central pillar of the structure to an inside battery. Many designs feature rotating (旋转的) panels that can move throughout the day in order to obtain the greatest amount of sunlight.
Solar trees help power homes, businesses, and public services. They can create shade to help reduce the urban heat island effect and provide shelter in severe weather such as rainstorms and heatwaves, creating greater urban adapting ability in the face of climate change. They also enhance public spaces, providing charging stations, and powering streetlights.
In comparison to other kinds of ground-mounted solar panel devices, solar trees don’t require much land. They make solar energy generation possible in areas with little land that can’t support vast solar arrays, as well as places that lack sufficient rooftop space for panels. However, solar panels are much cheaper than solar trees at present and have far greater energy generation capacity. Therefore, present solar tree designs often serve as a extra source rather than as a primary energy source.
At present, solar trees aren’t designed as large-scale solar projects, which limits their ability to contribute to the low-carbon energy transition. Still, their varied designs are appealing. This makes solar trees effective at displaying and thereby educating people about solar energy, and promoting a business or organization’s commitment to renewable energy.
1. What is the main purpose of building solar trees?| A．To beautify the urban environment. | B．To draw public attention to solar energy. |
| C．To replace non-renewable energy resources. | D．To provide charging services in emergencies. |
| A．It stores energy in its own battery. |
| B．It can adjust its height automatically. |
| C．It is made of environmentally friendly materials. |
| D．It transforms sunlight into electricity by its metal base. |
| A．The design features of solar trees. | B．The ways of saving energy in cities. |
| C．The benefits of solar trees to humans. | D．The difficulties of promoting solar trees. |
| A．They occupy much less land. | B．They are cheaper to manufacture. |
| C．They are more effective in generating energy. | D．They can work in various weather conditions. |
6 . To American ears, hearing the words “Black Grace” used together makes them feel a kind of quiet strength in times of hardship or perhaps a positive cultural stereotype (刻板印象). To choreographer Neil Ieremia, the words represent the joining of two ideas born from personal and cultural conflict.
In New Zealand, where Ieremia grew up in what he describes as “a fairly tough town” northeast of Wellington, black was used to describe brave, daring behavior. In Ieremia’s youth, brave people were called “black”, linking them to the neighborhood’ s heroes, New Zealand’ s great All Blacks, the national rugby (橄榄球) team.
Ieremia was born in New Zealand to Samoan immigrants who arrived in the country during the 1960s. Illnesses kept him from actively participating in the country’s widespread sports culture. This was difficult for a Pacific Island boy living in a neighborhood where boys were expected to be sporty and tough. In this world, he developed a passion for music.
At the age of 19, Ieremia decided to attend dance school. At his first ballet class, the instructor told him he lacked grace. Ieremia wasn’t discouraged. When he started his own dance company in 1995, he looked to his own experiences for a name that would also reflect his ambitions for dance grace and storytelling. Thus Black Grace was born. Since then, he has changed the face of modern dance in New Zealand and turned Black Grace into one of the most recognizable and successful cultural brands.
In the early years of Black Grace, Ieremia struggled with the conflict between Samoan and New Zealand cultures. Questions of how and where one belongs were at the forefront of his work. Ieremia draws inspiration from his Samoan and New Zealand roots to create innovative dance works that reach across social, cultural and generational barriers. The work itself is highly physical, rich in the storytelling traditions of the South Pacific, and expressed with unique beauty and power.
1. What is Neil Ieremia’s occupation?| A．a sports figure | B．a dancer | C．a psychologist | D．a great writer |
| A．Stay calm and positive when facing difficulties |
| B．The quality of being courageous and elegant |
| C．A kind of stereotype from cultural conflict |
| D．The expectation of being sporty and tough |
| A．Ieremia immigrated from New Zealand to Samoan. |
| B．Ieremia played a key role in mainstream sports culture. |
| C．Ieremia had a talent for dance at an early age. |
| D．Ieremia made Black Grace become a successful cultural brand. |
| A．Bridging cultures through dance | B．A conflict between two cultures |
| C．Breaking cultural stereotype | D．Neil Iremia—a successful choreographer |
7 . You have a story to tell and pass on — Start today! Your memories and legacy will inspire and enrich others. LifeStories.com guides you in writing your life story. Our goal is to help you build a bridge from you to future generations and transform the lives at both ends. This easy, creative, comprehensive and a fun website allows you to:
ComposeCapture your memories and write your life story using questions. We provide over 1,000 questions to help you! These questions help stimulate your memory and cover your different life stages. You can answer all of them or just a partial list.
Collaborate (合作)Invite others to read your story AND they can add content to your story. It’s easy and fun to do. After all life is about those experiences and events with others. So invite them to enrich your story.
ContributeYour journey is something beautiful to share with your family and friends. Really… is there anything more important to pass on to generations that follow? Your Life and Your Story will be honored and treasured for generations to come.
Tell Others!Nothing is more important then the legacy of your spiritual life story. Spread the good news to your friends and family and help them get started telling their story. Click here to get started.
Don’t Have An Account?Creating an account is easy. Start writing your story today by signing up for an account here.
Register now, it’s FREE!This registration is free and you will see your life story book in your library, the chapters of your book, and over 1,000 questions. If you wish to answer these questions, and share your answer with family and friends, you will need to pay a small annual fee of $100.00. So, check it out! We hope you join our ever-expanding list of satisfied customers who are writing their stories and sharing it with those they love.
1. What is the advertisement for?| A．Teaching learners to build websites. |
| B．Selling the famous writers’ story books. |
| C．Assisting readers to write life stories. |
| D．Providing students with reading materials. |
| A．Three. | B．Four. | C．Five. | D．Seven. |
| A．Registering to become learners. |
| B．Going over the guiding questions. |
| C．Seeing the chapters of your book. |
| D．Sharing your answers with others. |
8 . Guilin City Daily Bus Tour
| Departure Date: Daily Tour Time: Around 8:00 a.m.—Around 5:30 p.m. Pick-up & Drop-off Service: Your hotel in the downtown Vehicle Model: Air-conditioned tour coach Tour Guide Service: English-speaking tour guide Type of Tour: Bus Day Tours Tour Highlights: Reed Flute Cave, The Elephant Trunk Hill, The Fubo Hill, The Seven Star Park Tour Code: TBGTS－GLBT02 | |
| Itinerary (路线): 1. Pick up service by your tour guide and driver in the morning. 2. Visit Reed Flute Cave. Reed Flute Cave is the largest and the most spectacular of the karst caverns in Guilin. Its name derives from the reed that grows near the entrance of the cave and makes excellent flutes. 3. Visit the Elephant Trunk Hill. Elephant Trunk Peak, also known as Elephant Hill, a huge rock formation of an elephant by the confluence of the Yang and Li rivers, looks as if its trunk is dipping into the water. 4. Visit the Fubo Hill. Fubo Hill towers solitarily in the northeast of the city, with half of it in the Li River. 5. Visit the Seven Star Park. Located on the east bank of the Li River, the Seven-Star Park is about 1.5 kilometers away from the city proper. 6. There are two typical featured shopping stores included during today’s tour. 7. Drop-off service at your hotel at around 9:30PM. | Quotation (价格) Adult: USD66/pp (RMB400/pp) Child(Age:4-12):USD33/PP (RMB200/pp) Infant (Age:0-3): Free Cost Includes: 1. Service for Picking up and dropping off at the hotel. 2. Air-conditioned tour coach. 3. Professional English-speaking tour guide service. 4. Cost of main entrance tickets of mentioned attractions in the itinerary listed above. 5. Typical Chinese lunch. Cost Excludes: 1. All additional fees not listed as include in tour price will be the responsibility of the guest. 2. Tips to the guide and driver as your wish. (Based on the well-done job of the guide and driver). |
| How to book the tour: 1. Please use our online booking or book the tour by email to info@tour-china-guide.com. 2. Our real trip advisors will have your booking confirmed within one working day. We even take last minute booking if time is pressing. When your booking is confirmed, you will get a confirmation email from us, which includes the confirmed detailed itinerary with prices. 3. In your reply, please inform us of your hotel in Xi’an and date for the tour. Usually our tour guide will call you in the evening to confirm the departure time from your hotel. | Payment: 1. You don’t need to pay any deposit to book this tour. 2. Our tour guide will collect the money on the spot when you board the coach. 3. Both RMB and US Dollar are acceptable. Travel with Tour-china-guide Travel Service. Enjoy your pleasant and unforgettable trip in China. You just can’t afford to miss it! |
1. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．Payment should be made in advance. |
| B．English-speaking tour guide service is offered. |
| C．Shopping stores are not included in the tour. |
| D．Tips to the guide and driver are included in the quotation. |
| A．online booking is available | B．emailing is not recommended |
| C．it can be made by telephone | D．confirmation is made one working day later |
| A．a report | B．a journal | C．an advertisement | D．an introduction |
9 . For the Birds! (FTB!) is a place-based city conservation education program serving 2,000+ New York City youth and community members with a focus on schools and communities across all five boroughs (行政区) that are underserved by environmental education. The mission of FTB! is to get youth excited about helping birds and the places they need to survive. FTB! not only provides knowledge of local species and habitats but also encourages a sense of ecological place in one’s own community and empowers youth to take an active interest in protecting their local environment for birds and people.
For the Birds! Program Options
In-person Programs: During a 4, 8, or 12 session program, program participants learn about birds and local habitats in their neighborhood through both in-class and outdoor lessons. The curriculum is adaptable for grades 6-12. Each program ends with a field trip to a local park and/or a habitat project designed to attract birds and other wildlife to their community. Click here for our full course catalog.
Contact FTB!
To get started, learn more, or for questions about New York City FTB! programs, please contact our New York City team member.
Located outside of New York City? Audubon New York centers also offer FTB! program and volunteer opportunities. Reach out to a center near you to learn more.
| New York City Lianne D’Arcy, Senior Coordinator, Education & Volunteer Outreach lianne.darcy@audubon.org | Finger Lakes Region Montezuma Audubon Center 2295 State Route 89, Savannah, NY 13146 montezuma@audubon.org |
| Hudson Valley Region Rebecca Schultz, Education Manager Constitution Marsh Audubon Center and Sanctuary 127 Warren Landing Road, Garrison, NY 10524 rschultz@audubon.org | Long Island Julie Nelsen, Education Manager Theodore Roosevelt Sanctuary and Audubon Center 134 Cove Road, Oyster Bay, NY 10524 jnelsen@audubon.org |
| A．To build up community connections. | B．To get youth involved in bird protection. |
| C．To raise money for bird-saving programs. | D．To inform youth of endangered bird species. |
| A．They feature online lessons. | B．They involve hands-on activities. |
| C．They focus on global environment. | D．They offer 6 options for program duration. |
| A．lianne.darcy@audubon.org | B．rschultz@audubon.org |
| C．montezuma@audubon.org | D．jnelsen@audubon.org |
10 . College and high-school teachers are expressing concern about ChatGPT, an AI program that allows people with limited writing skills to create high-quality texts. It calls into question how and why we teach writing at all. If AI can do a fairly good job at most writing tasks, why spend so much time learning writing in school?
In fact, learning to write goes beyond just mastering grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. It involves much more. For one thing, it’s about learning to turn a loose set of thoughts into a clear line of reasoning — a skill that is useful for everyone, not just those who enjoy writing or need to do a lot of it for work.
Learning to write also trains your imagination to construct the person who will read your words. It puts you in relation to someone you may not know, someone who may even not exist. When you learn to write, you learn to meet their needs in an unfamiliar context. Even ordinary assignments teach students to predict what another person knows and expects.
Writing is never simply self-expression. It’s expression to a specific audience for a specific purpose. In some cases, like a love letter, a writer knows their audience very well. In others, the audience is every bit a work of the imagination as a novel’s characters are. Writers, then, should give up trying to address the public at large, but should imagine that a friend, though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk.
When this act of imagination is done well, a reader can feel deeply understood, as if a stranger has told them some previously unknown truth about themselves. That’s how I felt reading “Difference Maker” — an essay about parenthood. While our situations were unique, naming the problem provided a deeper understanding.
It seems unavoidable that large-language models of AI will allow us to offload some of the writing tasks that students learn in school. But we can’t allow ourselves to lose the capacity to empathize (共情) with distant strangers at just the moment when we’re more able than ever to communicate with them.
1. What is teachers’ concern about ChatGPT?| A．It’s a challenge to apply it to teaching. | B．It’s hard to grade a paper written by it. |
| C．It limits students’ imagination and creativity. | D．It questions the necessity of teaching writing. |
| A．It helps with logical thinking. | B．It is a basic skill for everyone. |
| C．It focuses on correct expression. | D．It is closely related to social skills. |
| A．Expressing oneself. | B．Targeting intended readers. |
| C．Conveying imaginative ideas. | D．Creating attractive characters. |
| A．What AI Can’t Teach the Writing Students | B．ChatGPT Writing VS Traditional Writing |
| C．Never Lose the Capacity for Empathy | D．What Is the Future for AI Writing |
