1 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once.Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. present       B. motivation        C. desire            D. creative     AB. awarded   AC. explore   AD. applications         BC. approach       BD. reduction       CD. currently        ABC. severe

Google Science Fair launched in 2011 as a way to challenge students around the globe to figure out solutions to some of the world’s largest problems, and this year’s winner focused on a problem we’re still wrapping our arms around: microplastics. Fionn Ferreira, an 18-year-old Irish student, earned the $50,000 prize through a simple    1    to help the planet. He was one of 24 finalists from 14 countries who went to Google headquarters to    2    their projects. Ferreira from West Cork, Ireland, developed a novel     3     to extracting (萃取) microplastics from water, with the greater goal of creating a method to clean our oceans.

You can explore Ferreira’s science fair project at the Google Science Fair project page. Beyond the science, it explains his    4    for the project, which stems from growing up near the coast and his love of nature. He tested 10 different types of microplastic suspensions and found that he could remove 85% or more of the microplastic contents in his samples. Ultimately, a(n)     5     in the amount of plastic the world uses on a daily basis is the best solution, but this project proves there are new,     6    ways to clean the water we’ve already polluted.

Lawmakers in Ireland     7     have plans to introduce legislation that will outlaw the sale, manufacturing, import and export of products containing microplastics. For his efforts, Ferreira was     8    $50,000 in scholarship money. He would like to study chemistry or chemical engineering in Ireland or in Europe. He currently works as a curator at the local Schull Planetarium, is fluent in three languages, is a skilled trumpet player,and has won 12 science fair awards.

As he described in his project page, it’s the next step of the process that opens doors: ”… winning a prize would give my project more attention and let it grow with mentorship to solve a real problem on the Earth. There is nothing I would like to see more than my project and idea to be used in real life     9     and I think a prize could do this.“

For any young scientists itching to     10    their own idea, your chance will come. The project submission window typically runs for a couple of months starting in September and ending in December. And as this year’s callout to young scientists reminds us, every great idea starts somewhere.

5 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. approach     B. bare     C. consistent     D. covered     AB. economies AC. hit     AD. record     BC. set     BD. stormed     CD. tough ABC. updates

The weather has been so warm, and snow so scarce, that Windham Mountain Resort in the Catskills opened its chairlifts to mountain bikers last weekend instead of skiers.

Ski resorts and their fans in the Northeast are hoping for a much better January. It has been a(n)     1    season. Judging by listings on Sno-country.com, which provides     2     on the slopes, roughly half of the ski areas in the Northeast haven’t opened yet for skiers but aimed to do so soon.

Snow making equipment needs temperatures in the high 20s or below. At Windham, eight trails out of 54 had enough snow to open on Friday, but Chip Seamans, general manager at Windham, predicted many more will be     3     next weekend.

“It looks like finally tonight and tomorrow and into next week we’ll get some     4     snowfalls so we’e very excited,” Mr. Seamans said.

Last month was the warmest December on     5     in Central Park, according to the National Weather Service. It said last month the average daily temperature in New York City     6     50.8 degrees, which is 13.3 degrees warmer than normal. Last month beat the previous December record of 44.1 degrees,     7     in 2001.

Tyler Fairbank, chief executive of the Fairbank Group, said the ski industry overall typically did 20% to 25% of its business over the Christmas holidays so the     8     slopes had a terrible impact. It also hurt hotels, equipment stores and local     9    .

Mr. Fairbank said about 25% to 30% of the slopes were open at his group’s mountains and he expected that to rise to 70% in a week.

The National Weather Service predicted Friday’s late night lows would range from the mid-20s inland to the lower 30s for New York City. It said a cold front would     10     Sunday evening, with the chilliest air of the season thus far coming on Monday.

6 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A.breakdown               B.masterpieces          C.committed                 D. reduced          E.extreme   F.allowances G.memorable       H.security       I.   attribute          J.tribute        K.conducted

The little thief: How Charlie Chaplin survived his hungry childhood

A recently unearthed interview with an old friend recalls how the actor was looked after by a kindly ‘foster mother’ who made sure he did the right thing.

The     1     poverty endured by Charlie Chaplin while growing up in the slums (贫民窟) of Victorian London    2    him to stealing and being scolded by the woman who took care of him, according to an interview with one of his childhood friends that has remained unheard in the British Film Institute for almost 40 years.

Effie Wisdom, whose aunt gave him a home from home when he needed it most, lamented that Chaplin “had a terrible life” as a child, “always hungry”, dressed in “ragged”, filthy clothes - no doubt later inspiring the comic genius who created the Tramp, society’s eternal victim and one of cinema’s most     3     characters.

In 1983, aged 92, Wisdom gave an interview in which she recalled first meeting Chaplin when he was five and she was seven, with her aunt becoming his “foster mother”, as he used to tell her.

She recalled: “My aunt used to feed him because there was no social    4     in those days, no free milk, no children’s     5    , nothing. You never starved and yet you were on the breadline.”

“He used to go up Lambeth Walk and pinch . He’d come home with four eggs one day in his pocket. He came home with a pair of boots one day he’d nicked.”

Her aunt scolded him: “Do you want me to get the police? If you go on doing this, you’ll be locked up. You realize that, don’t you?”

The interview was     6    by Kevin Brownlow, one of Britain’s leading experts in silent films after researching Unknown Chaplin, the acclaimed three-part 1983 documentary series that he made with David Gill. It has been stored in the British Film Institute’s archive (档案) ever since.

Chaplin’s parents were music-hall performers and his mother was abandoned by her husband. His mother was then    7    to an asylum (精神病院).

After Chaplin’s death in 1977, Wisdom had written to his widow (遗孀), with memories of his mother’s desperate concern for her sons, Charlie and Sydney “I told Lady Chaplin I knew Charlie when he was a little boy. I used to play with him out in the street. When his mother had a nervous    8    , she said to my aunt, ‘If I had to go away, you wouldn’t let my lovely sons go into an orphanage?’ My aunt said, ‘No, I’ll look after them, don’t you worry’. My aunt looked after them, fed them and clothed them.”

Chaplin never forgot that. Wisdom paid     9    to his generosity towards her after finding success in America: “He used to send my aunt so much money because she used to look after him.”He also wrote to her.

Chaplin, with his derby hat (圆顶窄边礼帽)，toothbrush moustache and impossibly large boots, was the protagonist in such    10    as City Lights, The Great Dictator and Limelight.

Wisdom, who left school at 13 and worked in a London pub into her 80s, recalled his natural comedic talent, “He was always falling about being funny. He’d get an old table out in the yard, and he’d get all the kids in there, and get up there, put an old pair of trousers on, an old coat and a stick when he was 12. The kids loved that, he used to fall off the table, then he’d get up.” But she joked: “I never thought he’d get to where he got.”

She remembered him writing to her aunt from America, telling her that he would visit on his return to England: “He said, I’m not like when I left England with nothing. I’m going on to be a rich man.”

She added that Chaplin stayed at the Ritz (一家豪华酒店) and turned up at his aunt’s home in-a chauffeur (私人司机)-driven Rolls-Royce: “He invited my aunt and my uncle and me to the Ritz. My aunt says to me, ‘Of course I’d never been in a place like that’.”

From the Gardian

7 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. accurately   B. attaches   C. displaying   D. employed   E. feedback   F. foresaw G. guide   H. increasingly   I. map   J. operating   K. wonders

VR surgery

Richard Satava, a program manager for advanced medical technologies, has been a driving force bringing virtual reality to medicine, where computers create a “virtual” environment for surgeons.

“With virtual reality we’ll be able to put a surgeon in every trench(战壕),” said Satava. He     1     a time when soldiers who are wounded fighting overseas are put in mobile surgical units equipped with computers.

The computers would convey images of the soldiers to surgeons back in the U. S. The surgeons would look at the soldier through virtual reality helmets that contain a small screen     2     the image of the wound. The doctors would     3     robotic instruments in the battlefield mobile surgical unit that operate on the soldier.

Although Satava’s vision may be years away from standard     4     procedure, scientists are progressing toward virtual reality surgery. Engineers in California are developing a tele-operating device. As surgeons watch a 3D image of the surgery, they move instruments connected to a computer, which passes their movements to robotic instruments that perform the surgery. The computer provides     5     to the surgeon.

The technological     6     may not yet be part of the community hospital setting. However, with the passage of time, some of the machinery is     7     finding its way into civilian medicine. At Wayne State University Medical School, surgeon Lucia Zamorano takes images of the brain from computerized scans and uses a computer program to produce a 3D image. She can then move the 3D image on the computer screen to     8     the shortest and least invasive surgical path to the cancer. Zamorano is also using technology that     9     a needle to surgical instruments so that she can track their positions. While cutting away a cancer deep in the brain, she watches the movement of her surgical tools in a computer graphics image of the patient’s brain taken before surgery.

During these procedures surgeons are wearing 3D glasses for a better view. And they are commanding robot surgeons to cut away tissue more     10     than human surgeons can.

Satava says, “We are in the midst of a fundamental change in the field of medicine.”

8 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. backed   B. benefit   C. consumption   D. diversity   E. disordered   F. matter G. perceive   H. led   I. snacking   J. treat   K. wandering

Walking past a corner bakery, you may find yourself drawn in by the fresh smell of sweets wafting from the front door. You're not alone. The knowledge that humans make decisions based on their nose has     1     major brands like Cinnabon and Panera Bread to use the scents of baked goods in their restaurants, leading to big increases in sales.

But according to a new study, the food you ate just before your walk past the bakery may impact your chance of stopping in for a sweet     2    —and not just because you're full. Scientists at Northwestern University found that people became less sensitive to food odors (气味) based on the meal they had eaten just before. So, if you were     3     on baked goods from a coworker before your walk, for example, you may be less likely to stop into that sweet-smelling bakery.

The study found that participants who had just eaten a meal of either cinnamon buns (肉桂面包) or pizza were less likely to     4     "meal-matched" odors, but not non-matched odors. The findings were then     5     by brain scans that showed brain activity in parts of the brain that process odors was altered in a similar way. These findings show that just as smell regulates what we eat, what we eat—in turn—regulates our sense of smell.

Feedback between food intake and the olfactory (嗅觉的) system may have an evolutionary     6    , said senior and corresponding study author Thorsten Kahnt, an assistant professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "If you think about our ancestors     7     around the forest trying to find food, they find and eat berries and then aren't as sensitive to the smell of berries anymore, "Kahnt said. So it could theoretically help facilitate (促进)     8     in food and nutrient intake.

While we may not notice the hunter-gatherer adaptation having an effect on our day-to-day decision-making, the connection between our nose, what we seek out and what we can detect with our nose may still     9    . If the nose isn't working right, for example, the feedback may be disrupted, leading to problems with     10     eating and obesity. There may even be links to disrupted sleep, another tie to the olfactory system the Kahnt lab is researching.

9 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. contributed       B. foundation       C. separating       D. isolated       E cultivating F. accomplished       G. convention       H. passion       I. well-educated J. reluctant       K. musician

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, an affluent (富裕的) suburb just west of Chicago, to Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, a physician, and Grace Hall Hemingway, a musician. His parents were     1     in Oak Park, a conservative community about which resident Frank Lloyd Wright said, “So many churches for so many good people to go to. ”When Clarence and Grace Hemingway married in 1896, they lived wit Grace’s father, Ernest Miller Hall, after whom they named their first son, the second of their six children. Grace followed the Victorian     2     of not differentiating children’s clothing by gender. With only a year     3     the two, Emest and Marcelline resembled one-another strongly.

Hemingway s mother was a well-known local musician, and taught her     4     son to play the cello (大提琴). Later he said music lessons     5     to his writing style, as evidenced in For Whom the Bell Tolls. As an adult Hemingway professed to hate his mother, although they shared similar enthusiastic energies. Each summer the family traveled to Windemere on Walloon Lake, near Petoskey, Michigan. Ernest joined his father and learned to hunt, fish and camp in the woods and lakes of Northern Michigan, early experiences    6     a life-long     7     for outdoor adventure and living in remote or     8     areas.

He attended Oak Park and River Forest High School in Oak Park between 1913 and 1917. He was a(n)     9     athlete, and competed in boxing, track and field, water polo, and football. He performed in the school orchestra (管弦乐队) for two years with his sister Marcelline, and received good grades in English classes. Like Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Sinclair Lewis, Hemingway was a journalist before becoming a novelist. After leaving high school, he went to work for The Kansas City Star as a cub reporter. Although he stayed there for only six months, he relied on the Star’s style guide as a     10     for his writing. such as “Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative. ”

10 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. competing     B. incredibly     C. issued     D. influential     E. barely F. hosting     G. highlight       H. stage     I. diagnosis     J. related K. commitment

Shanghai Is Full Speed Ahead

After decades of experience in the field, Shanghai is strengthening its reputation as a global leader in     1     top-level, professional sports events.

Last month’s Shanghai Sailing Open, held from March 26—31 on Dishui Lake, was a typical example of the city’s world-famous excellence, attracting over 300 competitors, including a six—time world champion of Poland, a gold medalist at the Hangzhou Asian Games, and China’s former Olympic champion Xu Lijia;     2     in sailboats and yachts, sailors sang praise on the competition environment and overall atmosphere of the event.

Shanghai’s     3     to developing its sports scene has been key to this success. In 2015, the Shanghai government     4     a plan to speed up the development of its sports industry, including a proposal to develop the city into a world-renowned sports hub within 10 years.

According to the “2023 Shanghai sports event influence     5     report”, Shanghai held 118 major sports events last year, with 36 of those international-level events, including the ATP 1000 Shanghai Masters, the Shanghai Marathon, and the Shanghai Half Marathon, which were rated as the city’s most     6     sports events last year.

This year, besides the recent Shanghai Sailing Open and various district-organized half marathon events, the city will continue to     7     sports competitions such as the Shanghai Half Marathon, the Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix, the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, and the Olympic Qualifier Series.

The success of sports development in Shanghai is closely     8     to a policy of top-level construction. In addition to top—level international competitions, top—tier home teams, and professional leagues, brand events are staged year-round to     9     the city’s characteristics. Linking sports with culture, commerce, tourism, and exhibitions is another feature of the city’s sports environment, helping to     10     maximize the economic benefits. Spectators can expect to be treated to the very best in urban sports and that organizers will strive to provide a warm atmosphere of sports, art, music, and culture.