1 . 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. earth-bound B. repeatedly C. decay D. increasingly E. redirect F. detecting G. complexity H. self-destructing I. exhibit J. protective K. atmosphere

New Effort To Clean Up Space Junk Reaches Orbit (轨道)

A demonstration mission to test an idea to clean up space debris (碎片) was launched Monday morning local time from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Known as ELSA-d, the mission will     1     technology that could help capture space junk, the millions of pieces of orbital debris that float above Earth.

The more than 8,000 metric tons of debris threaten the loss of services we rely on for     2     life, including weather forecasting, telecommunications and GPS systems.

The spacecraft works by attempting to -attach itself to dead satellites and pushing them toward Earth to burn up in the     3    .

The mission, which will be run from the U.K., will carry out this catch and release process     4     over the course of six months. The goal is to prove the servicer satellite’s ability to track down and remove with its target in varying levels of     5    .

Space junk has been a growing problem for years as human-made objects such as old satellites and spacecraft parts build up in low Earth orbit until they     6    , deorbit, explode or crash with other objects, breaking into smaller pieces of waste.

According to a recent report by NASA, at least 26,000 of the millions of pieces of space junk are orbiting along at 17,500 mph, they could “destroy a satellite on impact”. More than 500,000 pieces are a “mission-ending threat” because of their ability to impact     7     systems, fuel tanks and spacecraft cabins.

The development of other cleanup technologies has been in progress for years. In 2016, Japan’s space agency sent a 700-meter chain into space to try to slow down and     8     space junk. In 2018, a device called RemoveDebris successfully cast a net around a copy satellite.

The European Space Agency also plans to send a(n)     9     robot into orbit in 2025, which the organization’s former director general has referred to as a space “vacuum cleaner”.

These efforts could prove     10     important as private space ventures like SpaceX continue to disorder low Earth orbit with a huge number of satellites.

2 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Scientists say cure for baldness could be close

Help may soon be at hand for those who are losing or have lost their hair. A team of Japanese scientists has discovered stem cells     1     are vital in the hair regeneration process. This is promising news for the millions of people worldwide who suffer from baldness. A cure has escaped     2     (understand) by scientists for decades,     3     extensive research and significant investment in research. The scientists are now setting out on clinical research and laboratory trials. They hope to adapt the stem cells to finally create a therapy for hair loss. Baldness principally affects men. By the age of 35, around two-thirds of men will experience some degree of hair loss and by the age of 50, up to 85 per cent will experience significantly thinning hair.

The scientists took fur cells from mice and cultured them in the lab. They shared an observation     4     hair growth was a cyclical process within the follicle (毛囊). They analysed the stem cells and used 220 combinations of chemicals     5     (make) the hair regrow naturally. Lead scientist Takashi Tsuji said, “Our culture system establishes a method for cyclical regeneration of hair follicles from hair follicle stem cells and will help make hair follicle regeneration therapy a reality in the near future.” He added, “Losing hair is not life-threatening,     6     it negatively affects the quality of life.” Sam Baker, a 52-year-old bank worker, hopes the therapy     7     work. He said, “Having a full head of hair again will make me look ten years     8     (young)”.

It has to pass clinical trials     9     this baldness cure becomes commercially available. So far, the researchers     10     (demonstrate) stem cell therapy in preclinical lab tests. Tsuji said they were looking for outside collaborators to help develop clinical applications for the new hair growth technology.

3 .
1. What’s the cost for each MDHearingAid if you buy a pair according to the advertisement?

A．$99.99.

B．$199.99.

C．$399.98.

D．$2,400.

2. Why does the hearing aid advertised have price advantage over others?

A．It doesn’t include batteries.

B．It involves a simpler assembly job.

C．It gives customers the benefit of lowered cost.

D．It uses a superior digital hearing aid technology.

3. Which of the following is guaranteed as advertised?

A．You will not develop Alzheimer’s disease if you keep using the hearing aid.

B．You may get remote support from a hearing expert free of charge after the purchase.

C．You will have appointments with the clinic to adjust the hearing aid for personal use.

D．You can return the hearing aid if not satisfied but only with part of the money paid back.

4 . Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

Taking It to Extremes

Regular exercise benefits people extensively, from weight control to lengthened life. Exercise sets up a chain reaction that is generally positive for the human body, preventing and controlling some health problems. However, endurance sports, requiring the sustained efforts for long periods of time, reveal a darker side of exercise.

A common endurance sport is marathon. Running 26.2 miles is an achievement, but it’s ultimately harmful. In one study, about 75% of marathon runners suffered from kidney injury after finishing the race. Similarly, cross-country skiing offers excellent cardiovascular benefits when performing at a leisurely pace. Yet cross-country skiing alters the structure of the heart, making it more easily damaged to an arrhythmia, a condition where the heart beats irregularly. When it came to the participants’ hearts, competitive success in cross-country skiing doesn’t always translate into better health. The most extreme endurance races, such as Ironman Triathlons, provide more discouraging data.

Endurance athletes face another serious problem: they may drink much water while competing. Proper hydration while exercising is key to health and performance. But, too much of a good thing can be dangerous. Reportedly, over 10% of the participants in the triathlon suffered from hyponatremia, occurring when the level of sodium (钠) in the blood becomes dangerously low, often when the sodium concentration is too low with water. Evidently, extreme endurance sports can transform the basic necessity of drinking water into a potential source of harm.

Does running help a person live longer? A study published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings concluded that running distances of 0.1 to 19.9 miles a week, at six to seven miles per hour, was linked to a lower risk of death. However, running distances and speeds beyond this was not tied to higher rates of survival. This finding demonstrates no exercise is better for one’s health than excessive exercise in endurance sports.

Certainly, none of this means that exercise in moderation is harmful, but it shows that the benefits of exercise level off, and even reverse, when a person exercises too much. Endurance sports may continue to be a popular pursuit for those seeking a challenge, but for those eager for better health, a little can work.

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5 . Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in each blank with a proper sentence given in the box. Each sentence can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need.

Edison and Popular Culture

Whenever we play music or go to the movies, we enjoy the benefits of Thomas Edison’s genius and hard work. Although Edison is perhaps most famous for his light bulb, his inventions in sound recording and motion pictures has contributed to entertainment industry.

After his successful development of the first phonograph in 1877, Edison and his researchers made countless improvements to the phonograph (留声机) striving for the finest sound reproduction possible.     1     What the public really wanted, however, was a machine to play music. Recognizing the biggest market for the phonograph, Edison began producing musical records in the early 1890s. However scratchy and rough those early records seemed, they were amazing to buyers who were hearing recorded sound for the very first time. The development of records, cassette tapes and finally digital music traces back to Edison’s early experiments with sound recording.

    2     In October 1888, Edison intended to do “for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear, which is the recording and reproduction of things in motion.” Thus began Edison’s development of the kinetograph (motion picture camera) and kinetoscope (motion picture viewer).

Over the next years, Edison experimented with the making of motion pictures, constructing the Black Maria, the world’s first structure especially built to be a motion picture studio. The first motion pictures were not projected on a theater screen.     3     For a 5-cent coin, viewers could look through the peephole (窥孔) to see Blacksmith Scene, or the Barbershop. Although the first films lasted less than a minute, they excited audiences as much as any film seen today.

The first films were silent, but in 1895 Edison attempted to combine sound recording and motion pictures in a device he called the kinetophone. Unfortunately, this early effort at talking motion pictures proved unsuccessful. More than thirty years would pass before sound films would become widespread.

Edison wanted to invent things to improve the lives of all people, whether it was electric light bulbs to light their homes or phonographs and motion pictures to inspire their imagination. Every time we turn on a light switch or watch movie, we enjoy the gift of Edison’s genius. But true genius, said Edison, relies on “hard work, stick-to-initiativeness, and common sense”.     4    

A．Thomas Edison’s own example of dedication and determination may be his true gift.

B．Instead, viewers looked through a peephole fixed on top of a box with the projector inside.

C．Edison managed to make the phonograph praised by most people with effort and devotion,

D．Not satisfied with merely recording sound, Edison turned his attention to another of the senses: sight.

E．Thanks to Edison, people can live a convenient and comfortable life that we couldn’t imagine before.

F．At first, Edison thought the phonograph primarily suitable only for business purposes, like the dictation of letters.

6 . Humans are not the only ones who underwent self-domestication. So did our close relatives, the bonobos, and the species we call our best friend. A tiny proportion of the genome differentiates dogs from wolves, and yet millions of dogs are comfortably curled up in our homes, while wolves move around at the edge of extinction.

When our research group began its work almost 20 years ago, we discovered that dogs also have extraordinary intelligence: they can read our gestures better than any other species. Wolves, in contrast, are mysterious and unpredictable. Their home is the wilderness, and that wilderness is shrinking.

But not so long ago the evolutionary race between dogs and wolves was so close, it was unclear who would win. Dogs, in fact, did not descend from wolves. Instead, dogs and wolves shared a wolflike ancestor.

Folklore supposes that humans brought wolf puppies into camp and domesticated them. Or as wolf expert David Mech wrote in 1974, “Evidently early humans tamed wolves and domesticated them, eventually selectively breeding them and finally developing the domestic dog from them.” But this story has not held up. Taming an animal occurs during its lifetime. Domestication happens over generations and involves changes to the genome.

So how did wolves turn into dogs? Back in the Ice Age, as our human populations grew more sedentary, we probably created more rubbish, which we then dumped outside our camps. These leavings would have included tempting pieces of food for hungry wolves. Not every wolf would have been able to scavenge, however. These animals would have had to be unafraid of humans, and if they displayed any aggression toward us, they would have been killed. After generations of selection for friendliness without intentional selection by humans, this special population of wolves would have begun to take on a different appearance. Coat color, ears, tails: all probably started to change.

Animals that could respond to our gestures and voices would be extremely useful as hunting partners and guards. They would have been valuable as well for their warmth and companionship, and slowly we would have allowed them to move from outside our camps to our firesides. We did not domesticate dogs. The friendliest wolves domesticated themselves.

1. What can be summarized about wolves and dogs from the first three paragraphs?

A．Wolves are smarter than dogs.

B．They are very much racially divided.

C．They are close relatives but dogs seem to be on the winning side.

D．Dogs have made their ways to indoor life while wolves to the wild.

2. What is the meaning of the underlined word “sedentary” in paragraph 5?

A．diverse	B．limited
C．living in the same place	D．involving regular migration

3. What does the author conclude from the history of dogs and wolves?

A．Dogs evolved from wolves.

B．Selective breeding developed domestic dogs.

C．Taming and domesticating an animal are the same thing.

D．Friendliness as a quality translates into an evolutionary strategy.

4. Which of the following is suitable for a title?

A．From Wolf to Dog	B．Dog: Our Favorite Pet
C．An Intentional Domestication	D．A Competition Story between Wolf and Dog

7 . 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.

2. How does the semi-solo hike work?

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.

3. Which of the following can describe the author’s feelings when she sat on a rock?

A．Fearless and refreshed.	B．Free and relaxed.
C．Tense and depressed.	D．Upset and embarrassed.

4. What message does the author convey with this text?

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.

8 . 听下面一段较长对话，回答以下小题
1.

A．A famous photographer.

B．Photographic technology in the 1800s.

C．Photographic equipment used in the 1800s.

D．A new museum about photography.

2.

A．Appearance.	B．Character.
C．Social status.	D．Role in history.

3.

A．Bright.	B．Colorful.
C．Black and white.	D．Vague.

4.

A．Because she wanted to give John a surprise.

B．Because she was unsure whether John liked such things.

C．Because she was uncertain whether the tickets would be available.

D．Because she didn’t know the exact time for the opening of the exhibition.

9 . 听下面一段独白,回答以下小题
1.

A．They cover as many as three countries.

B．They contain four peaks over 8,000 meters.

C．Everest is the tallest and easiest peak to climb.

D．Everest is one peak with good technical support.

2.

A．Because the rate of successes to deaths is about 24 to one.

B．Because there are more snow storms happening on average.

C．Because the mountain is of loose quality with natural disasters.

D．Because the lack of oxygen makes breathing problem more seriously.

3.

A．The introduction to mountain climbing.

B．The ways to overcome difficulties as mountaineers.

C．The most challenging mountains to climb in the world.

D．The relationship between taking breath and mountain height.

10 . 听下面一段独白,回答以下小题
1.

A．The number of students involved.

B．The supply of computers, tablets and smartphones.

C．The Internet, teachers’ IT ability and students’ IT equipment.

D．The Internet speed, educational TV programming and test security.

2.

A．500.

B．1000.

C．1500.

D．150,000.

3.

A．Educators’ complaints about the online platforms.

B．Millions of teachers working for online platforms.

C．The supply of computers, tablets and smartphones.

D．An online educational scheme to help disadvantaged children.