1 . What distinguishes an outstanding city? The Global Cities Index assesses cities based on diverse criteria, including:

·Business – The presence of multinational corporations. How many global companies are in the city? Does the city do a lot of international business?

·People – The city’s ability to attract talents globally. Does the city attract talented people from around the world? What’s proportion of residents with higher education?

·Media – The accessibility of varied information channels. How many residents have Internet access?

·Entertainment – The availability of leisure and cultural activities. Does the city have many entertainment options: museums, sports, music, and different types of restaurants?

Future Leaders       

Most cities on the Global Cities Index are strong in certain areas. Beijing’s strength, for example, is business, while Los Angeles’s strength is people. Which cities will become more powerful in the future?

·Asia: Beijing and Shanghai are both business centers and will continue to grow. In a few years, they will potentially match New York’s influence. Indian cities such as Mumbai and New Delhi have a lot of business potential, too.

·South America: urban centers like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in Brazil will gain influence. In these cities, the middle class is growing, and life for many people is improving.

·The Middle East: Istanbul in Turkey, Cairo in Egypt, and the cities of the United Arab Emirates such as Dubai will hold more power in international politics and business, especially in helping East and West work together.

In 10 years, the top cities on the index may be different, but one thing is certain: With over 50 percent of the world’s people now living in urban areas, tomorrow’s global cities will be more powerful than ever.

1. Which aspect is considered in the Global Cities Index?

A．Education.

B．Climate.

C．Transportation.

D．Location

2. Which parts of the world are predicted to grow in the area of business?

A．Asia and Europe.	B．Asia and South America.
C．Asia and the Middle East.	D．South America and the Middle East.

3. What is the passage mainly about?

A．Similarities between top cities.	B．The ways to become global cities.
C．Daily life in fastest-growing cities.	D．Forecast on future influential cities.

2 . There’s a classic short story in which a young man travels years ahead and meets his future self. Narratives like this have always been related to science fiction. But what if you could meet your future self?

I’m a psychologist and professor. My research over the past 15 years isn’t far from this theme. I’ve largely focused on how people think about and relate to their future selves, and explored the reasons why we have such a hard time making long-term decisions. In my research, I’ve learnt that we often imagine our future selves like strangers, which can impede us in making long-term choices. One way to bridge the emotional gap is to think of future selves in more concrete and vivid ways, like writing letters to and from one’s future self, which can strengthen the connection between current and future selves.

Admittedly, having people engage in an imagined conversation is a far cry from actually meeting one’s future self. But it’s believed that far richer interactions may happen in the near future through artificial intelligence (AI). It wouldn’t be predicting exactly what choices you’d make. It’d be more about showing your potential, based on the lives of people similar to you: not just one possible life for you, but rather, the most possible life path for you. Such interactions could offer valuable insights into our potential future selves.

So, to return to my original question: if you could time-travel to meet your future self, what aspects of your life would you want to know more about? I realized, through thorough reflections, that the most powerful questions would be ones that helped me make better choices today —questions exploring personal growth, regrets and unfulfilled actions.

Actually, you don’t need to wait for time travel or advanced AI for answers that you can act on. Through my research, I’ve learnt that simply taking a bit of time to picture this meeting can help you make better choices now. All you need is a little imagination, and the willingness to put yourself in the shoes of a person you currently treat as a stranger.

1. Why is it difficult for people to make long-term decisions according to the author?

A．Technology for time travel is not available.

B．Strangers cannot help with decision-making.

C．Writing letters to one’s future self is impractical.

D．People find it hard to connect with their distant selves.

2. What does the underlined phrase “a far cry from” mean in paragraph 3?

A．contradictory to	B．very different from
C．not as convenient as	D．less popular than

3. Which question would the author most likely ask his future self?

A．Why hasn’t my hard work ever paid off?

B．What can AI do to help people become better persons?

C．If given the chance, what would you have done differently?

D．How can I succeed without going through all the difficulties in life?

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

A．Time travel: What if you met your future self?

B．My research: How do people view their future selves?

C．Emotional gap: Why can’t we talk with our future selves?

D．Artificial intelligence: Is it possible to meet your future self?

3 . One day, you might be ordering your favorite pizza from a robot.Researchers at a university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are working on creating a pizza-making robot.

“Robots are basically preprogrammed to repeat the same actions over and over,” says David Held, a robot expert from Carnegie Mellon University, and one of the members of a pizza-making team．But making pizza has challenges.For instance, the flour (面粉) will become squishy when meeting water, with a shape that can change in many ways.Also, pizza-making requires many steps—such as rolling and cutting—and several tools, including a rolling, a knife and so on.In what order should the steps be done? Which tools should be picked, and when? “If you need to do a cooking task, there are several levels that you have to reason about,” Held says.Once people get the hang of it, “We don’t even need to think about exactly how we’re doing it- it sort of just happens.But robots can’t really “understand what to do on their own”.

To start, the team used a computer to consider how a robot could lift, fatten, gather, move and cut dough (生面团).The method has two levels of robotic reasoning: one that thinks how it should approach the overall task, and the other that thinks how it should move its “hands” to perform each action．The result was better than with the usual programming techniques.“We got a little bit closer to the right shape than the former methods,” Held says．“‘But there’s still a lot of room for improvement.”

For now, people will continue to make pizza the old-fashioned way: with their own hands.Sill, a pizza-making robot is a good goal.And if a robot could deal with dough, it could also work with other objects that can change shapes.“You can imagine robots helping in hospitals, or robots that clean up toys in day cares,” Held says.“The general goal is to eventually have robots that can help with whatever the task may be.”

1. What does the underlined word “squishy” in paragraph 2 mean?

A．Soft.

B．Dirty.

C．Plain.

D．Precious.

2. What is a challenge for pizza-making robots?

A．Separating flour from water.

B．Doing all the steps in order.

C．Using several tools at once.

D．Repeating the same actions.

3. What does paragraph 3 mainly talk about?

A．Methods of moving a pizza.

B．Problems with pizza making.

C．Improvements to the pizza robot.

D．Suggestions on how to make pizza.

4. What does Held say about the development of robots in the future?

A．They will help humans in different fields.

B．They will replace humans to do all the work.

C．They will do better than humans in day cares.

D．They will do whatever task as well as humans.

5 . “Human activity has wiped out two-thirds of the world’s wildlife since 1970,” CNN reported on September 10, 2020. Later that month, the Guardian reported that “40 percent of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction”. Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich and his colleagues argued that “the ongoing sixth mass extinction may be the most serious environmental threat to the persistence of civilization”. Around the same time, the Daily Mail warned that “human civilization stands a 90 percent chance of collapse within decades due to deforestation”.

These horrible calculations and projections come from authoritative-sounding reports issued by international agencies, conservation groups, and peer-reviewed scientific journals. But is the future of wild nature and human civilization really so poor?

Data from uncontroversial mainstream sources strongly indicate that both humanity and the natural world are likely to be flourishing rather than collapsing at the end of this century. Humanity is becoming an urban species, and that’s good for the environment, since urban dwellers generally use less electricity, produce less globe-warming carbon dioxide, and have smaller land footprints than people living in the countryside. By 2100, it is estimated that 85 percent of people will be city dwellers, which would leave only 1.2 billion still living in the countryside. That means more space for the wildlife and less pollution from the agriculture.

The global tree-covering area increased by 865,000 square miles between 1982 and 2016. The researchers found that gains in forest area in the mild, subtropical and northern climatic zones are offsetting declines in the tropics. The Maryland researchers owe much of that increase to “natural afforestation on abandoned agricultural land”. “Furthermore, forests in mountainous regions are expanding as climate warming enables trees to grow at higher altitudes,” they added.

Humanity does face big environmental challenges in the coming century. But the scientific and economic evidence shows that most of the trends are positive or can be turned in positive direction by human wisdom. Rather than an age of extinction, the 21st century promises to be an era of environmental renewal.

1. Why does the author mention the reports in Paragraph 1?

A．To give examples.	B．To introduce the topic.
C．To make a contrast.	D．To support his opinion.

2. What will happen according to Paragraph 3?

A．No one will choose to live in the countryside.

B．More space will be available for the wildlife.

C．Neither humanity nor the natural world will develop quickly.

D．Urban residents will do more walking than those in the countryside.

3. Which of the following statements will the researchers agree with about forest area?

A．The expanding and disappearance in forest area aren’t evenly matched.

B．The forest area in the mild, tropic and northern zones is increasing.

C．There are more forests in mountainous regions due to the climate warming.

D．The plan of “natural afforestation on abandoned agricultural land” is unfavorable.

4. What might be the best title of the passage?

A．The Bright Future of Humanity

B．The Challenges in the Coming Century

C．Better Environment, Better Future of Human

D．21st Century: An Era of Environmental Renewal