1. How old is Jays a now?
| A．8. | B．12. | C．14. |
| A．To encourage people to do research. |
| B．To urge the coal plant to shut down. |
| C．To raise money for her health problems. |
Giant panda Ya Ya arrived at Shanghai Pudong International Airport on Thursday from Memphis. Tennessee. She returned
In December, the Memphis Zoo announced that it would return Ya Ya,
In January, Chinese netizens showed their concern for Ya Ya, for she
In 2006, Ya Ya’s fur began to fall out, and the condition worsened in 2014. Various
3 . Humans’ voice sounds more pleasant than that of primates (灵长类动物) because we don’t have vocal membranes (声带膜), a new study suggests.
Humans have vocal cords (声带), muscles in the top of the throat, which vibrate (振动) to produce sound. That unique part helps people control their voices well enough to produce sounds that form spoken language. However, unlike all the other studied primates, humans don’t have vocal membranes.
To find out how vocal membranes affected spoken sounds, a team from Kyoto University took throats from monkeys that had died of natural causes and put the parts into devices, pushing air through the throats to see how the vocal cords and membranes would react. In the experiment, the researchers found that their vocal membranes and vocal cords vibrated together.
Researchers said these vocal membranes make it harder for other primates to control the voices they make. Without these membranes, humans’ vocal source is more balanced, allowing better voice control and production of long and balanced voices. A key thing that distinguishes human speech from animal sounds is our control over the sounds we make.
In humans, that sort of unpleasant voices can happen when we put extreme amounts of pressure on our voice, like baby crying and adult screaming. But those are rare cases. Researchers also said that our mouths and tongues could help control the voices. They are the basis of human languages.
1. Why does the human voice sound less unpleasant?| A．Humans have no vocal membranes. |
| B．Vocal cords of humans are very narrow. |
| C．Muscles in the human throat can hardly be controlled. |
| D．Humans’ brains are structured differently from other primates. |
| A．By exploring the history of human evolution. |
| B．By referring to previous researches on primates. |
| C．By observing monkeys’ vocal cords and membranes. |
| D．By comparing the voice patterns of different animals. |
| A．A doubt about the research process. |
| B．The importance of the research findings. |
| C．Further explanation of the research results. |
| D．The potential application of the research methods. |
| A．Why humans cry or scream? |
| B．How primates make sounds? |
| C．How primates develop languages? |
| D．Why humans’ voice sounds pleasant? |
The Jiqing night street is located in the central part of an old city area in Hankou. Local people simply say that if you come to Jiqing, you will know
In the evening, hundreds of sidewalk snack boothes come out on the street and provide popular flavored food
Native people like to order several of the best-known dishes and a few
It is a lively place
5 . From the moon to Mars, scientists have been looking for water —the key to life —in the solar system for decades. Recently, they have turned to Jupiter (木星)!
On April 14, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) JUICE spacecraft successfully lifted off from French Guiana in South America. JUICE, short for “Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer”, will collect data from Jupiter and its three moons, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
The three moons are believed to have big oceans of liquid water under their icy shells. According to ESA, the water on these moons could be as much as six times the amount in Earth’s oceans. The mission “will change our understanding of the solar system”, wrote Scientific American.
In 1998, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft found that Europa might send water as far as 160 kilometers into space. That gave scientists the idea of studying the icy moons of Jupiter.
The oceans under these moons are likely to be tens of kilometers deep. But they are also trapped under tens of kilometers of ice, making it very difficult to study them. Although JUICE cannot land on the surface, it has lots of high-tech equipment to study the moon’s environment, including spectral imaging (光谱成像) tools and radar. They could give more data on things like the thickness of the oceans, their salt content, and their distance from the icy shells above, reported Phys.org.
“The main goal is to understand whether there are habitable (可居住的) environments among those icy moons and around a giant planet like Jupiter,” JUICE team member Olivier Witasse said during a press conference on April 6.
1. What do we know about JUICE?| A．It left for Jupiter from the US. | B．It got its name from how it looks. |
| C．It will become one of Jupiter’s moons. | D．It will collect data from Jupiter and its moons. |
| A．cover a small part of its surface |
| B．all come from its icy shell |
| C．have been thrown into space |
| D．be as much as six times the amount in Earth’s oceans |
| A．wandered | B．wept | C．kept | D．declined |
| A．find a possible way to solve the water shortage on Earth |
| B．find out if it is possible for life to live on Jupiter’s moons |
| C．explore if Jupiter has living things similar to human beings |
| D．test ways of keeping water on Europa, Ganymede and Callisto |
6 . Every winter, Siberian cranes (白鹤) migrate from northeast Siberia in Russia to Poyang Lake in Jiangxi province, China. About 95 percent of the birds spend the season there. However, climate change has endangered the birds’ habitats.
“In some years, the Poyang Lake experiences floods, while in others, it experiences droughts. Both of these create food shortages in the cranes’ habitat,” Qian Fawen, a researcher from the National Bird Banding Center of China, told China Daily.
To help deal with the problem, the local government has built 70 hectares of lotus roots (莲藕) in Nanchang to provide food during the winter for the cranes. The birds’ population has risen from about 3,000 to more than 5,000 over the past 20 years, according to Qian.
Over the years, China has worked hard to protect migratory birds and wetlands. Known as the “Earth’s kidneys (肾脏)”, wetlands play a key role in cleaning water, preventing floods, and helping with biodiversity. The Wetlands Protection Law was introduced on June 1, 2022. It stops building work on important national wetlands and bans activities such as overgrazing (过度放牧) and giving out wastewater.
Thanks to these efforts, China has reported more birds wintering in the nation’s wetlands. In February, black-faced spoonbills (黑脸琵鹭), an endangered species, were seen wintering at Dongting Lake after disappearing for five years. Last December, Shanghai Chongming Dongtan Bird National Nature Reserve recorded more than 2,900 tundra swans up from some 1,000 seen during the winter of 2021.
1. The bird population is rising in Nanchang because ________.| A．the city offers more food for birds | B．extreme weather hasn’t hit the city |
| C．the city becomes increasingly warm | D．climate change doesn’t affect the place |
| A．Saving endangered animal species. | B．Looking after water and biodiversity. |
| C．Providing shade for migratory birds. | D．Avoiding overgrazing and water pollution. |
| A．when the Wetlands Protection Law was introduced |
| B．why the bird population in Nanchang rises quickly |
| C．how China deals with water pollution and overpopulation |
| D．what China has done to protect migratory birds and wetlands |
| A．Migratory birds add biodiversity to China. |
| B．New bird species leave China for winter. |
| C．China has completed its wetlands protection. |
| D．China’s environmental protection is successful. |
| A．Mother. | B．Mr. White. | C．Uncle James. |
8 . Four Places Named After Scientists in Antarctica
There are many scientific breakthroughs made by women in Antarctic. Here are four landmarks in Antarctica and the female pioneers they’re named for.
Jones Terrace (梯田)
The ice-free terrace in eastern Antarctica’s Victoria Land bears Jones’ name. In 1969, geochemist Lois M. Jones led the first all-female research team from the U.S. to work in Antarctica. Jones and her team studied chemical weathering in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, an ice-free area of Antarctica. Through chemical analyses of rocks they had collected, Jones and her team discovered many geochemical characteristics of the valley’s ice-covered lakes.
Mount Fiennes
8,202-foot-high Mount Fiennes, located on Antarctica’s largest island — Alexander Island — is named for Ginny Fiennes. She established and maintained 80-foot-tall radio towers in the Antarctic. In 1985, Fiennes became the first female who was invited to join the Antarctic Club, a British supper club open to individuals who have spent extended time in the Antarctic region.
Francis Peak
The 3,727-foot-tall peak on Antarctica’s Adelaide Island is named after Dame Jane Francis, who is the first female director of the British Antarctic Survey, the national polar research institute of the UK. Her collection of fossils on Seymour Island helped conclude in a 2021 paper that Antarctica’s abundant plant fossils indicate the continent once had a much warmer climate than it currently does.
Peden Cliffs
Peden Cliffs near Antarctica’s Marie Byrd Land are proof of the labor of Irene Peden. She was the first American female scientist to both live and work in the Antarctic, where she used radio waves to study ice sheets. Peden and her team determined how very low frequency radio waves spread over long polar distances by measuring pathways in the ice. They also used varying radio wave frequencies to measure the thickness of Antarctica’s ice sheets.
1. Which place is named after a builder of radio towers in the Antarctic?| A．Jones Terrace. | B．Mount Fiennes. |
| C．Francis Peak. | D．Peden Cliffs. |
| A．Lois M. Jones. | B．Ginny Fiennes. |
| C．Dame Jane Francis. | D．Irene Peden. |
| A．She could judge the thickness of Antarctica’s ice sheets. |
| B．She discovered a lot of ice-covered lakes in the Antarctic. |
| C．She was the first female American to explore the Antarctic. |
| D．She correctly measured the spreading speed of radio waves. |
1. What’s the relationship between the man and the woman?
| A．They are neighbors. | B．They are relatives. | C．They are husband and wife. |
| A．Beans and potatoes. | B．Apples and tomatoes. | C．Potatoes and onions. |
| A．Winter. | B．Autumn. | C．Spring. |
| A．Her favorite food was green vegetables. |
| B．She made great apple pies. |
| C．She loved to garden. |
| A．Wet and rainy. | B．Foggy and windy. | C．Sunny and warm. |
