1 . A recent study, led by Professor Andrew Barron, Dr. HaDi MaBouDi, and Professor James Marshall, illustrates how evolution has fine-tuned honey bees to make quick judgments while minimizing danger.
“Animal lives are full of decisions,” says Professor Barron. “A honey bee has a brain smaller than a sesame (芝麻) seed. And yet it can make decisions faster and more accurately than’ we can. A robot programmed to do a bee’s job would need the backup of a supercomputer.”
Bees need to work quickly and efficiently. They need to make decisions. Which flower will have a sweet liquid? While they’re flying, they face threats from the air. While landing, they’re vulnerable to potential hunter, some of which pretend to look like flowers.
Researchers trained 20 bees to associate each of the five different colored “flower disks” with their visit history of reward and punishment. Blue flowers always had sugar juice. Green flowers always had a type of liquid with a bitter taste for bees. Other colors sometimes had glucose (葡萄糖). “Then we introduced each bee to a ‘garden’ with artificial ‘flowers’. We filmed each bee and timed their decision-making process,” says Dr. MaBouDi. “If the bees were confident that a flower would have food, they quickly decided to land on it, taking an average of 0.6 seconds. If they were confident that a flower wouldn’t have food, they made a decision just as quickly. If unsure, they took on average 1.4 seconds, and the time reflected the probability that a flower had food.”
The team then built a computer model mirroring the bees’ decision-making process. They found the structure of the model looked very similar to the physical layout of a bee brain. “AI researchers can learn much from bees and other ‘simple’ animals. Millions of years of evolution has led to incredibly efficient brains with very low power requirements,” says Professor Marshall who co-founded a company that uses insect brain patterns to enable machines to move autonomously, like nature.
1. Why does Professor Andrew Barron mention “a supercomputer”?| A．To illustrate how a honey bee’s brain resemble each other. |
| B．To explain how animals arrive at informed decisions fast. |
| C．To demonstrate how a robot could finish a honey bee’s job. |
| D．To emphasize how honey bees make decisions remarkably. |
| A．Easily harmed by. | B．Highly sensitive to. |
| C．Deeply critical to. | D．Closely followed by. |
| A．Their judgments about reward and punishment. |
| B．Their preference for the colors of flower disks. |
| C．Their confirmation of food’s presence and absence. |
| D．Their ability to tell real flowers from artificial ones. |
| A．The power of bee brains is underestimated. | B．Biology can inspire future AI. |
| C．Autonomous machines are changing nature. | D．AI should be far more efficient. |
1. What did NASA call the area?
| A．The Light of Venezuela. |
| B．The Lightning Capital of the World. |
| C．The Never-ending Storm of Catatumbo. |
| A．The warm ocean current. |
| B．The strong mountain winds. |
| C．The special geographical location. |
| A．About 12%. | B．About 30%. | C．About 70%. |
| A．The man is afraid of lightening very much. |
| B．The locals are surprisingly fearless of lighting. |
| C．About 12,000 American people get hit in their lifetime. |
3 . Meet Retro, a cloned rhesus monkey born on July 16, 2020. He is now more than 3 years old and is “doing well and growing strong,” according to Falong Lu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who published a study in the journal Nature Communications that describes how Retro came to be.
Retro is only the second species of primate (灵长类动物) that scientists have been able to clone successfully. The same team of researchers announced in 2018 that they had made two cloned cynomolgus monkeys, which are still alive today. “We have achieved the first live and healthy cloned rhesus monkey, which is a big step forward, although the efficiency is very low compared to fertilized embryos (受精胚胎),” said Lu. “Currently, we haven’t had the second live birth yet.”
The first animal to be cloned — Dolly the sheep — was created in 1996 using a technique called SCNT, where scientists essentially reconstruct an unfertilized egg by joining a somatic cell nucleus (体细胞核) with an egg in which the nucleus has been removed. The Chinese team improved the technique further to clone the rhesus monkey.
During hundreds of failed cloning attempts, they realized that, in the early cloned embryos, the outer part did not develop properly. To address this problem, they performed a process called inner cell mass transplantation, which involved putting cloned inner cells into a non-cloned embryo, and that allowed the clone to develop normally. “We think that there might be additional… abnormalities to be fixed. Strategies to further enhance the success rate of SCNT in primates remains … our main focus in the future,” Lu said.
The researchers said that being able to successfully clone monkeys might help accelerate biomedical research given that there are limitations on what scientists can learn from lab mice. Research on nonhuman primates, which are closer to humans, has been crucial for lifesaving medical advances, including the creation of medicines against Covid-19, according to a report by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
1. What can be learned about Retro?| A．It is the second live cloned rhesus monkey. | B．It represents a major scientific breakthrough. |
| C．It is a cloned monkey from a fertilized embryo. | D．It has outlived the cloned cynomolgus monkeys. |
| A．The purpose. | B．The process. | C．The difficulty. | D．The method. |
| A．Give the clone space to grow. | B．Fix additional abnormalities. |
| C．Change a non-cloned embryo. | D．Help inner cells develop properly. |
| A．To present the recent progress in cloning. | B．To reveal challenges in cloning monkeys. |
| C．To call for research on nonhuman primates. | D．To stress the importance of medical advances. |
As I stepped out of the cat and onto the unfamiliar driveway of my father’s home in Ontario, Canada. I couldn’t help but feel upset. My mother had just passed away in a car accident and now I was being forced to live with a father I barely knew.
My father was a metal sculpture artist, and I was not sure if I would ever fit into his world. Soon, I found comfort in exploring the nearby wilderness. Yet I couldn’t ignore the sadness and anger that welled up inside me when I saw a construction crew destroying a small wilderness area nearby. That’s when I came across a nest of geese eggs, abandoned and fragile.
Without hesitation, I brought them home. When the first crack appeared and a tiny head poked through, my heart swelled with purpose and affection. As they grew, the baby geese followed me everywhere. Father smiled and remarked that they surely thought me their mother.
My geese grew steadily but time was not. Father realized without a real mother’s guidance, the geese would never learn how to migrate south for the winter and winter’s arrival could be tough. That’s when my father came up with a daring plan. He was an amateur pilot, and he would teach me how to fly an aircraft. Together, we would lead the geese on their migratory journey. It was a risky plan, but I was willing to do anything to help my feathered friends.
Each day of flight training with Father, I felt myself gaining confidence m the skies. Yet with the journey approaching, more and more fear filled me. Crossing the border into the US and flying hundreds of miles to the reservation in North Carolina seemed a mission impossible.
Father gave me a supportive smile, his face reflecting a mix of determination and concern. “We’ve trained for this, and we’re a team. Just like you and your geese,” he said, placing a hand on my shoulder.
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Flying south, we started the migration, followed by my geese.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I said goodbye to Father in the hospital and continued the flight.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
5 . Do you know how much India struggles to gather the waste plastic water bottles? According to a Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) report from 2012, India generates 15, 000 tonnes of plastics a day, of which the gathered ones only achieve 60%. The trashed-but-not-gathered plastic waste leads to land and water pollution. posing serious threat to the environment.
After seeing that, Ankur Chawla, a drink expert, undertook research to find a solution, after which he realised the biggest problem the country faced was disposing of plastic waste. To address it, he wanted to come up with a solution where they do not add to the problem of waste. Fortunately, Ankur was not alone. He met Bhrigu Seth who was into green farming. Both of them found that they shared a common goal and it didn’t take long for them to draft a plan of action. It is estimated that over 90 percent of aluminium(铝) drink cans in India are recycled. Instead, 70 percent of the cans are manufactured through recycled waste. After going through challenges at hand, the pair made up their minds.
Before taking the next step. both co-founders visited five-star hotels and took samples of water in aluminium cans, asking them whether they would give it a shot if something like that comes in the market. The pair received an overwhelmingly positive response. They then determined to launch Responsible Whatr, natural spring water drink packed in an aluminium can to solve the problem of waste plastic water bottles.
As one of India’s first natural spring water drink, Responsible Whatr offered an environmentally friendly and endlessly recyclable aluminium can. It’s a non-alcoholic drink that was launched with a vision for an eco-friendly future and an agenda to reduce single-use plastic pollution.
Going forward, Ankur and Bhrigu aim to cooperate with airports and ecommerce gates which would help them in directly reaching the homes of high networth individuals (HNIs). They also plan to tie up with corporate firms and cinema halls and join hands with NGOs that are fighting for the conservation of beaches and oceans.
1. What inspired Ankur to conduct his research?| A．Plastics remained the major bottle material. |
| B．Uncollected plastics caused severe pollution. |
| C．Plastics accounted for most of the daily waste. |
| D．The amount of plastic waste was beyond control. |
| A．Creating a new packaging design. | B．Developing an alternative to plastics. |
| C．Launching a rubbish sorting program. | D．Increasing the recycling of plastic cans. |
| A．Removing plastic pollution. | B．Promoting aluminium cans. |
| C．Advertising non-alcoholic drinks. | D．Advocating a sustainable approach. |
| A．By cooperating with NHIs. | B．By introducing new products. |
| C．By targeting profitable NGOs. | D．By establishing diverse channels. |
1. How does the woman feel at first?
| A．Curious. | B．Surprised. | C．Excited. |
| A．Flowers. | B．Mushrooms. | C．Trees. |
| A．Two. | B．Three. | C．Four. |
| A．On Thursday. | B．On Friday. | C．On Saturday. |
1. What was the main topic of the meeting?
| A．Politics. | B．Green development. | C．The latest technology trends. |
| A．Making a wider variety of foods. |
| B．Developing sustainable agriculture. |
| C．Driving cars less. |
| A．Global teamwork. | B．Energy exploration. | C．More job opportunities. |
1. Where did the man learn about the new planet?
| A．From TV news. | B．From the website. | C．From the newspaper. |
| A．By researching into the star’s light. |
| B．By building a universe model. |
| C．By analyzing the star’s life. |
| A．Rainy. | B．Snowy. | C．Sunny. |
| A．At a pet clinic. | B．At Bob’s home | C．At Mr. Johnson’s office. |
