1 . A new study establishes that environmental damage caused by corn production results in 4,300 premature deaths annually in the United States, representing cost of $39 billion.
The paper, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Sustainability, presents how researchers have estimated for the first time the health damages caused by corn production using detailed information on pollution emissions, pollution transport by wind, and human exposure to increased air pollution levels.
The study also shows how the damage to human health of producing a litre (升) of corn differs from region to region and how, in some areas, the health damages of corn production are greater than its market price.
“The deaths caused per litre in western corn belt states such as Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska tend to be lower than in eastern corn belt states such as Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio,” said lead researcher Jason Hill.
It’s important for farmers to have this information so that they can carry out practices that reduce the environmental influence of the crops they grow. Farmers can greatly improve the environmental profile of their corn by using precision agriculture tools and switching to fertilizers that have lower ammonia (氨) emissions. The study’s results also suggest potential benefits from improving nitrogen use efficiency, switching to crops requiring less fertilizer, and changing the location where corn is grown.
Aware that changes in practices can take time and planning, Hill suggests farmers could be offered motivation to switch to crops that demand less applied nitrogen while still offering market and nutritional benefits.
Hill said, “The number of deaths related to corn production could be reduced through these key strategies”.
1. Which of the states has the lowest death rate caused by corn production?| A．Nebraska. | B．Illinois. |
| C．Indiana. | D．Ohio. |
| A．Improve nitrogen use efficiency. |
| B．Plant crops with no fertilizer. |
| C．Change the corn’s location. |
| D．Using precision agriculture tools. |
| A．Indifferent. | B．Optimistic. |
| C．Pessimistic. | D．Neutral. |
| A．Health and lifestyle. |
| B．Art and design. |
| C．Science and environment. |
| D．Fashion and business. |
2 . Even though these monuments are extremely well known, they hold secrets that not many people are aware of.
Empire State Building
On the 103rd floor of the Empire State Building in New York, there is a secret observation deck that not a lot of people know about. To access the balcony, you have to take a series of elevators and then a very steep, narrow staircase. The observation deck isn’t open to the public, but many celebrities have been photographed there.
Eiffel Tower
There is a secret apartment and office at the very top of the Eiffel Tower that has just recently become open to the public. In 1889, Gustave Eiffel, the engineer of this famous Paris landmark, built himself a private apartment and office. It has been restored and has wax models of Gustave, his daughter, and American inventor Thomas Edison on display.
Statue of Liberty
There is actually a room in the torch of the Statue of Liberty that showcases breathtaking views of the city. People used to be able to visit that room until 1916 when German agents blew up a nearby wharf (码头). The explosion sent broken pieces into the raised arm of Lady Liberty, making the staircase up to the hidden room unsafe.
Disneyland
Hardcore Disney fans might think they know all of the secrets of the park, a famous U.S. landmark, but many haven’t heard of Club 33. This exclusive restaurant is hidden behind an unmarked door in Disneyland’s New Orleans Square. If you want to dine here on your next trip to Disneyland, don’t get your hopes up. It costs $25,000 to join the club, plus an annual fee of $12,000.
1. What do the monuments have in common?| A．They are all in Europe. |
| B．They all have skyscrapers. |
| C．They are all the best-known. |
| D．They all hide little-known secrets. |
| A．Disneyland. | B．Eiffel Tower. |
| C．Statue of Liberty. | D．Empire State Building. |
| A．Attractive. | B．Expensive. |
| C．Wonderful. | D．Beautiful. |
3 . Culture often refers to things like food, holidays, clothing, and music, but it also goes much deeper than that.
One of the best ways to understand others’ cultures is to first examine your own. Do you take your shoes off when you go inside?
However, sometimes, learning a lot about a different culture can lead you into a trap. You may think you know much about a culture, which may lead you to show off your knowledge when you meet someone from that background. But it’s a problem to assume that everyone from one particular culture has the same attitudes and experiences. Your assumptions that lead you to pre-judge against others can be harmful.
Differences between us are what make life so interesting. So accept the differences between yourself and your friends from different cultures.
| A．It is a simple thing, but it’s a huge marker of culture! |
| B．Learning is another great way to understand different cultures. |
| C．Behaviors, customs, beliefs, and values are also part of your culture. |
| D．To achieve it, do strike a balance between curiosity and appreciation. |
| E．So don’t do it to others even if you understand their culture really well. |
| F．The more you learn, the more used you get to respecting cultural differences. |
| G．Wherever you live, there are probably immigrant communities (侨民团体)with their own customs. |
It was just another busy day until I met the boy on the bus. He was not a passenger like me. He was, what we call a street child, an 8-10-year-old kid with a worn T-shirt. These poorly dressed kids were seen almost everywhere in Dhaka city. But what was special about that boy was his face. There was “something” in him that caught my attention. That was an angelic(天使般的)baby face with little care.
He got straight into the bus as it stopped at a traffic light. The bus helper shouted at him in the first place. But instead of talking back, the boy kept silent and started handing out a piece of paper to all the passengers. What was written in the paper was, in short, that his father died a couple of years ago. His mother worked at houses. He badly needed money to help his family, so he wished someone warm-hearted to buy chocolates from him.
This was nothing new to people who took a bus every day and I was no different. I had my earphones on, listening to some relaxing music to kill time. When he came to me to get the paper back, I casually gave him some money. Thankfully it brought some smiles on his face. He was about to give me ten chocolates in return for the money I gave to him when I stopped him.
“I don’t like chocolates, brother. So there is no need of chocolates. You can have the money,” I said.
All of a sudden, the smile on his face disappeared.
“I’m not a beggar. Please take the chocolate, or take your money back.”
His straight answer greatly surprised me. I even felt he was slightly angry. I had given money to many kids before, without taking their chocolates. But this time something seemed different. I realized his angelic baby face was not the only thing special about him.
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。
The boy put ten chocolates on my seat and got off the bus.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Having got the boy’s name, I decided to help him.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________5 . Charlotte Grainger explains that it was her primary school teacher who first speculated that she might write a novel. “I thought the height of achievement would be to write a book because it seemed such a challenge and anyway I didn’t know what other teenagers were doing, like being in the Olympics, for example. When I turned 13, I thought I may be as well attempt this now. Recently I told my ex-teacher about it and she was astonished. She told me she’d meant I’d do it when I was 30 or 40. That had never occurred to me — I couldn’t understand why I’d be expected to put something on hold that I had a chance of being good at.”
It’s a winter afternoon, in the offices of Charlette’s publishers. The public relations representative for the book is keeping us company in case Charlotte might need defending. But she needs neither parental nor professional support. She’s her own person: spirited, with an alert face and great intelligence, but also a steadiness that prevents any overconfidence she could be forgiven for feeling.
She has a theory about teenagers and the way they are “betrayed” by the fiction that is specifically aimed at them. There are, she maintains, three types of teenagers depicted in novels. “There’s the outsider who becomes acceptable to society, the naive teenager who knows nothing about the big wide world, and the awkward teenage character who is socially skilled. The overall impression teenagers can get from some writers is teenagers can’t possibly know who they are because they are not experienced enough to know the truth. And when that is being pushed onto them by writers, it can undermine their self-belief. ”
Charlotte has always been a keen reader of famous fantasy writers, some of whom you might suppose she’d be grateful to, but in fact they almost put her off writing entirely. “Books by my favorite fantasy writers explore deep things about psychology and about life. I was asking myself: is this seriously what I have to be doing to write a good book and am I really up to it?” She does, however, praise the influence of a book called “How Not to Write a Novel. “It tells you that if the reader starts to guess what’s going to happen, the suspense has probably gone. ”
1. Why did Charlotte write her first novel at 13?| A．She considered it something she might be good at. |
| B．She wanted to live up to her teacher’s expectations. |
| C．She wished to prove age was no barrier to success. |
| D．She felt it impossible to delay doing anything. |
| A．She needs to be more confident. | B．She is more modest than expected. |
| C．She should take more advice from others. | D．She should be allowed more independence. |
| A．Mentioned. | B．Identified. | C．Betrayed. | D．Described. |
| A．They were too boring to read. | B．They offered inspirations for her novel. |
| C．They nearly made her frightened of writing. | D．They taught her the skill of creating suspense. |
6 . Big Space Events To Put In Your Calendar For 2022
MAY — CHINA’S SPACE STATION GETS BIGGER
May will see the launch of a new module for the Tiangong space station, China’s “Palace in the sky”. Its first core module, Tianhe was launched last April. The next module will be Wentian, a laboratory expected to launch between May and June. It will also serve as a backup core module and the place where future spacewalks from the taikonauts will take place. It will be followed by a second laboratory module, Mengtian, in August-September.
JUNE — INDIA’S SPACECRAFT TAKES ITS FIRST FLIGHT
ISRO, the Indian Space Research Organization, has announced that Gaganyaan (which translates to Sky Craft) will have is first unscrewed fight in June. The craft is panned to be a key vehicle in the Indian Human Spaceflight Program and, all going well in this test; it will be followed by a crewed test next year.
JULY — RUSSIA EYES THE MOONAGAIN
Russia’s Luna program had many successes with landers, rovers, and even sample returns, and Luna 25 is expected to follow in that tradition according to Russian Space Agency, Roscomos. The mission this fine is just a lander expected to touch down near the Lunar South Pole with instruments designed to study the soil. The location might be a possible area of interest for a permanent base on the Moon.
AUGUST — MORE LUNAR MISSIONS
August will see the launch of the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, a panned lunar orbiter by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI). This will be the first Korean Lunar Mission, a technology demonstration for KARI.
1. Which country will carry out multiple space tasks this year?| A．China. | B．India. | C．Russia. | D．Korea. |
| A．It will operate in low lunar orbit. | B．It will take a land on the Moon. |
| C．It will serve as a permanent base. | D．It will take its first crewed flight. |
| A．In May. | B．In June. | C．In July. | D．In August. |
Some researchers think there might be a connection between UFOs and angel sightings. They say the angels and heavenly figures might actually have been extraterrestrials(外星人)。
After his experience in the 1980s with "the most beautiful thing" he ever saw, Lewis might agree with that assessment.
It was a Saturday morning in Mariposa, California, and Lewis had to work that day. The air was fresh from a cool rain the night before, and the morning sky was bright with a few scattered clouds.
"I was heading out to my car in the back parking lot of the apartment complex where I lived when I noticed someone kneeling next to my car," Lewis says. "This person saw me and quickly stood up holding a crowbar(撬棍),"
The young man was quite obviously astonished by Lewis's interruption, and although Lewis sensed the boy was up to no good, it hadn't yet hit him what he was doing. Then Lewis looked through the passenger window of his car and saw that the steering wheel column had been stripped(脱去)of its cover. He realized that the young man was trying to steal his car.
"I asked him what he was doing," Lewis recalls, "He gave me a lame story about his friend's car being stolen last night and that my car looked like his friend's and so on. I didn't want to hear it. I told him I was going to call the police, which I did on my cell phone."
Lewis dialed 911 and gave the dispatcher(调度员)the address. He told the would-be thief that the police were on their way and warned him not to leave. "If he did, I wasn't going to try to stop him because he had that crowbar," Lewis says.
As Lewis was questioning the young man, trying to detain(扣留)him, he began to notice three rather large clouds in a single-file formation that were almost overhead.
"Then I saw it," he says."A shiny object exited from the first cloud and entered the next and then came out of that one. It was shiny, like brightly polished objects, moving at a good speed. I couldn't make out the shape."
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请在答题卡的相应位置作答。
By this time, Lewis was so distracted by the UFO.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________"As it sailed overhead, some of the arms and legs would move up and down, giving the impression of being alive!"
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________8 . We all do little things to boost the way we feel and think throughout the day. Something as simple as taking a walk or eating a piece of chocolate can brighten your mood almost instantly, thanks to certain chemical reactions that occur in the brain.
As Mental Health Awareness Month begins,it's worth learning about the ways that you can use writing to support your mental well-being.
Use writing for mindfulness. Mindfulness is a tried-and-true technique for improving mental wellness,but can writing have the same effect?
Another benefit to writing is its ability to clear your mind of worries, negative thoughts, or sources of pain.
Through the process of populating a blank page with letters and words, writing can be a useful mental health tool that both records your experiences and allows you to work through them.
| A．Become more self-aware. |
| B．These pleasures are just temporary, however. |
| C．There's real power behind the pen—here's why. |
| D．Writing is also the best method of self-care treatment. |
| E．Clearing your brain of negative thoughts can be really tough work. |
| F．Actually,the act of writing for a mere 20 minutes each day can work. |
| G．This is because writing tends to stimulate questions about your life and direction- |
