Originally unearthed in the late 1920s, the Sanxingdui Ruins have been regarded as one of the world’s greatest archaeological
One iconic (标志性的) exhibit is the four-meter-tall bronze sacred tree,
Divided into three themed areas, the exhibition hall makes use of a range of new technologies
2 . The Joys of College
Often, we college students complain endlessly about all of the things we hate about college. And sure, college is really stressful and there are some aspects I don’t like.
The first thing I truly enjoy about being a college student is that I get to take classes that actually interest me.
The community at the university is also very important to me. We are all suffering here but we are all suffering together.
The university presents us with so many unique opportunities as well. We are encouraged to study abroad, which allows students to experience student life in another country and dive into other cultures in the process.
So although there are a lot of negatives of college—and I mean a lot—there are also a lot of positives. I know that when I graduate, I’m going to miss being a college student.
| A．After all, college can be very demanding. |
| B．The fun activities and clubs are also a plus. |
| C．But for once, I’d like to focus on the positives. |
| D．Here, there are so many different fields to study. |
| E．Additionally, being a trainee is a great way to get experience. |
| F．The college experience can get bearable due to this community. |
| G．It isn’t like high school where you’re required to take the same classes. |
3 . Dementia (痴呆), a serious mental disorder caused by brain disease or injury, affects the ability to think, remember and behave normally. 160,000 people have some forms of dementia in Sweden, Alzheimer’s disease being the most common. At the same time, many new diagnostic (诊断的) methods and early-intervention treatment have been developed in recent years, which highlights the need to identify more risk factors for the disease.
Previous studies have demonstrated a possible association between depression and dementia. A present study now clearly shows that people who have been diagnosed with depression are more likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Unlike the previous ones, the study was conducted using Region Stockholm’s administrative healthcare database, which contains all healthcare contacts recorded by the region. It shows that the risk of Alzheimer’s disease was more than twice as high in patients with stress and in patients with depression as it was in patients without either condition; in patients with both depression it was up to four times as high.
“The reason for it is unknown,” says the study’s last author Axel C. Carlsson. “The finding is important in that it enables us to improve preventative efforts and understand links with the other risk factors for dementia.”
The researchers focused on patients between the ages of 18 and 65 and between 2012 and 2013. They identified 44,447 people with a diagnosis of depression and followed them for eight years to see how many of them were later diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. A comparison with all other 1,362,548 individuals in the age group showed that more people with depression had also been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
“It’s very uncommon for people in this age group to develop dementia, so we need to identify all possible risk factors for the disease,” says Dr Carlsson. “We show here that the diagnosis is more common in people who have suffered depression, but more studies will be required if we’re to demonstrate any reason there.”
1. What do the previous studies and the present one differ in?| A．The target. | B．The method. |
| C．The purpose. | D．The theory. |
| A．It clarifies the condition of dementia. |
| B．It makes clear the risks of depression. |
| C．It confirms the previous study finding. |
| D．It helps with the dementia prevention. |
| A．Its process. | B．Its background. |
| C．Its application. | D．Its assessment. |
| A．Why dementia spreads wide in Sweden. |
| B．What links exist among mental diseases. |
| C．How depression connects with dementia. |
| D．What other risk factors lead to dementia. |
1. Who is the main audience for the announcement?
| A．Soccer players. | B．Parents of soccer players. | C．The youngest soccer players. |
| A．They are too young to play. |
| B．The transportation will be arranged by the speaker. |
| C．There aren’t enough players to make teams. |
| A．Some insurance. | B．Some reservations. | C．Some paperwork. |
| A．His name is Steve. | B．His child plays soccer. | C．He is a soccer coach. |
1. What does the woman say about the houses?
| A．They were all built in the 1960s. |
| B．Most of them have two bathrooms. |
| C．They all look different. |
| A．Safety. | B．Size. | C．Price. |
| A．One of the smaller houses. |
| B．A four-bedroom apartment. |
| C．A two-bedroom apartment. |
| A．Tomorrow morning. | B．Tomorrow afternoon. | C．Later this afternoon. |
6 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。
In recent years, the world
7 . Tropical (热带的) forests could become so hot that some kinds of leaves will no longer be able to conduct photosynthesis (光 合 作用), according to a study. The photosynthetic machinery in tropical trees begins to fail at about 46.7℃ on average. The research suggests that forests may be nearing dangerous temperature sooner than expected. Models predict that once we hit a global temperature increase of 3.9℃, these forests might experience mass leaf damage.
Chris Doughty, an associate professor at Northern Arizona University and the lead researcher of the study, said the leaf-warming experiments had revealed a nonlinear rise in temperatures. “We were really surprised that when we warmed leaves by 2, 3 or 4℃, the highest leaf temperatures actually increased by 8℃. This shows a concerning nonlinear feedback that we were not expecting.” said Doughty. “If we adopt a do-nothing response to climate change and tropical forest air temperatures increase by greater than 4℃, there could be massive leaf death.” he added.
Avoiding high emissions (排放) in the first place is key to stabilizing temperatures. “We should do all we can to avoid high-emissions. Under low-emissions, almost all tropical forest tree leaves can avoid death from overheating and the trees will survive,” said Simon Lewis, a professor of global change science at University College London. “Yet what the study doesn’t look at is heatwaves. We still might see tree deaths from overheating for limited periods during heatwaves under lower emissions.”
Researchers suggest that the damage is not yet unchanged. “Vote for people who are serious about addressing climate change and transferring to low-carbon economies, ”Disney, one researcher, advocated. More generally, we can all recognize the importance of supporting those countries and people who live in and rely on tropical forests economically, But the serious changes to tropical forests don’t just affect the local people it’s a global issue.
1. Which of the following can best replace the underlined word “nonlinear” in Paragraph 2?| A．Global. | B．Dramatic. | C．Steady. | D．Minor. |
| A．Planting more trees. | B．Exploring heatwaves. |
| C．Conducting researches. | D．Pursuing low emissions. |
| A．Promoting global efforts. |
| B．Seeking economic support. |
| C．Helping tropical countries. |
| D．Boosting low-carbon education. |
| A．Global warming harms trees. |
| B．Tropical forests lose functions. |
| C．Tropical leaves struggle in heat. |
| D．Forests near dangerous temperature. |
8 . As a saying goes, you’re only as old as you feel, but what if different parts of your body aged at different speeds? It turns out they do. The study about the age of our bodies shows that different tissues inside us are effectively different ages. In 2012, Professor Steve Horvath at the University of California, Los Angeles, looked at something new—DNA methylation (甲基化), a naturally occurring process in which DNA is chemically changed over time.
Horvath analyzed the DNA in 8,000 tissue samples from different parts of the body in different people to study these markers. What he found was striking—the amount of methylation in cells from most parts of the body was a good predictor of the person’s age. But there were inconsistencies. Breast tissue, for instance, ages rapidly, whereas muscle ages slowly. The rates of ageing are also different in men and women. “There are many medical implications, from cancer to premature ageing diseases,” says Horvath. It has already been established that tissue that looks significantly older could be cancerous. Horvath’s study found that cancerous tissue has a biological age on average 36 years older than a subject’s actual age.
Could this knowledge help us live longer? “If the markers relate to a process that causes ageing, then it would be theoretically possible to slow down ageing by carefully targeting DNA methylation,” says Horvath. But before scientists got to work on dealing with methylation, they first needed to establish whether these changes were the cause of ageing or just a byproduct of another process. Now, a 2023 study from the University of Michigan has backed up Professor Horvath’s findings, which means they can safely make further studies of methylation.
“Our main aim was to see whether biological age acceleration measured from DNA methylation was predictive of health outcomes and death,” said research associate professor Jessica Faul. “It turned out that it is largely the case. You can use certain DNA methylation markers to predict age and age-related outcomes quite well.”
1. What is the purpose of the first paragraph?| A．To lead in the topic of the text. | B．To summarize the whole text. |
| C．To offer suggestions to readers. | D．To stimulate readers to imagine. |
| A．It helps people live much longer. | B．It doesn’t always predict one’s age. |
| C．It exists in some parts of one’s body. | D．It causes the different rates of ageing. |
| A．Consulted. | B．Contradicted. | C．Approved. | D．Predicted. |
| A．Avoidable. | B．Unrealistic. | C．Risky. | D．Potential. |
9 . Can you name a famous elephant? Babar, perhaps? Or Dumbo? Though these names may be memorable to humans, they sound nothing like the names elephants give each other. “If you’re an elephant, your name is something more like a low, rumbling sound (隆隆的声音),” scientists say. Researchers have found that African elephants emit sounds in response to individuals in their social group, and the receivers respond accordingly.
Researchers recorded 527 elephant calls in northern Kenya and 98 calls in southern Kenya. They then distinguished which members were separated from the herd at the time of each call, or which members were close to the herd. Researchers correctly identified the receivers of 20.3% of the 625 recorded calls. This marks a step forward in understanding how these highly intelligent animals communicate.
“There’s a contact rumble, an anti-predator rumble and a greeting rumble. If you look at a spectrogram (声谱图) with your eyes, they all look almost exactly the same,” said Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell, an elephant biologist at Harvard Medical School. “That’s why artificial intelligence(AI)has been exciting. It allows us to really figure out what the elephants are saying.”
As it turned out, the calls were distinct to the receivers. Even calls from different callers to the same receiver were similar. The pattern was less obvious than it was between a single caller and his or her receiver. This may be because rumbles encode multiple messages at the same time, so the AI system in computer model may not have been able to pick out the “name” used in each call. “It just highlights the complexity of what’s going on. And we’re not skilled enough in these measurements to figure out what’s going on,” said Caitlin.
However, the research shows how elephants are navigating through a large landscape and can still keep in touch with specific individuals. It allows them to spread out much further and still have very close tabs on individuals, not just the group.
1. What can we infer from paragraph 1?| A．Elephants seem to have their own names. |
| B．Elephants’ sounds differ from other species. |
| C．Elephants’ names sound exactly like humans’. |
| D．Elephants’ names sound different from each other. |
| A．By grouping the elephants based on intelligence. |
| B．By observing the elephants’ reactions to the calls. |
| C．By analyzing the relationship within the elephants. |
| D．By copying the elephants’ voice to call their names. |
| A．Simplifying the process. | B．Creating a spectrogram. |
| C．Letting out various rumbles. | D．Making out each rumble. |
| A．How do elephants contact each other? | B．Why do elephants make their voice? |
| C．Do elephants name one another? | D．Do elephants like to be called? |
10 . A new generation of opioids (阿片类药物) with fewer side effects is being explored by an Australian and Chinese research team.
Professor Maree Smith from the University of Queensland will present research on oliceridine being developed internationally, as well as results of her team’s CYX-6 research project on Saturday at a meeting to be held by Faculty of Pain Medicine (FPM) of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists during October 19-21 in Cairns.
Professor Smith’s laboratory is exploring the new opioid, together with the Chinese researcher, Professor Li Tingyou from Nanjing Medical University. She stressed that while the research project was still in its early stages and would consume much more time and energy, laboratory tests had found that a newly discovered compound (复合物), CYX-6, spared laboratory rats from some of the more common side effects of opioids. Strong opioids that are now used for pain relief can have serious and sometimes deadly side effects, such as breathing problems.
“We’ve seen that in the US there are many people who are dying as a result of taking too many opioids because they stop breathing,” Professor Smith explained. “Though it’s difficult, we are focusing on discovery of new opioid alternatives with a reduced risk of breathing difficulty. It is a hot topic in the research world at present. Our application of the compound would be a very positive step.”
Dr. Meredith Craigie, Dean of FPM, said opioid alternatives with fewer side effects like the one that is being investigated by Professor Smith required thorough study, and research into the possible unknown side effects of new opioids was an especially significant step in the development of potential new treatments for pain.
1. What is oliceridine?| A．An effective treatment. | B．A new opioid. |
| C．A kind of operation. | D．A piece of equipment. |
| A．It is found in the body of rats. | B．It is a compound used for pain relief. |
| C．It prevents some side effects of opioids. | D．It is newly invented by Professor Smith. |
| A．Expensive. | B．Promising. | C．Popular. | D．Risky. |
| A．Testing the side effects of new opioids. | B．Inventing opioids with better effects. |
| C．Developing new treatments for pain. | D．Using medicine for breathing difficulty. |
