1 . The coronavirus pandemic has created an environment for research on social connection. One of the most common areas of inquiry over the past couple of years was how our sudden mass shift to digital communication — away from face-to-face — affected overall social connectedness. Researchers studied nearly 3,000 adults during the pandemic’s early months and found that email, social media, online gaming, and texting were not fungible for in-person interactions. Voice and video calls, were somewhat better.
Social connectedness is a key to happiness. Lower it, and you will be worse off — and so will your loved ones, especially your kids. One 2014 survey revealed that 62 percent of U.S. children thought their parents were too distracted to listen to them. The No. 1 reason was parents’ phone use.
It is clear that scrolling or surfing will reduce social connection: You do them instead of interacting. Virtual communications such as texting are by design interactive and should theoretically be less harmful. However, text messages can’t convey emotion very well, because we can’t hear or see our conversational partners. These technologies are to in-person interactions what a black-and-white, pixelated (像素化的) version of the Mona Lisa is to the real thing; identifiable, but incapable of producing the same emotional effects.
With communications on line, we tend to hop from person to person and thus swap depth for breadth. However, research has shown that deeper conversations bring more well-being than short communications. Meanwhile, in a recent study, teens who texted more often than their peers tended to experience more depression, more anxiety and poorer relationships with their fathers.
It might seem strange that we would voluntarily adopt technologies that hurt our happiness. One of the explanations is convenience. Vegetating (无所事事) in front of a screen is simply easier than talking with a person, and virtual communications such as texting are faster and easier than a visit or a phone call. Think of these technologies as grab-and-go food at a convenience store: It’s not great, but it sure is easy — and after you eat enough microwave foods, you forget what the real thing tastes like.
In all, for most of us — especially people who grew up with it — the internet is an unquestioned part of the ecosystem of life. Quitting the virtual communications from our life is clearly not the answer. Since we’re not going back to life before this kind of technology, we can and should use it mindfully in service of love.
1. What does the underlined word “fungible” most probably mean?| A．Responsible. | B．Changeable. | C．Reliable. | D．Replaceable. |
| A．disapproving | B．doubtful | C．supportive | D．cautious |
| A．Virtual Communication Does Little Harm to People |
| B．Technology Can Make Your Relationships Shallower |
| C．Quitting Virtual Communication Is Just around the Corner |
| D．Technology Creates a Good Environment for Deeper Conversations |
2 . It’s worth being aware that developmental changes could make children more sensitive to the negative side of social media. During the teenage years, for example, the brain changes massively, and this can influence how young people act and feel—including making them more sensitive to social relationships, and status.
“Being a teenager is a really a major time of development,” says Orben. “You’re much more impacted by your peers, you’re much more interested in what other people think about you. And the design of social media might be more stressful at certain times.”
As well as age, other factors could influence the impact of social media on children and teenagers—but researchers are only just beginning to explore these individual differences. “There will be people who are more negatively or positively impacted at different time points. That might be due to living different lives, going through development at different points. They might be using social media differently.” says Orben.
For many parents, buying a child a phone is a practical decision. “In a lot of cases, parents are the ones that want the younger children to have phones so that they can keep in touch throughout the day.” says Odgers.
It can also be seen as a milestone on the road to adulthood. “I think for children it gives them a sense of independence and responsibility,” says Anja Stevie, researcher at the University of Vienna, Austria. “This is definitely something that parents should consider: are their children at a stage where they are responsible enough to have their own device?”
One factor parents shouldn’t overlook is how comfortable they feel with their child having a smart phone. Besides, it’s worth remembering, though, that having a smart phone need not open the floodgates to every single app or game available. “I’m increasingly hearing, when I interview children, that parents are giving them the phone but introducing requirements to check and discuss which apps they get, and I think that is probably really wise,” says Livingstone.
1. According to the passage, which of the following statements is TRUE?| A．Parents feel comfortable when children have smart phones. |
| B．Many parents have a tendency to buy children smart phones. |
| C．Age does not influence the impact of social media on children. |
| D．It is unacceptable for parents to check apps on children’s phones. |
| A．Concerned. | B．Puzzled. | C．Pessimistic. | D．Subjective. |
| A．Parents’ Practical Decision | B．Negative Sides of Social Media |
| C．An Introduction of Apps & Games | D．When to Buy Children Smartphones |
Times Higher Education (THE) has released its World University Rankings 2021, with Tsinghua University in Beijing
Face it
In much of the western world, governments now require people to wear masks when they are in crowded public spaces. That is good news, for masks could both save lives and allow people to get back to work. And to help economies restart safely, government should require people to wear face coverings in crowded public spaces.
People think of masks as something protecting them from dirty things in the air. But in the case of COVID-19, their more important job is to protect others from an infected wearer. That is because of one of the unusual characteristics of this disease: it seems likely that infection by people who have not, or not yet, developed symptoms(症状) makes up about a third to a half of the cases. So even if everybody with symptoms stays at home, the virus will still spread. Masks block the respiratory droplets(呼吸道飞沫) that carry the virus, so make risky situations safer.
There are signs that masking is useful. Even home-made face coverings can block droplets.
Experiments show that a piece of cloth over the mouth and face can block 60% of droplets—not as good as a medical mask, but much better than nothing.
East Asian countries’ success in controlling the disease argues in favour of masks. Wearing masks to protect against pollution or disease is common there, so people covered their faces as soon as they were informed of COVID-19. In the West, mask-wearing is alien. And in all of the countries where mask-wearing is common practice, the epidemic (流行病) was quickly controlled. This is not unquestionable evidence in favour of masks. Other factors distinguish those mask-wearing countries from bare-faced Western nations: some, such as China and South Korea, have strict track-and-trace systems and carry out mass coronavirus testing.
Yet the combination of this natural global experiment, laboratory studies and asymptomatic transmission(无症状传播) suggests that masks can help keep people safe. Lockdown destroys economies. Social distancing damages them. Masks cost next to nothing. They will not by themselves stop an epidemic. Hand-washing, track-and-trace systems and widespread testing are all crucial, too. But masks can do their bit to protect people and rebuild economies.
1. What is the key job of masks in COVID-19 epidemic according to the writer?2. Please paraphrase the underlined sentence in your own words.
3. Please underline the inappropriate part in the following statement and explain why.
Wearing masks is important and is considered the determining factor in the fight against the epidemic.
4. Please briefly present what can be done to fight against COVID-19. (about 40 words)
5 . A parent’s hopes for 2030
When 2010 arrived, my son was only a year old—tiny.
Now my baby has grown into an
A
I hope we finally get
I’m not sure what a warming planet will
The world is always going to be full of
The world of 2030 won’t
| A．special | B．generous | C．intelligent | D．dependent |
| A．welcomed | B．raised | C．grown | D．congratulated |
| A．athlete | B．adolescent | C．artist | D．engineer |
| A．director | B．author | C．lover | D．reader |
| A．month | B．century | C．year | D．decade |
| A．questions | B．experience | C．danger | D．change |
| A．create | B．notice | C．face | D．shake |
| A．worry | B．sacrifice | C．provide | D．arrange |
| A．plans | B．methods | C．hopes | D．choices |
| A．particular | B．serious | C．optimistic | D．enthusiastic |
| A．drying | B．rising | C．growing | D．cooling |
| A．for sure | B．as usual | C．no longer | D．till now |
| A．slow | B．record | C．complete | D．oppose |
| A．mean | B．obtain | C．share | D．seek |
| A．pick up | B．fight over | C．turn down | D．take part |
| A．finished | B．continued | C．started | D．left |
| A．aims | B．examples | C．disagreements | D．results |
| A．escape | B．express | C．seek | D．affect |
| A．differ from | B．agree with | C．refer to | D．call for |
| A．blame | B．admire | C．prove | D．build |
注意：词数不少于60。
提示词：平安校园：Safe Campus
法律意识： legal awareness
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7 . AI can identify rare genetic disorders
People with genetic syndromes (基因遗传综合症) sometimes have revealing facial features, but using them to make a quick and cheap diagnosis can be tricky when there are hundreds of possible conditions they may have. A new neural(神经的) network that analyses photographs of faces can help doctors narrow down the possibilities.
Gurovich at biotechnology firm FDNA in Boston and his team built a neural network to look at the gestalt (形态)– or overall impression of faces and return a list of the 10 genetic syndromes a person is most likely to have.
They trained the neural network, called DeepGestalt, on 17,000 images correctly labeled to correspond to more than 200 genetic syndromes. The team then asked the AI to identify potential genetic disorders from a further 502 photographs of people with such conditions. It included the correct answer among its list of 10 responses 91 per cent of the time.
Gurovich and his team also tested the AI’s ability to distinguish between different genetic mutations (突变) that can lead to the same syndrome. They used images of people with Noonan syndrome, which can result from mutations in one of five genes. DeepGestalt accurately identified the genetic source of the physical appearance 64 per cent of the time.
“It’s clearly not perfect,” says Gurovich. “But it’s still much better than humans are at trying to do this.”
As the system makes its assessments, the facial regions that were most helpful in the determination are highlighted and made available for doctors to view. This helps them to understand the relationships between genetic make-up and physical appearance.
The fact that the diagnosis is based on a simple photograph raises questions of privacy. If faces can reveal details about genetics, then employers and insurance providers could, in principle, secretly use such techniques to discriminate against people with a high probability of having certain disorders.
However, Gurovich says the tool will only be available to doctors. Christoffer Nellaker at the University of Oxford says this technique could bring significant benefits for those with genetic syndromes.
“This is not fundamentally different information than we’re sharing walking down the street, or we’re happy to share with Facebook or Google,” he says. “But questioning the data in this way means you can obtain information about health or disease status.
“The real value here is that for some of these extreme rare diseases, the process of diagnosis can be many, many years. This kind of technology can help narrow down the search space and then be confirmed through checking genetic markers,” he says.
For some diseases, this kind of technology will cut down the time to diagnose thoroughly. For others, it could perhaps add a means of finding other people with the disease and, in turn, help find new treatments or cures.
1. What is the purpose of Gurovich’s neural network?| A．To test the AI’s ability. |
| B．To analyze photographs of faces. |
| C．To help doctors reduce the range of the diagnosis. |
| D．To research the overall impression of patients’ faces. |
| A．It will probably involve in the people’s privacy. |
| B．It cannot provide information about health or disease. |
| C．The diagnosis based on a simple photograph is not accurate. |
| D．It could perhaps add a means of finding other people with the disease. |
| A．The result of the assessments for this system is perfect. |
| B．Deep Gestalt can correctly label 200 genetic syndromes. |
| C．It seems doubtful to use AI to distinguish genetic mutations. |
| D．This kind of technology can speed up the diagnostic process. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Puzzled. |
| C．Doubtful. | D．Negative. |
8 . Why is poverty so difficult to overcome? Why are poorer people less likely to invest in their own learning and ability development, but more likely to be addicted to television and video games?
In the past, a poor person was normally considered to have bad character or have no ambition. Banerjee corrects such views and explains the economics behind the poor. Poor people tend to live with more worries in their lives, he said, so they need tools such as televisions, cell phones, junk food and video games to relieve worries more than others. But investment in learning often takes a long time to get rewards, while the poor are often impatient due to economic reasons, and their life in the meantime is getting more worrisome and boring.
That goes for health. Banerjee and his wife find that the poor spend the same amount of money and time, or even more on health and medical care than the middle class group, but they tend to get bad effects. The reason is that the poor often lack the essential medical and healthy knowledge and they tend to get medical treatment when the disease has worsened to a certain stage. Besides, they tend to trust the doctors who “give strong medicine”because they believe such doctors are the “good” ones. But in fact,“strong medicine”always leads to resistance to drugs and overtreatment. This kind of attitude, which emphasizes treatment rather than early prevention, has brought many poor people more economic stress and physical damage, and even has affected the education of their next generation. According to the study, children in poorer physical condition tend to spend less time in school and have lower incomes after graduation, so poverty gets “inherited”.
When it comes to finance, Banerjee's research has found that the poor often need to borrow little and short-term loans while paying extremely high interest rates. It is also because the poor tend to take higher financial risks ----they often have unstable incomes and are unable to get working capital from banks, so they rely more on these high-interest loans. And these small loans put a brake on their savings against risks.
How could the poor step into the middle class? Maybe starting a business is a way out. But for the extremely poor, it's impossible to get the capital they need to start a business. In most cases, a more practical option is getting a job in government agencies because comparatively speaking, government jobs are very stable, which give the poor the opportunities to be hired for the long term, to increase the range of their thinking and thus enabling families to move from poverty to the middle class.
Banerjee's research provides a new perspective for governments to understand poverty, so that policies can be tailored to decrease poverty and ultimately eliminate(消除) it.
1. How do the poor deal with the issue of health?| A．They spend less money in preventing disease. |
| B．They focus more on the diseases than early prevention. |
| C．They usually think it essential to resist strong medicine. |
| D．They are willing to get free medical treatment from the government. |
| A．poverty is produced by the poor |
| B．poverty is passed down by their parents |
| C．poverty has some bad effects on the poor |
| D．poverty causes people to bear more economic stress |
| A．the poor have bad character or have no ambition |
| B．the poor prefer to invest in business rather than work |
| C．the government hasn’t taken proper and effective measure |
| D．the poor were troubled by their lives, health and finance |
| A．The poor have attached importance to education. |
| B．The government can’t provide the jobs for the poor. |
| C．All the poor need to start a business for their survival. |
| D．Banerjee's research is helpful for the government to rid of poverty. |
9 . Never Say Quit
In my twenty-five years of coaching, I encountered many extraordinary athletes. Yet the athlete who made the greatest impression on me wasn't one of those promising young men, but Bobby Colson.
Early in the season, Bobby, who looked heavy but strong,
Given his physique, the logical role for Bobby was that of a "weight man”. So he did his best in trying discus(铁饼), shot pot…, only to find out these events were not
Three months later, the two-mile race was well underway. While all the other runners had already finished, Bobby
After that, Bobby put in effort to support his teammates. He went from event to event
Bobby had been right when he told me he felt he could make a significant contribution. He had joined a good team and made it into a great
| A．waved | B．informed | C．limited | D．stopped |
| A．appearance | B．promise | C．contribution | D．influence |
| A．impressed | B．frightened | C．puzzled | D．embarrassed |
| A．satisfactory | B．challenging | C．suitable | D．attractive |
| A．enthusiasm | B．generosity | C．achievement | D．cooperation |
| A．worried | B．confused | C．determined | D．hesitated |
| A．cautiously | B．proudly | C．secretly | D．diligently |
| A．still | B．already | C．ever | D．rather |
| A．spare | B．remaining | C．extra | D．additional |
| A．crying | B．throwing | C．shouting | D．criticizing |
| A．pull | B．assist | C．drive | D．urge |
| A．over | B．around | C．with | D．beyond |
| A．rolled | B．paved | C．covered | D．measured |
| A．convincing | B．appreciating | C．competing | D．encouraging |
| A．envied | B．loved | C．respected | D．believed |
| A．family | B．organization | C．institution | D．system |
| A．check out | B．give off | C．walk off | D．carry out |
| A．supposed | B．considered | C．imagined | D．concerned |
| A．proved | B．realized | C．discovered | D．started |
| A．bravery | B．unity | C．perseverance | D．devotion |
1、该人物是谁；
2、该人物的主要贡献；
3、该人物对你的影响。
注意： 1. 词数不少于100；
2. 开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
Dear Jim,____________________________________________________________________________________________
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Yours
Lihua
