1 . Ariel Procaccia has thought a lot about how to cut a cake over the last 15 years. As the father of three children, he knows how hard it is to divide a birthday cake to everyone’s satisfaction. But it’s also because Procaccia’s work focuses on exploring the mathematical rules for dividing stuff up fairly. One way to do that is to think abstractly about dessert.
For decades, researchers have been asking the seemingly simple question of how to cut a cake fairly. The answer reaches far beyond birthday parties. A mathematical problem at its heart, cake cutting connects strict reasoning to real-world issues of fairness, and so attracts not only mathematicians, but also social scientists, economists and more. “It’s a very elegant model in which you can distill what fairness really is, and reason about it,” Procaccia says.
The simplest approach is called the “divider-chooser” method, where one person cuts the cake into two equal pieces in his view, and the other person picks first. Each receives a piece that they feel is as valuable as the other’s. But when personal preferences are taken into account, even the easiest rule becomes complicated. Suppose Alice and Bob are to divide a cake, and Alice knows Bob prefers chocolate, she may knowingly divide the cake unequally so the smaller piece contains more chocolate. Then Bob will choose according to his preference, and Alice will get the larger piece. Both of them are satisfied with what they get, but the meaning of fairness changes in this situation.
The cake is a symbol for any divisible good. When cake-cutting principles are employed to settle disagreements, they are potentially helping the world find solutions. Procaccia has used fair division algorithms (算法) to model food distribution. Social scientist Haris Aziz is exploring situations ranging from how to divide up daily tasks to how to best schedule doctors’ shifts in hospitals.
Even after decades of investigation, cake cutting isn’t like a simple jigsaw puzzle (拼图) with a well-defined solution. Instead, over time, it has evolved into a kind of mathematical sandbox, a constructive playground that brings together abstract proofs and easy applications. The more researchers explore it, the more there is to explore.
1. What does the underlined word “distill” in paragraph 2 mean?| A．Get the essence of. | B．Find the opposite of. |
| C．Keep the focus on. | D．Reduce the impact on. |
| A．Its standard is stable. | B．It prevents unequal division. |
| C．Its concept is complex. | D．It dominates personal preferences. |
| A．The application of its rules. | B．The details of its process. |
| C．The problems it produces. | D．The harmony it symbolizes. |
| A．Who benefits most from fairness? |
| B．How has fairness changed over time? |
| C．What method works best in cake-cutting? |
| D．Why are researchers so interested in cake-cutting? |
Every Sunday, the competition started. The three of us would set our alarm clocks to wake up earlier than anyone else. I had set my alarm clock to six in the morning, hoping that my brothers wouldn't start before me.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Groaning, I reached over to my nightstand and slapped the top of my alarm clock. “Too early on this cold winter day,” I murmured. I curled back into my warm blanket and fell asleep again.
My eyes blinked open to the whirring sound of the vacuum cleaner. “They chose their chores first!” I thought with despair. I jumped up from my bed and rushed to the bathroom, where I started the only chore that was left for me. I would definitely be shoveling (铲) the driveway while they built an igloo (冰屋) , I thought cheerlessly, rubbing and wiping madly at the toilet bowl.
When I finished cleaning the toilet and sink, my brothers came into the bathroom to watch me clean the bathtub as they mocked me about how I'd overslept and got stuck with the longest chore. “Whoever finishes last has to shovel the driveway, remember?” my older brother reminded me with a triumphant smile when we put on our big coats and snow pants to go outside.
The three of us stepped outside into the knee-deep snow and shielded our eyes from the brightness. My brothers wasted no time and dashed off to play in the yard, leaving me behind to tackle the frustrating task of shoveling the driveway. With a heavy sigh, I inched through the thick snow to the driveway, my boots sinking with each step. I grunted (嘟哝) with effort as my brothers yelled with joy. Sunday would never be my day, I sighed.
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。
Suddenly, I heard the sound of a shovel rubbing against the driveway concrete.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________After we finished, we sat inside the igloo, laughing about our morning adventures.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________3 . At Countryside High School in Clearwater, Fla. , 16-year-old Sage Waite is already taking a class in cybersecurity, and she’d welcome one that’s in the works on cyber disinformation.
“For the longest time, I didn’t actually know what disinformation was,” said Waite, who’s in the 11th grade. “There was always the idea that things could be wrong in what you’re hearing and what you’re being told. But the idea of misinformation and disinformation wasn’t in my day-to-day.” This past year, she says, has been an eye-opener. “My friends and I definitely started looking into stuff more and doing more research after that,” she said.
A new program on “digital literacy,” with a focus on topics like disinformation, is in the pipeline, thanks in part to Mike McConnell, who is now working to fight false information aimed at young people. “We need to understand this so we can appreciate what's happening to us, and be able to not only understand it, but also to navigate through it,” McConnell said. “That’s what I call digital literacy.”
McConnell is executive director of Cyber Florida, which is based at the University of South Florida in Tampa. The group works with kids throughout the state at universities, high schools, and even those in younger grades. Cyber Florida helped set up the cybersecurity program now being taught at many Florida schools. The new project, Cyber Citizenship, is even more ambitious. “We think if we can do this for Florida, we can spread it across the nation,” he said.
The expanded program now in the works aims to make digital literacy something all Florida students get, at several grade levels, before they finish high school.
There’s no date yet for the cyber disinformation classes in Florida, but computer teacher Jason Felt says it can’t come soon enough and he is ready to embrace it.
“The Internet is a wonderful tool. It’s connected us in a way that’s never really been seen before. But it’s a blessing and it’s also a curse.”
Teaching students the difference, he says, is a huge challenge.
1. What can we learn about the class that Sage Waite is taking from the first two paragraphs?| A．It receives a cold welcome. | B．It aims to form a bond. |
| C．It focuses on technologies. | D．It has a positive impact. |
| A．The specific strategies for protecting privacy. | B．The inborn capacity to track fake information. |
| C．The general skills of maintaining cybersecurity. | D．The overall ability to handle online information. |
| A．To outperform Cybersecuritiy. | B．To take the lead in the world. |
| C．To reach a wider range of students. | D．To make a substantial profit. |
| A．Welcoming. | B．Unclear. | C．Opposed. | D．Prejudiced. |
1、活动的时间和地点；
2、活动的内容；
3、期待参与。
注意：
1、词数80左右；
2、可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
NOTICE
Dear fellow students,_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Student Union
5 . Teachers worried about students turning in essays written by a popular artificial intelligence chatbot now have a new tool of their own.
Edward Tian, a computer science major at Princeton University, has built an App called GPTZero to detect whether a text is written by Chat GPT, which is a popular chatbot that has caused fears over its possibility for immoral uses in American academic circles. His motivation to create the computer program was to fight what he sees as an increase in AI plagiarism (剽窃). Since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, there have been reports of students using the language model to pass off AI-written assignments as their own. Many teachers have reached out to him after he released GPTZero, telling him about the positive results they’ve seen from testing it.
To determine whether an essay is written by a computer program, GPTZero uses two indicators: “confusion” and “burstiness (突发性)”. The first indicator measures the complexity of text; if GPTZero is confused by the text, then it has a high complexity and it’s more likely to be human-written. However, if the text is more familiar to GPTZero — because it’s been trained on such data — then it will have low complexity and therefore is more likely to be AI-generated. Besides, the second indicator compares the variations of sentences. Humans tend to write with greater burstiness, for example, with some longer or complex sentences alongside shorter ones. AI sentences tend to be more uniform.
In a demonstration video, Tian compared the App’s analysis of a story in The New Yorker and a Linked In post written by ChatGPT. It successfully distinguished writing between human and AI. However, GPTZero isn’t foolproof, as some users have reported when putting it to the test. He said he’s still working to improve the model’s accuracy.
Tian is not opposed to the use of AI tools like ChatGPT. GPTZero is “not meant to be a tool to stop these technologies from being used,” he said. “But with any new technologies, we need to be able to adopt it responsibly and we need to have protections.”
1. What have some students done since ChatGPT was released?| A．They have built language models from ChatGPT. |
| B．They have copied AI-written text from ChatGPT |
| C．They have accessed their assignments through ChatGPT. |
| D．They have passed their writing exams through ChatGPT. |
| A．The more uniform the text is, the more likely it is to be AI-generated. |
| B．The less complex the text is, the more likely it is to be human-written. |
| C．GPTZero sometimes confuses human-written texts with AI-generated texts. |
| D．GPTZero is more familiar with human-written texts than with AI-generated texts. |
| A．User-friendly. | B．Time-efficient. |
| C．Perfectly legal. | D．Completely reliable. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Disapproving. | C．Objective. | D．Ambiguous. |
6 . As a traveler with a disability, I have always avoided cruises. This expedition-style small-ship cruise changed my mind.
When our expedition leader
In fact, the possibility of
Our visit there wasn’t about what we could do or see. It was an opportunity to just be—to exist in a brief
| A．knew | B．announced | C．remembered | D．replied |
| A．living | B．return | C．landing | D．mark |
| A．failing | B．choosing | C．struggling | D．hoping |
| A．Instead | B．Finally | C．Thus | D．Otherwise |
| A．strategic | B．remote | C．favorable | D．central |
| A．set foot on | B．fell victim to | C．kept track of | D．gained control of |
| A．constructions | B．conditions | C．descriptions | D．distributions |
| A．unwanted | B．unsecured | C．unplanned | D．unauthorized |
| A．mistakenly | B．nervously | C．routinely | D．happily |
| A．walk | B．flight | C．ride | D．path |
| A．dampen | B．share | C．convey | D．fuel |
| A．changed | B．lost | C．fought | D．made |
| A．in response to | B．in view of | C．in contrast to | D．in defense of |
| A．moment | B．experiment | C．glance | D．ceremony |
| A．value | B．need | C．miss | D．experience |
7 . Of course, Baoyu had seen this new cousin earlier on and
“I’ve met this cousin before,” he
“You’re talking nonsense again,” said his grandmother, laughing.
“How could you possibly have met her?”
“Well, even if I haven’t, her face looks
“So much the better.” The Lady Dowager laughed. “That shows you’re
Baoyu went over to sit beside Daiyu and once more
Then, to the confusion of them all, he asked Daiyu if she had any jade (玉).
This instantly put Baoyu into one of his frenzies (狂暴).
“What’s rare about it?” he
| A．decided | B．recognized | C．observed | D．guessed |
| A．distant | B．free | C．different | D．absent |
| A．wondering | B．speaking | C．hesitating | D．pleasing |
| A．love | B．terror | C．charm | D．trick |
| A．gesture | B．figure | C．movement | D．breath |
| A．bathed | B．mirrored | C．planted | D．dropped |
| A．delicate | B．precious | C．aggressive | D．reserved |
| A．assumed | B．explained | C．declared | D．interpreted |
| A．common | B．familiar | C．pretty | D．similar |
| A．matched | B．committed | C．intended | D．meant |
| A．grasped | B．checked | C．aimed | D．stared |
| A．Realizing | B．Doubting | C．Imagining | D．Admitting |
| A．Setting off | B．Tearing off | C．Wearing off | D．Cutting off |
| A．stormed | B．threatened | C．identified | D．criticized |
| A．romantic | B．complex | C．spiritual | D．typical |
8 . Earlier this month, Bob Dylan released The Philosophy of Modern Song, a collection of 66 songs, detailing their status in music and, sometimes, explaining what a given track might mean or do. The book reminded me of the Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, in which Smith intelligently summarizes each song's narrative arc as if it were a newspaper headline. Dylan is less direct and more tends to allegorical (讽喻的) long speeches.
Dylan has always had a slightly tense relationship with the writers and journalists who grammatically analyze his songs for meaning, and, while reading The Philosophy of Modern Song, there were moments when I grew slightly red-faced, worried that the book might be an purposeful joke, making fun of all the drooling (垂涎) critics who have gone thrilled trying to illustrate the greatness and beauty of his work. Yet the pattern and rhythm of his descriptions will be quite familiar to anyone who listened to “Theme Time Radio Hour”, the Sirius XM show that Dylan hosted from 2006 to 2009.
Ultimately, both projects repeat, in a serious way, just how difficult it is to study, investigate, and evaluate something as indescribable and brain-scrambling (烧脑) as popular music.
The Philosophy of Modern Song picked a limited number of songs, for Dylan to define the masterpieces that defined him, and he did so determinedly. Much like Smith’s Anthology, Dylan’s book is deeply personal, despite its sweeping title. It’s obvious that Dylan did not adjust his preferences to suit a cultural narrative or to play down his age. Yet that the book contains only four songs performed by women is both depressing and astonishing. This might lead readers to question Dylan’s character and, more worrying, to wonder about the limits of his musical knowledge.
1. What do the two books, The Philosophy of Modern Song and Anthology of American Folk Music, have in common?| A．The writing style. | B．The writers’ career. |
| C．The books’ subject. | D．The creation background. |
| A．Because he was on bad terms with Bob Dylan. |
| B．Because he failed to listen to Dylan’s radio program. |
| C．Because he was laughed at for his comments on Dylan’s book. |
| D．Because he may be among those critics taking advantage of Dylan’s works. |
| A．It presents a whole history of American folk music. |
| B．It offers a review on Bob Dylan’s personal music albums. |
| C．It suggests a possible lack of attention to women’s music. |
| D．It follows the example of Anthology of American Folk Music. |
| A．To question Dylan’s expertise in folk music. |
| B．To introduce the newly-published book by Bob Dylan. |
| C．To blame Dylan for his underestimating female musicians. |
| D．To compare the two books of Philosophy and Anthology. |
Jessica and I wanted a dog more than anything else on Earth. At night, after Mom and Dad had gone to bed, Jessica and I would sneak out our bedroom windows and we’d sit together on the roof and talk about dogs. Sometimes, we had an argument about what our ideal dog would be. But it didn’t really matter — any dog or puppy (小狗崽) would do.
One summer night, as we sat together on the roof, Jessica saw something. “What’s that?” She pointed down toward a dark shadow on our driveway. The moon was up, and everything looked either black or milky. All I saw was darkness. Then the shadow moved. For one astonished second, Jessica and I just stared at each other. Then we scrambled down onto the porch. There in our yard stood a dog. A big, black dog with long hair. Jessica made a little kissing noise and held out her hand. And the dog came to us slowly, taking a few steps forward, then a step back, not sure whether to trust us, I guess.
“She’s a female,” said Jessica.
“Oh,” I said, pulling back and looking. The dog was so skinny and her coat was full of dirt. She must be a homeless dog.
“What can we give her?” I asked. Then I had a thought. “Bread! I’ll get her a big loaf of bread.” So, Jessica waited with the dog, and I sneaked into the kitchen to fetch the bread.
The dog got the bread and ran into the shadows and disappeared. We smiled at each other in the moonlight, our insides full of excitement. “We’re going to have a dog!” I whispered.
On the following nights, the dog, who we named “Shadow”, would come and Jessica and I would prepare food for her. But we never saw her eating anything, and each time she got the food she would run away into the darkness quickly.
“Why didn’t she eat?” I was curious. “And she is still so skinny.”
“We can look into the case,” Jessica said. So, we decided to find out the truth.
One night, we followed Shadow secretly at a distance.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Finally, we had a dog in our home and it was one of the puppies.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________1. What kind of place does Party Time Events provide?
| A．Restaurants. | B．Boats. | C．Offices. |
| A．How much to pay for the rent. |
| B．How to arrange atmosphere for a party. |
| C．How many courses to prepare for a meal. |
| A．Country music. | B．Dance music. | C．Live entertainment. |
| A．Next to a bar. |
| B．At the back of a bar. |
| C．In front of the Lochmead Leisure Center. |
