1. What does ASO-S mainly do?
| A．Do solar observation. | B．Study Earth’s atmosphere. | C．Make weather forecasting. |
| A．Four years. | B．Forty hours. | C．Seventy years. |
| A．It can block the sun’s radiation. |
| B．It may fill China’s gap in the field. |
| C．It is the first solar satellite globally. |
2 . Cities, covering less than 2% of the Earth’s surface, are major contributors to climate change, consuming almost 80% of the world’s energy and producing more than 60% of greenhouse gas emissions. Fortunately, net zero emissions (净零排放) by 2050, a target set at the COP26 conference, could be achieved faster using digital twins cities, according to a recent research.
Looking and behaving identically in their real-world physical environments, digital twins can help track, manage and reduce environmental damage rapidly. These replicas (复制品) link to networks of sensors that collect data from buildings, transport, air quality, and energy use, to see where emissions can be cut and efficiency improved. Similar technologies have been in use since NASA’s Apollo moon mission in 1969, where computers and machine replicas were used to test and monitor spacecraft.
Research shows that digital twins can save cities more than $ 280 billion globally by 2030 through more efficient urban planning. Digital twin provider Cityzenith believes that net zero deadlines could be achieved 15 years earlier if the world’s 100 biggest cities use the technology to decarbonize. “They are the perfect tool for managing and speeding up the energy transformation,” said CEO Michael Jansen. “We could get to net zero globally by 2035.”
Over the past decades, big tech companies around the world, including GE Digital and Siemens, have developed software for replicating cities, including a district of Berlin, the island nation of Singapore, and the entire city of Shanghai in China. In the US, the Digital Twin Consortium is working to standardize how digital twins are built and share data. Technology company MX3D built the world’s first 3D-printed stainless steel bridge and co-created its digital twin. CEO Gijs van der Velden believes twins will give us precise control over the built environment.
Recently, OpenAI also made advances in this field. On February 15, the company revealed its latest groundbreaking tech—Sora to the world. Sora is a text-to-video generative AI model. It can generate videos that matches the text prompt (文本提示) given to it in a few seconds. Experts believe Sora is likely to be applied in science and national defence in the future.
1. How does the author show the impact of cities on climate change?| A．By listing data. | B．By giving examples. |
| C．By comparing opinions. | D．By quoting research findings. |
| A．Approving. | B．Opposed. | C．Unconcerned. | D．Objective. |
| A．Sora has been used in scientific research and military. |
| B．Gijs van der Velden has little faith in digital twins’ future. |
| C．Digital twins technology is developing rapidly around the world. |
| D．Few tech companies are involved in the study of replicating cities. |
| A．Net Zero Emissions Could Be Hit 15 Years Earlier |
| B．Cityzenith Is Working on Promoting Digital Twin Cities |
| C．Big Cities Are to Blame for the Severe Environment Pollution |
| D．Digital Twin Cities Can Reduce the Impact of Planet’s Largest Polluters |
3 . Established earthquake warning systems provide at best just a minute or two of notice, leaving little time for preparedness. Decades of searching for a better warning sign-changes in the geochemistry of groundwater, electromagnetic effects in the upper atmosphere, and even changes in animal behavior-have failed. Many question whether such a precursor (先兆) even exists. This situation may change soon, as recent research is providing a glimmer of hope for improved earthquake prediction.
Researchers Quentin Bletery and Jean-Mathieu Nocquet from Cote d’Azur University in France collected data from over 90 earthquakes with magnitudes larger than 7 that had occurred in the past two decades.They focused on GPS station records near these quakes, which accurately captured land movement every 5 minutes with millimeter precision. They analyzed more than 3,000 time series of motion in the 48 hours leading up to the main ruptures (断裂).
They noticed that, in the first 46 hours, the records showed no significant features. However, during the 2 hours before the earthquake, they noticed signs of increasing movement along the fault zones (断层带). Essentially, there’s a slip between plates causing the land above them to move in a measurable, horizontal direction.
Could this be just a coincidence? The probability of this increase happening just before the quake and being unrelated is extremely low, and the researchers confirmed this by analyzing 100,000 random time windows in non-earthquake GPS data. The pattern occurred only 0.03% of the time in non-earthquake data.
While this precursor signal won’t be used for warnings anytime soon, officials from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) admit that this new study provides valuable insights into how to improve their warning systems-GPS data can grease the wheels of early earthquake warnings.
The researchers admit they're still a number of steps away from putting this precursor signal into use, particularly since detecting subtle signals at individual faults requires more GPS stations. But the biggest problem is that many of the world’s earthquake regions have no instrumentation. “We can’t realize the detection at the scale of one earthquake, so we cannot make predictions,” Bletery said.
1. What remains a tough problem for scientists?| A．Determining the magnitude of an earthquake. |
| B．Finding a way to detect earthquakes in early stages. |
| C．Measuring atmospheric changes during earthquakes. |
| D．Identifying animals’ possible responses to earthquakes. |
| A．The chance of main ruptures occurring in fault zones. |
| B．The accuracy of GPS in recording land movement. |
| C．The existence of a two-hour precursory phase. |
| D．The horizontal slip within the first 46 hours. |
| A．Distinguish | B．Contradict | C．Overmatch | D．Facilitate |
| A．The inaccessibility of precursor signals. |
| B．The complexity of updating GPS equipment. |
| C．The challenge of identifying earthquake regions. |
| D．The inconsistent slip patterns of different earthquakes. |
Another school year was beginning. I had thirteen excited first graders eager to learn and ready to fill my classroom with laughs, tears, and everything. I realized that I had a small class size and got excited about the special projects we could do. One project that I had been particularly interested in was finding a doctor in Doctors Without Borders as a pen pal for my students, which could definitely broaden my students’ horizons.
I began by sending out an e-mail to our school district employees asking for names and contact information of any doctor in Doctors Without Borders which they knew of. I sent an e-mail to each one asking if we could communicate with them, but only one reply came: Dr. Denisar, who was in Africa for humanitarian medical work. Since six-year-olds’attention spans were short and many of the students were just learning how to read and write, I thought it would be the best to correspond through e-mail. Dr. Denisar quickly became a reward system. If students practiced and could read a book fluently, I would record it and e-mail it. If they finished a writing assignment, I would scan it and e-mail it. If students were misbehaving, I caught myself saying, “What would Dr. Denisar think about that?”
We also used the information Dr. Denisar included in his e-mails as learning opportunities. As we communicated with him, we learned more about him, as well as his missions from disease outbreaks to malnutrition of the locals. We started to lighten things up by recording songs and jokes, and sending art projects and care packages. He appreciated the communication. After Dr. Denisar returned, we continued to communicate with him, as my students had got quite attached. He promised that he would make a trip to our small town in Illinois to meet my class when he could.
The school year was beginning to wrap up when he contacted me in April about coming up to visit in May. For the first time, we began talking on the phone about his visit.
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。
As the day of his visit approached, the kids began to get nervous.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________A whole morning had passed before we knew it.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________It was a special Saturday evening. Hardly had I finished my work and left my office building at 9:00 pm when it rained cats and dogs. In order to get home earlier, I dashed into the rain without hesitation. Out of my expectation, I noticed a man wandering around my car, the moment I approached the parking lot.
Shaking with cold in the heavy rain, he was looking around every few seconds as though to be waiting for somebody. It was at that moment that it occurred to me that I had forgotten to roll the car window up and that was exactly where I left my wallet. In a flash, I got a big breath.
So I couldn’t help speeding up and at the same time called out to the man, expecting that he didn’t take the money and make a run with it, as after a busy day’s work, I was too tired to catch up with him.
“Are you the owner of the car?” the man asked in a shaking voice, but raindrops on the roof of my car made his voice unclear.
“And who the hell are you?” I replied with an unfriendly expression as if he was a thief who was caught stealing my wallet.
The man went on to tell me that he was a beggar, begging around the nearby buildings where I worked every day and familiar with every face and every car here. “This morning, several young men walked up plotting to take the wallet in your car. I came over and frightened them away, pretending to call the police. Thus the bad boys were scared to run away immediately. I had been waiting for you here since then so that the car and your wallet would be secure,” added the man.
When the man gave me a clear explanation of what had happened earlier, I was astonished to cover my open mouth with my hands.
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。
Standing in the rain, I couldn’t believe my ears.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________“Why didn’t you take the money?” I asked him.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________It was hard to say goodbye to a pet, especially for children. Nancy Lowe. 5, from Walton-on Thames, England, experienced the loss of her beloved cat, Tintin, earlier this year. She died from heart failure and Nancy had been struggling to adjust to life without her best friend. Concerned and anxious, Nancy’s mom, Tamara, said, “Nancy and Tintin were best friends, and they had a really close bond, Whenever they saw each other, the two of them were so happy.”
Nancy desperately missed Tintin and she was worried the cat would be lonely, so she decided to write a letter to her cat up in heaven. She was warned by her mother, who told her that heaven might be too far away and that Tintin might have found a new friend, but Nancy insisted on writing the letter. When she was asked what she had written, she showed the letter to her mother generously. It read, “Dear Tintin, I miss you. Have you found a new friend in heaven?” Tamara was touched by her daughter’s sincere love and kindness. She didn’t want to disappoint her daughter so they posted the letter together.
Before they put the letter in a post box, once again Tamara tried to let her know she probably wouldn’t receive a reply, but Nancy addressed the envelope to “heaven” and mail edit off anyway.
Tamara said, “When we sent the letter I didn’t expect anything to comeback and I don’t think Nancy did, either. But it was important for her to say a proper goodbye. Getting a response was the last thing we expected.” Tamara and Nancy didn’t know a postman named Clive Edwards was on duty that day and he saw the letter addressed to heaven and wanted to help Nancy find some comfort in her loss.
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。
To their surprise, they received a letter from “Tintin” just a week later!
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Tamara shared the story on the Internet hoping to find the sender.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________It was after midnight last December and we were driving home from a party. The weather had been awful, with the rain pouring on our 40-minute journey there. Paul, my husband, was driving our Ford Ranger pick-up truck and my seven-year-old son, Silas, was in the back.
What was so frightening was the speed of water. One minute we were halfway home, the next there was water going up over the bonnet (汽车引擎盖). The rushing water lifted our car up and pushed it back against a hedge (树篱). I felt terrified of the power of the water, and Paul was trying to control the truck.
Water was instantly around my ankles. I reached my hand back and felt it around Silas’s too. Paul climbed out through a window, at which point Silas woke up, confused. I managed to pass him through the window to Paul, who was now on the truck’s roof.
Paul told me I needed to get out, but I couldn’t open my door. I attempted to push my body through the driver’s window and was left clinging on to the support between the windows. Paul grabbed my hood (兜帽) to help in vain and I could hear Silas crying, so I told him to let go—Silas needed him. He refused, but I insisted—I wanted to know Silas would be safe. As I saw his empty, outstretched hand, the water took me away. I was a strong swimmer but I had no option but to shoot down rapids. Shocked, I gasped for breath and tried to keep my head above water.
It was extremely dark but I could just make out trees. As I passed, I reached out and grabbed two slim branches, holding tightly. I hugged the tree with my knees. My plan was just to hold on. Not knowing if Paul and Silas were safe, I thought that if they did survive, they would try to save me. I wondered who would come to my rescue.
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。
After nearly 40 minutes, I saw a small boat spotlight.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________As I rose to my feet, I hugged my rescuers.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________8 . Jeannie Di Bon has a strong belief that movement heals. Following a 35-year quest for answers, a physical therapist was able to connect the dots of her symptoms by asking just a handful of questions. Finally, armed with an explanation, the diagnosis of hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS) was more of a relief than a surprise. Since qualifying as a yoga instructor in 2008, Di Bon has seen the condition appear in various ways among her clients.
Thought to be the most common of 13 known subtypes of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), the hEDS connective tissue disorder is most often associated with joint hypermobility, instability, chronic pain, and dislocations. However, those impacted can face multi-systemic symptoms and co-morbidities, such as gastrointestinal (肠胃的), and neurological disturbances, presenting a wide range of severity.
Despite yielding positive results, as Di Bon’s work with hEDS clients increased, she began to notice gaps in her teaching, and set out to address them. “That’s why I started to look more into the mind, into the breath, and relaxation... and modify the exercises so that they were safe and suitable for somebody who is maybe feeling very unstable.”
Having experienced her own difficulties navigating the healthcare system, Di Bon has been thinking about why so many with EDS carve out a vocation linked to the disorder. “I think it happens because we go through such a personal struggle to find information, to figure it out. For me personally, I just want to share that.” The Wimbledon native is constantly seeking a greater understanding of the body, currently studying for an MSc in Pain Management alongside her multi-hyphenate lifestyle as an author, movement therapist, app founder, and award-winning community champion. But, through her six principles of pain-free movement, Di Bon offers a sincere message of hope.
“We can always change something that would make your life better. Even if it’s the tiniest thing. I work with people who are bed bound, who have had to give up work, who are house bound, and we are working together to make their lives more fulfilling, and to give them a better quality of life.”
1. Why was her diagnosis of hEDS viewed as more of a relief than a surprise?| A．Its cause put her in a panic. | B．Its result came out in the wash. |
| C．It was not beyond her expectation. | D．It was not as serious as it seemed. |
| A．Kind and inspiring. | B．Generous and hard-working. |
| C．Firm and productive. | D．Reflective and considerate. |
| A．The desire to help others. | B．The exploration for a cure. |
| C．The passion for learning something new. | D．The determination to get over challenges. |
| A．More haste, less speed. | B．It never rains but it pours. |
| C．Focus on the big, start small. | D．There is no royal road to learning. |
1. What is Jennifer?
| A．A student. | B．A tour guide. | C．A manager. |
| A．Take a trip abroad. | B．Visit her grandparents. | C．Do some volunteer work. |
| A．English. | B．Science. | C．Geography. |
| A．On July 10th. | B．On July 16th. | C．On July 23rd. |
Tripod’s story started one spring morning as I finished morning surgery at the veterinary clinic (兽医诊所) I owned. I was writing up medical records of the surgery patients when my receptionist stuck her head into my office, saying that a lady phoned that she’d just found a cat in her back yard with a badly injured leg.
I immediately sent my two pre-vet students in the clinic right out to pick up the cat. They eagerly accepted the challenge and soon returned with my newest patient. We gently removed the large gray tabby (斑猫) from the carrier and placed him on a warm towel on the exam table. He lay very still, his breathing rapid and shallow. His right front leg was mutilated (残废的) from just below the shoulder. The students hadn’t exaggerated; the odor (气味) coming from what remained of the leg was overpowering. This guy was in pretty bad shape, with a mangled (轧平的) front leg, some scars on his head and no collar or tag on him. The poor thing…We were close to tears, especially those two students.
“Looks like he was caught in a trap. See those ragged wound edges?” I felt the ice-cold toes and foot pads, recognizing there was little, if any, chance of saving the leg. The only way I could save him was to amputate (截肢) that leg. The students watched in somber silence as I carefully cleaned the wound. I knew from years of experience this guy didn’t have an owner. “Well, then,” I sighed, “Either remove the leg and see if we can find a home for him or put him to sleep.” Just then, one of the students stroked the cat’s head. Somewhere deep in the cat’s throat, a faint purr began. As the student continued to pet the tabby, I noticed the cat’s breathing became less labored.
“You’re a fighter, aren’t you, boy?” I whispered. “You deserve a chance.” After stabilizing the cat’s vital signs, I performed the amputation in the hope of saving his life.
Over the next few weeks, Tripod, who the students had named, went through many ups and downs. I was cautiously optimistic about his recovery. Word got around about the three-legged “miracle cat” and many clients stopped by on a regular basis to check on his progress.
注意：1．所续写短文的词数应为150左右；
2．请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Paragraph 1:
The day finally came when I decided Tripod had truly survived.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Paragraph 2:
One day, one of our regular and favorite clients came in the door.
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