1 . “Find your passion!” is an appeal well-intended and meant to inspire. But is it good advice?

“Finding” a passion implies that it already exists and is simply waiting to be discovered. Unfortunately, this idea doesn’t square with what science tells us. Instead, passions are developed. They often begin with a spark (火花) of curiosity caused by something in one’s environment, such as a fascinating physics lecture. Through a process involving repeated engagement and-positive experiences, people can come to personally value that content or activity and internalize it. What was at first interesting becomes an interest. If these qualities continue to intensify, a passion can emerge.

Actually, assuming passion as inborn tend to cause people to be less open, less courageous in the face of challenges and less creative in pursuit of new interests. Thus, encouraging people to “find” their passion may cause them to eventually believe that interests and passions are unchangeable. People who think this have a fixed mindset of interest. By contrast, some people, whom we refer to as having a growth mindset of interest, view their interests and passions as developed.

People with a fixed mindset of interest, for example, may fall into the trap of thinking, “If I have already found my passion, why keep exploring?” In recent studies, after engaging in a new science task, arts students with a fixed mindset expressed less interest in a scientific topic than arts students with a growth mindset. Meanwhile, science students with a fixed mindset responded similarly to an art-related task. For those with a growth mindset, having a strong pre-existing interest in the arts or sciences did not get in the way of them viewing a new area as interesting.

Worse still, people with a fixed mindset of interest tend to expect their passions to provide limitless motivation, such that their favorite topics should never feel too difficult or demanding. Such a mindset can also limit creativity and innovation. If people believe they are restricted to only a few inborn interests and, in consequence, do not explore other areas, they may miss seeing important connections across different fields. That loss is especially unfortunate considering how leaders at innovative companies have long prized problem-solving that draw ideas from diverse disciplines.

Of course, not every activity will become a burning passion. But a growth mindset of interest will help you remain open and curious. The old saying “find something you love to do, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life” needs to be updated.

1. The author uses the sentence underlined in Paragraph 1 to ________.

A．set a target for criticism	B．point out the fact
C．confirm people’s finding	D．voice his opinion

2. What can we learn from the passage?

A．Any interesting activity can spark a passion.

B．Companies prefer those who specialize in one field.

C．People with a fixed mindset of interest are hard to be motivated.

D．A growth mindset of interest promotes creativity and innovation.

3. Which will the author probably agree with?

A．One should count on luck to excite a burning passion.

B．Reinforced positive experiences contribute to passion.

C．Those already interested in a field find new areas boring.

D．We’d better cherish the existing passion and look for more.

2 . How We Talk about Fear Matters

Lately, there seems to be plenty to fear in the world. How we talk about what we fear might offer clues to how we perceive that emotion socially and culturally.

Get the root of fear.

    1    . In Anglo Saxon times, “fear” primarily referred to sudden danger. The root of the word dates back to “pēr” from Indo-European about 6,000 years ago. This root suggests that fear developed from a sudden (frightening) experience you passed through.

Figure out the emotional meaning of fear.

Whether emotions are viewed positively or negatively varies from culture to culture.    2     . For instance, in English, the word “anxious” can be used to mean “worried” or “eager”. But the word meaning “anxious” just means “regret” in Dargwa. Therefore, many English speakers may not view anxiety as negatively as Dargwa speakers.

Find out a fearful pattern.

In looking at such patterns across the major language families, researchers found that the word “fear” was often associated with anxiety, envy and grief in Indo-European languages. But in Austronesian languages, “fear” more often was associated with surprise.     3     .

    4    

How we talk about fear changes how we react to it. When we talk about what frightens us, it may be useful to disrupt associated meanings. In addition, how our language categorizes an emotion seems to impact whether we perceive those emotions negatively or positively.

In conclusion, fear is something that can be changed by cultural and linguistic experience.    5     . Perhaps Roosevelt was right when he in famously said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

A．Talk more about fears

B．Change our perception of fear

C．The word fear has a long history in English

D．There seemed a fearful pattern across the major language families

E．This is based on what people have learned to associate with emotion words

F．It opens the door to potential ways to change how we talk about and react to it

G．This makes speakers of the latter languages associate this emotion with a less negative sense

3 . Nowadays, people are increasingly interacting with others in social media environments where algorithms control the flow of social information they see. People’s interactions with online algorithms may affect how they learn from others, with negative consequences including social misperceptions, conflict and the spread of misinformation.

On social media platforms, algorithms are mainly designed to amplify (放大) information that sustains engagement, meaning they keep people clicking on content and coming back to the platforms. There is evidence suggesting that a side effect of this design is that algorithms amplify information people are strongly biased (偏向的) to learn from. We call this information “PRIME”, for prestigious, in-group, moral and emotional information.

In our evolutionary past, biases to learn from PRIME information were very advantageous: Learning from prestigious individuals is efficient because these people are successful and their behavior can be copied. Paying attention to people who violate moral norms is important because punishing them helps the community maintain cooperation. But what happens when PRIME information becomes amplified by algorithms and some people exploit (利用) algorithm amplification to promote themselves? Prestige becomes a poor signal of success because people can fake prestige on social media. News become filled with negative and moral information so that there is conflict rather than cooperation.

The interaction of human psychology and algorithm amplification leads to disfunction because social learning supports cooperation and problem-solving, but social media algorithms are designed to increase engagement. We call it functional mismatch. One of the key outcomes of functional mismatch is that people start to form incorrect perceptions of their social world, which often occurs in the field of politics. Recent research suggests that when algorithms selectively amplify more extreme political views, people begin to think that their political in-group and out-group are more sharply divided than they really are. Such “false polarization” might be an important source of greater political conflict.

So what’s next? A key question is what can be done to make algorithms facilitate accurate human social learning rather than exploit social learning biases. Some research team is working on new algorithm designs that increase engagement while also punishing PRIME information. This may maintain user activity that social media platforms seek, but also make people’s social perceptions more accurate.

1. What are social media algorithms targeted at?

A．Improving social environment.	B．Generating PRIME information.
C．Avoiding side effects of social media.	D．Raising the media platform click rate.

2. Why does the author refer to “false polarization” in paragraph 4?

A．To make an assumption.	B．To illustrate a conclusion.
C．To explain a political issue.	D．To present an extreme case.

3. According to the author, algorithms will be improved so as to ________.

A．boost engagement and regulate amplification

B．strengthen social learning and delete biases

C．identify biases and punish PRIME information

D．monitor media platforms and guarantee users’ privacy

4. What is the best title of the text?

A．PRIME information meets with misperceptions

B．Algorithms control the flow of social information

C．Social media algorithms twist human social learning

D．Online algorithm designs face unexpected challenges

4 . What is life? Like most great questions, this one is easy to ask but difficult to answer. The reason is simple: we know of just one type of life and it’s challenging to do science with a sample size of one. The field of artificial life-called ALife for short — is the systematic attempt to spell out life’s fundamental principles. Many of these practitioners, so-called ALifers, think that somehow making life is the surest way to really understand what life is.

So far no one has convincingly made artificial life. This track record makes ALife a ripe target for criticism, such as declarations of the field’s doubtful scientific value. Alan Smith, a complexity scientist, is tired of such complaints. Asking about “the point” of ALife might be, well, missing the point entirely, he says. “The existence of a living system is not about the use of anything.” Alan says. “Some people ask me, ‘So what’s the worth of artificial life?’ Do you ever think, ‘What is the worth of your grandmother?’”

As much as many ALifers hate emphasizing their research’s applications, the attempts to create artificial life could have practical payoffs. Artificial intelligence may be considered ALife’s cousin in that researchers in both fields are enamored by a concept called open-ended evolution (演化). This is the capacity for a system to create essentially endless complexity, to be a sort of “novelty generator”. The only system known to exhibit this is Earth’s biosphere. If the field of ALife manages to reproduce life’s endless “creativity” in some virtual model, those same principles could give rise to truly inventive machines.

Compared with the developments of Al, advances in ALife are harder to recognize. One reason is that ALife is a field in which the central concept — life itself — is undefined. The lack of agreement among ALifers doesn’t help either. The result is a diverse line of projects that each advance along their unique paths. For better or worse, ALife mirrors the very subject it studies. Its muddled (混乱的) progression is a striking parallel (平行线) to the evolutionary struggles that have shaped Earth biosphere.

Undefined and uncontrolled, ALife drives its followers to repurpose old ideas and generated novelty. It may be, of course, that these characteristics aren’t in any way surprising or singular. They may apply universally to all acts of evolution. Ultimately ALife may be nothing special. But even this dismissal suggests something：perhaps, just like life itself throughout the universe, the rise of ALife will prove unavoidable.

1. Regarding Alan Smith’s defence of ALife, the author is      .

A．supportive

B．puzzled

C．unconcerned

D．doubtful

2. What does the word “enamored” underlined in Paragraph 3 most probably mean?

A．Shocked.

B．Protected.

C．Attracted.

D．Challenged.

3. What can we learn from this passage?

A．ALife holds the key to human future.	B．ALife and AI share a common feature.
C．AI mirrors the developments of ALife.	D．AI speeds up the process of human evolution.

4. Which would be the best title for the passage?

A．Life Is Undefined. Can AI Be a Way Out?

B．Life Evolves. Can AI Help ALife Evolve, Too?

C．Life Is Undefined. Can ALife Be Defined One Day?

D．Life Evolves. Can Attempts to Create ALife Evolve, Too?

5 . Plant-based products have been breaking into the foodie mainstream in the United States, after years in which vegan (素食的) burgers and milk alternatives knocked on the market’s door. That is partly because more companies are targeting people who seek to reduce the amount of meat they eat, rather than forswear it altogether.

Now, as fish alternatives begin to attract investment and land at restaurants in the United States and beyond, people who track the fishless fish sector say that it could achieve significant growth.

One reason, they say, is that consumers in rich countries are becoming more aware of the seafood industry’s environmental problems, including overfishing and the health risks of some seafood. Another is that today’s plant-based companies do a better job of approaching fish flavor than earlier ones did—an important consideration for non-vegetarians (非素食者).

“There are a number of people already looking at alternative hamburgers,” said Joshua Katz, an analyst at the consulting firm McKinsey who has studied the alt-protein (替代蛋白) industry. “You might actually say, ‘I should work on something else.’ And seafood is still a massive market with convincing reasons to work on.” People who reduce their consumption of animal proteins for environmental reasons often stop eating red meat, which requires enormous amounts of land and water to farm.

But alt-fish advocates say that seafood also comes with environmental problems. Unsustainable fishing practices have destroyed fisheries (鱼汤) in recent decades, a problem both for biodiversity and the millions of people who depend on the sea for income and food.

“It’s simply a smarter way to make seafood,” says Mirte Gosker, the acting managing director of the Good Food Institute Asia-Pacific, a nonprofit advocacy group that promotes alternative proteins. “Full stop.”

So far plant-based seafood products in the United States account for only 0.1 percent of the country’s seafood sales, less than 1.4 percent of the U.S. meat market occupied by plant-based meat alternatives. But alt-seafood enterprises worldwide received at least $83 million from investors in 2020, compared with $1 million three years earlier. As of this June, 83 companies were producing alt-seafood products around the world, a nearly threefold rise since 2017. All but 18 of those 83 companies focus on plant-based products. A dozen others are developing lab-grown seafood, which is not yet commercially available in any country.

1. What does the underlined word “forswear” in paragraph 1 probably mean?

A．Sample.

B．Consume.

C．Produce.

D．Abandon.

2. Which aspect of seafood do non-vegetarians focus on?

A．The health risks.	B．The protein intake.
C．The taste and mouthfeel.	D．The overfishing problem.

3. What is Mirte Gosker’s tone when he says “Full stop” in paragraph 6?

A．Determined.

B．Concerned.

C．Humorous.

D．Enthusiastic.

4. What do the figures in the last paragraph mainly show?

A．Seafood companies are struggling.

B．Plant-based meat products will be a trend.

C．Alt-seafood products have a promising future.

D．Seafood will be commercially available soon.

6 . With climate change continuing to worsen, our situation is beginning to feel increasingly serious.     1     Is it right? Maybe not.

Techno-optimism is one of the greatest misconceptions when it comes to solutions to ensure our future. It can be defined as a belief that future technologies will solve all of our current problems. This definition reinforces (强化) the idea that there’s no reason to panic or change our current energy-intensive lifestyle. All society needs to do is look to green technology to work its magic.     2    

One of the best examples of this optimistic misconception is the electric car. Despite being highly regarded as an eco-friendly way to get around, electric cars are not the end for the future of transport. Batteries in electric cars use chemical elements which we could be seeing a shortage of by the midcentury.     3     Techno-optimism has led many to believe that if everyone just switched to driving electric vehicles, we would be making incredible steps towards sustainability. However, the reality is that the amount of resources and energy needed to produce enough electric vehicles for everyone is not even remotely sustainable.

    4     Investing in public transportation and moving away from individually owned vehicles. Producing fewer cars. Improving recycling practices of old batteries. The solutions we seek should not be rooted in new technology, but be about changing the way our society functions.

Techno-optimism puts too much emphasis on technology and not enough on what we can do right this minute. Unfortunately, people seem to like the picture that techno-optimism paints.     5     It is important to understand that the problem begins when we see those technologies as a way to make our current lifestyles eco-friendly. Until we are ready to face the need for a less complex life, we cannot make true progress towards sustainability.

A．So where should we look for answers instead?

B．The modern world’s simple solution is technology.

C．Moreover, they are more energy intensive to produce.

D．Is it a trap that many people have fallen into in recent years?

E．Unfortunately, this is an incredibly dangerous opinion to hold.

F．Despite any technology, we as a whole are not living sustainably.

G．Nevertheless, the truth is, we need a widespread change in our lifestyles.

7 . Arguably, the biggest science development of the year to date has been the images of the very depths of the universe taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Those images beg a comparison between the external and internal universes that science is bent on observing and understanding.

Decades ago, astrophysicist Carl Sagan famously said, “The universe is also within is. We’re made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself. ” He was commenting then on the reality that our internal universe was as complex and as fantastic as the outer space.

There are many similarities between the progress we’ve made in understanding the universe and in piecing together life’s inner workings. Like the technological developments that took us from Galileo’s telescope to the Hubble to the JWST, life science tools have also improved rapidly. From early light microscopes to modern super-resolution ones, these developments have afforded researchers a deep look into biology’s infinitesimal (无限小的) landscape. Learning that living things were composed of cells was, not a terribly long time ago, a revolutionary observation. Since then, scientists have been able to dive ever deeper into the components of life.

Going beyond merely observing the complicated makeup of organisms, life scientists can now discover the workings of molecules (分子). And that is where scanning the universe differs from peering into biology. Understanding the universe, especially from a functional standpoint, is not necessarily an immediate urgency. Understanding biology on that level is. Simply observing the amazing internal structure of cells is not enough. Biologists must also characterize how all those parts interact and change in different environments and when faced with various challenges. Being able to image a virus or bacterium is nice at the level of basic science. But knowing how viruses gain entry into cells and spread, infect, and disable can literally save lives. Through time, biology has risen to this mechanistic challenge. Not only can life science tools produce images of cell components, even more importantly, they can help predict the effects of drugs on receptors, of immune cells on foreign invaders (入侵者), and of genetic perturbations (基因干扰) on development and aging.

This is not to belittle the work of scientists researching into universe. They should rightly be praised for delivering views of impossibly distant, impossibly massive phenomena. My aim is to celebrate these accomplishments while at the same time recognizing that science’s inward search for detail and insight is equally impressive and, in my view, more urgent. The output of both the outward and inward explorations should stimulate wonder in everyone. After all, it’s all star-stuff.

1. Why does the author quote Carl Sagan’s comment in Paragraph 2?

A．To introduce the background.	B．To prove an assumption.
C．To make a comparison.	D．To present an idea.

2. Like the study of the universe, life science has been advancing in ________.

A．study approaches	B．system management
C．research facilities	D．technology integration

3. We can infer from Paragraph 4 that biologists’ work is ________.

A．practical

B．risky

C．flexible

D．popular

4. As for life science, which would the author agree with?

A．It has received universal recognition.	B．It should enjoy priority in development.
C．It can be applied in the majority of areas.	D．It is more complicated than space science.

8 . Technology seems to discourage slow, immersive reading. Reading on a screen, particularly a phone screen, tires your eyes and makes it harder for you to keep your place. So online writing tends to be more skimmable and list-like than print. The cognitive neuroscientist Mary Walt argued recently that this “new norm” of skim reading is producing “an invisible, game-changing transformation” in how readers process words. The neuronal circuit that sustains the brain’s capacity to read now favors the rapid absorption of information, rather than skills developed by deeper reading, like critical analysis.

We shouldn’t overplay this danger. All readers skim. Skimming is the skill we acquire as children as we learn to read more skillfully. From about the age of nine, our eyes start to bounce around the page, reading only about a quarter of the words properly, and filling in the gaps by inference. Nor is there anything new in these fears about declining attention spans. So far, the anxieties have proved to be false alarms. “Quite a few critics have been worried about attention span lately and see very short stories as signs of cultural decline,” the American author Selvin Brown wrote. “No one ever said that poems were evidence of short attention spans.”

And yet the Internet has certainly changed the way we read. For a start, it means that there is more to read, because more people than ever are writing. If you time travelled just a few decades into the past, you would wonder at how little writing was happening outside a classroom. And digital writing is meant for rapid release and response. An online article starts forming a comment string underneath as soon as it is published. This mode of writing and reading can be interactive and fun. But often it treats other people’s words as something to be quickly harvested as fodder to say something else. Everyone talks over the top of everyone else, desperate to be heard.

Perhaps we should slow down. Reading is constantly promoted as a social good and source of personal achievement. But this advocacy often emphasizes “enthusiastic”, “passionate” or “eager” reading, none of which adjectives suggest slow, quiet absorption.

To a slow reader, a piece of writing can only be fully understood by immersing oneself in the words and their slow comprehension of a line of thought. The slow reader is like a swimmer who stops counting the number of pool laps he has done and just enjoys how his body feels and moves in water.

The human need for this kind of deep reading is too tenacious for any new technology to destroy. We often assume that technological change can’t be stopped and happens in one direction, so that older media like “dead-tree” books are kicked out by newer, more virtual forms. In practice, older technologies can coexist with new ones. The Kindle has not killed off the printed book any more than the car killed off the bicycle. We still want to enjoy slowly-formed ideas and carefully-chosen words. Even in a fast-moving age, there is time for slow reading.

1. What is the author’s attitude towards Selvin Brown’s opinion?

A．Favorable.

B．Critical.

C．Doubtful.

D．Objective.

2. The author would probably agree that          .

A．advocacy of passionate reading helps promote slow reading

B．digital writing leads to too much speaking and not enough reflection

C．the public should be aware of the impact skimming has on neuronal circuits

D．the number of Internet readers is declining due to the advances of technology

3. What does the underlined word “tenacious” in Paragraph 6 probably mean?

A．Comprehensive.

B．Complicated.

C．Determined.

D．Apparent.

4. Which would be the best title for the passage?

A．Slow Reading Is Here to Stay

B．Digital Technology Prevents Slow Reading

C．Screen vs. Print: Which Requires Deep Reading?

D．Reading Is Not a Race: The Wonder of Deep Reading

9 . Clown fish live their adult lives in the protective arms of sea anemones, the small brightly colored sea animals attached onto rocks to house clown fish. Between birth and adulthood, however, the fish have to complete a treacherous journey. After hatching, they swim out to the open sea to finish developing. After maturing, the young fish swim back, during which they have to avoid a “wall of mouths” by sensing the unfriendly smells. With ocean acidification, a trend that is occurring worldwide, scientists began to wonder what might happen to fish’s sense of smell.

My team put 300 recently hatched clown fish in our lab. When we introduced a friendly fish odor (气味), they did not react. But when we introduced an enemy odor, they swam away. We then repeated the experiment with 300 new hatchlings from the same parents in the more acidic water-a level we can expect by the year 2100 if current trends continue. When we introduced friendly and unfriendly smells at the same time, the fish seemed unable to make up their minds, spending equal time swimming toward one smell and the other. They could sense chemical signals but couldn’t recognize the meaning of them.

It is always tricky to say that behaviors seen in a lab would also be seen in the wild. So we went to a sandy lake near one of the Great Barrier Reef’s northern islands to test how wild-caught damselfish would react to enemy smells after exposing them to acidic water. In a tank, about half of them held in water with acidity expected by 2050 were attracted to the unfriendly odor and half were not, yet not one held in water anticipated by 2100 avoided being attracted to the enemy odor. We then let the marked damselfish loose in the lake. The fish once held in the most acidic water swam farther away from their protective home. Can fish adapt? Most studies have habituated fish to lifted acidic conditions over a few days or months-an extremely short length of time. The animals are not given a realistic opportunity to adapt. Yet some scientists thought that fish might escape the anger of ocean acidification, in part because early research done in the 1980s showed that certain animals had an astonishing ability to regulate their internal chemistry to survive acidified water. But maintaining normal functions such as avoiding danger is a different challenge.

At a minimum, confusion could place yet another stressor on fish already challenged by rising water temperatures, overfishing, etc. Further, if many ocean creatures start to behave strangely, entire food webs and ecosystems could come crashing down. Although the science is still new, the results appear to be lining up: ocean acidification is messing with fish’s minds.

1. What does the underlined word “treacherous” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?

A．Risky.	B．Hurried.
C．Mysterious.	D．Helpless.

2. What can we learn about the fish in the acidic water?

A．They lost their senses to chemical signals.

B．They were less likely to respond to threats.

C．Their behavior in the lab disappeared in the wild.

D．They tended to seek the protection from their home.

3. What can be inferred from the passage?

A．The author’s study confirms previous findings.

B．Fish’s adaptation to acidic water is a matter of time.

C．Different fishes behave differently to acidity change.

D．The chances of restoring fish’s minds are yet to be seen.

4. Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?

A．What Do Different Stressors Do to Ocean Creatures?

B．What Does Ocean Acidity Mean to Ocean Creatures?

C．How Does Ocean Acidification Destroy the Ecosystem?

D．How Do Ocean Creatures Adapt to Ocean Acidification?

10 . Many people would answer the question of what makes us human by insisting that we are cultural beings. There is no doubt that we are. But one definition of culture is the totality of traditions acquired in a community by social learning from other individuals, and many animal species have traditions. Can we then say that some animals are cultural beings too?

One approach to study culture in animals is the so-called Method of Exclusion (排除), in which scientists investigate behavioral variations across populations of one species. In a famous study, scientists learned that chimpanzee (黑猩猩) behaviors were socially passed on as they were present at some sites but not at others, despite having same ecological settings. For example, chimpanzees in Tai National Park in Ivory Coast are well-known for their nut-cracking skills. Chimpanzees in Gombe national part in Tanzania, on the other hand, do not crack nuts, although nuts exist in their environment too.

However, when applying the Method of Exclusion, one has to be very careful. There are other factors that could also explain the pattern of behavioral evaluation. For example, some of the chimpanzee techniques scientists evaluated occur in only one of the three subspecies. So it’s quite possible that these behaviors also have an innate component. This would mean that one chimpanzee subspecies uses a new technique not out of cultural tradition, but because the behavior is fixed to specific genes. Another factor that has to be excluded is of course the environment Chimpanzees in Mahale do not fish algae (水藻), simply because algae does not exist there.

But when we exclude all the variations that can be explained by genes or environment, we still find that animals do show cultural variations. Does that mean there is no real difference between them and us after all? Not exactly: There is a fundamental difference between human and animal culture. Only humans can build culturally on what generations before us have learned. This is called “cumulative culture”. We don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel. This is called the “ratchet (棘轮) effect”. Like a ratchet that can be turned forward but not back, people’s cultural techniques evolve.

It is likely that behaviors we see today in chimpanzee cultures could be invented over and over again by individual animals themselves. In contrast, a child born today would not be able to invent a computer without the knowledge of many past generations.

1. Why does the author mention the example of the chimpanzees in two parks in Paragraph 2?

A．To prove that culture does exist in animals.

B．To justify the uniqueness of the research method.

C．To compare how chimpanzees behave in different parks.

D．To stress the importance of environment in studying culture.

2. What does the underlined word “innate” in Paragraph 3 probably mean?

A．Advanced.

B．Inborn.

C．Adaptive.

D．Intelligent.

3. What can we learn from the passage?

A．Cumulative culture is what sets humans apart from animals.

B．Culure in animals is as worthy to be valued as human culture.

C．Animals don’t have the ability to invent behaviors in a community.

D．The “ratchet effect” decides if humans can build on past experiences.