1 . We may weep for the dodo, but could and should we bring this lovely bird back from the dead? De-extinction is the science of restoring lost species and it has been in the news for decades.
The story in modern times began in 1990 when Michael Crichton published his science fiction novel Jurassic Park, in which he imagined a world where scientists were able to bring dinosaurs back to life. Crichton imagined that polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology could be a way to amplify (放大) tiny quantities of dinosaur DNA and thus build a living embryo.
Sadly, biologists soon realized that DNA in fact breaks down super-fast; even after 100 years, DNA from museum skins of dodos was decayed (腐烂) beyond repair. They could be sequenced (测定序列) using massive computational power, but then only with considerable uncertainty. And even if you capture a DNA sequence, there’s still the problem of how you get living cells to read that sequence and express proteins that make the dinosaur or the dodo.
But why would anyone want to see mammoths, or something like them, roaming (漫游) present-day Siberia? Well, they were undoubtedly amazing beasts. As well as hunting them, our distant ancestors painted their likenesses in caves across Europe. Fascinating as they may be, there's some ecological justification for the project too.
It was this diversity of land surface, broken up by heavy limbs and randomly fertilised by faeces (排泄物), that supported so much flora (植物群). Without the mammoths, that diversity disappeared. Return them and landscapes would once again be with a variety of species, including flowers and bushes.
True, it’s not de-extinction in the sense of bringing a long-dead species back to life. Instead it’s more like making a “dodo” by engineering a modern pigeon, its closest relative, to become huge and flightless. The result would be a big, fatty pigeon that, whether it looked like a dodo or not, would probably fulfil some of its ecological roles.
As a palaeontologist, I would of course love to see living dinosaurs, mammoths and dodos. In some ways, though, I am relieved that the optimistic claims for cloning and genetic technologies have not been borne out. The slowdown gives us time to consider the outcomes—and hopefully avoid some of Michael Crichton’s more fevered imaginings.
1. What is paragraph 2 of the text mainly about?| A．A science fiction review. | B．The development of DNA. |
| C．An inspired guess of de-extinction. | D．The application of PCR technology. |
| A．DNA is hard to keep for long. | B．Computational power is limited. |
| C．Biologists are opposed to it. | D．Living cells cant be sequenced. |
| A．They expect to seek hunt fun. | B．They lack sources of modern art. |
| C．They need them for research. | D．They want to see biodiversity. |
| A．Cautious. | B．Unclear. | C．Dismissive. | D．Approving. |
When my sister, Dona, and I were little kids, my parents both joined the army. They stayed far away from our town and hardly returned home. My grandpa took on the big responsibility of taking care of us. Still, without our parents by our side, Dona and I sometimes felt lonely and sad, especially one winter.
One morning in that winter when Dona and I were sitting in our bedroom, dull and quiet, Grandpa said, “My dear, how about trying skating for fun?” Our faces immediately lit up and we answered together, “Great, we surely like it, Grandpa!”
He smiled and quickly set about building us a skating rink (溜冰场) in our yard. The process of building a skating rink was not easy. First, Grandpa laid out long wooden boards around the yard. Next, he made the base of the rink flat. Grandpa then began spraying the water, lightly at first, until the first layer of ice was established. He would then put some water onto the ice each night. And thus, the ice became thicker and thicker.
In the darkness of the night, from the kitchen window Dona and I watched Grandpa with great expectations. His back and shoulders rounded to protect him from the freezing wind. He stood alone, busying himself creating a perfect skating rink for us. The only light was from the moon and stars.
One night, Grandpa suddenly pressed his waist and the look on his face showed he was painful. Quite concerned, Dona and I rushed out and asked, “Grandpa! What’s wrong?” “My waist is painful. Don’t worry! I’ll be fine just after a little rest,” he smiled. Dona and I offered to help create the rink. But he said it was too cold outside at night and that building the rink needs much experience and lots of skills. Then, we gave up the idea of offering him a hand, but demanded he build the rink a few days later. Seeing we were determined, he walked into the room with us and had warm tea. Before long, Dona and I were tired and went to bed.
注意：1.续写词数应为150个左右。
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
When we fell asleep, Grandpa quietly walked out into the yard.
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Amazed, we hurriedly put on the skating equipment and rushed out._
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“I look like a clown (小丑)!” Winston thought sadly. He pulled his cap down, thankful for the cover it provided. He wanted to escape the attention of the people outside the barbershop (理发店). He looked around before hurrying away into the darkness to put some distance between himself and the curious eyes of others.
As he moved quickly down the street,Winston wondered why he hadn’t spoken up to prevent the terrible haircut. He felt sad and questioned why this had happened to him. Did the barber give him this messed-up haircut on purpose? Winston didn’t believe it because the barber looked very friendly. But it seemed so crazy! Could he have unknowingly offended the barber,and this disastrous hairstyle was the barber’s way of getting back at him?
Winston was also worried that Jack would laugh at him. Jack was his cousin and liked playing jokes. But maybe he wouldn’t; he was understanding too. Winston kept thinking about it.Upon entering his new home, ,Winston’s mom greeted him from the kitchen. She called out to him,asking to see his new hairstyle. Winston walked into the kitchen, his cap still on, and slowly took it off.
His mother looked very surprised. She couldn’t help but burst into laughter. “Oh déar,” she shouted. “What happened?” Winston stood silently for a moment before letting out his anger. He blamed his mom for bringing him to this place, torcing him to attend a new school where he believed everyone would make fun of him. He also said he hated this terrible hairstyle, and his hair was beyond fixing.
Just as his anger was about to grow, the doorbell-rang. Winston’s mom calmly told him to answer it. As he opened the door, he forgot to cover his terrible haircut, and there stood his cousin Jack. Since it was Saturday today, they had planned to go skating together. Winston felt extremely embarrassed.
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。
Jack looked at Winston in disbelief.
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That afternoon, Winston returned to the barbershop, hoping to find out the truth.
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It was my very first trip to Africa. We were driving along a track that skirted the southern bank of the Chobe River, when my friend suddenly noticed something up ahead — a large shape jammed in-between a couple of big trees, right beside the road. We edged the car closer and, to our surprise, found ourselves looking at a young calf snuggled (偎依) up against a sizeable elephant (most probably its mother).
Our dilemma now was this: Was it OK to just drive slowly past the pair of elephants on that narrow track? Or would that cause the mother to become upset and charge, in which case we should either wait for them to move on or turn the car around? A bit unnerved by the close encounter, we chose to head back the way we’d come.
In the following days, I had a number of conversations with national park staff and fellow travelers about what to do when you suddenly come across an elephant while driving in the African wilds.
Sometimes people told me it would be OK to slowly drive past the mother and calf, because the wild animals of Chobe have become pretty used to humans in cars. Elephants seldom pose a threat to us. So there’s no need to adopt an attitude of permanent near-panic calm decisiveness is your true ally (助手) in such situations.
But then sometimes I was told to switch off the car and wait until the elephant had departed the scene. The idea was that the rumble (隆隆声) of an automotive engine could be interpreted by the animal as a kind of challenge. Keeping silent would reassure the elephant that you weren’t going to cause any trouble, and eventually it would go on its merry way. OK, that also sounded reasonable enough.
A week later, my friend and I were driving by a river, watching elephants meet on the water for a drink, and were driving back to our lodge (度假小屋) when we found our route blocked by a young male elephant. As surprised as we were, the elephant planted his feet in the dirt and seemingly prepared to fight against our car.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在相应位置作答。
The track was narrow and bordered by thick bush, so we couldn’t go around him.
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The elephant walked right up to the car.
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5 . Most glitter(小发光物品), which is made up of tiny pieces of plastic, is a huge danger to the environment. “Everyone talks about the mountain of plastic floating in the ocean. You can grab empty bottles from the water, but with tiny pieces, it’s impossible,” says Victor Alvarez, a chemical engineer who sells an eco-friendly alternative to glitter.
In the early 2,000s, Alvarez worked for Mercedes-Benz in Germany, where he became fond of any technology that protected the environment. A few years after leaving Mercedes-Benz, he founded Blue Sun International in Miami, which makes specialty ingredients for the skin and hair care industries.
Glitter is a popular ingredient in cosmetics, such as eye shadows and lipsticks. So Alvarez began researching an alternative that didn’t contain plastic to make his products safer for the environment. That’s when he came across Ronald Britton Ltd., a company which had developed a plastic-free, biodegradable product called Bioglitter. It is made from regenerative cellulose(纤维素) sourced from hardwoods, primarily eucalyptus(桉树). Alvarez worked with the company to become the first retailer to sell Bioglitter in America. In 2018, he formed Today Glitter in order to sell the biodegradable glitter directly to consumers through its website.
Today Glitter sells two kinds of biodegradable glitter Bioglitter Sparkle and Bioglitter Pure. Both are almost plastic-free and can biodegrade in a short time. Meanwhile, they are as shiny as regular glitter. All these products are third-party tested by TÜV, an international organization that provides testing and certification for compostable (可降解的) and biodegradable products.
Despite its benefits, the hardwoods needed to make biodegradable glitter cause it to cost about twice as much as conventional glitter. A small glass container that contains just 6 grams of Bioglitter costs $10, while the same amount of regular glitter could cost at least half that amount. Alvarez expects the price will come down over time. He also expects the company’s sales to cross $1 million next year. But more importantly, Alvarez says, his main goal is to effect a meaningful change.
1. While at Mercedes Benz, Alvarez .| A．developed a way to grab glitter in the sea | B．became interested in the environment |
| C．attempted to live a plastic-free life | D．created a kind of harmless glitter |
| A．It is a plastic-free ingredient for eye shadows. |
| B．It will soon be on sale in the American market. |
| C．It is very difficult to break down in the wild. |
| D．It was invented by Blue Sun International. |
| A．To show Bioglitter Sparkle and Bioglitter Pure are popular. |
| B．To stress it provides a broad range of testing services. |
| C．To prove Today Glitter’s products are eco-friendly. |
| D．To explain many plastic products are low-quality. |
| A．The complex process of making glitter. | B．How to expand its overseas market. |
| C．How to attract potential investors. | D．The high cost of raw materials. |
6 . People solve some new problems readily without any special training or practice by comparing them to familiar problems and extending the solutions to the new problems. That process, known as analogical reasoning (类比推理), has long been thought to be an ability only humans have. But now people might have to make room for a new kid on the block.
Psychologists from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) claim that, astonishingly, the artificial intelligence (AI) language model GPT-3 performs about as well as college undergraduates when asked to solve the sort of reasoning problems that typically appear on intelligence tests and standardized tests.
But the psychologists raise the question: Is GPT-3 copying human reasoning as a by-product of its massive language training data set or using a fundamentally new kind of cognitive (认知的) process? They also say that although GPT-3 performs far better than they expected at some reasoning tasks, the popular AI tool still fails completely at others. “It can do analogical reasoning, but it can’t do things that are very easy for people, such as using tools to solve a physical task,” says Taylor Webb, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher in psychology.
Webb and his colleagues tested GPT-3’s ability to solve a set of problems inspired by a test known as Raven’s Progressive Matrices, which ask the subject to predict the next image in a complicated arrangement of shapes. To enable GPT-3 to “see” the shapes, and make sure that the AI tool had never met the questions before, Webb transformed the images into a text format that GPT-3 could process.
The psychologists asked 40 UCLA undergraduate students to solve the same problems. Surprisingly, not only did GPT-3 do about as well as humans but it made similar mistakes as well. GPT-3 solved 80% of the problems correctly — well above the human subjects’ average score of just below 60%, but within the range of the highest human scores.
1. What is analogical reasoning usually considered?| A．A simple learning skill. | B．A unique human ability. |
| C．A vital thinking process. | D．A solution to any problem. |
| A．Its system has some limitations. | B．Its application hasn’t been popular. |
| C．It needs to be trained for these tasks. | D．It is good at copying human reasoning. |
| A．To add difficulty to the questions. | B．To enable GPT-3 to see the results. |
| C．To guarantee the foreignness of the tasks. | D．To test GPT-3’s ability to identify text. |
| A．It will replace humans in some cases. | B．It rarely makes mistakes like humans. |
| C．It is able to do things very easy for people. | D．It runs undergraduates close in reasoning. |
7 . A comment from Zadie Smith caught my attention this week. Asked whether she had ever considered recording an album, the novelist responded, “I have a dream of having a Café Carlyle residency in New York in my 80s.” Here she is at the height of her success dreaming of a career Plan B just like the rest of us!
Weird Plan Bs fascinate me because for years I had one of my own. Despite being perfectly happy in my chosen profession, I had long harboured the fantasy of becoming a photographer and I took a lockdown leap and applied to art school to acquire some actual skills.
Has it brought me fame and riches? Not as yet. Like many people who dream of having a go at something different, I was focusing on creative fulfilment rather than my future finances. By the time I graduated in 2022, my dream of running a portrait photography business was looking a lot less practicable—in part thanks to AI head-shot generators.
If only I had had a little more Fobo, also known as the fear of becoming out-of-date. This workplace trend is an updated version of Fomo—the fear of missing out, which now feels like a poignant (辛酸的) throwback to more optimistic times. 22% of workers are worried that technology will put them out of a job. And who can blame them?
There is another reason that nurturing an alterative career might be risky. Research indicates that having a back-up plan can work against you. Having a Plan B as a safety net can cause people to make less effort at their day job and — unhelpfully — run a greater risk of losing it.
So, do I regret pursuing my Plan B? Not at all — hopefully I’ve got a few years before robot photographers take over the world, and I currently spend a day a week on photography. My only sorrow is something unexpected. For so many years. I had the fantasy of trying something new. My “someday” ambition sustained me through dull and boring days. But now I’m actually spending some of my week doing it, which has caused empty space in my life. It made me realize that having an alternative career to dream about is in itself sustaining and comforting. You might never do it, and that might not even matter. So, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and start working on my Plan C...
1. Why did Zadie Smith want to have a Cafe Carlyle residency?| A．She was not satisfied with her writing career. |
| B．She was eager to take up a second career. |
| C．She was depressed by recording an album. |
| D．She was unable to reach the height of success. |
| A．She was a skilled photographer who graduated from an art school. |
| B．She gave up her chosen occupation because of lockdown. |
| C．She gained a sense of creative satisfaction instead of income. |
| D．She ran a photography business with the assistance of AI. |
| A．To explain why workers are eager to do plan |
| B．To introduce one of the disadvantages to do plan B. |
| C．To advocate the society’s acceptance of plan B. |
| D．To display the future of trend of the workforce. |
| A．She will be replaced by robot photographer in the future. |
| B．She can’t spare time to do photography professionally. |
| C．She hates the dull and boring days in doing photography. |
| D．She lost something new to excite some enthusiasm for life. |
In one club in Beijing, for example, players enter into a fictional martial arts school
The whodunits may be imaginary,
The games also provide free-flowing opportunities for young people to get together, something
9 . Researchers have claimed a major step forward in the field of organ transplantation after a monkey survived for more than two years with a genetically engineered pig kidney.
Scientists have spent decades working out whether animal organs could ever work properly and safely in humans without them being rejected by the patient’s immune system, but the challenges have proved immense.
For the latest trial, researchers used a gene-editing tool called Crispr to alter genes in Yucatan miniature pigs before transplanting their kidneys into macaques (猕猴). The modifications altered genes to prevent organ rejection and remove pig viruses that could potentially be activated in recipients.
Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists describe how 21 monkeys got on after their kidneys were removed and a single genetically modified pig kidney was implanted. Monkeys typically survived no more than 24 days when the kidneys were edited to disable three genes that triggered immune rejection. But when the scientists added seven human genes that reduce blood clotting (结块), inflammation and other immune reactions, the monkeys survived seven times longer, typically for 176 days. When combined with treatment to restrain the immune system, the researchers report that one monkey survived for more than two years — 758 days — with the transplanted organ.
Curtis, the chief executive of eGenesis, said the long-term survival of at least some of the monkeys had put eGenesis on course to satisfy the US Food and Drug Administration requirement to see at least 12 months’ survival in animals before the team can launch a clinical trial in humans. “We are well on our way there,” Curtis said. “There simply aren’t enough kidneys to go around. In our opinion it’s the only near-term practicable solution.”
The team uses Yucatan miniature pigs as donors because at maturity their kidneys are roughly the same size of those in the adult human. In the monkey trial, the kidneys were transplanted at two to three months when the organs were much smaller.
Prof Tatsuo Kawai, an author on the study at Harvard Medical School, said the scientists expected the modified pig organs to perform better in humans than monkeys because “they are a better match”.
1. What do researchers do with the Yucatan miniature pigs?| A．They altered their immune systems. | B．They changed their genes to prevent rejection. |
| C．They used them to produce a gene-editing tool. | D．They transplanted their kidneys into human beings. |
| A．The 21 monkeys were implanted with a healthy pig kidney. |
| B．The monkeys usually survived less than 24 days previously. |
| C．Researchers removed three genes causing immune rejections from the kidneys. |
| D．Monkeys can survive much longer if their genes are modified property. |
| A．Dissatisfied. | B．Doubtful. | C．Content. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．Monkey survives for over two years with a genetically engineered pig kidney. |
| B．A big breakthrough has been made in the field of organ transplantation. |
| C．Animal organs can work in an effective way in the bodies of human beings. |
| D．It’s high time to make some adjustments to human immune system. |
Every morning before going to school, Galen would stand in front of their bookshelf in the living room, focusing his sights on one book titled “The Greatest Explorer That Never Was”. It was kept on the top shelf. His mom would always read it to him when he was feeling sad. And lately, he’d always been feeling sad. His mom died.
He would try to think of a way to get the book. He’d thought about asking his dad for help but his dad had been spending more time in his office. Galen was on his own for this one and he saw it as a challenge he needed to overcome. This was his test.
At school, he would draw up plans on how he would do it. First, he planned on using the ladder they kept in the shed (小屋). So when he got home, he threw his bag on the couch and carried out the plan. But when he had his hands on and tried to carry it, immediately he realized that the plan was a failure-the ladder was too heavy for him to carry to the living room. He left the shed, defeated. He took out the notebook that he’d written his plans on. He crossed out using a ladder. He went to bed that night determined to come up with a new plan that would work.
His next plan was to use his mom’s old trampoline (蹦床). Using it would allow him to jump high enough, reach the top of the shelf, grab the book, and land on the ground. He did this about four or five times before deciding that this plan, like the one before, wouldn’t work.
Galen started coming with other plans as the days went on. After the unsuccessful mop and broom plan, he stayed up late that night hatching a new plan, which had a higher success rate than the others. It was to climb to the top of the shelf until he could just take the book. He’d just have to hold on to the sides a little tighter so that he wouldn’t fall off.
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。
But it wasn’t the easy climb he expected.
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Down to the ground with the book, he turned around to see who the ally (同盟)was.
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