1 . Researchers hope brain implants will one day help people with aphasia(失语症) to get their voice back—and maybe even to sing. Now, for the first time, scientists have demonstrated that the brain’s electrical activity can be decoded and used to reconstruct music.
A new study analyzed data from 29 people monitored for epileptic seizures(癫痫发作), using electrodes(电极) on the surface of their brain. As participants listened to a selected song, electrodes captured brain activity related to musical elements, such as tone, rhythm, and lyrics. Employing machine learning, Robert Knight from UC Berkeley and his colleagues reconstructed what the participants were hearing and published their study results. The paper is the first to suggest that scientists can “listen secretly to” the brain to synthesize(合成) music.
To turn brain activity data into musical sound, researchers trained an artificial intelligence (AI)model to decode data captured from thousands of electrodes that were attached to the participants as they listened to the song while undergoing surgery. Once the brain data were fed through the model, the music returned. The model also revealed some brain parts responding to different musical features of the song.
Although the findings focused on music, the researchers expect their results to be most useful for translating brain waves into human speech. Ludovic Bellier, the study’s lead author, explains that speech, regardless of language, has small melodic differences—tempo, stress, accents, and intonation—known as prosody(韵律). These elements carry meaning that we can’t communicate with words alone. He hopes the model will improve brain-computer interfaces (BCI), assistive devices that record speech-associated brain waves and use algorithms to reconstruct intended messages. This technology, still in its infancy, could help people who have lost the ability to speak because of aphasia.
Future research should investigate whether these models can be expanded from music that participants have heard to imagined internal speech. If a brain-computer interface could recreate someone’s speech with the prosody and emotional weight found in music, it could offer a richer communication experience beyond mere words.
Several barriers remain before we can put this technology in the hands—or brains— of patients. The current model relies on surgical implants. As recording techniques improve, the hope is to gather data non-invasively, possibly using ultrasensitive electrodes. However, under current technologies, this approach might result in a lower speed of decoding into natural speech. The researchers also hope to improve the playback clarity by packing the electrodes closer together on the brain’s surface, enabling an even more detailed look at the electrical symphony the brain produces.
| A．Electrodes can analyze musical elements. |
| B．The decoding of brain data helps recreate music. |
| C．Machine learning greatly enhances brain activity. |
| D．The AI model monitors music-responsive brain regions. |
| A．The prosody of speech. | B．The collection of brain waves. |
| C．The emotional weight of music. | D．The reconstruction of information. |
| A．Unlocking the Secrets of Melodic Mind | B．Brain Symphony: Synthesized Human Speech |
| C．BCI Brings Hope to People with Aphasia | D．Remarkable Journey: Decoding Brain with AI |
It is a hot sunny Saturday morning on the farm. Maya, Duksie and Doobie are helping Mama K in her vegetable garden. The children work all morning.
Mama K always gives the children a treat for helping her. Sometimes it’s cake or chocolate; sometimes it’s apples, pears or oranges. Mama K has only one rule. “Share it fair!” The children know they must share the treats equally, so they all get the same amount.
Today Mama K has baked a round strawberry cake with pink icing (糖霜) and berries from her garden. The children wait on the grass for their treat. “Here you go!” smiles Mama K. “But remember the rule. Share it fair!”
Maya has the first turn to share the cake. She uses the knife to draw lines in the icing. The others watch her. She does not cut the cake yet. The others must first agree if her way is fair. “I think I will make two cuts down like this. Now we have three slices, all the same!” Maya shows them. There is one line on the left and the other on the right.
“No way!” says Duksie. “The one in the middle is much too big!” Doobie also shakes his head. Maya laughs and tells Duksie to try.
“Pass me the knife.I’ll do it,” says Duksie First she rubs out Maya’s pattern in the icing, and then she makes one cut across and one down. “Look, I have made my three slices!” “That’s not fair!” shout Maya and Doobie together,.
“Why don’t you try, Doobie?” says Duksie. “I bet you can’t do it!”
“I wish the cake was a square, and then it would be easy!” says Doobie thoughtfully. And then! A picture comes into Doobie’s head. He sees the silver badge (标识) at the front of his father’s big red Benz truck. “I’ve got it! I’ve got it! I know how to do it,” shouts Doobie.
“How did you work it out?” Maya asks. Doobie smiles to himself. For now it’s his secret. Later, he will tell his dad.
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。
First Doobie uses a knife to smooth Duksie’s lines in the icing.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________With Mama K’s encouragement, Maya takes charge, expertly cutting along Doobie’s lines to make three equal slices.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________We Survived Getting Swallowed by a Whale
Respect and revere (敬畏) nature. I’m Julie, 56 years old, living in San Luis Obispo, California, about four miles from the beach. Every few years, the humpback whales come into the bay for several days while migrating.
In November 2020, the whales were around, so I took out my yellow double kayak (皮划艇) to watch the wildlife. I paddled out the pier (长堤) and saw seals, dolphins, and about 20 whales feeding on silverfish. They sprayed through their blowholes. Each one is huge, about 15 metres long. Sometimes they turned side fins as if waving at me. It was incredible.
At the time, my friend Liz was with me. We had met 28 years earlier. I asked Liz if she wanted to see the whales. I really wanted to share the magnificent experience with her.
“No way,” she said. She’s terrified of whales and sharks. I promised that the craft was stable and safe enough. Moreover, humpback whales couldn’t swallow down kayaks for their throats were tight even though they had enormous mouths and white-wall-like internal mouth structures, not to mention that we got paddles and life jackets. After some persuasion, Liz finally agreed.
We set off at about 8:30 the next morning. There were already about 15 other kayakers in the bay. One hour later, I spotted two whales right past the pier, swimming toward us. We were in awe, feeling amazed to be so close to a creature that size.
When whales swam down after breaching (跃身激浪), they disappeared in ripples. I figured if we paddled there, we’d be safe since they’d just left. We followed them at a distance—or what I thought was a distance. I later learned that it’s recommended to keep 90 metres away, or about the length of a football field. We were probably 18 metres away.
All of a sudden, a swarm (群) of fish started jumping out of the water into our kayak. Their movement sounded like crackling glass. Now I knew we were too close. I was terrified. Then our kayak was lifted out of the water—about two metres—and tipped back into the ocean. I figured the whale was going to drag us down somehow, and I had no idea how deep.
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。
I didn’t realize that Liz and I sitting in the kayak were in the whale’s mouth.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Thankfully, the whale spitted us out, people paddling to help, shooting videos.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Police chief Matthew Bruce’s son, Adam, came late into his lives, so he always spoiled him and never said no to him for anything. As Adam grew older, he began to take his parents’ love and concern for granted, as if it were permission for him to do whatever he pleased. There were certainly times when he was criticized for bad grades or sneaking out of the house, but that was limited to only minor blame. Adam thought that if he pretended to be an “ideal” son, he would have to face absolutely no blame from his parents. So he began to act like a good son in front of them while engaging in all sorts of wrongdoing behind their backs, such as breaking the law. However, Adam always got away with it.
One day, Adam was driving back from a party with his friend Freddie when he began over-speeding. Freddie warned him to slow down, but Adam didn’t listen. Adam’s driving worried Freddie. He asked Adam to slow down again, and when Adam didn’t, he grabbed the steering wheel himself, causing the car to slide off the road and ran into a tree on the side. Then they heard the alarm of a police car behind them. The car came to a stop in front of them, and a police officer approached them.
“I’ve been following your car for a while now, and I’m afraid I’ll have to take you to the station for speeding. May I have your driver’s license first?” the police officer said.
Freddie was scared. “Here’s my driver’s license, sir,” he said, offering it to the officer. Adam tried to explain that he was the police chief’s son, but the police officer turned a deaf ear to him. They drove him to the station, and when Adam stepped inside, he was surprised to see his father there. He had been called to the station for an urgent case.
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。
Adam felt no worries and thought he was out of trouble.
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He told Adam he would need to earn money himself to pay for the fine.
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5 . If you look at the dynamic “Global Temperatures” map on NASA’s website, you can see the historic temperature change over time across the planet as the timeline goes from 1880 to the modern day. By 2019, the entire planet is in red, orange, and yellow colors, indicating temperatures much higher than the historical average in every country and human inhabitance.
If the timeline went to 2023, the map would look even worse. That’s because the summer of 2023 was the hottest ever, according to ocean monitors. July was the hottest month in recorded history. Next July could be worse. Unless we do something quickly, we face dealing with more and more dangerous and expensive natural disasters in the future.
Forest fires sent smoke from Canada across the North American continent, causing New York City to have the worst air quality in its recorded history. Heavy rainstorms fell on Vermont and the Northeastern United States in just a couple of days in the middle of July, which exceeded the amount that area would usually receive in two months and caused extreme damage to homes and businesses. Around the same time, flash flooding in Bucks County, Pennsylvania — north of Philadelphia — killed nearly a dozen people.
Erich Fischer, a researcher specializing in climate studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, is concerned that natural disasters could get much worse in the future—and in ways we cannot predict. He called for a “strike for climate justice,” which actually took place on Sept. 15, 2023. “The strategy needs to be twofold (双重的) . We need to decrease carbon emissions as much as realistically possible. That is already happening with people using electric cars and other green technologies. At the same time, we also need to find ways to predict the risk of natural disasters ahead of time,” said Erich Fischer.
1. Why does the writer mention the data on NASA’s website in paragraph 1?| A．To explain a concept. | B．To introduce a topic. |
| C．To provide a solution. | D．To make a prediction. |
| A．The severity of natural disasters. | B．The worst air quality in New York City. |
| C．The extreme damage by flash flooding. | D．The cause of the forests fires in Canada. |
| A．He advocated a twofold strategy. |
| B．He suggested forbidding carbon emissions. |
| C．He required people to use more electric cars. |
| D．He emphasized the awareness of climate changes. |
| A．The Hottest Month in History | B．Natural Disasters in the World |
| C．Extreme Weather Could Get Worse | D．Green Technology Would be Needed |
The Charm (魅力) of Schoolyard
In the charm of school life, where classrooms are seats of knowledge and the schoolyard becomes source of memory, there are a fund of stories mixed with humor, warmth, and teacher-student relationships.
Mr. Smith was a country teacher, but not an ordinary one; he was a storyteller, a mentor (人生导师) , and a friend to all his students. His classroom was a world of its own, full of colorful characters and brilliant ideas. One day, during the noon break, a student named Alice noticed a wandering kitten padding (潜行) through the familiar grounds where many schoolyard tales were born. Alice took her to Mr. Smith, who had magical Tricks for handling even the smallest things. With Mr. Smitt’s permission, Alice and her classmates built a shelter for the kitten in a corner of the campus.
The days turned into weeks, and the kitten grew under the tender care of Mr. Smith and his students. Once in a while, she became a temporary resident of the classroom, much to the delight of the whole class. They named her “Schoolyard”, a name that generalized the spirit of their school days.
As the year progressed, Schoolyard became not just a kitten, but a tie connecting each of them and a thread of continuity in their lives. She played on desks, slept in chairs, and hid in folders, thus becoming an unofficial mascot (吉祥物) of the classroom. The students found comfort in her presence, and Mr. Smith, joy in watching them grow through her company.
As graduation neared, Mr. Smith gathered his students for one last lesson. He told them that they would soon be exploring new horizons. He reminded them that life was full of unforeseeable twists and tums along with unexpected potentials, just like the appearance of a kitten in their schoolyard. At the moment, the students were greatly touched and deep down there arose a strong love for those memorable warmth and hearty laughter of their school days.
Thereafter, Mr. Smith and the students agreed to meet here once again in ten years.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式作答。
A decade later, Mr. Smith greeted his former students at the school gate.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________“Isn’t that our Schoolyard?” cried Alice, gazing at the classroom door.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________7 . Some of our planet’s power pollinators (传粉昆虫) may have originated tens of millions of years earlier than scientists once believed. In a study published July 27 in the journal Current Biology, a team of researchers traced bee family back over 120 million years to the ancient supercontinent Gondwana (冈瓦纳大陆). While looking deeper into bee history, the team found evidence that bees originated earlier, diversified faster, and spread wider than previously suspected, putting together pieces of a puzzle on the origin of these pollinators.
In the study, an international team of scientists would be in sequence and compared genes from over 200 bee species. They then compared these bees with the traits from 185 different bee fossils and extinct fossils to develop an evolutionary history and genealogical model for how bees have historically been spread around the world. The team was able to analyze hundreds of thousands of genes at a time to make sure that the relationships they inferred were correct.
“This is the first time we have broad genome-scale data for all seven bee families,” study co-author and Washington State University entomologist Elizabeth Murray confidently said in a statement. Earlier studies established that the first bees potentially evolved from wasps (黄蜂), transitioning from predators up to collectors of pollen and nectar (花蜜). According to this study, bees arose in the dry regions of western Gondwana during the early Cretaceous period, between 145 million years ago to 100.5 million years ago.
“There’s been a long-time puzzle about the origin of bees,” study co-author and Washington State University entomologist Silas Bossert said in a statement. “For the first time, we have statistical evidence that bees originated on Gondwana. We now know that bees are originally southern hemisphere insects.” The team found evidence that as new continents formed, the bees moved northward. They continued to diversify and spread in parallel partnership with flowering plants called angiosperms. The bees later moved into India and Australia and all major bee families appear to have split off from one another before the beginning of the Tertiary period (65million years ago).
1. What’s the purpose of bee history researchers do research on?| A．To discover the origin of these pollinators. |
| B．To find out some reasonable proofs. |
| C．To know much about our planet. |
| D．To study the life of bee species. |
| A．in danger. | B．in need. | C．in order | D．in favor. |
| A．Unbelievable. | B．Reliable. | C．Positive. | D．Negative. |
| A．The earliest home of bees may be in Gondwana. |
| B．The world’s earliest bees were found in India and Australia. |
| C．The researchers are going on doing research on bee families. |
| D．The researchers get a lot evidence to prove their research. |
Javon was the shortest kid in the class. It had been that way since the third grade. He’d had to ask to get his gym locker changed so that he didn’t have to struggle so much to reach it. For most kids, being short would be a problem, but Javon didn’t let being short bother him at all.
That was Javon’s attitude about most things except school work. And Javon had worked hard. By the middle of seventh grade, Javon was one of the top kids in the class. So, he hadn’t been too concerned when Mr. T announced they were starting a new unit in math. For Javon, math used to be easy. He figured that since he had ten fingers, he could do most of it. But when Mr. T threw letters into math problems, he couldn’t wrap his mind around using these letters. Mr. T had given them all sorts of rules for what to do when there were letters in math problems. But Javon couldn’t remember what they all were and he didn’t think he even understood the rules he did remember. Soon he was hopelessly lost in math class. Even worse, it was time for the class to take the chapter test.
The test was quite demanding. Javon was confused by the very first question. He was nervous and kept losing track of what he was doing. When the class period ended, he hadn’t finished all of the problems.
The day came when the class finally got their papers back. Seeing “D” written in red ink on the corner of the paper, he felt desperate. In the seat next to him, Tyler sighed slightly, catching Javon’s attention. He couldn’t help but see the big, red “C” on Tyler’s paper. He felt so upset.
When they started packing up to leave after class, Tyler accidentally told Javon he got extra time on the test. Upon hearing this, Javon burst out, “It was unfair!” He dropped his books, face hot.
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。
At this very moment, Mr. T came up to see what happened to them.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Eventually, Javon understood what a reading disorder was and how to ask for help.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________When I woke up, I felt pains all over. A pool of sticky blood surrounded my head. I lay trapped in the bottom of n smooth-walled pit (坑) with an empty water bottle.
I thought of what had happened. I was climbing down the mountain as I was admiring the beautiful scenery. Accidentally. I stepped on a loose rock. Then I slipped, fell with the rock and got stuck somewhere below the top. It was getting dark in the pit. Only my mother knew where I’d gone. I promised to have lunch with her. Thinking of this. I took my phone out and dialed her number with shaking fingers. No service. The silence, which earlier I’d valued, was now horrible.
With a sharp pain in my head, I was terrified. I knew I’d fallen far, but I wasn’t sure where I was. I called 911 because I knew by the pain that my back was severely injured, if not broken. My ear was torn badly. There was still no service. I dug through my bag to assess my supplies and found a whistle and some wipes.
I put the whistle around my neck and blew, though I knew no one would hear me. It was 1:15 pm and I was miles from the town where I lived. I used the wipes to clean off as much blood as I could. I rested. Then I screamed, blew my whistle, and let myself think the unthinkable. What if they can’t find me? What if this is it?
I decided to get moving. I climbed through a small opening, but when I peered over the next edge, my heart sank: there was a 30-foot drop. There was no way down. I was trapped.
I knew with that extreme Arizona heat in the day and bitter desert cold at night, I wouldn’t last long. But I thought my mother was sure to call the police for help if she couldn’t get in touch with me. With a little hope, I prayed the police would send a helicopter (直升机) to my resecu.
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。
Around five hours later, a growing buzz (嗡嗡声) in the air broke the silence.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Though the pilot saw me, it was difficult for the team to get to me.
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