1. When did Bill Wales leave his parents?
| A．At the age of 18. | B．At the age of 20. | C．At the age of 23. |
| A．By asking his parents for money. |
| B．By working in his spare time. |
| C．By borrowing from his roommates. |
| A．He moved to another place. |
| B．He left London and found a job. |
| C．He left school and worked for a year. |
| A．The rent of his room was raised. |
| B．He couldn’t stand his roommates. |
| C．He didn’t get along well with the house-owner. |
1. How long are most shops open in New York?
| A．9 hours. | B．10 hours. | C．12 hours. |
| A．In Paris. | B．In London. | C．In New York. |
| A．Normal. | B．Direct. | C．Interesting. |
3 . Exploring unmapped territory on the moon could soon be as easy as slipping on a backpack. NASA researchers designed a new high-tech pack for navigating(给引航)unknown territories in outer space.
The backpack uses a remote-sensing mapping system to create high-resolution(高分辨)3-D maps that astronauts could use to explore the southernmost point on the moon according to a statement. NASA’s dynamic technology is like the technology used by smart cars to alert their drivers of potential collisions(碰撞).
“Basically, the sensor is a surveying tool for both navigation and science mapping, able to create ultra-high-resolution 3-D maps at centimeter-level precision and give them a rich scientific context,”tells Michael Zanetti, a scientist. “It will also help ensure the safety of astronauts and rover vehicles in a GPS-denied environment such as the Moon by identifying actual distances to far-off landmarks and showing explorers in real time how far they’ve come and how far is left.”
NASA plans to have astronauts return to the moon by 2025. The team is set to land near the lunar south pole because previous evidence suggests that the area may contain subsurface water ice. Part of the reason astronauts would need a GPS tracking backpack is because the area on the moon’s south pole is shrouded by shadows, making it difficult for space explorers to estimate distances on the moon.
Next, NASA is working on bringing the backpack’s weight and size down. Currently. It weighs 40 pounds, but the team hopes that the tech could be small enough to fit on an astronaut’s helmet.
1. What are Michael Zanetti’s words mainly about?| A．The working principle of the backpack. | B．The challenges of the backpack. |
| C．The shortcomings of the backpack. | D．The development of the backpack. |
| A．Mixed. | B．Reduced. | C．Covered. | D．Separated. |
| A．Make the backpack cheaper. | B．Make the backpack more accurate. |
| C．Make the backpack more fashionable. | D．Make the backpack lighter and smaller. |
| A．A travel journal. | B．A science magazine. |
| C．An impressive novel. | D．A personal notebook. |
4 . This year, people around the world are lining up to buy electric vehicles even as prices increase. Electric vehicle, EV, demand has stayed strong even as the average cost of lithiumion (锂离子) battery cells increased to an estimated $160 per kilowatt-hour in the first quarter from $105 last year. Costs rose due to supply issues, restrictions on Russian metals and investor speculation (投机).
For a smaller vehicle like the Hongguang Mini, the best-selling EV in China, the higher battery costs added almost $1,500, equal to 30 percent of the listed price. But gasoline and diesel fuel costs have also increased since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and experts noted that environmental concerns are also pushing more buyers to choose EVs.
Manufacturers from Tesla to SAIC-GM-Wuling, which makes the Hongguang Mini, have passed higher costs on to consumers with price increases for EVs. More may be coming. Andy Palmer, chairman of Slovak EV battery maker InoBat, said, “rising costs will have to be passed onto carmakers.” But EV shoppers have so far not slowed down. Worldwide EV sales in the first quarter jumped nearly 120 percent, said the website EV-volumes.com.
Venkat Srinivasan is director of the Center for Collaborative Energy Storage Science at the U.S. government’s Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago. He said, “more and more people would buy EVs despite the cost of the battery and the vehicle.”
This increase in battery costs could be an unusual short-term change in a situation in which improving technology and growing production have pushed costs down for almost 30 years. Industry data showed that the $105 per kilowatt hour average cost in 2021 was down nearly 99 percent from over $7,500 in 1991.
Experts say battery costs could stay high for the next year or so, but then another large drop is likely as big investments by automakers and suppliers change the balance from shortage to surplus. “It’s like a bubble (泡沫) and for that bubble to settle down, it’s going to be at least the end of 2023,” said Prabhakar Patil, a former LG Chem executive.
The industry has long been awaiting the battery cell cost of $100 per kilowatt-hour, as a signal EVs were reaching a similar cost to fossil-fuel vehicles. But with gasoline prices high and consumer preferences changing, such cost considerations may no longer matter as much, experts say.
1. Why does the author mention Hongguang Mini?| A．To present a fact. | B．To give an example. | C．To introduce a topic. | D．To make an assumption. |
| A．More EV shops. | B．Production growth. | C．Sufficient supplies. | D．Technology improvement. |
| A．Promising. | B．Unclear. | C．Doubtful. | D．Confusing. |
| A．At present demands for EVs beat supply. | B．People concern price more when buying cars. |
| C．EVs sell much better than fossil-fuel vehicles. | D．People prefer EV mainly because of conflict. |
5 . You’ve heard that plastic is polluting the oceans — between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes enter ocean ecosystems every year. But does one plastic straw or cup really make a difference? Artist Benjamin Von Wong wants you to know that it does. He builds massive sculptures out of plastic garbage, forcing viewers to re-examine their relationship to single-use plastic products.
At the beginning of the year, the artist built a piece called “Strawpocalypse,” a pair of 10-foot-tall plastic waves, frozen mid-crash. Made of 168,000 plastic straws collected from several volunteer beach cleanups, the sculpture made its first appearance at the Estella Place shopping center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Just 9% of global plastic waste is recycled. Plastic straws are by no means the biggest source (来源) of plastic pollution, but they’ve recently come under fire because most people don’t need them to drink with and, because of their small size and weight, they cannot be recycled. Every straw that’s part of Von Wong’s artwork likely came from a drink that someone used for only a few minutes. Once the drink is gone, the straw will take centuries to disappear.
In a piece from 2018, Von Wong wanted to illustrate (说明) a specific statistic: Every 60 seconds, a truckload’s worth of plastic enters the ocean. For this work, titled “Truckload of Plastic,” Von Wong and a group of volunteers collected more than 10,000 pieces of plastic, which were then tied together to look like they’d been dumped (倾倒) from a truck all at once.
Von Wong hopes that his work will also help pressure big companies to reduce their plastic footprint.
1. What are Von Wong’s artworks intended for?| A．Beautifying the city he lives in. | B．Introducing eco-friendly products. |
| C．Drawing public attention to plastic waste. | D．Reducing garbage on the beach. |
| A．To show the difficulty of their recycling. |
| B．To explain why they are useful. |
| C．To voice his views on modern art. |
| D．To find a substitute for them. |
| A．Calming. | B．Disturbing. |
| C．Refreshing. | D．Challenging. |
| A．Artists’ Opinions on Plastic Safety |
| B．Media Interest in Contemporary Art |
| C．Responsibility Demanded of Big Companies |
| D．Ocean Plastics Transformed into Sculptures |
