1 . Our sense of smell, which we normally take for granted, is nowadays being increasingly used for purposes which might surprise us if we realized them.

One area in which smells are created to achieve particular results is marketing. For some time producers have taken advantage of our sense of smell with regard to household goods.

When pleasant smells are passed through a store’s air conditioning system, people tend to spend more time in the store and buy more. For example, the smell of chocolate is used in sweet stores, while the smells of leather and perfume are used in clothes stores.

In a test, people looked at the same types of shoes in two rooms— one filled with cleaned air, the other with a smell of mixed flowers. Eighty-four percent of the people preferred the shoes in the room with the smell of flowers. In fact, many said they would have paid up to US $10 more for a pair.

Smells also have other uses. Research has shown that certain smells can help to calm anxious people and increase their feeling of safety. Smells such as that of flowers and pine forests might therefore be used to relax patients in doctors’ and dentists’ waiting rooms, and to make the environment more pleasant and less stressful to them.

Some companies are experimenting with different smells to produce different effects on their workers according to the time of day.

For example, early in the morning they might put the smell of lemon in the air conditioning system to wake people up. In the middle of the morning, when the atmosphere tends to become more tense (紧张的), the smell of wood could be used to calm people down. Before lunchtime the smell of melting butter would encourage people to go to lunch on time. After lunch, when people often begin to lose attention, the smell of mint would increase their watchfulness.

While some of these uses of smells may be helpful and effective, not everyone would agree with their use to control customers in stores. It has been suggested by consumers’ organizations that one way to avoid this new subconscious (下意识) pressure to buy is to go shopping when people are less likely to be influenced by smells.

1. We can conclude from the text that__________.

A．smells are widely used in different shops	B．different smells can keep people feel happy
C．smells are effective if used in suitable cases	D．hospitals take advantage of the sense of smell

2. What kind of smell is effective when the students are having a lesson according to the text?

A．Butter.

B．Leather.

C．Wood.

D．Mint.

3. The 4th paragraph proves that

A．pleasant smalls attract people’s attention to stores

B．people prefer the shoes with the smell of different flowers

C．right smells increase people’s view of the value of a product

D．people want to pay more money because of good smells

4. What does the underlined word ”them“ in Paragraph5 refer to?

A．patients

B．doctors

C．smells

D．waiting rooms

2 . Nicholas Epley, a behavioural scientist, and I conducted a series of studies and concluded that kind acts as simple as buying a cup of coffee for someone can promote a person’s happiness. Everyday life affords many opportunities for such actions, yet people do not always catch them.     1    

We firstly studied acts of kindness done for familiar people such as friends, classmates or family.     2     For instance, in one experiment, people wrote notes to friends and family “just because”. In another, they gave cupcakes away to workmates. Across these experiments, we asked both the person performing a kind act and the one receiving it to fill out questionnaires (问卷).

Across our studies, several strong patterns appeared. For one, both performers and receivers of the acts of kindness were in more positive moods than normal after these kind acts.     3     The receivers felt significantly better than the kind actors expected. The receivers also reliably rated these acts as “bigger” than the people performing them did.

    4    In one experiment, participants at an ice-skating rink (溜冰场) in a public park gave away hot chocolate to people they didn’t know on a cold winter day. Again, the experience was more positive than the performers expected for the receivers. Although the people giving out the hot chocolate saw the act as relatively small, it really mattered to the receivers.

These findings suggest that what might seem small when we are deciding whether or not to do something nice for someone else could matter a great deal to the person we do it for, These warm acts can improve our own emotional health and brighten the day of another person.     5    

A．So why not choose kindness when we can?

B．For another, it was clear that performers undervalued their impacts.

C．From one situation to the next, the specific acts of kindness differed.

D．We found that participants didn’t realize their positive impacts on strangers as well.

E．Our research also revealed one reason why people may not realize their actions’ impacts.

F．We compared the performers’ expectation of the receivers’ moods with their actual experiences.

G．It is because people performing kind acts undervalue how much receivers value their behaviour.

3 . Episodic memory (情景记忆) allows humans to revisit past personal experiences in their minds, and it was once thought to be a special skill of humans. Although there are still arguments about the extent of this type of memory in non-human animals, scientists have proved that creatures like rats and dogs can pass tests that are developed to assess episodic memory over the past two decades. “Curiously, there is a lack of research investigating dolphins’ episodic memory,” University of Cambridge cognitive (认知的) scientist James Davies says. Therefore, this surprising fact encourages him to fill this gap.

The team used “where” and “who” questions in their research, each on a different test. Each dolphin was first trained to retrieve a ball from the water, and then trained to get a ball by approaching a person holding it in front of them while ignoring an empty-handed person standing at a different spot. During this training, the locations were randomized (使随机化) and the person holding the ball differed each time, so that those details were irrelevant to learning the retrieving behavior. Then, for the tests, the dolphins were asked to retrieve the ball as they had learned to do, but after 10 minutes, something changed-this time, the ball couldn’t be seen, as it was now behind one of the two people’s backs. In the “where” tests, the ball was hidden in the same spot as in the training, but both people had been changed, while in the “who” tests, the locations of the people changed but the ball remained with the person who’d had it previously.

Eight dolphins went through each of the two tests, separated by at least 48 hours. All the dolphins got it right in choosing the correct spot on the “where” experiments, and seven achieved success on the “who” experiments.

Kelly Jaakkola, a psychologist, says that based on their cognitive skills, dolphins are a good candidate for having episodic-like memory, and this study goes really far in showing that. She also says, “The more we look for such capabilities in non-human animals, the more species we’ll likely find them in.” She adds, “An exciting question is therefore ‘Where do we draw that line? Which animals do have it, which animals don’t, and what sort of cognitive or neurological or social characteristics do those animals share? ’ That’s going to be the fun part of the game.”

1. What does the underlined word “retrieve” in Paragraph 2 probably mean?

A．Fetch.

B．Move.

C．Throw.

D．Play.

2. What does Paragraph 2 mainly talk about?

A．The locations of the people involved in the tests.

B．The memory tasks that dolphins need to perform.

C．The ability of dolphins to communicate with humans.

D．The dolphins’ characteristics related to their memory processing.

3. What can be inferred from the passage?

A．Dolphins pass the tests as a result of training.

B．It is very likely that dolphins are affected by people during the tests.

C．Scientists will probably find episodic memory in all non-human animals.

D．The influence of dolphins’ familiarity with a location or a person is avoided.

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

A．Dolphins Are the Most Intelligent Animals

B．Dolphins May Remember Personal Experiences

C．Episodic Memory Is Important for Humans and Animals

D．A Scientific Method Is Used to Study Dolphins’ Memory

4 . Laughing together is an important way for people to connect and bond. And though the causes of laughter can vary widely across individuals and groups, the sound of a laugh is usually recognizable between people belonging to different cultures.

But what about animals? Do they “laugh”? And are the causes of animal and human laughter alike? In humans, people may laugh when they hear a joke, or when they see something that they think is funny, though it’s unknown if animals’ intelligence includes what humans would call a sense of humor.

However, many animals produce sounds during play that are unique to that pleasant social interaction. Researchers consider such vocalizations to be similar to human laughter. Recently, scientists investigated play vocalization to see how common it was among animals. The team identified 65 species that “laughed” while playing — most were mammals (哺乳动物), but a few bird species demonstrated playful laughter too. Reports of playful laughter were notably absent in studies describing fish, perhaps because there is some question as to whether or not play exists at all in that animal group. This new study could help scientists to analyze the origins of human laughter.

But how can we identify play? Unlike fighting, play is usually repetitive and happens independently of other social behaviors, said lead study author Sasha Winkler, a doctor of biological anthropology at the University of California. When it comes to identifying it, “you know it when you see it,” Winkler told Live Science. One sign is that primates — our closest relatives — have a “play face” that is similar to the expressions of humans who are playing.

When Winkler previously worked with rhesus macaques, she had noticed that the monkeys panted (喘气) quietly while playing. Many other primates are also known to vocalize during play, she said, so a hypothesis (laughter in humans is thought to have originated during play) supported by the play-related panting laughter of many primate species was put forward.

People now still laugh during play, but we also integrate laughter into language and non-play behaviors, using laughter in diverse ways to express a range of emotions that may be positive or negative. Human laughter notably differs from other animals’ laughter in another important way: its volume. People broadcast their laughter loudly, often as a way of establishing inclusion. By comparison, when most animals laugh, the sound is very quiet — just loud enough to be heard by the laugher’s partner.

“It’s really fascinating that so many animals have a similar function of vocalization during play,” Winkler told Live Science. “But we do have these unique parts of human laughter that are also an important area for future study."

1. What is the main purpose of the passage?

A．To explain causes of animal and human laughter.

B．To assess complexities regarding animal laughter.

C．To present findings on the existence of animal laughter.

D．To analyze differences between animal and human laughter.

2. What can we learn from this passage?

A．Animal laughter is even noticeable in fish.

B．Animal laughter is hard to recognize during play.

C．People have learned to combine play with laughter.

D．People laugh loudly because they want to involve others.

3. What is probably the focus of future study on laughter?

A．Distinctive features of human laughter.

B．Different functions of animal laughter.

C．The origin and development of human laughter.

D．The relationship between animal laughter and intelligence.

5 . At a museum in Vietnam, Lena Bui’s film Where Birds Dance Their Last reflected on the beauty and vulnerability of Vietnamese feather farms after Bird Flu. During a festival in Rwanda, Ellen Reid’s audio experience Soundwalk was shared in a hopeful discussion about music, parks and mental health. These are a few of the things I have helped bring to life over the years, working at the intersection of scientific research, the arts and advocacy to support science in solving global health challenges.

Science is key to addressing these issues. But it isn’t the only key. To achieve its potential and for its advances to be implemented and reach all who could benefit, science depends on trust and good relationships. People might not always see science as relevant, trustworthy or meaningful to their lives. There are reasons why some see science as having a chequered past, from nuclear weapons to eugenics, and are therefore uninterested in, or suspicious of, what it proposes. Others feel excluded by the incomprehensibility of hyper specialist knowledge.

In its capacity to build upon and test an evidence base, science is powerful, but researchers and funders haven’t been as good at ensuring this evidence base responds to the needs and interests of diverse communities, or informs policy makers to take action. Science might be perceived as distancing itself from the personal, the poetic and the political, yet it is precisely these qualities that can be most influential when it comes to public interest in atopic or how a government prioritizes a decision.

A moving story well told can be more memorable than a list of facts. This is where the arts come in. Artists can give us different perspectives with which to consider and reimagine the world together. They can redress the proclaimed objectivity in science by bringing stories —subjectivities —into the picture, and these can help foster a sense of connection and hope.

In 2012, I set up artist residencies in medical research centres around the world. Bui was attached to the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam. The head of the research team was delighted, finding that Bui, as a Vietnamese artist, had license to be in, and to share useful insights from, villages where infectious disease researchers weren’t welcome. Six years later, I led Wellcome’s Contagious Cities program, which established artist residencies worldwide to support locally led explorations of epidemic preparedness. The recent pandemic made this work more noticeable, and has informed our Mindscapes program which is currently sharing experiences of mental health through the work of artists.

With pandemic, climate and mental health crises upon us, rising inequality and what feels like an increasingly broken world, never has there been more need to build and nurture hopeful and imaginative spaces to grow human connection and shared purpose for the common good. Science and the arts can work hand in glove to achieve this.

1. The author lists two works in Paragraph 1 mainly to ______.

A．reveal the gap between science and art	B．prove his competence in both science and art
C．introduce successful science-related artworks	D．show that science can be promoted in art forms

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

A．Recent and remote.	B．Good and bad.
C．Usual and unusual.	D．Peaceful and scary.

3. Which of the following would the author agree?

A．Policy-makers base their decisions on science.	B．Researchers popularize science effectively.
C．Science is well received among the public.	D．The arts help people build connections.

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

A．The Value of the Arts to Science	B．Where Do Science and the Arts Meet?
C．A New Way to Fight Pandemic—the Arts	D．Which Matters More, Science or the Arts?

6 . What Makes Art Valuable?

Why do people buy art? An even bigger question is, why do people pay tens of millions of dollars to own art? Is it for status, prestige(威望), and approval from peers? One thing to remember is that value isn’t only linked to its artist quality.    1    

Provenance

In the art world, an artwork’s value can be the result of provenance. In other words, who has owned the painting in the past.    2    The masterpiece went from a value of less than $10,000 when David Rockefeller first owned it, to upwards of $72 million when it was later sold by Sotheby’s.

The Thrill of Auction(拍卖)

The salerooms at Christie’s or Sotheby’s are full of billionaires—or better yet, their advisors.    3    They know when to bump up a lot and when to slightly tip the scales. They’re running the show and it’s their job to make sure the highest bidder(出价者)has a shot and that values soar.

Historical Significance

Historical significance works in a couple of ways when it comes to determining the value of art. Firstly, you can consider the piece in terms of its importance to art history in its genre. For example, a painting by Claude Monet is worth more than other more recent impressionist work since Monet changed the standard of art history and impressionism as a whole.    4    After all, art is often a reflection of the culture of its time and as it became a product, art was affected by political and historical changes.

    5    Whether in a perfect storm of passion and desire or a calculated risk of business deals and rewards, art collectors continue to spend millions upon millions each year at art auctions. What makes art valuable beyond the cost of supplies and labor? We may never truly understand.

A．World history also affects the value of art.

B．It’s interesting to explore what makes art valuable.

C．It seems as though all of these factors combine to determine the value of art.

D．Auctioneers are skilled salesmen who help raise those prices up and up and up.

E．It’s obvious that changes in polities have a historical effect on the value of art to different people.

F．For instance, art describing beautiful women tends to be sold for higher prices than that of beautiful men.

G．For example, Mark Rothko’s White Center was owned by the Rockefeller family, one of America’s most powerful dynasties.

7 . If you are of the “no regrets” school of life, you might think that all this regret is a recipe for unhappiness. But that isn’t the case. True, letting yourself be overwhelmed by regret is indeed bad for you. But going to the other extreme may be even worse. To extinguish your regrets doesn’t free you from shame or sorrow; it consigns you to make the same mistakes again and again. To truly get over our guilt requires that we put regret in its proper place.

As uncomfortable as it is, regret is an amazing cognitive feat. It requires that you go back to a past scenario, imagine that you acted differently to change it, and with that new scenario in mind, arrive at a different present — and then, compare that fictional present with the one you are experiencing in reality.     1     You would remember your own pettiness and irritability, and then imagine yourself showing more patience, being kind instead of hurtful at key moments. Then you would fast-forward to today and see how your relationship could be flourishing instead of languishing.

    2     Pink says they come in four basic varieties, and an instance of regret may involve just one or a combination. Wishing you’d been kinder to your partner is an example of a connection regret, in which you lament behavior that harmed an important relationship, such as spoiling a romance or neglecting your bond with relatives before they died.

Many connection regrets overlap with moral regrets, which can come about after you violate your own values. For example, you may pride yourself on being a loving person, and thus regret not living up to this image in the relationship you harmed. Moral regrets can also involve just yourself.     3    

Pink’s other two categories of regrets involve life choices. Foundation regrets are those in which you did something that affected the course of your life in a way you don’t like. A classic example is wishing you had stayed in school.     4    . They are all about inaction and forgone opportunities. This is what you feel when you kick yourself for not taking a chance, as in wishing you had just gone up to that attractive person and introduced yourself.

    5     Regret is implicated in depression and anxiety, and excessive regret can adversely affect your hormones and immune system. In 2013, researchers asked one group of participants in an experiment to describe “your most burdensome regret” right before going to bed; this group took 61 percent longer to get to sleep than a group told to think about a typical day.

But regret doesn’t have to be left unmanaged. The trick is not to remove the bad feeling; it’s to acknowledge it and use it for learning and improvement. Instead of letting the specter of your failed relationship make you miserable, by simply wishing it had tuned out differently you can be honest with yourself about what went wrong and use that knowledge to enjoy better relationships in the future.

A．Not all regrets are the same of course.

B．Meanwhile, boldness regrets are the opposite.

C．Regret may hurt, but obsessing over them is destructive.

D．Your regret can teach you to become smarter and more successful — if you let it.

E．Unanalyzed and unmanaged, any variety of regret can be poison for your well-being.

F．Maybe you regret not living up to your commitment to your health when you ate a whole pizza or skipped the gym.

G．For example, if today your relationship with your partner has soured, your regret might mentally take you back to last year.

8 . It’s worth being aware that developmental changes could make children more sensitive to the negative side of social media. During the teenage years, for example, the brain changes massively, and this can influence how young people act and feel—including making them more sensitive to social relationships, and status.

“Being a teenager is a really a major time of development,” says Orben. “You’re much more impacted by your peers, you’re much more interested in what other people think about you. And the design of social media might be more stressful at certain times.”

As well as age, other factors could influence the impact of social media on children and teenagers—but researchers are only just beginning to explore these individual differences. “There will be people who are more negatively or positively impacted at different time points. That might be due to living different lives, going through development at different points. They might be using social media differently.” says Orben.

For many parents, buying a child a phone is a practical decision. “In a lot of cases, parents are the ones that want the younger children to have phones so that they can keep in touch throughout the day.” says Odgers.

It can also be seen as a milestone on the road to adulthood. “I think for children it gives them a sense of independence and responsibility,” says Anja Stevie, researcher at the University of Vienna, Austria. “This is definitely something that parents should consider: are their children at a stage where they are responsible enough to have their own device?”

One factor parents shouldn’t overlook is how comfortable they feel with their child having a smart phone. Besides, it’s worth remembering, though, that having a smart phone need not open the floodgates to every single app or game available. “I’m increasingly hearing, when I interview children, that parents are giving them the phone but introducing requirements to check and discuss which apps they get, and I think that is probably really wise,” says Livingstone.

1. According to the passage, which of the following statements is TRUE?

A．Parents feel comfortable when children have smart phones.

B．Many parents have a tendency to buy children smart phones.

C．Age does not influence the impact of social media on children.

D．It is unacceptable for parents to check apps on children’s phones.

2. What’s the writer’s attitude towards buying children smart phones?

A．Concerned.

B．Puzzled.

C．Pessimistic.

D．Subjective.

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

A．Parents’ Practical Decision	B．Negative Sides of Social Media
C．An Introduction of Apps & Games	D．When to Buy Children Smartphones

9 . I have a friend who bird watches. She feels comfortable whenever she’s doing it. If you ask her why she likes it, she will say things like “Well, birds are the world’s most magical creatures.” I have another friend who knits. She likes it because it’s satisfying, and has an astonishingly impressive impact on people for whom being able to knit gloves is out of reach.

As a term, “hobby” has always been of arguable meaning. Ask someone what they think a hobby is, and you’ll get a dictionary definition that they will have just looked up on their phones and, then, a passionate speech on all of the activities that can under no circumstances be put into groups as hobbies by their own highly unique and inflexible standards. Being online is not a hobby, apparently, nor is listening to music.

Hardly anyone knows what a hobby is, and this is particularly the case now that so many of us are spending our leisure time online arguing about these sorts of basic definitions with people, as the writer Max Read put it in an essay, “to whom the world has been created again every morning, for whom every settled argument of modernity must be rewritten, but this time with their engagement.”

Even taking these difficulties into account, however, it seems obvious that birdwatching and knitting are classic hobbies. They are enjoyable, involve practice and reward effort, and they are given immediate access to a group with the same interests. They are the sorts of hobbies advice columnists (专栏作家) have in mind when people write in about their imbalanced lives. It’s interesting, then, that not one of my two clearly hobby-having friends would admit to the practice.

They worried that their hobbies, which give them pleasure and keep them far from their computers, made them seem like they had too much leisure time and too Lew inner resources that would enable them to naturally avoid boredom. They are fully paid-up members of society, with busy lives, fulfilling interpersonal relationships and, again, hobbies that make them happy. It’s just that hobbies have an undeservedly bad reputation, one made worse by the Internet, like everything else.

The birdwatcher said the problem with having a hobby was that it made people seem like they were contributing and learning nothing. The knitter said that she personally connected hobbies with having no friends and no idea of what normal people do to have fun, Actually, they do not want to be seen as mad people who intentionally get away from the correct course.

Well, I enjoy certain light operas. I play music for my own amusement. And yes, I am an ordinary student, and that is not a sign of madness.

1. The author mentions two friends with different hobbies in Paragraph 1 mainly to       .

A．explain the definition of “hobby”

B．attract the readers’ attention to hobbies

C．stress the importance of having a hobby

D．compare two different types of hobbies

2. What does the author mean by quoting Max Read in Paragraph 3?

A．“Hobby” as a term can only be defined without the Internet.

B．People online discuss the definition of “hobby” to change lives.

C．People create a new world by expressing their ideas of hobbies online.

D．It is hard for online people to reach an agreement on the definition of “hobby”.

3. What can be inferred from the two friends’ concerns about their hobbies?

A．They are afraid of being seen as crazy people.

B．They fear their hobbies are not impressive enough.

C．They find it necessary to share hobbies to balance their lives.

D．They refuse to share their feelings about their hobbies with mad people.

4. What does the author intend to tell us in the last paragraph?

A．Hobbies are great for people’s mental health.

B．Different people have their own standards of hobbies.

C．It is reasonable and normal for people to have hobbies.

D．People who suffer from madness can also have hobbies.

10 . Understanding The Metaverse

The metaverse is rapidly being described as the next frontier in the tech, business, and finance world. The idea gained popularity in July 2021, after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg renamed the company to Meta to reflect its growing focus on the metaverse. Today, everyone, from major corporations like Microsoft and Disney to creative startups, is struggling to enter the market that is predicted to reach over $780 billion by 2024.     1     How will it affect the way we live and work?

In simplest terms, the metaverse is a fully immersive (沉浸式) virtual world that is like our real life.     2     Instead, a functioning metaverse requires a combination of cutting-edge technologies like augmented reality (增强现实), virtual reality, 3D avatars, and artificial intelligence.

Zuckerberg may have drawn the world’s attention to the metaverse, but the idea of a virtual world is not new.     3     For instance, Fortnite: Battle Royal, where 100 players battle it out on a small island until only one survivor is left, is a typical example of a virtual universe.

    4     They imagine using the virtual platform to attend meetings, conferences, concerts, and even tour the world with friends.

However, experts believe the technologies need to improve greatly before that happens. The still heavy virtual reality headsets often cause motion sickness and are not ready for long time use. The amount of computing power required to house billions of people worldwide in a virtual universe also presents an issue.

The various Metaverse companies will also have different virtual worlds. They will have to standardize the technology so users can move seamlessly (无缝) between them.     5    

A．But what exactly is the metaverse?

B．The development of the metaverse still has a long way to go.

C．However, a metaverse is not a specific type of technology.

D．The metaverse industry will create jobs for hundreds and thousands of people.

E．Most importantly, the virtual experience has to be very attractive and affordable for consumers.

F．Fans believe that the metaverse will enable people to conduct their daily lives in an online world.

G．The gaming industry has been building the fundamental elements of the metaverse for many years.