1 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Doctors in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have followed the meal-time habits of more than 500 people for six years,     1    (find) weight change is most affected by the size and     2    (frequent) of meals rather than the interval (间隔) from first to last meal. It challenges the popular trend of intermittent fasting (禁食疗方)     3     a useful weight loss strategy.

Intermittent fasting, also referred to as time-restricted feeding, is a dietary strategy where all meals     4    (consume) during a short window of time each day. These windows can extend from 6 to 10 hours, resulting in a person essentially fasting for up to 18 hours each day.

The idea reveals     5     is no link between the lime of a person’s eating window each day and weight changes. “Based on other studies that have come out, including     6    (we), we are starting to think timing of meals most likely doesn’t produce     7     instant impact on weight loss,” said doctor Bennett. “What does matter, however, is the total number of medium and large meals a person eats over the day.” It suggests simply eating smaller meals, less frequently, is     8     ultimately leads to weight loss.

All of this doesn’t mean intermittent fasting strategies won’t help. But what does seem increasingly clear is that the weight loss benefits occasionally     9    (see) with these eating strategies may be primarily driven by a reduced caloric intake. It doesn’t mean you can simply eat all you want in a short window each day and still expect     10    (lose) weight.

2 . The brown paper bag hit the ground. A Michelin engineer picked it up and opened it, revealing a cracked, leaking egg. The third graders at A.J. Whittenberg Elementary School were disappointed when they saw the runny mess.

It was engineering week at A.J. Whittenberg, a public primary school in Greenville, South Carolina. One week per month, engineers from local industries visit the classrooms and talk to students about their careers.

Greenville is now introducing the idea of a career path to students in primary school and giving students the option to follow those programs to middle and high schools. Each primary school focuses on a specific technical skill. The district allows students to attend schools outside of their attendance boundaries as long as space is available, which means students can choose to continue to follow their chosen career pathway at a middle school with corresponding programs.

The effort in Greenville is part of a growing national trend in which school districts partner with local industries to develop curriculum (课程) and expose students to specialized careers at a young age.

Some education experts worry the focus on industry qualifications has resulted in schools taking on responsibilities that should fall to businesses, like training workers for specific job duties, damaging a more comprehensive education in schools. “Schools are to not just prepare people for work and strengthen the economy, but also a place where students should experience art, music and think creatively,” said Jack Schneider, a professor of education at the University of Massachusetts.

A teacher from Greenville, however, said, “Career exposure has a big impact on kids. We’re not really wanting them to make a decision—‘I’m in the second grade and now I’m locked in to being whatever when I graduate from high school in 10 years.’ We just hope students walk across the graduation stage with plans for a career in mind.”

Modern times need modern solutions. When students leave school, they need to be already down their road to college, if that’s what they’re going to do, or schools need to give them something that allows them to get to work and earn a living. Just getting out with a high school degree doesn’t do that.

1. Why were the third graders disappointed?

A．Their test failed.	B．The bag missed the target.
C．Engineers disturbed them.	D．They had to clean the ground.

2. What does Greenville do to help students follow their chosen path?

A．Design more career paths.	B．Invite engineers to their schools.
C．Adopt the open enrollment policy.	D．Offer more courses for them to choose.

3. What is Jack Schneider concerned about?

A．People’s employment.	B．Students’ overall development.
C．The nation’s economy.	D．The school’s innovative education.

4. Which statement would the author most likely agree with?

A．Modern solutions are hard to find.

B．More students need college education.

C．Greenville’s practice is not acceptable.

D．A high school degree is not enough for jobs.

3 . 阅读下面材料, 根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段, 使之构成 一篇完整的短文。

I yawned (打哈欠)as I got off the last step of the bus. I had woken early that morning, and had not been able to sleep on the long ride from Riverside High, thinking about that day’s race, the Eye Opener. I had never raced in a state-wide race before. Over thirty high school teams ran, along with quite a few colleges. The rest of my team and I unloaded the bus, and we relaxed and waited for our race patiently.

“Start warming up,” our coach told us, roughly forty-five minutes after we arrived. After finishing our stretches, we headed over to the starting line, eager for the race to begin.

The starter walked to the middle of the field. “There will be two commands,” his voice boomed, ‘‘Runners set, then the gun. If you hear another shot, return to the starting line to start again. ” My heart raced as I got my legs ready to race.

“Runners set!” the starter shouted Bam! The gun fired, and he rushed out of our way. Adrenaline (肾上腺素)rushed through my body as I raced through the mass of runners. As I rounded the first turn, my schoolmates greeted me with heartening shouts. Then, in what felt like only one minute, I arrived at the one mile mark.

“6’10”, a man declared as I ran by. I tried to ignore him, but my legs began to burn as I realized I had run a mile and still had two to go. I slowed down my pace, for I knew the second mile was the worst of all three. Minutes later, I felt horrible. My legs ached, feeling like lead blocks. My vision was clouded as sweat dropped down into my eyes, and my arms felt as if they would fall off if I swung them one more time. Just as I almost reached my limit, a boy passed me. He also seemed to have lost strength but soon he was a little ahead of me.

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 gathered up my strength to speed up but suddenly fell to the ground.

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In the last mile, seeing the athletes passing us one by one, I asked the boy to run without me.

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4 . Natural silence — the kind when you hear nothing but the sound of nature around you — is becoming increasingly scarce. The noise of man-made can be heard even in the remote corners of national parks and deep in the Arctic Ocean.

This is having some troubling effects. In humans, noise pollution has been linked to physical, mental health problems and cognitive impairment (认知功能障碍) in children. In wildlife,it’s disturbing navigation, pairing, communication and can cause hearing loss. “We’re losing the ability to listen to nature without noise pollution,” says sound recordist Matt Mikkelsen. He’s part of the non-profit organization Quiet Parks International, which aims to identify and preserve the planet’s last quiet places.

Recently, this took him to Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northeastern Minnesota. No cars, motor boats, electricity or telephone lines are allowed in the one-million-acre area,making it a strong candidate for Quiet Park status. But listening back to the recording, Mikkelsen can hear the low hum (嗡鸣声) of a commercial plane flying far away.

Quiet Parks hasn’t yet decided if Boundary Waters meets its criteria — it’s one of 260 potential sites around the world that the organization is currently exploring. The team will analyze the sound recordings from each location and consider them alongside other data.

In recent years, the world has been getting louder, with cities and towns expanding and an increasing number of noises from cars, airplanes or ships. But during the COVID-19 pandemic (流行病), there has been momentary delay.In2020,global air travel was down by 60% and road transport decreased by almost half. Scientists in Europe found that noise caused by humans fell by up to 50% after lock downs were carried out.

“People enjoyed the silence,” says Mikkelsen. “There were no airplanes in the sky and cars weren’t on the street. It was an incredible thing to be able to hear the world, all of a sudden, free from noise pollution,” he says. Since the start of the pandemic, Quiet Parks says it has experienced a huge increase in interest for quiet places. “I hope that we can take that desire for a world with less noise forward,” says Mikkelsen, “and appreciate the spots we have, where we can go and not experience noise pollution.”

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

A．Special.

B．Rare.

C．Common.

D．Typical.

2. What is paragraph 2 mainly about?

A．Causes of hearing loss.

B．Tips on protecting the nature.

C．Harmful effects of noise pollution.

D．Unidentified problems from human beings.

3. What will Matt Mikkelsen’s team analyse according to the text?

A．The sound recordings.	B．Global air travels.
C．Quiet Parks’ criteria.	D．Data of the pandemic.

4. Where is the text probably taken from?

A．A book review.	B．A travel guide.
C．A business plan.	D．A science report.

5 . 假如你是李华，请结合下表提供的信息，给21st Century 报社写一份倡议书，倡议大家关注野生动物的保护。内容包括:
1. 野生动物减少或灭绝的原因：
2. 需要采取的措施；
3. 提出倡议。
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6 . Besides “wow” and “great”, what else would you say when flying over the Earth in space? Samantha Cristoforetti, the first Italian female astronaut in space, posted several lines of a famous ancient Chinese composition on Twitter to share her joy.

She first wrote in Chinese, and then attached an accurate translation of the lines in both Italian and English to help more people understand. “Looking up, I see the immensity of the cosmos; bowing my head, I look at the multitude of the world. The gaze flies, the heart expands, the joy of the senses can reach its peak, and indeed, this is true happiness,” it says. Two days before she landed on Earth, the beauty of space and Chinese literature resonated on her Twitter account. Before long, her posts went viral on Twitter with thousands of retweets, likes and replies.

The text she quoted is from the Preface to Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion,a Chinese calligraphy masterpiece by Wang Xizhi (303-361) of the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420). She also attached three photos taken in space of China’s Bohai Bay and the day-night view of Beijing. “The poem and views are both magnificent as well as healing. If everyone could enjoy the same sight, a lot of pain in the world would be ‘dissipated’,” one user comments.

As the first Italian female astronaut in space, Cristoforetti carried out her first space mission on Nov 23, 2014. In 2022, she started the second mission in April and returned to Earth on Friday night after a 127-day stay in orbit.

Cristoforetti has also been active in Sino-European cooperation in the field of manned spaceflight. She was a working group member with Chinese counterparts to define and implement cooperation in the field of astronaut operations. When not traveling for work, she is an eager reader and has a great passion for languages. Speaking clear Chinese, Cristoforetti once told the media that the teams from China and Europe were working very well together in the field of astronaut training.

1. What is the result of Cristoforetti’s post online?

A．The birth of a masterpiece.

B．A trend of journey to space.

C．An instant hot issue on Twitter.

D．Different translations of the lines.

2. Which word below can be used to replace the underlined word “dissipated” in Paragraph 3?

A．Relieved.	B．Caused.
C．Increased.	D．Recognized.

3. What can we learn from the last paragraph?

A．Cristoforetti’s devotion to her career.

B．Cristoforetti’s language learning strategies.

C．The leadership Cristoforetti plays in her team.

D．The possible motivation for Cristoforetti’s post.

4. What can be the best title of the passage?

A．A female astronaut becomes online star

B．A Chinese poem gets popular abroad

C．Literature conveys the beauty of space

D．An Italian astronaut promotes Sino-European cooperation

7 . Nuclear bombs. That’s the go-to answer for incoming space objects like asteroids(小行星) and comets, as far as Hollywood is concerned. Movies like Deep Impact and Armageddon rely on nuclear weapons, delivered by stars like Bruce Willis, to save the world and deliver the drama.

But planetary defense experts say in reality, if astronomers spotted a dangerous incoming space rock, the safest and best answer might be something more subtle, like simply pushing it off course by crashing it with a small spacecraft.

That’s just what NASA did on Monday evening, when a spacecraft headed straight into an asteroid called Dimorphous, which is around 7 million miles away and poses no threat to Earth. It’s about 525 feet across and orbits another larger asteroid.

In images streamed as the impact neared, the egg-shaped asteroid grew in size from a little spot on screen to have its full rocky surface come quickly into focus before the signal went dead as the craft hit right on target.

Events happened exactly as engineers had planned, they said, with nothing going wrong. “As far as we can tell, our first planetary defense test was a success,” said Elena Adams, the mission systems engineer, who added that scientists looked on with “both terror and joy” as the spacecraft neared its final destination.

The impact was the peak of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) ,a 7-year and more than $300 million effort which launched a space vehicle in November of 2021 to perform humanity’s first ever test of planetary defense technology. It will be about two months, scientists said, before they will be able to determine if the impact was enough to drive the asteroid slightly off course, probably shortening its original orbit.

NASA plans to launch an asteroid-hunting space telescope named NEO Surveyor in 2026. “We’ve tacked lots of space rocks, especially the larger ones that could cause extinction-level events. Thankfully, none currently threaten Earth. But many asteroids the size of Dimorphous haven’t yet been discovered, and those could potentially take out a city if they came crashing down. ” explains Lindley Johnson, NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer.

1. How did scientists know the craft hit the asteroid successfully?

A．The signal from the craft was lost as it hit the target.

B．They recorded the whole process with a telescope.

C．The little spot on the screen suddenly disappeared.

D．They monitored the craft with satellites in space.

2. What is the purpose of launching the spacecraft?

A．To search for evidence of alien life.

B．To end the asteroid’s threat to Earth.

C．To save the world and deliver a drama.

D．To test technology for defending Earth.

3. What can be inferred about Dimorphous?

A．It is a dangerous incoming space rock.

B．It is an egg-shaped asteroid around Earth.

C．It may orbit the same asteroid after the hit.

D．It is expected to blow up after the impact.

4. Which statement will Lindley Johnson probably agree with?

A．Asteroids are equally destructive whatever the size.

B．NEO Surveyor is aimed to track smaller asteroids.

C．Larger asteroids will no longer threaten Earth.

D．NASA is responsible for the safety of Earth.

8 . Each place on this planet has its own unique traits culture and customs. In addition, different locales have their own languages and dialects.     1    

As people travel more frequently, they exchange goods and ideas. Thus, the blending of cultures has become easier and more commonplace. In the age of globalization, one may argue that language acts as a barrier to communication. Individual dialects may divide people even further.     2     Dialects are important for international business. Read on to learn how.

DIALECTS RETAIN IDENTITY

Many cultures use different words or pronunciations for the same thing.     3     Many times, exact translations are impossible. For example, one language may have a specific word for something, while another does not. If each language were standardized with the same set of words and pronunciations, cultures would lose their identities.

DIALECTS HELP SPREAD CREATIVITY

New words spread freely throughout different cultures thanks to world travel and the internet. In our modern society, each person can travel to experience new things. By learning new languages and dialects, a person expands his or her mind. Opening one’s mind promotes creativity.     4     Therefore, as we interact internationally, these exchanges lead to innovations.

DIALECTS INCREASE INDEPENDENCE

    5     Even though a small group is part of a larger whole, their unique form of expression sets them apart. Their uniqueness provides them a sense of independence. Oftentimes, people from a specific area take pride in their dialect. Differences enhance cultural diversity and increase independence. Without diversity, our world would not progress in business or technology.

Our world needs dialects and individual expression to keep cultures alive for future generations. Preserving dialects is good for creativity, innovation, and business.

A．The free exchange of ideas leads to new ideas.

B．Unique pronunciations help give a culture its identity.

C．A dialect, by definition, is specific to a region or group.

D．When exchanging ideas, they feel comfortable speaking dialects.

E．Therefore, a standardized language is crucial in the communication.

F．However, dialects express the unique qualities of a particular region.

G．Language and dialects preserve the unique cultural elements of a given place.

9 . What are pillows really stuffed with? Not physically, but symbolically? The question occurred to me with the photos in the news and social media from the 50 cities around the world that staged public celebrations for International Pillow Fight Day. Armed with nothing more than bring-our-own sacrificial cushions, strangers struck heavily each other in playful feather from Amsterdam to Atlanta, Warsaw to Washington DC. But why? Is there anything more to this delightful celebration?

As a cultural sign, the pillow is deceptively soft. Since at least the 16th Century, the humble pillow has been given unexpected meanings. The Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu tells a famous story about a wise man who meets a depressed young scholar at an inn and offers him a magic pillow filled with the most vivid dreams of a seemingly more fulfilling life. When the young man awakens to discover that his happy 50-year dream has in fact come and gone in the short space of an afternoon’s nap, our impression of the pillow’s power shifts from wonder to terror.

Subsequent writers have likewise seized upon the pillow. When the 19th-Century English novelist Charlotte Bronte poetically observed “a ruffled (不平的) mind makes a restless pillow”, she didn’t just change the expected order of the adjectives and nouns, but instead she made unclear the boundaries between mind and matter — the thing resting and the thing rested upon.

It’s a trick perhaps Bronte learned from the Renaissance philosopher Montaigne, who once insisted that “ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head”. On Montaigne’s thinking, intelligence and happiness confront each other forever in a pillow fight that only one can win.

With the words of Tang. Bronte, and Montaigne, we can perhaps more easily measure the attraction of the global pillow fight. Like a ritual of release, the annual international pillow fight amounts to a kind of cleansing, a brushing off of daily worries: an emptying of the world’s collective mind. Rather than a launch-pad for weightless rest, the pillow is a symbol of heavy thought: an anchor that drags the world’s soul down — one that must be lightened.

1. The example of Tang Xianzu is used to illustrate that ________.

A．pillows give people satisfactory dreams

B．dreams are always wonderful while the real world is cruel

C．people’s impression of pillows changes from wonder to terror

D．pillows symbolically convey the meaning in contrast to their soft appearance

2. From the passage, we can learn that Charlotte Bronte ________.

A．wrote poems about pillows

B．regarded pillows as reflections of our minds

C．shared the same viewpoint as Tang Xianzu on pillows

D．was likely to have been influenced by the thoughts of the Renaissance

3. The underlined sentence in Paragraph 4 “ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head” most probably means ________.

A．pillows give us comfort

B．pillows make people more intelligent

C．people with too many thoughts have less inner peace

D．people can easily fall asleep when they know nothing

4. According to the author, why is Pillow Fight Day so popular around the world?

A．Because it is a ritual release.

B．Because it makes life delightful.

C．Because it comforts restless minds.

D．Because it contains a profound meaning of life.

10 . Though researchers have long known that adults build unconscious (无意识的) preferences over a lifetime of making choices between things that are essentially the same, the new finding that even babies engage in this phenomenon demonstrates that this way of justifying choice is intuitive (凭直觉的) and somehow fundamental to the human experience.

“The act of making a choice changes how we feel about our options,” said Alex Silver, a Johns Hopkins researcher. “Even infants who are really just at the start of making choices for themselves have this preference.”

The findings are published today in the journal Psychological Science. People assume they choose things that they like. But research suggests that’s sometimes backwards: we like things because we choose them. And, we dislike things that we don’t choose. “Adults make these inferences unconsciously,” said co-author Lisa Feigenson, a Johns Hopkins scientist in child development. “We justify our choice after the fact.”

This makes sense for adults in a consumer culture who must make random choices every day, between everything from toothpaste brands to styles of jeans. The question was when exactly people start doing this. So they turned to babies, who don’t get many choices so, as Feigenson puts it, are “a perfect window into the origin of this tendency.”

The team brought 10-to 20-month-old babies into the lab and gave them a choice of objects to play with; two equally bright and colorful soft blocks. They set them far apart, so the babies had to crawl to one or the other — a random choice. After the baby chose one of the toys, the researchers took it away and came back with a new option. The babies could then pick from the toy they didn’t play with the first time, or a brand new toy. Their choices showed they “dis-prefer the unchosen object.”

To continue studying the evolution of choice in babies, the lab will next look at the idea of “choice overload.” For adults, choice is good, but too many choices can be a problem, so the lab will try to determine if that is also true for babies.

1. What is people’s assumption about the act of making choices?

A．They like what they choose.

B．They choose what they like.

C．They base choices on the fact.

D．They make choices thoughtfully.

2. Why were babies selected as subjects for the study?

A．To help them make better choices.

B．To guide them to perceive the world.

C．To track the root of making random choices.

D．To deepen the understanding of a consumer culture.

3. What does the study on the babies show?

A．They like novel objects.

B．Their choices are mostly based on colors.

C．Their random choices become preferences.

D．They are unable to make choices for themselves.

4. What will the following study focus on?

A．The law of “choice overload”.

B．The problem of adults’ many choices.

C．Why too many choices can influence adults.

D．Whether babies are troubled with many choices.