Late one evening, my constant yawns(呵欠)convinced me to retire for the night. I put on a comfortable cotton gown, turned the lights low, and crawled into bed between the cool but comfortable sheets. To ensure a good night’s rest, I called out towards the kitchen to my smart speaker, “Alexa, play sounds to sleep by.” As I gathered my cozy sheet up under my chin, I felt at peace with my cat Bella snuggled up(依偎)to me.
During the night, a heavy object landed on my stomach, causing me to scream and sit up, only to discover that it was Bella. She had a habit of waking me up to get her a snack, but the hands on the clock said 3:00 am, and I was annoyed that she had interrupted a happy dream. I fell back against the pillow and promised I’d feed her in the morning. That wasn’t acceptable to her, so she continued to walk on top of me while pressing her paws into my body.
Because that proved to be unsuccessful, she jumped over to the bedside table and deliberately used her paw to knock things on the floor, one at a time, to keep me from going back to sleep. Her efforts paid off as I looked over in the dark room and knew the smug(沾沾自喜的)look on her face conveyed a serious demand. “Get up, human. I’m ready for my nightly treat.”
Knowing she would keep disturbing me until she got her snack, I took a few minutes to focus my eyes and heard what sounded like running water or someone pressure-washing a wall. I couldn’t imagine our apartment staff doing maintenance in the middle of the night, so I assumed I had turned off the water tap. I would regret the large water bill it would bring about, so I unwillingly got up and went into the kitchen. I found nothing out of the ordinary so I continued to search with Bella following me. I checked the bathroom, where I found no running water.
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。
Since the sound was still evident, I realized the seriousness of the situation.
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I didn’t see water on the wall, so I thought it wasn’t an emergency.
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The craftswoman Ji Yulan, an inheritor of the intangible heritage of paper-cutting from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region,
She made paper-cuts of people from all
Ji has 12 students, aged from 3
Ji keeps practicing paper-cutting every day. Her works hang in her studio
3 . A group of Georgia high school football players are being praised as heroes. They
The students were on their way to school on Friday morning when they saw the crash
Luis Goya,a math teacher at the high school, praised the boys’
Police said the lady was taken to the
| A．sprang | B．looked | C．ran | D．turned |
| A．exist | B．occur | C．play | D．stop |
| A．awkwardly | B．deliberately | C．successfully | D．formally |
| A．strategies | B．plans | C．services | D．efforts |
| A．ran off | B．calmed down | C．rolled over | D．broke off |
| A．fairy | B．imaginary | C．detailed | D．frightening |
| A．guessed | B．feared | C．copied | D．heard |
| A．accident | B．performance | C．competition | D．party |
| A．youth | B．partner | C．victim | D．teacher |
| A．usual | B．terrible | C．good | D．normal |
| A．forming | B．paying | C．renting | D．using |
| A．released | B．hidden | C．avoided | D．blocked |
| A．school | B．hospital | C．square | D．spot |
| A．easy | B．clear | C．selfless | D．common |
| A．boys | B．students | C．athletes | D．heroes |
4 . If your books are piled up all over the place or you find yourself always digging through piles looking for that novel you’ve been meaning to read, it may be time to reorganize.
Organize your books by genre (体裁)
Organize your books by the author’s last name
Sorting by the author’s last name is a classic way to organize. If you have an especially large collection, sorting by author will make it a lot easier to locate a given book when you want it.
For a narrower collection, arranging the books by subject makes sense. If you’re a huge poetry buff, you could separate your Romantic collections, postmodern books, and objectivity poetry. If you’re super into historical nonfiction, give World War I its own shelf, the Civil Rights Movement another shelf, and books about the United Nations in another area.
Organize your books by how much you like them
Put your favorites up top and your least favorites at the bottom. This is going to be totally subjective, but it may be fun to spend an evening taking the books down and assessing how you feel about it.
| A．Organize them by subject |
| B．Display the books you use the most |
| C．Did a book completely change your life |
| D．Look for a book written by James Joyce |
| E．Want to read the book over and over again |
| F．Luckily, you have a ton of choices to organize and display them |
| G．Separating books by types will make you quickly find the book you want |
5 . A breakthrough in electric vehicle(EV)battery design has enabled a 10-minute charge time for a typical EV battery. The record-breaking combination of a shorter charge time and more energy acquired for longer travel range was announced on Oct. 12 in the journal Nature.
“The need for smaller, faster-charging batteries is greater than ever,” said Wang, the William E. Diefenderfer Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State and lead author on the study.“Because the critical raw(未经加工的)materials are short,there are not enough batteries to meet expected demand.”
In August, California’s Air Resources Board passed an extensive plan to restrict and ultimately ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars within the state.“If new car sales are going to shift to battery powered electric vehicles,” Wang explained,“they’ll need to overcome two major drawbacks: They are too slow to recharge and too large to be efficient and affordable. Instead of taking a few minutes at the gas pump, depending on the battery, some EVs can take all day to recharge.”
“Our fast-charging technology works for most energy-dense batteries and will open a new possibility to downsize electric vehicle batteries from 150 to 50 kWh without causing drivers to feel range anxiety,” said Wang,whose lab partnered with a power company to develop the technology. “The smaller, faster-charging batteries will dramatically cut down battery cost and usage of critical raw materials, enabling mass adoption of affordable electric cars.”
“True fast-charging batteries would have immediate impact,” the researchers wrote. “Since there are not enough raw minerals for every internal combustion engine car to be replaced by a 150 kWh-equipped EV, fast charging is necessary for EVs to go mainstream.”
“The study’s partner, the power company,is working to manufacture and commercialize the fast-charging battery for an affordable and sustainable future of vehicle electrification,” Wang said.
1. What is the EV battery market lacking?| A．Vital substances. | B．Critical technology. |
| C．High-end products. | D．Scientific market survey. |
| A．It has an ugly design. | B．It’s too small to offer power. |
| C．It has a very short service life. | D．Recharging it is time-consuming. |
| A．Fierce market competition. | B．Wide use of affordable electric cars. |
| C．The disorder of the electric car market. | D．The disappearance of gas-powered cars. |
| A．Researching and developing new EVs. |
| B．Looking for a new sustainable EVs market. |
| C．Making and marketing the fast-charging battery. |
| D．Identifying and producing critical raw materials. |
6 . A study published has modeled the wide-ranging impacts of climate change and extreme weather events on Australia’s food systems and supply chains, identifying potential chain re-actions including job and income loss as well as a loss in nutrient availability and diet quality. Led by Dr Arunima Malik from the Integrated Sustainability Analysis(ISA)group, the paper analyzed the climate change impacts across different sectors and regions in Australia. The researchers found that climate change and extreme weather events have impacts across communities, with rural regions the most negatively impacted.
The study also found that climatic events,such as floods, bush fires and heatwaves could affect surrounding areas by way of limiting food availability and employment. The effects of these events could be felt in distant regions due to the complex inter-connectivity of modern supply chains.
Previous research undertaken by the ISA has shown that a local disaster can impact every other Australian state, resulting in losses across primary, secondary and tertiary industries. What plays out globally seems to play out locally as well. Everyone is affected by climate change， even if they’re not in areas directly hit by extreme weather，and the vulnerable (脆弱的) are affected most.
Damages to food supply can negatively impact diet quality, through reducing the diversity that contributes to a balanced diet to unhealthy processed foods that have a longer shelf life. This disproportionately impacts vulnerable groups, who do not have the means to pay increasing prices for scarce fresh foods.
Co-author Dr Sinead Boylan, a public health nutrition researcher in the Sydney Environment Institute, said, “The research highlights that climate change may not only affect food supply in NSW, but access to healthy and equitable diets, particularly among the most vulnerable populations. These findings could help reform relief strategies to help these communities adapt.”
1. What can we learn about the study from paragraph 1?| A．The Australian government’s reaction to the study. |
| B．The influence of the study on the climate. |
| C．The principle of doing the study. |
| D．The result of the study. |
| A．Local. | B．Third. | C．Global. | D．Rural. |
| A．By decreasing food variety. |
| B．By shortening shelter life of food. |
| C．By reducing the amount of food supply. |
| D．By reducing unhealthy processed foods. |
| A．Everyone is affected by climate change |
| B．Climatic events could affect surrounding areas |
| C．Climate threat to food supply creates chain effect |
| D．The vulnerable are affected most by climate change |
7 . No party? No problem. These people found a way to celebrate their special day that was just as fun and even more meaningful than a traditional birthday party.
On the e-vite (电子邀请函) for Mikayla Gounard’s birthday party, she told her friends that she didn’t want presents. “I didn’t really need anything,” she said. “Everything they would have given me was plastic and stuff I really didn’t need.”
Instead, she asked for donations to help the homeless man, David Sean Currey, who found and returned Gounard’s grandmother’s lost wallet. She was super inspired by that story. She wanted to pay forward the kindness the stranger showed her grandmother.
On Dec. 22, her 12th birthday, Gounard raised $479. A GoFundMe raised an additional $55,000,which Gounard gave to David Sean Currey, along with a note saying, “In a dark tunnel, there is always light.” The homeless man started crying. He was able to check into a hotel, and open a bank account.
Across the country, kids and adults are having pay-it-forward parties, skipping traditional birthday celebrations, foregoing gifts, and choosing to spread kindness and help others.
After the devastating Texas snow and ice storm, Texas State Senator Dawn Buckingham spent her birthday on Feb. 2l in Harper. Texas handed out water and food and supplies to people who had no power for 10 days. Buckingham also invited strangers into her home to use her gas stove to cook meals. It was the end of hunting season — and she had a freezer full of venison she shared with strangers. “There’s nothing better than helping those who need help on your birthday,” Buckingham said on her birthday morning.
1. What did Gounard receive on her birthday in the past?| A．Inspiring blessings. | B．Unnecessary presents. |
| C．Her desired presents. | D．Donations from friends. |
| A．Buckingham’s story. | B．Her friends’ requirement. |
| C．A homeless man’s honesty. | D．Her grandma’s influence. |
| A．Moved. | B．Annoyed. | C．Anxious. | D．Frightened. |
| A．Receiving endless wishes. | B．Inviting strangers to her home. |
| C．Holding an amazing party. | D．Giving hands to those in need. |
8 . Mirthy hosts over 80 online events every month. You can enjoy them from the comfort of your home. All you need to do is visit our dedicated page on the Mirthy website.
Learning to rug hooking on a budgetFriday 4th and Friday 18th November at 2:30 pm
Participants will learn a brief history of rug hooking. Participants will also be encouraged to try their hand at this multi-generational art form, have two weeks to complete the small project and then come back to the second session to learn how to finish it off and prepare it for display.
The disappearance of Heneage BloxhamWednesday 9th November at 7:30 pm
In 2001, Sam Eedle was approached by an elderly woman in Tewkesbury. Her uncle, Heneage Bloxham, had disappeared on the Western Front and nobody in her family was able to tell her what actually happened to him. By accessing the available records, maps and war diaries, and by taking a diversion to the battlefield while on a trip to France, Sam was able to find out what happened to the woman’s uncle.
African danceMonday 2lst November at 5:15 pm
African dance allows us to express ourselves individually while also being part of a collective. Creative expression is encouraged and our uniqueness is celebrated. Kenzi will be reminding you that movements can be adapted and explored to find a way that works for your body and movement style. Making a wild foraged wreath Monday 28th November at 2:30 pm
In this workshop, you will be learning how to make a wreath! Through winding twigs and vines to find forest textures into a festive sampling of nature, this will be an artistic nature-based experience. The wreath is free-form and adds a naturalistic winter atmosphere to your door with a minimal, organic style.
1. Where do the activities take place?| A．On the Internet. | B．In public places. |
| C．At school. | D．In a lecture hall. |
| A．Sam Eedle. | B．An elderly woman. |
| C．Heneage Bloxham. | D．Kenzi. |
| A．18th November at 2:30 pm. | B．9th November at 7:30 pm. |
| C．21st November at 5:15 pm. | D．28th November at 2:30 pm. |
9 . In a study involving sweat samples from 335 people, trained dogs sniffed out 97 percent of the coronavirus cases that had been identified by PCR tests and all 31 COVID-19 cases among 192 people who didn’t have symptoms, researchers reported.
These findings are evidence that dogs could be effective for mass screening efforts at places such as airports or concerts and may provide friendly alternatives for testing people who fear the tests, says Dominique Grandjean in France.
Dogs’ noses also identified more COVID-19 cases than did antigen (抗原) tests, but sometimes mistook another virus for the coronavirus, Grandjean and colleagues found. What’s more, evidence suggests the dogs can pick up cases 48 hours before people test positive by PCR.
In the study, dogs were trained in coronavirus detection by rewarding them with toys—usually tennis balls. “It’s playtime for them,” Grandjean says. It takes about three to six weeks, depending on the dog’s experience with odor detection, to train a dog to pick out COVID-19 cases from sweat samples. For detection, the dogs sniffed used face masks or housing sweat samples collected from human volunteers’ underarms. Results showed that dogs perform as well as or even better than PCR tests for detecting the virus that causes COVID-19, Furton says. He and colleagues have used dogs at schools, a music festival and in a small trial screening airline employees for coronavirus infections.
One of the biggest advantages dogs have over other tests is their speed, Furton says. “Even with what we call a rapid test, you’re still going to have to wait tens of minutes or even hours, where the dog in a matter of seconds can make a response.” However, dogs take time to train and there currently aren’t even enough dogs trained to detect explosives, let alone diseases, Otto says.
Another drawback is that people don’t think of them as high-tech, though they’re one of the highest-tech devices we have.
1. What can we learn about the study from the first paragraph?| A．Dogs were trained to test COVID-19. |
| B．Sweat samples are perfect to test COVID-19. |
| C．Dogs can identify most COVID-19 cases. |
| D．PCR tests failed to meet public expectation. |
| A．Dogs may be unfriendly to people when doing tests. |
| B．Dogs lack experience dealing with large screens. |
| C．Dogs may need a long time to identify the disease. |
| D．Dogs may recognize other diseases as coronavirus. |
| A．They perform well at detecting COVID-19 virus. |
| B．They do better at detecting explosives than viruses. |
| C．They are widely used in public places like schools. |
| D．They like to be rewarded with toys after training. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Disapproving. | C．Fearful. | D．Confident. |
10 . Seven years ago, American Libby Green was traveling with her mom to the French Mediterranean resort city of Nice.
Meanwhile, German-born Marcel Gnauk and a friend were also in Nice, attending the Crossover Festival, a celebration of eclectic music.
Walking on the city’s beachfront Promenade des Anglais, Marcel spotted Libby holding a Hasselblad, a traditional medium-format film camera, and couldn’t resist approaching her. The pair chatted about this valuable object and then their travel. The next day, Libby flew back to the US, but they kept in contact.
In the early years of their relationship, sharing their travel experiences online became part of their routine. Then, when traveling in Phnom Penh, Libby filmed some pigeons taking flight that she wanted to use in a film. But she couldn’t record the sound of their wing beats.
They looked on the internet, searching sound libraries, but couldn’t find anything appropriate. So, Marcel took a $100 audio recorder, and went searching for the missing sound to record. He didn’t find any pigeons—but he did manage to change the direction of the couple’s future.
Marcel turned the recorder on in a small construction zone where women were shoveling gravel, listening through a cheap set of headphones. He was shocked. Everything became alive, and from that day until now he had never stopped recording.
In the six years since that first recording, Libby and Marcel have captured audio in more than 25 countries. They share their experiences through Instagram. Through postings they offer not just their passion and experiences recording sounds, but also details of the equipment and techniques they use. Through their website they offer 500 royalty-free sound libraries. Of these, 145 are free to download.
Marcel says their “a-ha” moment came when he was sitting in front of a computer in 2017. Libby had added a donation button to their website, and a Hollywood post-production creative had donated a few dollars. He realized others shared a passion for sound—and were willing to pay for it. Now their passion becomes a business.
1. What attracted Marcel when he saw Libby?| A．Her voice. | B．Her camera. | C．Her kindness. | D．Her beauty. |
| A．When they made a film in France. |
| B．When they shared travel experiences online. |
| C．When they searched the woods for a specific bird. |
| D．When they tried to record sounds of birds beating wings. |
| A．Marcel got a surprise. | B．Marcel could do nothing but sigh. |
| C．Marcel couldn’t say a word. | D．Marcel felt really worried. |
| A．An Unforgettable Travel | B．A Secret to Happiness |
| C．A Passion for Sounds | D．A Lesson From Nature |
