1 .

To the Editors: I am surprised to read that Dr. Strojnik (“Direct Detection of Exoplanets,” September-October2023) states that we have not yet and cannot directly image exoplanets (外部行星). This is incorrect. NASA/IPAC has a list at exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/imaging.html. One example is an image of 51 Eridani b. The planet is 2.6 times as massive as Jupiter and has the same radius (半径). Gerard Kriss Space Telescope Science Institute

Dr. Gerard: I am pleased that my article brought a response. The phrase “planet detection” arouses in people’s imaginations beautiful images of planets that are creative artistic representations of novel worlds. But a blur of brightness is not an image. Exoplanet researchers routinely call videos such as the one below of 51 Eridani b “direct images” because the planet’s light has been separated from that of its star. “Directly imaged” is the standard language of exoplanet astronomy. But to an optical (光学的) scientist such as myself, there is a strong distinction between direct detection (the planet’s light separated from the light of its star) and direct imaging (a proven picture of the exoplanet). From an optical researcher’s perspective, a single bright spot simply is not an image. Indeed, even the word “direct” in direct detection is debatable from an optical researcher’s point of view. The detection of the light of the exoplanet requires significant processing, adding multiple images and removing starlight based on theoretical models of the source signal. But the interpretation of a bright spot as a planet is only possible upon visual inspection and optimistic thinking. As an optical scientist, I cannot look at a single spot and call it an image of exoplanets. A trajectory (轨迹), or a series of bright points, is not an image of a planet, although it very likely represents something that nowadays is described as an exoplanet. Marija Strojnik

1. ________ is the main disagreement between Marija Strojnik and Gerard Kriss.

A．The definition of a planet	B．The importance of detecting exoplanets
C．The artistic representation of exoplanets	D．The use of the term “direct imaging”

2. How does Dr. Strojnik feel about the interpretation of a bright spot as an exoplanet?

A．She supports it, as it is a common practice in exoplanet astronomy.

B．She approves of it, although it does not provide a clear picture of the exoplanet.

C．She believes it is only possible through visual observation and positive assumption.

D．She considers the interpretation to be debatable, as it requires significant processing.

3. Where can you find these two letters?

A．In the textbook.	B．In a local newspaper.
C．In a published essay.	D．In a science journal.

2 . Staying motivated is key to achieving personal and professional success. However, it’s common to experience waves in motivation levels. To overcome these challenges and maintain a high level of motivation, we’ve compiled practical tips that can help you stay on track and achieve your goals.

＊Set clear and specific goals. Having clear and specific goals is essential for keeping motivated. Define what you want to achieve and break it down into smaller tasks. This way, you’ll have a clear road map.     1    .

＊Stay inspired with role models. The people you spend time with greatly affect your mindset. Get yourself close to individuals who are supportive, positive, and motivated themselves.     2    . During challenging times, they can also help you maintain a positive outlook.

＊    3    . Understanding the underlying reasons behind your goals can greatly inspire your motivation. Reflect on why you want to achieve something and how it agrees with your values and wishes. Having a strong sense of purpose will serve as a constant reminder and fuel your determination.

＊Break tasks into manageable parts.     4    . Break them into manageable parts. And then, focus on one step at a time. This way, you’ll experience a sense of progress, booming your motivation and making the task feel more achievable.

＊Celebrate milestones and progress. Acknowledging your achievements, no matter how small, is key to staying motivated. Celebrate milestones and progress along the way.     5    . Or you can take a moment to reflect on how far you’ve come. The positive strengthening will keep your motivation levels high.

Staying motivated requires intentional effort and self-reflection. With the right strategies, you can overcome obstacles and maintain your drive towards success.

A．Find your why

B．Pay attention to people around you

C．Their energy and encouragement can inspire you

D．Overloaded tasks can quickly beat your motivation

E．It could be treating yourself to something you enjoy

F．Imagine the positive emotions and sense of accomplishment

G．It can fuel your motivation as you achieve each milestone

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。

When you find someone made a mistake, which would you choose, being right or being nice?

At ages five and eight, Bobby and I would spend our usual Saturday with Grandpa, cleaning his house.

Grandpa was only in his late fifties. His own dad had died early, so he didn’t go to school but ran the family farm to raise his family. Because of that, his skills consisted of being able to sign his name, read his grandchildren’s names, and do simple sums in his head.

Then I didn’t understand the poverty and limited opportunities Grandpa lived with. A little food was the only items in his small refrigerator. He worked as a night guard for several companies, and the highlight of his week was the reward he gave my brother and me for cleaning.

After we were done, Grandpa would put on his only suit, and we’d head to town. As we walked, Grandpa would greet every person he met along the way. Everyone had a story to share, and Grandpa would stand quietly, always smiling, and listen with great appreciation.

When we’d finally arrive at Grandpa’s favorite diner, the waitresses would all greet him as a long-lost elder. Bobby and I split an adult plate, and Grandpa either had a cup of soup or a cup of coffee, talking about how well we cleaned his place, telling anyone who would listen every step of every task we accomplished. Every waitress would make sure they came up to say “hi” to Grandpa and congratulate his grandkids on their work. It may have been a diner, but it was our another home.

When dinner was over, the waitress would bring the check and slide it over to Grandpa. One day it was Gloria, and like always she bent close to him and told him the amount of the check (knowing that he couldn’t read the paper).

Grandpa carefully dug into the pocket and brought out a broken coin purse. He carefully laid out the bills and coins. Then he gave Gloria a very very small tip. I was ashamed that he had got it wrong and that he—we—would be embarrassed.

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。

I was about to say something to Grandpa when Gloria grabbed my hand.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The words “being nice” played over and over in my mind.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

4 . 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，并将答案填写在答题卡上。

China plans to expand its space station to six modules(舱)from three in coming years, a researcher at the China Academy of Space Technology said on Wednesday.

The space station will play     1     important role as “space home port”,     2     (provide) an alternative platform for near-Earth missions as the International Space Station (ISS) nears the end of its lifespan(寿命). The ISS     3     (expect) to be decommissioned (退役) after 2030. The lifetime of the Chinese space station will be more than 15 years. It is longer than the 10 years the country     4     (previous) announced.

China’s self-built space station, also     5     (know) as Tiangong, or Sky Palace in Chinese, has been     6     full operation since late 2022. And it hosts a maximum of three astronaut s at an orbital altitude of up to 450 kilometers.

It will have a weight of 180 tonnes after expansion, about 40 percent of the mass of the ISS,     7     has been in orbit for over two decades.

Regarding the expansion, another module is also in the plan. Other plans, including the development of large space telescopes, 3D printers, intelligent robots     8     a warning system, are also underway.

Chinese state media said last year that China would be matchless as the ISS was approaching     9     (retire), and added that China had been requested by several countries     10     (send) their astronauts to the Chinese station.

5 . Some songs tend to get stuck in our heads more easily than others. When a song becomes super popular, we say it’s “gone viral”. Those words might be more accurate than we ever imagined.

David Earn is an applied mathematician. One day, he talked with musician and scientist Matt Woolhouse. Woolhouse found some songs had been downloaded thousands of times over just a few weeks or months. Those patterns looked familiar to Earn, who studies disease epidemics. And those download data resembled the kind of data he saw with disease transmission (传播). They wondered whether that kind of spread from person to person could be how people decide that they like particular songs.

Earn had been working with a mathematical model to predict how diseases spread during an epidemic. His team now used the same model with the song data. They looked at the 1,000 most downloaded songs in the United Kingdom, dividing them by type.

For popular songs, downloads increased rapidly over time, much like a contagious (传染性的) disease infecting a group of susceptible people. Some types were more contagious than others, the team reported in 2023. “The group of people who connect and like folk music isn’t the same as the group of people who like heavy metal or dance music. They’re different social groups,” Earn says. “And some of those social groups are much more likely to share things quickly.”

Surprisingly, pop music wasn’t the most contagious. It spread, but not as quickly as some other types. Electronic music, on the other hand, was super contagious. Earn thinks these listeners are probably super connected on the web and share things more than people who prefer other types of music.

“We think of contagion as a strictly negative thing,” Earn says. “But that same process of contagion functions for other things in life,” he now concludes, “like sharing favorite songs with your closest friends.”

1. Why did Earn and his team conduct their research?

A．To analyze the pattern of song spread.

B．To investigate the ways songs are grouped.

C．To count the times that the songs were downloaded.

D．To study the characters of the people who downloaded songs.

2. What does the underlined word “susceptible” in paragraph 4 mean?

A．With a strong will.	B．Preferring new ideas.
C．Sticking to traditions.	D．Likely to be influenced.

3. Why does electronic music spread quicker?

A．Electronic music covers all music types.

B．Its fans are skillful at surfing the Internet.

C．Electronic music can impress people easily.

D．Its lovers like sharing things with others better.

4. What can be the best title for the text?

A．Contagion of Music	B．Music Spreads Online Wildly
C．How a Song Becomes Attractive	D．Frequency of Downloading Songs

6 . Born in Wales in 1950, Martin Lockley was a pioneer in the study of the dinosaur tracks and footprints preserved in rocks around the world. His work helped his fellow paleontologists (古生物学家) understand what the footprints can tell us about dinosaurs and the world that they lived in.

The footprints and tracks left behind by dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals are called trace fossils (痕迹化石). They can offer clues to how quickly an animal walked or ran and even what their skin may have looked like. Compared with the body fossils of bones and teeth, trace fossils contain evidence of the interactions that the animals had with their environment and can describe what the physical environment may have looked like. They offer a more reliable way to imagine the speed of a dinosaur than analyzing the bones.

Lockley’s mother and father were nature lovers. Lockley loved to observe nature. His father inspired him to “just go out and observe and trust your observations”, which proved important in Lockley’s launching his future career in dinosaur research. He took that advice with him to Gunnison, southwest of Denver, the United States. While North America is home to some of the largest number of fossil footprints in the world, Lockley’s work with prints and his father’s words took him far and wide. He explored fossil and track sites in China, South Korea, Spain and the United Kingdom.

In addition to finding the tracks, Lockley devoted time and energy to preserving these important parts of the fossil record. This includes guiding the politics needed to create UNESCO world heritage sites so that future generations wouldn’t lose out on these precious relics of the past.

1. What can we know about trace fossils?

A．They can reflect the then environment.

B．They are mainly left by some larger animals.

C．They can be easier to preserve than teeth fossils.

D．They are as accurate as bone fossils in analyzing animals’ speed.

2. What contributes to Lockley’s beginning his career in dinosaur tracks?

A．His family’s tradition.

B．His father’s encouragement.

C．His love for dinosaurs and their footprints.

D．His desire to find the largest dinosaur track site.

3. What did Lockley do besides his professional research?

A．He explored places of interest around the world.

B．He guided fellow paleontologists in their work.

C．He conserved and promoted dinosaur track sites.

D．He educated the next generation of track hunters.

4. Which can best describe Lockley’s work?

A．Dangerous.

B．Time-consuming.

C．Far-reaching.

D．Demanding.

7 . The first U. S. cookbook was published in 1796, and since then, they have provided insight into different times in American history.

Cookbooks tell us what foods were available during the period the books were written. If you see a lot of recipes for things that are preserved for pickles (腌菜), you know that you’re looking at a time without refrigeration. In the late 1860s, many recipes started paying more attention to food bacteria concerns and healthy-seeming foods, reflecting society’s growing knowledge of both subjects. Cookbooks show that meal planning changed in the 1930s, when refrigerators became more common in American homes.

Early cookbooks were also lifestyle guides. So, there were not only some recipes for food, but recipes for a cleaning solvent (溶剂) or what to do when your child were poisoned, how to clean, and how to get spots out.

Cookbooks became more diversified and regional after the Civil War. Southern writers, and some Northern writers, began publishing cookbooks in an attempt to memorialize, and beautify, the American South. They became very successful and they really helped to develop a sense of what southern hospitality was. Community cookbooks, edited by more than one person, often as a fundraiser or for charity, ultimately provide insight into what middle-class Americans were eating at a given time, as well as a statement about neighborhoods and groups.

Cookbooks, however, sort of stop being a comprehensive reflection of society now. You really have to think about the publishing world and who it is, where it is, and what it wants. The publishing world doesn’t necessarily have the goal of representing the truth of Americans because it wants to make money. But publishing’s control of the storytelling has loosened. Social media and food blogs have led to the freedom of conversations around food, recipes and cooking, giving consumers more power.

But that doesn’t mean that the golden age of cookbooks is over. Cookbooks are still one of the most popular books out there and are purchased regularly. They’re very good to give as gifts. They’re very, very popular because they’re sort of neutral (中立的). And everyone loves a cookbook, especially with beautiful pages.

1. What can we learn from paragraph 2?

A．There are always recipes to make pickles in cookbooks.

B．Refrigerators first entered American homes in the 1930s.

C．People ate more healthy foods in the late 1860s than now.

D．The cooking method changes as the equipment improves.

2. What does the fourth paragraph mainly focus on?

A．The variety of cookbooks.	B．The popularity of cookbooks.
C．The limitations of cookbooks.	D．The editors of cookbooks.

3. What weakens the power of cookbooks now?

A．New media.

B．Picky consumers.

C．Outdated content.

D．Economic downturn.

4. What does the author say about U. S. cookbooks?

A．They are all about some recipes for food.

B．They are still appealing for their objective description.

C．They are the voice of middle-class Americans.

D．They are purchased more easily online now.

8 . Thanks to the $10bn James Webb Space Telescope, we are beginning to “see” the radiant heat of the early universe like never before. On Monday night, to the excitement of professional astronomers and amateurs the world over, the telescope’s first full-colour image of deep space was released. The striking image, taken at minimally explored wavelengths and never-before-seen resolution, reveals a large number of universal objects.

The image is yet to be fully analysed but some objects are relics (遗迹) dating to within 0.7bn years of the Big Bang, the explosion that created our universe 13.8bn years ago. A new era (时代) of astronomy, in which we can finally see the oldest objects in the universe and gain a fuller understanding of its origins, has officially begun.

Tuesday saw four more important results emerge from the Webb’s first week of observations. Chris Lintott, professor of astrophysics at Oxford University and a researcher on galaxy (星系) formation, said he was blown away by the quality and beauty of the images. “It knocked my socks off,” Lintott said on Tuesday. “I was sitting in a roomful of galaxy experts when the Stephan’s Quintet image was shown, and jaws hit the floor. The Webb is going to produce some of the most amazing pictures of the space age.”

Webb’s “first deep field”, as the image of deep space released on Monday is known, is a picture taken over 12. 5 hours. It shows the cotton-wool-like galaxy cluster (团) SMACS 0723 centrally in the foreground, plus bright white stars.

As Lintott points out, bigger light-collecting mirrors result in sharper images, of the type that Webb is now delivering. The investment in the James Webb Space Telescope’s large foldable mirror has paid off. It is hard to believe that the Earth-orbiting telescope, regarded as one of the most complex engineering projects ever attempted and nearly cancelled a decade ago, has begun operating successfully.

1. What may be most probably talked about before paragraph 1?

A．The radiant heat.	B．Some astronomers.
C．Some universal objects.	D．The history of mankind.

2. How did Chris Lintott react to Stephan’s Quintet image?

A．He was humble.	B．He was tolerant.
C．He was surprised.	D．He was prejudiced.

3. What can we know about Webb according to the last paragraph?

A．It is a complex project.

B．It is regarded useless.

C．It was put into use a decade ago.

D．It was innovated by Chris Lintott.

4. Which would be a suitable title for the passage?

A．The story of an inventor

B．Chris Lintott made a breakthrough

C．The image of relics of the Big Bang

D．A new era of astronomy has begun

9 . Walking by Mr. Groll’s yard is the worst part of our morning walk—the unfriendly shape nearby that shades us: Mr. Groll.

“Hello, Mr. Groll.” I _________ him as I do every morning. And he never answers me. But I know he’s there, watching, behind his fence. Why does he _________ me? It’s a mystery (迷). Maybe he’s afraid of me because I’m blind. _________ scare grown-ups sometimes. Then I _________ hearing him playing with my friend Jimmy, who’s in a wheelchair. Maybe Mr. Groll does not like Vietnamese _________. No. Every Saturday Mr. Groll and my big brother, Lien, help each other with yard work.

Me and Chó! An idea _________ my mystery. Maybe I do know why Mr. Groll doesn’t talk to me! So, I attach Chó to a post, and I _________ my way along the fence.

“Mai! Be _________!” Mr. Groll’s loud voice steadies my _________ while his hand steadies my elbow (肘部).

“You solve my mystery. It isn’t because I’m blind that you don’t like me. Or because I am a Vietnamese.” I ________. “It’s Chó who scares.”

He __________ his large voice. “I like you, Mai. And Chó, too. But up close, Chó scares my ________ away,” he says.

I tell him, “Your fear of Chó may be big, but __________ is bigger. We will help. Come with me.” I hear a smile in Mr. Groll’s voice. “OK,” he says, “I __________ you, my friend.”

Then I take Mr. Groll’s hand in mine and guide it to Chó’s head. __________, Mr. Groll pets Chó’s ears. Friendly Chó—good Chó—swings her tail. Our new friendship begins.

1.

A．inquire

B．greet

C．bother

D．perceive

2.

A．tolerate

B．criticize

C．punish

D．ignore

3.

A．Disabilities

B．Challenges

C．Patients

D．Animals

4.

A．miss

B．find

C．recall

D．imagine

5.

A．neighbors

B．adults

C．students

D．locals

6.

A．solves

B．brightens

C．investigates

D．creates

7.

A．fight

B．push

C．lose

D．feel

8.

A．brave

B．active

C．quiet

D．careful

9.

A．courage

B．panic

C．discovery

D．exploration

10.

A．complain

B．illustrate

C．sigh

D．argue

11.

A．hears

B．expresses

C．keeps

D．lowers

12.

A．friends

B．fellows

C．words

D．ideas

13.

A．company

B．friendship

C．kindness

D．politeness

14.

A．trust

B．warn

C．detect

D．respect

15.

A．Accurately

B．Hesitantly

C．Aimlessly

D．Fearfully

10 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。
1. What will the man do right after graduation from high school?

A．Go to university.

B．Travel in the world.

C．Do voluntary work.

2. What’s the man interested in?

A．Traditional Chinese architecture.

B．Ancient buildings in his homeland.

C．Famous buildings around the world.

3. What does the man’s father wish him to be?

A．A doctor.

B．A teacher.

C．A lawyer.

4. What’s the man’s goal?

A．Living in his own green house.

B．Designing environment-friendly houses.

C．Raising money for poor children in London.