1 . In today’s digital era, social media users are increasingly coming across fake news online. This leads to the pressing issue: What causes people to fall for misinformation on the Internet?
According to researchers at the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, users can easily fall into an echo chamber (回声室)—a sort of virtual space where users consume only one-sided news, eventually distrusting any opposing views. “We all tend to agree with the group opinion. Hence, people naturally get together with others who hold the same opinion,” said Dongwon Lee, one of the researchers. “But if you’re not cautious, there is a high risk of falling into an echo chamber.”
To prevent this phenomenon, the researchers have crafted a novel tool, a game named ChamberBreaker, to help players resist echo chambers and reduce the rate of fake news spread. The fundamental approach employed by ChamberBreaker centers around a decision-making procedure that mirrors the creation of echo chambers. In ChamberBreaker, a player is tasked with trying to have community members fall into an echo chamber. To begin, the player is randomly assigned a situation that focuses on a health, political or environmental issue, and is presented with six pieces of news on that topic. Then, the player selects news that could cause the other members to fall into an echo chamber while at the same time maintaining their trust. If successful, the community members will fall into an echo chamber and the player will witness the resulting negative effects on the community.
After developing ChamberBreaker, researchers tested it with over 800 subjects to see if it raised awareness of echo chambers and changed news consumption behaviors. The researchers found that those who played ChamberBreaker were significantly more likely to state their intention to observe online information from more diverse perspectives and showed an increased awareness of the echo chamber phenomenon.
Ultimately, the researchers hope that their methodology can excite a greater interest in the scientific and scholarly study related to information consumption. The application of tools like ChamberBreaker, which focuses on fostering analytical reasoning, may lead us towards a more informed online community.
1. What can be learned about an online echo chamber?| A．It encourages well-judged views. |
| B．It gathers like-minded individuals. |
| C．It functions as a virtual reality platform. |
| D．It serves as a tool for identifying fake information. |
| A．Assignment of situations. | B．Trust-building exercises. |
| C．News selection strategy. | D．Community impact assessment. |
| A．The results of scientific testing. |
| B．The theoretical framework of the game. |
| C．The description of the game procedures. |
| D．The common challenges faced during gameplay. |
| A．Reducing news inquiry. | B．Encouraging passive reading. |
| C．Strengthening prejudiced views. | D．Enhancing critical thinking. |
2 . Dutch researchers have discovered that birds living in cities are using metal spikes (尖刺) to build their nests. People put these spikes on buildings in order to keep birds off their balconies, benches, and chimneys, but birds seem to be stealing them and using them to keep people away from their eggs.
The research began when, in the courtyard of a hospital in Antwerp, Belgium, biologist AukeFlorian Hiemstra found a large nest that had been built by a magpie (喜鹊). The nest was made from about 1,500 metal spikes. They were pointing outward to create a protective system around the nest.
“I just stared at it, this strange, beautiful, weird nest,” Hiemstra told BBC News. When he investigated further, he found that magpies had moved away nearly 165 feet of metal spikes that had been glued to the hospital’s roof.
After Hiemstra made this discovery, his team heard about a similar nest created by crows in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, and another magpie nest in Glasgow, Scotland. The crows had positioned the spikes in a different way, perhaps using the metal to support the nest’s structure.
In their report, the researchers mention many kinds of birds moving spikes off buildings, but they chose to focus their study on corvids(birds from the crow family). The researchers pointed out that there have been previous studies on how corvids use everything from telephone wires to clothes hangers to build their nests. They said the use of anti-bird spikes “hints at a functional use”—meaning the birds seem to know exactly what they’re doing.
Magpies have often been seen nesting in thorny (多刺的) places, where the thorns can prevent people from attacking the small eggs and chicks inside the nest. Thorny hedges aren’t common in cities, however, so the theory is that magpies use the human-made version instead. Hiemstra calls this the birds’ “revenge”. “We’re trying to get rid of birds, but the birds are collecting our metal spikes and actually making more birds in these nests,” he said.
1. Why are metal spikes put on buildings?| A．To draw birds’ attention to the nest. | B．To prevent strangers entering. |
| C．To keep birds off the buildings. | D．To make the buildings more beautiful. |
| A．to protect their eggs and chicks | B．to decorate their nests |
| C．to provide a strong hold | D．to support the structure of the nests |
| A．Disappointing. | B．Appreciative. |
| C．Confusing. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．To introduce a new species of bird that has adapted to city life. |
| B．To compare different nesting habits of birds in urban environments. |
| C．To emphasize the negative impact of human activities on bird habitats. |
| D．To inform readers about birds using metal spikes to build nests in cities. |
3 . Small planetary (行星) bodies is the big focus of space exploration in 2023 and People are eager to solve many of the mysteries about these tiny worlds. In 2023, the launching of two spacecrafts aims to explore some of the solar system’s smaller bodies, in an effort to understand how worlds become suitable habitats for humans to live in.
The first task Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) was launched in April 2023 and is scheduled to land in 2031. This spacecraft from the European Space Agency (ESA) is designed to explore three of Jupiter’s major moons: Europa, Callisto and Ganymede. They are thought to have oceans of liquid water beneath their frozen shells.
“The thing we are most interested in is the liquid oceans and in particular with Ganymede –we don’t know the location, the depth ,the composition of these oceans,” says ESA’s Olivier Witasse, the project scientist. “While JUICE has many goals, the most exciting one is to hunt for life there as water is crucial to life ”.
Due to launch in October 2024 and arrive in 2030, the other spacecraft Psyche from NASA is named after the asteroid (小行星) it will land. Researchers believe Psyche to be an exposed iron core of a young planet. Studying planetary cores is nearly impossible on actual planets because they are so deep underground, so Psyche could present a unique opportunity.
“The core is always crucial. For the Earth, it creates magnetic field and gives off heat,” says one of the researchers of Psyche, “One of the ways to answer why Earth is habitable is to study how it was built, and Psyche is part of that story. We don’t know what we’re going to find, and if blessed, we’re going to be completely surprised because there was no previous data.”
Habitability (宜居性) in our solar system is still a huge mystery, but the two spacecrafts should bring us one step closer to understanding it.
1. What is the aim of the two spacecraft launching tasks?| A．To study planetary bodies. | B．To solve mysteries about worlds. |
| C．To explore the solar system. | D．To understand how worlds become habitable. |
| A．Its most important goal is to hunt for life. |
| B．It is scheduled to travel about 8 years before it reaches its destination. |
| C．It has found there are liquid oceans under frozen shells of Jupiter. |
| D．It is designed by EAU to explore three of Jupiter’s major moons. |
| A．Psyche will be launched to explore Psyche. |
| B．There was a little previous data about the asteroid. |
| C．People have known how the earth is built through it. |
| D．Psyche’s core creates magnetic field and gives off heat. |
| A．Ganymede attracts particular attention of scientists of ESA. |
| B．Psyche is key to helping people solve mysteries about space. |
| C．JUICE is scheduled to explore three of Jupiter’s major moons. |
| D．The launching of two spacecrafts is to help understand habitability. |
4 . Inside a fishbowl, the goldfish — a species of carp native to East Asia, bred for aesthetic delight and traditionally believed to bring good fortune — is among the easiest of pets to keep. But released into the wild, the seemingly humble goldfish, freed from glass boundaries, can grow to large proportions. They can even kill off native marine wildlife and help destroy fragile and economically valuable ecosystems.
“They can eat anything and everything,” said Christine Boston, an aquatic research biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Over the past several years, Ms. Boston and her colleagues have been tracking invasive goldfish in Hamilton Harbour, which is on the western tip of Lake Ontario (安大略湖), about 35 miles southwest of Toronto.
Their study, published last month in the Journal of Great Lakes Research, could help pinpoint goldfish populations for culling, said Ms. Boston, who is the lead author. “We found out where they are before they start spawning (产卵),” she said. “That’s a good opportunity to get rid of them.”
The fast-growing female goldfish, Ms. Boston noted, can also reproduce several times in one season. “They have the resources,” she added, “and they can take advantage of them.” Their football-shaped bodies can swell to a size that makes them too large a meal for predators (捕食者) — up to about 16 inches long. The feral goldfish are also destructive, uprooting and consuming plants that are home to native species.
Nicholas Mandrak, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Toronto Scarborough, studies in the “dramatically increase” of the wild population in the past two decades. Their spawning explosion, he said, resulted partly from people in densely-populated areas releasing pets in urban ponds. He added, environmental managers tend to forget the goldfish. “They just assume, ‘It’s been there for 150 years — there’s nothing we can do about it.’”
The problem is not unique to Canada. In Australia, a handful of unwanted pet goldfish and their offspring took over a river in the country’s southwest. And the discovery of football-size creatures in a lake in 2021 even led British officials to beg their citizens: “Please don’t release your pet goldfish into ponds and lakes!”
People wrongly believe that because goldfish are “small and cute” they won’t pose a problem when released into the wild, said Anthony Ricciardi, a professor of invasion ecology at McGill University in Montreal.
Goldfish, he added, are just a small part of a vast invasion of non-native species whose outcomes can be unpredictable, and in some cases, are worsened by climate change.
“Under human influence, beasts are moving faster farther in greater numbers, reaching parts of the planet they could never reach before,” he said. “We’re talking about the redistribution of life on Earth.”
1. Which of the statements about the goldfish is correct?| A．Their place of origin is Canada. | B．They are capable of reproducing. |
| C．They will grow well over 16 inches. | D．They only invade Lake Ontario. |
| A．Killing | B．Controlling | C．Catching | D．Observing |
| A．Citizens wrongly set free the fish. | B．Climate change has a negative impact. |
| C．The environmental management is absent. | D．The food increases in habitats. |
| A．Now goldfish are turning into wild monsters. |
| B．Now goldfish are on the way to become a global issue. |
| C．Now goldfish are attracting scientists to study in. |
| D．Now goldfish are threatening the Great Lakes. |
5 . 
The day starts early for Tang Shengli, a bird protection volunteer in Lanshan county, Yongzhou, Hunan province. At about 5 am, the 60-year-old is in uniform and ready to start his day’s work protecting and recording migratory (迁徙的) birds. Located on the northern side of the Nanling Mountains, Lanshan is an important passageway for migratory birds. From September to December every year, more than 240 species of migratory birds fly from Siberia to Australia via Hunan. In the past 10 years, Tang has recorded more than 120 species of such birds with his camera. “The flight calls of the migratory birds at night attract me so much that I cannot sleep. All I want to do is get up and record them,” Tang says.
When Tang joined the Hunan provincial bird protection organization in 2013, he knew he faced a tough task. Numerous migratory birds were lost each year as a result of killing and illegal trade. At that time, poachers (偷猎者) lit up the hillside to attract the birds there and hunt them. Some nights hundreds of birds would be killed or caught, remembers Liao Changgui, an official with the local forestry bureau.
By day, Tang distributes brochures to villagers in Lanshan to raise public awareness of bird protection, while at night, he goes deep into the wilderness to tackle illegal hunting. “Many villagers didn’t think bird hunting was illegal, and some made a living from it. Our work has affected their business,” Tang explains, adding his wife was threatened at their home in order to stop him doing his work.
To stop poaching, in October 2012, the National Forestry and Grassland Administration issued a notice to prevent the illegal hunting of migratory birds. In December that year, the Hunan provincial government promised to fight against poaching and establish a bird monitoring and protection system. So far, 43 migratory bird protection stations have been built across the province, covering almost all key points on the passageway. In 2020, a “lights out” program started in Lanshan county to prevent the birds from being distracted (使分心).
On Nov 1, the Hunan provincial government issued a ban on hunting migratory birds and other wildlife listed under national and provincial protection. Nationwide, the National Forestry and Grassland Administration is carrying out a two-month special action plan to strengthen patrols and remove illegal hunting equipment in national parks, nature reserves and bird migration routes across the country.
1. Why did poachers light up the hillside according to paragraph 2?| A．To find their way around the hill. |
| B．To search for birds’ nests and catch them. |
| C．To draw the birds’ attention to catch them. |
| D．To lead the birds to fly safely and in the correct direction. |
| A．Give up. | B．Put off. | C．Call for. | D．Deal with. |
| A．Ways to punish bird poachers. |
| B．Routes migratory birds fly along. |
| C．Measures to protect migratory birds. |
| D．Reasons why poachers try to capture birds. |
| A．Ensuring birds have a safe passage |
| B．Important passageway for migratory birds |
| C．Flight calls of migratory birds at night attract Tang |
| D．Tang records more than 120 species of migratory birds |
6 . Typing.com is an online typing tutor for students of all ages. Typing.com’s proven curriculum helps students from beginners to advanced learners, focusing on technique, accuracy, and speed. The following are some frequently asked questions about typing on our website.
How long does it take to type without looking at the keyboard?An average student without learning differences will learn to touch type within eight to ten hours. They may be touch typing at a very slow speed (8-15 words per minute).
Is it bad to look at the keyboard when typing?Yes. Not only does it prevent you from practicing your fingering, but it also slows you down and makes you type less accurately. It's far more difficult to notice mistakes when you're not looking at the screen.
How do you get faster at typing?The most important technique to learn to type faster is touch typing. This is a technique based on developing muscle memory for your fingers.
How can I learn to type correctly?Focus on accuracy rather than speed. Use the entire keyboard correctly. Learn some keyboard shortcuts. Practice every day.
How do I increase my typing speed?Arrange your fingers properly. The most important step in improving your typing speed is ensuring that you place your fingers correctly on the keyboard. Rest the index finger (食指) of your left hand on the “F” key and the index finger of your right hand on the “J” key.
Is typing.com free?Typing.com is a free online typing tutor and digital literacy (读写能力) platform used by millions of students and education professionals around the world. We aim to provide valuable learning tools to as many school teachers and students as possible.
1. What do we know about typing.com?| A．It charges very little. | B．It is suitable for every student. |
| C．It helps to improve writing skills. | D．It can automatically correct typing errors. |
| A．Managers. | B．Salesmen. | C．Athletes. | D．Teachers. |
| A．To promote a typing website. | B．To share typing experience. |
| C．To correct typing mistakes. | D．To teach typing skills. |
7 . Generally speaking, the single most important thing you can do to keep your computer safe is make sure your operating system and apps are up-to-date. Because though it looks like nothing has changed afterwards, below the surface every update is fixing bugs and holes that can be taken advantage of by hackers. Modern computer systems are so wildly complicated that it is basically impossible for developers to build a completely secure system. However much you test and try, hackers and people with bad intentions will comb through and look for a bug or a hole they can use to access your private data.
The most simple attack is a Bruteforce attack of simply going through and trying every single combination of letters and numbers to, for example, guess a password. This is why you can only get the passcode on your phone wrong three times before it locks up. Phishing isn’t so much clever technology, but is a psychological trick to persuade you to hand over your details. If you browse a website that has http and not https, and you’re on a public WiFi, anyone on the same network could read every word being sent to your phone or computer. This is called A Man In The Middle attack. Finally there is Malware. This is software through which hackers can run their own code on your computer, then they can do whatever they like.
This used to be a really, really bad problem. But today, both Windows and Mac are more locked down than they used to be. So though the threat of hackers is real and scary, the good news is that the good guys are getting better at fighting them. But that doesn’t mean we should be contented. The best way to keep your data safe is to remain careful where you click. And, of course, make sure all of your apps are up-to-date, so they have all of the latest safeguards to keep you safe.
1. What happens after your operating system and apps are updated?| A．Nothing happens to them. | B．They become locked up. |
| C．Data in them are stolen. | D．Bugs and holes are fixed. |
| A．To keep other people from working out the passcode. |
| B．To prevent you from falling for a psychological trick. |
| C．To pick up the information being sent to other devices. |
| D．To stop hackers from installing software on your phone. |
| A．Two. | B．Three. | C．Four. | D．Five. |
| A．To inform people of different approaches to hacking the Internet. |
| B．To remind people of the significance of updating apps and systems. |
| C．To appeal to developers to build an entirely secure computer system. |
| D．To blame hackers and those who have the intention to do damage. |
8 . The International Space Station was a small three-room “apartment” when the first crew (工作人员) moved in. Twenty years later, the complex has a lookout tower, three toilets, six sleeping places and 12 rooms.
The first crew-American Bill Shepherd and Russian Sergei Krikalev and Yun Gidzenko-took off from Kazakhstan on October 31st, 2000. Two days later, they swung open the space station doors, clasping their hands in unity.
Shepherd, who served as the station commander (指挥官), compared it to living on a ship at sea. The three spent most of their time operating the equipment. Conditions were primitive, compared with now. Installations (安装) and repairs took hours at the new space station, compared with minutes on the ground. “Each day seemed to have its own set of challenges,” Shepherd recalled.
The space station has transformed into a complex that’s almost as long as a football field with 13 kilometers of electrical wiring, an acre of solar panels and three high-tech labs.
The space station marked two decades of a steady stream of people living there. While men still lead the pack, more crews include women. Two U. S. women have served as the space stations top leader. Commanders typically are American or Russian, but have also come from Belgium, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan. While African-Americans have made short visits to the space station, the first Black resident is expected to arrive.
“Many tasks like human Mars trips can benefit from the past two decades of international experience and cooperation,” Shepherd said. “If you look at the space station program today, it’s a scheme for how to do it. All those questions about how this should be organized and what it’s going to look like are already behind us.”
1. What can we learn about the International Space Station?| A．It began as a Russian effort. | B．It is under constant construction. |
| C．It was set up on October 31st, 2000. | D．It can accommodate 12 people in all. |
| A．Complex. | B．Steady. | C．Special. | D．Rough. |
| A．The leadership in the space station. | B．The background of crew members. |
| C．The challenges faced by astronauts. | D．The teamwork between space visitors. |
| A．The space exploration has a long way to go. |
| B．The space station needs to be further improved. |
| C．The space station program has got big achievements. |
| D．The space station is the result of international cooperation. |
9 . Artificial intelligence models can trick each other into disobeying their creators and providing banned instructions for making drugs, or even building a bomb, suggesting that preventing such AI “jailbreaks” is more difficult than it seems.
Many publicly available large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, have hard-coded rules that aim to prevent them from exhibiting racial or sexual discrimination, or answering questions with illegal or problematic answers — things they have learned from humans via training data. But that hasn’t stopped people from finding carefully designed instructions that block these protections, known as “jailbreaks”, making AI models disobey the rules.
Now, Arush Tagade at Leap Laboratories and his co-workers have found a process of jailbreaks. They found that they could simply instruct one LLM to convince other models to adopt a persona (角色), which is able to answer questions the base model has been programmed to refuse. This process is called “persona modulation (调节)”.
Tagade says this approach works because much of the training data consumed by large models comes from online conversations, and the models learn to act in certain ways in response to different inputs. By having the right conversation with a model, it is possible to make it adopt a particular persona, causing it to act differently.
There is also an idea in AI circles, one yet to be proven, that creating lots of rules for an AI to prevent it displaying unwanted behaviour can accidentally create a blueprint for a model to act that way. This potentially leaves the AI easy to be tricked into taking on an evil persona. “If you’re forcing your model to be good persona, it somewhat understands what a bad persona is,” says Tagade.
Yinzhen Li at Imperial College London says it is worrying how current models can be misused, but developers need to weigh such risks with the potential benefits of LLMs. “Like drugs, they also have side effects that need to be controlled,” she says.
1. What does the AI jailbreak refer to?| A．The technique to break restrictions of AI models. |
| B．The initiative to set hard-coded rules for AI models. |
| C．The capability of AI models improving themselves. |
| D．The process of AI models learning new information. |
| A．It can help AI models understand emotions. |
| B．It prevents AI learning via online conversations. |
| C．It can make AI models adopt a particular persona. |
| D．It forces AI models to follow only good personas. |
| A．Unclear. | B．Cautious. | C．Approving. | D．Negative. |
| A．LLMs: Illegal Learning Models | B．LLMs: The Latest Advancement |
| C．AI Jailbreaks: A New Challenge | D．AI Jailbreaks: A Perfect Approach |
Our three kids were all under age five. We’d recently moved to the suburbs, and I’d stopped working to be a stay-at-home mom. Most of our friends lived outside our immediate community and didn’t have children. This all added up to a nonexistent social life for my husband and me.
I needed to fix this, so I became a room parent in my son’s kindergarten class, partly to spend time with him, but also to make more friends within the school community. I also signed my son up for weekend soccer. While those activities gave me the opportunity to socialize with other moms, it was challenging to cultivate friendships. I only saw my fellow room parents a few times a -year, usually during class parties. On the soccer sidelines, I found it impossible to watch the game, keep track of my young children, and maintain conversations with other parents at the same time.
I desired deeper interactions with the smart, interesting moms I saw around school. But we all led busy lives. How could I make this happen?
“You should throw a party,” suggested a friend who happened to be a professional event planner. “I can’t do that. I don’t really know these women,” I replied quickly. I hardly even had my closest friends over to my house. The thought of hosting an adult party terrified me.
“Just invite a few people that you’ve talked to and ask them to bring along a friend. You’ll meet even more people that way. It will be fun,” my event-planner friend said. I ran this idea by my husband, and I was certain he’d agree it wouldn’t work. “Great idea,” he said. “I’ll stay upstairs with the kids, and the party can take place on the main floor.”
I picked a date and set up an electronic invitation, making a guest list of moms from my son’s soccer team, my fellow room moms, and a few other moms I’d started saying “hi” to at school pick-up. But I didn’t hit Send. I started to talk myself out of it. There were so many reasons this wouldn’t work.
注意：1. 续写词数为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
With four mess makers in my household, I imagined many “what ifs”.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________But you know what? Everyone showed up.
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