1 . A volcano is an opening in the Earth’s surface. Through that opening, red-hot rock and hot gases escape. This can be a sudden and thunderous puff of ash and gas, or it can be a continuous flow of lava (岩浆) destroying everything in its path. The danger of a volcano may explain why its importance are often ignored. They exist for hundreds of thousands of years, and the gases they release come from the inside of our planet. They are probably the very gases that created Earth’s atmosphere (大气层) billions of years ago. Both awful and amazing, volcanoes have much more to offer than other geographical events.
Volcanic regions are hotbeds of biodiversity. The lava islands of the Galapagos in the Eastern Pacific are textbook examples in action. As lava hardens and begins to erode (风化) over the course of years or centuries, the nutrients and minerals from the volcanoes create rich soil.Some of the world’s most productive regions for farming, such as in Indonesia and Central build up underground aquifers (含水层). For example, without the Tibesti and its five volcanoes in the north of Chad and in southern Libya, the eastern Sahara would be even drier.
Volcanoes also produce geothermal energy, which makes up significant shares of electricity supply in a growing number of countries, including EI Salvador, Kenya and New Zealand. The most common type of volcanic rock, basalt (玄武岩), is capable of permanently trapping (卡住) carbon dioxide. This will make volcanoes an important player in the game of catching and storing carbon. Long viewed as a fearsome enemy of humankind, volcanoes may yet become a savior.
1. What is the text mainly about?| A．The definition of volcanoes. |
| B．The value of volcanoes. |
| C．The danger of volcanoes. |
| D．The type of volcanoes. |
| A．They are both made up of gases. |
| B．The Earth’s atmosphere comes from volcanoes. |
| C．They formed in the same time period. |
| D．There might be some connection between them. |
| A．The cause of a volcano. |
| B．The procedure of a volcanic eruption. |
| C．The contribution of volcanoes to rich soil. |
| D．The influence of biodiversity on volcanoes. |
| A．Carbon dioxide. |
| B．The most common type of volcanic rock. |
| C．Basalt’s being the most common type of volcanic rock. |
| D．Volcanic rocks’ ability to permanently trap carbon dioxide. |
2 . Abel Cruz is an industrial engineer living in Lima, the capital of Peru, which is located in the central coastal part of the country, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. When Abel Cruz was a boy,his weekly routine was to climb down a valley in the foothills of the Peruvian Andes to get the family’s water from a spring.
“It was downhill from the house, far away and steep,” he says.
The Peruvian Andes are under the weather influences coming both from the Pacific Ocean and from the jungle and traditionally there is a “dry” and “rainy” season. Recent climatic changes have made the dry seasons even drier and longer.
Cruz began dreaming up better ways to collect water. He noticed that some plants, for example, capture (捕获) rain and mist with their wide leaves. Eventually, he struck upon the idea of a fog net, a concept that he would go on to share around the world.
Each vertical (垂直的) net is 215 square feet of man-made resin (树脂). Micro-droplets (滴液) of water gather together and then fall down into collection tanks. One net can collect 50 to 100 gallons per day. Locals can carry back the water in small containers like buckets for their small farms.
Working in Lima, Peru, with support from the Creating Water Foundation, Cruz has installed (安装) more than 3,600 nets on the bare hillsides around the city to capture fog coming from the Pacific Ocean. This should help bring relief to the city of more than 9 million, which tends to have little rainfall and suffers from frequent lack of water. “The planet has less and less fresh water,” Cruz points out, “because the glaciers (冰川) that are natural water collection tanks are disappearing. So, we must find a way to store and save water for times of drought.”
1. Which of the following can best describe Abel Cruz’s work of getting water from a spring?| A．Tiring. | B．Entertaining. |
| C．Unnecessary. | D．Economic. |
| A．Capturing rain with wide leaves. |
| B．Gathering fog droplets with big nets. |
| C．Turning resin into water droplets. |
| D．Carrying water into collection tanks. |
| A．The net is man-made. |
| B．The collection tanks are made of resin. |
| C．The net is vertically installed on the hillsides. |
| D．Locals must carry water in small containers. |
| A．His concerns over world’s lack of water. |
| B．His engineering experience. |
| C．Support from Creating Water Foundation. |
| D．His geographic knowledge on his home country. |
3 . What does the term “dinosaur” actually mean? What Beatles’ song stayed in the US singles chart for the longest? Who was the president of the United States when Uncle Sam first got his beard?
These are not just questions from a particularly difficult public test.
But what was perhaps more surprising was what was going on in people’s brains at the point that they recalled these facts.
Making full use of your curiosity is an important method for building adventure into your life.
| A．Curiosity doesn’t simply make our lives more enjoyable. |
| B．They are used by researchers in a pioneering experiment. |
| C．Feeling good is a normal thing, not something unusual. |
| D．When given a brain X-ray examination, their brain activity was quite different. |
| E．They are three of the most interesting questions worldwide. |
| F．The researchers tried to figure out what effect curiosity had on people’s minds. |
| G．They in turn become better at receiving information. |
4 . When we wake up, how many of us think of what we want to do today? Almost all of us.
How many of us think of improving at what we do or focus on personal growth and development? Not many.
As Josh Waitzkin, a talented chess player and martial arts world champion, said in his book The Art of Learning, “We focus so much on the result that the details of the learning process are lost on us.”
Why is the process of learning so important? If we are getting the result,why do we have to learn or do things in a better way?
My point: Life is a marathon, not a sprint (冲刺). You have to keep running. You have to build the base of the house strong enough so that it could bear every earthquake or storm. And believe me, bad days come.
That base is the process of learning. Learning is more important than the result. And those who understand this always win.
Many of us, me included, do not realize the importance of this process. When I used to code (编程), rather than understanding the root cause of a code break, I was more interested in just fixing the issue. The next time a similar issue occurred, I worked from scratch again. I didn’t learn anything from the first time and ended up spending even more time later on the same thing.
If you were a designer but didn’t understand how 3D objects could be presented in 2D, you might look at someone else’s sheet and get the work done. But what about the next time? And the next time?
If we don’t do something properly — it could be worse than not doing it at all. But if we focus on the learning process, we could be faster and better for any future problems.
1. If you think of what you want to do today after you wake up, it means you are focusing on .| A．the result |
| B．the learning process |
| C．your personal growth |
| D．building the base of your life |
| A．They are the root cause of failure. |
| B．They can be avoided with careful work. |
| C．We don’t need to worry too much about them. |
| D．We should be prepared for them. |
| A．worked very hard |
| B．lost my interest |
| C．started from the beginning |
| D．solved the problem very fast |
| A．Why the Process of Learning Matters More Than the Result. |
| B．Why the Result Are Often Focused on. |
| C．If You Want to Succeed, Please Learn from Others. |
| D．If You Can’t Get a Good Result, Please Stop. |
5 . Some people today might be early risers because of DNA they take after Neanderthals tens of thousands of years ago, suggests new research.
When early humans migrated from Africa to Eurasia roughly 70,000 years ago, some of them mated with Neanderthals, who had already adapted to the colder, darker climates of the north. The ripple (涟漪) effects of that intermating still exist today: Modern humans of non-African ancestry (血统) have between 1 and 4 percent Neanderthal DNA. Some of that DNA relates to sleep more specifically, the internal body clock known as the circadian rhythm.
For the new study, researchers compared DNA from today’s humans and DNA from Neanderthal fossils (化石). In both groups, they found some of the same genetic variants involved with the circadian rhythm. And they found that modern humans who carry these variants also reported being early risers.
For Neanderthals, being “morning people” might not have been the real benefit of carrying these genes. Instead, scientists suggest, Neanderthals’ DNA gave them faster, more flexible internal body clocks, which allowed them to adjust more easily to annual changes in daylight. This connection makes sense in the context of human history. When early humans moved north out of Africa, they would have experienced variable daylight hours — shorter days in the winter and longer days in the summer-for the first time. The Neanderthals’ circadian rhythm genes likely helped early humans’ offspring (后代) adapt to this new environment.
Notably, the findings do not prove that Neanderthal genes are responsible for the sleep habits of all early risers. Lots of different factors beyond genetics can contribute, including social and environmental influences. The study also only included DNA from a database called the U.K. Biobank—so the findings may not necessarily apply to all modern humans. Next, the research team hopes to study other genetic databases to see if the same link holds true for people of other ancestries. If the findings do apply more broadly, they may one day be useful for improving sleep in the modern world, where circadian rhythms are disturbed by night shifts and glowing smartphones.
1. What does the new research focus on?| A．DNA’s dramatic changes. | B．Genes’ influence on early risers. |
| C．Neanderthals’ sleeping patterns. | D．Ancestors’ environmental adaptability. |
| A．Historical context. | B．Additional proof. |
| C．Sample analysis. | D．Studying process. |
| A．Getting up earlier. | B．Having healthier daily routines. |
| C．Being more flexible in their work. | D．Possessing a better circadian rhythm. |
| A．They get proof from other studies. | B．They are confirmed by early risers. |
| C．They suggest potential applications. | D．They reveal factors in sleeping disorders. |
6 . “Palace, Mountain, Moon?” has been selected by NASA as the Astronomical Picture of the Day for December 25, 2023.
The photo was taken by Valerio, a young photographer of Turin, Italy. It was shot on the evening of December 15, 2023. While he knew about NASA’s competition, he hadn’t considered participating until receiving much encouragement from his social media followers. Soon after, he received the message, “Your image has been chosen as the astronomical photo of the day.” It was incredible!
In a photo like this, nothing is left to luck. The concept came to him back in 2017. Walking on the hills north of Turin, he found several spots perfect for including both the Basilica of Superga Palace and Mountain Monviso. After numerous visits over several months, he identified four spots where Superga and Monviso line up just right.
After pinpointing these locations, he experimented with shooting them at different times. “I knew I needed something special to perfect the photo. The Sun was a no-go, so I turned to the Moon. Its various phases and position s reach an azimuth angle (方位角) of 230 degrees,” Valerio said. With this in mind, he researched the Moon’s phases, marked potential dates on the calendar, and planned the exact moments when the moon could join the queue.
It was very successful, especially because the Moon was in a waxing phase. This meant that in the photo, not only was its crescent (新月) lit up, but so was the left part, its shadowed side. That part is lit by reflected light, also known as Da Vinci’s glow, named after him because he was the one who theorized about why the Moon’s shadowed side is brightened. During the early days of the waxing Moon phases, the shadowed part is visible because the Sun’s light reflects off the Earth and hits the Moon’s shadowed side, giving it a greyish, silvery color. This allowed the light to outline Monviso on the left as well.
1. Why did Valerio send the photo to NASA?| A．He took an interest in astronomical advances. |
| B．He expected to create an impact on social media. |
| C．He received broad support from enthusiastic fans. |
| D．He wished to make his hometown a tourist hot spot. |
| A．shine light on each other | B．stand in a straight line |
| C．fit each other in size | D．vary from usual in color |
| A．Studying how the Moon phase changes. | B．Calculating the Superga-Monviso distance. |
| C．Analyzing when to adjust the camera angle. | D．Measuring the height of the observation point. |
| A．The outline of the crescent. | B．The outline of Superga. |
| C．The dark side of the Moon. | D．The shadowed side of the Earth. |
7 . “It’s not unusual for guests to feel emotional when they discover the story behind our food,” says Patrick Navis. “Not to mention when they taste it. One even cried with happiness.” The setting for these tearful scenes? Navis’s restaurant in a Dutch city. Here, the owner and his team create experimental food using herbs, roots, flowers and nuts — some common, others less so.
Most of these ingredients (食材) come from the Ketelbroek Food Forest nearby. To the untrained eye, it’s like an ordinary wood. But there’s one key difference: everything in it is edible. It was set up in 2009 by Dutch botanist and environmentalist Noah Eck as an experiment in slow farming, to see what would happen if the right combination of food plants were left to grow together like a natural forest, without chemicals.
“It’s the first ‘food forest’ of its kind in Europe and we’re one of the few restaurants around the world cooperating in this way,”says Navis.“We have over 400 different species of edible plants we plan our menus around, including some we previously knew little about.” He harvests the ingredients and, with his fellow chefs, works them into beautifully presented tasting menus, served in a dining room hidden in the backstreets of the city,
“To us, fine dining is not about the fame of a restaurant, its location, expensive decoration, fancy cooking and wine list,”says Navis.“It’s about adding value through creativity and using ingredients nobody knows of, which are grown with great attention.” However, he adds, luxury cooking can be about enhancing everyday ingredients, too.
“When looking at cooking in this way, who can argue that caviar (鱼子酱), for example, is more valuable than a carrot grown with specialist knowledge?”
Experimentation is extremely important to Navis. In the next five years, he hopes to open an outdoor restaurant. But for now, the most important thing is to continue focusing on how plants are being grown and the perennial system used in the Food Forest, reducing the need for replanting each season.
1. What can we learn about Navis’s restaurant?| A．It is well received by its guests. | B．It serves food with moving stories. |
| C．It offers experimental food for free. | D．It is known for its rare food sources. |
| A．It is a natural forest. | B．Diverse plants coexist in it. |
| C．Plants there take longer to grow. | D．It provides safe food ingredients. |
| A．Convenient locations. | B．Expensive ingredients. |
| C．Innovative menus. | D．Fancy cooking techniques. |
| A．The sustainable farming practice. | B．Farming with proper use of chemicals. |
| C．Natural farming without human intervention. | D．An experimental farm for an outdoor restaurant. |
8 . It was dinner time, yet I hadn’t finished my work for the day. Cheery people who were enjoying their holiday time buzzed around me. But with my head down and headphones in, I had interacted with very few of them. The day passed more like a fast-forwarded video than something that I actually fully experienced.
This was my first week living the digital nomad lifestyle. I had left my corporate role and found freelance (自由职业的) writing work online to afford me the freedom to travel.
I had prepared excitedly, surfing online about digital nomadism.
But that’s not all that’s waiting for new digital nomads.
| A．And my surroundings looked different. |
| B．But this wasn’t at a tiring nine-to-five office job. |
| C．This was a typical day back in my office I managed to escape. |
| D．New surroundings may also make you fully engaged in your work. |
| E．Should you choose to become a digital nomad, your environment will change. |
| F．You’ll still wake up with emails in your inbox and to-dos begging to be handled. |
| G．Yet somehow I unknowingly over-consumed expectation and under-consumed realism. |
9 . When 2023 turned out to be the hottest year in history, it underlined the warnings of some outstanding climate scientists that the pace of global warming was accelerating and had entered a dangerous new phase. A new study, published in Communications Earth & Environment, suggests one reason for such an acceleration: Earth’s skies are getting clearer and letting in more sunshine.
The study was carried out by a set of NASA instruments in space that since 2001 have tracked the delicate balance of energy entering and leaving the planet. Over the past decade, the instruments, called the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES), have detected a marked rise in the amount of solar energy the planet has absorbed — well beyond the warming expected from rising greenhouse gases. The readings show the planet has become less reflective, as if it recently put on a darker shirt. One reason is a drop in light-reflecting pollution because of power-plant scrubbers (洗涤器) and cleaner fuels, the researchers say. They calculate that cleaner air could account for 40% of the increased energy warming the planet between 2001 and 2019.
Climate scientists have long known that pollution declines can lead to warming: Not only do the pollution particles (微粒), or aerosols, reflect light into space, but they can also increase the number of droplets in clouds, causing them to grow brighter or last longer. Two years ago, the decline of aerosols became detectable on a global scale. But the climate models used in the new study attributed a startling (惊人的) amount of warming to the pollution drop.
However, falling pollution may not be the only reason for the brighter skies detected by CERES, a trend that kicked up after 2015. The models were unable to explain up to 40% of the extra absorbed light, and the CERES data show reflectivity falling in both hemispheres (半球), whereas pollution has fallen the most in the north. Both of those observations suggest other factors might be reducing Earth’s reflectivity. The models in the new study may be overstating the influence of aerosols, says Bjorn Stevens, a climate scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. “If the models are too sensitive to aerosols, as some of us think, it will cause us to look in the wrong direction.”
The new study highlights the important role aerosols will play as Earth continues to warm, and the need to keep models updated, says Tiffany Shaw, a climate dynamicist at the University of Chicago. The skies will only get clearer, with pollution controls in China taking force, and India soon expected to follow. Aerosol declines will also reshape regional weather, with cleaner air leading to a weaker Asian monsoon and increased heat extremes in northern hemisphere.
1. According to the article, which of the following concerning CERES is true?| A．CERES has been keeping track of the delicate balance of energy since the early 20th century. |
| B．CERES has discovered a noticeable increase in the amount of solar energy absorbed by the planet. |
| C．CERES has detected that the warming is exactly in line with the rising greenhouse gases. |
| D．CERES has provided data to fully explain where the extra absorbed light comes from. |
| A．They can throw light to the earth back into space. |
| B．They can increase the number of clouds in the sky. |
| C．They can increase the brightness and duration of clouds. |
| D．They can give rise to more tiny drops of water in clouds. |
| A．The models in the new study are too sensitive. |
| B．The result of the new study is misleading. |
| C．The findings of the new study may be unreliable. |
| D．The new study attaches great importance to the role aerosols will play. |
| A．CERES has figured out the reason for global warming. |
| B．Aerosol declines will reshape regional weather. |
| C．Pollution declines are making the earth’s skies clearer. |
| D．Clearer skies may be accelerating global warming. |
10 . The Giza Pyramids are relics of Egypt’s Old Kingdom era and were constructed 4,500 years ago. Pharaoh (法老) Khufu was the first Egyptian king to build a pyramid in Giza, a project he began around 2550 BC. His Great Pyramid is the largest in Giza and originally towered 481 feet above the plateau. Its estimated 2.3 million stone blocks each weigh an average of 2.5 — 15 tons.
Khufu’s son, Khafre, built the second pyramid at Giza around 2520 BC. His burial ground stands out because it also includes the Sphinx, a limestone monument with the body of a lion and the head of a pharaoh. The third pyramid at Giza is considerably smaller than the first two—less than half their height at about 218 feet. Built by Khafre’s son Menkaure around 2490 BC, the pyramid’s complex includes two separate temples and three individual queens’ pyramids.
According to scientists, the builders were skilled Egyptian workers who lived in a nearby temporary city. Boatmen used the Nile and a network of artificial waterways to bring materials to the Giza Plateau, including copper cutting tools from the Sinai Peninsula and timber (木材) from Lebanon. To sustain the workers, they also delivered cattle from farms near the Nile Delta. Communities across Egypt probably contributed workers, as well as food and other essentials.
It’s generally believed that the Egyptians moved massive stone blocks to the heights along large ramps (坡道), using a system of ropes, rollers, and levers. Some suggest exterior ramps around each pyramid were applied, while a more controversial theory suggests internal ramps were used. Perhaps future imaging technology will reveal how Egyptian builders created these timeless monuments.
As the pyramids helped to build ancient Egypt, they also preserved it. “Many people think of the site as just a tomb in the modern sense, but it’s a lot more than that,” says Harvard University Egyptologist Peter Der Manuelian. “Almost any subject you want to study about the Pharaonic civilization is available on the tomb walls at Giza—so it’s not just about how the ancient Egyptians died but how they lived.”
1. What do the first two paragraphs mainly talk about?| A．The history of the Giza Pyramids. | B．The height of the Giza Pyramids. |
| C．The significance of the Giza Pyramids. | D．The preservation of the Giza Pyramids. |
| A．It resulted in social conflicts. | B．It was intended to remain safe. |
| C．It involved multiple efforts. | D．It did damage to local people. |
| A．How they were interconnected. | B．How they worked in the past. |
| C．How they were constructed. | D．How they were restored. |
| A．They are a key symbol of ancient civilization. | B．They allow us to explore a disappeared world. |
| C．They have played a role in protecting Egypt. | D．They help push forward imaging technology. |
