1 . Many people don’t understand why anyone would travel by bicycle. It’s so exhausting. For me it’s the best way to travel. Why I love it and why the effort is paying off, you can read here.
When I sit on the bike, I am free and flexible. I can pause at any time to eat or start the stove to enjoy a coffee with breathtaking views. I’m not dependent on bus or train.
I am the whole day in nature. The wind blows around my nose.
I could tell hundreds of stories. Because of getting to know so many people I’m experiencing a lot. The travel form itself invites many to ask questions. And the best thing about it is, that all these stories make me rich. Rich in memories, on which I think with laughter.
| A．I listen to the birds singing. |
| B．I get the chance to look inside myself. |
| C．It will change the way you see the world. |
| D．I can decide for myself when and where to go. |
| E．Before my start, I was fascinated of the bike touring community. |
| F．Likewise, I find my own rhythm and how to assess my reserves of strength. |
| G．Nobody can ever take them away and they have an unspeakable value for me. |
2 . More parental investment; slower children’s growth
Are teenagers less likely to participate in activities associated with adulthood because they’re busier with homework and extracurricular activities? Researchers found that time spent on homework and extracurricular activities has declined among 10th graders. It’s remained relatively steady among 12th graders.
The study researchers also found an association between a slower developmental trajectory and smaller family size, higher parental age at first birth, and higher median income. With fewer children and more money, parents can invest more time and resources in their kids.
There are also economic factors. With shifts in the economy, more people go to college and are dependent on their parents for longer.
| A．There are benefits and drawbacks to the decline in adult activities among adolescents. |
| B．It helps children enjoy a life with more material richness. |
| C．On the other hand, Internet usage has increased. |
| D．This may allow them to follow a slower developmental path. |
| E．On the downside, it poses an obstacle to teens’ all-round deveolopment. |
| F．More money is needed to cover their education. |
| G．That also gives rise to more careful parenting with the idea that education will last longer. |
3 . Brushing your teeth effectively lowers your chances of getting a host of chronic diseases, as well as keeping your teeth and gums (牙龈) healthy. But the majority of us are doing it wrong.
In Sweden, one study found as few as one in 10 people practice the best brushing technique. The British health insurer Bupa found that almost half of respondents did not know how to brush their teeth properly in a survey of 2,000 people in the UK.
So what exactly are most of us getting wrong, and how can we change our routine to make sure we brush our teeth effectively? Here’s how to properly brush your teeth, according to experts.
“Lots of patients understand that what they need to do is remove food remains,” says Josefine Hirschfeld, associate professor and specialist in restorative dentistry at the University of Birmingham in the UK. “That is only partially true. It’s much more important to remove bacteria from the teeth.” These bacteria and other microorganisms grow inside everyone’s mouth, and form a sticky biofilm commonly known as dental plaque (牙菌斑). It is made up of around 700 different species of bacteria, the second-greatest diversity in the human body after the gut, as well as a host of fungi and viruses. “They are living in the sticky film stuck to the teeth and also to the soft tissues,” says Hirschfeld. “This sticky film can't be easily rinsed off — it really needs to be manually cleaned.”
The most important place to remove it from is not in fact the teeth, but the gum. This is where microbes are best able to sink the gum tissue and do damage to teeth. In fact, “brushing your teeth” is something of a misnomer. “Think of brushing your gum, rather than the teeth themselves,” says Hirschfeld. “The teeth will then be brushed automatically.”
Brushing too hard, especially with a firmer-bristled brush, can cause injury to the gums. Small tears in the soft tissue caused by overzealous brushing are an opportunity for bacteria to enter the bloodstream. And grating the brush’s bristles over the enamel can wear tiny grooves in the tooth, which add up to significant erosion over time.
1. When brushing teeth most people’s practices are __________.| A．healthy | B．effective | C．faulty | D．uncertain |
| A．They are practicing the best brushing skills |
| B．Bacteria and microorganisms are not common inside their mouths |
| C．It’s the most important to remove the sticky film from the gum |
| D．The aim of brushing teeth is to remove food remains |
| A．Attentive. | B．Overdone. | C．Overlooked. | D．Slight. |
| A．When our gum is brushed, our teeth is cleaned together. |
| B．It’s much more important to remove food remains from the teeth . |
| C．The greater care we take to brush our teeth, the healthier the teeth will be. |
| D．Dental plaque containing species of bacteria only exists on teeth. |
4 . With the growing popularity of the TV series Blossoms Shanghai (繁花), key scenes describe city areas in the show have become the hottest tourist attractions in Shanghai of late. Here are some citywalk routes based on the TV series that are worthy of exploration:
Major citywalk route:Huanghe Road → West Nanjing Road → East Nanjing Road → East Zhongshan Road → Number One
The narrator in the TV series Blossoms Shanghai points out: “In 1993, the 755-meter-long Huanghe Road had over 100 restaurants, attracting countless wealthy diners each night.”
Starting from Huanghe Road and crossing Nanjing Road to the Bund, you'll pass by many scenic spots often filmed in the series:
• Tai Sheng Yuan restaurantThis restaurant specializes in Shanghai cuisine. It opened in 1993 and is also recognized as the prototype of Zhi Zhen Yuan restaurant in the TV series.
Address: No 50 Huanghe Road, Huangpu district
• Wing On Department StoreThe prototype of Hu Lian Department Store in the TV series was Hua Lian Department Store between 1988 and 2006. It later changed its name to Wing On Department Store and was one of the four major original department stores in Shanghai.
Address: No 635 East Nanjing Road, Huangpu district
• Fairmont Peace HotelPeace Hotel on East Nanjing Road, a major scene in the TV series where leading character A Bao, played by actor Hu Ge, lives. The hotel first opened its doors on Aug 1, 1929, and was originally named Cathay Hotel by its owner, Sir Victor Sassoon, a businessman and hotelier from the Sassoon banking family, a famous and prosperous British-Iraqi Jewish family in Shanghai in the 1920s and 30s. The Sassoon family once owned lots of property including HSBC.
Address: No 20 East Nanjing Road, Huangpu district
1. What makes these citywalk routes so popular in Shanghai ?| A．The friendly tourism policy | B．The fantastic scenery |
| C．The hit TV play | D．The beautiful season |
| A．No 50 Huanghe Road, Huangpu district |
| B．No 635 East Nanjing Road, Huangpu district |
| C．No 20 East Nanjing Road, Huangpu district |
| D．No 211 Cheting Road, Songjiang district |
| A．Their history is not long. |
| B．They feature fine cuisine. |
| C．They offer diverse goods. |
| D．They are in the same district. |
5 . Since the 1950s, some 9.2 billion tonnes of plastic have been produced globally, of which only about 10% has ever been recycled. Yet environmentally conscious companies and consumers continue to look to recycling as a way to ease the plastic problem. Manufacturing giants claim to be committed to making more of their products and packaging from recycled materials. However, this confidence masks (掩饰) a complex web of issues around plastic recycling. Recycling rates remain extremely low and critics argue that we should look at alternative ways to tackle plastic pollution.
While many plastics have the potential to be recycled, most are not because the process is costly, complicated and the resulting product of a lower quality than the original. Despite rising demand for recycled plastic, few waste companies turn a profit. Part of this is because virgin plastic-linked to oil prices -is often cheaper than recycled plastic, meaning there is little economic motive to use it. Worse yet, much of our plastic waste is difficult to recycle. Lightweight food packaging, like a mozzarella packet, contains different plastics, dyes and toxic additives (添加剂). This dirty mix means plastic recycled through mechanical methods-the most common form-can only be melted down and moulded(浇铸)again a couple of times before it becomes too fragile to be reused. And the nature of the process means plastic recycling has a carbon footprint of its own.
Given all of these difficulties, environmental critics say recycling is not the solution-and argue that creating more products from recycled material to attract environmental consciousness merely worsens the problem. “The solution is to use less plastic and to stop misleading the public about the recyclability,” says Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, a US campaign group with a mission to end single-use plastic. “They should stop making false claims about the recyclability of plastics since they know most will either be littered or burned or landfilled (填埋). Using less plastics means shifting to reusable products and relying more on paper, cardboard, glass and metal-all of which should be made from recycled content.”
1. Which of the following statements would environmentally conscious companies support?| A．Recycling can’t solve the plastic problem. |
| B．Creating more products from recycled material can help ease plastic pollution. |
| C．The solution to plastic pollution is to use less plastic. |
| D．People should give up recycling because the recycling rates remain extremely low. |
| A．The recycling process of plastics. |
| B．Pollutants contained in recycled plastics. |
| C．Reasons why users dislike recycled plastics. |
| D．Contributing factors to low plastic recycling rates. |
| A．Disapproving | B．Unclear | C．Neutral | D．Indifferent |
| A．Using metal or glass food containers. | B．Littering recycled plastics in a landfill. |
| C．Processing plastics in a mechanical way. | D．Launching campaigns to promote recyclability. |
6 . Cheetahs (猎豹) are usually daytime hunters, but the speedy big cats will shift their activity toward dawn and dusk hours during warmer weather, a new study finds.
Unfortunately for endangered cheetahs, that sets them up for more potential conflicts with mostly competing animals like lions. “Lions normally kill prey (猎物) themselves, but if they come across a cheetah’s kill, they will try to take it,” said Bettina Wachter, a behavioral biologist. “The cheetahs will not fight the larger cats, they will just leave.” Hunting at different times of the day is one way to reduce meetings between large meat-eating animals.
But the new study found that on the hottest days, when daily temperatures got to nearly 45 degrees Celsius, cheetahs became more active at night. Kasim Rafiq, co-writer of the study, said, “There’s a greater chance for more unfriendly encounters and less food for the cheetahs.”
For the current study, researchers placed GPS devices on 53 large meat-eating animals—including cheetahs, lions, and African wild dogs. Researchers then recorded their position s and hours of activity over eight years. They compared this data with the highest daily temperature records. While seasonal differences explain most temperature changes in the time from 2011 to 2018, the scientists say the observed behavior changes offer information about the future of a warming world.
In future research, the scientists plan to use audio-recording devices and accelerometers (加速度计) — “like a Fit bit for big cats,” said Rafiq. The goal is to document the number of meetings between large meat-eating animals.
In addition to competition with lions, cheetahs already face strong pressure from the loss of living space and conflict with humans. The fastest land animal — cheetahs are the rarest big cat in Africa, with fewer than 7,000 left in the wild.
“These climate changes could become really critical if we look into the future — it’s predicted to become much warmer in this part of Africa where cheetahs live, in Botswana, Namibia and Zambia,” said Wachter.
1. What does the underlined word “it” in paragraph 2 refer to?| A．The lion’s kill. | B．The cheetah’s prey. | C．The lion. | D．The cheetah. |
| A．Cheetahs would rather sleep in the daytime. |
| B．Cheetahs will get more food if they hunt later. |
| C．Cheetahs spend less time hunting than lions. |
| D．Cheetahs will face strong competition with lions. |
| A．By placing positioning equipment on them. |
| B．By documenting their meeting times in summer. |
| C．By providing them with a Fitbit equipment. |
| D．By leading them to hunt in different hunt areas. |
| A．To show the big influences of climate changes. |
| B．To protect the environment from being destroyed. |
| C．To reduce conflicts among large meat-eating animals. |
| D．To record the frequency of encounters between large meat-eating animals. |
7 . Iris Logan was having a hard time growing grass at her home in St. Paul, Minnesota. So, she covered the space with stones, statues, and other art. More than 30 years later, it is something of a local landmark. But to a city inspector, it is a problem. Logan, who is 70, has been told to clean up the different objects, like wood and large rocks, noted after a recent inspection, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, a local newspaper reported.
Logan said the city’s actions forced her to create the art in the first place. She said city workers who were fixing the road dug so deep around one of her trees that its roots were open to the air. So, she brought in dirt, planted flowers, and added stones — and just kept adding. Logan said that if she likes a rock, she will try to bring it home. “I’m a rock lover,” the former farmer from Mississippi added.
Logan recently received written notice that a city official will suggest to the City Council that she be given until December 22 to clean things up. She wrote six pages of note by hand to appeal the order. The stones do not enter the street or block city vehicles, Logan wrote to answer one of the inspector’s concerns. “I just want to make a stand for the next person,” Logan said.
Justin Lewandowski is a community organizer who lives near Logan. He said that 150 people signed their support on a petition (请愿) “in just a few hours”. He is hopeful that the city will soon clear up their rules.
“The quick support from our neighbors has been a clear signal of how much this art means to our community,” Lewandowski said. He said it is not just about how it looks; it is about their identity and how they work with each other and with city policy.
1. What can we learn about Iris Logan from paragraph 1?| A．She works for a local newspaper. |
| B．She is good at beautifying the environment. |
| C．She has strong interest in making city politics. |
| D．She is excellent in cleaning up different objects. |
| A．A news report. | B．Her friends’ support. |
| C．Local city’s engineering work. | D．Her community’s common demand. |
| A．Logan makes a stand for the next person. |
| B．Art matters a lot to the local community. |
| C．The stone art may cause potential traffic danger. |
| D．More people signed their support on a petition. |
| A．Disapproval. | B．Objective. | C．Suspicious. | D．Optimistic. |
8 . Despite his slim body of work, J. D. Salinger was one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century. His short stories, many of which appeared in The New Yorker, inspired the early careers of writers such as Phillip Roth, John Updike and Harold Brodkey.
Born on January 1, 1919, in New York, Salinger was a restless student, attending New York University, Ursinus College and Columbia University. While taking classes at the latter, he met Professor Whit Burnett, who was also the editor of Story magazine. Burnett, sensing Salinger’s talent as a writer, pushed him to create more often and soon Salinger’s works were appearing not just in Story, but in other big-name publications such as Collier’s and the Saturday Evening Post.
His career had started to take off, but then, like so many young American men around that time, World War II interrupted his life. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Salinger was drafted into the army, serving from 1942 to 1944. During that time, however, Salinger kept writing for a new novel whose main character was a deeply unsatisfied young man named Holden Caulfield.
When Salinger returned to New York, he quickly set about resuming his life as a writer and soon found his work published in his favorite magazine, The New Yorker.
He also pushed on with the work on his novel about Holden Caulfield. Finally, in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye was published. The book earned its share of positive reviews, but some critics weren’t so kind. But over time the American reading public ate the book up and The Catcher in the Rye became an essential part of the academic literature course. To date, the book has sold more than 65 million copies.
In 1953, two years after the publication of The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger moved from New York City to Cornish, New Hampshire. There, Salinger did his best to cut off contact with the public and significantly slowed his literary output. He only published one new story, the 25,000-word Hapworth 16, 1924, before his death on January 27, 2010, in Cornish, New Hampshire.
1. Who had a great influence on J. D. Salinger?| A．Phillip Roth. | B．Whit Burnett. |
| C．John Updike. | D．Harold Brodkey. |
| A．Continuing. | B．Saving. |
| C．Wasting. | D．Risking. |
| A．It was published during World War II. |
| B．It has sold less than 65 million copies. |
| C．It was well received by American readers. |
| D．It features an old man as the main character. |
| A．He stopped writing when he was in the army. |
| B．He wrote lots of short stories in his later years. |
| C．His literary output was very low in his later years. |
| D．He had moved to New York City just before he died. |
9 . More than 1 billion children, teenagers and adults live with obesity (肥胖) around the world, making it the most common form of malnutrition in many countries, according to a study published on Thursday in the journal The Lancet.
“Previous estimates by the World Obesity Federation suggested that there would be 1 billion people living with obesity by 2030, but that number was already overtaken in 2022,” Dr. Majid Ezzati, senior author of the study and professor at Imperial College London, said in a news conference on Thursday. “We hadn’t expected that the things happened so fast.”
The new global study, conducted by more than 1,500 researchers from the Non-Communicable Diseases Risk Factor Collaboration and the World Health Organization (WHO), analyzed the height and weight measurements of over 220 million people from more than 190 countries.
The study focused on rates of underweight and obesity, both forms of malnutrition that are harmful to people’s health. Adults were regarded as obese if their body mass index (指数) (BMI) was greater than or equal to 30 and considered as underweight if their BMI was below18.5. Children and teenagers were defined as obese or underweight based on age and sex, according to the study.
“Undernutrition and obesity are two faces of the same problem, which is the lack of access to a healthy diet,” Dr. Francesco Branca, director of the WHO Department of Nutrition and Food Safety, said in the news conference. “Public policy must aim to improve monitoring of food producers and ensure fair access to healthy and nutritious food for everyone. Over 3 billion people in the world still cannot afford a healthy diet.”
France, which saw a steady level in its obesity rates in the study, has carried out a national plan called Programme National Nutrition Santé that sets objectives for nutritional policy at the industry, consumer and research levels. Countries in South America have begun carrying out front-of-package nutritional labelling that includes clear warnings about fat, sugar and salt levels. Mexico has led the way on taxation of sweetened drinks, and in Chile, processed foods cannot be marketed to children.
1. How does Ezzati feel about the number of obese people worldwide in 2022?| A．Disappointed. | B．Astonished. |
| C．Amused. | D．Relieved. |
| A．By asking questions. | B．By analyzing data. |
| C．By making observations. | D．By carrying out experiments. |
| A．33. | B．30. |
| C．20. | D．18. |
| A．The good habits of teenagers in South America. |
| B．The differences in diet among different countries. |
| C．The problems of rising obesity rates faced by France. |
| D．The measures taken by several countries to address obesity. |
10 . Developing new materials requires significant time and labor, but some chemists are now hopeful that AI could one day shoulder much of this burden. In a new study in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a team used a popular AI model, ChatGPT, to perform one particularly time-consuming task: searching scientific literature. With that data, they built a second tool, a new model to predict experimental results.
Reports from previous studies offer a vast amount of information that chemists need, but finding and analyzing the most relevant details can be laborious. For example, those interested in designing highly porous, crystalline (晶体) metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) — which have potential applications in areas such as clean energy—must sort through hundreds of scientific papers describing a variety of experimental conditions. Researchers have previously attempted to let AI take over this task; however, the language processing models they used required significant technical expertise , and applying them to new topics meant changing the program. Omar Yaghi and colleagues wanted to see if the next generation of language models, which includes ChatGPT, could offer a more accessible, flexible way to extract information.
To analyze text from scientific papers, the team gave ChatGPT prompts (提示符) it through three processes intended to identify and summarize the experimental information the papers contained. The researchers carefully constructed these prompts to minimize the model’s tendency to make up responses, and to ensure the best responses possible.
When tested on 228 papers describing MOF syntheses (合成), this system drew more than 26, 000 factors relevant for making roughly 800 of these mixtures. With these data, the team trained a separate AI model to predict the crystalline state of MOFs based on these conditions. And finally, to make the data more user-friendly, they built a chatbot to answer questions about it. The team notes that, unlike previous AI-based efforts, this one does not require expertise in coding. What’s more, scientists can shift its focus simply by adjusting the narrative language in the prompts. This new system, which they call the “ChatGPT Chemistry Assistant,” could also be useful in other fields of chemistry.
1. What does the research team hope the new model to do?| A．Search and classify scientific literature. |
| B．Analyze data and predict laboratory findings. |
| C．Prevent the model from making up responses. |
| D．Generate a faster language processing system. |
| A．To suggest their potential applications in clean energy. |
| B．To illustrate the laborious analysis of scientific papers. |
| C．To confirm they are of importance in chemistry industry. |
| D．To stress the testing system is extraordinarily complicated. |
| A．Secure. | B．Virtual. | C．Practical. | D．Specialized. |
| A．Making the MOFs be more useful |
| B．Doing further analysis for scientific papers |
| C．Improving the language processing models |
| D．Turning ChatGPT into a “chemistry assistant” |
