1 . Is there a friend of yours who always sings out of tune (曲调) but never realizes it? Don’t be so hard on them — they may have amusia — the inability to tell the difference in tunes.

Apart from singing out of tune, people with amusia may also find it hard to recognize music they’ve heard before without the help of song lyrics. Besides, people who suffer from Amusia can have difficulty in recognizing melodies and a total inability to tell between different musical sounds, according to Live Science. However, people with amusia can recognize common environmental sounds as well as the high and lows sounds in human voices, meaning that this inability can be specially related to music.

In many cases, people who have amusia are born with it, as 46 percent of these individuals’ family members were found to have similar conditions, according to a 2017 study. Brain imaging shows that their brains receive and respond to music pitch (音高) information, but it is not reaching conscious awareness, meaning that the mind can’t understand the information.

Scientists at the University of Otago in New Zealand also think that amusia is related to people’s special processing skills. They invited people with amusia, musicians and students from non-musical backgrounds to perform a task related to spacial imagination. They were asked to decide whether pairs of images are the same object moving around or mirror images.

The result showed that the amusia group made more mistakes than the other two groups. Amusia might be related to the way brain stores information about the high and low sounds in songs, according to the study.

Although those who aren’t confident about their singing skills often say they’re “tune-deaf”, people with amusia only make up about 1.5 percent of the population, as shown in the 2017 study. “Like dyslexics (诵读困难者) can learn how to read, those with amusia should be able to better their ability to recognize tunes if they start early enough,” Isabelle Peretz, a professor of psychology from the University of Montreal in Canada, told Live Science.

1. According to the article, what is the main difficulty faced by people with amusia?

A．Recognizing tunes.	B．Identifying human voices.
C．Understanding song lyrics.	D．Noticing common sounds in nature.

2. What did the 2017 study tell us about amusia?

A．Amusia is common among children.

B．Amusia is a result of brain damage.

C．Many individuals with amusia are born with it.

D．Those who are tune-deaf often suffer from amusia.

3. What did the study by scientists at the University of Otago show?

A．People with amusia have strong spa cial imagination skills.

B．People with amusia struggle to decide the shape of images.

C．Amusia may be affected by one’s level of music education.

D．Amusia may be related to how the brain stores sound information.

4. How can people with amusia improve their musical ability, according to Peretz?

A．Go for medical treatment.	B．Sing frequently with friends.
C．Learn how to read earlier in life.	D．Start to explore and learn music early.

2 . Whenever we are planning to buy something online, most of us prefer to look at the reviews first. We imagine that they have been left by shoppers like us who want to share their knowledge with others, so the reviews would be of great value to us.     1     Some of them are writing positive review s in return for a payment or gifts from the maker. How do we know this?

A careful study of thousands of reviews on a popular shopping website showed that a surprisingly large number of reviewers gave either four-or five-star ratings to the product. Two-or three-star ratings both accounted for less than ten percent of the total, which looked suspicious (可疑的).     2     Not everything being sold on the shopping website could be first class! We all know that some false information is provided. Some products that you buy on shopping website can be terrible. You would expect therefore to see a variety of scores.     3    

It seems that anyone who writes a large number of good review s is given a special treat by the shopping website.     4     How should a shopper reply to all these “wonderful” reviews? The best thing to do is to have access to a website run by some organizations such as Which in the UK. The Which product evaluation is based on strict tests carried out by experts and then on reviews by trusted shoppers who are Which members. They are not allowed to take free gifts from makers.

    5     So, a good and responsible organization seems to be the best answer.

A．So why are most reviews positive?

B．Reviews differ from person to person.

C．However, not all reviewers are like this.

D．So how can we tell true review s from false ones?

E．These “top” reviewers are then given free products.

F．Shoppers need protection from misleading reviews.

G．If those reviews were true, a broader spread of ratings would be given.

4 . “I was captivated by weightlifting during the London 2012 Olympic Games,” says Fiona Clements, a software developer working in London. “I think it’s partly because the effort is so obvious—you can see every flash of doubt, pain and happiness of success on the athletes’ faces.”

Clements was 48 at the time. She thought she’d left it far too late to even consider trying it, but then she kept thinking about it. “It took until September 2022, but I finally went for it.” Clements signed up for a beginner’s class with Sally Moss, a strength coach who is an expert in Olympic lifting, and loved it from her first class. Now 58, Clements can lift 50kg and push 21kg overhead. She says she has never felt stronger.

Resistance training, to use the term for any type of exercise where you’re working against weight, whether it’s using dumbbells(哑铃), exercise bands or just your own body weight, is extremely beneficial.

“I just thought that it would be impossible to make a difference to my body as an older woman,” says Joann a Blacker, a small business owner, who took up strength training at 53. “I’d gained weight and felt awful. I certainly didn’t think that weightlifting would be the way I would change my body.”

Blacker can now lift 40kg for 10 repetitions and feels more than ready to deal with training alone. Clements, at the same time, has already signed up with her local gym, for the days she’s not training with Moss. “I can feel these bands of hard muscle when I move my arms and legs that I’m pretty sure weren’t there before,” she says. “But the best part is that I’m actually able to understand the sport I love. It still feels like magic when that bar goes overhead.”

1. What does the underlined word “captivated” in Paragraph 1 mean?

A．Uninterested.

B．Attracted.

C．Upset.

D．Satisfied.

2. Why did Clements fail to try weightlifting in 2012?

A．She was fearful of the pain.	B．She found it hard to get a top coach.
C．She was doubtful about its lasting effects.	D．She thought she was too old to have a go.

3. What did Blacker benefit from taking up weightlifting?

A．She increased her willpower.	B．She improved her body shape.
C．She found a part-time job in this field.	D．She had her busy daily life changed.

4. What does Clements say about weightlifting?

A．She has a deeper understanding of it.	B．She suggests starting it at a local gym.
C．She enjoys muscle-building most of all.	D．She finds it more magic than hard work.

5 . A team of scientists is studying the sound of the forest in Ecuador to learn how artificial intelligence (AI) could follow animal life in recovering environments.

When scientists want to measure new forest growth, they can study large areas of land with tools like satellites. But understanding how fast and in what number wildlife is returning to an area is more difficult. Sometimes it requires an expert to listen through sound recordings and pick out animal calls.

Jorg Muller, an expert on birds, wondered if there was a different way. So, he turned to bioacoustics (生物声学), which uses sound to learn more about animal life and their living environments. Muller and his team recorded wildlife sounds in Ecuador. They first had experts listen to the recordings and list the sounds of different animals. Then, they examined the sound quality to measure the environment. Finally, they ran two weeks of recordings through an AI computer program trained to understand 75 different bird calls.

The program was able to pick out the calls on which it was trained. However, scientists wondered if the program could correctly identify the number of different kinds of plants and animals in each environment. To see if the program could do that, the team used two different controls. One was from the experts who listened to the recordings, and the second was based on examples from each environment, which can be used to understand biodiversity (生物多样性).

Since the number of sounds that are found to be used to train is limited, the AI program could only identify one-fourth of the bird calls experts could. But it was still able to correctly measure biodiversity levels in each environment, the study said. It also said the results show the AI program is a powerful tool to measure the recovery of animal societies in some forests. The study showed that biodiversity found from recordings can be measured in a cost-effective and complete way and measure environments.

There are still areas for improvement, including the lack of animal sounds on which to train AI models. And the method can only catch animals that use sound to communicate.

1. What does the study focus on?

A．Studying plant growth.	B．Observing birds’ behavior.
C．Understanding AI’s effect on wildlife.	D．Measuring wildlife recovery.

2. What method did the team use to learn wildlife sounds in Eduador?

A．Bioacoustics.	B．Satellite recording.
C．Sound recording by AI.	D．Direct observation by experts.

3. What did the AI program prove to be useful for?

A．Identifying plant species.	B．Tracking weather change.
C．Measuring biodiversity levels.	D．Identifying all the bird calls.

4. What did the study suggest for improvements?

A．Measuring more bird environments.

B．Catching animals that use sound to communicate.

C．Training the program on a wider variety of sounds.

D．Having experts study more and understand bird calls.

6 . Tricks To Preparing For Winter SADness

Have you felt tired and sleepy recently? Or do you experience a mood shift as it turns to winter?     1     Actually, these common symptoms can be owing to Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, a type of depression that typically arrives in winter because of the change of the seasons. Here are some recipes for you to predict its onset and ward it off.

    2    

There’s been a fair bit of research supporting light therapy (疗法) as being effective for seasonal kinds of depression. So don’t withdraw like the hibernating bear but walk outside to expose yourself to the sun every day.     3    

Choose essential foods to boost mood.

When the temperature drops, our body loses more heat and requires high calorie food to supplement this loss.     4     Instead of giving in to such high carbs (碳水), it is important to consume foods such as dark chocolate that can cheer you up.

Engage in more social interaction.

    5    . Not only can it help you stay on track with regular activity but also stay connected, which furthermore lifts your spirits. After all, being alone is never consistent with your goal of getting rid of winter sadness.

Too nervous to enter winter? Not every mild blue feeling in winter is SAD. It may be just a psychological response that everyone could experience seasonally. If winter comes, can spring be too far behind?

A．If so, just lighten up.

B．If not, it couldn’t be better!

C．Work out on a regular basis to keep fit.

D．Get outside regularly to absorb some light.

E．But food merely containing carbs can make you feel more tired.

F．It is a great way to invite a friend or family member to support each other.

G．Remember, even 20 or 30 minutes could make a huge difference.

7 . Dopamine (多巴胺), known as the “source of pleasure”, is a chemical that is released in the brain and provides people with a feeling of reward and motivation. Now, China’s young people are seeking to wear that joyfulness on their bodies, giving rise to the fashion craze—“dopamine dressing style”. Mainly characterized by bright colors, this dressing style is described by many Chinese netizens as “healing” and “a mood booster”. It is part-fashion, part-mindfulness.

Dopamine dressing is nothing new. In fact, a study published in 2012 found that when participants were asked to wear clothing that held some symbolic meaning, their perceived (感知的) confidence increased. The study determined that clothing can have a direct impact on their psychological process.

Another 2015 study found that the outfits we wear can directly influence how we think. It suggested that dressing in a certain way can influence the way we make decisions. “What we wear is how we show ourselves to those we interact with—we are influenced by their reaction to it. If we are well received, it builds up our confidence and can eventually affect our wellbeing.” one of the leading researchers, Mair added.

Actually, dopamine dressing is different for everyone. It’s about wearing the clothes that make you feel good. It could be joggers and a sport shirt; it could be your favorite pair of jeans; or it could be that dress you were saving for a special occasion. In a word, it’s ok to wear anything that can boost your mood.

Color psychologist Karen Haller said: “Color is a great way to lift our spirits and boost our moods in an instant. Our confidence can be boosted when we wear colors that we love and feel good in. We instinctively feel and behave differently when we take the colors in through our eyes and through the part of our brain where our emotions reside.” Ultimately, dopamine dressing is whatever makes you feel good.

1. What makes the dopamine dressing a real hit according to paragraph 1?

A．Its featuring only bright colors.	B．Its healing and boosting function.
C．Its impacting on people’s confidence.	D．Its allowing people to wear differently

2. What can we infer from the two studies mentioned in the passage?

A．Dopamine dressing is simply a new concept of dressing.

B．Dopamine dressing is beneficial to our mental health.

C．Dopamine dressing has little to do with our decision making.

D．Dopamine dressing can drive us to interact with more people.

3. Which of the following can be considered as dopamine dressing?

A．All the students wear school uniform on Mondays.

B．My father has to put on a heavy coat in cold weather.

C．Jack often follows the trend to buy clothes in dark colors.

D．The girl chooses her favorite skirt for her birthday party.

4. Why does the author write the article?

A．To demonstrate a pleasant dressing style.

B．To convince us to buy more fashionable clothes.

C．To arouse our curiosity of the dopamine dressing.

D．To promote more people to accept dopamine dressing.

9 . For Cruz, who grew up in Peru’s mountainous region of Cuzco, fog represents a massive opportunity. As a boy, he had to hike for more than an hour every day across hills to collect water from the nearest source. But over time, he realized that during the rainy season, droplets of water would gather in the large leaves of banana trees. So one day he and his father tried to build a canal system with the leaves to collect water and it turned out a success. But afterwards, he moved to Lima at the age of 25.

There, shocked by the water shortages and expensive water supply that some of the city’s poorest residents were faced with, Cruz set up El Movimiento Peruanos sin Agua in 2005. The idea was to deploy the method he learned in his hometown on a larger scale, which would provide free, independently sourced and easily accessible water to those who needed it most. He began installing (安装) a traditional fog catcher model developed in the 1980s.

At the highest point of Los Tres Miradores, there is a curious set of large structures that resemble a fleet of ships in the sky. They are so-called “fog catchers”. Netted devices, made of high density Raschel polyethylene and spanning several meters wide, are lined up at the top of a misty mound and linked by a network of tubes that lead to storage containers. The 40 fog catchers there provide enough water for 180 families, whether to bathe, clean, drink or to irrigate crops on small garden patches.

Supporters believe that fog catchers have the potential to improve water supply for communities around the world among the ever-challenging circumstances. German researcher Lummerich says, “They are cheap, easy to construct.” In a world searching for water supply systems, it is one important puzzle piece that can make an essential difference locally.

However, there are some issues. For one, fog catchers require space, which is not always easy to come by in cities, let alone urban slums. At the same time, fog catchers must be properly cleaned and maintained to stay effective. Most crucially, appropriate climate conditions are required. Fog isn’t everywhere.

1. What does the underlined word “deploy” probably mean in paragraph 2?

A．Employ.

B．Adjust.

C．Design.

D．Study.

2. What does paragraph 3 mainly talk about?

A．The reason why Cruz installed fog catchers.

B．The difficulties of constructing a canal system.

C．The installation and benefits of fog catchers.

D．The inspiration Cruz gained to build a canal system.

3. What is the biggest challenge associated with the use of fog catchers?

A．High costs.	B．Public opposition.
C．Space limitation.	D．Climate conditions.

4. What’s the best title for the text?

A．Urban Areas: A Struggle for Sufficient Water

B．Innovative Water Collection Techniques in Peru

C．The Global Water Crisis and Possible Solutions

D．Fog Catchers: A Local Solution with Global Potential