1 . Painting is an ancient medium and even with the introduction of photography, film and digital technology, it still has remained a persistent mode of expression. So many paintings have come into being over the years but only a small percentage of them could be described as “timeless classics”. The following are some of the most famous paintings of all time.
Leonardo Da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 1503 — 1519Painted between 1503 and 1519,Leonardo da Vinci’s attractive portrait has been a subject of controversy since the day it was made, due to two questions: Who’s the subject and why is she smiling? A number of theories for the former have been provided over the years: That she’s the wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco di Bartolomeo del Giocondo and that she’s Leonardo’s mother, Caterina. As for that famous smile, its quality has driven people crazy for hundreds of years.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, 1871Whistler’s Mother, or Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1,as it’s actually titled, speaks to the artist’s ambition to pursue art for art’s sake. James Abbott McNeill Whistler painted the work in his London studio in 1871. Whistler’s mother Anna is pictured as one of several elements locked into an arrangement of right angles. Her severe expression fits in with the rigidity of the composition, and it’s somewhat ironic to note that despite Whistler’s formalist intentions, the painting became a symbol of motherhood.
Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait,1434As one of the most significant works produced during the Northern Renaissance, this composition is believed to be one of the first paintings finished in oils. It portrays an Italian merchant and a woman who may or may not be his bride. In 1934.the celebrated art historian Erwin Panofsky proposed that the painting is actually a wedding contract. What can be reliably said is that the piece used orthogonal perspective to create a sense of space. It feels like a painting you could step into.
1. What aspect of the Mona Lisa has attracted people for centuries?| A．The research methods. | B．The mysterious smile. |
| C．The attractive clothing. | D．The matching of colors. |
| A．To show love for his mother. | B．To be a symbol of motherhood. |
| C．To express his artistic intention. | D．To decorate his studio in London. |
| A．Leonardo da Vinci. | B．James Abbott McNeill Whistler. |
| C．Jan van Eyck. | D．Erwin Panofsky. |
2 . Spending a day glued to your smartphone probably isn’t doing you any favors. Too much phone use has been linked with a range of concerns, including sleep issues, joint pain and even relationship problems. But if it’s radiation you’re worried about, experts say you don’t have to ditch your phone.
“There’s no risk of anything hazardous or dangerous with radiation from cellphones,” said Gayle Woloschak, an associate dean and professor of radiology at the Northwesterm Univerity Feinberg School of Medicine. As with all cellphones, along with Wi-Fi networks, radio stations, remote controls and GPS, smartphones do send out radiation, said Emily Caffrey, an assistant professor of health physics at the University of Alabama at Birningham. They use invisible energy waves to transmit voices, texts, photos and emails to nearby cell towers, which can carry them to almost anywhere in the world. But nearly three decades of scientific research has not linked such exposures to medical issues like cancer, health authorities including the Food and Drug Administration say. Here’s what we know.
“Radiation” describes many types of energy, some of which do carry risks, explained Dr. Howard Fine, director of the Brain Tumor Center at New York — Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City, “It is often sent out from radioactive substances”, Atomic bombs, or, to a far lesser degree, X-ray machines, send out energy called ionizing radiation that in high enough or frequent enough amount can damage DNA and cause cancer, Dr. Fine said.
But smartphone energy falls into a category called non-ionizing radiation, Dr. Caffrey said, which isn’t powerful enough to cause this damage. “A lot of people think radiation is radiation, but it’s not all the same,” Dr. Woloschak said. “There’s no DNA damage seen from cellphone use.”
Most experts and health authorities like the F.D.A. and World Health Organization agree that there’s no evidence that smartphone radiation causes health problems. Still, several studies over the years have made headlines for suggesting their links to brain diseases. Many of these studies have since been proved to be false, Dr. Fine said, including those focused on fifth-generation.
1. What does the underlined word “ditch” in Paragraph 1 mean?| A．Make use of. | B．Keep track of. | C．Get hold of | D．Get rid of. |
| A．They consider it secure based on current research. |
| B．They are indifferent due to lack of sufficient data. |
| C．They express concern and require strict regulations. |
| D．They are doubtful and appeal for immediate action. |
| A．Forming a healthy lifestyle is vital. |
| B．Smartphones need radiation limits. |
| C．Radiation concerns are unfounded. |
| D．Technology reduces radiation risks. |
| A．In a science magazine. |
| B．In a collection of short stories. |
| C．In a school newsletter. |
| D．In a phone advertising brochure. |
3 . Bill Sumiel was having a tough Friday. It was October 2020,and the 71-year-old,who was dealing with kidney (肾) failure and had been on dialysis (透 析) for a few years, found himself away from home.
He’d been diagnosed with diabetes (糖 尿 病) over 20 years before, which led to his kidney problems. He was on the transplant list, but no matches had yet appeared. So he continued with his treatments periodically. Without a ride lined up for Friday’s do-over, Sumiel took Ubers to and from his appointment.
Timothy Letts,31,was driving to visit a friend when his phone received the request for Sumiel’s ride home. When Sumiel got into his car, Letts could see that the older man was unenergetic but in good spirits. And as they set out to Sumiel’s home, the pair got to chatting. During conversation, Sumiel revealed that he was searching for a kidney donor. Letts joked that he’d be a good donor candidate, given that he didn’t drink or smoke.
Sumiel agreed, though he didn’t think much of it. Letts, however, couldn’t stop thinking about it and it was always on his mind. So, Letts said: “I’d like to see if I could be a match to give you a kidney.”
“I was shocked,” Sumiel recalls. He was shaking so hard that he could barely write his name when they exchanged contact information
After the initial excitement, Sumiel started feeling less optimistic. He was touched by Letts’s offer, but he wondered if it had just been an emotional moment. Would he hear from him? And what was the likelihood of a match?
But Letts was true to his word. He got in touch with Sumiel just a few hours later, and by the next week, Letts had contacted the kidney transplant program. After a series of testing, the results were in: Letts was an ideal donor, and he and Sumiel were a perfect match.
In December 2021,14 months after their chance encounter, Sumiel and Letts had their surgeries. It was a success. Today they live respectively and healthily and anticipate the day they can reunite.
1. What can be inferred from the first four paragraphs?| A．Sumiel’s problem was caused by his wrong treatments. |
| B．Sumiel must take Ubers to receive treatment periodically. |
| C．Letts took the matter of donating his kidney seriously. |
| D．Letts’s energetic friend requested him to donate his kidney. |
| A．He questioned the sincerity of Letts’ offer. |
| B．He worried about the risks of the surgery. |
| C．He believed Letts would forget his offer. |
| D．He doubted if Letts was fit for donation. |
| A．Sympathetic and wise. | B．Reliable and helpful. |
| C．Responsible and Sensitive. | D．Trustworthy and humble. |
| A．A Fortunate Driver. | B．A Kidney Transplant. |
| C．A Successful Surgery. | D．A Ride for a Lifetime. |
4 . So, you want to learn how to get the most out of your reading experience. Reading effectively is a piece of cake whether you’re reading for school or fun. The following tricks will not only help you comprehend the information you’re learning, but make the reading experience much more enjoyable.
Skim through the text.Get a preview of what’s to come by flipping through the pages. Once you have the basic idea of what you’re reading, scan through the table of contents and headers or flick through the pages. Glance over any images, graphs, or illustrations.
Practice active reading by taking notes. Before grabbing your notebook, wait until you’ve finished reading or skimming through a complete section or idea.
Link what you read to your existing knowledge or past experiences. Instead of treating the text as an isolated piece of writing, link it to previous readings. If a plot point reminded you of something from your own life, make a mental note of it. If you can connect the examples in the journal article with something you learned in class, jot down those similarities.
| A．Make personal connections to the material |
| B．Set aside a few minutes to keep everything in mind |
| C．Pause between main ideas to process the reading material |
| D．Don’t be afraid to question the text and make your own assumptions. |
| E．Remember: trying to be as fast as possible is the first thing you should consider |
| F．Summarize the main idea in your head, and then write the main points and concepts |
| G．Take a few seconds to read the text quickly, including the notes, to spot eye-catching key words. |
5 . Researchers believe they have found evidence for a hidden ocean on Mimas, one of Saturn’s major moons. This makes Mimas a target for learning more about the origins of life in our solar system.
Saturn has 146 moons orbiting it. The biggest is larger than the planet Mercury; the smallest is roughly the size of a sports field on the Earth. Mimas, which was first discovered in 1789, is one of the major moons and is about 250 miles wide.
Experts used to think Mimas was mostly made out of solid ice and rock. In 2014, astronomers noticed its orbit around Saturn was moving unsteadily. A shaky orbit can be caused either by a core shaped like a rugby ball or a huge liquid ocean beneath the surface. At first, lots of astronomers argued against the suggestion that Mimas had an ocean because there is no sign of it on the surface.
To investigate more thoroughly, researchers looked at images taken by Cassini, a NASA spacecraft sent to study Satun. The images showed that the moon’s orbit around Saturn drifted by about six miles over 13 years. The team’s calculations found that the only way Mimas could move in this way is if it had a hidden ocean under the surface. They think the ocean formed when the moon’s core warmed up and melted some of the ice.
Mimas is just one of many moons that scientists think could have oceans below the surface Ganymede, which orbits Jupiter and is the largest moon in the solar system, has more water in its ocean than all of the oceans on the Earth. Titan, another of Saturn’s moons, is believed to have a salty ocean beneath the surface.
Space agencies want to study these oceans because they might be home to living organisms. However, the ocean on Mimas might not be old enough for life to have emerged there yet. It took hundreds of millions of years for life to develop on the Earth and the ocean on Mimas is relatively young; it is less than 25 million years old.
1. What is the exploration of Mimas aimed at in Paragraph 1?| A．Providing evidence for a hidden ocean. |
| B．Exploring the beginning of life in outer space. |
| C．Promoting research for space exploration. |
| D．Ensuring harmony between man and nature. |
| A．The discovery of Saturn’s moons. |
| B．The number and variety of moons orbiting Saturn. |
| C．The size and characteristics of Mimas. |
| D．The comparison between Satum and Mercury. |
| A．Confident. | B．Indifferent | C．Optimistic | D．Doubtful |
| A．To analyze its orbit. | B．To measure its size. |
| C．To observe its surface | D．To find landing sites. |
6 . Everyone “talks” with their hands at least sometimes. Some people’s hand-talking, or gesturing (手势) matches their messages well. Other people like to make gestures that can be confusing. And still others don’t use their hands much at all. No matter which group you are in, it’s important to pay attention to your hand gestures while you are communicating. And also remember hand gestures can have cultural meanings.
A few years ago, I was a speaker at a conference in Lisbon, Portugal. It was my first time in Portugal, and I became immediately fond of the special pastries (糕点) that Lisbon and Portugal are known for. One morning I went into a bakery and ordered two of the pastries. I did so by holding up two fingers, similar to the “victory” or “peace” gesture in the United States. The person behind the counter put three pastries in the box. I later learned that the gesture for two would raise thumb and index finger. Even though my thumb wasn’t showing, the person behind the counter thought I was signaling for three.
I was lucky that I didn’t get into more trouble than an extra pastry. Many hand gestures are not universal. Before speaking in a country that you are not familiar with, do some research to find out which gestures might be misunderstood, not understood at all or rude.
1. Why did the author go to Lisbon, Portugal?| A．To taste pastries. | B．To take a holiday. |
| C．To attend a meeting. | D．To learn Portuguese culture. |
| A．Normal. | B．Independent. | C．Common. | D．Complex. |
| A．One should be careful when ordering food in Portugal. |
| B．Hand gestures may have different meanings in different cultures. |
| C．The person behind the counter understood the author’s gesture. |
| D．The person behind the counter cheated the author. |
| A．tell us that hand gestures are not the same worldwide |
| B．explain the general use of gestures |
| C．ask us to use correct hand gestures in Portugal |
| D．share a funny story in Portugal |
7 . The drive to create the new is part of our biological makeup. We build cultures by the hundreds and new stories by the millions.
Through the history of human activities, prior art promotes the creative process. Before 1908, each vehicle was custom built, with different parts assembled in different places and then painstakingly brought together.
However, on closer inspection, Cicoria also turns out to rely on the raw materials around him. He recalls that, after his accident, he developed a strong desire to listen to nineteenth-century piano music. It is difficult to know what the lightning strike did to his brain, but it is clear that he rapidly absorbed these musical products.
We humans are always waiting for the creative lightning to strike.
| A．However, creative ideas evolve from existing memories and impressions. |
| B．We surround ourselves with things that have never existed before, while pigs and llamas and goldfish do not. |
| C．But is there any moment when someone is suddenly struck by an idea that comes from nowhere? |
| D．But Henry Ford came up with a critical innovation of streamlining the entire process. |
| E．It shares the same structure and progression as other paintings. |
| F．No doubt the non-musician surely managed to compose due to the sudden idea flashing through his mind. |
| G．His sudden desire to compose may have come from nowhere, but his basic creative process did not. |
8 . Not much trash and almost no plastic actually gets recycled. About a third of U.S. garbage gets recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s most recent estimate. The rest goes to landfills, which release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and pollute their surroundings.
To make recycling easier, many U.S. cities don’t ask Americans to separate paper, glass, metal and plastic. They just ask people to put anything recyclable into one bin and let waste plants do the sorting. But waste plants don’t catch everything. AI is now an essential tool for the world’s waste management leaders. Greyparrot, a tech company has already installed more than 100 AI trash spotters in about 50 sorting facilities.
Greyparrot’s device is, basically, a set of visual and infrared (红外线的) cameras hooked up to a computer, which monitors trash as it passes by on a conveyor belt and labels it under 70 categories, from loose bottle caps to books to aluminum cans. Waste plants could connect these AI systems to sorting robots to help them separate trash from something recyclable more accurately. They could also use the AI as a quality control system to measure how well they’re sorting trash from something recyclable. That could help plant managers adjust their production lines to cover more recyclable objects, or cheek that a bundle of recyclable objects is free of pollutants, which would allow them to sell at a higher price.
In the next few years, some recycling companies plan to retrofit (改良) thousands of material-recovery facilities with Al trash-spotting tools. Of these companies, Bollegraaf has built thousands of these facilities, including 340 in North America, accounting for a majority of the recovery plants in the world.
The trash-spotting computers could one day help regulators punish companies that produce tsunamis of non-recyclable packaging because the AI systems are so accurate that they can identify the brands on individual items. Putting the AI tools in thousands of waste plants can raise recycling percentage. If the needle can be moved by even 5 to 10 percent, that would be a phenomenal outcome for greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impact.
1. What does the author want to show in Paragraph 1?| A．People pay little attention to environmental protection. |
| B．The US has not recycle all the trash. |
| C．Greenhouse gas is a major contributor to air pollution. |
| D．People in other countries show little enthusiasm for recycling. |
| A．It works with sorting robots. | B．It adjusts the production line. |
| C．It monitors the conveyor belt. | D．It controls cameras in a computer. |
| A．They are highly profitable. | B．They have unforeseeable prospect. |
| C．They will be well received. | D．They present a challenge for regulators. |
| A．On a website about education. | B．In an economics magazine. |
| C．In a science fiction. | D．In a science newspaper. |
9 . After skating, skiing or shoveling snow, nothing warms you up better than a cup of hot cocoa though today it will be topped with marshmallows (棉花软糖), you may not know that chocolate was first consumed in liquid form by the Olmec people of northwestern Central America around 1500 B. C.
However, the Olmec people didn’t serve their coco a hot. And since sugar had not yet arrived from Europe back then, the drink was often flavoured with peppers and spices. After the Spanish arrived in the Americas in the 1500s, liquid chocolate made its way across the pond, where wealthy Europeans added sugar and drank it warm. According to Chocolate: History, Culture and Heritage, hot chocolate became ‘the drink of the aristocracy (贵族)”, as sugar was still a luxury.
Soon enough, though, hot chocolate caught on with the masses. Chocolate houses started springing up around 17th-century Europe. However, by the end of the 18th century, chocolate houses had mostly died off, because the input of chocolate was much dearer than that of coffee or tea.
Marshmallows first came into the picture in 1917, when the company, Angelus Marshmallows, published a recipe for hot cocoa topped with their product. Instant coco a is another American invention, created in the late 1950s when dairy company owner, Charles Sanna, faced an oversupply of powered coffee creamer. His solution was mixing the creamer sugar and coco a powder together, thus creating a Formula (配方) favored by many.
Taking a tour of international cups of cocoa, you can try cioccolata calda, a thick, pudding-like version in Italy. In Colombia and Ecuador, chocolate is served with a teaspoon of soft farmer cheese, and Filipino hot chocolate, sikwate, is served with mango chunks.
However, you choose to jazz up your own cup, the simple pleasure of drinking a warm, chocolaty drink is one that hasn’t gotten old for thousands of years.
1. What was unlikely to happen in the 16th century?| A．Glen decorated his hot coco a with marshmallows. |
| B．Annie used sugar to add flavour to hot chocolate. |
| C．Nick couldn’t afford to put much sugar in the cocoa. |
| D．Miss Brown enjoyed drinking hot coco a during breakfast. |
| A．Lack of sugar. | B．Public health awareness. |
| C．High cost of material. | D．Popularity of instant cocoa. |
| A．A man can do no more he can. |
| B．Constant dripping wears away á stone. |
| C．Beauty without virtue is a rose without fragrance. |
| D．Innovation unlocks the door of success. |
| A．Hot Cocoa: An Accidental Invention |
| B．Hot Cocoa: A Journey To A Cup Of Comfort |
| C．Hot Cocoa: A Combination Of Global Cultures |
| D．Hot Cocoa: From The Aristocracy To The Public |
10 . What are pillows really stuffed with? Not physically, but symbolically? The question occurred to me with the photos of the international pillow fight in the news and social media from the 50 cities around the world. Armed with nothing more than bring-our-own pillows, strangers struck heavily each other from Amsterdam to Atlanta, Warsaw to Washington DC. But why? Is there anything more to this delightful celebration?
Actually, since at least the 16th century, the soft pillow has been given symbolic meanings. The Chinese playwright, Tang Xianzu, told a famous story in his work, Handan Notes. It was about a wise man who met a depressed young scholar at an inn and offered him a magic pillow. The scholar had a sweet afternoon nap on this pillow, dreaming that he had a more fulfilling life. When the young man awakened to discover that all was just a dream. The magic pillow’s power shifts from wonder to terror. What’s more, the 19th-century English novelist, Charlotte Bronte, poetically observed “a ruffled mind makes a restless pillow”. Perhaps Bronte learned this from the philosopher, Montaigne, who once insisted that “lack of thoughts in mind is the softest pillow on which a man can have a good rest”. On Montaigne’s thinking, intelligence and happiness compete against each other forever in a pillow fight that only one can win.
With the above information, we can perhaps more easily measure the attraction of the global pillow fight. Just like a ceremony of release, the annual international pillow fight amounts to a kind of cleansing, a brushing off of daily worries: an emptying of the world’s restless mind.
1. How did the writer lead into the topic of the passage?| A．By giving reasons. | B．By telling stories. |
| C．By using sayings. | D．By raising questions. |
| A．To state how pillows help people take a good rest. |
| B．To explain why pillows connect with people’s minds. |
| C．To claim that pillows can symbolically convey the meaning. |
| D．To describe that pillows always symbolize the good dreams. |
| A．A mind without any thoughts. | B．A mind with messy thoughts. |
| C．A mind that is peaceful. | D．A mind that is simple. |
| A．It mainly celebrates daily worries. |
| B．It contains a profound meaning of history. |
| C．People will feel relieved during the fight. |
| D．People will lose their inner peace during the fight. |
