1 . What is life? Like most great questions, this one is easy to ask but difficult to answer. The reason is simple: we know of just one type of life and it’s challenging to do science with a sample size of one. The field of artificial life-called ALife for short — is the systematic attempt to spell out life’s fundamental principles. Many of these practitioners, so-called ALifers, think that somehow making life is the surest way to really understand what life is.

So far no one has convincingly made artificial life. This track record makes ALife a ripe target for criticism, such as declarations of the field’s doubtful scientific value. Alan Smith, a complexity scientist, is tired of such complaints. Asking about “the point” of ALife might be, well, missing the point entirely, he says. “The existence of a living system is not about the use of anything.” Alan says. “Some people ask me, ‘So what’s the worth of artificial life?’ Do you ever think, ‘What is the worth of your grandmother?’”

As much as many ALifers hate emphasizing their research’s applications, the attempts to create artificial life could have practical payoffs. Artificial intelligence may be considered ALife’s cousin in that researchers in both fields are enamored by a concept called open-ended evolution (演化). This is the capacity for a system to create essentially endless complexity, to be a sort of “novelty generator”. The only system known to exhibit this is Earth’s biosphere. If the field of ALife manages to reproduce life’s endless “creativity” in some virtual model, those same principles could give rise to truly inventive machines.

Compared with the developments of Al, advances in ALife are harder to recognize. One reason is that ALife is a field in which the central concept — life itself — is undefined. The lack of agreement among ALifers doesn’t help either. The result is a diverse line of projects that each advance along their unique paths. For better or worse, ALife mirrors the very subject it studies. Its muddled (混乱的) progression is a striking parallel (平行线) to the evolutionary struggles that have shaped Earth biosphere.

Undefined and uncontrolled, ALife drives its followers to repurpose old ideas and generated novelty. It may be, of course, that these characteristics aren’t in any way surprising or singular. They may apply universally to all acts of evolution. Ultimately ALife may be nothing special. But even this dismissal suggests something：perhaps, just like life itself throughout the universe, the rise of ALife will prove unavoidable.

1. Regarding Alan Smith’s defence of ALife, the author is      .

A．supportive

B．puzzled

C．unconcerned

D．doubtful

2. What does the word “enamored” underlined in Paragraph 3 most probably mean?

A．Shocked.

B．Protected.

C．Attracted.

D．Challenged.

3. What can we learn from this passage?

A．ALife holds the key to human future.	B．ALife and AI share a common feature.
C．AI mirrors the developments of ALife.	D．AI speeds up the process of human evolution.

4. Which would be the best title for the passage?

A．Life Is Undefined. Can AI Be a Way Out?

B．Life Evolves. Can AI Help ALife Evolve, Too?

C．Life Is Undefined. Can ALife Be Defined One Day?

D．Life Evolves. Can Attempts to Create ALife Evolve, Too?

2 . In some ways, it is surprising that languages change. After all, they are passed down through the generations reliably enough for parents and children to communicate with each other.     1     For example, while Japanese has changed relatively little over a thousand years, English evolved rapidly in just a few centuries. Many present day speakers find Shakespear’s sixteenth-century plays difficult and Chaucer’s fourteenth-century The Canterbury Tales nearly impossible to read.

Languages change for a variety of reasons. Large-scale shifts often occur in response to social, economic, and political pressures, as there are many examples of language change fueled by invasions, colonization, and migration.     2     Frequently, the needs of speakers drive language change. New technologies industries, products and experiences simply require new words. By using new and emerging terms, we all drive language change. But the unique way that individuals speak also fuels language change because no two individuals use a language in exactly the same way.     3     Through our day-to-day interactions, we pick up words and savings from other people and integrate them into our speech. Teens and young adults, for example, often use different words and phrases from their parents. Some of them spread through the population and slowly change the language.

    4     Vocabulary can change quickly as new words are borrowed from other languages, or as words get coined, combined, or shortened. Some words are even created through misinterpretation of form. As noted in the Linguistic Society of America’s publication Is English Changing?, the word pea is one such example. Up until about four hundred years ago, pease could refer to either a single pea or many peas. At some point, people assumed that pease was the plural form of a new word, pea, based on the way pease sounded. While vocabulary can change quickly, sentence structure — the order of words in a sentence changes more slowly.     5     For example, during the Great Vowel Shift five hundred years ago, the pronunciation of vowels in English changed dramatically. This shift represents the biggest difference between the pronunciation of Middle English and Modern English.

A．Changes in sound are somewhat harder to document but just as interesting.

B．Yet linguists find that all living languages change over time — at different rates though.

C．As long as people are using a language, that language will undergo some change.

D．All natural languages change, and language change affects all areas of language use.

E．The three main areas of language that change over time are vocabulary, sentence structure, and pronunciation.

F．Even without these kinds of influences, a language can change dramatically if enough users adopt a new way of speaking.

G．The vocabulary and phrases people use depend on where they live, their age, education level, social status and other factors.

3 . The Science of Recreational Fear

From peek-a-boo to Halloween haunted houses, research shows that recreational fear can teach us to face scary situations. The “paradox of horror” is that being scared, under the right circumstances, can be fun.     1    

Having fun with fear is an “extremely important tool for learning,” said Mathias Clasen, director of the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University in Denmark. “We learn something about the dangers of the world. We learn something about our own responses: What does it feel like to be afraid? How much fear can I take?”

Horror movies have gotten more popular. And in one survey of more than 1,000 Americans, conducted by Clasen, 55% described themselves as horror fans.     2     Many people who would not consider themselves fans of fear enjoy true-crime podcasts and novels featuring violence and murder. Others may enjoy nature documentaries about top predators (捕食性动物) such as sharks and bears.

Even babies like being a little spooked (惊的). Peek-a-boo is “an infant jump scare,” Clasen said.     3     “I don’t think I’ve yet come across a person who did not enjoy some kind of recreational fear,” he said.

    4     It is a combination of an adrenaline (肾上腺素) rush and an opportunity to learn about dealing with scary situations in a safe environment, researchers say. When we are afraid, our endocrine system releases adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol to help prepare our body for physical action. We know the “Halloween” movie Michael Myers is not real, but our brain still responds as if he were a burning threat. One brain imaging study found that watching horror movies activates threat-response brain regions such as the amygdala (扁桃腺), prefrontal cortex and insula as if the danger were real.

After this rush, many people experience an uplifted mood. One study examined how 262 adults felt before and after they entered an extreme haunted house.     5     Brain recordings before and after showed that those whose mood improved had a smaller neural response to subsequent stressors, which is associated with the post-haunt high.

A．So why do we like it?

B．Fifty percent of people said they felt better after the visit.

C．And recreational fear, as it is rightly named, could benefit us, too.

D．Playing with fear helps us learn what our body does under pressure.

E．Horror, though, is not the only genre of what people find scary fun, he said.

F．We define recreational fear broadly as a mixed emotional experience of fear and enjoyment.

G．Classic childhood games of tag and hide-and-seek are just like the real scenes of predator vs. prey.

4 . Technology seems to discourage slow, immersive reading. Reading on a screen, particularly a phone screen, tires your eyes and makes it harder for you to keep your place. So online writing tends to be more skimmable and list-like than print. The cognitive neuroscientist Mary Walt argued recently that this “new norm” of skim reading is producing “an invisible, game-changing transformation” in how readers process words. The neuronal circuit that sustains the brain’s capacity to read now favors the rapid absorption of information, rather than skills developed by deeper reading, like critical analysis.

We shouldn’t overplay this danger. All readers skim. Skimming is the skill we acquire as children as we learn to read more skillfully. From about the age of nine, our eyes start to bounce around the page, reading only about a quarter of the words properly, and filling in the gaps by inference. Nor is there anything new in these fears about declining attention spans. So far, the anxieties have proved to be false alarms. “Quite a few critics have been worried about attention span lately and see very short stories as signs of cultural decline,” the American author Selvin Brown wrote. “No one ever said that poems were evidence of short attention spans.”

And yet the Internet has certainly changed the way we read. For a start, it means that there is more to read, because more people than ever are writing. If you time travelled just a few decades into the past, you would wonder at how little writing was happening outside a classroom. And digital writing is meant for rapid release and response. An online article starts forming a comment string underneath as soon as it is published. This mode of writing and reading can be interactive and fun. But often it treats other people’s words as something to be quickly harvested as fodder to say something else. Everyone talks over the top of everyone else, desperate to be heard.

Perhaps we should slow down. Reading is constantly promoted as a social good and source of personal achievement. But this advocacy often emphasizes “enthusiastic”, “passionate” or “eager” reading, none of which adjectives suggest slow, quiet absorption.

To a slow reader, a piece of writing can only be fully understood by immersing oneself in the words and their slow comprehension of a line of thought. The slow reader is like a swimmer who stops counting the number of pool laps he has done and just enjoys how his body feels and moves in water.

The human need for this kind of deep reading is too tenacious for any new technology to destroy. We often assume that technological change can’t be stopped and happens in one direction, so that older media like “dead-tree” books are kicked out by newer, more virtual forms. In practice, older technologies can coexist with new ones. The Kindle has not killed off the printed book any more than the car killed off the bicycle. We still want to enjoy slowly-formed ideas and carefully-chosen words. Even in a fast-moving age, there is time for slow reading.

1. What is the author’s attitude towards Selvin Brown’s opinion?

A．Favorable.

B．Critical.

C．Doubtful.

D．Objective.

2. The author would probably agree that          .

A．advocacy of passionate reading helps promote slow reading

B．digital writing leads to too much speaking and not enough reflection

C．the public should be aware of the impact skimming has on neuronal circuits

D．the number of Internet readers is declining due to the advances of technology

3. What does the underlined word “tenacious” in Paragraph 6 probably mean?

A．Comprehensive.

B．Complicated.

C．Determined.

D．Apparent.

4. Which would be the best title for the passage?

A．Slow Reading Is Here to Stay

B．Digital Technology Prevents Slow Reading

C．Screen vs. Print: Which Requires Deep Reading?

D．Reading Is Not a Race: The Wonder of Deep Reading

5 . For most people traveling abroad, their first choice is probably to make a beeline for (直奔) tourist sights. For me, I find lots of joy in grocery (食品杂货店) shopping on holiday.

As a vegetarian (素食主义者), finding restaurants that meet my needs is not always easy abroad.     1     The first thing I do, after dropping my bags off, is to go to a grocery store. That enables me to cook breakfast in the morning without walking around for hours trying to find “vegan breakfast” near me.

The variety of foods attracts me every time I travel somewhere new. In Malta, I found the most delicious chocolate-filled cakes, a product I would struggle to find even in the UK.     2     I was so delighted that I could enjoy such an unexpected treat. Another surprise was their selection of ice cream available even in the smallest grocery stores.

    3     Looking for smoked tofu and corn pancakes turns into quite a mission whenever I visit Cluj-Napoca in Romania. There is usually only one variety of smoked tofu, sold in a very small tub (食品盒) and only in the cafeteria section.     4     That is because they are never available at the smaller ones.

Grocery shopping on holiday sounds unusual. But it means being involved in the day-to-day lives of a country’s citizens. I can pretend I am a local and put myself in their shoes. I can watch kids begging their parents for sweets, an international experience that needs no language, or watch couples pick up snacks and drinks for a party on a Friday night.     5    

A．I ended up eating these every day for breakfast.

B．The challenge of finding food is interesting, too.

C．So I always make sure to book a place with a kitchen.

D．Grocery shopping was a vital part of the holiday experience.

E．It’s an act of understanding people as much as of buying food.

F．Corn pancakes always require a trip to the bigger grocery store.

G．By wandering around in a new country, I start to see what they value.

6 . I enjoy throwing stuff away. I’d love to go full minimalism (极简主义), but my wife and two teenage kids do not share my dream of a house with almost nothing in it. I have tried. When the kids were little, I taught them my two favorite games – “Do We Need It?” and “Put It in Its Place”– and made them play every few months. Their enthusiasm never matched mine.

If I’m going to be honest, my own tidying skills are not as great as I’d like. My “discarded” pile is never quite the trash mountain I want because I make up excuses for why things are useful. I consider this unhealthy. I want to be better at moving on.

So, this time I found help – the classics for people like me: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo. Kondo’s commitment to her craft is astonishing. Her philosophy is only to keep things you love. Can I go full Kondo? I will try. One central idea is to clean by category. You start by collecting all clothes and gathering them together for consideration. It makes you rethink how you organize. Next, hold each item and ask if it brings you joy. This way you’re choosing what to keep. And that’s how I find myself with all my clothes on my bedroom floor. My wife walks by and gives me a look that says I’m nuts. She’s probably not wrong.

Somewhere near the bottom of this chaos is my special jacket. I move through the pile: pants, shirts, suits and shoes. Then my last category: jackets. I haven’t worn the thing in about 30 years. Somehow, it has survived. Now that I’m striving to follow Kondo – surely, its time has come?

I hold it in my hand. There is a tear just below the collar that widens as I hold it. It’s literally falling apart. Will I ever wear it again? Not a chance. Does it feel good to wear? Does it bring me joy? Actually, yes. At this moment, my daughter walks in. She asks about the jacket. I tell her the story. She thinks I should keep it. It’s cool and unique and full of memories. She is arguing that nostalgia (怀念) is the very reason.

I’m not entirely convinced by my daughter’s arguments. I believe in looking ahead, not backward. Nevertheless, sometimes it’s hard to let go. So I gently place the jacket on the “keep” pile.

1. What does the underlined word “discarded” probably mean in Paragraph 2?

A．adjusted

B．reserved

C．abandoned

D．tidied

2. What drives the author to read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up?

A．To learn how to categorize.	B．To improve his tidying skills.
C．To persuade his family members.	D．To develop passion for minimalism.

3. What is the attitude of the author’s family members toward minimalism?

A．They don’t understand it.	B．They completely support it.
C．They are strongly opposed to it.	D．They are less passionate about it.

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

A．Knowing when to let go	B．Classifying what you love
C．Throwing worn-out clothes	D．Keeping valuable possessions

7 . Whether you’re an introvert or extrovert, quiet or loud, one of the keys to success in every area of your life is learning how to be more confident. Here are some things that can help you become more self-confident!

Train your brain.     1     Instead of immediately assuming you can’t accomplish something, believe you have what it takes to figure it out. Like Marie Forleo always says, “Everything is figureoutable.”

Watch your words. Whether you realize it or not, the words you speak shape your beliefs about yourself and what others believe about you.     2     The act of gossiping and putting others down always comes from a place of insecurity, so if you catch yourself wanting to say something sarcastic, redirect those thoughts to something better.

    3     In her research, social psychologist Amy Cuddy found that confident people have higher levels of testosterone and that people’s levels of testosterone can rise simply by exhibiting a “high power pose.” We’ve all heard the phrase “Fake it till you make it,” but Amy took this a step further and said, “Fake it till you become it.”

Be secure. Being secure in who you are means that, although you might make a mistake or fail, you know you’re not a failure.    4    

Get experience. Nothing builds self-confidence like experience. After you’ve done: the thing once you’ve led the company meeting, published your first blog, or coached your first client-your confidence in your ability to do it again will soar.     5    

A．Stay positive.

B．Change your body language.

C．That also goes for what we speak about others.

D．Just do it, and watch your confidence take off.

E．You have the power to be more confident within yourself.

F．You can learn how to be more confident in your mind.

G．It means someone might disagree with you, but it doesn’t shake you up.

8 . The robots are alive, and now they can reproduce.

That’s not a continuation to “The Terminator” It's the latest result of research among scientists at Harvard and the University of Vermont. These xenobots, named for the African frog Xenopus laevis, could move around and display collective behavior.

The researchers took stem cells (干细胞) from the skin of frog and put them in salt water, where they came together into balls with a covering of cilia, which are similar to small hairs and enable the organisms (生物体) to move. The scientists noticed that these organisms, xenobots, would collect any particles (粒子) placed in the dish to make piles. They started to wonder whether the tiny robots would do the same thing with individual stem cells, so they conducted a test.

Knowing that xenobots5 shapes affect their behavior, the researchers tried to figure out which form would help the organism to reproduce repeatedly. They discovered that a “C” shape seemed to be the best. The C-shaped xenobots gathered individual stem cells into groups, which became xenobots of their own. This type of reproduction is based on the organisms’ movement, rather than growing and then forming a new being as other animals and plants do.

Xenobots are on an unusual line between living organisms and robots. They are organisms because they are made of stem cells and can reproduce. But they are also robots because they can move on their own and perform physical labor. Although most robots are made of metal, robots are given the definition not by their material, but by what they can do.

Before now, Kriegman, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, said, “no one has been using living materials as self-moving, self-powered robots.” The researchers hope that the xenobots can help them better understand the process of reproduction —a fundamental quality of life —and how to control it. Faced with a world full of self-reproducing problems, such as Covid-19, Kriegman said studying xenobots could lead scientists closer to solutions.

1. What inspired the researchers to perform an experiment?

A．The position of particles.	B．The gathering of stem cells.
C．The movement of organisms.	D．The collective ability of xenobots.

2. What is special about the C-shaped xenobots reproduction?

A．It's repeated constantly.	B．It generates new beings.
C．It separates individual stem cells.	D．It's based on xenobots’ motion.

3. How are xenobots defined as robots?

A．By their function.	B．By their reproduction.
C．By their unique component.	D．By their physical appearance.

4. What can be inferred about the research from the last paragraph?

A．It could make a breakthrough.	B．It would bring scientists closer.
C．It could find the secret of reproduction.	D．It would discover the solution to Covid-19.

9 . Researchers at the University of Cambridge carried out a year-long study with Design and Technology(D&T) year 9 pupils at two London schools. Pupils at one school spent the year following school lessons while the other group’s D&T lessons used a set of engineering design thinking tools. Creativity of both groups of pupils was assessed at the start and end of the school year using an authoritative mental test.

Results showed a significant increase in creativity among pupils at the intervention(干预) school where thinking tools were used. At the start of the year, the creativity scores of pupils at the control school were 11% higher than those at the intervention school according to data from the mental test. By the end, however, creativity scores of pupils in the intervention group were 78% higher than those in the control group.

The research is part of a program called Designing Our Tomorrow and challenges pupils to find ways of dealing with real-world problems by thinking about the thoughts and feelings of others. The particular challenge used in the study required pupils at the intervention school to design an asthma-treatment(哮喘治疗) pack for children. Pupils were given various “tools”. They were shown data on the number of asthma-related deaths of children in the UK, and a video about a child having an attack. They also explored the problem and tested their design ideas by role-playing---for example---patients, family members, and medical staff.

Nicholl, Senior Lecturer in Design and Technology Education, said, “When I taught D&T, I didn’t see children as potential engineers who would one day contribute to the economy - they were just people who needed to be ready to go into the world at 18. Although teaching empathy(同理心) has been part of the D&T National Curriculum for over two decades, this study suggests it is still a missing link in the creative process, and vital if we want education to encourage designers and engineers of tomorrow.”

1. What can we learn about the control group?

A．They used thinking tools.

B．They didn’t take D&T lessons.

C．They followed standard courses.

D．They got higher creativity scores twice.

2. Why do researchers give pupils various “tools”?

A．To develop their empathy.

B．To test their creativity levels.

C．To inspire them to solve problems.

D．To help them understand asthma.

3. What is Nicholl’s attitude to current D&T teaching?

A．Appreciative.

B．Doubtful.

C．Objective.

D．Unsatisfied.

4. Which can be the best title for the text?

A．Teaching Kids Empathy Is a Must.

B．Pupils Should Empathise with Others.

C．Empathy Improves Creativity in Pupils.

D．Empathy Is Missing in the Creative Process.

10 . Final exams are around the comer — but that won’t stop some teenagers putting in the least effort. This may be because their brains aren’t developed enough to properly assess how high the stakes (利害关系) are, and adapt their behaviour accordingly.

Catherine Insel, at Harvard University, and her team asked adolescents between the ages of 13 and 20 to play a game while monitoring their brains. In some rounds of the game,participants could earn 20 cents fora correct response, while an incorrect one would cost them 10 cents. But in rounds with higher stakes,correct responses were worth a dollar, and wrong answers lost the participants 50 cents.

The team found that while the older volunteers performed better in the high stakes rounds, the younger ones didn’t — their performance didn’t change in line with whether the stakes were low or high. And the older the volunteers were, the more improved their performance was.

When the team looked at the brain activity of the volunteers,they found that their ability to improve their performance was linked to how developed their brains were. A region in the brain, which continues to develop until we are at least 25 years old, seemed to be particularly important. The findings explain why some teenagers are so unconcerned when it comes to hazardous behaviors, such as driving too fast, for instance, especially when one of their friends is nearby.

Insel thinks schools should reconsider the way they test performance in teenagers. “This study suggests it’s not a good idea to evaluate school performance in a single final exam”, she says. A better idea would be to use a variety of smaller tests, conducted throughout the year.

It’s not all bad news for teens, though. Teenagers put the same amount of effort into tasks that aren’t “important”, and start to prefer hobbies to school. It could be a good thing, allowing teenagers to learn complex social skills, for example.

1. Why did the researchers set different bets in the game?

A．To teach how to make money.

B．To better monitor participants’ brains.

C．To show the varied risk levels of the game.

D．To meet the needs of different participants.

2. What does the underlined word “hazardous” probably mean?

A．Dangerous.	B．Abusive.
C．Specific.	D．Addictive.

3. What should be kept in mind while assessing students’ performance?

A．It should not be judged by only one exam.

B．The items in exams should not be too difficult.

C．Exam-focused education should not be adopted.

D．Examination is not a good means of evaluating students.

4. What is Insel’s attitude to teenagers’ putting effort into “unimportant” tasks?

A．Unclear.

B．Favorable.

C．Doubtful.

D．Negative.