1 . Farmers have long relied on things that work without their involvement — bees to pollinate (授粉) flowers, earthworms (蚯蚓) to turn the soil, swallows to eat pests — to make sure that crops grow the right way. Now a team of British researchers is trying to take this hands-off thinking in a high-tech direction. Last October, scientists at Harper Adams University started a farm called the Hands Free Hectare to make the entire process of farming — from sowing and fertilizing to harvest — fully automatic. The project has just succeeded with five tons of robot-grown barley (大麦).
“We believe the best idea is that in the future, farmers will manage groups of smaller, autonomous machines, ” the researchers explained. “They will go out and work in the fields, allowing the farmer to use their time more effectively instead of having to drive up and down the fields.”
At the moment, agricultural machines — very large and heavy — can cover a lot of space quickly. But there are shortcomings. “Fertilizer gets sprayed over entire farms, regardless of the different needs of different crops. They’re also so heavy that they’re damaging farmers’ soils,” researcher Jonathan Gill said.
Gill and his colleagues went smaller: a tractor, a combine and a harvester, which followed a programmed route, using GPS. Altogether, they spent less than ￡200, 000 on equipment, and used open-source technology and a drone (无人机). Eventually the system will be complex enough to treat different parts of a field, or even individual plants, differently.
The team is quick to caution that they don’t want to put farmers out of work. They said, “Instead of being busy in the fields, the farmer will manage the machines and monitor their crops.” The next stop for the barley will be a brewery. That’s not going to be completely automatic. At least not yet.
1. What feature of bees, earthworms and swallows inspired scientists?| A．Their dependence on nature. | B．Their special way of survival. |
| C．Their selfless love for the earth. | D．Their natural involvement in farming. |
| A．Freeing workers totally. | B．Reducing the cost of harvest. |
| C．Improving the accuracy of farming. | D．Increasing the output of different crops. |
| A．Gill’s project is still at the design stage. | B．Unemployment wouldn’t be a concern. |
| C．The brewery will realize automation soon. | D．Complete automatic farming is unrealistic. |
| A．The future of hands-free farming | B．The functions of agricultural machines |
| C．The development of automatic harvest | D．The shortcomings of traditional farming |
2 . HARDCORE TANO*C is an independent Japanese music label that is known for releasing music compilations and albums focused on various forms of hardcore techno such as UK hardcore, happy hardcore, and gabber. The label was founded in 2003 by Yoshikazu Nagai (who at the time used the Akai Hito alias), originally under the name of Hardcore Tanoshii, but changed to its current name of HARDCORE TANO*C in 2007 after the release of the album HARDCORE SYNDROME. The label features a store which sells the most notable doujin (同人)music releases, and is well known for their frequent live events that are regularly organized throughout the years, including the annual TANO*C TOUR series of events and the S2TBTANO*C events done in collaboration with kors k’s S2TB Recording label.
From 2011 to 2018, HARDCORE TANO*C were very closely linked with BEMANI, most notably in beat mania IIDX and SOUND VOLTEX. Many of HARDCORE TANO*C’s members were frequent contributors to BEMANI,and KONAMI even collaborated with the label for a few of their own album releases. Their presence also expanded to various other music game titles.
Many guest artists have appeared in HARDCORE TANO*C compilations, including Ryu☆, kors k, DJ Shimamura, m1dy, M-Project, JAKAZiD (as Joshka), Hommarju, Camellia, lapix, C-Show, Maozon, Nhato, Dustvoxx, and Akira Complex.
By the end of 2017, HARDCORE TANO*C has started to produce major artist album releases, containing licensed works done for music games by the circle’s artists. From September 2018, a sub-label directed by DJ Myosuke named HARDCORE TANO*C HARD has been established, which focuses on harsher music. HARDCORE TANO*C is also heavily involved in the 2019 rhythm game WACCA, which is published by MARVELOUS!, with nearly its entire staff contributing to the game.
A song composed by various members of HARDCORE TANO*C, BATTLE NO.1, was planned to be in SOUND VOLTEX IV HEAVENLY HAVEN for the The 8th KONAMI Arcade Championship, under the artist name of TANO*C SOUND TEAM. KONAMI rejected the song (likely due to their poking fun (打趣) of the BEMANI Sound Team moniker, which was at its most extreme in the time of that event), and it later appeared instead in the HARDCORE TANO*C-produced game WACCA on August 1st, 2019. It also appeared in lowiro’s Arcaea as part of the Arcaea× HARDCORE TANO*C Collaboration (联动) and SEGA’s maimai でらっくす Splash. It was added to Muse Dash on February 5, 2021.
1. What’s the main idea of the first paragraph?| A．Some basic information about HARDCORE TANO*C. |
| B．The founder and members of HARDCORE TANO* |
| C．C. The relationship between Yoshikazu Nagai and HARDCORE TANO*C. |
| D．The relationship between BEMANI and HARDCORE TANO*C. |
| A．Camellia. | B．Laur. | C．Maozon. | D．Akira Complex. |
| A．It was produced by HARDCORE TANO*C last year. |
| B．None of MARVELOUS!’s employees is working for it. |
| C．The song BATTLE NO.1 was included in this game. |
| D．It had a collaboration with Muse Dash in Feb, 2021. |
| A．Try playing WACCA if possible. |
| B．Spread bad comments about HARDCORE TANO* |
| C．Only cheer for the game or the artist you like. |
| D．Ask the official staff about the song selection petulantly. |
3 . A humanoid robot can relay video and touch sensations to a person wearing a haptic (触觉内) feedback suit and a virtual reality (VR) headset hundreds of kilometres away, offering away for people to attend events without travelling.
The iCub 3 robot is a 52-kilogram, 125-centimetre-tall robot with 54 joints across its body. Its head contains two cameras where a human’s eyes would be, and an Internet-connected computer where the brain would go. Along with the cameras, sensors covering its body send data to the robot’s “brain”. These sensations are then reproduced on a suit and VR headset worn by a remote human operator.
When the operators react to what they see and feel, the suit’s sensors pick up the movements and the robot matches them. “The key is to translate every signal and bit of digital data that can be sent through the network.” says Stefano Dafarra, who was part of the iCub3 team. There can be a small delay of up to 100 milliseconds to capture and transmit the visual shots, but the operator can case this by moving slightly slower than normal.
The team demonstrated the robot at the Venice Biennale, where it wandered through an exhibition while its operator stood 290 kilometres away in Genoa. Dafarra hopes people will use the iCub3 to attend events remotely, reducing the need to travel. “But at present, a fall could be hugely damaging to the robot, and it’s uncertain whether it could stand up again on its own," he says.
“iCub3 is an interesting robot and offers clear advantages from the previous versions.” says Jonathan Aitken, whose laboratory owns a prior version of the robot. However, he is disappointed that the team wasn’t clear in its research about the data transmission requirements of the new version of the robot. “It would be good to know just how much data was required, and what the upper and lower bounds were.” he says.
1. What’s the principle behind the humanoid robot?| A．It conveys sensations to the wearer and acts accordingly. |
| B．It receives commands from an operator through the Internet. |
| C．The cameras take pictures and then interact with the sensors. |
| D．The computer in the robot processes the data and gives orders. |
| A．Medical consultation. | B．Sports events. |
| C．Outdoor workouts. | D．Virtual tourism. |
| A．It fails to appeal to potential investors. |
| B．Its performance hasn’t been evaluated clearly. |
| C．Its present version still requires to be updated. |
| D．Its transmission of data came across technical problems. |
| A．Humanoid robots with sense of touch catch on |
| B．iCub 3 robot combines with VR to benefit more people |
| C．Humanoid robots let people see and feel things remotely |
| D．New advances in technology enable people to travel at work |
4 . Who can imagine life today without an Automated Teller Machine (ATM)? They are available in considerable numbers throughout the world.
The first ATM was the brainchild of an enterprising Turkish-American inventor Luther George Simjian. When the idea of an automated banking machine struck him, he registered 20 patents before any bank agreed to give it a trial run. It is easy to assume that the inventor of such a popular machine was laughing all the way to the bank.
It was not until 1967, nearly 30 years later, that Barclays Bank, in a careful launch, rolled out a self-service machine in London, England, which proved successful.
Experts quickly determined that public acceptance of ATMs counted on convenience, simplicity, speed, security and trust.
Public acceptance of deposits (存款) by machine was significantly slower than customers’ usage of ATMs for withdrawals. In general, it seems that customers sometimes still prefer and trust an over-the-counter transaction (交易) for deposits.
| A．Location, in particular, was a key factor. |
| B．His cash machine, however, didn’t prove durable. |
| C．The device was relatively primitive, at least by today’s standards. |
| D．However, cash machines posed some interesting, unanswered questions. |
| E．An interesting factor was the issue of bio-statistics for customer identification. |
| F．Devices originally dismissed by the public are now recognized as essential institutions. |
| G．Soon afterwards, many other banks became admittedly champions of the cash machine. |
5 . When children are growing up, what they see in their families is what they tend to consider normal. That means family traditions and other activities are generally seen as just normal. If a family eats dinner together or spends time talking with each other, that’s what the child absorbs and internalizes.
Our family traditions are declining as we move toward a more isolated (孤立的) society. How many families no longer share meals around the dinner table, instead choosing to watch TV or text friends on their phones? This tends to isolate and disconnect family members from each other. It also stops families from communicating and catching up on each other’s lives.
For those of us who grew up in a household where families shared meals together and spent time talking with each other, chances are that we are passing along those traditions to our own families. The problem is, children today often want to spend their time in front of screens rather than people. Cell phones, computers and other attention-grabbing devices often mean parents get resistance to traditional family togetherness time. This pressure can lead to parents giving in and letting children do what they want rather than fight with them over sitting at the dinner table. This creates a new normal that no longer values the idea of families and the society at large, connecting with each other.
Family and community traditions are important, not just for the current shared experiences, but for the future as well. Since children internalize their experiences, that means generations to come may not know what it’s like to sit together around the dinner table and truly connect as a family.
That is why it is so important that parents and caregivers create boundaries of behavior that help to keep family traditions alive. If you remember the shared experiences you had with your parents and grandparents, you know the important bonding that took place during those times. It is this shared experience that brings people closer together and is well worth preserving.
1. What is the phenomenon the author describes at the beginning of the text?| A．The increase in shared family meals means a shift towards isolation. |
| B．Increased use of technology replaces traditional family interactions. |
| C．More and more children prefer to spend quality time with the family. |
| D．Family members are more likely to share their updates with each other. |
| A．The inability of parents to understand technology. |
| B．The challenge of preserving traditional family values. |
| C．The influence of technology on children’s education. |
| D．The necessity of controlling children’s digital devices. |
| A．They will be more addicted to advanced technology. |
| B．They will maintain stronger and closer family bonds. |
| C．They may create new and irreplaceable family traditions. |
| D．They may not understand the value of family gatherings. |
| A．Insignificant | B．Irresponsible |
| C．Crucial | D．Overemphasized |
6 . Ramirez Castañeda, a Colombian biologist, spends her time in the Amazon studying how snakes eat poisonous frogs without getting ill. Although her findings come in many shapes and sizes, she and her colleagues have struggled to get their biological discoveries out to the wider scientific community. With Spanish as her mother tongue, her research had to be translated into English to be published. That wasn’t always possible because of budget or time-and it means that some of her findings were never published.
“It’s not that I’m a bad scientist,” she says. “It’s just because of the language.”
Castañeda is not alone. There is plenty of research in non-English-language papers that gets lost in translation, or is never translated. A research looked through more than 400, 000 peer-reviewed papers in 16 different languages and found 1, 234 studies providing evidence on biodiversity conservation which, because they weren’t in English, may have been overlooked. These included Japanese-language findings on the effectiveness of relocating the endangered Blakiston’s fish owl, the largest owl species.
Some experts argue that for the sake of the bigger picture, scientific knowledge should converge (转换) into one common language. Science is very globalised and becoming more so, so the use of a global language is enormous for that.
Of course, scientists can work with an English partner, or use a translator-but this ultimately strengthens the cycle of dependency on the global north, leading to inequality in international influence. The specific meanings of words can also pose a problem in translation. For example, it is difficult to find in English one single word to describe forest snakes and frogs in the work Castafieda does with indigenous (土著的) communities in the Amazon.
“So we’re losing observations for science, too, ” says Castañeda. “For me, it’s not possible to just have everything translated into English. We need multilingual (多语种的) science, and we need people that feel comfortable doing science in their own languages. It could be possible to switch to a world where, say, Chinese, English and Spanish are the three languages of science, just as English, French and German were the languages of science in the 19th century.”
1. What prevented Castañeda’s discoveries from being more widely known?| A．Poor management. | B．Opposition from her colleagues. |
| C．Her bad reputation. | D．The language barrier. |
| A．Inefficient wildlife conservation. |
| B．A knowledge gap in the scientific world. |
| C．A growing interest in non-English papers. |
| D．Inadequate job opportunities for translators. |
| A．The urgency to protect rare species. |
| B．The need to adopt one global language. |
| C．The challenges in translating scientific texts. |
| D．The biodiversity on the South American continent. |
| A．A potential solution. | B．A theoretical model. |
| C．A popular belief. | D．A global trend. |
7 . What comes to mind when you think about chocolate? A candy bar at Halloween? Ice cream on a hot day?
For Ibrahim, a 12-year-old boy from the West African country of Ghana, chocolate is not about sweet treats; it is about bitter work.
To change the harmful practices like this, some farms use an approach called Fairtrade.
Consumers like you can play a role as well. You can buy Fairtrade chocolate if possible, pressure candy companies to change their labour practices, or ask local stores to sell Fairtrade products.
Chocolate has a hidden story that affects children like Ibrahim—children who want a happy future just like you do.
| A．You have the power to change the story. |
| B．The labels on chocolate do not tell his story. |
| C．Fairtrade is a way of doing business that prohibits child labour. |
| D．You can also take action through the Fairtrade Schools network. |
| E．On many farms, children like Ibrahim perform difficult farming tasks. |
| F．Cocoa trees grow in the tropical climates of Africa, Latin America and South-East Asia. |
| G．With more income, farmers can pay adult workers and can send their children to school. |
8 . Some ants have figured out how to avoid getting lost: build taller anthills, according to a recent study.
Desert ants living in the hot, flat salt pans of Tunisia spend their days looking for food and reach as far as 1.1 kilometers from their nests. To find their way home, desert ants use a navigation system, relying on the sun’s position and counting their steps to track their location relative to their nest.
But this system becomes increasingly unreliable as the distance from the nest increases. “We realized that, whenever the ants in salt pans came closer to their nest, they suddenly pinpointed the nest hill from several meters distance,” says Markus Knaden, a researcher at Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. “This made us think that the hill serves as a nest-defining landmark.”
So Knaden and colleagues captured ants from nests in the middle of salt pans and from along their shorelines. Only salt-pan nests had distinct hills, up to 40 centimeters tall, whereas the hills on shoreline nests were lower or barely noticeable. Next, the team removed any hills and placed the captured insects some distance away from their nests. Salt-pan ants struggled more than shore ants to find homes. Shore ants relied on the shoreline for guidance and weren’t affected by the hill removal, the researchers concluded.
The team further conducted another study to see if desert ants were deliberately building a taller hill when their surroundings lacked any visible landmarks. So, the researchers removed the hills of 16 salt-pan nests and installed (安装) two 50-centimeter-tall blocks near eight of them. The other eight nests were left without any artificial visual aid. After three days, the researchers found that seven ants from the unaided nests had rebuilt their hills. But only two ants from the nests with man-made blocks nearby had bothered to rebuild.
“It implies that ants regularly assess the complexity of their environment and change their decisions based on their conclusion,” says ecologist Judith Bronstein of the University of Arizona.
1. What aspect of ants is the recent study mainly about?| A．Challenges of survival. | B．Landmarks of habitats. |
| C．Intelligence of navigation. | D．Comparison of varieties. |
| A．Explored. | B．Recognized. | C．Climbed. | D．Crossed. |
| A．To observe different ants’ reactions. | B．To prove impacts of various habitats. |
| C．To disturb desert ants’ navigation system. | D．To test anthills’ functions and significance. |
| A．Evaluate and make changes. | B．Visual aid is a must. |
| C．Cooperation brings victory. | D．No man-made blocks are used. |
9 . The needs of plus size consumers have long been the elephant in the room of the fashion industry until body positivity and fat acceptance movements promoted the slogan (口号) that large-bodied people are not those who are left behind. This size-inclusive (尺码包容) trend has become so popular that it is influencing mainstream culture. As a result, fashion brands have finally decided to extend their size ranges. In 2022, the plus-size market grew twice as fast as the standard size market in both North America and the UK.
Yet, many consumers say fashion brands broadening their ranges are not truly inclusive. “Inclusive sizing means that all bodies are included in fashion, not just the ones who fit in standard sizes,” says Marie Southard Ospina, a UK-based journalist who covers body-image issues. “However, what many designers do right now is pick a number that they think is big enough to include plus sizes and stop. This is even more disrespectful.”
Researchers also criticize that some brands are just taking advantage of the trend. “Brands that used to promote so-called perfect bodies in their advertisements are now trying to get in on the trend by adding a few sizes. It doesn’t feel like they really care about plus-size people,” says Tom Burgess, analyst in fashion industry. “If brands cared about large-bodied consumers, then it wouldn’t have taken until now to acknowledge that they exist,” he says. “It gives the impression that companies are just trying to gain a share of the market without a real commitment to the community.”
The fashion industry must go beyond merely producing clothing in a range of sizes if they hope to succeed with a body -diverse world. The whole industry has to connect on a personal level with consumers. That involves showing shoppers that they are seen, understood and important to brands. “Consumers care about values, and so they want to buy from brands that reflect the values they believe in. Everyone should enjoy the same range of fashion options,” says Ludovica Cesareo, professor of marketing at the College of Business in the US.
1. What do the underlined words “the elephant in the room” mean in the first paragraph?| A．The hot issue that is valued. |
| B．The obvious truth that is ignored. |
| C．The important principle that is recognized. |
| D．The common phenomenon that is criticized. |
| A．They pick sizes randomly. | B．They offer limited plus sizes. |
| C．They treat designers disrespectfully. | D．They haven’t broadened standard sizes. |
| A．Their designs. | B．Their quality. |
| C．Their motivations. | D．Their advertisements. |
| A．Buyers may deserve fashion that fits their figure. |
| B．Consumers prefer brands with personalized values. |
| C．Brands should catch up with the size-inclusive trend. |
| D．A good brand image is critical in the fashion industry. |
10 . When Kurt Benirschke started collecting skin samples from endangered animals in 1972, he didn’t have a firm plan on what to do with them. As a researcher at the University of California San Diego, he believed that one day these samples would be used to save these animals. A few years later, he moved his collection to the San Diego Zoo, and called it the Frozen Zoo.
For a long time, it was the only project of its kind; however, in recent years, similar conservation efforts have spread globally, and tools that Benirschke didn’t yet have are now available. Today, the Frozen Zoo is the world’s largest animal cryobank(生物冷冻库), holding samples from over 10,500 individual animals from 1,220 species, in the hope that one day science can bring them back as a species.
The Frozen Zoo’s advanced technology is the key to its success in saving species from extinction. By using cryopreservation techniques, the zoo can store cells and tissues from endangered animals. The stored genetic material can be used for research, breeding(繁殖) programs, and potentially even cloning or genetic engineering to restore endangered species.
By protecting the genetic heritage of endangered animals, the Frozen Zoo provides hope for the survival of species that would otherwise be at risk of dying out, and the preservation of Earth’s precious biodiversity. It has inspired the establishment of similar cryobanks worldwide, expanding efforts to conserve endangered species. These cryobanks contribute to the global network of genetic resources, improving cooperation and knowledge exchange. By demonstrating the potential of technology in the preservation of biodiversity, the frozen zoo serves as a powerful tool in raising awareness and driving change.
The Frozen Zoo is like a time capsule, preserving the genetic heritage of endangered species for future generations. It reminds us about the importance of conservation and offers a window into a world that could otherwise be lost forever.
1. What do we know about the Frozen Zoo?| A．It is the world’s oldest and largest animal cryobank. |
| B．It started with a detailed plan led by Kurt Benirschke. |
| C．It is a project to explore the evolution of animal species. |
| D．It was established to protect animals in the San Diego Zoo. |
| A．By expanding their natural habitats. |
| B．By raising their survival rate with genetic technology. |
| C．By preserving their genetic material for further research. |
| D．By innovating breeding techniques to increase their population. |
| A．To stress the importance of the Frozen Zoo. |
| B．To explain the urgency of saving endangered species. |
| C．To prove the potential value of preserving biodiversity. |
| D．To show the necessity of cooperative conservation efforts. |
| A．Costly and controversial. | B．Profitable and instructive. |
| C．Conservative and effective. | D．Pioneering and significant. |
