1 . As cities balloon with growth, access to nature for people living in urban areas is becoming harder to find. If you’re lucky, there might be a pocket park near where you live, but it’s unusual to find places in a city that are relatively wild.

Past research has found health and wellness benefits of nature for humans, but a new study shows that wildness in urban areas is extremely important for human well-being.

The research team focused on a large urban park. They surveyed several hundred park-goers, asking them to submit a written summary online of a meaningful interaction they had with nature in the park. The researchers then examined these submissions, coding (编码) experiences into different categories. For example, one participant’s experience of “We sat and listened to the waves at the beach for a while” was assigned the categories “sitting at beach” and “listening to waves.”

Across the 320 submissions, a pattern of categories the researchers call a “nature language” began to emerge. After the coding of all submissions, half a dozen categories were noted most often as important to visitors. These include encountering wildlife, walking along the edge of water, and following an established trail.

Naming each nature experience creates a usable language, which helps people recognize and take part in the activities that are most satisfying and meaningful to them. For example, the experience of walking along the edge of water might be satisfying for a young professional on a weekend hike in the park. Back downtown during a workday, they can enjoy a more domestic form of this interaction by walking along a fountain on their lunch break.

“We’re trying to generate a language that helps bring the human-nature interactions back into our daily lives. And for that to happen, we also need to protect nature so that we can interact with it,” said Peter Kahn, a senior author of the study.

1. What phenomenon does the author describe at the beginning of the text?

A．Pocket parks are now popular.	B．Wild nature is hard to find in cities.
C．Many cities are overpopulated.	D．People enjoy living close to nature.

2. Why did the researchers code participant submissions into categories?

A．To compare different types of park-goers.	B．To explain why the park attracts tourists.
C．To analyze the main features of the park.	D．To find patterns in the visitors’ summaries.

3. What can we learn from the example given in paragraph 5?

A．Walking is the best way to gain access to nature.

B．Young people are too busy to interact with nature.

C．The same nature experience takes different forms.

D．The nature language enhances work performance.

4. What should be done before we can interact with nature according to Kahn?

A．Language study.	B．Environmental conservation.
C．Public education.	D．Intercultural communication.

2 . My husband and I just spent a week in Paris.    1    So the first thing we did was rent a fantastically expensive sixth-floor apartment the size of a cupboard. It was so tiny that we had to leave our suitcases in the hallway.

The place wasn’t entirely authentic, though. Unlike a normal Parisian apartment, the plumbing (水管) worked.     2    Our building even had a tiny lift with a female voice that said, “Ouverture des portes,” in perfect French. That is the only French phrase I mastered, and it’s a shame I don’t have much use for it.

Parisians are different from you and me. They never look lazy or untidy. As someone noted in this paper a couple of weeks ago, they eat great food and never gain weight.     3     French strawberries do not taste like cardboard. Instead, they explode in your mouth like little flavor bombs.

    4     On our first morning in Paris, I went around the corner to the food market to pick up some groceries. I bought a handful of perfectly ripe small strawberries and a little sweet melon. My husband and I agreed they were the best fruit we had ever eaten. But they cost $18!

In France, quality of life is much more important than efficiency.

You can tell this by cafés life. French cafés are always crowded.    5    When do these people work? The French take their 35-hour workweek seriously — so seriously that some labor unions recently struck a deal with a group of companies limiting the number of hours that independent contractors can be on call.

A．Not all the customers are tourists.

B．The quality of life in France is equally excellent.

C．There was a nice kitchen and a comfortable bed.

D．The amazing food is mainly consumed by local farmers.

E．That’s not the only reason the French eat less than we do.

F．Our aim was to see if we could live, in some way, like real Parisians.

G．The food is so delicious that you don’t need much of it to make you happy.

3 . You’ve heard that plastic is polluting the oceans — between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes enter ocean ecosystems every year. But does one plastic straw or cup really make a difference? Artist Benjamin Von Wong wants you to know that it does. He builds massive sculptures out of plastic garbage, forcing viewers to re-examine their relationship to single-use plastic products.

At the beginning of the year, the artist built a piece called “Strawpocalypse,” a pair of 10-foot-tall plastic waves, frozen mid-crash. Made of 168,000 plastic straws collected from several volunteer beach cleanups, the sculpture made its first appearance at the Estella Place shopping center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Just 9% of global plastic waste is recycled. Plastic straws are by no means the biggest source (来源) of plastic pollution, but they’ve recently come under fire because most people don’t need them to drink with and, because of their small size and weight, they cannot be recycled. Every straw that’s part of Von Wong’s artwork likely came from a drink that someone used for only a few minutes. Once the drink is gone, the straw will take centuries to disappear.

In a piece from 2018, Von Wong wanted to illustrate (说明) a specific statistic: Every 60 seconds, a truckload’s worth of plastic enters the ocean. For this work, titled “Truckload of Plastic,” Von Wong and a group of volunteers collected more than 10,000 pieces of plastic, which were then tied together to look like they’d been dumped (倾倒) from a truck all at once.

Von Wong hopes that his work will also help pressure big companies to reduce their plastic footprint.

1. What are Von Wong’s artworks intended for?

A．Beautifying the city he lives in.	B．Introducing eco-friendly products.
C．Drawing public attention to plastic waste.	D．Reducing garbage on the beach.

2. Why does the author discuss plastic straws in paragraph 3?

A．To show the difficulty of their recycling.

B．To explain why they are useful.

C．To voice his views on modern art.

D．To find a substitute for them.

3. What effect would “Truckload of Plastic” have on viewers?

A．Calming.	B．Disturbing.
C．Refreshing.	D．Challenging.

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

A．Artists’ Opinions on Plastic Safety

B．Media Interest in Contemporary Art

C．Responsibility Demanded of Big Companies

D．Ocean Plastics Transformed into Sculptures

4 . Imagine you can open your fridge, open an app on your phone and immediately know which items will go bad soon. This is one of the applications that a new technology developed by engineers at the University of California San Diego would enable.

The technology combines a chip (芯片) integrated into product packaging and a software update on your phone. The phone becomes capable of identifying objects based on signals the chip sends out from specific frequencies, in this case Bluetooth or WiFi. In an industrial setting, a smartphone equipped with the software update could be used as a radio frequency identification (RFID) reader.

The work uses breakthroughs in backscatter (反向散射) communication, which uses signals already generated by your smartphone and re-directs them back in a format your phone can understand. Effectively, this technique uses less power than the latest technology to generate WiFi signals.

The custom chip, which is roughly the size of a grain of sand and costs only a few pennies to produce, needs so little power that it can be entirely powered by LTE signals, a technique for wireless broadband communication for mobile devices. The chip turns Bluetooth signals into WiFi signals, which can in turn be detected by a smartphone with that specific software update.

The technology’s broader promise is the development of devices that do not need batteries because they can harvest power from LTE signals instead. This in turn would lead to devices that are significantly less expensive and last longer, said Dinesh Bharadia, one of the paper’s senior authors.

“E-waste, especially batteries, is one of the biggest problems the planet is facing, after climate change,” Bharadia said.

For future research, the team will integrate this technology into other projects to demonstrate its capabilities, and they also hope to commercialize it, either through a startup or through an industry partner.

1. How does the chip interact with the phone?

A．By providing power for the phone.	B．By producing LTE signals for the phone.
C．By giving Bluetooth signals to the phone.	D．By sending WiFi signals back to the phone.

2. What is the potential of the technology according to Bharadia?

A．Reducing e-waste.	B．Making batteries cheap.
C．Supplying power to LTE signals.	D．Decreasing the cost of LTE signals.

3. What will the team do in the future?

A．Invest in new technologies.	B．Bring the technology to market.
C．Improve the quality of the device.	D．Commercialize more research projects.

4. Which is the most suitable title for the text?

A．New technology turns smartphones into RFID readers

B．Smartphones need to be equipped with software updates

C．RFID readers obtain new chips and have new functions

D．Backscatter communication makes the best of smartphones

5 . In August, Jason M. Allen’s piece “Theatre D’opéra Spatial” — which he created with Al image generator Midjourney — won first place in the emerging artist division’s “digital arts photography” category at the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition. The definition for the category states that digital art refers to works that use “digital technology as part of the creative process”.

Allen’s award-winning image has led to debates about what, exactly, it means to be an artist and whether AI can truly make art. “It felt bad for the exact same reason we don’t let robots participate in the Olympics,” one Twitter user wrote. “This is the literal definition of ‘pressed a few buttons to make a digital art piece’,” another tweeted.

Yet while Allen didn’t use a paintbrush, there was plenty of work involved, he said. First, he played around with phrasing that led Midjourney to generate images of women in elegant dresses and space helmets, in an attempt to mix Victorian-style costuming with space themes. Over time, with many slight changes to his written prompt (提示符), he created 900 different versions of what led to his final image. Then he improved its resolution through Gigapixel AI and finally had the images printed.

Allen is glad the debate over whether AI can be used to make art is attracting so much attention. “Rather than hating on the technology, we need to recognize that it’s a powerful tool and use it for good so we can all move forward,” Allen said.

Cal Duran, one of the judges for the competition, said that while Allen’s piece included a mention of AI, he didn’t realize that when judging it. Still, he sticks by his decision to award it first place. “I think the AI technology may give more opportunities to people who may not find themselves artists in the conventional way,” he said.

1. Why has Jason’s work led to debates?

A．It was a copy of a photograph.

B．He challenged the older artists.

C．It was created with the help of AI.

D．He broke the rule of the competition.

2. What can best describe Allen’s creating process?

A．Cooperative.

B．Energy-consuming.

C．Straightforward.

D．Imagination-lacking.

3. What can we learn about AI from the last paragraph?

A．It is a double-edged sword.

B．It attracts conventional artists.

C．It strikes art judges as no surprise.

D．It may open a new world to artists.

4. What is the text mainly about?

A．A trend to be AI artists.

B．An AI-generated art contest.

C．Responses to a winning AI artwork.

D．Curiosity about an image generator.

6 . A growing body of research suggests that the gut microbiome (消化道菌群) could play a major role in a rising chronic disease that makes us physically weaker. The illness, which is commonly called chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), is characterized by intense fatigue, gastrointestinal (胃肠道的) issues, muscle pain, and cognitive challenges such as headaches and difficulty concentrating, among other symptoms. It often follows a viral infection which can lead to a “disruption” in a balanced gut ecosystem. Actually, an increasing number of Americans have been the sufferers since the outbreak of COVID-19.

Two recent studies published in Cell Host &Microbe point to changes in the microbiome as a possible cause of CFS. Research groups at Columbia University and the Jackson Laboratory performed detailed analyses of the microbes in stool (粪便) samples from patients with CFS and compared them to healthy controls.

The two groups found similar bacteria species were less present in CFS patients compared to control patients. They focused on bacteria that produce butyrate, a fatty acid involved in regulating metabolism and the immune system. “Butyrate plays several roles in directing the body’s response to infections, while also protecting the barrier between the intestine (肠) and the circulatory system, regulating genetic changes in cells, and more,” says Brent Williams, lead author on the Columbia study. Williams and his colleagues extensively analyzed the role of butyrate in CFS patients’ guts, even identifying a correlation between low levels of bacteria that produce this acid and more severe symptoms.

Parallel findings from the Jackson Laboratory team suggest the bacteria that produce butyrate could be used to diagnose CFS. Previous research has identified microbiome issues in CFS patients, but the new findings help clarify which microbes could be related to the illness.

More research on butyrate-producing bacteria and other species identified in the studies is necessary to investigate these potential biomarkers of CFS, the authors say. If the findings are replicated, specific gut bacteria could be used to diagnose the illness, which is currently identified based on symptoms alone.

The findings additionally point toward possible treatments, such as probiotics or microbiome-focused diet adjustments—though patients who have been sick for long periods may require drugs that alleviate the damage done to their metabolism or immune system.

1. What do we know about CFS?

A．It is caused by COVID-19 only.	B．It is an illness with systemic symptoms.
C．It breaks the balance of the gut ecosystem.	D．The number of the infected is on the decrease.

2. How did the researcher carry out the recent studies?

A．By controlling data.	B．By identifying genes.
C．By analyzing samples.	D．By comparing symptoms.

3. Which of the following is NOT the significance of the recent researches?

A．Butyrate’s multiple functions are promoted.

B．Targeted gut microbes may be used to diagnose CFS.

C．Certain microbes responsible for CFS are narrowed down.

D．Probiotics supplement with drugs can be a treatment for CFS.

4. What is the text mainly about?

A．Gut microbiome may be the key to CFS.	B．Microbes help digest food and aid absorption.
C．Man’s gut is a rich, diverse tropical rainforest.	D．New method for diagnosing CFS are provided.

7 . The teenage years are probably the most unsettled and stressful years in a person’s life. Teens experience significant physical, emotional, social and cognitive changes. And teens of today face more challenges as they go through more uncertain times of the 21st century.     1    

As teens experience massive physical, social and emotional changes, the challenges are managing social expectations of ideal body images, developing their identity and finding their place in the world. In the past, a teen who was criticized for his or her larger figure or pimpled (有粉刺的) face, might feel embarrassed and dejected in school.     2     Constant comparison and endless posts of picture — perfect images and lives give teens greater pressure to follow current fashion trends. The Wall Street Journal reported that Instagram made body images worse for one in three teenage girls.

    3     Statistics show that most cases of cyber bullying take place on popular social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchats and Twitter, where cyber bullies make emotionally scarring comments. These can be made publicly on a teen’s social media account.     4     As a result, cyber bullying can be more threatening than traditional bullying because it can be shared and viewed repeatedly on social media. In this age of social media, it is also important for teens to learn to cultivate positive, and healthy relationships with people.

There have been many discussions about new technologies and ways of working, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, which will impact future jobs.     5    . Unlike in the past, the situation is different today as AI and automation are causing some jobs to disappear. Teens will have to meet this challenge by adopting an attitude of lifelong learning, and keeping paces with technology.

A．They can also be spread quickly by sharing with others.

B．Furthermore, social media has taken bullying to a new level.

C．The future has always been a dreamland for teens to anticipate.

D．Today, these same sufferings can be expanded by social media.

E．Social media, and technological advances are posing new challenges.

F．Additionally, social media is a strong tool for a teen to defend himself.

G．The challenge for a teen today is preparing for a largely unknown future.

8 . Arguably, the biggest science development of the year to date has been the images of the very depths of the universe taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Those images beg a comparison between the external and internal universes that science is bent on observing and understanding.

Decades ago, astrophysicist Carl Sagan famously said, “The universe is also within is. We’re made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself. ” He was commenting then on the reality that our internal universe was as complex and as fantastic as the outer space.

There are many similarities between the progress we’ve made in understanding the universe and in piecing together life’s inner workings. Like the technological developments that took us from Galileo’s telescope to the Hubble to the JWST, life science tools have also improved rapidly. From early light microscopes to modern super-resolution ones, these developments have afforded researchers a deep look into biology’s infinitesimal (无限小的) landscape. Learning that living things were composed of cells was, not a terribly long time ago, a revolutionary observation. Since then, scientists have been able to dive ever deeper into the components of life.

Going beyond merely observing the complicated makeup of organisms, life scientists can now discover the workings of molecules (分子). And that is where scanning the universe differs from peering into biology. Understanding the universe, especially from a functional standpoint, is not necessarily an immediate urgency. Understanding biology on that level is. Simply observing the amazing internal structure of cells is not enough. Biologists must also characterize how all those parts interact and change in different environments and when faced with various challenges. Being able to image a virus or bacterium is nice at the level of basic science. But knowing how viruses gain entry into cells and spread, infect, and disable can literally save lives. Through time, biology has risen to this mechanistic challenge. Not only can life science tools produce images of cell components, even more importantly, they can help predict the effects of drugs on receptors, of immune cells on foreign invaders (入侵者), and of genetic perturbations (基因干扰) on development and aging.

This is not to belittle the work of scientists researching into universe. They should rightly be praised for delivering views of impossibly distant, impossibly massive phenomena. My aim is to celebrate these accomplishments while at the same time recognizing that science’s inward search for detail and insight is equally impressive and, in my view, more urgent. The output of both the outward and inward explorations should stimulate wonder in everyone. After all, it’s all star-stuff.

1. Why does the author quote Carl Sagan’s comment in Paragraph 2?

A．To introduce the background.	B．To prove an assumption.
C．To make a comparison.	D．To present an idea.

2. Like the study of the universe, life science has been advancing in ________.

A．study approaches	B．system management
C．research facilities	D．technology integration

3. We can infer from Paragraph 4 that biologists’ work is ________.

A．practical

B．risky

C．flexible

D．popular

4. As for life science, which would the author agree with?

A．It has received universal recognition.	B．It should enjoy priority in development.
C．It can be applied in the majority of areas.	D．It is more complicated than space science.

9 . Recently, I accidentally found a set of Hanfu l only wore once from the bottom of the cupboard. I remember buying them simply to match the ancient-style hair accessories (配饰) a friend gave me. It occurred to me that 1 had been trapped in the “birdcage effect”.

“Birdcage effect” means that when you get an item one day, you will prepare more things to match it. Weeks ago, I was in the company of friends engaged in shopping. One said that she wanted to buy a good writing pen to match the delicate notebook that her sister gave her, so that she would fall in love with taking notes on reading, and thus love reading, not just reading. I joked that she must have fallen for the “birdcage effect”. But the friend said with a smile: “Why not use the ‘birdcage effect’ instead?”

For the first time, I heard that the “birdcage effect” can be used in reverse (逆向). However, this can’t help but remind me of middle school, and I seem to have used the “birdcage effect”. Passing by a bookstore one day, I purchased a magazine and saw the call for contributions published in the magazine, so I started writing with eager hands, and then I fell in love with writing.

After shopping with my friends that time, I began to proceed to use the “birdcage effect”. I bought a small fresh tablecloth to decorate my desk, and a beautiful notebook to record my inspiration. When everything was ready, I started writing again.

But how can we get rid of the “birdcage effect” in many things, and even use the “birdcage effect” in the opposite way? Various “birdcages” unavoidably appear in life, but we can distinguish them. If it is not in line with the actual situation, it is a “negative birdcage”, then we must learn to stop losses in time and maintain a heart of abandonment and separation. If it is a “positive birdcage” that motivates us to develop upward, we can clarify our goals, shop or decorate appropriately, and motivate ourselves to move towards our goals. At this time, you will find that the “birdcage effect” is actually not so terrible!

1. What is paragraph 2 mainly about?

A．The application of the “birdcage effect” in life.

B．The necessity of using the “birdcage effect” in life.

C．The turning point of the author’s idea on the “birdcage effect”.

D．The author’s conflict with her friend over the “birdcage effect”.

2. What is the author’s purpose in mentioning her middle school experience?

A．To recall her delightful days at school.

B．To explain the reason for her love with writing.

C．To confirm the positive of the “birdcage effect”.

D．To prove her knowledge of the “birdcage effect”.

3. How can we make use of the “birdcage effect” positively?

A．By realizing this effect has two sides.

B．By promoting our personal consumption.

C．By recognizing this effect is not so terrible.

D．By guiding our acts to go with reasonable goals.

4. What can be a suitable title for the text?

A．Getting Rid of the Birdcage Effect Confidently

B．Motivating Ourselves to Move Towards Our Goals

C．The Birdcage Effect: Influence on Consumer Behavior

D．The Birdcage Effect: How to Use It to Your Advantage

10 . Goldfish may seem like simple creatures swimming in a glass tank, but they possess a rather complicated navigation system, as discovered by researchers at the University of Oxford Led by Dr. Adelaide Sibeaux, the study aims to shed light on our understanding of how fish, and potentially humans, estimate distances using what could be described as an internal GPS.

Writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Sibeaux and colleagues report how they created a tank in their experiment with 2cm-wide black and white vertical stripes (条纹) on the walls, connected by similar stripes across the floor. The team trained nine goldfish to swim a set distance of 70cm and then return to their starting point when waved at. The experiment aimed to investigate how the fish would estimate this distance without any gestures, under different patterns.

Over multiple trials, the goldfish averaged a swim distance of 74cm, give or take 17cm, when presented with the vertical 2cm-wide stripes. However, when the stripe pattern was altered to either narrower vertical stripes, checked patterns, or horizontal stripes, the fish’s behavior changed significantly. Narrower vertical stripes led them to overestimating the distance by 36%, while horizontal stripes resulted in highly inconsistent estimations.

According to the researchers, the goldfish appeared to be using an “optic (光学的) flow mechanism” based on the visual density of their environment. They kept track of how frequently the vertical pattern switched between black and white to estimate how far they had traveled. The study suggests that different optic flow mechanisms are used by mammals, including humans, based on angular (有角度的) motion of visual features. The study implies that the use of visually based distance information could have emerged early in the evolutionary timeline.

“This study is novel because, despite knowing that fish respond to geometric information regarding direction and distance, we don’t know how they estimate distances,” Professor Colin Lever, although not involved in the study, said, “it’s exciting to explore fish spatial mapping because fish navigation evolved earlier and better than most mammals.”

1. Why did Dr. Adelaide Sibeaux conduct the study on goldfish?

A．To test the accuracy of goldfish’s internal GPS.

B．To create an advanced navigation system for humans

C．To uncover how an inbuilt GPS helps calculate distances.

D．To explore the relationships between goldfish and humans

2. What can we learn about the experiment?

A．People gestured the goldfish throughout the experiment

B．The tank was decorated with colorful background patterns

C．Goldfish tended to underestimate distances with horizontal stripes.

D．The change in the tank setting led to the goldfish's incorrect judgment.

3. It can be concluded from the fourth paragraph that ____________.

A．optic flow mechanism is unique to humans

B．mammals developed flow mechanism long before goldfish

C．goldfish evaluated the distance with multidimensional visual information

D．visual density of the environment strengthened the locating ability of goldfish

4. What attitude does Professor Colin hold towards the study?

A．Neutral.

B．Ambiguous.

C．Disapproving.

D．Favorable.