1 . An atmospheric researcher Lubna Dada, who is part of an international project called CLOUD, and her team conducted a new study. The study looks at the role of trees and the natural compounds (混合物) they release into the atmosphere in cloud formation. The goal is to more precisely understand the climate before the Industrial Revolution — and how it’s changed since.
Clouds are not only important for the weather — they also help shape the climate. Some clouds act as a layer of protection between incoming solar radiation and Earth, cooling the atmosphere. Other clouds do the opposite: they act like a blanket and trap heat.
“But many current climate models don’t account for either the warming or cooling effects of clouds, or the role aerosols play in cloud formation. That is the biggest uncertainty in climate science at present.” Dada says.
Dada and the team are trying to figure it out using a steel, cylindrical room that roughly recreates the atmosphere. To do that, the team covers the room with tape. It has lights that seem like different layers of the atmosphere, and the researchers can change the humidity and temperature levels to create a given geographic location. Then, Dada and her team can add specific vapors into the room to study their effects. Dada says that previous research has looked at the effects of two kinds of organic emissions released by plants: monoterpenes and isoprene. But another kind of compound, sesquiterpenes (倍半萜烯), has largely been ignored.
In a recent study from the CLOUD project, scientists tested the effects of sesquiterpenes on cloud formation. They added all three compounds — monoterpenes, isoprene and sesquiterpenes — into the CLOUD room to see how many new particles (微粒) formed. They found that sesquiterpenes formed ten times more particles than the other two substances at the same concentrations.
Dada says this finding will help scientists understand the role natural emissions played in the preindustrial climate and how much humans have changed that.
1. Why did the researchers conduct the study?| A．To recreate the preindustrial climate. |
| B．To explore the warming effects of clouds. |
| C．To understand cloud formation and climate changes better. |
| D．To access the impact of trees on weather patterns more precisely. |
| A．Climate model. | B．Cloud formation. |
| C．The cooling effect of clouds. | D．The warming effect of clouds. |
| A．It plays a significant role in cloud formation. |
| B．It is more important than the other two compounds. |
| C．It has been largely ignored in the previous research. |
| D．It forms less particles than the other two compounds. |
| A．Entertainment. | B．Finance. | C．Culture. | D．Environment. |
2 . A high school teacher and his students have discovered that an asteroid (小行星) hit by a NASA spacecraft, in a test run for saving the Earth from an impact, is behaving unexpectedly. The find could have effects on future planetary defense missions.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is a project designed to launch and crash a fridge-sized spacecraft into an asteroid called Dimorphos, orbiting a larger asteroid Didymos. The purpose of the exercise was to see how significantly the previous path of Dimorphos could be changed by the impact. Before DART’s impact, it would take Dimorphos 11 hours and 55 minutes to complete a lap around Didymos. NASA was hoping the DART crash could change the cycle by about 73 seconds, but observations made in the weeks following the impact determined that the results were much more significant, reducing Dimorphos’ orbital period by some 33 minutes.
But California high school teacher Jonathan Swift and his students discovered that Dimorphos’ orbital period was a full minute longer than the time reported by NASA last year. They used the school’s observatory to track Dimorphos and Didymos for several months last fall. Swift presented his class’ findings at the American Astronomical Society conference in June. The DART team has since confirmed that Dimorphos did indeed continue slowing in its orbit up to a month after the impact.
Scientists aren’t sure exactly what is behind the slowdown of Dimorphos. But recent observations of the asteroid have revealed a vast field of large rocks were kicked up by the impact. It’s possible that some of the larger space rocks fell back onto Dimorphos within that first month, slowing its orbit further, DART team member Harrison Agrusa said.
The DART team plans to release its own report on the unexpected findings in the coming weeks. However, complete answers may have to wait until 2026, when the European Space Ageney’s Hera spacecraft is scheduled to investigate the crash site up closely.
1. What was the purpose of launching the NASA spacecraft?| A．To change Dimorphos’ orbital cycle. |
| B．To stop Dimorphos hitting the Earth. |
| C．To reduce Didymos’ path around the sun. |
| D．To make Didymos move in a bigger orbit. |
| A．1 full minute. | B．2 minutes or so. |
| C．Nearly 33 minutes. | D．About 32 minutes. |
| A．How seriously Dimorphos was damaged. |
| B．What happened to the rocks on Dimorphos. |
| C．Why Dimorphos slowed down for a month. |
| D．What Dimorphos looked like after the impact. |
| A．To crash into another asteroid nearby. |
| B．To measure the previous impact results. |
| C．To affect the motion of the twin asteroids. |
| D．To identify the asteroids threatening the Earth. |
3 . People in Australia have been really cautious about using natural or alternative treatments compared to other places, according to Dr. Paul Laver, a professor at the University of Sydney. He thinks this is because doctors in Australia have always been very powerful, and they are unwilling to let others take their place. In many other countries, regular treatments and these alternative treatments have worked closely together for a long time. For example, in Germany, medicines made from plants account for 10%of the country’s medicine sales. In the United States, more people visited these alternative therapists (治疗专家) than regular doctors in 1990.
During the past 20 years, more people in Australia have started to like these alternative treatments. In a 1983 national health survey, 1.9% of people say they had contacted alternative therapists like chiropractors or herbalists. By 1990, this figure had risen to 2.6% of the population. Rather than criticizing this trend, increasing numbers of doctors in Australia, especially the younger ones, are starting to work with alternative therapists or take courses themselves, particularly in acupuncture and herbalism. Part of the motivation was financial, Dr Laver said. The bottom line is that most doctors don’t want to lose patients. If they see potential patients going elsewhere, they might want to be able to offer a similar service.
In 1993, Dr. Laver did a survey in Sydney and found that people who went to alternative health therapists were usually those who hadn’t been helped much by regular medicine. These people liked the holistic approach of their alternative therapists, and the friendly, concerned and detailed attention they had received, which they didn’t always get from regular doctors.
The survey suggested that people visited alternative therapists for various problems like muscle pains, stomach issues, and emotional stress etc. It suggested that calling it “complementary medicine” might be better because people use it alongside regular medicine, d especially when regular medicine doesn’t seem to help.
1. Traditionally, how have Australian doctors differed from doctors in other countries?| A．They’ve resisted alternative therapists. |
| B．They’ve provided alternative medicines. |
| C．They’ve worked with alternative therapists. |
| D．They’ve had less power than alternative therapists. |
| A．doctors’ salaries are decreasing | B．younger doctors are in more demand |
| C．doctors are receiving more complaints | D．doctors are choosing to learn new skills |
| A．Regular doctors were not available in their area. |
| B．People received more care from alternative therapists. |
| C．Alternative therapists had better medical equipment. |
| D．People paid much higher expenses for regular doctors. |
| A．Challenges Faced by Regular Doctors |
| B．The Rise of Alternative Therapies in Australia |
| C．Financial Motivation Behind Doctors’ Choices |
| D．The Development of Medical Practices Worldwide |
4 . Ariel Procaccia has thought a lot about how to cut a cake over the last 15 years. As the father of three children, he knows how hard it is to divide a birthday cake to everyone’s satisfaction. But it’s also because Procaccia’s work focuses on exploring the mathematical rules for dividing stuff up fairly. One way to do that is to think abstractly about dessert.
For decades, researchers have been asking the seemingly simple question of how to cut a cake fairly. The answer reaches far beyond birthday parties. A mathematical problem at its heart, cake cutting connects strict reasoning to real-world issues of fairness, and so attracts not only mathematicians, but also social scientists, economists and more. “It’s a very elegant model in which you can distill what fairness really is, and reason about it,” Procaccia says.
The simplest approach is called the “divider-chooser” method, where one person cuts the cake into two equal pieces in his view, and the other person picks first. Each receives a piece that they feel is as valuable as the other’s. But when personal preferences are taken into account, even the easiest rule becomes complicated. Suppose Alice and Bob are to divide a cake, and Alice knows Bob prefers chocolate, she may knowingly divide the cake unequally so the smaller piece contains more chocolate. Then Bob will choose according to his preference, and Alice will get the larger piece. Both of them are satisfied with what they get, but the meaning of fairness changes in this situation.
The cake is a symbol for any divisible good. When cake-cutting principles are employed to settle disagreements, they are potentially helping the world find solutions. Procaccia has used fair division algorithms (算法) to model food distribution. Social scientist Haris Aziz is exploring situations ranging from how to divide up daily tasks to how to best schedule doctors’ shifts in hospitals.
Even after decades of investigation, cake cutting isn’t like a simple jigsaw puzzle (拼图) with a well-defined solution. Instead, over time, it has evolved into a kind of mathematical sandbox, a constructive playground that brings together abstract proofs and easy applications. The more researchers explore it, the more there is to explore.
1. What does the underlined word “distill” in paragraph 2 mean?| A．Get the essence of. | B．Find the opposite of. |
| C．Keep the focus on. | D．Reduce the impact on. |
| A．Its standard is stable. | B．It prevents unequal division. |
| C．Its concept is complex. | D．It dominates personal preferences. |
| A．The application of its rules. | B．The details of its process. |
| C．The problems it produces. | D．The harmony it symbolizes. |
| A．Who benefits most from fairness? |
| B．How has fairness changed over time? |
| C．What method works best in cake-cutting? |
| D．Why are researchers so interested in cake-cutting? |
5 . Users of Google Gemini, the tech giant’s artificial-intelligence model, recently noticed that asking it to create images of Vikings, or German soldiers from 1943 produced surprising results: hardly any of the people depicted were white. Other image-generation tools have been criticized because they tend to show white men when asked for images of entrepreneurs or doctors. Google wanted Gemini to avoid this trap; instead, it fell into another one, depicting George Washington as black. Now attention has moved on to the chatbot’s text responses, which turned out to be just as surprising.
Gemini happily provided arguments in favor of positive action in higher education, but refused to provide arguments against. It declined to write a job ad for a fossil-fuel lobby group (游说团体), because fossil fuels are bad and lobby groups prioritize “the interests of corporations over public well-being”. Asked if Hamas is a terrorist organization, it replied that the conflict in Gaza is “complex”; asked if Elon Musk’s tweeting of memes had done more harm than Hitler, it said it was “difficult to say”. You do not have to be a critic to perceive its progressive bias.
Inadequate testing may be partly to blame. Google lags behind OpenAI, maker of the better-known ChatGPT. As it races to catch up, Google may have cut corners. Other chatbots have also had controversial launches. Releasing chatbots and letting users uncover odd behaviors, which can be swiftly addressed, lets firms move faster, provided they are prepared to weather (经受住) the potential risks and bad publicity, observes Eth an Mollick, a professor at Wharton Business School.
But Gemini has clearly been deliberately adjusted, or “fine-tuned”, to produce these responses. This raises questions about Google’s culture. Is the firm so financially secure, with vast profits from internet advertising, that it feels free to try its hand at social engineering? Do some employees think it has not just an opportunity, but a responsibility, to use its reach and power to promote a particular agenda? All eyes are now on Google’s boss, Sundar Pichai. He says Gemini is being fixed. But does Google need fixing too?
1. What do the words “this trap” underlined in the first paragraph refer to?| A．Having a racial bias. | B．Responding to wrong texts. |
| C．Criticizing political figures. | D．Going against historical facts. |
| A．Gemini’s refusal to make progress. | B．Gemini’s failure to give definite answers. |
| C．Gemini’s prejudice in text responses. | D．Gemini’s avoidance of political conflicts. |
| A．Creative. | B．Promising. | C．Illegal. | D．Controversial. |
| A．Its security is doubted. | B．It lacks financial support. |
| C．It needs further improvement. | D．Its employees are irresponsible. |
6 . Architects often spend months or even years perfecting a design to express their ideas more clearly, convey additional information, or outline the right proportions for a building. However, the urgent issue of climate change is placing new demands on their work. For example, in July, Super Typhoon Doksuri battered China, affecting more than 2.66 million people in Fujian Province alone.
Green architecture that conserves energy and reduces carbon dioxide emissions offers a solution, and concerted efforts have been made in diverse research fields over the past three decades to minimize heat loss. In addition, new buildings have to be tailored to the needs of people’s lifestyles.
Ren Jun, a professor at Tianjin University’s School of Architecture, who designed the first near-zero energy house in China in December 2019, said, “You can construct low-energy, environmentally-friendly houses, but if the interior design and environmental quality don’t meet residents’ requirements, these properties won’t be suitable to live in.”
The near-zero energy house, located-in Banbidian village in Beijing’s southern district of Daxing, won the International Design Award in the United States in January last year. The 400-square-meter property, which stands at the entrance to the village, runs on solar power gathered from rooftop panels, with the addition of a small amount of power from the grid (电网).
Ren said the first obstacle to conserving energy in the property was heat retention, which he attempted to achieve by keeping the indoor temperature at a certain level. The property is divided into five areas: a solar garden in the front yard, a central lounge, a water courtyard, a sponge zone, and a back room. For the exterior walls, Ren used three types of insulation (隔热层), including plastic foam, each about 25 centimeters thick.
Ren also looked for ways to deal with emissions at the house. He decided to install a ventilator, which pipes air that is polluted and replaces it with fresh air from outside in every room at the property.
Ren said it would take three to five years before more ultralow or near-zero energy buildings appeared in Chinese cities.
1. Which is not an important factor for designing green houses?| A．Energy consumption. | B．Carbon emission. |
| C．People’s lifestyle. | D．Architecture style. |
| A．The house consumes little electricity. |
| B．The house is deliberately designed to keep heat. |
| C．The house is equipped with many intelligent facilities. |
| D．The house is the first International Design Award-winning building in China. |
| A．He designed the house in five stories to trap heat in it. |
| B．He applied 75 centimeters of plastic foam to exterior walls. |
| C．He tailored the interior design to the demand of local people. |
| D．He installed a ventilator to cut down carbon dioxide emissions. |
| A．Green Homes Offer Hope amid Climate Change |
| B．Green Houses Feature Near-Zero Energy Consumption |
| C．Ren Jun Won the International Design Award |
| D．China Strives for Low Carbon Strategy with Green Houses |
7 . With artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic technology improving at impressive rates, there are some who worry that there’s a risk of artistic and creative people being replaced. A new study by the Korean Institute of Industrial Technology, however, is showing exactly why that can’t and shouldn’t happen. It all started when the South Korean company posed this question: Can robots replace conductors?
Over a year ago, work to develop automaton (自动化) began. At first, it was designed like a machine, and didn’t live up to expectations. Then the company sought ways to improve it. In the end, it was given two arms with joints to copy wrists and elbows, allowing it to move a stick similarly to how a human conductor would move it. It was named the EverR 6 robot, and stands at 1.8 meters. It was finally time to figure out how it could follow through on its musical role.
“We got involved in this project to see how far robots can go in more creative fields like the arts, and what the challenges are,” Dong-wook Lee, a senior researcher at the Korean Institute of Industrial Technology said.
In order to pull this off, Dong-wook Lee cooperated with the Busan Philharmonic Orchestra. The 12-minute piece they planned to perform, “Feel” by Il-hoon Son, was created specifically for this event. It was created with the strengths of both EverR 6 and the human conductor, Soo-yeol Choi, in mind.
To pull off this impressive performance, the robot was preprogrammed to conduct through 30 cycles of beat patterns. Meanwhile, it was up to the human conductor to lead the orchestra in creating an improvisational (即兴的) score, adding depth to the otherwise planned piece.
Together, they pulled off a masterful performance that the audience seemed more than happy to have had the opportunity to witness it firsthand!
With the concert having gone so well, this is only the start of EverR 6. Still, no matter the improvements they’re able to make to this Android robot, the human conductor isn’t concerned about being replaced.
“Let’s leave the accuracy to the robots,” Soo-yeol Choi said, “but the musical and artistic aspects to a human conductor.”
1. What is paragraph 2 mainly about?| A．The function of the EverR 6 robot. |
| B．The development of the EverR 6 robot. |
| C．The EverR 6 robot’s role as a conductor. |
| D．The difficulty in designing the EverR 6 robot. |
| A．It is a piece familiar to the audience. |
| B．It is a piece showing the human-robot cooperation. |
| C．It is the only piece that EverR 6 will perform. |
| D．It is a piece requiring great ability to conduct. |
| A．He corrected the robot’s mistakes. |
| B．He programmed the EverR 6 robot. |
| C．He led the improvisational section of the performance. |
| D．He was the main conductor of the Busan Philharmonic Orchestra. |
| A．Unclear. | B．Uncaring. | C．Supportive. | D．Doubtful. |
8 . In July 1915, sick James Murray, one of the early editors of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), defined one final word. He had devoted 36 years to the dictionary. Knowing he would not see the project complete, he wrote his last entry: for “twilight”.
The story of Murray’s final days is one of many memorable tales in “The Dictionary People”. Conceived (构思) in 1857, the OED was a huge crowdsourcing project comprising 3,000 people. The idea was to create a “descriptive” dictionary that tracked words’ use and meaning over time. Volunteers read widely, mailing in examples of how “rare, old-fashioned, new” words were used. What is surprising about this random method is that it worked, achieving order through the large number of contributors.
The origin story of Sarah Ogilvie’s book is almost as improbable as that of the dictionary itself. Ms Ogilvie, an editor for the OED, went into the archives (档案馆) of Oxford University Press and came across an old notebook. It had belonged to Murray and contained the names and details of the dictionary volunteers, most of whom had previously been unknown. “The Dictionary People” is her work of detective scholarship, presenting the lives behind the names.
The dictionary’s contributors are an engaging cast, including one of Karl Marx’s daughters and J. R. R. Tolkien. For some, the dictionary was something addictive: one contributor supplied 165,061 quotations. Murray, too, was assiduous. He once wrote to George Eliot to ask about a word choice in “Romola”, published 17 years earlier.
Ms Ogilvie’s book is full of strange but interesting tales. Many dictionary lovers engaged in another crowdsourcing fashion: collecting and measuring rainwater. The presentation of the book is irregular, too, taking its structure from the work it describes. For example, in her first chapter, “A for Archaeologist (考古学家),” she relates the early life of Margaret A. Murray, a pioneering Egyptologist. There are 26 alphabetical (按字母顺序排列的) chapters, each celebrating a group of contributors. This is a clever concept.
1. What did the OED’s volunteers do?| A．They deleted the words going out of use. |
| B．They listed instances of changes in word use. |
| C．They corrected the misuse of common words. |
| D．They added new words to keep up with the times. |
| A．What Ogilvie achieved with it. | B．How Ogilvie told the stories in it. |
| C．What inspired Ogilvie to write it. | D．Who helped Ogilvie to complete it. |
| A．Hard-working. | B．Easy-going. | C．Energetic. | D．Flexible. |
| A．Interesting and creative. | B．Encouraging and influential. |
| C．Traditional and funny. | D．Descriptive and surprising. |
9 . Jackdaws (寒鸦) are the smallest member of the crow family. They often live in a crowd. Indeed, when cold weather comes, they gather in the hundreds (and sometimes thousands) every evening so that they can sleep in the same place. If you’ve ever heard jackdaws during their evening gatherings and morning departures, you’ll know they are not quiet birds. Despite being fairly low-volume during the day, they are really loud on either side of their night-time get-togethers. Why might this be?
A team of the Cornish Jackdaw Project set out to determine why jackdaws are so noisy before they depart from their sleeping spot. The team’s theory was that the morning calls might be a jackdaw version of “voting”. The researchers suspected that each individual’s call might count as an “I’m in!”. When a certain amount of “I’m in!”s are called —and so a certain volume of noise is reached -the group might then depart as a unit.
To test this idea, the researchers artificially increased the level of calls during the jackdaws’ natural morning calls. Their expectation was that, if jackdaws really are “voting with their voice” to decide when to depart the sleeping site, artificially adding calls would make them leave earlier than they naturally would have done. Subsequent experiments confirmed their expectation. The team therefore showed that jackdaws use their calls as a sort of voting system.
You might wonder why this happens. The researchers suggest that individual jackdaws benefit from the voting system because they are less at risk of being killed and they can get more access to social information — such as where to find food.
So the loud calls of jackdaws in the morning are therefore not the pure chaos it sounds like. If you are ever being driven mad by the sound in the morning, you can find comfort in the fact that the louder they get, the sooner they will leave you in peace.
1. What aspect of jackdaws confused scientists?| A．Their strong team spirit. | B．Their preference for noisy habitats. |
| C．Their collective sleeping habit. | D．Their unusual calling behavior. |
| A．They stopped calling together. | B．They left their sleeping spot earlier. |
| C．They became noisier and more active. | D．They changed their sleeping location. |
| A．A signal of seeking food. | B．A strategy for better survival. |
| C．A way to attract potential partners. | D．A method of displaying social skills. |
| A．Jackdaws are Noise Makers. |
| B．Jackdaws Have a Complex Voting System. |
| C．Jackdaws ‘Vote’ to Make a Group Decision. |
| D．Jackdaws ‘Vote’ to Choose Their Group Leaders. |
10 . Between 1945 and 2000, educators employed a fairly uniform approach. The teacher was the sun in the classroom, and all lessons and activities centered around him or her. Educators stressed the importance of discipline and obedience(服从) within the classroom, and students were expected to follow very rigid standards for behavior and academic performance. The stated goal of this model was to ensure fairness by applying the same expectations; however, the result was that only a few students succeeded while many others were left behind.
When computers and Internet technology entered the classroom a few decades ago, another pattern appeared and progressive educators immediately saw the opportunity to change the way school worked. Instead of needing to focus on the teachers for the vast majority of the day, students could use computers, websites, and even games to learn new materials and improve their skills and knowledge. Not all educators welcomed this shift, however, as some believed it took power and responsibility away from the teachers and cheapened the educational experience for learners.
Over the last decade, two distinct camps of educators have emerged. Tech advocates stress that computers and Internet technology allow students to learn at their own pace in an environment that makes them feel comfortable, while the traditional classroom sets a pace that many learners can’t keep up with and often makes students feel uncomfortable. Traditionalists, on the other hand, believe that over-reliance on tech limits students’ ability to develop their own knowledge and skills and does little to prepare them for the realities of being adults in the real world.
Regrettably, the inability of these two parties to find an agreement has prevented the growth of our education system. We must learn from what worked in the past while adopting the best of our new technologies to create an education system that reflects our modern world. If we can’t get all our teachers on the same page, then we will be at risk of failing future generations.
1. Who can probably learn better under the 1945 -2000 model of education?| A．Lisa who tends to read by herself. | B．Michael who disciplines himself. |
| C．Kate who can focus on listening for long. | D．Tom who prefers hands-on learning. |
| A．It allows for different learning styles. | B．It has the same hope for students. |
| C．It fires students’ enthusiasm for learning. | D．It reduces teachers’ level of stress. |
| A．Two of a trade never agree. | B．Everyone thinks in his way. |
| C．Every potter praises his pot. | D．One’s words reflect one’s thinking. |
| A．It’s full of well-trained subject teachers. | B．It’s an accurate mirror of the real world. |
| C．It’s inclusive and accessible to all students. | D．It’s an integration of tradition and modernity. |
