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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| A．Language study. | B．Environmental conservation. |
| C．Public education. | D．Intercultural communication. |
2 . It’s often said that we human beings can dream in a foreign language. Could dreaming in a foreign language improve our memory? Does dreaming in a foreign language mean we are making progress in learning that language?
Before we look at multilingual (多语言) dreams, first we need to look at sleep. The connection between sleep and language can be applied to how we learn any language, including our native language. Even adults still learn about one new word every two days in their first language. But, if we are going to remember that new word better, what matters is that we need to connect it with what we have learned. And in order to do that, we “need to have some sleep”, says Gareth Gaskell, a professor at the University of York.
It’s during sleep that the integration (整合) of old and new knowledge happens. At might, one part of our brain — the hippocampus — takes whatever new information it receives during the day and passes it on to other parts of the brain to be stored. The role that dreams play in this night-time learning process is still being studied, but “it’s entirely possible that during multilingual dreams, the brain is trying to connect the two languages”, says Marc, a researcher at a university in Bern, Switzerland.
So having multilingual dreams could mean that our brain is trying to remember a new word or phrase. However, it could also have an emotional (情感) significance. Danuta, a professor of psycholinguistics at the University of Silesia in Poland, suggests that multilingual dreams can express “fears or wishes” around learning a foreign language, including the wish to be a local speaker or to be accepted within a certain community.
We clearly still have a lot to learn about multilingual dreams, but one thing seems certain: if you’re trying to learn a new language, you can sleep on it.
1. Why does the author mention questions in paragraph 1?| A．To compare different ideas. | B．To introduce the main topic. |
| C．To present different types of dreams. | D．To discuss the human language ability. |
| A．The other new words. | B．The native language. |
| C．The gained knowledge. | D．The speaking practice. |
| A．They may influence people’s sleep quality. | B．They can reflect language-learning feelings. |
| C．They are the best option to learn a language. | D．They help to clear up the useless information. |
| A．A novel. | B．A diary. | C．A guidebook. | D．A magazine. |
3 . Live-stream marketing: A rural rags-to-riches story?
For many years, quality agricultural products were unable to sell in faraway provinces.
In Yunnan Province, southwest China, live-stream marketing is currently the most popular way of pushing local products to consumers across the country.
| A．There arises a question. |
| B．Government policies and guidance should follow up. |
| C．The expansion of 5G technology is a vital contribution. |
| D．The biggest barrier is lack of efficient marketing channels. |
| E．China has a tradition of intensive cultivation and a huge rural population. |
| F．But we should establish a complete supply chain based on strict standards. |
| G．Once back they can introduce more digitally advanced approaches to agricultural management. |
4 . If you look at the dynamic “Global Temperatures” map on NASA’s website, you can see the historic temperature change over time across the planet as the timeline goes from 1880 to the modern day. By 2019, the entire planet is in red, orange, and yellow colors, indicating temperatures much higher than the historical average in every country and human inhabitance.
If the timeline went to 2023, the map would look even worse. That’s because the summer of 2023 was the hottest ever, according to ocean monitors. July was the hottest month in recorded history. Next July could be worse. Unless we do something quickly, we face dealing with more and more dangerous and expensive natural disasters in the future.
Forest fires sent smoke from Canada across the North American continent, causing New York City to have the worst air quality in its recorded history. Heavy rainstorms fell on Vermont and the Northeastern United States in just a couple of days in the middle of July, which exceeded the amount that area would usually receive in two months and caused extreme damage to homes and businesses. Around the same time, flash flooding in Bucks County, Pennsylvania — north of Philadelphia — killed nearly a dozen people.
Erich Fischer, a researcher specializing in climate studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, is concerned that natural disasters could get much worse in the future—and in ways we cannot predict. He called for a “strike for climate justice,” which actually took place on Sept. 15, 2023. “The strategy needs to be twofold (双重的) . We need to decrease carbon emissions as much as realistically possible. That is already happening with people using electric cars and other green technologies. At the same time, we also need to find ways to predict the risk of natural disasters ahead of time,” said Erich Fischer.
1. Why does the writer mention the data on NASA’s website in paragraph 1?| A．To explain a concept. | B．To introduce a topic. |
| C．To provide a solution. | D．To make a prediction. |
| A．The severity of natural disasters. | B．The worst air quality in New York City. |
| C．The extreme damage by flash flooding. | D．The cause of the forests fires in Canada. |
| A．He advocated a twofold strategy. |
| B．He suggested forbidding carbon emissions. |
| C．He required people to use more electric cars. |
| D．He emphasized the awareness of climate changes. |
| A．The Hottest Month in History | B．Natural Disasters in the World |
| C．Extreme Weather Could Get Worse | D．Green Technology Would be Needed |
5 . Phonetic (语音) information—the smallest sound elements of speech - is considered by researchers to be the basis of language. Babies are thought to learn these small sound elements and add them together to make words. But a new study suggests that phonetic information is learnt too late and slowly for this to be the case. Instead, rhythmic (有韵律的) speech helps babies learn language and is effective even in the first few months of life.
Researchers from the Trinity College Dublin investigated babies’ ability to process phonetic information during their first year. Their study, published in the journal Nature Communications. found that phonetic information wasn’t successfully encoded (编码) until seven months old, and did not occur very often at 11 months old when babies began to say their first words. From then individual speech sounds are still added in very slowly—too slowly to form the basis of language.
The researchers recorded patterns of brain activity in 50 babies at four, seven, and eleven months old as they watched a video of a primary school teacher singing 18 nursery rhymes (童谣) to a baby. They found that phonetic encoding in babies appeared inchmeal over the first year of life, beginning with labial sounds (e.g. “d” for “daddy”) and nasal sounds (e.g. “m” for “mummy”), with the “read out” progressively looking more like that of adults.
“The reason why we use nursery rhymes is because that is the best way for babies to discover and connect sounds with language, so we are teaching them how to speak,” said Giovanni Di Liberto, lead author of the study at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. “Parents should talk and sing to their babies as much as possible or use baby-directed speech because it will make a difference to language outcome,” she added.
1. What should babies learn in the first few months of life according to the new study?| A．Small sound elements | B．Rhythmic information. |
| C．Phonetic information. | D．Individual words. |
| A．The poor phonetic encoding in babies. | B．The advantages of phonetic information. |
| C．The babies’ great ability to learn language. | D．The babies’ growing process in the first year. |
| A．Gradually. | B．Suddenly. | C．Successfully. | D．Occasionally. |
| A．When Babies Are Able to Say Their First Words |
| B．How Phonetic Information Changes Over Time |
| C．Why Phonetic Is Better Than Rhythmic for Babies |
| D．Why Babies Need Nursery Rhymes for Language Mastery |
6 . Some of the oldest living things on our remarkable planet are trees. The record holders are bristlecone pines (狐尾松) of the western United States, quite a few of which are known to be more than 3,000 years old. One individual, discovered in 2012, is estimated to be more than 5,060 years old, making it the oldest known non-clonal tree in the world!
So, how do trees survive for thousands of years?
The other part of the answer has to do with how trees age. In fact, there is quite a debate about whether ancient trees can be considered “immortal (永生的)”. That is, will such trees ever die if they are not killed by an outside force? We may never know the answer to that, but, at the very least,
Older trees benefit greatly from having bodies made mostly of dead woody tissue. In fact, an old tree might be as much as 95 percent dead tissue! Given that it isn’t alive, wood does not require metabolic (新陈代谢的) activity to maintain it,
| A．so an old tree doesn’t really need to do much to keep living |
| B．This is a question that has something to do with the good luck of trees |
| C．However, bristlecones are certainly not alone in terms of the oldest creatures |
| D．This is a fascinating question for biologists that does not yet have a settled answer |
| E．What’s more, some ancient trees have superior chemical defenses against pests and diseases |
| F．which means that trees can survive everywhere without being limited by external and internal conditions |
| G．we know that ancient trees age in ways that are dramatically different from the ways that most animals and even other plants age |
7 . Imagine you need milk, so you go to the grocery store to pick some up, only to find there are dozens of options. These days, you have to make a decision on not only the percentage of fat you want, but also what source you want your milk to be coming from: cows, soybeans... You have no idea what milk to pick. There are so many choices that you are confused.
This phenomenon is known as the paradox (悖论) of choice and it is becoming a concern in the modern world, where more and more options are becoming easily available to us. While we might believe that being presented with multiple options actually makes it easier to choose one that we are happy with, and thus increases consumer satisfaction, having too many options actually requires more effort to make a decision and can leave us feeling unsatisfied with our choice.
The idea was popularized by American psychologist Barry Schwartz when he published his book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. Schwartz, who has long studied the ways in which economics and psychology intersect (交叉), became interested in seeing the way that choices were affecting the happiness of citizens in Western societies. He identified that the range of choices that we have available to us these days is far greater than that people had in the past; however, consumer satisfaction has not increased as much as traditional economics theories might expect.
Schwartz identified that the paradox of choice carries the most consequence for people that are maximizers. Maximizers, unlike satisficers, are concerned with making the best choice instead of simply making a choice that they are happy with. When there are many options available to maximizers, it becomes harder for them to determine which is the best, which can cause them to feel a great deal of regret after they have made a choice.
Instead of believing that freedom of choice is unlimited, Schwartz advocates that the role of psychology and behavioral economics should be to find the kind of limitations on freedom that can lead to the greatest level of happiness within society.
1. What’s the author’s purpose in mentioning buying milk in paragraph 1?| A．To lead in the topic. |
| B．To draw a conclusion. |
| C．To show that we have more choices when shopping. |
| D．To indicate that people pay greater attention to health when shopping. |
| A．More options mean less satisfaction. |
| B．Consumer satisfaction has greatly increased. |
| C．People are happy with more choices. |
| D．Modern people are happier than their ancestors. |
| A．They aim for the very best. | B．They tend to follow their feelings. |
| C．They often regret their decisions. | D．They have trouble making a decision. |
| A．Hold on to their beliefs. | B．Accept their own behavior. |
| C．Give up freedom. | D．Limit their own choices. |
8 . The Ancient Chinese Game of Go
Weiqi, known in English as Go, is one of the four skills that an ancient Chinese intellectual (知识分子) could possess. It has a history of well over 4,000 years in China and remains popular. Culturally, this activity is really “more than just a game”.
History books have recorded quite a number of ardent Go fans from each dynasty. Today, there are still many in China, Japan and South Korea. Wu Yulin, a professional, explains its attraction, “In Go, you can learn the dialectics (辩证法) and military stratagems.
In fact, all of our minds can benefit from playing Go, which officially has the capacity to make you smarter. Research has shown that children who play Go have the potential for greater intelligence.
Today, the number of Go fans in China is at 36 million and rising. Some universities like Beijing University are even offering courses in Go to undergraduates.
| A．There’s always loss and gain. |
| B．It’s a war between equal powers. |
| C．That is because it motivates both the right and left sides of the brain. |
| D．You can also cultivate your character and improve your intelligence. |
| E．But more often, ancient Chinese played Go to cultivate their mind and character. |
| F．The influence of Go on Chinese society is quite evident in literature works. |
| G．Many people also love this ancient game for the Chinese philosophy it contains. |
9 . The Mona Lisa is the famous Leonardo da Vinci painting of a woman with a mysterious smile. This week, the painting gave up a secret.
Scientists using X-rays to examine the chemical structure of a small part of the painting discovered a technique Leonardo used in the work. An oil paint used for it was a special, new chemical mixture, which suggests that the Italian artist was in an experimental mood when he worked on the painting in the 16th century.
“He loved to experiment, and each of his paintings is completely different technically,”said Victor Gonzalez, a chemist who has studied the chemical element (成分) of several works by Leonardo and other artists. The researchers found a rare lead compound (铅化合物) — plumbonacrite, in Leonardo’s first layer of paint. The discovery proved that da Vinci most likely used lead oxide to thicken and help dry his paint. The paint in the study is about the thickness of a human hair, lying in the top right area of the painting.
The scientists looked into its atomic structure using X-rays, moving particles at the speed of light, permitting researchers to look deeper into the paint structure. “ Plumbonacrite is really a fingerprint of his recipe, as it’s the first time we can chemically confirm it,” Gonzalez said.
Dutch artist Rembrandt may have used a similar mixture when he was painting in the 17th century. Gonzalez and other researchers have found plumbonacrite in his work, too. Leonardo is thought to have put lead oxide powder, which has an orange color, in the oil to make it thicker and dry faster. “What you will get is an oil that has a very nice golden color,” Gonzalez said. “It flows more like honey.”
But the Mona Lisa — said by the Louvre to be a portrait (肖像) of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine silk businessman — and additional works by Leonardo still have other secrets to tell. “What we are saying is just a little brick in the knowledge,” Gonzalez said.
1. What’s the new discovery about the Mona Lisa?| A．A new explanation of the secret smile. |
| B．A new chemical element used in the painting. |
| C．The secret of the woman in the painting. |
| D．The structure of the paint da Vinci used. |
| A．Open secret. | B．Widespread use. | C．Hidden element. | D．Long-term dream. |
| A．It helps to make many things into paints. |
| B．It helps to make paints easy to deal with. |
| C．It helps to keep the paintings last long. |
| D．It helps to make paintings rich in color. |
| A．It has more secrets to tell the world. |
| B．It’s the portrait of a silk businessman. |
| C．It’s well kept in bricks in the Louvre. |
| D．It has a mixture of different art styles. |
10 . Imagine this. You need an image of a balloon for a work presentation and turn to an AI text-to- image generator, like Midjourney or DALL-E, to create a suitable image. You enter the prompt (提示词) “red balloon against a blue sky” but the generator returns an image of an egg instead.
What’s going on? The generator you’re using may have been “poisoned”. What does this mean? Text-to-image generators work by being trained on large datasets that include millions or billions of images. Some of the generators have been trained by indiscriminately scraping online images, many of which may be under copyright. This has led to many copyright infringement (侵害) cases where artists have accused big tech companies of stealing and profiting from their work.
This is also where the idea of “poison” comes in. Researchers who want to empower individual artists have recently created a tool named “Nightshade” to fight back against unauthorised image scraping. The tool works by slightly altering an image’s pixels (像素) in a way that confuses the computer vision system but leaves the image unaltered to a human’s eyes. If an organization then scrapes one of these images to train a future AI model, its data pool becomes “poisoned”. This can result in mistaken learning, which makes the generator return unintended results. As in our earlier example, a balloon might become an egg.
The higher the number of “poisoned” images in the training data, the greater the impact. Because of how generative AI works, the damage from “poisoned” images also affects related prompt keywords. For example, if a “poisoned” image of a Picasso work is used in training data, prompt results for masterpieces from other artists can also be affected.
Possibly, tools like Nightshade can be abused by some users to intentionally upload “poisoned” images in order to confuse AI generators. But the Nightshade’s developer hopes the tool will make big tech companies more respectful of copyright. It does challenge a common belief among computer scientists that data found online can be used for any purpose they see fit.
Human rights activists, for example, have been concerned for some time about the indiscriminate use of machine vision in wider society. This concern is particularly serious concerning facial recognition. There is a clear connection between facial recognition cases and data poisoning, as both relate to larger questions around technological governance. It may be better to see data poisoning as an innovative solution to the denial of some fundamental human rights.
1. The underlined word “scraping” (para. 2) is closest in meaning to ____.| A．facilitating | B．collecting | C．damaging | D．polishing |
| A．increase the accuracy of returned information |
| B．cause users to forget the prompt key words |
| C．interfere with the training of generative AI |
| D．discriminate against great masterpieces |
| A．Data poisoning is somehow justified to direct attention to human rights. |
| B．Computer scientists has learned to respect the copyright of most artists. |
| C．Nightshade is being abused by human rights activists to recognize faces. |
| D．The issue of technological governance has aroused the lawyers’ interest. |
| A．Data Poisoning: Government Empowering Citizens to Protect Themselves |
| B．Data Poisoning: Addressing Facial Recognition Issues Among Artists |
| C．Data Poisoning: Risks and Rewards of Generative AI Data Training |
| D．Data Poisoning: Restricting Innovation or Empowering Artists |
