1 . London native, Bodhana first became interested in chess to beat back boredom. Just five years old at the time, she quickly surpassed (超越) her father’s chess playing ability and began playing, and winning, in online chess games. Three years later, Bodhana made history as the top female chess player in Europe after she defeated grandmasters many times her age at the European Rapid & Blitz Chess Championship in December 2023.
Sivanandan Velayutham, Bodhana’s father, said that his daughter first became fascinated with chess at the age of five, when he brought home a second-hand chess set. Bodhana happened to see the knight (武士) lying around and it caught her interest. “I want the horse,” she told her father.
Bodhana’s father was happy to help and he taught her the chess basics that he’d learned in India. But it didn’t take long for his preschool daughter to beat him. “At the start, I might have won one or two games, but she soon knew the rules better than me and the tables quickly turned,” Velayutham said.
From the beginning, Bodhana strengthened what her father was teaching her with games and methods that she learned from YouTube videos. But when it became clear that she had a lasting interest and an unusual talent, her father enrolled in a local chess club for her, where she soon fell into the habit of practicing daily for an hour or more.
Last year, at one of Bodhana’s first ever tournament experiences, which was hosted by the English Chess Federation, she defeated a number of grandmasters.
A year later, Bodhana won the World Youth Chess Championship in the Under-8 Girls category. After defeating kids at her age, a few months later she went back to beating adults.
BBC shared Bodhana’s win at the European Blitz Chess Championship in December of 2023. There, she earned the title of best female player, scoring8.5/13, and earning widespread praise from other game masters.
1. What can be learned about Bodhana in paragraph 1?| A．Her considerate family. | B．Her amazing chess talent. |
| C．Her great luck in her career. | D．Her powerful self-study ability. |
| A．Her father’s encouragement. | B．The interesting rules of chess. |
| C．An animal-shaped chess piece. | D．Education received in preschool. |
| A．Bodhana made her father lose face. | B．Bodhana’s father collected used chess. |
| C．Bodhana was sent to India to learn chess. | D．Bodhana’s father used to live abroad. |
| A．Joining a local chess club. | B．Learning chess rules online. |
| C．Defeating a number of grandmasters. | D．Meeting with a second-hand chess set. |
2 . Top Technology Products at CES 2024
One of the world’s largest technology events, CES, is taking place this week in Las Vegas, Nevada. Here is a look at some top products presented at CES 2024.
Robot that adds walking power
WIRobotics introduced a wearable robot that provides walking assistance to users. The company’s WIM model is designed for anyone who needs an extra “push” when walking. An online description explains the robot can help individuals “walk farther, faster and healthier”. The price for such assistance is high, though, with the WIM selling for about $2,500.
Body power to charge a phone
Sports equipment developer LifeSpan introduced an exercise bicycle/desk combination that uses human power to charge phones or other devices. The Ampera bike is designed to be used with a “standing” desk table. LifeSpan says the bike can produce up to 65 watts of electricity per hour.
Home-made ice cream in 2 minutes
The ColdSnap company introduced a machine that can make single servings of ice cream in about two minutes. The machine uses small containers, called pods, just like Keurig coffeemakers. The company points out the pods for its ColdSnap machine can be kept at room temperature, saving energy costs. The machines can be taken anywhere and are simple to operate.
Smart mirror for better mental health
French health product developer Baracoda presented what it described as “the world’s first AI-powered smart mirror for mental wellness.” The company’s BMind model is built to work in any bathroom. The product was designed to use cameras and sensors to collect data on a person's movements , expressions and language. It can identify a user’s moods (心情) and sense other possible mental health issues.
1. What do the first product and the second one have in common?| A．They are expensive. | B．They are related to sports. |
| C．They can produce power. | D．They can make walking easier. |
| A．Maintain a good mood. | B．Make bathing more comfortable. |
| C．Improve your image gradually. | D．Find your mental health problems. |
| A．The robot that adds walking power. | B．The Ampera bike. |
| C．The home-made ice cream machine. | D．The AI-powered smart mirror. |
3 . Friends make life more rich and satisfying, and that’s for sure. But sometimes it can be hard to tell when you’ve crossed the line from “stranger” to “friend” with another person.
See if they have your back during hard times.
A true friend should be with you through the good, bad, and ugly. They should offer to help you however they can, and bring you back from the darkness into the light again. A true friend would never think of leaving you during a difficult time in your life.
Some people may pretend to be your friend, and they’d much rather see you fail or get into trouble.
| A．This happens occasionally, of course. |
| B．Decide if they help make you a better person. |
| C．Ask if they make time for you, even when they’re busy. |
| D．Friends won’t make it all about them in communication. |
| E．A fake friend will probably only stick around when things are going well. |
| F．Read on to find who’s a friend in your life by searching for some key factors. |
| G．Everyone makes mistakes, and your friend should be willing to accept that you’re no different. |
4 . Recently, a group of stroke (中风) survivors in British Columbia will test a new technology designed to aid their recovery, and finally restore use of their arms and hands. Participants will wear a new groundbreaking “smart glove” capable of tracking their hand and finger movements during rehabilitation (康复) exercises supervised by Dr. Janice Eng, a professor of medicine at UBC.
“With this glove, we can monitor patients’ hand and finger movements without the need for cameras. We can then analyze and fine-tune their exercise programs for the best possible results, even remotely,” says Dr. Eng.
Peyman Servati, a UBC electrical and computer engineering professor and their team at their startup, Texavie, created the smart glove for collaboration on the stroke project. Dr. Servati described in a paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence, “This is the most accurate (精确的) glove we know of that can track hand and finger movements and grasping force without requiring motion-capture cameras. Thanks to machine learning models we developed, the glove can accurately determine the angles of all finger joints and the wrist as they move. The technology is highly precise and fast, capable of detecting small stretches and pressures and predicting movement with at least 99% accuracy—matching the performance of costly motion-capture cameras.”
Unlike other products in the market, the glove is wireless (无线的) and comfortable, and can be easily washed after removing the battery. Dr. Servati and his team have developed advanced methods to produce the smart glove at a relatively low cost locally.
Dr. Servati hopes that the smart glove can enter the market soon. He adds, “Imagine being able to accurately capture hand movements and interactions with objects and have it automatically display on a screen. There are endless applications. You can type text without needing a physical keyboard, control a robot, or translate American Sign Language into written speech in real time, providing easier communication for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing.”
1. What’s the function of the “smart glove”?| A．Treating the stroke patients. | B．Keeping track of the cure. |
| C．Helping the patients to recover soon. | D．Taking control of a patient’s hands. |
| A．Its price. | B．Its advantages. | C．Its inspiration. | D．Its users. |
| A．It’s produced at quite a low price. | B．It’s light and warm. |
| C．It’s fashionable. | D．It’s easy to carry. |
| A．Unclear. | B．Careless. | C．Doubtful. | D．Positive. |
5 . Security is the condition of feeling protected against danger. A lack of security causes stress, which can negatively impact your parrots’ health. Stress often leads to their picking feather (羽毛), screaming and biting.
Since parrots are flock animals, they are born to live as part of a group. It is the most important for their security. Parrots left in isolation (孤独) without the benefit of direct contact and interaction do not develop a sense of security. They need to interact with their household flock to become comfortable and develop a sense of belonging.
The decision on where to place your bird’s cage is a critical one. Placing at least one side of the cage against a wall may help your bird feel sheltered from predators (捕食性动物). Placement opposite the entry to the room allows your bird to observe who is approaching and what is going on. Also, avoid placement in a room with a ceiling fan or directly in front of a window so they can relax and stop worrying about flying predators. Making use of cage covers or tents surrounded by lots of toys can also provide a parrot with hideaway and feel more secure when they want to sleep.
Parrots are less stressed when there are household routines that provide them with the opportunity for regular sleep hours, regular feeding and watering times and special one on one time. Since they have no means to do it for themselves, caged parrots are entirely dependent on us to provide them with clean water and a nutritious diet. They need to know they can rely on this. Daily interactions also reinforce your parrot’s sense of security. For example, greetings in the morning, goodbyes when leaving for the office, game playing when coming home, silly songs during activities such as feeding or bathing all help to reassure your bird.
The earlier in life you start to expose your bird to changes of a non-threatening nature, the less likely they will be threatened by things commonly encountered (遇到) in life such as household moves, family additions, time away from their flock (vacations, business trips). Variations in diet and toys, travel, and exposure to new people and places all help to make your bird more flexible and adaptable to change.
1. What will parrots show when under stress?| A．Undesirable behaviors. | B．Joyful reactions. |
| C．Direct contact. | D．Lost memories. |
| A．Having a safe cage. | B．Living within a flock. |
| C．Being left in isolation. | D．Interacting with owners. |
| A．Strategy. | B．Adventure. | C．Fitness. | D．Shelter. |
| A．Might is right. | B．Change is good. |
| C．Practice makes perfect. | D．Nature creates ability. |
6 . When I was young, my dad would always play music in the house. I’d dance to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Whenever he played Tritsch-Tratsch Polka, I’d grab my skipping ropes and skip to the beat. I’d request Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata when I was getting ready for bed. Listening to classical music was part of my daily routine. I eventually learned how to play the piano.
After I had my own daughter, I was excited to introduce her to classical music. However, this excitement soon led to disappointment as no matter what piece I chose, she would not listen.
Then one day in October, everything changed. My daughter came home and announced, “I want to dress up as a bumblebee (大黄蜂) for Halloween. Can you make me a costume, Mom?” Of course, I agreed to sew her a bumblebee costume. But at the same time, the bumblebee gave me an idea.
I worked all week on the costume. On Halloween night, my daughter put the costume on and looked in the mirror. Her eyes lit up.
She began making buzzing noises (嗡嗡声)— and I was ready. “Can you fly like a bumblebee?” I asked. As she began to buzz around the room, I quickly started playing Flight of the Bumblebee.
As the fast-paced violin music began, my daughter buzzed around to the music. She never stopped moving.
When the music came to its final bars, my daughter shouted, “Play it again, Mom!” So I played it again.
Since that night, classical music has become more prevalent (普遍的) in our household. Eventually, she learned how to play the violin and guitar.
I still have that costume stored away in a special box. I hope to pass it on to my grandchildren one day and see what happens.
1. What does the author intend to show by mentioning the music works in paragraph 1?| A．Their impact on her. | B．Their lasting popularity. |
| C．Her favorite classical music pieces. | D．Her dad’s vast collection of music records. |
| A．Teaching my daughter a bumblebee dance. |
| B．Reintroducing classical music to my daughter. |
| C．Making my daughter a nice bumblebee costume. |
| D．Spending a meaningful Halloween with my daughter. |
| A．Calmly. | B．Hesitantly. | C．Enthusiastically. | D．Halfheartedly. |
| A．As evidence of her sewing skills. | B．To let it play its magic on her grand-kids. |
| C．As a Halloween gift for her future grand-kids. | D．To remind her of a happy holiday experience. |
7 . The cry of the fishing cat sounds like the quack of a duck, and the rest of this midsize cat also enables it to hunt in the water. Its streamlined head is perfect for moves in the mangrove swamps (红树林沼泽地) and wetlands of South and Southeast Asia, and its pointy ears even fold (折叠) down when it jumps into deep water. The short and strong tail helps control its direction. The extra-thick coat keeps it warm and dry while swimming.
“I found fishing cats to be very ingenious,” says Tiasa Adhya, co-founder of The Fishing Cat Project, a research and conservation group based in eastern India. Her research recently showed that the animal has two methods of catching fish. In deep waters, the cat stays still on the banks for hours before jumping into the water for the kill. In shallow (浅的) waters, though, the cat actively drives the fish out of their hiding places by moving about with heavy steps.
Now the fishing cat is facing another challenge: humans. The world has lost almost 90 percent of its wetlands since the 1700s, with Asia suffering the greatest loss. These days, industrialized fish farming, pollution and other human behaviors have destroyed the living condition of freshwater fish and set fishing cats against farmers, as the hungry cats steal farmed fish, and the farmers get even with them (报复). Once found along river systems from Pakistan to Vietnam, the cats have disappeared from large areas of their range.
Researchers are testing new methods, including the commercial launch (商业化推出) of a type of native rice variety. Depending on nutrients (营养物) washed in by rains rather than on chemicals, the rice creates living space for the fishing cat and its food. The idea is that in healthy lakes where there is plenty to feed fishing cats and fishermen alike, killings will be unnecessary. “Nobody takes a loss,” Adhya explains, “when somebody takes a fish.”
1. What does the author want to explain about fishing cats in the first paragraph?| A．Why they moved to South and Southeast Asia. |
| B．What helps them swim well in the water. |
| C．What pushes them to live with ducks. |
| D．Why they love staying in the water. |
| A．Friendly. | B．Alarmed. | C．Clever. | D．Lazy. |
| A．The battle between fishing cats and humans. |
| B．The decision to protect freshwater fish. |
| C．The importance of stopping pollution. |
| D．The method of increasing wetlands. |
| A．It will do some harm to the environment. |
| B．It will create a win-win situation. |
| C．It will increase food production. |
| D．It will cost a lot of money. |
8 . In online meetings, it’s easy to keep people from talking over each other. Someone just hits the mute (静音) button. But for the most part, this ability doesn’t translate easily to recording in-person meetings. In a cafe, there are no buttons to silence the table beside you.
The ability to locate and manage sound —separating one person talking from a specific location in a crowded room, for example — has challenged researchers, especially without the help of cameras.
A team led by researchers at the University of Washington has developed a shape-changing smart speaker, which can divide rooms into speech areas and track the position s of individual speakers. With the help of the team’s deep-learning AI model, the system lets users mute certain areas or separate simultaneous (同时的) conversations, even if two people have similar voices. In a room meeting, such a system might be used instead of a central microphone, allowing better control of in-room sound.
“If I close my eyes and there are10 people talking in a room, I have no idea who’s saying what and where they are in the room exactly. That’s very intractable for the human brain to process. Until now, it’s also been hard for technology,” said co-lead author Malek Itani. “For the first time, we’re able to track the positions of different people talking in a room and separate their speech.” Early research has required using overhead cameras, projectors or special surfaces. The new system is the first to use only sound.
Instead of processing the sound in the cloud, as most smart speakers do, the new system processes all the sound locally. And even though some people’s first thoughts may be about observation, the system can be used for the opposite, the team says.
“It can actually benefit privacy, beyond what current smart speakers allow,” Itani said. “I can say, ‘Don’t record anything around my desk,’ and our system will create a bubble 3 feet around me. Nothing in this bubble would be recorded.”
1. What did the research team focus on?| A．Allowing real-time communication by AI. |
| B．Developing Al-powered language models. |
| C．Lowering the background noise of conversations. |
| D．Tracking and controlling sound in crowded settings. |
| A．Dangerous. | B．Natural. |
| C．Difficult. | D．Necessary. |
| A．Educational. | B．Influential. |
| C．Pioneering. | D．Costly. |
| A．It records nearby conversations. |
| B．It offers improved privacy protection. |
| C．It deadens the noise in a particular space. |
| D．It includes simultaneous translation service. |
9 . Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras have been working on a fascinating new way to identify people: using the ways of their breath. This idea could change how we unlock our phones and access secure places.
The key to this technology lies in the way we breathe out. Every person has a unique way of breathing air, which creates specific turbulence (涡流) patterns. The IIT Madras team, led by Prof. Mahesh Panchagnula, has developed a method of catching these unique patterns and using them as a biometric (生物特征识别的) signature, similar to how fingerprints are used today.
They conducted tests with breath samples from 94 people and found that their system could correctly confirm the person’s identity with an impressive accuracy of 97%. However, when it came to identifying someone without knowing who they were beforehand, the accuracy was around 50%. This means the technology is great at confirming if someone is who they claim to be, but it still needs improvement in recognizing people without any prior information. What makes this research exciting is its potential beyond just unlocking phones. It could play a significant role in personalized medicine. Since the way we breathe can give insights into our health, this technology could help doctors tailor treatments to individual patients more effectively.
In a similar study at Kyushu University in Japan, researchers developed an artificial system that identifies people based on how their breath smells. This system showed a high accuracy rate of 97.8% in identifying individuals. However, this method currently requires people to fast (禁食) for six hours before testing, indicating that it still needs to be improved to be more practical for everyday use.
These advancements in using human breath for identification are not just about adding another cool feature to our smartphones. They represent a significant step forward in biometric technology, which could have far-reaching implications in security, medicine, and personal technology. This research at IIT Madras and Kyushu University is pioneering a new way of using the unique patterns of our breath for identification purposes, potentially revolutionizing (变革) how we interact with technology and receive medical care.
1. What makes the new technology possible according to paragraph 2?| A．The distinctive breath smells. | B．The unique patterns of breath. |
| C．The different patterns of fingerprints. | D．The speed of taking in air. |
| A．To eat no food for 6 hours is practical in everyday life. |
| B．To eat fast is a basic requirement for a higher accuracy rate. |
| C．The system is workable and will soon appear on the market. |
| D．Breath smells affected by food can decrease the accuracy rate. |
| A．It helps raise people’s awareness of health. | B．It will let people better understand their breath. |
| C．It makes unlocking our phones more easily. | D．It will introduce new ways to develop medicine. |
| A．Should We Still Use Fingerprints to Unlock Our Phone? |
| B．Fingerprint Patterns Can Identify Breath Types Easily |
| C．A Breath “Fingerprint” Could Be Used to Unlock Your Phone |
| D．Which Unlocking Method Is More Secure, Breath or Fingerprint? |
10 . Many people changed residences and are eager to get familiar with their new neighbors. Here’s a quick refresher on making the most of neighborhood relationships.
Begin at the beginning. Building good neighborly relationships starts when you or someone else moves into the area. If a new neighbor moves in, be proactive (主动的) and welcome them to the neighborhood.
Be inclusive. If you are hosting a large party, consider extending invitations to your neighbors. During the holiday season, remember the people next door with a card, a homemade goodie, or an offer of assistance. Give without expectations.
Allow people to be human.
Accept it. If you have tried your best to resolve a conflict without success, let it go. Sadly, some people won’t like you whatever you do. And you aren’t going to enjoy some people.
| A．Maintain your space |
| B．Be the first to stop by and say hello |
| C．It’s easier to accept it and move on |
| D．Everyone has a bad day now and then |
| E．Take steps to ensure it won’t happen again |
| F．Let others know you are thinking of them |
| G．Some neighbors are more easygoing than others |
