1 . Relatives of starfish, brittle stars (海蛇尾) spend most of their time hiding under rocks in the ocean or digging in the sand. These shy marine creatures have no brain to speak of—just nerve cords running down each of their five wiggly arms, which join to form a nerve ring near their mouth.
“There’s no processing center. Each of the nerve cords can act independently. Instead of a boss, it’s like a committee. That seems to be enough to learn by association,” said lead author Julia Notar. This type of leaning involves associating different stimuli via a process called classical conditioning (条件反射).
Classical conditioning has been demonstrated in a handful of previous studies in starfish. But brittle stars and similarly brainless starfish have not been tested.
To find out if brittle stars have the ability of learning, the researchers put 16 black brittle stars in individual water tanks and used a video camera to record their behavior. Half the brittle stars were trained by dimming the lights for 30 minutes whenever the animals were fed. Every time the lights went out, the researchers would put a bit of shrimp in the tanks, placed just out of reach. The other half got just as much shrimp and also experienced a 30-minute dark period, but never at the same time—the animals were fed under lit conditions.
Whether it was light or dark, the animals spent most of their time hiding behind the filters in their tanks, only coming out at mealtime. But only the trained brittle stars learned to associate darkness with food. They didn’t need to smell or taste the shrimp to react.
Notar said the results are exciting because classical conditioning hasn’t really been shown definitively in this group of animals before. “Knowing that brittle stars can learn means they’re not just robotic scavengers (清道夫) cleaning up the ocean floor,” Notar said. “They’re potentially able to expect and avoid predators (捕食者) or expect food because they’re learning about their environment.”
1. What is paragraph 1 about?| A．The living habits of brittle stars. | B．The features of a brainless creature. |
| C．The characteristics of the starfish. | D．The definition of classical conditioning. |
| A．The hiding time in tanks. | B．The change of feeding location. |
| C．The amount of the shrimp. | D．Light conditions at mealtime. |
| A．Brittle stars can be trained to make a connection. |
| B．Brittle stars can clean up the ocean floor. |
| C．Brittle stars’ nerve cords can act independently. |
| D．Brittle stars have a sharp sense of smell. |
| A．Brainless brittle stars can act like robots. |
| B．Brittle stars might keep away from catchers. |
| C．Brittle stars are the only ocean floor cleaners. |
| D．Brittle stars are adaptable to new environment. |
2 . Pat Patterson, a pilot for 25 years, had never met anyone like the handsome young man in the wheelchair who faced him at the Medford, Oregon, airport on July 28, 1976. Mike Henderson, a quadriplegic (四肢瘫痪者), wanted flying lessons.
As a 22-year-old Coast Guardsman eight years before, Henderson had fallen off a dock and landed on a floating log, breaking two of his bones. Doctors said that he would probably never walk again, let alone fly. “Here was this doctor telling me how it was going to be,” he says, “but no one was going to limit my freedom to try.”
Henderson parked his wheelchair next to the airplane and began to climb up onto the wing. He injured his elbow on the way, and after a great struggle, finally managed to pull himself into the airplane’s pilot’s seat. In the flight office, Pat Patterson watched in disbelief. “He crawled his way up that wing!” he says. “It took him 45 minutes. When I went out, he was sitting in the pilot’s seat, bleeding from his injured elbow all over the place. When I saw him go through that much pain, I knew nothing could stop him.”
Now everything was up to the instructor and the student, and together they set about solving each problem as it arose. A small piece of carpet gave Henderson traction (摩擦力) to climb the slippery wing. A headset freed his hands from the radio microphone, and the two men developed a moving bar that enabled Henderson to operate the airplane more easily.
Three weeks and eight flying hours after the first lesson, Henderson and Patterson happily phoned Dr. Stoddard — Henderson’s physician. At the airport, as the physician looked on, Henderson quickly wheeled himself around the airplane, doing a thorough, professional ground check. With Patterson and Dr. Stoddard on board, he went through his preflight instrument check. Minutes later, engine starting, the plane rolled down the runway and took off into the gray sky.
1. When did Mike Henderson become disabled?| A．At the age of 25. | B．In 1968. |
| C．At the age of 30. | D．In 1976. |
| A．Depressed. | B．Experienced. |
| C．Determined. | D．Delighted. |
| A．How Patterson and Henderson overcame the difficulties together. |
| B．How Patterson helped Henderson overcome the difficulties. |
| C．How Patterson taught Henderson to fly with difficulty. |
| D．The difficulties Henderson faced before flying. |
| A．Patterson didn’t want to teach Henderson at first. |
| B．Henderson finally succeeded in flying alone. |
| C．Patterson was very strict with Henderson. |
| D．Henderson went through a lot of difficulties. |
3 . “Few articles change owners more frequently than clothes. They travel downwards from grade to grade in the social scale with remarkable regularity,” wrote the journalist Adolphe Smith in 1877 as he traced a coat’s journey in the last century: cleaned, repaired and resold repeatedly; cut down into a smaller item; eventually recycled into new fabric. But with the improvement in people’s living standards, that model is mind-boggling in the era of fast fashion. The average British customer buys four items a month. And it is reported that 350,000 tonnes of used but still wearable clothes go to landfills in the UK each year.
Yet the gradual revival of the second-hand trade has gathered pace in the past few years. At fashion website Asos, sales of vintage clothes (古董衫) have risen by 92%. Clothing was once worn out of necessity, and now it is simply a way of life. Busy families sell used items on eBay, teenagers trade on Depop and some fashion people offer designer labels on Vestiaire Collective. Strikingly, it has become big enough business that mainstream retailers (零售商) want a slice of the action.
For some buyers and sellers, the switch to the second-hand is born of financial difficulties. Only a few have become worried about the impact of their shopping habit on the planet. But the shift is only a partial solution. Some people worry that some mainstream brands may “greenwash” — using second-hand goods to improve their image, rather than engaging more seriously with sustainability.
However, the biggest concern may be that people keep buying because they know they can resell goods, still chasing the pleasure of the next purchase but with an eased conscience (愧疚). Boohoo, a powerful fast fashion company, has seen sales and profits rise, despite concerns about environmental problems in its supply chain that led to an investigation last year.
A new Netflix series, Worn Stories, documents the emotional meanings that clothes can have: Each old item is full of memories. Actually, a handbag from a grandmother and a scarf passed on by a father are both valuable for us. A love of style is not a bad or an unimportant thing. But a committed relationship is better than a quick flash. Can we learn to appreciate our own old clothes as well as others’?
1. What does the word “mind-boggling” underlined in paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．Unbelievable. | B．Popular. | C．Reasonable. | D．Influential. |
| A．old clothes are more popular than new pieces |
| B．the online second-hand markets are booming |
| C．the fashion world begins to favor vintage clothes |
| D．many clothing brands are innovative in their new products |
| A．It makes people feel free to pursue fast fashion. |
| B．It makes people more cautious about their budgets. |
| C．It encourages people to choose eco-friendly clothes. |
| D．It pushes people to be more engaged with sustainability. |
| A．Old items have lost favor with the public. |
| B．Old items are worthy of being long cherished. |
| C．Older generations attach great importance to old items. |
| D．Older generations care about the quality of their clothes. |
4 . Anew study reports that a mosquito’s sense of smell is more complicated than we once thought. And it may explain why this annoying insect is so good at seeking you out at a barbecue or in your bedroom and biting you—as well as lead to new strategies to prevent the potentially deadly diseases transmitted by its bite.
Meg Younger, a neuroscientist at Boston University, is co-author of the study. She exhales(呼气)gently into one of the mosquito-filled cages. A waft of carbon dioxide blows across the insects, and they go wild. “And now, they’re looking fora target like the complex mixture of human body smell—a smell that’s attractive to the mosquitoes,” Younger explains.
In many parts of the world, this attraction isn’t merely an annoyance for humans. It’s a major health problem. Mosquitoes transmit diseases to humans. These diseases include dengue, Zika, chikungunya fever and malaria. The last disease alone causes over half a million deaths each year.
So scientists have attempted to break this attraction. But try as they might, the little mosquito has resisted. “They’re really good at what they do,” Younger says. Most of what we know about the neuroscience of smell comes from mice and fruit flies, where the wiring is fairly simple. Each neuron(神经元) in the nose has one kind of receptor(感受器) that detects a single kind of smell—say, a banana. And all the neurons with receptors for the banana smell connect to the same part of the brain. Younger and the others studied mosquito brains, where she found that each neuron has multiple receptors that can detect multiple smells.
This work could give researchers additional ways to battle the insects like developing traps that contain new smell mixtures that are more appealing than people.
“It’s an enormous study,” says Josefina del Marmol, a neurobiologist at the Harvard Medical School. She says there’s more work to be done to check. neuron by neuron, that each one actually responds to all the smells it has receptors for. But regarding the central finding, she says, “It really does change a lot about what we know of how insects perceive the world.”
1. Why does Younger exhale into a mosquito-filled cage?| A．To keep targeted mosquitoes alive. | B．To confuse the experimented mosquitoes. |
| C．To experiment on mosquitoes’ sense of smell. | D．To see if breath contributes to disease transmission. |
| A．They have a clearer smell mechanism. | B．They have more neurons to detect smells. |
| C．They have bigger brain parts focusing on smell. | D．They have more smell receptors in each neuron. |
| A．It may have found an ideal way to study insects. |
| B．It inspires new methods to prevent mosquito bites. |
| C．It proves the previous assumption about mosquitoes. |
| D．It sheds light on how mosquitoes transmit diseases. |
| A．It is a big step forward. | B．It has many weaknesses. |
| C．It is far from impressive. | D．It has a worldwide influence. |
5 . Mary Dickins had been a member of the audience at poetry nights before and knew “the poetry clap”. She made a polite tapping of fingers. But when she made her debut (首次演出) as a performer at the age of 62 at the legendary Bang Said the Gun night in south London, she said, “It was so wild — like nothing I had ever seen before.” The audience stamped their feet and shook shakers. “It felt transformative. I thought, ‘I’ve got to have more of this,’ ” Dickins said. Becoming a performance poet has given her a place on a stage of her own making.
All her life she has written, mostly without being seen or heard. Her mother died when she was nine, and, after she went into a care home at 13, Dickins’ writing stayed in notebooks. Really, she says, a lot of her adult life has been about getting over childhood shyness. At university — she studied education — she met her husband of 40 years, but in three years of seminars she did not say a word. Some of this results from her years at the children’s home. She says, “It gave me a sense of what it’s like to be excluded. I never fitted in anywhere.”
After she graduated, she discovered that she loved working with people with learning disabilities. She became an expert in inclusive education. “That was my niche (称心的职业),” she says. She published books and returned to the University of North London as a senior lecturer in early childhood studies.
Dickins now sees that in adulthood she has been giving herself permission to be silly. “The sillier I allow myself to be, the better the writing is,” she says. Her observations are humorous.
“Putting things into words and giving shape to your emotions is an important part of coming to terms with the things that happen in life,” she says.
Does she still feel like an outsider?
“I think I’ve made it into a virtue. I celebrate the fact that I don’t fit into a box. Finally! You have to wait till you’re 62 to feel confident!” she says. “But I have a sense of who I am and I'm proud of it. I wouldn’t be anyone else now — and it took me a long time to say that.”
1. How did Dickins feel about her debut?| A．Calm. | B．Awkward. | C．Stressed. | D．Encouraged. |
| A．Her immature writing style. | B．Her experience at the care home. |
| C．Her struggle with her university studies. | D．Her difficult relationship with her husband. |
| A．It makes her land a good job. | B．It sharpens her sense of humor. |
| C．It enables her to get on well with her life. | D．It helps her overcome her learning disabilities. |
| A．Mary Dickins’ New Start after 60 | B．Mary Dickins’ First Performance |
| C．Mary Dickins’ Troubled Writing Career | D．Mary Dickins’ Impact on Performance Poets |
6 . Typing.com is an online typing tutor for students of all ages. Typing.com’s proven curriculum helps students from beginners to advanced learners, focusing on technique, accuracy, and speed. The following are some frequently asked questions about typing on our website.
How long does it take to type without looking at the keyboard?An average student without learning differences will learn to touch type within eight to ten hours. They may be touch typing at a very slow speed (8-15 words per minute).
Is it bad to look at the keyboard when typing?Yes. Not only does it prevent you from practicing your fingering, but it also slows you down and makes you type less accurately. It's far more difficult to notice mistakes when you're not looking at the screen.
How do you get faster at typing?The most important technique to learn to type faster is touch typing. This is a technique based on developing muscle memory for your fingers.
How can I learn to type correctly?Focus on accuracy rather than speed. Use the entire keyboard correctly. Learn some keyboard shortcuts. Practice every day.
How do I increase my typing speed?Arrange your fingers properly. The most important step in improving your typing speed is ensuring that you place your fingers correctly on the keyboard. Rest the index finger (食指) of your left hand on the “F” key and the index finger of your right hand on the “J” key.
Is typing.com free?Typing.com is a free online typing tutor and digital literacy (读写能力) platform used by millions of students and education professionals around the world. We aim to provide valuable learning tools to as many school teachers and students as possible.
1. What do we know about typing.com?| A．It charges very little. | B．It is suitable for every student. |
| C．It helps to improve writing skills. | D．It can automatically correct typing errors. |
| A．Managers. | B．Salesmen. | C．Athletes. | D．Teachers. |
| A．To promote a typing website. | B．To share typing experience. |
| C．To correct typing mistakes. | D．To teach typing skills. |
7 . Learning how to apologize is similar to learning any new behavior. It may feel awkward and may not be polished at first.
First of all, wait until the right time and you are in the right place. Although public apology is often appropriate, discretion (谨慎) should be used.
Be direct and brief in your approach. Acknowledge the fact that injury has occurred and then take responsibility for what happened. Be sincere in expressing your regret and demonstrate your willingness to take ownership of the situation.
Even if you follow these steps, be prepared for rejection. Sometimes, the person apologizing has an expectation that the apology will lead to immediate forgiveness and acceptance.
| A．Forgiveness and acceptance may take time. |
| B．To give or receive a good apology is an art. |
| C．But with practice, everyone can learn to do it. |
| D．Listening to the response to our apologies is important. |
| E．Most apologies can and should happen in a private setting. |
| F．In other words, avoid excuses and offer to repair the damage. |
| G．Taking responsibility doesn’t mean accepting blame for everything. |
8 . For lots of kids, toddlerhood (幼儿期) is an important time for friendship. Studies show that the earlier kids learn to form positive relationships, the better they are at relating to others as teenagers and adults. Playing together also helps these kids practice social behaviors, such as kindness, sharing, and cooperation.
Even so, how quickly your child develops into a social creature may also depend on his temperament(性格). Some toddler s are very social, but others are shy. In addition, the way that toddlers demonstrate that they like other children is markedly different from what adults think of as expressions of friendship. Research at Ohio State University in Columbus found that a toddler’s way of saying “I like you” during play is likely to come in the form of copying a friend’s behavior.
This seemingly unusual way of demonstrating fondness can result in unpleasant behavior. Regardless of how much they like a playmate, they may still grab his toys, refuse to share, and get bossy. But experts say that this is a normal and necessary part of friendship for kids this age. Through play experiences, toddlers learn social rules. That’s why it’s so important to take an active role in your toddler’s social encounters by setting limits and offering frequent reminders of what they are. When you establish these guidelines, explain the reasons behind them.
Begin by helping your child learn sympathy (“Ben is crying. What’s making him so sad?”), then suggest how he could resolve the problem (“Maybe he would feel better if you let him play the ball.”). When your child shares or shows empathy(同理心) toward a friend, praise him (“Ben stopped crying! You made him feel better.”).
Another way to encourage healthy social interaction is by encouraging kids to use words- not fists-to express how they feel. It’s also important to be mindful of how your child’s personality affects playtime. Kids are easy to get angry when they’re sleepy or hungry, so schedule playtime when they’re refreshed.
1. What does it indicate when toddlers copy their playmates’ behavior?| A．They are interested in acting. | B．They are shy with the strangers. |
| C．They are fond of their playmates. | D．They are tired of playing games. |
| A．Design games for them. | B．Find them suitable playmates. |
| C．Play together with them. | D．Help them understand social rules. |
| A．Giving examples. | B．Explaining concepts. |
| C．Providing evidence. | D．Making comparisons. |
| A．How Children Adapt to Changes | B．How to Be a Role Model for Children |
| C．How Your Baby Learns to Love | D．How to Communicate with Your Kid |
9 . In his 1936 work How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie wrote: “I have come to the conclusion that there is only one way to get the best of an argument — and that is to avoid it.” This distaste for arguments is common, but it depends on a mistaken view of arguments that causes problems for our personal and social lives — and in many ways misses the point of arguing in the first place.
Carnegie would be right if arguments were fights, which is how we often think of them. Like physical fights, verbal (言语的) fights can leave both sides bloodied. Even when you win, you end up no better off. You would be feeling almost as bad if arguments were even just competitions — like, say, tennis tournaments. Pairs of opponents hit the ball back and forth until one winner comes out from all who entered. Everybody else loses. This kind of thinking explains why so many people try to avoid arguments.
However, there are ways to win an argument every time. When you state your position, formulate (阐述) an argument for what you claim and honestly ask yourself whether your argument is any good. When you talk with someone who takes a stand, ask them to give you a reason for their view and spell out their argument fully. Assess its strength and weakness. Raise objections (异议) and listen carefully to their replies. This method will require effort, but practice will make you better at it.
These tools can help you win every argument — not in the unhelpful sense of beating your opponents but in the better sense of learning about what divides people, learning why they disagree with us and learning to talk and work together with them. If we readjust our view of arguments — from a verbal fight or tennis game to a reasoned exchange through which we all gain respect and understanding from each other — then we change the very nature of what it means to “win” an argument.
1. What is the author’s attitude toward Carnegie’s understanding of argument?| A．Critical. | B．Supportive. | C．Tolerant. | D．Uncertain. |
| A．They lack debating skills. | B．They may feel bad even if they win. |
| C．They fear being ignored. | D．They are not confident in themselves. |
| A．Defend. | B．Explain. | C．Conclude. | D．Repeat. |
| A．Sense of logic. | B．Solid supporting evidence. |
| C．Proper manners. | D．Understanding from both sides. |
10 . Some ants have figured out how to avoid getting lost: build taller anthills, according to a recent study.
Desert ants living in the hot, flat salt pans of Tunisia spend their days looking for food and reach as far as 1.1 kilometers from their nests. To find their way home, desert ants use a navigation system, relying on the sun’s position and counting their steps to track their location relative to their nest.
But this system becomes increasingly unreliable as the distance from the nest increases. “We realized that, whenever the ants in salt pans came closer to their nest, they suddenly pinpointed the nest hill from several meters distance,” says Markus Knaden, a researcher at Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. “This made us think that the hill serves as a nest-defining landmark.”
So Knaden and colleagues captured ants from nests in the middle of salt pans and from along their shorelines. Only salt-pan nests had distinct hills, up to 40 centimeters tall, whereas the hills on shoreline nests were lower or barely noticeable. Next, the team removed any hills and placed the captured insects some distance away from their nests. Salt-pan ants struggled more than shore ants to find homes. Shore ants relied on the shoreline for guidance and weren’t affected by the hill removal, the researchers concluded.
The team further conducted another study to see if desert ants were deliberately building a taller hill when their surroundings lacked any visible landmarks. So, the researchers removed the hills of 16 salt-pan nests and installed (安装) two 50-centimeter-tall blocks near eight of them. The other eight nests were left without any artificial visual aid. After three days, the researchers found that seven ants from the unaided nests had rebuilt their hills. But only two ants from the nests with man-made blocks nearby had bothered to rebuild.
“It implies that ants regularly assess the complexity of their environment and change their decisions based on their conclusion,” says ecologist Judith Bronstein of the University of Arizona.
1. What aspect of ants is the recent study mainly about?| A．Challenges of survival. | B．Landmarks of habitats. |
| C．Intelligence of navigation. | D．Comparison of varieties. |
| A．Explored. | B．Recognized. | C．Climbed. | D．Crossed. |
| A．To observe different ants’ reactions. | B．To prove impacts of various habitats. |
| C．To disturb desert ants’ navigation system. | D．To test anthills’ functions and significance. |
| A．Evaluate and make changes. | B．Visual aid is a must. |
| C．Cooperation brings victory. | D．No man-made blocks are used. |
