1 . Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word. For the other blanks, fill in each blank with one proper word. Make sure that your answers are grammatically correct.

DNA analysis reveals two waves of migration

The results of the study, published in the Science Bulletin, revealed two major migration waves in history. In this pioneering study, scientists from Fudan University     1     (dig) into the ancient DNA of individuals buried in Gansu province, revealing interesting insights into the genetic makeup of Hexi Corridor residents dating back over 12 centuries. The research employed ancient DNA data     2     (explore) human migration along the Hexi Corridor.

The Hexi Corridor, was a narrow yet crucial link     3     (connect) the heartland of ancient China to the Western Territory. Characterized by its lofty mountains and deserts, the ancient pathway was dotted with cities     4     (found) along short rivers.

Historical documents attest (证实) to the Hexi Corridor’s significance as a crossroads     5     Western and Eastern civilizations mixed through trade, religion and occasional conflicts following the establishment of the Silk Road during the Han Dynasty.

    6     technological advances in biology open new avenues for exploration, archaeologists are increasingly drawn to analyzing DNA samples. Led by Wen Shaoqing from Fudan University’s Institute of Archaeological Science, the team successfully extracted DNA data     7     the teeth and bones found at two sites near Dunhuang.

The DNA analysis pinpointed two outliers (异常样本) dating to the Wei Dynasty and the Tang. Further examination revealed one had approximately 50 percent western Eurasian ancestry and       8     30 percent, suggesting the individuals were likely descendants of unions between western Eurasian women and local men.

    9     the team concluded was that the genetic mix could be partially attributed to those migrations. Experts said the second major migration period       10     (mark) by a significant shift in the gene pool. Historical records say migration facilitated by Chinese explorer Zhang Qian’s visit to the Western Territory from 138 BC resulted in the creation of the Silk Road.

2 . Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word. For the other blanks, fill in each blank with one proper word. Make sure that your answers are grammatically correct.

What’s Good About Social Network

Do you remember when social media felt good? When friends got reunited years after graduation? But then came all the fake news, targeted advertising, and fear of leaking personal information... You began questioning     1     why you had spent all the time on it. This was     2     happened to many, including me. Though social media was always something I needed, the life when it was needed for sheer entertainment has gone.

But occasionally, I     3     (remind) how powerful a tool it always is. It remains unparalleled in its original, uncommercialized mission     4     (serve) as a connector of people and a facilitator of friendship. I’m thinking about this after having just returned from breakfast with my friend, Rob. I     5     (not see) him since I was 16. We fell out of touch because he lived in Scotland while I lived in London, two opposite ends of this country. But last month I ran across something when I was browsing through Facebook. It was a photo of a little girl     6     I didn’t know, winning first prize in a school talent show. A photo unusually     7     (post) by Rob, which was his first post on Facebook, was tagged with the name of the school his daughter attended, which was not in Scotland, but just five miles from my house.

Were it not for social media, I would never have known that Rob had moved to my neck of the woods. Both of us were amazed at how incredible it was that we’d spent years living so near, shopping in the same grocery stores, taking the same commuter buses and going to the same cinema, without ever     8     (bump) into each other. Truth is,     9     we had, I’m not sure I would have recognized him without his profile picture. So     10     all the considerations and criticisms about how social media disturbs our lives, it is nice to know that it’s still worth pressing Like. Anyway, social media is irreplaceable to us.

3 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper from of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Many governments are promoting above and underground transit systems to fight such congestion (拥堵). Urban trains are appearing even in the wide expanses of the Western United States, in places like Dallas, a city     1     (know) for oil riches and big cars.

People are not very used to     2     (ride) a train around the city. But actually, Dallas and Houston have both started light rail system. It’s very popular in both cities.

What is happening in Texas    3     (reflect) a growing trend elsewhere in the United States, says William Millar. He’s president of the non-profit American Public Transportation Association. “In the last several years, public transportation in America has undergone a renaissance (复兴).”

In 1900, many US cities had extensive urban rail systems.     4     with the arrival of the automobile, most of them disappeared by the 1950s. Now many cities are returning to     5     they had 100 years ago.

In other countries, riding buses, trains or subways are part of everyday life, many countries support public transportation to a much    6     (great) degree than happens in the United States, particularly in Europe. In other places in the world that are developing cities, there is a tremendous growth of investment in public transit. Throughout southeast Asia, certainly the capital cities, major rail systems    7     (build) over the last two or three decades. In south America, we see not only rail systems being built, but we see some of the most innovative use of public transit buses as anywhere in the world.

Rising levels of pollution from cars is leading to more investment in public transportation.

Public transport can help cities develop     8     spoiling the environment with excessive greenhouse gas emissions.

Many analysts say the growth of public transportation does not challenge the automobile, but provides    9     choice to commuters. As a rising number of people want to go to    10     infinite number of places at any time, public transportation maybe the answer.

4 . Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word. For the other blanks, fill in each blank with one proper word. Make sure that your answers are grammatically correct.

OpenAI Announces ChatGPT Successor GPT-4

OpenAI has released GPT-4, the latest version of its hugely popular artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT.

The new model can respond to images by providing recipe suggestions from photos of ingredients as well as writing captions and descriptions. It can also process up to 25,000 words, about eight times as many as ChatGPT. Millions of people have used ChatGPT since it     1     (launch) in November 2022. Popular requests for it include writing songs, poems, marketing copy, computer code, and helping with homework,     2     teachers say students shouldn’t use it. ChatGPT answers questions     3     (employ) natural human-like language, and it can also imitate other writing styles such as songwriters and authors, using the Internet as its knowledge database.

There are concerns that it could one day take over many jobs currently     4     (do) by humans. OpenAI said it     5     (spend) six months on safety features for GPT-4, and on human feedback. However, it warned that it     6     still be subject to sharing disinformation.

GPT-4 will initially be available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers,     7     pay $20 per month for easy access to the service. It’s already powering Microsoft’s Bing search engine platform. The tech giant has invested $10b    8     OpenAI.

GPT-4 has “    9     (advanced) reasoning skills” than ChatGPT, OpenAI said. The model can, for example, find available meeting times for three schedules.

OpenAI also announced new partnerships with language learning app Duolingo and Be My Eyes, an application for the visually impaired,     10     (create) AI Chatbots which can assist their users using natural language.

However, like its predecessors (被替代的事物), OpenAI has warned that GPT-4 is still not fully reliable and it may invent facts or make reasoning errors.

5 . Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word. For the other blanks, fill in each blank with one proper word. Make sure that your answers are grammatically correct.

Your Smell Could Attract Mosquitoes

A new study finds that some people attract mosquitoes much more than others, and it probably involves the way they smell.

The researchers have found that people who attract mosquitoes the most     1     (produce) a lot of certain chemicals on their skin. These chemicals     2     (connect) to the smell that attracts the mosquitoes.

Leslie Vosshall is one of the researchers in New York. She said, “If you have high levels of this stuff on your skin, you’re going to be the one at the picnic    3     (get) all the bites.”

For the study, researchers designed an experiment to have people’s smells compete against each other. They asked 64 volunteers to wear stockings around their forearms to absorb the smell from their skin. The stockings were put in separate traps at the end of a long tube. Then, dozens of mosquitoes were released. The mosquitoes came to some traps much more than others. The scientists did the experiment several times, always changing which stockings were competing against each other. At the end, they discovered a huge difference between stockings.     4     (attractive) stocking was around 100 times more attractive to the mosquitoes than the last-place finisher.

By testing the same people for over a year, the study showed that these big differences remain. “Mosquito magnets (招蚊子喜欢的人) seem    5     (remain) mosquito magnets,” Researchers said. One common factor they found was     6     mosquito magnets had high levels of certain acids on their skin.

“The research could help find new ways to drive away mosquitoes,” said Jeff Riffell, a scientist not     7     (involve) in the study, “There     8     be ways to affect the skin bacteria and change the smell that attracts mosquitoes.” However, he said that would be hard to do. Researchers also did the experiment with mosquitoes     9     genes were changed to damage their sense of smell. But they still flew to the same mosquito magnets. Vosshall said mosquitoes have ways to find us     10     we change some conditions. “They have many backup plans to be able to find us and bite us,” she said.

7 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Play the financial markets: it’s not rocket science

Back in the 1950s, economists developed Nobel Prize-winning theories for how best to invest money in financial markets. And     1     (do) it, they drew on the theory of probability. The result was Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT),     2     shows how to create a mix of stocks, bonds and other assets (股票、证券和其他资产) to get the best possible return for the     3     (low) risk. By feeding in past performance data for each asset, the formulas of MPT reveal the relative proportions of each     4     (need) to achieve this best performance.

To pull off this miracle, MPT involves some fearsome equations that only rocket scientists might     5     (expect) to solve. But—like any attempt to model reality with mathematics—MPT makes assumptions, and the bad news is     6     they’re not very realistic. A wealth of data now suggests that MPT simply cannot capture the real complexity of markets,     7     (make) its conclusions not that trustworthy.

Even Harry Markowitz, the US economist who won the economics Nobel Prize in 1990 for developing MPT,     8     (admit) he ignored his own theory and simply split his investments equally between stocks and bonds.

The lesson of the laws of chance this time is: don’t get too clever. When it comes to investment, history suggests most of us may do best     9     simply dividing our money among so-called index trackers that just follow entire sectors of the market—and then forget about them     10     we retire. After all, caution is the best policy.

8 . Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word. For the other blanks, fill in each blank with one proper word. Make sure that your answers are grammatically correct.

A positive influencer

Compared to most people with disabilities, Zhao Hongcheng is lucky. Born in 1990, a wheelchair     1     (be) part of Zhao’s life since she was 1 year old due to a disease. However, it did not stop her from completing her college and graduate studies before becoming a white-collar worker in Shanghai,     2     her parents’ great support. And now, Zhao is a video content creator, who has over 84,000 followers on a video-sharing platform.

“I made my first video in 2019,” Zhao says,     3     (add) that it was also the year she moved to Shanghai. “My original purpose was     4     (find) an emotional outlet. I always encountered inconvenience     5     (cause) by my wheelchair when going out, which made me feel sad. However, I barely had any disabled friends, so I had no one to talk to. I felt quite lonely.”

In 2019, the rising popularity of short videos inspired Zhao. “I felt that I should make some videos of     6     I experienced in my daily life. If it went well, it could give people with disabilities references and suggestions, and if not, at least it would draw people’s attention to related issues,” Zhao says. To her great surprise, the video     7     (view) more than 2,000 times on the first day. “     8     made me feel that there were many things worth sharing in my life, and it also gave me a sense of mission,” she explains.     9     her fourth video went viral (走红), she continued to make short videos and, in 2021, became a full-time content creator on the platform.

Yet, most people with disabilities are not as lucky as Zhao. Zhao says education and employment are the two major obstacles for the disabled group around her. In addition, the construction of accessible facilities is still at a relatively early stage. “Shanghai is the city     10     I have the best experience as a wheelchair user, but it still cannot guarantee that I can go out alone,” she says, adding that only with deep understanding and recognition can the system be implemented better.

Zhao hopes to be a bridge between the wider society and the disabled.

10 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passages coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

We had several monkeys on board, but Jack was the prince of them all. As he grew tame, he got more liberty, till he got the whole range of the ship, except the captain’s and the passengers’ cabins. I     1    (awaken) at an early hour by the quick steps of feet. It was Jack chasing around. He would seize the hats     2     the sailors’ heads, and threw it to the sea. He would steal their knives and other tools, which,     3     not very actively pursued, he would sometimes throw overboard. When breakfast was preparing, Jack used to sit in a corner, and when the cook’s back was turned, take something from the fire.

He sometimes burned his fingers by these tricks, and this kept him quiet for a few days. But no sooner had the pain been gone, to no one’s surprise,    4     the same thing was done again. Two days in each week, the pigs, which formed part of our livestock,     5     (allow) to run about for exercise; and then Jack was as happy as the day was long.    6     (hide) himself behind a bucket, he would suddenly spring upon the back of one of them, which then ran around in a fright.

Besides Jack, we had on board three little monkeys with red skins and blue faces. Once, Jack attracted     7     (small) one to him. Then, seizing him with one hand, with the other he took the brush and covered him with white paint from head to foot! As soon as Jack saw that he was discovered, he dropped his wet-through brother, and ran up to the main-top,     8     he stood looking at what was going on below with his nose between the bars.

Jack was afraid to come down, and only after three days passed     9     hunger force him to come down. He chose the moment when I was sitting on deck, he dropped suddenly into my feet, looking so piteously (可怜地) at me for pardon, that I not only forgive him     10    , but saved him from further punishment. Soon after this, I took another ship, and Jack and I parted, never to meet again.