1 . The lead role
Travaris always loved singing and he landed the lead role in the school musical. He could barely wait to tell his parents the
The next day at school, Travaris
Travaris was still staying after school to practice his part, reading his lines, singing the songs, and even learning the dance numbers. But as the weeks went by, Travaris started to feel
Finally, Travaris told Ms. Phelps how he couldn’t be in the musical. Ms. Phelps thanked him for taking the whole
| A．lie | B．story | C．news | D．truth |
| A．wandered | B．raced | C．failed | D．sank |
| A．planned | B．pretended | C．managed | D．forgot |
| A．lesson | B．performance | C．practice | D．holiday |
| A．complaints | B．concerns | C．contributions | D．congratulations |
| A．nothing | B．anything | C．something | D．everything |
| A．courageous | B．disappointed | C．guilty | D．curious |
| A．put off | B．gave up | C．depended on | D．set about |
| A．experience | B．situation | C．conversation | D．argument |
| A．belief | B．confidence | C．independence | D．responsibility |
2 . How can we use scientific design to change the world and take better care of our environment? In this course, you will learn about our natural resources and explore renewable energy through problem solving in a multi-science class.
________
Solving any problem begins with recognizing it! But where do you begin? In this multi-science class, you will investigate global issues facing the world today and how people make changes in their communities. You will both discuss and put into practice creative and persuasive ways to influence policymakers and community organizations. Furthermore, you will create your own political community at the Harkness table that will inspire you to learn by doing.
Energy and Innovation
In this multi-science class, you will investigate biological, physical, and chemical aspects of Earth’s working systems and how they relate to climate change. Its impacts are far reaching and thus will require forward thinking and planning. Your ideas and creativity will be needed to compare and contrast the benefits and costs of energy alternatives as we discuss and problem solve our planet’s path into the future.
Art: Transform the World
In this studio class we will develop our creative powers. Drawing on natural sciences, we will engage with perspectives of life on Earth. Our materials will be newspapers, recycled cardboard, and other things that are often thrown away. Working with our hands and tools, we will transform wastes into objects useful. In this class you will discover your artistic talent, learn about form, image and technique, and cooperate to create pieces for the final Student Art Exhibit.
1. Which of the following might be the name of the class?| A．Political Science | B．Green Organizations |
| C．Global Changes | D．Practical Policymaker |
| A．solve political problems | B．make a plan for their future |
| C．change the world through pictures | D．explore the Earth’s working system |
| A．They conduct scientific experiments. |
| B．They develop personal interests. |
| C．They need creative design. |
| D．They use renewable energy. |
3 . “Flying insects don’t fly directly to lights from far away because they’re attracted to them, but appear to change course toward a light if they happen to be passing by due to a strange inborn biological response,” writes Samuel Fabian, a bioengineer, in a research paper.
Until now, the leading scientific hypothesis has been that insects use the moon’s light to direct the way at night and mistake artificial lights for the moon. But this idea doesn’t explain why insects that only fly during the day also gather around lights.
To find out what really happens, Samuel’s team track the precise movements of insects in the wild around lights using a high-speed camera. This revealed two notable behaviours. First, when insects fly above lights, they often invert (转向) themselves and try to fly upside down, causing them to fall very fast. Just after insects pass under a light, they start doing a ring road. As their climb angle becomes too steep, they suddenly stop and start to fall. Second, when insects approach a light from the side, they may circle or “orbit” the light.
The videos show that the inversions sometimes result in insects falling on lights. It can appear to the naked eye as though they are flying at the lights. “Instead, insects turn their dorsum toward the light, generating flight perpendicular(垂直) to the source,” the team write. It is common to the two behaviours that the insects are keeping their backs to the light, known as the dorsal light response (DLR). This DLR is a shortcut for insects to work out which way is up and keep their bodies upright, as the moon or sun is usually more or less directly above them, and this direction allows them to maintain proper flight attitude and control. They also find that the insects fly at right angles to a light source, leading to orbiting and unstable flights as the light’s location relative to them changes as they move.
Samuel’s team suggest that a possible outcome of the research could help the construction industry to avoid the types of light that most attract insects.
1. What does the research focus on?| A．Why insects gather around lights. |
| B．Where artificial lights lead insects to. |
| C．What biological response insects are born with. |
| D．How to design environment friendly artificial lights. |
| A．They fly directly to lights. | B．They circle close to lights. |
| C．Their flying speed is steady. | D．Their inversions can be controlled. |
| A．balance their flying | B．keep their route straight |
| C．decide their body positon | D．shorten their flight distance |
4 . Braving the elements
On Dec.26, Gelinne, 60, was looking out the back windows of his home at the frozen lake. Then an airplane came into his sight. Gelinne looked up just in time to see that small air plane a few hundred yards away, losing control.
As the plane disappeared behind the trees, Gelinne, a former Navy officer, realized it was going to land in the lake. He flashed on a moment from more than 20 years earlier: Gelinne was at work in a bank. When a fire alarm rang, he escaped from the chaos but has always wondered if he could have stayed inside and helped.
On this day, Gelinne didn’t hesitate. He ran down to the waterfront. The plane had skidded (侧滑) to a stop on the broad, frozen lake, far from shore. It was now sinking. The pilot was standing on the wing. Gelinne knew from his Navy training that even a few minutes in the icy water could kill the pilot.
Gelinne tested the ice with his foot and decided not to take any chances walking on it. So he pulled a boat out from under his back deck.
Then he set off, pushing his boat across the ice. It was tough work. When Gelinne reached the plane, it had broken through the ice and sunk; only its tail was visible. The pilot was standing on a tail wing, submerged up to his chest, surrounded by open water. Gelinne pushed his boat off the ice and into the water, paddling (划) toward the pilot.
Gelinne focused on keeping the pilot calm, joking, “Just hang on to the boat as if you were hugging your wife.” The pilot grabbed the boat’s bow, but Gelinne knew he had to get the pilot out of the water and up onto the shelf of unbroken ice behind him before the man lost too much body heat.
By now a police officer had arrived and radioed for help. A lifeboat appeared, breaking through ice as it arrived. It picked up the pilot and rushed him to safety. Later the boat returned to help Gelinne, now extremely tired, to shore.
“I’m 60 years old,” Gelinne says. “There was no way I could get him to shore.” Still, he was satisfied he’d gone the right way that day.
1. Why did Gelinne run outside without hesitation?| A．He had rescucing experience. | B．He wanted to offer help in time. |
| C．He needed more time to prepare. | D．He was amazed at what had happened. |
| A．He made a call to the police. | B．He got the pilot out of the water. |
| C．He asked the pilot to grasp the bow. | D．He picked up the pilot onto the shore. |
| A．generous | B．brave | C．curious | D．strict |
| A．Think twice before action. |
| B．One good turn deserves another. |
| C．It’s never too late to make things right. |
| D．One should always be ready to seize chances. |
5 . All the feels
You can make your picture book memorable by concentrating on emotional connection. This works across every principle of writing, regardless of age range or genre (文体), because it is universally recognized.
The reason why emotional connection works is that emotion is a fundamental human experience.
For example, if it’s a funny picture book, your reader is clearly expecting to laugh. Make sure they laugh. If it’s an adventure story, your reader will be expecting to feel excitement, anticipation and probably a little mild fear. If it’s a heartwarming story, your reader expects to feel warm, comforted and overflowing with love.
Another reason for including emotion in your picture book is to really get your reader inside your character’s head. Firstly, it helps build on the young reader’s emotional development and understanding of self and others.
If you want your story to stand out amongst other stories, give your reader something to remember — a strong emotional connection.
| A．Secondly, it creates interest in the character. |
| B．It helps us make sense of the world around us. |
| C．An emotional ending in a picture book works well. |
| D．When we feel something, we will have sharp minds. |
| E．This is obviously not a complete list, but it is a starting point. |
| F．Here is why it works and how you can use it in your picture book writing. |
| G．Picture books have many different genres and your job is to know which genre your story sits in. |
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which
Male voices are much lower than female voices. This is mainly
8 . We humans are in trouble. We have let loose a new evolutionary process that we don’t understand and can’t control.
The latest leaps forward in artificial intelligence (AI) are rightly causing anxiety. Yet people are responding as though AI is just one more scary new technology, like electricity or cars once were. We invented it, the argument goes, so we should be able to manage it for our own benefit. Not so. I believe that this situation is new and potentially dangerous.
My thinking starts from the premise that all design anywhere in the universe is created by the evolutionary algorithm (算法). This is the process in which some kind of information is copied many times, the copies vary slightly and only some are selected to be copied again. The information is called the replicator (复制者), and our most familiar example is the gene.
But genes aren’t the only replicator, as Richard Dawkins stressed in The Selfish Gene. People copy habits, stories, words, technologies and songs; we change, recombine and pass them on in ever greater variety. This second replicator, evolving much faster than genes ever could, Dawkins called memes (模仿传递行为) — and they are selfish too.
As we face up to the recent explosion in AI, new questions arise. Could a third replicator take advantage of the first two? And what would happen if it did?
For billions of years, all of the Earth’s organisms were gene machines, until, about 2 million years ago, just one species — our ancestors — started imitating sounds, gestures and ways of processing food. They had let loose a second replicator and turned us into meme machines. Following the same principle, could a third replicator appear if some object we made started copying, varying and selecting a new kind of information?
It could, and I believe it has. Our digital technology can copy, store and spread vast amounts of information with near-perfect accuracy. While we had mostly been the ones selecting what to copy and share, that is changing now. Mindless algorithms choose which ads we see and which news stories they “think” we would like. Once a digital replicator takes off, its products will evolve for its own benefit, not ours.
All is not lost, though. We already cope with fast-evolving parasites such as viruses by using our immune systems, machines and vaccines. Now, we need to build our collective mental immunity, our critical thinking and our ability to protect our attention from all that selfish information. Taking lessons from evolution, we can stop imagining we are the controllers of our accidentally dangerous offspring and start learning how to live with them.
1. As for people’s attitude toward AI, the author is ____________.| A．disapproving | B．unconcerned |
| C．sympathetic | D．tolerant |
| A．memes are composed of selfish genes | B．the speed of evolution is underestimated |
| C．replicators vary with human interference | D．memes and genes share a common feature |
| A．Technologies can be double-edged. |
| B．Collective efforts make a better world. |
| C．We should live in harmony with nature. |
| D．Past experience is relevant to future action. |
| A．The pace of technological progress is unstoppable. |
| B．The initiative of algorithm should be strengthened. |
| C．The new evolution can bring about negative effects. |
| D．The artificial intelligence can satisfy our real desires. |
9 . Upgrade your problems
In 2017, I spent all my money buying my first flat — which meant I had no money to fix my first homeowner’s problem. I was sleeping on an air mattress because I couldn’t afford furniture. Then I noticed a leaky pipe under the bath, which created a wet puddle (水坑). I couldn’t afford a plumber (水管工) but I didn’t want to introduce myself to the neighbour by crashing through their wet ceiling.
The only option left for me was that I had to solve the problem on my own. I took the bus to a nearby store and talked with the nice guy behind the counter. He explained how to fix it and sold me a pipe cutter and a bit of pipework. I went back home, pushed my head under the bath, and got the job done.
It taught me a lesson that has since become a bit of motto for me: Upgrade your problems.
Having a wet bathroom floor is a problem — and the day before I bought the place, I would have had a landlord to call. But once the place was mine, this became my problem. I saw this as progress: You must own your own property to take care of this sort of situation.
Years later, when I founded my professional services company with my business partner, Adam, this motto became core to how we approach the business. There have been many problems, and there will continue to be new ones. However, we remember the reason we have these problems — it’s because we run our own business! A late-paying customer is a problem, but it’s one we encounter only if we have paying customers.
That is why I still keep the pipe cutter on my desk today. It reminds me that, no matter my level of frustration (挫败), I am fortunate to face the problems I do. The more I solve them, the more I upgrade to even better ones.
1. What did the author notice in his first flat?2. How did the author solve his problem with the bath?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
The author still keeps the pipe cutter on his desk today because it reminds him of his success in business.
4. What else would you do when you encounter problems in life? (In about 40 words)
Driving to Palm Springs two years ago, I met a snowstorm. A car suddenly changed the direction
