1 . A music column by New Music Friday is from https: //www.npr.org, sharing the best albums released every Friday. Readers can enjoy and download the album’s title track online. The column is well enjoyed by the music explorers. Here are some recent hits.
The best releases out Sept. 30
By Stephen Thompson, Keanna Faircloth, Bob Boilen, Tarik Moody
It’s been five years since Björk last released an album, but now the Icelandic icon (偶像) is back with a deeply inventive set called Fossora. Every sound on the record feels as if it’s springing into the mix from a different direction, as her energetic voice shares space with everything from bass clarinets (低音单簧管) to the voices of Björk’s own creation. Fossora was inspired, at least in part, by the death of the singer’s mother, but joy also exists.
The best releases out Sept. 16
By Cyrena Touros, Christina Lee, Tarik Moody, Stephen Thompson
The superstar K-pop girl group BLACKPINK is one of the biggest pop juggernauts in the world, with billions of streams and massive world tours to its name. Born Pink, its second full-length album, promises to further promote BLACKPINK’s domination of the U.S. charts.
The best releases out Sept. 9
By Christina Lee, Ann Powers, Stephen Thompson, Cyrena Touros
Ari Lennox experienced a huge breakthrough with 2019’s much-loved Shea Butter Baby, but her new album age/sex/location promises to be even bigger. She’s been trying many her singles for many months now, and even dropped a five-song EP last Friday, but the album is finally here. It somehow sounds modern even if it recreates the most unforgettable R&B sounds of the’90s and early’00s.
1. Why is Björk’s mother mentioned?| A．She gave Björk an energetic voice. |
| B．She helped Björk to record the new album. |
| C．Her death gave Björk some inventive ideas. |
| D．Her leaving delayed the release of Fossora. |
| A．It is made up of five songs. |
| B．It is adapted from Shea Butter Baby. |
| C．It is intended for single music-lovers. |
| D．It is trying to make another breakthrough. |
| A．Stephen Thompson. | B．Tarik Moody. |
| C．Christina Lee. | D．Ann Powers. |
2 . You may have recently seen a video from the Beijing Wildlife Zoo becoming a hit. What exactly was so interesting about this video? It shows a dog playing with big cats four to five times its size! Many people might wonder if this dog has a death wish, but it seems that the dog and the big cats are good friends.
The dog was actually raised alongside the lion and tiger cubs, making up an odd but loving family, according to zoo officials. As opposed to the common belief, cross-species friendship has been around for centuries. People have domesticated many animals, most notably cats and dogs, and formed bonds with them as pets. Perhaps you even have a pet yourself.
There are many other instances of cross-species friendships.
At an animal sanctuary in Santiago, Chile, a jaguar named Marina and a deer named Laura formed a friendship after they both came to the park. As neither animal had a mother, sanctuary staff said they instantly bonded when they met. Laura had been rescued from a slaughterhouse while Marina had been rescued from the street.
One possible explanation for these friendships is the environment of the zoo. Animals don’t hunt for their food and don’t need to worry about marking their territory or looking for mates in the way an animal in the wild would. “All those activities take time and energy, and if these needs are removed, the animals get bored,” Gordon Burghardt, a psychologist at the University of Tenessee, US, told The Atlantic magazine. “In this particular situation, the animal’s motivation to engage socially and playfully may be higher in its need hierarchy(等级)than eating.”
Marc Bekoff, former biology professor at the University of Colorado, US, told Slate magazine, “I think the choices animals make in cross-species relationships are the same as they’d make in same-species relationships. Some dogs don’t like every other dog. Animals are very selective about the other individuals who they let into their lives.”
1. What is the common opinion about the friendship between animals?| A．It’s easier for dogs and cats to become friends. |
| B．Animals tend to play with peers of the same species. |
| C．The friendship between animals is not solid and reliable. |
| D．It’s common that animals of different species can become friends. |
| A．To present a truth. | B．To explain a phenomenon. |
| C．To introduce the topic. | D．To provide a proof. |
| A．The existing tradition. | B．The influence by mates. |
| C．The animals’ inner social drive. | D．The animals’ raisers’ instruction. |
| A．To appeal to people to treasure animals. |
| B．To inform readers of a special friendship. |
| C．To demonstrate the history of bringing up pets. |
| D．To compare friendship between cross-species and same-species. |
3 . Humans have been living and working on the space station for 20 years. Their meals are packaged, though sometimes astronauts receive fresh treats from resupply missions. The longer that packaged food is stored, the more it loses nutrients like vitamin C and vitamin K.
Astronauts have successfully grown 10 different crops on the space station since 2015 and had the chance to sample each one. The International Space Station hosted a party for astronauts on Friday as they celebrated the harvest of the first Chili (辣椒) grown in space. The crew finally had a chance to taste the peppers after initially kicking off the plant experiment on the space station in July.
Plant Habitat-04 is one of the most complex plant experiments on the orbiting laboratory to date because peppers take much longer to grow than the previous experiment plants. After growing for four months, the peppers were harvested on Friday.
Peppers provide a great source of vitamin C, as well as other key nutrients. Pepper plants self-pollinate, so they are easy to grow, and they are a pick-and-eat crop that doesn’t have to be cooked. They are also safe to eat raw.
A side effect of life in zero gravity is that astronauts often lose some of their taste and smell, so spicy or well-seasoned foods are a favorite. Adding fresh greens or peppers to the menu allows astronauts to liven up their regular meals. But growing and tending to the plants can also produce other benefits.
Astronauts have described the joy from seeing—as well as smelling and caring for—leafy green plants on the space station that remind them of Earth.
“Growing colorful vegetables in space can have long-term benefits for physical and psychological health,” said Matt Romeyn, principal investigator for the experiment.” We are discovering that growing plants and vegetables with colors and smells helps to improve astronauts’ well-being.”
1. What does underlined “kicking off” in the 2nd paragraph mean?| A．Launch. | B．Complete. | C．Quit. | D．Announce. |
| A．The technology. | B．Growing process. |
| C．The varieties of plants. | D．Growing time required. |
| A．They are delicious. | B．They restore their appetite. |
| C．They help kill diseases. | D．They improve their memory. |
| A．The Fun in the Space Life |
| B．The Common Goal in the Space Mission |
| C．The First Chili Peppers Grown in Space |
| D．A Research Finding from the Space Mission |
4 . Steve Forest is a scientist. He’s standing on an island off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. Below him are several hundred penguins and their children. Forrest’s job is to count every one of them. It's snowing. There is a big wind, too. And their children won’t stay still. Penguins are great climbers. So Forrest and the team members must be too. And penguins aren't always clean.
Forrest has been coming to Antarctica every January for six years. He's helping count the area’s penguins. This will help researchers better understand the Antarctic environment. There used to be lots of penguins in Antarctica, “It's all because of climate change,” Heather J. Lynch says seriously. She is leading the research team. The team member Noah Strycker adds, “We know climate change is hitting the Antarctic Peninsula harder than anywhere else in the world. We are following the situation closely.”
Scientists think that warming waters do harm to krill, the tiny animals that penguins eat. This is bad for the sea life. But krill are hard to study, so researchers pay attention to penguins. They’re easier to follow. They return to the same place each year to lay eggs. If penguins aren't doing well , krill probably aren't either. “Penguins give us an idea about what is going on in the sea around us,” Forrest says.
This year, Lynch’s research team uses a drone to help them. They fly it over an area to take pictures to count penguins.
Counting penguins is quite necessary. The more we learn, the more we know about krill and the ocean animals that depend on them. When we understand them, we can start fixing them. We should consider carefully what Lynch says: “What’s happening in the Antarctic is happening everywhere.”
1. What is required of scientists like Forrest according to Paragraph 1?| A．Being clean. | B．Being good at math. |
| C．Being cool-headed. | D．Being skilled in climbing. |
| A．To protect this animal species from extinction. |
| B．To help find out how many krill might be living |
| C．To have a better knowledge of the Antarctic environment |
| D．To collect first-hand data for analyzing global warming. |
| A．Scientists. | B．Krill. | C．Penguins. | D．Ocean animals. |
| A．Penguins lay eggs in the same place on the island every year. |
| B．The penguin population is increasing due to climate change. |
| C．The penguin population determines the krill population. |
| D．Climate change is most obvious in the Antarctic Peninsula. |
5 . Wholesale prices for gas and electricity are increasing suddenly across Europe,raising the possibility of increases in already-high utility (公共事业）bills and further pain for people who have taken a financial hit fromCOVID-19.
Governments are struggling to find ways to limit costs to consumers as scant natural gas reserves present yet another potential problem, exposing the continent to even more price increases and possible shortages if it’s a cold winter.
In the U.K., many people will see their gas and electricity bills rise next month after the nation’s energy regulator approved a 12% price increase for those without contracts that lock in rates. Officials in Italy have warned that prices will increase by 40% for the quarter that will be billed in October.
There are multiple causes for the price increases, energy analysts say, including tight supplies of natural gas used to generate electricity, higher costs for permits to release carbon dioxide as part of Europe’s fight against climate change, and less supply from wind in some cases.
Analysts at S&P Global Platts say electricity prices have risen due to strong demand from places like data centers and electric cars, but above all because of the rise in the price of natural gas used in generating plants. Utility companies’ exposure to natural gas prices has increased as high-emission coal plants have been retired, while utilities face higher costs for carbon allowances required by the European Union’s emissions trading system, which is aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
The tight gas market could bite even more sharply if there’s an unusually cold winter. That’s because European distributors did not refill reserves reduced during last winter as they typically had done in summer months. In March 2008, when the freeze named “the beast from the east” hit Europe, industrial users in the U.K got a notice that there was a risk of interruption, although it didn’t come to that.
Could Europe run out of gas? “The short answer is Yes, this is a real risk,” said James Huckstepp, an analyst at S&P Global Platts. “Storage stocks are at record lows and there isn’t currently any spare supply capacity that is exportable anywhere in the world.The longer answer is that it’s hard to predict how it will play out given that Europe has never run out of gas in two decades under the current distribution system.”
1. What does the underlined word “scant” in Paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Total. | B．Additional. | C．Limited. | D．Regular. |
| A．The closure of some coal plants. |
| B．The great demand for electric cars. |
| C．The competition between utility companies. |
| D．The change in the emissions trading system. |
| A．More natural gas will be needed for industrial use. |
| B．European distributors don’t make good preparations. |
| C．It is not easy to fill reserves during the cold weather. |
| D．Utility companies work can be easily interrupted. |
| A．Europe is expected to seek help from other countries. |
| B．It is hard to control the gas price in Europe at present. |
| C．Europe might face a serious shortage of gas in the future. |
| D．There’s something wrong with Europe’s distribution system. |
6 . Mike Mushaw joined the national bone marrow registry (骨髓登记) three years ago by chance. Six months later, he got a call. The 21-year-old football player's bone marrow matched a patient in Virginia. Mushaw gave a second thought to the donation, because apart from some risks, he never knew whether his donation worked.
“Finally I said yes,” Mushaw told the journalist. “Once they took my blood, I thought, ‘All right, this is real. This is going to happen.’”
Mushaw didn't know it at the time, but his donation would go to a five-month-old girl named Eleanor who was sick with a rare disease diagnosed when she was only three months old. Days and weeks passing, her condition had become more dire.
“Eleanor was going to die without a bone marrow transplant,” her mother, Jessica, said. “The choices were to either get a transplant or die early. Luckily, Mushaw’s bone cured her.”
Mushaw didn't know any of this until months after his donation. About six months after the procedure, Eleanor's parents sent him an e-mail to thank him for his selfless love.
Their surprising connection was beginning. Mushaw kept checking on her progress. Eleanor focused her attention on him, too, by watching his football games on TV. In August, Mushaw invited her family to drive from Virginia to Connecticut to meet at one of his games. They had a good time together.
In January, Mushaw reunited with Eleanor, this time in Virginia, to celebrate her birthday. It will likely be first of many celebrations together. “As a parent, it feels really great to watch someone love your kid as much as you do,” Jessica says. “We were two complete strangers, and now we've become such a big part of each other's lives.”
1. Why did Mushaw hesitate at first?| A．He was a football player. | B．He would face some danger. |
| C．He knew it wouldn't work at all. | D．He didn't know whether his risks were worthy. |
| A．Serious. | B．Complicated. | C．Relieved. | D．Hopeful. |
| A．Kind but hesitant. | B．Active and confident. |
| C．Worried but energetic. | D．Selfless and considerate. |
| A．Why health matters. | B．Never make excuses. |
| C．How to be a good person. | D．Love brings people together. |
