1 . Have you ever wondered if you see the same colours as other people? Most people know what blue is when they see it. They call it "blue” because they were taught the word and connected it with what they saw. But how do you know what you see as blue isn’t someone else s red?
The ability to perceive (感知) different colours is up to receptors (接受器) in our eyes. Light waves hit these receptors and they react depending on which colour the light is, sending signals to the brain. The brain then reads these signals to determine which colour light the eyes are receiving.
Some people’s receptors are more developed than others. The inability of the receptor to feel the light waves correctly means that some people cannot tell the differences between similar colours.
Those with more developed receptors can see more colours. We sometimes hear people having an argument about whether something is dark blue or black. It might be because one person has stronger receptors to feel the light than another.
In the past, most scientists would argue that everyone saw colours in the same way. However, research was conducted on monkeys, in which their receptors were changed. This enabled them to see more colours than usual. Normally monkeys can only see blue and green, but the change allowed them to see red. Their brains automatically (自动地) got used to new colours. This suggests that our brains may adapt depending on our stimulus (刺激) and find new colors of the things we see. Colours could be a very personal experience, unique to everyone.
So, the next time you talk about your favourite colour, just remember if yours is blue and your friend says red, you two might actually be thinking about the same colour. What if everyone in the world has the same favourite colour, but just calls it different names?
1. What is Paragraph 2 mainly about?| A．How we perceive colours. |
| B．The inability to see colours. |
| C．What the brain does with signals. |
| D．The connection between receptors and light waves. |
| A．Some people cannot feel colours with their developed receptors. |
| B．The more light people feel, the weaker receptors they have. |
| C．People with poor receptors usually have colour weakness. |
| D．People who have strong receptors can see dark blue. |
| A．To test the monkeys with colours. |
| B．To develop the receptors of humans. |
| C．To enable monkeys to find more colors. |
| D．To prove everyone sees colours in a different way. |
| A．A film review. | B．A science magazine. |
| C．An art magazine. | D．A business newspaper. |
2 . In English it’s common to say, “I know this town like the back of my hand!” While we may know our towns really well, how well do we actually know our hands? Maybe not quite as well as we think, said a scientific study.
Matthew Longo and his team from University College London studied the left hands of 100 people. With their hands placed palms down under a board, Longo’s team gave the instruction to point to their knuckles and fingertips with a marker. How did they do? Not that well.
“People think their hand is wider than it actually is,” said Longo. He said they also seemed to think their fingers were shorter than their true lengths. People were most accurate when finding their thumbs, but became less accurate with each finger, up to their little fingers.
“It is connected to our sense of position,” explained Longo. Humans know where different parts of our bodies are, even if we can’t see them. “It tells us whether a joint is straight or not,” said Longo. “We also need to know the distances between our joints,” he went on. Our brains know the sizes and shapes of our bodies from the maps they make for themselves. “This experiment tried to find those maps,” he said.
Maybe maps don’t need to be perfect. But why aren’t our brains more accurate? Longo said our brains “see” areas based on our sense of touch, with the stronger the sense of touch in a specific body part, the bigger that body part seems. An example is our lips. As they have more nerves than our noses, our brain’s map shows our lips are bigger. The same thing can happen with body parts that have a lot of nerves. If you’ve ever had something stuck in your teeth, it probably felt huge! That’s because our tongues also have lots of nerves.
If you want to have some fun, try this test with your classmates. Get some boards and some markers and have them mark the spots where they think their knuckles and fingertips are. Compare their hands to the marker spots and see how well they have performed.
1. Why is the saying mentioned in Para. 1?| A．To test readers. | B．To serve as a topic. | C．To prove a scientific study. | D．To attract readers’ interest. |
| A．Thumbs are bigger. | B．Thumbs are much stronger. |
| C．Thumbs may have more nerves. | D．Thumbs may have strong sense of position. |
| A．Sizes. | B．Brains. | C．Shapes. | D．Maps. |
| A．To find the maps in human brains. | B．To draw the maps in human brains. |
| C．To figure out how different senses cooperate. | D．To help people locate their body parts accurately. |
| A．The left one. | B．The right one. | C．Both. |
4 . How tall are you? Do you tower over your friends and family - or are they people you literally have to look up to?
Of course, our height is out of our control.
In a recent study scientists have discovered a brain receptor, called MC3R, linked to our growing process.
For those eager to be taller, we need to look at the Dutch, who stand head and shoulders above the rest of us as the tallest people in the world. But, of course tall people have to stoop (俯身) through doorways and struggle to fit in cars and can have joint and cardiovascular problems.
| A．Are you getting as tall as you want to be? |
| B．It’s a biological fact influenced partly by genetics. |
| C．So maybe we should be careful for what we wish for. |
| D．Obviously, we’re not all the same, and size doesn’t really matter. |
| E．It’s thought to be the crucial link between food and sex development and growth. |
| F．There is a ceiling for height, and it’s reached when people achieve their genetic potential. |
| G．If this makes you want to be taller, it’s good to know we are taller than we were 150 years ago. |
5 . Perhaps you use your headphones to enjoy music and peace and quiet during the day. But you may be neglecting the dangers of hearing loss with headphones.
In fact, headphones are not a bad thing. They can bring peace, allow for better musical enjoyment, and even protect your ears from higher decibels(分贝).
How long should you wear your headphones every day? The answer is, according to the World Health Organization, one hour per day.
Then, how do you set the safest volume for your headphones? With headphones, it depends on the type you’re using and your environment. To test things out, you should take them off your ears and extend them in your hands out in front of you.
| A．This might seem unreasonable to you. |
| B．At times, hearing loss isn’t permanent. |
| C．l in 5 teens will have some types of hearing loss. |
| D．What’s more concerning is what that means for children. |
| E．It’s the duration and volume that cause the problem, however. |
| F．If you still hear your music clearly, you need to turn them down. |
| G．It’s a wonderful thing to shut out the rest of the world and enjoy your music. |
| A．Have a rest. | B．Walk further. | C．See a doctor. |
7 . As time goes on, neuroscientists learn more about the wonders of human brains. The deeper understanding offers ways to enhance your brain to work in your favor. You don’t have to be a brain scientist to do it!
When you hear the word hack, you might be reminded of the snaky computer science term. Computer hackers need to understand the inner workings of a computer to break into its system.
Neurohackers use their knowledge of how the brain works to change though patterns, like daily habits. Doing this requires understanding the way habits form in the brain. Whenever you repeat a task, the brain connects its wires together between brain cells. Over time, these habits become hardwired into the brains.
Below the conscious mind lives the subconscious, a deeper mental space that hosts what you have previously engraved into your mind.
| A．Find out what neurohacking is. |
| B．The same goes for neurohackers. |
| C．Just learn how to hack your brain. |
| D．How can you improve your mindfulness? |
| E．How do you change those undesirable habits? |
| F．Habits free up our brains so that we can learn new things. |
| G．With proper practices, you’ll build a deeper awareness of your own brain. |
1. What does the man take to school?
| A．Five books. | B．Three pens. | C．Two rulers. |
| A．He studies for too long. |
| B．He picks up some dictionaries. |
| C．He carries a heavy backpack. |
9 . Everyone has their favorite food. Some might love chocolate. Some might love potato chips.
Think about your favorite food. Have you ever wondered why your favorite food tastes so good? The answer is about your tongue (舌头) and your nose.
There are some taste buds (味蕾) on your tongue. They give you the sense of taste. How do the taste buds work? In fact, they have many tiny hairs on them. These tiny hairs send messages to your brain about the tastes of different food. In this way, you know whether it is sweet, sour, biter or salty.
An average person has about 10, 000 taste buds. They keep working all the time when we enjoy our food. The taste buds don’t always stay the same. They are replaced every two weeks or so. However, as a person gets older, some of these taste buds don’t get replaced.
An older person may only have 5, 000 working taste buds. That’s why some food may taste stronger for you than they do for an older person.
Besides your tongue, your nose also helps you learn about the taste of food. Sometimes, strong smells can even confuse (使困惑) your sense of taste. Try holding an onion under your nose while eating an apple. What do you taste?
So the next time you enjoy salty pizza and sweet ice cream, thank your tongue and your nose. Without them, you won’t have any sense of taste at all! Without the sense of taste, life will be boring.
1. Which parts of our body can help us taste the food?| A．Tongue and eyes. | B．Tongue and hairs. |
| C．Nose and eyes. | D．Tongue and nose. |
| A．Only parts of them work when people are eating. |
| B．There are tiny hairs sending messages to our brain about the taste of food. |
| C．The taste buds remain the same for two weeks for all the old people. |
| D．Most old people have stronger taste buds than the young. |
| A．About 5,000. | B．Over 6,000. | C．Over 10,000. | D．About 100,000. |
| A．The taste of apple. | B．The taste of onion. |
| C．The taste of sweet ice cream. | D．The taste of potato chips. |
| A．The Use of Tongue. | B．Our Favorite Food. |
| C．How We Can Taste Food. | D．Different Tastes of Food. |
10 . Hearing loss is unavoidable, but listening to loud music when you’re younger can make it worse. To reduce your risk of hearing loss via loud music, learn why and how it can cause hearing loss, and just how loud is too loud.
Hearing loss occurs in four ways: conductive hearing loss, sensorineural hearing loss, mixed hearing loss and auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder. Noise-induced (噪音诱发的) hearing loss is a type of sensorineural hearing loss.
Sensorineural hearing loss occurs when your inner ear becomes damaged. In the case of noise- induced hearing loss, most of the damage affects the cells of tiny sensory hairs in your inner ear.
When those cells get damaged or die, the electrical signal that your auditory nerve sends to your brain changes.
Noise-induced hearing loss can be acute or severe, and it can be temporary or permanent. You might be familiar with acute temporary noise-induced hearing loss, even if you didn’t realize what was happening at the time.
Acute temporary noise-induced hearing loss can occur from attending a loud concert or sporting event, going to a gun range without earmuffs or being near an explosion. It can make noises sound “stuffy” or far away, especially when talking on the phone or in a crowded room. Repeated exposure to those loud situations can eventually lead to permanent hearing loss.
Noise levels from earbuds and headphones can get as loud as 139 decibels, according to the journal Noise &Health, far greater than the recommended range of everyday sound exposure, which is 60 to 85 decibels. And the average level of noise from headphones, with the volume turned all the way up, is 94 to 110 decibels. For context, 60 decibels is about the volume of an average conversation, and 130 decibels is about the noise level of a rock concert. 85 decibels is considered the maximum volume at which you can listen to sound for eight hours without damaging your hearing. So if you were to listen to music from your headphones for eight hours a day, listening at a volume louder than 85 decibels can cause permanent damage to your ears.
Unfortunately, the relationship between decibels and time isn’t linear (线性的). For every three decibels, safe exposure time gets cut in half, according to the CDC. At 88 decibels, you can only safely listen for four hours; at 91 decibels, just two hours.
1. Which of the following statements is true according to the passage?| A．Noise-induced hearing loss belongs to sensorineural hearing loss. |
| B．Noise-induced hearing loss is always severe and permanent. |
| C．Occasional exposure to the loud situations can lead to permanent hearing loss in the end. |
| D．Listening to music from headphones for long at any volume won’t be harmful to your ears. |
| A．Participating in a heated debate. | B．Attending a rock concert. |
| C．Going to a gun range with earmuffs. | D．Watching an explosion at a distance. |
| A．Two hours. | B．Half an hour. |
| C．One and a half hours. | D．One hour. |
| A．Loud Music Damages Hearing | B．How to Prevent Hearing Loss |
| C．How Loud Is Too Loud | D．Music and Hearing |
