1 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. access       B. basically       C. eliminate       D. fit       E. generate       F. majority G. merely     H. perform       I. power       J. promise       K. preference

Noise-canceling headphones worth the price?

A little bit of silence. Sometimes that’s all we want. Whether it is halfway through a 10-hour flight with a crying baby or trying to sleep through the snoring from the hotel room next door, the     1     of noise-canceling headphones is one that every traveler probably finds charming. Yet are they worth it? These headphones are often expensive, and for some people, they don’t live up to the ads.

I’ve spent a     2     of the last five years traveling, taking dozens of flights and train journeys, and as someone who has reviewed noise-canceling headphones for even longer, I can definitely say maybe.

HOW THEY WORK? Noise-canceling headphones, also called active noise canceling headphones, use electronic processing to analyze nearby sound and attempt to     3     the opposite sound. The result is less noise, over all.

These headphones don’t create silence, nor are they able to     4     noise. The crests and troughs (波峰和波谷) do not perfectly cancel out. The absolute best noise-canceling headphones     5     reduce noise and work best with low-frequency droning sounds.

Two headphone sets could claim to reduce the same amount of noise but     6     completely differently. Only hands-on testing, ideally with objective measurements, can tell the difference.

Noise-canceling headphones require a battery to     7     their electronics. Noise-isolating headphones, which do not require electronics and therefore can be far cheaper, work by creating a seal in your ear canal to block noise. They are     8    like earplugs, but with earbuds. If you can get a good seal, these work reasonably well.

Getting a good seal can be a challenge, however, since everyone’s ears are different, and not all headphones will     9     correctly. And even if you do get a good seal, noise-isolating headphones will not be able to block low-frequency sounds as well as the best noise-canceling headphones. They will reduce a wide range of frequencies, which can help.

WHO REALLY NEEDS THEM? If you are a frequent traveler, good noise-canceling headphones will make any journey in a plane, train or automobile far more pleasant.

In-ear models are easier—though still slightly uncomfortable—to sleep with and are my     10    . Over-ear models reduce a little more noise, as they are able to passively block some sound because of their design. But they are always bulky on your head or in your bag. After I stopped reviewing these headphones for Wirecutter, I bought a pair of Bose QuiteComfort 20s, a long time Wirecutter pick, and I never fly without them.

2 . Direction: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. labour              B. manner              C. highlighting        D. circumstances              E. updated F. characterised        G. integrated             H. admirable              I. accommodate              J. overseeing       K. flexible

The house of the future? A sun-filled, shape-shifting, shed-share paradise

What will homes be like 10 years from now? Judging by the winners of the Home of 2030 competition, sharing will be key.

Shared home-working spaces, communal garden sheds and houses built using apps—these are just some of the ideas in the winning proposals for the government’s Home of 2030 competition to develop prototype “homes fit for the future”,    1    the “best of British design”. The aim was to imagine what the best age-adaptable, energy-efficient, healthy homes might look like in 10 years’ time; but, according to the winning architects, most of the best ideas have been around for generations.

“You can’t get much more     2    and adaptable than the Georgian townhouse,” says Jennifer Beningfield of Openstudio, leader of one of the two winning teams announced today. “We’ve taken this very simple model and     3    it for the 21st century. Our idea was to create infinite choice and variation from something very simple.”

Her team’s scheme imagines a terraced (排房的) housing type made from two standard components, a base unit and a loft, joined with “connector” pieces, taking into account multiple configurations (布局) over time as family     4    change. Standing between the homes, the connectors would     5    stairs and a lift, as well as storage and shared workspace. One of the most important aspects since the pandemic, says Beningfield, is providing “space to work from home, without having your laptop on the kitchen table”. Each home would have its own private outdoor space, while they would all back on to large communal gardens, arranged in the     6    of a traditional London square.

Built off-site to demanding Passivhaus standards, with a twin wall timber frame, the homes would be     7    by generous 2.7m high ceilings and tall 2.5m windows and doors, massively increasing the amount of daylight brought into the rooms, compared with most new-build spec housing. Beningfield, who studied and worked in South Africa and the US, says that off-site construction is crucial, given the shocking build quality of so many new homes in the UK – which she fears will only get worse after Brexit, if much of the skilled     8    is forced to leave.

As is so often the case with blue-sky (纯理论的) ideas competitions, the ambitions of the Home of 2030 winning teams are     9    – and, in this case, completely buildable – but there is little evidence to suggest that either the government or the volume housebuilding sector has any intention of putting them into practice. For that, we must look to Sunderland in 2023, and hope that a(n)    10    union of other councils, communities and smaller-scale builders have the imagination to follow their lead.

3 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct.

How language transformed humanity

Language is very probably the one characteristic that separates us from the chimpanzees, our closest relatives. All other major differences between us likely stem from language. “It allows you to implant (植入) a thought from your mind directly into someone else’s mind”, says Mark Pagel, professor and head of the Evolution Laboratory at the University of Reading.

Humans use discrete (分离的) pulses of sound—their language—    1    (alter) the internal settings inside someone else’s brain to suit an individual’s interests. Language is a form of social learning instead of something     2    (pursue) all by oneself.

Social learning is visual theft: for example, if I can learn by watching you, I can steal (and benefit from) your best ideas, wisdom or skills without having to invest the time and energy to develop these     3    .

There are two options for dealing with this crisis: either return into small family groups so the benefits of each group’s knowledge     4    (share) only with one’s relatives or expand one’s group to include unrelated others.    5    our relatives, the Neanderthals, who withdrew into small groups, humans chose the second option, and language was the result.

“Language evolved to solve the crisis of visual theft and to exploit cooperation and exchange”, says Professor Pagel.

In fact, as Professor Pagel argues, language is a “social technology”     6    (allow) for cooperation between unrelated individuals and groups. According to the archaeological record, it was this cooperation and sharing of ideas     7    came before human migration around the planet and the following human population explosion.

But almost incomprehensibly, thousands of languages evolved. So just     8    a shared language facilitates communication and cooperation between unrelated groups, different languages slow the flow of ideas, technologies—and even genes.

“Can humans afford to have all these different languages?” asks Professor Pagel. In a world     9    we want to promote cooperation, in a world that is more dependent than ever on cooperation to maintain and enhance humanity’s levels of prosperity, multiple languages     10    not be practical.

In fact, humanity’s “destiny is to be one world with one language”, concludes Professor Pagel.

4 . Human beings have somehow managed to engineer the night to receive us by filling it with light. This kind of control is no different from the feat ( 壮 举 ) of damming a river. Its benefits come with_________ — called light pollution — whose effects scientists are only now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design. _________ lighting washes out the darkness of night, altering light levels and light rhythms to which many forms of life, including ourselves, have_________. Wherever man-made light spills into the natural world, some aspects of life-migration, reproduction, feeding-is affected.

For most human history, the phrase “light pollution” would have_________. Imagine walking towards London on a moonlit night around 1800, when it was Earth’s most populous city. Nearly a million people lived there, _________ candles, torches and lanterns, as they always had. Only a few houses were lit by gas, and there would be no public gaslights in the streets or squares for another seven years. From a few miles away, you would have been more likely to_________ London than to see its dim collective glow.

We’ve lit up the night as if it were a(n) _________ country. As a matter of fact, among mammals (哺乳动物) alone, the number of species active at night is astonishing. Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet attracting them to it. The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being_________ by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms, circling and circling in the thousands until they drop.

It was once thought that light pollution only affected astronomers, who need to see the night sky in all its glorious clarity. Unlike astronomers, most of us may not need a_________ view of the night sky for our work. __________, like most other creatures, we do need darkness. __________ darkness is pointless. It is as essential to maintaining our biological welfare as__________ itself; the price of modifying our internal clockwork means it doesn’t operate as it should, causing various physical discomforts. So fundamental are the regular rhythms of waking and sleep to our being that__________ them is similar to altering our center of gravity.

In a very real sense, light pollution causes us to__________ our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best__________ against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way — the edge of our galaxy — arching overhead.

1.

A．consequences

B．achievements

C．agreements

D．circumstances

2.

A．Randomly-designed

B．Well-designed

C．Poorly-designed

D．Economically-designed

3.

A．appealed

B．adapted

C．objected

D．amounted

4.

A．come under criticism

B．made no difference

C．come into effect

D．made no sense

5.

A．making do with

B．fed up with

C．identifying with

D．overflowing with

6.

A．visit

B．greet

C．feel

D．smell

7.

A．independent

B．disconnected

C．unoccupied

D．excluded

8.

A．exposed

B．captured

C．dismissed

D．frustrated

9.

A．clear

B．comprehensive

C．traditional

D．critical

10.

A．Subsequently

B．However

C．Therefore

D．Similarly

11.

A．Reviewing

B．Embracing

C．Denying

D．Regulating

12.

A．light

B．rhythm

C．status

D．dawn

13.

A．emerging from

B．withdrawing from

C．messing with

D．coinciding with

14.

A．keep track of

B．lose sight of

C．catch hold of

D．let go of

15.

A．measured

B．neutralized

C．undergone

D．supervised

5 . Scientists in the U. S. have developed a new training program for the brain that they say can make you smarter. Called “Gist(主旨)Reasoning Training,” the program developed out of the University of Texas at Dallas goes beyond standard memory recall and information _______ tests and improves cognitive performance by _______ the brain in areas like strategic attention, integrated reasoning and innovation, they claim.

To start, participants - who ranged from teenagers and healthy adults to brain injury victims and seniors at risk for Alzheimer’s disease - were _______ with filtering competing information and focusing on only important, essential components. They were also instructed to _______ the information, finding common _______ or developing generalized statements from what they were reading. Each strategy was designed to build on the previous exercise. Participants were encouraged to apply the same mental strategies outside the training sessions.

After about a dozen 45- to 60- minute sessions, conducted over two months, cognitive _______ were recorded in areas like abstraction, reasoning and innovation, scientists said, and by extension, also improved memory, planning and problem solving. “What’s exciting about this work is that in randomized trials _______ gist reasoning training to memory training, we found that it was not learning new information that engaged widespread brain networks and _______ cognitive performance, but rather actually _______ processing of information and using that information in new ways that augmented brain performance,” said the study co-author Sandra Bond Chapman in a statement.

________ helping seniors improve their cognitive function in old age, a strategic and more analytical approach to brain boosting exercises could also be used by young people to develop an early ________, and help middle-aged adults sharpen their skills and remain“ ________ healthy,” scientists say.

The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. Research out of the University of Los Angeles California published last year also found that older adults who ________ used a brain-fitness program called Dakim Brain Fitness improved their memory and language skills. Another ________ way to keep mentally fit? Hit the pavement and go for a run or brisk walk, as it’s been well ________ that physical activity is an effective brain booster.

1.

A．preserving

B．progressing

C．processing

D．protecting

2.

A．challenging

B．exchanging

C．transplanting

D．transforming

3.

A．provided

B．tasked

C．connected

D．mixed

4.

A．offer

B．search

C．investigate

D．interpret

5.

A．themes

B．senses

C．knowledge

D．claims

6.

A．performances

B．gains

C．benefits

D．procedures

7.

A．referring

B．applying

C．comparing

D．turning

8.

A．reduced

B．elevated

C．advanced

D．faded

9.

A．clearer

B．vaguer

C．wider

D．deeper

10.

A．Instead of

B．But for

C．In addition to

D．In terms of

11.

A．advantage

B．disadvantage

C．innocence

D．conscience

12.

A．physically

B．physiologically

C．psychologically

D．mentally

13.

A．regularly

B．irregularly

C．reluctantly

D．illegally

14.

A．imaginary

B．proven

C．stimulating

D．complicated

15.

A．authorized

B．accomplished

C．established

D．organized

6 . Ever been just about to call someone when the phone rings and the person in question is on the other end? Or have you experienced a sudden feeling of unease or danger, even though you’re in a(n)_________situation? If you don’t believe in it, you’ll put it down to_________and an overactive imagination. But some people believe it is _________that there is a sixth sense beyond smell, taste, touch, hearing and sight. Now, scientists are carrying out experiments not only to prove that it exists, but also to find out how you can_________it to your advantage.

Dean Radin, a researcher in California, has set up the Boundary Institute in Los Altos and is currently using its website to recruit (招募) 4, 000 people in 57 countries to find out if there are any_________instances of sixth sense or, as he calls it, “recognition”— the ability to predict outcomes. The results so far are_________. In a card test, where you have to _________which of the five cards on a computer screen will be turned over to reveal a picture, the top scorers hit the the right card 48% of the time— _________of this happening are 2,669 to 1.

_________, Radin’ s most famous study involves participants looking at a variety of image that are designed to stimulate a specific response. In the experiment, participants sit alone in room in front of a computer, with devices attached to their bodies to measure changes in skin resistance and blood flow, which are measures of emotional arousal. Radin has found that one in six people has a rise in arousal before they see the road accident-type pictures, while remaining __________before the tree-type pictures.

But even if you do accept that a sixth sense exists, the question is, does it actually____________? Radin says it does. “The future of our civilization depends on____________that are being made now, whether it’s about how we farm our food, how we get rid of our waste or whether we allow chemicals to be included in everyday products. We don’ t have answers to these important questions, yet what we decide on will____________our lives for decades or longer. Anything we can do to improve our ability to predict future events is well worth the____________.” He says. If it turns out that some people can genuinely forecast the future some of the time, as I believe the data shows, then ____________this ability is as important as cutting-edge science.

1.

A．unfamiliar

B．tough

C．harmless

D．ridiculous

2.

A．coincidence

B．resistance

C．innovation

D．distraction

3.

A．mystery

B．evidence

C．falsehood

D．innocence

4.

A．alter

B．define

C．find

D．use

5.

A．historical

B．strange

C．mistaken

D．true

6.

A．extraordinary

B．inevitable

C．alarming

D．disappointing

7.

A．ask

B．guess

C．recall

D．learn

8.

A．figures

B．methods

C．scores

D．chances

9.

A．However

B．Otherwise

C．Meanwhile

D．Consequently

10.

A．active

B．calm

C．silent

D．alert

11.

A．serve any purpose

B．take any advantage

C．make any progress

D．win any support

12.

A．inquiries

B．decisions

C．donations

D．comparisons

13.

A．ruin

B．improve

C．affect

D．maintain

14.

A．expense

B．risk

C．effort

D．wait

15.

A．proving

B．challenging

C．limiting

D．understanding

7 . “We know that narrative has the power to transport us to another world,” says Guilherme Brockington from Brazil’s Federal University. “Earlier research suggested that stories help children process and regulate their emotions — but this was mostly conducted in a laboratory, with subjects answering questions while lying inside functional MRI machines. There are few studies on biological and psychological effects of storytelling in a more commonplace hospital setting.”
What is the second paragraph mainly about?

A．The effects of story-telling on children.

B．The limitations of the earlier research.

C．The methods used in earlier studies.

D．The major breakthroughs achieved so far.

8 . Given its role in helping restore physiological peace, it appears that regardless of whether someone has BPD or not, it can be beneficial to learn to label your emotions. When you’re starting down the pathway of experiencing a negative emotion, you can benefit by applying an accurate label to that emotion as opposed to holding it back or calling it something else. This can potentially prevent engagement in destructive behaviors that may function to downregulate emotion such as self-harm.

To sum up, this new information about BPD can offer hope that at least one key element of the emotion regulation process appears to function effectively. Building on this strength could very well provide a new and unexplored pathway for their satisfaction.

What is the passage mainly about?

A．A new pathway of regulating emotions.

B．A method of consciously labeling emotions.

C．An unexpected strength of people with BPD.

D．An involuntary reaction to people with BPD.

9 . I Am Not a Robot

An annoyance, an important security feature, an uncomfortable request: however you feel about being asked to prove you are not a robot, it has become a daily occurrence for most of us, but perhaps not one we would miss if it were to suddenly go away.

A new feature in the latest versions of iOS and macOS, Apple’s operating systems for smartphones and computers, promises to give the boot to “captchas” once and for all.     1    

“Sometimes a captcha is just a button to press,” said Apple engineer Tommy Pauly. “But other times it can be a challenge to fill out.”

The term captcha is in fact an acronym (首字母缩略词) for   “completely automated public Turing test (图灵测试) to tell computers and humans apart.” To help stop fraud (欺诈), these little tests often pop up when you’re signing up for or onto a website.

    2     If you get it wrong, it may ask you to start again, leading you to wonder if you really know what a traffic light looks like—or if you might really be a robot after all.

But captchas are now fast becoming unusable, making the Internet a wasteland of difficult puzzles. Users must struggle to do the most basic things. “We’ve literally all found ourselves at one time or another complaining: ‘Those were all the pictures with traffic lights,” said Effie Le Moignan, a researcher in social computing at Newcastle University.

Internet users struggle to tell the difference between a wear of paint on a sidewalk and a formalized crosswalk that’s often requested in a traditional captcha, and worry that one wrong answer may lock them out of an account.     3    

“You likely don’t enjoy being interrupted by these,” said Apple’s Tommy Pauly. “I certainly don’t. The reason these experiences exist is to prevent dishonest activity. If you run a server, you don’t want it to be defeated by fraud.     4    ”

The company worked with Fastly and Cloudflare to build the new feature. It works by allowing your device to send a statement confirming it is being used by a human to the requesting website.

A．This is becoming a bigger issue as captchas have grown increasingly confusing.

B．Therefore, when faced with something really confusing, many people simply give up.

C．Most attempts to create accounts or to buy products come from common users, but some attempts can also come from attackers.

D．Called “automatic confirmation,” the technology will allow sites to confirm you are not a robot without you having to do anything at all.

E．These tests may ask you to spot all the traffic lights in a picture or to type out some special letters and numbers.

F．Although the service is tied to Apple’s iCloud network, the requesting site will not receive any personal information about the user or their device.

10 . Venus (金星) has long played second to its redder, smaller and more distant neighbor. Given how inhospitable (不宜居住的) Venus has appeared to be, we have spent the majority of the last century pinning some of our biggest hopes of finding signs of life on Mars.

That all changed on September 15, 2020. It was announced that a strange gas called phosphine had been spotted in the clouds above Venus. The gas is produced by microbes, extremely small living things, here on Earth, so the discovery has renewed hopes that there might be life on Venus. Now we need to know for sure.

There is, after all, only so much we can do with ground-based instruments. Venus is extremely bright. This brightness, caused by the intense reflection of sunlight from its thick clouds and highlighted because of its closer distance to Earth, basically blinds our instruments from making more detailed observations of the planet. It is like trying to look at the road while another car’s high beams (远光灯) are pointed in your direction.

“To really get to the heart of this question, we need to go to Venus,” says Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at North Carolina State University. But of course, that is easier said than done. Temperatures at the surface reach 464℃, and pressures are 89 times higher than on Earth. Only the Soviet Union has successfully landed on the Venusian surface—its Venera 13 lander functioned for 127 minutes before succumbing to the bad weather in 1982. It is not easy to justify spending hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars on a mission that could be over in a matter of hours without giving us what we need.

An orbiter is the most sensible start. Unlike ground-based observations, orbiters can peer into the atmosphere and would have a better time observing how phosphine levels change over time or over what regions they are most concentrated. An orbiter also presents the opportunity to complete more challenging projects by potentially venturing directly into the planet’s atmosphere. A sample return mission could be possible, in which a spacecraft flies into the atmosphere and bottles up some gas to bring back to Earth for laboratory analysis.

Trying to find life on another planet, however, is not simply a walk from point A to point B. No single mission to Venus will be able to finish all the work necessary to answer the question. It might be time to think not just about what the next mission to Venus should be, but what a whole new era of Venus exploration would look like: a group of multiple missions that explore Venus in joint efforts—the way we currently do with Mars.

1. Venus is considered inhospitable to humans mainly because ________.

A．the pressure of the planet is too low

B．the surface of the planet is too bright

C．the density (密度) of the clouds is too low

D．the surface temperature of the planet is too high

2. The underlined phrase “succumbing to” in paragraph 4 is closest in meaning to “________”.

A．giving in to	B．keeping away from
C．making up for	D．putting up with

3. According to the article, scientists will be better able to reveal the secret about Venus by ________.

A．sending astronauts to the planet

B．using a more advanced space telescope

C．launching an orbiter to the planet

D．redesigning their ground-based instruments

4. What can we infer from the article?

A．We have little hope of successfully finding life on Venus.

B．We have a firm determination to discover life on other planets.

C．We have spent much time studying phosphine in the past century.

D．We have attempted to land on the Venusian surface in the last century.