1 . Maps, number lines, shapes, artwork and other materials tend to cover elementary classroom walls. However, too much of a good thing may end up _______ attention and learning in young children, according to research published in Psychological Science.

Psychology researchers Anna V. Fisher, Karrie E. Godwin and Howard Seltman of Carnegie Mellon University looked at whether classroom displays affected children’s ability to maintain _______ during instruction and to learn the lesson content. They found that children in highly decorated classrooms were more distracted, spent more time off-task and demonstrated smaller learning _______than when the decorations were removed.

“Young children spend a lot of time — usually the whole day — in the same classroom, and we have shown that a classroom’s _______ environment can affect how much children learn,” said Fisher, lead author and associate professor of psychology in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Should teachers _______ their visual displays based on the findings of this study?

“We do not suggest by any means that this is the answer to all _______ problems. Furthermore,_______ research is needed to know what effect the classroom visual environment has on children’s attention and learning in real classrooms,” Fisher said. “_______, I would suggest that instead of removing all decorations, teachers should consider whether some of their visual displays do make it difficult for young children to _______.”

For the study, 24 kindergarten students were placed in ________classrooms for six introductory science lessons on topics they were unfamiliar with. Three lessons were taught in a heavily decorated classroom, and three lessons were given in a sparse (稀疏的) classroom. The results showed that while children learned in both __________ types, they learned more when the room was not heavily decorated. Specifically, children’s __________ on the test questions was higher in the sparse classroom (55% correct) than in the decorated classroom (42% correct).

“We were also interested in finding out if the visual displays were removed, whether the children’s attention would __________ to another distraction, such as talking to their peers, or the total amount of time they were distracted would remain the same,” said Godwin, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology and fellow of the Program in Interdisciplinary Education Research.

However, when the researchers totaled all of the time children spent off-task in both types of classrooms, the rate of off-task __________ was higher in the decorated classroom (38.6% time spent off-task) than in the sparse classroom (28.4% time spent off-task).

The researchers hope these findings will lead to further studies into developing guidelines to help teachers design classrooms __________.

1.

A．attracting

B．distracting

C．holding

D．paying

2.

A．confidence

B．relationship

C．consistency

D．focus

3.

A．gains

B．opportunities

C．needs

D．disabilities

4.

A．social

B．natural

C．physical

D．visual

5.

A．turn over

B．take down

C．try out

D．look into

6.

A．athletic

B．environmental

C．educational

D．communicative

7.

A．additional

B．prior

C．national

D．independent

8.

A．However

B．Besides

C．Therefore

D．Meanwhile

9.

A．stretch

B．adapt

C．concentrate

D．explore

10.

A．decorated

B．empty

C．transitional

D．laboratory

11.

A．teaching

B．classroom

C．school

D．personality

12.

A．accuracy

B．emphasis

C．impact

D．perspective

13.

A．refer

B．listen

C．respond

D．shift

14.

A．questions

B．behaviors

C．incidents

D．tasks

15.

A．originally

B．innovatively

C．appropriately

D．exclusively

2 . Precognitive dreams are dreams that seemingly predict the future which cannot be inferred from actually available information. Former US President Abraham Lincoln once revealed the frightening dream to his law partner and friend Ward Hill Lamon, “…Then I heard people weep… ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded. ‘The President,’ ‘he was killed!’…” The killing did happen later.

Christopher French, Professor in the Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths, stated the most likely explanation for such a phenomenon was coincidence (巧合). “In addition to pure coincidences we must also consider the unreliability of memory”, he added. Asked what criteria would have to be met for him to accept that precognitive dreams were a reality, he said, “The primary problem with tests of the claim is that the subjects are unable to tell when the event(s)they’ve dreamed about will happen.”

However, some claimed to make such tests practicable. Professor Caroline Watt at the University of Edinburgh, has conducted studies into precognitive dreaming. She stated that knowing future through dreams challenged the basic assumption of science — causality (relationship of cause and effect).

Dick Bierman, a retired physicist and psychologist, who has worked at the Universities of Amsterdam, Utrecht and Groningen, has put forward a theory that may explain precognitive dreams. It is based on the fact that when scientists use certain mathematical descriptions to talk about things like electromagnetism (电磁学), these descriptions favour the belief that time only moves in one direction. However, in practice the wave that is running backwards in time does exist. This concept is called the time symmetry, meaning that the laws of physics look the same when time runs forward or backward. But he believes that time symmetry breaks down due to external conditions. “The key of the theory is that it assumes that there is a special context that restores the broken time-symmetry, if the waves running backwards are ‘absorbed’ by a consistent multi-particle (多粒子) system. The brain under a dream state may be such a system where broken time-symmetry is partially restored. This is still not a full explanation for precognitive dreams but it shows where physics might be adjusted to accommodate the phenomenon,” he explains.

Although Bierman’s explanation is still based on guesses and has not accepted by mainstream science, Watt does think it is worth considering. For now, believing that it’s possible to predict future with dreams remains an act of faith. Yet, it’s possible that one day we’ll wake up to a true understanding of this fascinating phenomenon.

1. According to French, what makes it difficult to test precognitive dreams?

A．Unavailability of people’s dreams.

B．That coincidences happen a lot in reality.

C．That criteria for dream reliability are not trustworthy.

D．People’s inability to tell when dreamt events will happen.

2. Believers in precognitive dreams may question the truth of ________.

A．the assumption of causality	B．the time symmetry
C．memories of ordinary people	D．modern scientific tests

3. We can infer from the passage that ________.

A．Lincoln was warned of the killing by his friend

B．Watt carried out several experiments on causality

C．researches on electromagnetism are based on the time symmetry

D．time’s moving in two directions may justify precognitive dreams

4. Which might be the best title of the passage?

A．Should Dreams Be Assessed?

B．Can Dreams Predict the Future?

C．How Can Physics Be Changed to Explain Dreams?

D．Why Should Scientists Study Precognitive Dreams?

3 . The emergence of black holes undoubtedly marks the beginning of a revolution. Black holes have many peculiar properties, such as the alteration of space and time, the radiation of gravitational waves and so on. Scientists are still trying to study the properties and evolution of black holes in order to better understand the origin and evolution of the universe.

Recently, a team of astronomers may have found a solo-wandering black hole using a strange trick of gravity called microlensing (微透镜效应), but the results still have to be confirmed.

Sometimes it’s tough being an astronomer. Nature likes to hide the most interesting things from easy observation. Take, for example, black holes. Except for the strange quantum (量子) phenomenon of Hawking radiation, black holes are completely black. They don’t emit a single bit of radiation – they only absorb, hence their name.

To date, the only way astronomers have been able to spot black holes is through their influence on their environments. For example, if an orbiting star gets a little too close, the black hole can absorb the gas from that star, causing it to heat up as it falls. We can watch as stars dance around the giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

Even the famed pictures of the black holes in the center of the Milky Way and the M87 galaxy(星系) aren’t photographs of the black holes themselves. Instead, they are radio images of everything around them.

But surely not all black holes have other light-emitting objects around them to help us find them. To find these wanderers, astronomers have tried their luck with microlensing. We know that heavy objects can bend the path of light around them. This is a prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and the slight bending of starlight around our own sun was one of the first successful tests of the theory.

Microlensing is pretty much what the name suggests. When astronomers get extremely lucky, a wandering black hole and pass between us and a random distant star. The light from that star bends around the black hole because of its gravity, and from our point of view, the star will appear to temporarily flare in brightness.

And when I say “extremely lucky” I mean it. Despite trying this technique for over a decade, it is only now that astronomers have found a candidate black hole through microlensing. Two teams used the same data, a microlensing event recorded from both the OGLE (Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment) telescope in Chile and the MOA (Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics) telescope in New Zealand. One team found that the mass was somewhere around seven times the mass of the sun – definitely black hole territory. But the other team estimated a much smaller mass, around 2-4 times the mass of the Sun. If the true mass of the object is at the lower end of that spectrum (光谱), then the wanderer is probably not a black hole.

1. Why does the author say it is hard to be an astronomer?

A．Einstein’s theory is hard to understand.

B．Many things in nature are not easy to observe.

C．Understanding the evolution of the universe is not easy.

D．Whether the black hole has been found remains to be seen.

2. What is the example in Para. 4 trying to prove?

A．Stars’ wandering in black holes.

B．Black holes’ absorbing the star’s gas.

C．The relationship between stars’ heating and black holes.

D．Finding black holes by observing environmental changes.

3. What does the author tell us about the discovery of black holes?

A．People can often find black holes with glowing objects.

B．Research groups can work together to find black holes.

C．Glowing objects around black holes help us find them sometimes.

D．Understanding the properties of black holes helps find them.

4. What conclusion can we draw from the last paragraph?

A．To persevere in the end is to win.

B．Facts speak louder than words.

C．Failure is the mother of success.

D．Things are not always what they seem.

4 . Why Are You Still Coughing?

Have you caught a cold recently — but can’t get rid of the cough? You’re not alone. The symptom can stick around for weeks after our bodies have cleared a virus. Michael Shiloh, a physician specializing in infectious disease research at UT Southwestern Medical Center, says coughing patients often report that they were sick as many as eight weeks prior to seeing him. He says, “    1    ”

The United States saw a sharp rise in cases of influenza in late 2023 that’s dragged on into 2024. And though positive tests for the illness have leveled off or decreased countrywide over the past weeks, the number of people seeking healthcare for respiratory (呼吸的) diseases is still elevated across much of the U.S.     2     But research on how infections affect nerves in the airway is revealing new clues.

Coughing is an important reaction that protects the airway from dangers like water or bits of mis-swallowed food, says doctor and researcher Lorcan McGarvey of Queen’s University Belfast.     3     These nerves are decorated with receptor (受体) proteins that react to everything from cold air to hot pepper. When a stimulus causes those receptors, nerves send signals to the brain that we experience as the urge to cough.

While it may seem obvious that coughing is meant to clear our throats, it’s also possible that viruses cause the reaction to help themselves spread.     4     And if we do ultimately cough to clear out our airway during an infection, that still wouldn’t explain what exactly our nerves sense during an infection that causes a cough.

“We don’t know,” says electrophysiologist Thomas Taylor-Clark of the University of South Florida. “But what we can say is that we do know some things, one being that viruses cause infection.”

A．The reaction is caused by nerves that reach into the airway.

B．Scientists know about many different stimuli that can cause cough.

C．Many infections involve dry coughs that don’t produce phlegm (痰) at all.

D．We can’t really detect virus any more in these individuals, and yet they’re still coughing.

E．But at least temporarily, they can send us into coughing even when we’re no longer sick.

F．Scientists still aren’t sure exactly why otherwise healthy people experience this kind of persistent cough.

5 . 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. emerge          B. absorbing            C. subject          D. defining          E. movement F. originally       G. course            H. universally        I. happens        J. constant       K. corresponds

How Long Is a Second?

The length of a second depends on how you’re measuring it. There are 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute — so surely a second is 1/86400, of a day, right? Well, it turns out that     1     time isn’t that simple.

“The second was     2     based on the length of the day,” Peter Whibberley, a senior scientist at the National Physical Laboratory in the U.K., told Live Science. “People observed the sun passing overhead and started measuring its     3     using sundials (日晷). However, sundials have a few disadvantages. Aside from the obvious problem of not being able to read a sundial when the sun isn’t visible, relying on Earth’s daily turning is surprisingly inaccurate. “The turning is not precisely     4    ,” Whibberley said. “The Earth speeds up and slows down over time.” So how can we precisely measure time if using the length of a day is so unreliable?

In the 16^th century, people turned to technological solutions to this problem, and the first recognizable mechanical clocks began to     5    . The earliest mechanical clocks, which were designed to click at a specific frequency, averaged over the     6     of a year.

By around 1940, quartz crystal clocks (石英钟) had become the new gold standard. However, problems arose, and this was where atomic clocks came in. “Atoms exist only in particular energy states and can only change from one state to another by     7     or giving out a fixed amount of energy,” Whibberley explained. “That energy     8     to a precise frequency, so you can use that frequency as a reference for time keeping.” The astronomical second continued to vary. Every few years, scientists must add a second to allow Earth’s slowing turning to keep up with atomic time.

In fact, scientists are discussing whether it’s time to redefine the second again. But while several important questions still need to be answered before this     9    , it’s clear that the strictly correct definition of a second is     10     to change.

6 .      New research confirms that human footprints found in New Mexico are probably the oldest direct evidence of human presence in the Americas, a finding that upends what many scientists knew about human habitation and migration (迁徙).

The footprints were discovered at the edge of an ancient lakebed in White Sands national park. According to the new paper published in the journal Science, they date back to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago. Actually, the estimated age of the footprints was first reported in Science in 2021, but some researchers raised concerns about the dates. Questions focused on whether seeds of water plants used for the original dating may have absorbed ancient carbon from the lake — which could, in theory, throw off radiocarbon dating by thousands of years. But the new study presents two additional lines of evidence for the older date range. It uses two entirely different materials found at the site, ancient pollen (花粉) and stone grains.

       The reported age of the footprints challenges the once conventional wisdom that humans did not reach the Americas until a few thousand years before rising sea levels covered the Bering land bridge between Russia and Alaska, perhaps about 15, 000 years ago. “This is a subject that's always been controversial because it's so significant. It's about how we understand the last chapter of the peopling of the world,” said Thomas Urban, an archaeologist (考古学家) at Comell University, who was involved in the 2021 study but not the new one.
       Thomas Stafford, an independent archaeological geologist in New Mexico, who was not involved in the study, said he “was a bit suspicious before” but now is convinced. The new study isolated about 75, 000 grams of pure pollen from the same stone layer that contained the footprints. ‘Dating pollen is laborious but worthwhile,” said Kathleen Springer, a research geologist at the US Geological Survey and a co-author of the new paper.
     Ancient footprints of any kind can provide archaeologists with a quick look of a moment in time. While some archeological sites in the Americas point to similar date ranges — including necklaces carved from giant animal remains in Brazil — scientists still question whether such objects really indicate human presence. “White Sands is unique because there's no question these footprints were left by people,” said Jennifer Raff, a scientist at the University of Kansas, who was not involved in the study.
1. The underlined word “upends” (paragraph 1) is closest in meaning to “_______”.

A．comprises

B．connects

C．challenges

D．compares

2. According to the passage, what is special about the new research?

A．It shows the footprints were made by the Russians.

B．It offers more convincing lines of evidence for dating.

C．It confirms that the ancient humans enjoyed living by the lake.

D．It reveals the footprints are much younger than previously thought.

3. It can be inferred from the last paragraph that _____________.

A．necklaces are valuable objects for archaeologists to date animals

B．human footprints are often sure signs of human presence

C．ancient objects in Brazil are excluded from the study

D．White Sands is one important archaeological site

4. Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?

A．Scientists Discovers New Species of Humans in Americas

B．Humans Reached Americas 15, 000 Years Earlier Than Believed

C．American Archaeologists Unearthed Valuable Manmade Objects

D．New Research Confirms Early Human Presence in Americas

7 . 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

Seeing Math on the Page

Math and literature are probably two of the subjects that bring students headaches. However, scientists wonder     1     the beauty of math can be found in literary works. Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections between Mathematics and Literature, a book published recently by UK mathematician Sarah Hart,     2     (present) some interesting thoughts about "three". She argues that the beauty of this number is indeed evident in many works of western literature and languages in general.

‘Three’ is the minimum number     3     a two-dimensional shape can be defined. For example, three sticks can create a triangle, a stable structure. Many common phrases are in three words, such as “ready, set, go”. Being the first things kids may learn, some nursery rhymes have a word     4     (repeat) three times, such as “row, row, row your boat”. In stories, there are usually three main characters, such as Harry, Ron and Hermione in the Harry Potter series. For a series of novels, there are usually three books     5     four, according to Hart.

Why is it always the third son who behaves differently from his two older brothers, thus     6     (win) the princess? “The reason for this,” Hart explains, “ is obvious. We require two repetitions to get to know the pattern,     7     the breaking of the pattern in the third character can surprise or amuse us.”

Similarly, another study by researchers at the University of Vermont also connected math and storytelling. They analyzed more than 1, 300 fiction books and arranged for 10, 000 words from the books     8     (rate) by 50 participants on a happiness scale of 1 to 9. Then the ratings     9     (categorize) into different graphs, which showed how the readers' emotions changed while reading. It turned out that each story fit perfectly into one of six basic graphs, a mathematical pattern.

“The idea that one would     10     choose between mathematics and literature is something of a tragedy, ”Hart says, “The two fields are fundamentally linked”.

8 . The cultivation of plants by ants is more widespread than previously realized, and has evolved on at least 15 separate occasions.

There are more than 200 species of ant in the Americas that farm fungi (真菌) for food, but this trait evolved just once sometime between 45 million and 65 million years ago. Biologists regard the cultivation of fungi by ants as true agriculture appearing earlier than human agriculture because it meets four criteria: the ants plant the fungus, care for it, harvest it and depend on it for food.

By contrast, while thousands of ant species are known to have a wide variety of interdependent relationships with plants, none were regarded as true agriculture. But in 2016, Guillaume Chomicki and Susanne Renner at the University of Munich, Germany, discovered that an ant in Fungi cultivates several plants in a way that meets the four criteria for true agriculture.

The ants collect the seeds of the plants and place them in cracks in the bark of trees. As the plants grow, they form hollow structures called domain that the ants nest in. The ants defecate (排便) at designated absorptive places in these domain, providing nutrients for the plant. In return, as well as shelter, the plant provides food in the form of fruit juice.

This discovery prompted Chomicki and others to review the literature on ant-plant relationships to see if there are other examples of plant cultivation that have been overlooked. “They have never really been looked at in the framework of agriculture,” says Chomicki, who is now at the University of Sheffield in the UK. “It’s definitely widespread.”

The team identified 37 examples of tree-living ants that cultivate plants that grow on trees, known as epiphytes (附生植物). By looking at the family trees of the ant species, the team was able to determine on how many occasions plant cultivation evolved and roughly when. Fifteen is a conservative estimate, says Campbell. All the systems evolved relatively recently, around 1million to 3 million years ago, she says.

Whether the 37 examples of plant cultivation identified by the team count as true agriculture depends on the definitions used. Not all of the species get food from the plants, but they do rely on them for shelter, which is crucial for ants living in trees, says Campbell. So the team thinks the definition of true agriculture should include shelter as well as food.

1. According to biologists, why is ant-fungus cultivation considered as a form of true agriculture?

A．Because it occurred earlier than human agriculture.

B．Because it fulfills the standards typical of agricultural practices.

C．Because it redefines the four criteria for true human agriculture.

D．Because it is less common than previously thought.

2. What motivated Chomicki and others to review the literature on ant-plant relationships?

A．They determined on new family trees of the ant species.

B．They overlooked some tree-living ants that provided nutrients for the plants.

C．They never studied the ant-plant relationships within the context of agriculture.

D．They never identified any an t species that engaged in cultivation of fungi.

3. Which of the following statements is supported by the team's findings according to the passage?

A．Ants’ cultivation of plants is limited to a few specific species.

B．The cultivation of fungi by ants is considered the earliest form of agriculture.

C．True agriculture in ants involves only food-related interactions with plants.

D．Ants have independently cultivated plants on at least 15 distinct occasions.

4. What is the passage mainly about?

A．The evolution of ants in the plant kingdom.

B．The widespread occurrence of ant-plant cultivation.

C．The discovery of a new ant species engaging in agriculture.

D．The contrast between ant agriculture and human agriculture.

9 . Scientists know that the internal forces that generate Earth’s magnetic field (磁场) can change and that the strength of the field swings over time. This can lead to gradual shifts in the intensity and location of Earth’s magnetic north and south poles and even reversals where Earth’s magnetic poles trade places.

But are these geomagnetic events responsible for extreme weather, extinction, and even disasters? Claims that Earth’s magnetic field is responsible for climate change are widespread online, but scientists say the theory has no basis. “At this time there aren’t any credible mechanisms that could make it a possibility,” says Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist in New York.” It’s not that we’re ruling out magnetic effects on climate without thinking about it, we collectively have thought about it, and it’s been found devoid.

There are three north poles on Earth: true north, geomagnetic north, and magnetic north. True north is a fixed position on the globe that points directly towards the geographic North Pole. But geomagnetic north, currently located over Canada’s Ellesmere Island, is not a fixed point — it represents the northern axis (轴) of Earth’s magnetosphere and shifts from time to time. Magnetic north corresponds to magnetic field lines and is what your compass locates.

During a pole reversal, Earth’s magnetic north and south poles exchange locations. This happens on average every 300,000 years or so, but the last reversal occurred around 780.000 years ago. Some scientists have assumed that reversals and the corresponding decrease in strength of the magnetic field could cause a big problem that increased solar radiation was able to enter Earth’s atmosphere, altering ozone levels and driving global climate shifts and extinctions.

Kirk Johnson, a director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, has spent much of his career studying the extinction of dinosaurs. While analyzing fossil records and timelines surrounding his research, Johnson zeroed in on the magnetic reversal that occurred around 66.3million years ago.

Deep ocean samples revealed significant climate change around 66.3 million years ago. But this also coincides with a large volcanic eruption in India called the Deccan volcanism, which produced some of the longest lava (熔岩) flows on Earth. “We’ve always owed that transition to the carbon dioxide released by the Deccan volcanism and the increase of greenhouse gases,” says Johnson. “There are two things happening: The magnetic field is changing, the Deccan volcanism is happening, and there’s climate warming. So that would be an example of coincidental climate change.”

1. The underlined word “devoid” in paragraph 2 probably means        .

A．fruitless

B．obvious

C．reasonable

D．misleading

2. Which north pole on earth is involved in the pole reversal?

A．True north.

B．Geomagnetic north.

C．Magnetic north.

D．Geographic north

3. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

A．The geomagnetic events are to blame for the climate change.

B．The decrease in strength of the magnetic field resulted in extinction.

C．The magnetic field is changing all the time with the climate warming.

D．Internal forces which produce Earth’s magnetic field can alter over time

4. Which of the following statements does Kirk Johnson most probably agree with?

A．A magnetic reversal doesn’t necessarily cause climate change.

B．A magnetic reversal is accompanied with significant climate change

C．The extinction of the dinosaurs is due to the magnetic reversal.

D．Climate change is not relevant to the carbon dioxide emission.

10 . Social Masking

Amanda is always an expert at working the room. She would adopt the manner of the people around her to fit in while hiding her true personality. This is social masking, the process of hiding your natural way of interacting with others so you can feel accepted.     1    Instead, they are hoping to fit in with everybody else. Social masking is a set of learned pattern-matching behaviors, movements and actions where you try to be normal to fit in rather than stand out.

    2    People all wear certain social masks in order to get through some tricky life situations with confidence, according to Dr. Tara Quinn-Cirillo. And some experts even think social masking is built in all human beings at a physical level, adding that something in our brain gives indications of how to essentially stay safe and not stick out.

In a world that often tells us to just be ourselves, you might wonder why we are still dependent on these social masking behaviors. “Social masking happens because we as a species want to be included,” says Tara. “It has been a tribal thing of being together rather than being on our own, from a historical perspective.     3    ”

There is a huge difference between naturally identifying with someone and consciously social masking.    4    Social masking, on the other hand, involves a conscious effort to change your personality to suit your surroundings. It typically involves depressing your natural urges and changing your personal interests to fit the crowd.

A．Social maskers do not try hard to match other people in pace and tone.

B．Social masking is something we all engage in to some extent.

C．Social maskers are not trying to fox anyone.

D．When we are in natural identification with someone, it happens naturally, and there is very little effort involved.

E．It’s adopted by people unable to naturally act in a way considered socially acceptable.

F．That is, it’s an ancient part of our evolution to socialize, rather than be anti-social or a misfit.