2 . False medical news can lead to patients’ experiencing greater side effects through the “nocebo effect (反安慰剂效果)”. Sometimes patients benefit from an intervention simply because they believe they will- -that’s the placebo effect. The nocebo effect is the opposite: Patients can experience negative effects just because they expect them. This is very true of statins. In blinded trials, patients who get statins are no more likely to report feeling muscle aches than patients who get a placebo. Yet, in clinical practice, according to one study, almost a fifth of patients taking statins report side effects, leading many to discontinue the drugs.

What else is on the fake news hit list? As always, vaccines. False concerns that the vaccine for the virus called human papilloma virus causes seizures (癫痫) and other side effects reduced coverage rates in Japan from 10 percent to less than 1 percent in recent years.

Cancer is another big target for pushers of medical misinformation — many of whom are making money off alternative therapies. “Though most people think cancer tumors are bad, they’re actually the way your body attempts to contain the harmful cells,” one fake news story reads. It suggests that surgery increases the risk of spreading harmful cells.

Silicon Valley needs to own this problem. When human health is at risk, perhaps search engines, social media platforms and websites should be held responsible for promoting or hosting fake information. The scientific community needs to do its part to educate the public about key concepts in research, such as the difference between observational studies and higher quality randomized trials.

Finally, journalists can do a better job of spreading accurate information. News sites are more likely to cover catchy observational studies than randomized controlled trials, perhaps because the latter are less likely to produce surprising results. Such coverage can overstate benefits, claiming for example, that statins could cure cancer; it can unduly emphasize potential risks, such as suggesting a misleading connection with dementia, a serious mental disorder.

1. What does the writer imply about the side effects of statins?

A．They are common in certain patients.

B．They aren’t like those of placebos.

C．They don’t really exist.

D．They disappear very soon.

2. Which statement is the writer most likely to agree with?

A．The public should put more trust in news coverage.

B．Silicon Valley ought to take the blame for the fake medicine.

C．The scientific community ought to involve the public in research.

D．Journalists should be objective while reporting medical news.

3. The word “unduly” in the last paragraph most probably means       .

A．on a small scale

B．overly

C．as likely as not

D．universally

4. What is the main purpose of the passage?

A．To warn readers against fake medical news on the Internet.

B．To encourage journalists to report more positive news events.

C．To tell readers what role the “nocebo effect” plays in treating disease.

D．To teach readers how to distinguish truths from fake news.

3 . 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. monitors       B. risen       C. nonprofit       D. mostly E. alarms       F. recovered       G. nonexistent       H. amazingly I. corresponding       J. responded       K. remote

US schools struggle to deal with hoax (恶作剧) shootings

More and more US schools are confiscating (没收) guns from students and having to deal with calls falsely reporting school shootings.

The number of guns found on students in schools during the first two months of this school year has    1     compared with the same time in the past two years, says the nonprofit group Gun Violence Archive, which     2     gun activity.

At least 220 guns were seized last month and in August in 35 states, compared with 128 at the same time last year. In the     3     period in 2019, 132 guns were confiscated. The number of guns found in 2020 is likely to have been lower because it was amid the pandemic, when classes were     4    .

At least 15 guns were    5     from schools in Baltimore, Maryland, last year, said Sergeant Clyde Boatwright of the Baltimore City School Police Force. It was higher than in any recent year. This school year the department has recovered two guns. One was used when a high-school student was shot dead outside a school.

The increasing prevalence of guns comes with an increase in what has come to be known as swatting. This is a hoax in which someone calls emergency services and reports a    6     crime to get law enforcement officials, generally a SWAT team, to go to an address.

On Wednesday many San Francisco Bay Area high schools received active shooter hoax calls, a day after police in Florida     7     to swatting calls at several high schools.

Since early last month about 117 hoaxes have been reported at schools in 17 states and the District of Columbia, said the National Association of School Resource Officers, a     8     group for school-based law enforcement professionals.

“These false     9     are far from harmless,” said Mo Canady, the associations’ executive director. “They also distract limited public safety resources from other community needs and increase anxiety among students and others.”

The calls have been made     10     from high schools, but also middle and elementary schools, according to local news reports. Some of the calls are hard to trace because they are made from internet phone numbers, law enforcement experts said.

5 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage 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.

Machines are once again doing the car-washing in Britain

Warm weather is to ice-cream vans     1    popcorn is to dentists, Saharan dust storms are to car washes. A big dust cloud like the one     2     reached Britain on March 16th boosts revenues by about a quarter, according to Kevin Pay of Wilcomatic, which runs about 800 automatic car washes in Britain. “You love to see it,” he says, as a dusty red Ford Ka joins the queue in Hove in East Sussex, on the south coast.

Until recently, Britain’s drivers usually took their dirty motors to car parks and disused petrol stations,    3     eastern European immigrants had them washed with sponges. In 2018, a parliamentary committee was informed that Britain had 10,000 — 20,000 hand car washes,    4    (compare)with 2,000 automatic “rollover” machines and about 4,000 do-it-yourself jet washes. Hand car washes were     5    (convenient) — drivers simply handed money through the window rather than traipsing into a petrol station to buy a six-digit code-and often cheaper than machines. The industry     6     be a rare example of de-automation.

It is now re-automating. Automatic car washes and jet washes have improved,     7     contactless payment, superior brushes and theatrical foam. But the main reason for their popularity is that hand car washes     8    (disappear). The informal ones can be inferior employers: in 2016 a study of Leicester by two academics, Ian Clark and Trevor Colling, found that many paid less than the legal minimum wage. Car washing is a typical first job for an unskilled immigrant. And Brexit means that Britain has fewer newly arrived unskilled immigrants these days.

Covid-19 further tilted (倾斜) the market towards machines. The government shut down hand car washes for longer than automated ones,    9     they posed a higher infection risk. The pandemic also discouraged drivers from paying with cash.

Alexander Russell of the Car Wash Association, a trade group, says that the industry has gone in a circle. Some petrol stations are now putting automatic car-washing machines into bays that were originally built for     10    , but were then occupied by hand car washes. Car washing has been in a lather, but it is emerging cleaner.

6 . Otters, are cute, this no one can deny. They have big eyes, short and flat noses and claws (爪子) like tiny hands. They look even cuter when they wear hats and throw food balls into their mouths as if they were bar snacks, like Takechiyo, a pet otter in Japan. Documenting Takechiyo’s funny behavior has earned his owner nearly 230,000 followers on Instagram, a photo-sharing app.

Takechiyo’s fame reflects a craze across east and South-East Asia for keeping the cute creatures as pets. Enthusiasts in Japan visit cafés where they pay to hug them; Indonesian owners parade their pets around on leads or go swimming with them, then share their pictures online. But these enjoyable photos mask a trade that is doing a lot of damage. Even before they became fashionable companions for humans, Asia’s wild otters faced plenty of threats. Their habitats are disappearing. They have long been hunted for their coats, or killed by farmers who wish to prevent them consuming fishes. The pet trade, which began picking up in the early 2000s but appeared to speed up a few years ago, has made things worse. The numbers of wild Asian small-clawed otters and smooth-coated otters, two species that are in highest demand, have declined by at least 30% in the three decades to 2019.

The international agreement that governs trade in wildlife, known as CITES, now prohibits cross-border trade in these species. But laws banning ownership are often poorly implemented, as in Thailand, or full of holes, as in Indonesia. And the otter-keeping craze has been dramatically improved by the internet, says Vincent Nijman of Oxford Brookes University. In 2017 TRAFFIC, a British charity that monitors the wildlife trade, spent nearly five months looking at Facebook and other social-media sites in five South-East Asian countries. During that time, it found around 1,000 otters advertised for sale online.

In any case, otters do not even make particularly good pets. Every year the Jakarta Animal Aid Network, a charity in Indonesia’s capital, receives some ten otters from people who have struggled to look after them. Faizul Duha, the founder of an Indonesian otter-owners’ group, admits that his two animals emit a “very specific” (read: fishy) smell. They bite humans and chew on furniture. Their scream can be heard blocks away. And their cages need cleaning every two-to-three hours. That is how often they empty their bowels (肠道).

1. The function of the first paragraph is to ________.

A．present the main idea	B．introduce the main topic
C．set readers thinking	D．illustrate the writer’s point

2. According to the passage, which of the following mainly drives the otter trade?

A．The demand for pet otters.	B．The disappearance of otters’ habitats.
C．The popularity of otter coats.	D．The decrease of fishes.

3. It can be inferred from the passage that ________.

A．the laws that prohibit cross-border trade are strict in Asia

B．social media plays a significant role in the online otter trade

C．people usually give up otters because they are endangered

D．otters are suitable pets because they are friendly to humans

4. The purpose of the writing is to ________.

A．advertise for a photo-sharing app

B．introduce the popularity of pet otters

C．discourage the illegal otter pet trade

D．describe the characteristics of otters

7 . 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. adapt     B. challenging     C. points     D. infection     E. vulnerable     F. optimistic G. transmissible     H. restrictions       I. lessened     J. impact     K. moderate

When Will Life Return to Normal?

If 2020 felt hellish, be warned that we aren’t out of the fire yet, even if we are moving in   the right direction. Welcome to 2021, aka purgatory.

There is little doubt that vaccines hold the key to ending the pandemic. A recent modeling study predicted that vaccinating just 40 per cent of US adults over the course of 2021 would reduce the coronavirus     1     rate by around 75 per cent and cut hospitalizations and deaths from covid-19 by more than 80 per cent.

But all this is still some way off. In the meantime, we will have to    2     to a middle ground where some people are protected but not others. As Adam Kleczkowski, a mathematical biologist at the University of Strathclyde UK,     3     out, supplies of the various vaccines are limited, distributing them is    4    , immunity takes a few weeks to develop and the protection they offer isn’t 100 percent.

In the northern hemisphere, he says, the most likely scenario is a third wave of covid-19 in the new year, requiring further lockdowns and    5     for up to five months. “ Realistically we’re in for a longer ride than we hope for.” he says.

Tim Spector at King’s College London, who leads the Covid-9 Symptom Study in the UK,   also predicts a third wave. But if lots of healthcare workers and    6     people have been vaccinated, the mortality rate will be lower and the pressure on the healthcare system    7     , he said at a recent Royal Society of Medicine seminar.

The upsides of ever-widening vaccination will kick in around April. He said, “I’m    8     that if we can just get our mental state together until Easter, we can hang on in there.”

There are still many things we don’t understand about this virus, however, and we may well be in for some surprises in the coming year that throw that trajectory（轨）off course. As this magazine went to press, for example, there was widespread speculation about the     9     of a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus circulating in the UK that may be more highly     10    .

In Australia, the goal will be to keep the virus from resurging as the summer fades into autumn, says epidemiologist Catherine Bennett at Deakin University in Melbourne. A recent outbreak in Sydney has led to new restrictions.

8 . Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in the blanks to make the passage 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.

Barry Jenkins: ‘When you climb the ladder, you send it back down’

“So, you saw the film?” Barry Jenkins is eager to ask the minute we are introduced. He gives good eye contact through those stylish thick-rimmed glasses – not the big-time, Oscar-winning writer-director speaking, but a nervous artist, anxious     1     the new work he is starting to screen. I love it, I tell him. If Beale Street Could Talk may be only Jenkins’ third feature-length film,     2     it has already been nominated for three Oscars (best adapted screenplay, best supporting actress, best score), just two years     3     his Moonlight walked away with the Academy Award for best film. A passionate film about race and love, it’s an     4     (add) pleasure to see black characters of such complexity on the big screen.

Adapted from James Baldwin’s 1974 novel, Beale Street tells the story in which the personal experiences of a young black couple     5     (interweave) with the big picture in 1970s Harlem. When Tish (KiKi Layne) becomes pregnant, they plan to marry – until her fiancé Fonny (Stephan James) is set up by a racist police officer for a rape he did not commit. The film explores the different reactions of their siblings (兄弟姐妹) and parents, led by Regina King in a standout performance as Tish’s mother, as they fight for Fonny’s freedom.

Baldwin has been dead for 30 years, but his depiction of the fight against a country’s powerful prejudice is a sad reminder     6     not enough has changed. Yet Jenkins turns a bleak story into a fascinating romance, as the young lovers strive     7     (regard) as human beings. With its lingering, saturated-colour photography – the director has cited Wong Kar-Wai’s In The Mood For Love as an influence – Beale Street is one of     8     (visually-arresting) films I’ve seen.

Beale Street     9     (film) on location in New York and the Dominican Republic – filling in for Puerto Rico, still devastated by 2017’s Hurricane Maria. It was shot on an Arri Alexa 65 camera. Throughout the film, as he did in Moonlight, the director lingers over often wordless scenes between his characters,     10     (present) them as a series of moving photographs.

9 . For years, studies have found that first-generation college students — those who do not have a parent with a college degree — lag behind other students on a range of education achievement factors. Their grades are lower and their dropout rates are higher. But since such students are most likely to advance economically if they succeed in higher education, colleges and universities have pushed for decades to recruit more of them. This has created a ‘paradox’ in that recruiting first-generation students, but then watching many of them fail, means that higher education has ‘continued to reproduce and widen, rather than close’ the achievement gap based on social class, according to the depressing beginning of a paper set to be published in the journal Psychological Science.

But the article is actually quite optimistic, as it outlines a potential solution to this problem, suggesting that an approach (which involves a one-hour, next-to-no-cost program) can close 63 percent of the achievement gap (measured by such factors as grades) between first-generation and other students.

The authors of the paper are from different universities, and their findings are based on a study involving 147 students (who completed the project) at an unnamed private university. First generation was defined as not having a parent with a four-year college degree. Most of the first-generation students (59.1 percent) were recipients of Pell Grants, a federal grant for undergraduates with financial needs, while this was true only for 8.6 percent of the students with at least one parent with a four-year degree.

Their thesis — that a relatively modest intervention could have a big impact — was based on the view that first-generation students may be most lacking not in potential but in practical knowledge about how to deal with the issues that face most college students. They cite past research by several authors to show that this is the gap that must be narrowed to close the achievement gap.

Many first-generation students “struggle to navigate the middle-class culture of higher education, learn the rules of the game, and take advantage of college resources,” they write. And this becomes more of a problem when colleges don’t talk about the class advantage and disadvantages of different groups of students. Because U.S. colleges and universities seldom acknowledge how social class can affect students’ educational experience, many first-generation students lack sight about why they are struggling and do not understand how students like them can improve.

1. The authors of the research article are optimistic because _____________.

A．the problem is solvable

B．their approach is costless

C．the recruiting rate has increased

D．their findings appeal to students

2. The study suggests that most first-generation students _____________.

A．study at private universities

B．are from single-parent families

C．are in need of financial support

D．have failed their college education

3. The authors of the paper believe that first-generation students _____________.

A．are actually indifferent to the achievement gap

B．are inexperienced in handling their issues at college

C．may lack opportunities to apply for research projects

D．can have a potential influence on other students

4. We may infer from the last paragraph that _____________.

A．universities often reject the culture of the middle-class

B．students are usually to blame for their lack of resources

C．social class greatly helps enrich one’s educational experience

D．colleges are partly responsible for the problem in question