A. As a consequence, songs sound like nothing but noise for such a person, many of whom compare the sound of music to pieces of metal hitting each other.
B. However, this can result in social loneliness. “I used to hate parties,” says Margaret, a seventy-year-old woman who only recently discovered that she was amusic. By studying people like Margaret, scientists are finally learning how to identify this unusual condition.
C. Many amusics are relieved when their condition is finally diagnosed. For years, Margaret felt embarrassed about her music problem. Now she knows that she is not alone.
D. For some people, music is no fun at all. About 4% of the population is what scientists call “amusic”. People who are amusic are born without the capacity to enjoy musical notes.
E. Scientists note that the brains of amusics vary from those of people who can enjoy music. The difference is complex, and it is not connected with poor hearing.
A. The use of avatars has also caused a few concerns.
B. However, other users view avatars in a more positive light.
C. The use of several avatars can also be a risk, as people can use avatars to cheat others online.
D. They look forward to a time when their avatar will act like a real person and travel around bigger, more exciting virtual worlds.
E. Some users worry that they are spending so much time in virtual worlds that they are becoming afraid of meeting people in the real world.
A. It turned out that the second group remembered the information better. In another experiment, the researchers gave people facts to remember, and told them where to find the information on the Internet. The information was in a specific computer folder (文件夹).
B. According to Sparrow, we are not becoming people with poor memory as a result of the Internet. Instead, computer users are developing stronger transactive (交互) memory. This doesn’t mean we are becoming either more or less intelligent, but there is no doubt that the way we use memory is changing.
C. As Internet users become more dependent on the Internet to store information, are people remembering less? If you know your computer will save information, why store it in your own personal memory—your brain? Experts are wondering if the Internet is changing what we remember and how.
D. In a recent study, Professor Betsy Sparrow her research team wanted to know whether the Internet is changing memory. In one experiment, they gave people 40 unimportant facts to type into a computer. The first group of people understood that the computer would save the information while the second group understood that the computer would not save it.
E. Surprisingly, people later remembered the folder location better than the facts. When people use the Internet, they do not remember the information. Rather, they remember how to find it. This is called ”transactive memory“.
A. For example, governments can use tax systems and place restrictions on the marketing of foods that are high in fat, salt or sugar. They can also provide healthy food in schools.
B. It is expected to rise by 100% among boys under 18, but go up even more sharply by 125% among girls the same age.
C. About 2.6 billion people around the world are already overweight. But on current trends, that is expected to rise to more than 4 billion people within 12 years, according to a research by the World Obesity Federation.
D. Therefore, governments and policymakers around the world need to do all they can to avoid passing health, social and economic costs on to the younger generation.
E. The research also shows that obesity(肥胖)among children and young people is increasing faster than among adults. By 2035, the number of obese youth is expected to be at least double the rate seen in 2020.
A. It is reported that one in three people lose a whole year off their life due to noise. And this has been linked to heart disease, sleep loss, and high blood pressure.
B. According to recent studies, excessive (过量) noise does harm to us. The average person wakes up to an alarm and then turns on the radio or TV. Outside, planes roar, cars honk, and ambulances wail.
C. When participants were exposed to a silent pause after listening to relaxing music, increased relaxation was observed. When surrounded by silence, your consciousness has more freedom to process information. This can lead to better decision-making.
D. In this noisy world, the sound of silence is a gentle friend. Try to remove yourself to a place of pure silence and simply be with it. If you let it fill you, you are open to wellness.
E. Because of this, it is time to value silence, a gift and a rare product like gold. Shut off your phone, turn off the music, and spend time alone. Studies showed that even though relaxing music can positively affect the cardiovascular and respiratory (呼吸的) systems, silence is ideal.
6 . Just as a hungry brain craves (渴望) food, a lonely brain craves people. A new brain study demonstrates this. After being left alone, it shows people’s brains would be activated at the sight of other people. The action was in the same brain region that speeds up when a hungry person sees food.
Livia Tomova, a neuroscientist, who studies how the brain produces mental activities, and her colleagues began this study. They recruited (招募) 40 people. On one day, the participants had to fast—not eat anything at all—for 10 hours. On another day, the same people were placed in a room for 10 hours. They couldn’t see anyone. No friends, no family and no social media. They weren’t even allowed to check their email. After both days, Tomova and her colleagues put the people in a MRI machine. It shows activity in the brain by tracking how much blood is flowing to each region.
At the end of each day, the participants showed high activity in a brain area called the midbrain. The scientists were interested in two, small areas within it. Both areas produce dopamine, a chemical that is important in craving and rewards. The two areas activated when hungry participants saw pictures of tasty pizza or juicy hamburgers. After the volunteers had been isolated, those brain areas became active when they saw social activities they missed. It might be playing sports or chatting with friends.
The midbrain plays an important part in people’s motivation to seek food or friends. In fact, it responds to food and social signals even when people aren’t hungry or lonely. But hunger and loneliness increased the reactions and made people’s responses specific to the thing they were missing. And the more hunger or isolation the volunteers said they were experiencing, the stronger the activity in this part of the brain. Tomova and her colleagues published their results November 23 in Nature Neuroscience.
What can be the best title for the text?
| A．Dopamine—a Sure Sign of Age |
| B．Midbrain—a Nest for the Thoughts |
| C．Hunger Makes Mental Health Struggle |
| D．Loneliness Makes Our Brains Need People |
7 . Regardless of how famous they are, and despite the star treatment they receive, many celebrities make it a point to give back to charities. Some have even set up their own private foundations. Their widely publicized visits to troubled areas of the world help to raise awareness of issues such as famine and poverty. According to Jane Cooper of UNICEF UK, celebrities have a unique ability to reach huge numbers of people, many of whom might not otherwise be engaged in charitable causes. She pointed out that famous faces had played a significant role in raising funds in recent years, and their energies had produced tangible results, such as enabling millions of children in poorer countries to attend school.
But in spite of these successes there is evidence to suggest that celebrity endorsement (代言) may be overrated. In a survey of members of the public to find out if celebrity involvement would encourage people to donate, researchers found that the impact was not as great as previously thought. When shown a list of well-known organizations and famous people who represent them, over half of respondents were unable to match the celebrity with the cause. What’s more, three quarters claimed that they didn’t respond to celebrity endorsement in any way. The survey also showed that a few names did stand out as being associated with particular charities. But the presence of a celebrity in a campaign, was not a significant factor when it came to a decision to donate time or money. Instead, the majority of people contribute because of personal connections in their lives and families which make a charity important to them.
In another study aimed at young people, most participants cited a compelling (无法抗拒的) mission as their main motivation to give. The second most important incentive was if a friend or peer recommended supporting a particular cause. Only two percent of respondents said they were motivated by celebrity endorsement. This seems to contradict the general assumption that teenagers are particularly influenced by famous people. One possible explanation is that there is a general fatigue (疲倦) with celebrity culture. There is also a suspicion that the stars are the one who benefit most when they offer to do charity work. Some critics have accused that celebrities might actually take attention away from issues by attracting more attention than the causes they represent.
So taking all these issues into account, is it time for charities to rethink their campaign strategies and look for alternative ways to reach new audiences? Whichever point of view you favour, there seems to be opportunities for more research into how charity campaigns might develop relationships with celebrities to maximise their potential. This in turn will open up more engagement, and better targeted campaigns-which can only benefit those who really matter — the people and animals that are in need of assistance.
The third paragraph is mainly about ________.
| A．what celebrities achieve in doing charities |
| B．How young people react to celebrity culture |
| C．why young people are hardly influenced by celebrities |
| D．who is to blame for taking attention away from charities |
8 . In previous recessions (经济衰退), billionaires were hit along with the rest of us; it took almost three years for Forbes’s 400 richest people to recover from losses caused in 2008’s Great Recession. But in the coronavirus recession of 2020, most billionaires have gotten richer than ever before.
Billionaires increased their new billions just as millions of other Americans ran into terrible financial problems. More than 20 million people lost their jobs at the start of the pandemic. Food banks across the country are preparing for another great increase in demand. Why are American billionaires doing so well while so many other Americans suffer? People may find part of the reasons from the following fact. Stocks (股票) are overwhelmingly owned by the wealthy, and the stock market has recovered from its early-pandemic depths much more quickly than other parts of the economy.
But some billionaires are also benefiting from economic and technological trends that were accelerated by the pandemic. Among these are the owners and investors of retail giants like Amazon, Walmart, Target, Dollar Tree and Dollar General, which have reported huge profits this year while many of their smaller competitors were defeated completely as the coronavirus spread.
Then there are companies that have bet on the rapid digitization of everything Eric Yuan, the chief executive of Zoom, became a billionaire in 2019. Now he is worth almost $20 billion. Dan Gilbert, the chairman of Quicken Loans, was worth less than $7 billion in March, now he commands more than $43 billion. But there is a great deal of stratification (层化) even among billionaires—richer billionaires got even richer in 2020 than the poorer ones did. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s funder, was worth about $113 billion at the start of the pandemic. Now he is worth $182 billion. Two years ago, Bezos was the only “centibillionaire” on earth—the trendy neologism (a new word) for people whose wealth exceeds (超过) ￥100 billion.
What does the author mainly tell us in the passage?
| A．Food banks are not enough in the United States. |
| B．The richest kept getting richer even in the pandemic. |
| C．The stock market recovered before the pandemic started. |
| D．400 richest people recovered from losses in the pandemic. |
9 . Over the last seven years, most states have banned texting by drivers, and public service campaigns have tried a wide range of methods to persuade people to put down their phones when they are behind the wheel.
Yet the problem, by just about any measure, appears to be getting worse. Americans are still texting while driving, as well as using social networks and taking photos. Road accidents, which had fallen for years, are now rising sharply.
That is partly because people are driving more, but Mark Rosekind, the chief of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said distracted(分心)driving was “only increasing, unfortunately.”
“Big change requires big ideas.” he said in a speech last month, referring broadly to the need to improve road safety. So to try to change a distinctly modern behavior, lawmakers and public health experts are reaching back to an old approach: They want to treat distracted driving like drunk driving.
An idea from lawmakers in New York is to give police officers a new device called the Textalyzer. It would work like this: An officer arriving at the scene of a crash could ask for the phones of the drivers and use the Textalyzer to check in the operating system for recent activity. The technology could determine whether a driver had just texted, emailed or done anything else that is not allowed under New York’s hands-free driving laws.
“We need something on the books that can change people’s behavior,” said Félix W. Ortiz, who pushed for the state’s 2001 ban on hand-held devices by drivers. If the Textalyzer bill becomes law, he said, ”people are going to be more afraid to put their hands on the cell phone.“
What is a suitable title for the text?
| A．To Drive or Not to Drive? Think Before You Start |
| B．Texting and Driving? Watch Out for the Textalyzer |
| C．New York Banning Hand-Held Devices by Drivers |
| D．The Next Generation Cell Phone: The Textalyzer- |
10 . Dating in the workplace is, if not a taboo, certainly a conundrum-not only for businesses, but also for the employees who find themselves falling for a co-worker. [1] Should it be allowed? Would it be authoritarian to ban it? Should employees inform their bosses of office relationships, or should they conceal them? Is requiring so-called “love contracts” to be signed by both parties before initiating a relationship even realistic?
[2] Most people spend 30 to 45 hours in the office each week-and with team-bonding activities, work celebrations and Friday drinks, it’s normal for colleagues to build a bond with one another, especially if they find that they have more things in common than just their employer.
From the company’s point of view, however, couples at work are a serious risk factor which must be mitigated. Without a proper dating policy in place, claims of sexual harassment and accusations of favoritism become a significant risk. It’s not necessary to ban office romance (though you are certainly allowed to): but you do need to have clear rules in place, to ensure you’re doing all you can to head off any potential issues. Ask, for example, that all employees who embark on a relationship have a sit-down, be it casual or formal, with HR. [3]
As for employees, there are two things to consider when you find yourself romantically interested in one of your colleagues: first of all, is it worth it? [4] Regardless of how your employer feels, office romance can be quite complicated-not only because you’ll most likely be the target of gossip, but also because your work environment will be affected if the relationship does not work out. And secondly, what is your company’s dating policy? If they have a zero-tolerance policy, do not risk your job or assume you will be able to keep your relationship on the down low. In the vast majority of cases, it’s simply not possible.
Attitudes towards office romance are certainly changing, with more companies reassessing zero-tolerance policies and opting for a more casual approach to how their employees connect with one another. That said, however, office romance is still a complex issue, and it should be treated with gravitas.
In which of the positions [1], [2], [3] or [4] does the following sentence best belong? “It is, of course, it is not surprising that relationships do form in the workplace.”
| A．[1] | B．[2] | C．[3] | D．[4] |
