1 . Harvard University’s Claudia Goldi n has won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics for her research on women in the labor market. She studies the changing role of working women through the centuries, and the causes of the consistent pay gap between men and women. The award comes with a prize of about $1 million. Goldi n is the third woman to receive the prize.
“Claudia Goldin’s discoveries have vast society significance,” said Randi Hjalmarsson, a member of the Nobel committee. “She has shown us that the nature of this problem or the source of these possible or underlying gender gap s changes throughout history and with the course of development.”
Goldin’s research showed that women’s role in the job market has not moved in a straight line, but has risen and fallen with social regulations and women’s own ideas about their prospects in the workplace and the home. Some of these ideas are shaped early in life and are slow to change.
“She can explain why the gender gap suddenly started to close in the 1980s and the surprising role of the birth control pill and changing expectation,” Hjalmarsson said. “And she can explain why the earnings gap has stopped closing today and the role of parenthood.”
Looking back the history of women in the workplace was easier said than done. The Nobel committee said Goldi n often had to deal with spotty records.
Women currently fill nearly half the jobs in the U. S. but typically earn less. They briefly outnumbered men on pay lists in late 2019 and early 2020, but women dropped out of the workforce in large numbers early in the pandemic (大流行病), and their ranks have only recently recovered.
Some forecasters think women’s role in the workplace will continue to grow as they pass men on college campuses and as service fields such as health care expand.
“Understanding women’s role in labor is important for society,” said Jakob Svensson, chair of the prize committee. “Thanks to Claudia Goldin’s groundbreaking research, we now know much more about the underlying factors and which barriers may need to be addressed in the future.”
1. Why was the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics awarded to Goldin?| A．She realized the importance of women in the labour market. |
| B．She researched the changing role of working women for a long time. |
| C．She found the causes of income inequality between men and women. |
| D．She did pioneering studies on the role of women in the labour market. |
| A．Organic. | B．Potential. | C．Fundamental. | D．Preferred. |
| A．Parenthood played an important role. |
| B．Women’s own ideas about work have improved. |
| C．The income gap between men and women has been narrowed. |
| D．Birth control pills and changes in expectation played an amazing role. |
| A．Gender pay gap remains. |
| B．Women employed had briefly outperformed men. |
| C．Women’s role in the workplace will continue to grow. |
| D．Many women pulled out of the workforce in the pandemic. |
2 . Every one of us may have been hurt by others — either by their words or actions. The best way to deal with the problem is to “forgive and forget”.
“It is well established that learning to forgive others can have positive benefits for one’s physical and mental health,” Saima Noreen, a scientist at the University of St. Andrews, UK, told the Huffington Post.
Recently, Noreen and her research team have found one more reason that you should stick to this principle — forgiving somebody who has hurt you makes it easier for you to forget the unhappy memory, according to their new study.
In the study, researchers asked volunteers to read descriptions of 40 different situations that contained bad actions such as stealing, lying and cheating. Imagining being the victims (受害者) , volunteers then had to decide whether they would be able to forgive. Two weeks later, volunteers took part in a memory test. In the test, they were shown a series of words related to the situations they had read about and then were asked to recall certain ones.
The results showed that people were less likely to remember the details of the unpleasant experiences if they had found forgiveness in their hearts. In contrast, if they hadn’t forgiven the mistake, they could always remember what had happened.
However, forgiving someone who has hurt you is always easier said than done. So Noreen hopes that one day in the near future research will give rise to powerful therapeutic (有疗效的) tools that will enable people to “forgive and forget” more effectively.
1. What have Noreen and her team found recently?| A．They have found no reason to hurt other people. |
| B．A memory test is necessary to help people forgive. |
| C．An unpleasant experience can be easily forgotten. |
| D．Forgiving helps us to forget unhappy memories. |
a. Take a memory test. b. Imagine being a victim.
c. Decide whether to forgive or not. d. Read descriptions of 40 different situations.
| A．d→b→a→c | B．d→b→c→a | C．a→b→d→c | D．a→d→b→c |
| A．Remember. | B．Translate. | C．Choose. | D．Explain. |
| A．It’s impossible to forgive someone. | B．Noreen has finished her research report. |
| C．There may be some therapeutic tools soon. | D．The therapeutic tools have been invented. |
3 . Climate change isn’t just about rising seas and hotter heatwaves; it’s also bringing about a pothole (坑洞) disaster on our roads! In 2023, the UK reported nearly 630,000 pothole complaints—a shocking five-year peak. Across the road, the USA saw a shocking 57% increase in vehicle damages due to potholes compared to 2021. What’s causing this asphalt (沥青) disaster? Climate change is a key factor, damaging our streets with severe weather and rising temperatures.
The science behind this damages is astonishing. Dr. Hassan Davani, an engineering expert, explains that intense heat can soften roads, leading to cracks and potholes. Floods, another climate change mark, wash away road surfaces. Adding to the mess are increased freeze-thaw (冻融) cycles, which create damaged ice lenses under the road. When these melt, they leave behind the terrible potholes.
But fear not! There’s hope on the horizon with cutting-edge innovations. Certain regions are adopting pavements designed to endure broader temperature ranges. Gabe Cimini, a pavement engineering expert, points to California’s use of specialized asphalt mixes that can resist temperatures from58℃ to a freezing -32℃.
And there’s more! Modern Hydrogen, a pioneering climate tech startup backed by Bill Gates, is transforming road repair. By using solid carbon from carbon capture in asphalt, they’re crafting roads that are 250% more solid, enduring higher temperatures and reducing CO2 emissions. This revolutionary asphalt is already hitting roads in the US and Canada.
Self-healing pavement, or “smart asphalt,” is another game-changer. Imagine roads that can repair themselves! Some newer versions use steel fibres that heat up, melting the mortar (灰浆) to completely mend potholes.
While these innovations promise smoother and more solid roads in our climate-impacted world, widespread adoption might still be a few years away. So prepare for an uncomfortable ride, but remember, smoother streets are on the horizon!
1. How does the author stress the serious pothole disasters?| A．By stating viewpoints. | B．By making comparisons. |
| C．By making a list of cases. | D．By supposing a situation. |
| A．Analyze causes. | B．Describe scenes. |
| C．Make arguments. | D．Conclude science findings. |
| A．Increase the temperature of the asphalt. | B．Use solid carbon to make asphalt stronger. |
| C．Improve the endurance of asphalt mixture. | D．Get the road to repair itself by smart asphalt. |
| A．None of them are available now. | B．They will be more widely used in the future. |
| C．They need support from the governments. | D．They are impractical solutions to the current disaster. |
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5 . Farm to school events are happening all over the country this month. The events are aimed at bringing fresh food to students’ plates. And, after a decline in nutrition education in U. S. schools in recent decades, there’s new momentum (势头), to weave food and cooking into the curriculum again.
“I’d love to see it brought back and have the science around healthy eating integrated,” says Stacy Dean, deputy under secretary for food, nutrition and consumer services at the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Dean told me she was inspired by a visit to Watkins Elementary, in Washington, D. C. where this idea is germinating. Students grow vegetables in their school garden. They also roll up their sleeves in the school’s kitchen to participate in a FRESHFARM FoodPrints class, which integrates cooking and nutrition education.
Evaluations show participation in FRESHFARM programs is associated with increased preference for fruits and vegetables. And, the CDC points to evidence that nutrition education may help students maintain a healthy weight and can also help students recognize the connection between food and emotional wellbeing. Given the key role diet plays in preventing chronic (慢性的) disease, the agency says it would be ideal to offer more nutrition education.
At a time when diet-related disease is a leading cause of death, and unhealthy eating habits are entrenched (根深蒂固的) in U. S. culture, it’s unrealistic to think that a cooking curriculum could overcome such a sweeping, societal problem. “We know from years of evidence that we need multiple things to come together to support healthy eating,” says Angela Odoms-Young, a professor of maternal and child nutrition at Cornell University.
At a time when the U. S. spends billions of dollars on diet-related disease, an investment in nutrition education makes sense, says the USDA’s Stacy Dean. “Food is so fundamental to life and good health and it is absolutely worthy of some time in the basic curriculum,” she says. The hope is that integrating nutrition and cooking into a school program will give kids the skills and inspiration to eat well, and help put them on a healthy path.
1. Where did Stacy Dean’s idea come from?| A．Her visit to Watkins Elementary. |
| B．Her work at the U. S. Department of Agriculture. |
| C．The decline in nutrition education in U. S. schools. |
| D．The new trend to bring back cooking into school curriculum. |
| A．Students can raise animals in school. |
| B．It can protect students from chronic disease. |
| C．Students become more interested in fruits and vegetables. |
| D．Students can do some gardening and cooking in the program. |
| A．Cooking curriculum can solve the diet-related disease problem. |
| B．We need to work together in order to keep a healthy diet. |
| C．People have changed their unhealthy eating habits nowadays. |
| D．Diet-related disease used to be a cause of death in U. S. culture. |
| A．Cooking is fundamental in school education. |
| B．Add nutrition education in school curriculum. |
| C．Investment in nutrition education makes sense. |
| D．Cooking and gardening at school inspire better nutrition. |
6 . If you frequent any kind of public transportation, then you’re well aware of certain types of passengers and passenger habits that are annoying. But it’s not just other passengers that get angry, there are certain things that drive the train attendant crazy.
We’ve all been there in that moment when someone boards a train trying to take several huge items with them to wherever they’re trying to go. They wind up taking up way too much space and blocking seats.
For some reason, people have a bad habit of talking very loudly to one another to a point where you can hear them from opposite sides of the train cart (车厢). This goes for playing music as well. Some people like to play music through their phone. This really bothers fellow passengers on the train.
| A．Being really loud |
| B．Arguing with others |
| C．Here are some of the most annoying things |
| D．Then who would be in charge of playing music on the train |
| E．It’s one thing if you’re having something small such as an apple |
| F．This can make things uncomfortable for everyone else on the train |
| G．Plus when other passengers complain, guess who has to take care of it |
7 . Airports are finding new ways to reduce travel stress, from eye-catching aesthetics (美学) to improved passenger flow. At Singapore’s Changi Airport, passengers get a close-up view of the world’s tallest indoor waterfall.
As you enter the airport, you look up at a large screen. Rather than showing dozens of arrivals and departures, the monitor greets you by name and tell you where and how far to walk to catch your flight. That’s the scene today in an area of the Detroit Metropolitan Airport. The personalized screens are part of a new generation of technologies rapidly being used in airports around the world as cities make up for delays (延误) and compete for travelers.
“Every airport wan wants a ‘wow’ factor — something people will remember after passing through,” says Darin Friedmann, Vice President and Head of Transportation Systems for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America, a leader in automated people movers (APMs) at airports. The automated I people movers built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries move more than 100 million people worldwide each year. New generations of these driverless electric trains feature oversized windows on all sides (including the doors), and HD video screens.
“In the past airports planning for people movers were focused just on getting people from here to there reliably,” says Friedmann. “Now they’re really taking the aesthetics seriously, too. After all, these trains provide travelers’ first and last impression of a city.”
Detroit’s personalized monitors are just one of many innovations designed to increase the flow of travelers through key airport choke points (阻塞点). Already, biometrics (生物识别技术) can help speed passengers through security. Before long, auto main and AI will route luggage more efficiently and reduce human error, while apps using geolocation will shout the information travelers need in real time: Exit the train at the next station; walk to the right for seven minutes to reach your gate,
In other words, today’s air travelers may be waiting in long lines, but they have something to look forward to. The airport of the future, a destination offering less stress, moments of beauty and all-around smarter travel, is arriving now.
1. What is the Detroit Metropolitan Airport like now?| A．It has a smart monitor. | B．It has personalized seats. |
| C．It has an impressive indoor waterfall. | D．It has huge arrival and departure screens. |
| A．To tell their production process. | B．To compare them with the APMs. |
| C．To explain their importance at airports | D．To give an example of a “wow” factor at airports. |
| A．They’re more complex. | B．They’re more reliable. |
| C．They’re more attractive. | D．They’re more environment-friendly |
| A．Be patient. | B．Be optimistic. | C．Be clear-minded. | D．Be well-mannered. |
8 . Newly published Federal Trade Commission data shows that consumers reported losing more than $5.8 billion to scams (欺诈) in 2021, an increase of more than 70 percent over the previous year.
Of the losses reported by consumers, more than $2.3 billion of losses reported were due to imposter (假冒者) scams—up from $1.2 billion in 2020, while online shopping accounted for about $392 million in reported losses from consumers—up from $246 million in 2020. Prizes, internet services and job chances followed closely behind.
The FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network (Sentinel ) is a database that receives reports directly from consumers, as well as from federal, state, and local law enforcement(执行) agencies, industry members, and non-profit organizations. It received more than 5.7 million reports in 2021; these include the scam reports detailed above, as well as identity theft reports and complaints related to other consumer problems, such as problems with banks and lenders. These reports are a key resource for FTC studies that stop illegal activities and, when possible, provide aids to consumers.
The FTC uses the reports it receives through Sentinel as the starting point for many of its law enforcement studies, and the agency also shares these reports with approximately 2, 800 federal, state, local, and international law enforcement professionals.
The Federal Trade Commission works to promote competition and protect and educate consumers. The FTC will never demand money, make threats, tell you to transfer money, or promise you a prize. Learn more about consumer topics at consumer.ftc.gov, or report scams, and bad business practices at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. Follow the FTC on social media, read consumer warnings and the business blog, and sign up to get the latest FTC news and warnings.
1. How much was lost to scams in 2020?| A．About $3.4 billion. | B．About $ 4.1 billion. |
| C．About $5.8 billion. | D．About $9.8 billion. |
| A．Prize scams. | B．Imposter scams. |
| C．Online shopping scams. | D．Internet service scams. |
| A．Relations between the FTC and Sentinel. | B．Introductions to Sentinel’s primary work. |
| C．Problems to be worked out by Sentinel. | D．Expectations for setting up Sentinel. |
| A．Make donations to the FTC. | B．Educate consumers with the FTC. |
| C．Publicize the FTC on social media. | D．Value the FTC warning information. |
Nowadays, one of the common
10 . Digital reading (数字阅读) appears to be destroying habits of “deep reading”. Astonishing numbers of people with years of schooling are in fact illiterate (文盲). This month’s Ljubljana Manifesto (宣言) explains: “The digital field may promote more reading than ever in history, but it also offers many attractions to read in a casual and scattered (零散的) manner— or even not to read at all. This increasingly endangers higher-level reading.”
That’s frightening, because “higher-level reading” has been necessary to civilization. It made the understanding and an international increase in empathy (共鸣). Without it, we would suffer a lot. As the Ljubljana Manifesto notes, “as much as one-third of Europeans struggle even with lower-level reading skills.” More than one-fifth of adults in the US “fall into the illiterate/functionally illiterate category”. Separately, post-pandemic (后疫情时期) reading scores for American13-year-olds are the lowest in decades. And the Washington-based Center for Global Development recently estimated that literacy (读写能力) in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa among those with five years of schooling has decreased by 10% this past half century.
Experts in the Ljubljana Manifesto record the demerits of digital reading: “Recent studies of various kinds indicate a decline of thoughtful reading, slow reading and long-form reading.” When you read a book on paper, you can be entirely inside the experience, absorb hundreds of pages of details thoroughly and begin to catch the world’s complexity. Online, says Maryanne Wolf of UCLA, we are “skimming, scanning and scrolling”. The medium is the message: doing deep reading on your phone is as hard as playing tennis with your phone. Recently, a bright 11-year-old boy told me I was wasting time on books: he absorbed more information faster from websites. He had a point. But digital readers also absorb more misinformation and seldom absorb fine opinions.
In short, as professors from Northwestern University predicted in 2005, we are returning to the days when only an elite (精英) “reading class” reads long texts, which is worrying.
1. What can we learn about digital reading from paragraph 1?| A．Digital reading has weakened the practice of deep reading. |
| B．Digital reading has solved the problem of illiteracy. |
| C．Digital reading has made deep reading accessible to wider readers. |
| D．Digital reading has caused a greater appreciation for deep reading. |
| A．Digital reading’s great popularity. | B．The importance of deep reading. |
| C．American students’ reading skills. | D．The lowering of the level of literacy. |
| A．Functions. | B．Depths. | C．Shortcomings. | D．Features. |
| A．Advantages of digital reading. | B．Measures to practice deep reading. |
| C．Ways to encourage digital reading. | D．Benefits of lower-level reading. |
