2024年3月24日发(作者：步行者vs勇士维金斯)

II. Grammar and Vocabulary

Section A

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.

A Chinese civilian unmanned airship un-intendedly entered US airspace last week due to

force majeure and was shot down by the US military on Saturday. For days, US politicians and

media have hyped up this incident, claiming it was a spy in the sky. Is this a part of China's

surveillance program or an accidental incident overplayed by US politicians and media to smear

China?

Last Friday, China confirmed that the airship was from China, noting that it was an unitended

entry caused by force majeure. According to a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, the balloon

was a civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research that went off __21__ planned

course due to winds and had limited self-steering capability. __22__ the US spotted the airship,

the Chinese side informed the US side of the civilian nature of the airship and conveyed that its

entry into the US was unexpected. China has actively communicated with the US and worked with

the US to properly handle this unexpected situation in a calm, professional, and __23__ (restrain)

manner.

It is not the first time in the world that balloons for scientific research __24__ (go) out of

control. In 1998, a Canadian weather balloon - __25__ (conduct) scientific research for the

Canadian Space Agency, Environment Canada, and the University of Denver in the US - went

rogue due to a technical malfunction. The balloon failed to come down as planned and drifted

across Canada toward the Atlantic Ocean. The balloons drifted in the sky for nine days, __26__

(enter) many countries' airspace, and finally landed on Finland's Mariehamn Island. The current

Chinese balloon is a similar style to the Canadian balloon.

According to __27__ US official, the balloon's payload - the part under the balloon - is the

size of two or three school buses. If the balloon is __28__ the US claimed as "part of an espionage

program," it didn't make sense for China to choose such a giant balloon visible to civilians with

the naked eye __29__ the US side would easily detect. Also, the US senior defense official

acknowledged that the balloon "never posed a military or physical threat to the American people."

It is not the first time the US side has made groundless accusations __30__ China of spying.

However, the US never provided any substantial evidence to prove their suspicion. As a

responsible country, China strictly adheres to international law and respects other countries'

sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Section B

Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can only be

used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. necessity B. strikingly C. committed D. donate E. literally F. attachments

G. incomprehensible H. eased I. switch J. green-wash K. pilot

The thrill of the old

"Few articles change owners more frequently than clothes. They travel downwards from

grade to grade in the social scale with remarkable regularity," wrote the journalist Adolphe Smith

in 1877 as he traced a garment's journey.

That model is almost __31__ in the era of fast fashion. The average British customer buys

four items a month, often at pocket-money prices; though the low cost is a godsend for the hard-up,

many purchases are discarded after a few outings, or never worn at all. Clothes Aid reports that

350,000 tonnes of used but still wearable clothing goes to landfill in the UK each year.

Yet a gradual revival of the secondhand trade has gathered pace in the last years. At fashion

website Asos, vintage sales have risen by 92%. It was once worn out of __32__; then it became

the quirky choice of Jarvis Cocker-style misfits and the label of "vintage" gave it cachet. Now it is

simply a way of life. Busy families sell cast-off items on eBay, teenagers trade on Depop and

fashionistas offer designer labels on Vestiaire Collective. __33__, it has become big enough

business that mainstream retailers want a slice of the action. Cos, owned by H&M, has launched a

resale service on its website. Selfridges already has a vintage channel. Asda announced last week

that it would sell secondhand clothing in 50 supermarkets, following a successful __34__ project.

For some buyers and sellers, the __35__ to secondhand is born of pandemic-induced

financial need. Others have become queasy at working conditions in factories, or the impact of

their shopping habit on the planet. But the shift is only a partial solution. One concern is that

mainstream brands may "__36__" - using relatively small volumes of secondhand goods to

improve their image, rather than engaging more seriously with sustainability. Another worry is

that good causes are losing out as people trade rather than __37__ unwanted clothes. The biggest

concern may be that people keep buying because they know they can resell goods, still chasing the

buzz of the next purchase but with a(n) __38__ conscience and healthier bank balance.

A new Netflix series, Worn Stories, documents the emotional resonance that clothes can have,

each item "a memoir in miniature", writes Emily Spivack, whose book gave rise to the show. A

handbag from a grandmother; a scarf passed on by a father, garment that made people feel

confident in their first job - almost everyone has at least one item they cherish. Perhaps we could

cultivate such __39__. A love of style is not a bad or trivial thing. But a(n) __40__ relationship is

better than a quick fling. Can we learn to appreciate our own old clothes as well as other people's?

III. Reading Comprehensions

Section A

Directions: For each blank in the following passage, there are four words or phrases marked A, B,

C and D. Fill in each blank with the word or phrase that best fits the context.

Sounds of Mars wind captured by Nasa's InSight lander

The sound of the wind on Mars has been captured for the first time by Nasa's InSight lander,

which was __41__ to Mars and touched down on the red planet 10 days ago.

The agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) __42__ a piece of processed audio of the alien

wind on Friday evening. InSight collected the low-frequency rumblings during its first week of

operations.

The wind is __43__ to be blowing at between 10 and 15 mph. These are the first sounds from

Mars that are __44__ by human ears, according to the researchers.

"Capturing this audio was an unplanned __45__," said Bruce Banerdt, the InSight principal

investigator at Nasa's lab in California. "But one of the things our mission is __46__ to is

measuring motion on Mars and naturally that includes motion caused by sound waves."

Nasa presented the sounds at a news conference on Friday. Cornell University's Don Banfield

told reporters they __47__ him of "sitting outside on a windy summer afternoon ... in some sense,

this is what it would sound as if you were sitting on the InSight lander on Mars."

Scientists involved in the project said the sound has a thought-provoking, quality. Thomas

Pike of Imperial College London said the rumbling was "rather different to anything that we've

experienced on Earth, and I think it just gives us another way of __48__ how far away we are

getting these signals."

The noise is of the wind blowing against InSight's solar panels and the resulting vibration of

the entire spacecraft. The sounds were __49__ by an air pressure sensor inside the lander that is

part of a weather station, as well as the seismometer（地震仪）on the deck of the spacecraft.

The low frequencies are a result of Mars' very thin air __50__, which is almost entirely made

up of carbon dioxide, and, even more so, the seismometer itself, which is meant to detect

underground seismic waves that are well below the threshold of human hearing. The seismometer

will be moved to the Martian surface in the coming weeks. Until then, the team plans to record

more wind noise.

The 1976 Viking landers on Mars __51__ spacecraft shaking caused by wind, but it would be

a(n) __52__ to consider it sound, said Banerdt.

InSight landed on Mars on 26 November. "We're all still on a high from the landing last

week ... and here we are less than two weeks after landing, and we've already got some amazing

new science," said Nasa's Lori Glaze, the acting director of __53__ science. "It's cool. It's fun."

On the surface of Mars, InSight will draw on a suite of instruments to study the planet's

internal structure. A seismometer deployed by a robot arm will act as a(n) __54__ to the ground

and listen for tremors produced when subterranean rock faces slip past one another along

geological fault-lines（断层线）. Scientists expect InSight to record anything from a dozen to 100

Marsquakes of magnitude 3.5 or greater over the lander's two-year mission. The seismometer is so

__55__ that it can detect vibrations smaller than the width of an atom.

41. A. transferred B. launched C. delivered D. orbited

42. A. released B. generated C. advocated D. addressed

43. A. realized B. established C. estimated D. identified

44. A. distinguishable B. available C. detectable D. accessible

45. A. incident B. implication C. trick D. treat

46. A. deposited B. arranged C. supposed D. dedicated

47. A. informed B. reminded C. deprived D. convinced

48. A. figuring out B. dealing with C. thinking about D. working on

49. A. screened B. recognized C. interfered D. recorded

50. A. density B. concentration C. intensity D. quantity

51. A. made up B. caught up C. took up D. picked up

52. A. stretch B. illusion C. coincidence D. approach

53. A. planetary B. geological C. gravitational D. physical

54. A. aid B. ear C. arm D. tool

55. A. delicate B. sensible C. accurate D. sensitive

Section B

Directions: Read the following two passage. Each passage is followed by several questions or

unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the

one that fits best according to the information given in the passage you have just read.

(C)

Alan Jamieson remembers seeing it for the first time: a small, black fiber floating in liquid. It

resembled a hair, but when Jamieson examined it under a microscope, he realized that the fiber

was clearly synthetic -- a piece of plastic. And worryingly, his student Lauren Brooks had pulled it

from the gut of a small amphipod living in one of the deepest parts of the ocean.

For the past decade, Jamieson, a marine biologist at Newcastle University, has been sending

vehicles to the bottom of marine trenches（海沟）, which can be as deep as the Himalayas are tall.

These landers have collected amphipods -- scavenger relatives of crabs and shrimp that thrive in

the abyss. Jamieson originally wanted to know how these animals differ from one distant trench to

another. But a few years ago, he decided to analyze their body for toxic, human-made pollutants,

which have been banned for decades but which persist in nature for much longer.

The team found much PCBs（多氯联苯）. Some amphipods were carrying levels 50 times

higher than those seen in crabs from one of China's most polluted rivers. When the news broke,

Jamieson received calls from journalists and concerned citizens. And in every discussion, one

question kept coming up: What about plastics?

The world produces an estimated 10 tons of plastic a second, and between 5 million and 14

million tons sweep into the oceans every year. Some of them washes up on beaches. About 5

trillion pieces currently float in surface waters, mostly in the form of tiny, easy-to-swallow

fragments that ends up in the gut of albatrosses, sea turtles, plankton, fish, and whales. But those

pieces also sink, snowing into the deep sea and upon the amphipods that live there.

"It's not a good result," Jamieson said. "I don't like doing this type of work." When he

submitted his findings to a scientific journal, the researchers who reviewed the paper reasonably

asked how he could tell that the fibers were actually plastic. "Our response was, 'Some of it's