Vel Scott is known for creating a bustling (热闹的) nightlife for Black Clevelanders in the 1960s. But now this grandmother has changed her life’s work into helping others change their eating habits and creating a(n)
In 1963, Vel and her husband Don Scott
Vel took it upon herself to
Dionne Thomas-Carmichael, a friend of Vel who suffered from cancer, said, “Vel has really helped to
Vel brings the farm to the
“The Black community has the highest rates of cancer and the highest rates of diabetes (糖尿病). It’s up to us to change our
Like Carmichael, many people have
| A．active | B．healthy | C．unique | D．green |
| A．visited | B．dreamed of | C．passed by | D．opened |
| A．entertain | B．educate | C．promote | D．contact |
| A．advantageous | B．flexible | C．energetic | D．anxious |
| A．culturally | B．technologically | C．academically | D．professionally |
| A．efforts | B．comments | C．changes | D．demands |
| A．trade in | B．care for | C．experiment with | D．cut off |
| A．needs | B．challenges | C．benefit | D．guidance |
| A．museum | B．road | C．club | D．farm |
| A．options | B．donations | C．collections | D．adaptations |
| A．force | B．permit | C．require | D．inspire |
| A．stage | B．table | C．hospital | D．garden |
| A．attitude | B．schedule | C．goal | D．circumstance |
| A．credited | B．charged | C．occupied | D．satisfied |
| A．working | B．staring | C．starting | D．communicating |
Emile and the Field is the story of a little boy who spends every season playing in a field by his house, whispering to the trees or playing in the leaves.
Kevin Young, the author of the book, originally wrote Emile and the Field years ago as a bedtime poem for his son. Young’s son is a teenager now — and too old for bedtime stories — but this poem about Emile lives on, now as a children’s book illustrated by Chioma Ebinama, a fine artist living in Greece.
Ebinama wanted to reflect Emile’s love for nature, so she used a sort of romantic palette (调色板) of pinks, blues and sunny yellows. She hand-painted the illustrations in watercolor.
For inspiration, Ebinama says she drew from a variety of influences. One scene, where Emile and his father hold hands and walk through the snow-covered field, reminds us of Snowy Day, Keats’ 1962 children’s book about Peter, an African American boy who explores his neighborhood after the season’s first snowfall.
And — as in Snowy Day — Ebinama drew the little boy in Emile and the Field as a black child. Even though the author and the illustrator never discussed it clearly, Young says the fact of Emile’s blackness was very important to him. The winter scenes were actually the most challenging. Obviously it’s winter so it’s mostly white.
Emile and the Field is a family story for both the author and the illustrator. Ebinama, for example, drew her dog, Luna, into the story as the little dog that follows Emile around. Even though there is no dog in Young’s original poem, Luna came in very handy.
There was a kind of family quality to the book for Young. He named the main character of his poem after his great-grandfather, Emile, a farmer who lived to be 103 years old. He says the story reminds him of running around his family’s fields as a kid in Louisiana.
“There’s nothing better than being read to or reading to someone,” Young says. “It really connects you to this long story-telling tradition.”
1．Why did Young write Emile and the Field at first?| A．To satisfy his love for nature. | B．To read it as a bedtime poem. |
| C．To encourage his teenage son. | D．To tell the story of a Greek boy. |
| A．To give us a good understanding of Keats. |
| B．To introduce the life of an African American boy. |
| C．To provide us with an example of children’s books. |
| D．To tell us where Ebinama got her inspiration to paint Emile. |
| A．It’s Emile’s pet in real life. | B．It’s a character created by Young. |
| C．It gives Ebinama a sense of family. | D．It has the colors of black and white. |
| A．To report an important event. | B．To help readers appreciate a book. |
| C．To tell about a personal experience. | D．To advertise for a publishing house. |
Several years ago, shortly after going through months of chemotherapy (化疗) for breast cancer (癌症), I was burned out. I should have been happy. The treatments were over. Instead, a door somewhere in my heart flew open from the stress of dealing with my cancer diagnosis (诊断). All the feelings, worries, and fears made me struggle. It took a huge effort to get through each day. The world was dark. I didn’t care about anything. One day, I visited a counselor at the nearby cancer center.
“You need to make a treasure map,” she said. “How do I do that?”
“First, you make a list of the things you want to do or achieve in the future. Then bring it here next week.”
That afternoon, I started and wrote, “Walk for twenty minutes each day” and “Finish the book I started.” Then I began thinking a week and then a month ahead, writing, “Visit Sea World,” and “Start attending yoga classes.” And, finally, I was looking a year ahead: “Finish writing my novel,” and “Go to cheer for Diane.” (My sister was training for a sixty-mile walk to raise money for breast cancer research.) I felt a little better.
When I showed my counselor the list, she told me to buy a piece of poster board and cutout pictures of the goals I had written. That would be my treasure map, my working plan to lead my way to the future.
At home that day, I cleared off the kitchen table and took out some old magazines. At first, I felt silly looking for pictures, like I was back in kindergarten. But as I found what I was looking for, I became more interested. Before the cancer diagnosis, I had wanted to travel to see the Grand Canyon. I had forgotten that. I had wanted to learn to use my camera and to visit New Orleans. I had forgotten those, too.
Good morning, everyone.
Carved out of a rocky hill, the Temple of the Rising Sun had showed the power of Egypt’s greatest pharaoh to the Nubian people in the Upper Nile. Over time, the great temple and the smaller buildings became
But just over a century later, the southernmost relics of this ancient human civilization were threatened
In an attempt
The race against time
Young Emily, aged four, is deaf and uses British Sign Language to communicate. Her mother, Tanya Andrews, took her and her six-year-old brother Hugo to
The family
Tanya said the
“Emily being able to
Tanya was so glad that her daughter’s dream
| A．attract | B．help | C．see | D．direct |
| A．lasting | B．shocking | C．general | D．tough |
| A．created | B．shared | C．missed | D．disliked |
| A．bought | B．reserved | C．wanted | D．made |
| A．gifts | B．coworkers | C．audience | D．children |
| A．immediately | B．specifically | C．eagerly | D．anxiously |
| A．experience | B．training | C．student | D．volunteer |
| A．forgets | B．prefers | C．knows | D．teaches |
| A．jump | B．struggle | C．laugh | D．communicate |
| A．unnecessary | B．unbelievable | C．strange | D．endless |
| A．light up | B．calm down | C．stand out | D．break away |
| A．confident | B．ordinary | C．annoyed | D．nervous |
| A．advised | B．encouraged | C．forced | D．warned |
| A．went on | B．cried out | C．set off | D．came true |
| A．custom | B．proposal | C．inspiration | D．adventure |
Microplastics (微塑料) pollute drinking water. Data now suggest all of us have microplastics in our bodies. Some plastics are harmful.
Menake Piyasena, a professor at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, and his team worked on a new process. In the past, Piyasena used ultrasound (超声波) to separate microbes and other cells from water. He recalls thinking: “What if we can use the same method to concentrate on microplastics?”
The researchers send polluted water down a tube. The tube’s water flows past a transducer, which turns electrical energy into sound energy. It makes ultrasound waves that travel from one side of the tube to the other. When they hit microplastics, these waves exert（施加）a force on the plastic bits.
What happens next depends on the size of those plastic bits. Ones less than about 180micrometers across will move to the center of the flow. Larger ones will interact with each other and create an additional force. This sends those larger ones toward the other end of flowing water.
The ultrasound treatment removed about four in every five plastic bits from the water. It took about 90 minutes to clean one liter. It cost only about 10 cents to do that. “We think our approach will be cost-effective and simple,” Piyasena says.
“Microplastics are a problem worldwide,” says a research chemist Souhail Al-Abed, who works for the US Environmental Protection Agency. In his opinion, this tech is not yet ready to be rolled out for widespread use. “I’d like to express praise for Piyasena’s team that are conducting this research,” Al-Abed adds. “Research does not have all the answers on day 1 or day 2 or day 100. But continuing work by these researchers may find a good solution for the future.”
1．Why did the researchers turn to ultrasound in the new study?| A．They proved it was harmless to humans. |
| B．They managed to apply it to other studies. |
| C．It produced enough energy to heat water. |
| D．It enabled them to focus on the experiment. |
| A．It might waste plenty of water. |
| B．It will serve every family soon. |
| C．It could lead to safer drinking water. |
| D．It has been the most effective approach. |
| A．Hopeless. | B．Unclear. | C．Concerned. | D．Positive. |
| A．Ultrasound Helps Remove Microplastics in Water |
| B．Scientists Have Found the Cause of Water Pollution |
| C．Efforts Are Made to Turn Microplastics into Energy |
| D．Plastics Have a Bad Influence on Our Everyday Life |
Ecologists Dr. Matt Holden, Dr. Andrew Rogers and Dr. Russell Yong observed their share house and its backyard in 2020, and discovered 1,150 unique species of animals and plants over a 12-month period.
“We asked a large number of ecologists and conservation scientists how many species they’d expect to find in this setting and they said it could be only 200,”Dr. Holden said. “But after 60 days of surveying, we’d already discovered 777 species. It shows suburban (郊区的) houses and apartments could have far more biodiversity (生物多样性) than ever imagined, especially when it comes to insects.”
The idea of the species count was born when Dr. Rogers went to clean spider’s webs (蜘蛛网) in his room and wondered how many spiders were in the house. “The three of us soon worked out a plan to check the house and backyard in search of other insects that lived alongside us,” Dr. Holden said.
The survey showed richly biodiverse creatures, including 436 moth and butterfly species, 56 different spiders, and 56 birds. The researchers were also surprised to discover three species not previously recorded in Australia’s leading biodiversity database. “The house was a rich ecosystem of species interacting—we discovered unexpectedly a kind of moth, which spends its whole time feeding inside the waste of other animals before turning into an adult,” Dr. Holden said.
Homes across all suburban areas could play host to similar biodiversity. “It depends on how people tend to their homes and gardens—keeping low maintenance trees and flowers and preventing chemicals used for killing insects will lead to the rising number of living creatures,” Dr. Holden said. “You don’t have to go travelling to connect with Australia’s different species of creatures. Just look in your own backyard.”
1．How many species did the three housemates discover in 12 months?| A．200. | B．436. | C．700. | D．1, 150. |
| A．Cleaning his room. | B．Observing the spiders. |
| C．A talk with his friend. | D．A mass of dead insects. |
| A．Australia has seen a jump in living creatures. | B．Suburban backyards are home to diverse species. |
| C．Wildlife tourism threatens animals and plants. | D．People should keep their gardens free of insects. |
| A．A children’s story. | B．A museum guide. |
| C．A science magazine. | D．A health report. |
In December 2018, Cheré Bautista had to face a fear that she had worried about since she was a teen. Then 36, Bautista had spent months searching for work and had finally been offered a job in the call center of a Seattle-area hospital. But at the last minute, the offer was rescinded due to something Bautista had kept secret for twenty years: She had never graduated from high school.
“That was the lowest point in my life,” recalls Bautista. She has come a long way since her childhood. Raised by a single dad, she often had to take care of herself. At 16, she dropped out of high school to work and support herself. Gradually, Bautista built a life. By 2005, she had worked at a local bank.
With each passing year, however, Bautista felt her career options (职业选择) narrowing. After nearly ten years in banking, she was getting burned out. She dreamed of becoming an accountant (会计), but knew that required a diploma (文凭). Meanwhile, her incomplete education made her feel uncomfortable socially.
When the hospital call center job fell through, Bautista knew she’d reached a breaking point. “At that moment, it was just, ‘I have to fix this.’”
After searching for local classes, Bautista came across a preparatory program on the Hopelink website. She’d known it ran a food bank, but was unaware Hope link also offered free adult education programs.
Though Bautista was nervous about being in class, she refused to let that fear get in the way. “She always asked questions and was really open about what she understood and didn’t understand,” says Debbie Margolis, a teacher of Hopelink.
Hopelink helped Bautista prepare for her GED test, which awards the equivalent of a high school diploma. She passed the test in six months in June 2019. Even today, Bautista recalls the relief she felt—“Just the weight lifting off my shoulders: I finally get this done.”
1．What does the underlined word “rescinded” mean in the first paragraph?| A．Limited. | B．Delivered. | C．Identified. | D．Cancelled. |
| A．She missed her childhood. | B．She suffered many hardships. |
| C．She supported a big family. | D．She lived with her students. |
| A．teach the locals how to save food | B．design GED tests for young students |
| C．provide adults with education courses | D．help parents see their own strengths |
| A．Determined. | B．Demanding. | C．Humorous. | D．Generous. |
It was my tenth birthday—double digits—which would be a big day for me, and I would have the biggest party ever. The guest list, which I kept at the back of my homework assignment folder, began with a few close friends. But in the two weeks before that special Friday night, it had quickly grown from seven girls to a large total of seventeen. Nearly every girl in my fifth-grade class had been invited to sleep over at my house for a big celebration. I was especially happy when each guest I invited excitedly accepted the invitation. I couldn’t wait! It would be a night of scary stories, funny games, pizza and lots of presents, which would be a happy paradise (天堂) for kids. Who could resist it?
But as I later realized, I would truly treasure only one gift I received that night.
The big night finally came. Every friend invited came to my house on time. We kept dancing, singing, talking loudly and playing all pop games. As you could imagine, my family room was full of crazy shouts and bursts of laughter. We had just finished a game of Twister and were lining up for the limbo (林波舞)when the doorbell rang suddenly. I hardly paid attention to who might be at the door. What did it matter? Who cared? Everyone I liked from school was there, in my family room, preparing for the game —to lean under the stick held by my two sisters.
“Judy, come here for a minute,” Mom answered the door and called loudly from the front door.
I hated to be interrupted. I rolled my eyes and shrugged to my friends as if to say, “Now who would dare bother me at a time like this?” What I really wanted to say was, “It’s tough being popular!”
I ran to the front door, wondering who it was, and then I stopped.
I slowly accepted the gift from Sarah.
搜索
