外刊阅读理解测试9 -2025届高三英语上学期一轮复习专项

Will an AI be the first to discover alien life? From the hills of West Virginia to the flats of rural Australia, some of the world’s largest telescopes are listening for signals from distant alien civilizations. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, known as SETI, is an effort to find artificial-looking electromagneticradiation signals that might have come from a technologically advanced civilization in a far-away solar system. A study published today describes one of several efforts to use machine learning, a subset of artificial intelligence (AI), to help astronomers sift quickly through the reams of data such surveys yield. As AI reshapes many scientific fields, what promise does it hold for the search for life beyond Earth? “It is a new era for SETI research that is opening up thanks to machine-learning technology,” says Franck Marchis, a planetary astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. The problem of big data is relatively new for SETI. For decades, the field was constrained by having hardly any data at all. Astronomer Frank Drake pioneered SETI in 1960, when he pointed a telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia, towards two stars and listened for radio transmissions. Most of the SETI searches that followed were also limited to a small number of stars. But in 2015, billionaire Yuri Milner funded the biggest SETI programme ever, in Berkeley, California: the Breakthrough Listen project to search one million stars for signs of intelligent life. Using telescopes in West Virginia, Australia and South Africa, the project looks for radio emissions that come from the direction of a star and that change steadily in frequency. The trouble is that these searches yield a blizzard of data — including false positives produced by Earthly interference from mobile phones, GPS and other aspects of modern life. “The biggest challenge for us in looking for SETI signals is not at this point getting the data,” says Sofia Sheikh, an astronomer at the SETI Institute. “The difficult part is differentiating signals from human or Earth technology from the kind of signals we’d be looking for from technology somewhere else out in the Galaxy.” Going through millions of observations manually isn’t practical. A common alternative approach is to use algorithms that look for signals matching what astronomers think alien beacons could look like. But those algorithms can overlook potentially interesting signals that are slightly different from what astronomers are expecting. Enter machine learning. Machine-learning algorithms are trained on large amounts of data and can learn to recognize features that are characteristic of Earthly interference, making them very good at filtering out the noise. Machine learning is also good at picking up candidate extraterrestrial signals that don’t fall into conventional categories and so might have been missed by earlier methods, says Dan Werthimer, a SETI scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. Peter Ma, a mathematician and physicist at the University of Toronto, Canada, and lead author of today’s paper, agrees. “We can’t always be anticipating what ET might send to us,” he says. Ma and his colleagues sifted through Breakthrough Listen observations of 820 stars, made using the 100-metre Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope. They built machine-learning software to analyse the data; this netted nearly three million signals of interest but discarded most as Earth-based interference. Ma then manually reviewed more than 20,000 signals and narrowed them down to 8 intriguing candidates. The search ultimately came up empty — all eight signals disappeared when the team listened again. But the methods could be used on other data, such as a flood of observations from the MeerKAT array of 64 radio telescopes in South Africa, which Breakthrough Listen began using in December. The machine-learning algorithms could also be used on archived SETI data, says Ma, to seek signals that might previously have been overlooked. Machine learning is also at the heart of a separate SETI effort that will launch next month. On 14 February, astronomers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), will launch a community-science project in which volunteers from the public will sort through images of radio signals and classify them as potential types of interference, to train a machine-learning algorithm to search SETI data from Green Bank. And AI can help with other stages of the SETI process. Werthimer and his colleagues have used machine learning to come up with a ranking of stars to be observed in an ongoing SETI project that uses the world’s largest single-dish telescope, the 500-metre FAST radio telescope in China. Still, SETI will probably continue to use a mixture of classical and machine-learning approaches to sort through data, says Jean-Luc Margot, an astronomer at UCLA. Classical algorithms remain excellent at picking up candidate signals, and machine learning is “not a panacea”, he says. “The machines can’t do it all, yet,” agrees Werthimer. What is SETI? A. A study on machine learning. B. An effort to find alien life. C. A project to build telescopes. D. A research on artificial intelligence. What is the problem with the current SETI searches? A. Lack of data. B. Difficulty in getting the data. C. Too many false positives. D. Limited number of stars. What is the advantage of machine learning in SETI? A. It can find all the alien signals. B. It can replace classical algorithms. C. It can filter out Earthly interference. D. It can build telescopes. What did Ma and his colleagues do? A. They built a new telescope. B. They found alien signals. C. They trained a machine-learning algorithm. D. They sifted through Breakthrough Listen observations. What is the future of SETI according to the article? A. It will only use machine learning. B. It will use a mixture of classical and machine-learning approaches. C. It will stop searching for alien life. D. It will build more telescopes. What Would Happen If You Ate Instant Noodles All the Time? Instant ramen is cheap, it's tasty, and if you buy the kind in Styrofoam cups, you don't even need a bowl or utensils to enjoy a hot meal. Which raises the question: Is ramen any good for you? And what would happen if you ate it all the time—say six or seven nights a week? "In a just-add-water container of ramen, there isn't a lot going on other than carbs and salt," says Abbey Sharp, a Toronto-based dietician. The same goes for those square bricks of ramen that require a few minutes of boiling. Sharp says ramen has little-to-no fiber or protein—which are two of the primary components of food that make a person feel full after eating. So ramen is unlikely to fill you up for very long, she says. "There's also very little micronutrients going on, so it's not contributing anything meaningful in the way of beneficial vitamins or antioxidants," she says. But back to the carbs and salt. Let's say you're hungry, and you decide to knock back two of those Styrofoam-cupped noodles. Depending on the product you buy, each one may contain 1150 mg (or more) of sodium. "That is extremely high," says Jim White, a registered dietician nutritionist and owner of Jim White Fitness studios. Consuming too much salt can raise a person's risk for high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke in the long term, the CDC warns. But in the short-term, slurping that much sodium would likely lead to serious water retention, White says. That would promote weight gain, and also feeling bloated, sluggish, or lethargic, he says. "Ramen also contains MSG and TBHQ, which may cause some unwanted side effects," White says. MSG (or monosodium glutamate) is a non-essential amino acid that gives ramen a satisfying, umami-rich flavor. While the FDA considers MSG to be safe, some people report feeling nauseated, headachy, or otherwise unwell after eating it. TBHQ is also considered safe, though in high doses it has been linked with brain toxicity and some other health concerns. What is the main ingredient in instant ramen according to the article? A. Fiber and protein. B. Carbs and salt. C. Vitamins and antioxidants. D. MSG and TBHQ. Why is ramen unlikely to fill you up for long? A. It contains too much sodium. B. It has little-to-no fiber or protein. C. It has MSG and TBHQ. D. It is in Styrofoam cups. What is a long-term risk of consuming too much salt? A. Water retention. B. Weight gain. C. Feeling bloated. D. High blood pressure. What does MSG give ramen? A. A satisfying flavor. B. Health benefits. C. Fiber and protein. D. Vitamins and antioxidants. What is considered safe but may cause unwanted side effects in some people? A. Carbs and salt. B. Fiber and protein. C. MSG. D. TBHQ. US megadrought has led to more air pollution from power plants Water levels at reservoirs across the western US have hit record lows, reducing the amount of energy generated at dams. Fossil fuel power plants are filling the hydropower gap, leading to more greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution duringthe region’s megadrought. On average, about 26 per cent of the electricity for the western US comes from hydropower and 50 per cent comes from fossil fuel plants burning gas, coal or oil. The rest is from wind, solar and nuclear power and other sources, such as geothermal energy. Under drought conditions, the proportions in that mix can change, says Minghao Qiu at Stanford University in California. Less water in reservoirs means less water to release, leading to reductions in hydropower. The Hoover Dam on the Colorado river, for instance, is currently generating less than half its usual output because it draws water from a shrinking Lake Mead. Qiu and his colleagues analysed the effects of drought on electricity generation in 11 states in the western US, using data collected between 2001 and 2021 on precipitation runoff into reservoirs, electricity generation and resulting emissions. They found that during the most extreme drought conditions, the electricity generated by fossil fuel plants increased as much as 65 per cent above average at some facilities. During the driest months, plants in California saw average increases of 35 per cent, while the Pacific Northwest and the Southwest saw increases of 11 and 9.5 per cent, respectively. These “drought-induced shocks” accounted for 12 per cent of total carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation over that period, say Qiu. They also accounted for 8 per cent of sulphur dioxide emissions and 6 per cent of nitrogen oxide emissions. Both sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions contribute to a harmful type of pollution called PM2.5, which refers to particles between 1 and 2.5 micrometres in diameter. These particles can penetrate deep into lung tissues and are responsible for most deaths from air pollution. “It’s not just drought,” says Nathalie Voisin at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state. “It also has impacts on air quality.” While previous research used statistical models to show that drought might boost pollution, the new study used data from air quality monitors downwind of fossil fuel power plants to confirm this is the case, finding increased pollution from PM2.5, especially within 50 kilometres of the plants. “It’s surprising to actually see this in the real world,” says Qiu. Drought-induced air pollution has decreased in the US in recent years because many coal-powered plants have been supplanted by natural gas, which produces fewer emissions. Also, more power plants are using scrubbers to reduce pollution. But in countries that use a large amount of both hydropower and coal and oil, such as Madagascar or Honduras, drought-induced shocks would cause more air pollution, says Qiu. “Even with a very expansive renewable energy transition this drought-induced fossil problem doesn’t really go away,” he says. Overall emissions go down as renewable sources are added, but even ambitious clean energy scenarios show fossil fuels being used to fill in drought-induced gaps for decades. What has led to more air pollution from power plants during the US megadrought? A. Increased use of nuclear power. B. Decreased use of fossil fuel power plants. C. Filling the hydropower gap with fossil fuel power plants. D. More wind power generation. What percentage of electricity for the western US usually comes from hydropower? A. 26 per cent. B. 50 per cent. C. 12 per cent. D. 8 per cent. What did Qiu and his colleagues find about fossil fuel power plant emissions during drought? A. They decreased. B. They remained the same. C. They increased as much as 65 per cent above average at some facilities. D. They increased by 100 per cent. What kind of pollution do sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions contribute to? A. PM2.5. B. PM10. C. Ozone. D. Carbon dioxide. Why has drought-induced air pollution decreased in the US in recent years? A. More coal-powered plants have been built. B. Fewer power plants are using scrubbers. C. Natural gas has supplanted many coal-powered plants and more power plants are using scrubbers. D. There is less drought. In an Uncertain Job Market, How Can Companies Retain Workers? Reports of layoffs have cast a shadow over the recent surge in quitting. Tech behemoths like Amazon and Meta and, most recently, Dell and Microsoft have led the way in cutting jobs, along with companies like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs; layoffs are planned at McDonald’s, as well. In absolute terms, resignations still far outnumber reductions — people are quitting at three times the rate of layoffs, said Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of organizational behavior at the University College London’s School of Management. (He coined the term the Great Resignation.) Indeed, the U.S. Labor Department’s January jobs report said employers had added over 500,000 jobs, exceeding expectations and bringing the unemployment rate down to 3.4 percent, the lowest since 1969. Nonetheless, frequent headlines of work force reductions across industries may be having a cumulative effect on the collective labor market psyche. Although some workers — even unhappy ones — might decide to stick with their jobs when the market appears uncertain, news of layoffs can, conversely, spur more quitting. Layoffs “create an environment where people worry it might happen to them next,” said Laszlo Bock, who was Google’s senior vice president for people operations before helping found the human resources platform Humu. Poorly handled reductions may “degrade trust in management as people start hearing rumors of further cuts,” he said, and “that in turn raises anxiety, which causes more people to quit.” The most recent data shows that while quitting has slowed, it still surpasses prepandemic numbers, Professor Klotz said. The number of people quitting peaked at approximately 3.4 percent of the work force early in 2022; by November it had fallen to 2.9 percent. While that may not sound significant, it translates to more than four million workers per month. As a result, companies in a range of industries are taking steps to discourage departures and retain talent. Creating mentorship programs; prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts; and hiring career development officers have become standard practice at many larger companies. Spurred by a competitive labor market and increasing transparency in many industries, companies are now viewing competitive compensation and benefits as necessities. Changes like these have, in reality, created a new floor as to what employees can expect — so these changes won’t necessarily solve attrition issues. Donald Sull, a senior lecturer at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, was a co-author of a study of attrition that examined a period between April 2021 to September 2021, incorporating employee reviews from Glassdoor, a jobs website. The study found that corporate environment ranked as the top factor in employee retention. A toxic corporate culture was “10 times more predictive of having a higher-than-industry-average attrition rate than compensation,” Mr. Sull said. While there is no standard definition of a toxic culture, it can involve a lack of respect for employees, a noninclusive environment, unethical as well as cutthroat behavior and, most strikingly, abusive management, he said. (Mr. Sull and his son Charles found Culture X, a firm that focuses on improving corporate environment.) Professor Klotz said leaders needed to be listening to their workers right now. “They need to ask, How are you experiencing the late pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis and other things going on in your life?” he said, adding that high levels of “burnout and stress are predictors of quitting.” As a result, managers should be checking with their employees in one-to-one conversations as well as with large-scale questionnaires. The software giant HubSpot, for example, conducts quarterly employee engagement surveys. “We can get up to 7,000 comments and we literally read and analyze every single one of them to understand how we’re doing,” Eimear Marrinan, the company’s senior director of culture, said. Of course, analysis is only an initial step; taking action is the next, and it is the one most likely to affect employees directly. In 2021, HubSpot “heard an overwhelming amount of feedback that our employees were burned out and that we weren’t doing enough for our employees’ mental health,” Ms. Marrinan said. The fix centered on “unplugging” HubSpot as an organization, she said. That included giving employees a week of rest every July. And no internal meetings are permitted on Fridays, “so that employees can actually disconnect from Zoom,” she added. In addition, all managers “had psychological safety training to make sure they could show up in the right way for our employees,” Ms. Marrinan said. The company also began offering more extensive mental health benefits. Ms. Marrinan said the efforts paid off: The company “halved the level of burnout” over the course of the year, as determined by subsequent surveys. Two other factors that have been found to help retain employees are offering remote work options and more consistent scheduling for those for whom remote work is not an option, Mr. Sull’s 2021 analysis found. At Hilton Worldwide Holdings, for example, Laura Fuentes, the company’s chief human resources officer, said creating policies could be complicated when the work force was divided between those working at one of its 18 brands and those who work at corporate headquarters. But “we know all team members want flexibility,” she said. Meaningful feedback can also help with retention. At Littler Mendelson, a global law firm specializing in labor matters, Erin Webber, its president and managing director, said the firm revamped its review process several years ago. Younger associates in particular are given written reviews before they have an in-person meeting to discuss performance. “If they read the reviews and think there is something wrong, they can come to us and explain what happened in the situation — we want to give people the opportunity to improve,” Ms. Webber said, acknowledging that “it’s not always easy.” The lawyers “have to remind ourselves that this is what we’d tell our clients — that they need to be transparent,” she added. Just as reviews are critical, first impressions also count. The success of an employee’s initial months at a company — including the onboarding process — can determine whether an employee stays, said Ms. Fuentes of Hilton. Companies striving to retain their employees should also focus on personal growth and development. Mr. Sull’s analysis found that providing lateral job moves was 12 times as important as promotions are in encouraging retention. “It’s important to let the employees know that someone is focusing on what they’re learning and that it’s going to pay off in the future,” Mr. Bock of Google said. Hilton, for example, offers training opportunities and skill-building programs for its employees, Ms. Fuentes said, including those who perform housekeeping and other maintenance jobs. The training can occur during work hours or on their own time. Companies, irrespective of size, need to focus on building a supportive corporate culture beyond values statements. Cross-function meetings, where employees in different divisions are introduced, can help. While it may not seem intuitive that those in sales have much in common with engineers, for example, they can discuss how customers ultimately use the product, Mr. Bock said. Ultimately, corporate leaders need to follow the values that they include in their public statements and websites. “We compared how heavily companies weighted the values in their public statements versus how employees assess them in terms of how well they did on those very values,” Mr. Sull said of his study. It found that companies that preached values most loudly didn’t necessarily practice them. Companies where leaders practiced their values “are the exception, not the rule,” he added. In the end, while compensation is important for employee morale, it is not the top factor in retaining employees. “Pay is never far from employees’ minds, and with the cost-of-living crisis right now that’s even more the case,” Professor Klotz said. “If you’re not in the right ballpark when it comes to pay and benefits, it’s going to be hard to get employees to fully invest their energy back into their jobs.” He said that while compensation was important, it was not a very effective motivator: “Pay is like the entry fee to engaging employees. It needs to be there, but don’t expect it to drive outstanding performance.” If a recession happens this year, however, the entire calculus may change again, Mr. Sull said. “Companies will be under a lot of pressure to manage costs,” he said, including by scaling back budgets. “These are the trade-offs that leaders will have to manage.” What has led to the recent surge in quitting? A. High pay. B. Good corporate culture. C. Layoffs in various industries. D. Lack of job opportunities. According to the study by Donald Sull, what is the top factor in employee retention? A. Competitive compensation. B. Corporate environment. C. Promotions. D. Remote work options. What did HubSpot do to address employee burnout? A. Conducted employee engagement surveys. B. Gave employees a week of rest every July. C. Offered more promotions. D. Increased pay. What is important for retaining employees according to Mr. Bock of Google? A. High pay. B. Promotions. C. Letting employees know their learning will pay off. D. Flexible work schedules. What did Littler Mendelson do to improve retention? A. Offered more pay. B. Revamped its review process. C. Provided more remote work options. D. Conducted cross-function meetings. 学科网（北京）股份有限公司 $$ Will an AI be the first to discover alien life? 答案： B。解析：文章提到“The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, known as SETI, is an effort to find artificial-looking electromagnetic radiation signals that might have come from a technologically advanced civilization in a far-away solar system.”，即 SETI 是寻找外星生命的努力。 C。解析：文中提到“The trouble is that these searches yield a blizzard of data — including false positives produced by Earthly interference from mobile phones, GPS and other aspects of modern life.”，即当前 SETI 搜索的问题是有太多的假阳性结果。 C。解析：文中提到“Machine-learning algorithms are trained on large amounts of data and can learn to recognize features that are characteristic of Earthly interference, making them very good at filtering out the noise.”，即机器学习在 SETI 中的优势是可以过滤掉地球干扰。 D。解析：文中提到“Ma and his colleagues sifted through Breakthrough Listen observations of 820 stars, made using the 100-metre Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope.”，即 Ma 和他的同事筛选了突破聆听对 820 颗恒星的观测结果。 B。解析：文中提到“Still, SETI will probably continue to use a mixture of classical and machine-learning approaches to sort through data.”，即 SETI 未来可能会继续使用经典方法和机器学习方法的混合来筛选数据。 What Would Happen If You Ate Instant Noodles All the Time? 答案： B。解析：文中提到“In a just-add-water container of ramen, there isn't a lot going on other than carbs and salt.”。 B。解析：文中提到“Sharp says ramen has little-to-no fiber or protein—which are two of the primary components of food that make a person feel full after eating. So ramen is unlikely to fill you up for very long.”。 D。解析：文中提到“Consuming too much salt can raise a person's risk for high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke in the long term, the CDC warns.”。 A。解析：文中提到“MSG (or monosodium glutamate) is a non-essential amino acid that gives ramen a satisfying, umami-rich flavor.”。 C。解析：文中提到“MSG (or monosodium glutamate) is a non-essential amino acid that gives ramen a satisfying, umami-rich flavor. While the FDA considers MSG to be safe, some people report feeling nauseated, headachy, or otherwise unwell after eating it.”。 US megadrought has led to more air pollution from power plants 答案： C。解析：文章提到“Fossil fuel power plants are filling the hydropower gap, leading to more greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution during the region’s megadrought.”。 A。解析：文中提到“On average, about 26 per cent of the electricity for the western US comes from hydropower.”。 C。解析：文中提到“They found that during the most extreme drought conditions, the electricity generated by fossil fuel plants increased as much as 65 per cent above average at some facilities.”。 A。解析：文中提到“Both sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions contribute to a harmful type of pollution called PM2.5.”。 C。解析：文中提到“Drought-induced air pollution has decreased in the US in recent years because many coal-powered plants have been supplanted by natural gas, which produces fewer emissions. Also, more power plants are using scrubbers to reduce pollution.”。 In an Uncertain Job Market, How Can Companies Retain Workers? 答案： C。解析：文章开头提到“Reports of layoffs have cast a shadow over the recent surge in quitting.”，即各行业的裁员导致了最近辞职人数的增加。 B。解析：文中提到“The study found that corporate environment ranked as the top factor in employee retention.”。 B。解析：文中提到“The fix centered on “unplugging” HubSpot as an organization, she said. That included giving employees a week of rest every July.”。 C。解析：文中提到“Google’s Mr. Bock said. “It’s important to let the employees know that someone is focusing on what they’re learning and that it’s going to pay off in the future.”。 B。解析：文中提到“At Littler Mendelson, a global law firm specializing in labor matters, Erin Webber, its president and managing director, said the firm revamped its review process several years ago.”。 学科网（北京）股份有限公司 $$