全国I卷区（湖南、江西、安徽等地）2021届高三上学期1月优生联赛英语试题

Write a one-page report titled "The Best Book I Read This Year" and enter it in the Boys' Life 2020 "Say Yes to Reading!" contest.

The book can be fiction or nonfiction. But the report has to be in your own words — 500 words tops. Enter in one of these three age categories:

·8 years old and younger

·9 and 10 years old

·11 years old and older

First-place winners in each age category will receive a $100 gift card from Amazon.com. Second-place winners will receive a $75 gift card; third-place winners, a $50 gift card.

Everyone who enters will get a free patch like the one on this page. The patch is a temporary sign, so it can be worn on the right pocket of the Scout uniform shirt. Proudly display it there or on another item such as a vest, plaque or trophy! In coming years, you'll have the opportunity to earn other patches.

The contest is open to all Boys' Life readers. Be sure to include your name, address, age and grade in school on the entry.

Send your report, along with a business-size, self-addressed, stamped envelope, to:

Boys' Life Reading Contest

S306

P.O. Box 152079

Irving, TX 75015-2079

Entries must be postmarked by Dec. 31, 2020 and must include entry information and a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

Ray Kurzweil is an inventor and futurist with some interesting ideas on how humans will soon be able to live much longer than the average 78 years they do now. If Kurzweil is right, this is a question we'll have to ask ourselves in the near future.

The first challenge is how to stop our bodies from getting old and dying. Kurzweil doesn't see this as a problem. With gene technology we'll soon be able to "turn off" genes that cause ageing and disease. This technology is getting cheaper and advancing at an incredible rate. Kurzweil believes that from every year after 2023, we'll be adding more than a year to the average life expectancy. He also expects that within the next 20 years, we will have 'nanobots' in our blood. These tiny robots will automatically keep our bodies healthy and free from diseases by finding damaged cells and destroying them.

Of course, if we're all going to live longer, then there are going to be more of us on this already overcrowded Earth. Many people think there are likely to be problems with resources such as food and energy. Kurzweil doesn't agree. He says that the same technologies used to increase our life expectancy will also be used to help with food production and energy needs. For example, he says, sunlight can potentially give us 10,000 times more energy than we currently use. We just need to develop the technology to capture it and make it cheaper. There are also new technologies that can recycle water extremely cheaply. This means that dirty water can be made clean again at a very low cost. When you consider that 80% of disease in the developing world is because of dirty water, you can see how this technology might help change the world.

But what are we going to do with all this extra time? Won't we all get bored? Again Kurzweil says 'no'. For a start, we won't be stuck in old bodies. We'll stay young for years. This will mean we'll be able to experiment with many more things than we can now. We'll also see huge developments in virtual reality technology that will keep us entertained for years.

The future according to Ray Kurzweil looks good — and we might just be around to see it.

Restaurants, schools, dentist offices are all keeping more windows open, to increase ventilation — and hopefully, to decrease the chances of encountering the coronavirus. But letting in fresh air also lets in more noise.

Now, researchers have come up with a device that's like noise-cancelling headphones — but for a building.

"It works on the same principle, so it detects noise that's coming into the windows, and then is cancelling the noise." says Bhan Lam, an acoustical engineer at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. The device looks like a grid of small speakers, and fits over an open window.

A microphone samples incoming noise, then sends the speaker grid instructions on what sort of "anti-noise" to emit. The result is to cancel out the incoming sound.

For example, here's the sound of a commuter train in Singapore, with no noise control. (Before Control SFX) Now, here's that same train sound, with the array of noise-cancelling speakers turned on. (After Control SFX)

Compare that to a closed window (Window Closed SFX). The anti-noise device is almost as good, and allows air to keep flowing into and out of the window. The details are in the journal Scientific Reports. The device is just a prototype (样机) — so it's still expensive.

And it doesn't block out all sounds. It masks sound at frequencies from 300 to 1000 Hz — which includes the rumble of freeways, trains and planes. But even that could come in handy in a place like Singapore. "Give me a second, there's a plane flying past." Bhan says Singapore already has a lot of green buildings that use natural ventilation. "But the downside is, when you have lots of openings in the buildings, the noise comes in, so you need some way to manage the increasing noise."

A grid of window speakers could do the trick — especially if people prioritize peace and quiet over a good view, which folks at home tend to do all night.

Don't you wish those long summer days could last forever? An island in northern Norway is campaigning to do just that.

Sommarøy — meaning "Summer Island" — wants to swap its watches for flower garlands and declare itself the world's first time-free zone.

On this island in West Tromsø, north of the Arctic Circle, the sun doesn't set from May 18 right through to July 26, a full 69 days.

The locals, having endured the long polar night from November to January, when the sun doesn't rise at all, make the most of these precious months, with no regard to conventional timekeeping.

"There's constantly daylight, and we act accordingly," says islander Kjell Ove Hveding in a statement. "In the middle of the night, which city folk might call '2 a.m.', you can spot children playing soccer, people painting their houses or mowing their lawns, and teens going for a swim. "

Now they want to make it official. Islanders gathered at a town hall meeting to sign a petition for a time-free zone and on June 13, Hveding met with a Norwegian member of parliament to hand over the locals' signatures and to discuss the practical and legal challenges of the initiative.

"To many of us, getting this in writing would simply mean formalizing something we have been practicing for generations," he says.

Islanders hope to be free of traditional opening hours and to introduce flexibility in school and working hours. Fishing and tourism are the main industries on this island with a population of little more than 300 people.

Hveding says local fishermen and women often spend days on the ocean pursuing their catch, with little regard to timetable.

It's clear they mean business. When visitors cross the bridge to the island from the mainland, they aren't greeted with padlocks (symbolizing love locks) like on similar bridges worldwide. The bridge is covered with watches, as people prepare for entry to the land time forgot.

Will the islanders succeed in their efforts? It's already paying off in a publicity boost, which could well be the primary aim of the campaign.

Our Amazing Hands

The hand is where the mind meets the world. We use our hands to build fires, to fly airplanes, and to write. The human brain, with its open-ended creativity, may be the thing that makes the human race unique. But without hands, all the ideas we think up would come to nothing.

Study it carefully, you will find something interesting. The thumb (拇指) alone is controlled by nine separate muscles. The wrist is a group of bones and muscles connected with nerves (神经). The nerves send branches into each fingertip, which makes the fingers extremely flexible.

Early hands seemed more unusual and interesting than any hand today. Some animals had seven fingers. Others had eight. But by the time vertebrates (脊椎动物) appeared 340 million years ago, the hand had developed to only five fingers.

Nevertheless, there are still many different types of hands in living animals. After years of research, scientists are beginning to understand the molecular (分子的) changes in hands. This makes the hands of different animals very similar. There is a network of many genes (基因) that builds a hand, and all hands are built on that network.

The discovery has given scientists a deeper understanding of the development of hands. A bird's wing and a lion's paw (爪) may appear to have nothing in common. It may just be a little more of one protein (蛋白) here, a little less of another there. In the past, scientists could recognize only the outward signs that hands had developed from a common ancestor. Today scientists are uncovering the inward signs as well.

A. Hands can often be used for a number of different purposes.

B. They also see that all hands start out in much the same way.

C. It has kept that number for reasons scientists don't yet know.

D. No one would doubt that the five fingers are different with each other.

E. But the difference between them may come down to a tiny change in form.

F. The reason we can use our hands for so many things is their special structure.

G. So you can see a skilled watchmaker use his hands to set springs in place under a microscope.

Bob was set to visit his wife Nancy in her nursing home for their wedding anniversary on March 14, but when the home banned visitors due to coronavirus, Bob had to get1.

Bob, 90, and Nancy, 88, have been 2 for 67 years. The two met when Nancy worked at a small dairy shop and Bob would 3 while he waited for the bus to go to work at his job after World War II. The 4 has four children, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren with one on the5.

After being diagnosed with dementia(痴呆症), Nancy moved into a(an) 6 home in December. Bob has a caretaker or family friend 7 him to visit her almost every day.

"I just miss her 8 she's in the nursing home," Bob said.

On March 9, the nursing home9 that it would stop accepting visitors due to coronavirus 10. Bob's youngest daughter, Laura, 51, 11 her dad to tell him the news. Bob and Nancy's 12 was that Saturday.

"He asked me, 'How am I going to get in there?'" Laura said. "I told him he couldn't get in, 13 maybe they could wheel her up to the 14 and we could stand with balloons outside so she can see us."

Bob, who used to work in graphic arts as his profession, decided to 15 his wife a sign she could read through the window. He went and bought 16 and spent days crafting the sign on his kitchen table. He cut a heart out of red felt(毡) and lined the edges with glitter. In the middle he wrote, "I've loved you 67 years and I still17 . Happy Anniversary."

"He was so 18 of the sign," Laura said. "He kept asking, 'Do you think she'll be able to read it?' He was thrilled."

Laura drove her father to the nursing home on their anniversary, where the staff was 19 his arrival. When he was all set up with his sign, they brought Nancy to her window to see him.

"I just wanted her to know for sure that I hadn't forgotten," Bob said. "This year she may have forgotten our anniversary, but I'd hoped it would 20 her."

When Nancy saw Bob she got a big smile on her face and began waving and blowing kisses.

China now ranks first in four major areas of scientific research in terms of academic activity and influence — one than last year, according to the report “Research Fronts 2020”.

The report is published by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institutes of Science and Development and US-based Clarivate Analytics.

The 2020 report  (identify) 148 frontier research topics, including 110 prominent and 38 emerging subjects,  are divided into 11 broad research categories, clinical medicine to social sciences.

The list is compiled by analyzing data of highly  (influence) and often-cited papers published from 2014 to 2019.

This year, China leads the world in four major research categories: agricultural, plant and animal sciences; chemistry and materials science; mathematics and information science.

China also ranks second in ecology and environmental sciences; physics; social sciences including (economic) and psychology.

, China is notably behind other scientific powerhouses in clinical medicine and astronomy and astrophysics,  (rank) at 12th and 8th, respectively.

In terms of overall national performance in these research fronts, the US  (top) the world for the fourth straight year, followed by China, the United Kingdom, Germany and France.

Of the top five countries, China is the only one that is making(notice) progress in catching up with the leader, the report shows.

增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号(∧)，并在其下面写出该加的词。

删除：把多余的词用斜线(\)划掉。

修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。

注意：1．每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；

2．只允许修改10处，多者(从第11处起)不计分。

Last Sunday, I visited my grandparents in the country. They live on a big farm, where there are lots of animals, fruit trees and freshly vegetables. When I was staying at there, the apples in their orchard was in season, and we went picking. Some of the neighbour also came. They helped us picked the apples, which was so much fun. Then in the end of the day, my grandma cooked a big meal, we sat around, eating and talking. Towards evening, I became a bit boring because they didn't have a TV set. And I really miss my friends of the city. I think the country is certain good for a visit, but it is too quiet for me!

内容包括：1）取得的成绩； 2）成功脱贫的原因。

注意：

1）词数100左右；

2）短文题目和首句已为你写好。

A Miracle in China

China, as a responsible major country, has been steadily marching towards its goal of ending extreme poverty.