Apples are generally red, green, yellow or a combination of the three, but if the right geographical conditions are met, they can grow dark purple, almost black, as well. These apples are called Black Diamond, currently only grown in the mountains of Tibet.
Black Diamond apples get their dark purple color from the geographical conditions of Nyingchi, in Tibet. The 50-hectare (公顷) orchard(果园) set up by Chinese company Dandong Tianluo Sheng Nong E-Commerce Trade Co., Ltd. is 3,100 meters above sea level, making it the perfect place to grow these interesting fruits. The temperature differences between day and night are important, and the fruits get a lot of sunlight and ultraviolet light (紫外线), which causes their skin to go from the deep red to dark purple.
Production at the Nyingchi orchard started in 2015, three years after the trees were planted, but they can only be found in some high-end supermarkets in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and are usually sold in gift package of 6 to 8 fruits. And the price of Black Diamond apples is around 50 yuan per fruit.
Due to the low temperatures, Black Diamond apple trees’ growth rate is much lower than average. While most apple types are fully grown in 2 to 5 years, these trees require no less than 8 years. Furthermore, only about 30% of the orchard’s product meets the standards of color to be sold as high-quality Black Diamond apples.
Black Diamond apples are a mystery, even among experienced apple growers, as there really isn’t much information about them online. Some users of the Growing Fruit forum, for example, think these dark purple apples don’t really exist, while others say that the photos posted online have made the fruits darker than they really are.
1. Which plays a key role in the growth of Black Diamond apples?A.Much rain. | B.High temperature. |
C.Much land | D.High altitude |
A.Their unusual sizes | B.Their limited numbers. |
C.Their growing conditions. | D.Their high prices. |
A.Too much heat. | B.Low temperatures. |
C.Much poor soil. | D.Lack of enough water. |
A.To tell people’s different ideas of Black Diamond apples. |
B.To ask readers to learn more about Black Diamond apples. |
C.To show people know little of Black Diamond apples. |
D.To prove the information of Black Diamond apples wrong. |
相似题推荐
Scientists and city officials had supposed that Naples, one of Italy’s most populous cities, was far enough away that it would be safe from the volcano’s wrath. New evidence suggests that this might not be the case.
Researchers recently discovered 4000-year-old layers of ash and mud under present-day Naples. Just outside the city, they also uncovered abandoned villages, as well as human and animal skeletons. Most surprising of all, the researchers say, was the discovery of thousands of footprints from the same time period, pressed into layers of wet ash that had rained from the sky. The footprints show that thousands of people were fleeing to the northwest, away from the volcano, as it erupted.
Mount Vesuvius hasn’t had a major eruption since 1631, but it’s still very active. The discovery of the ancient ash layers, skeletons, and footprints is a warning that modern Naples, a city of 3 million people, isn’t safe from the volcano, scientists say. So, when the volcano begins to rumble again, Naples should have an emergency evacuation plan ready - just in case.
1. Which of the following is true with Mount Vesuvius?A.It formed 2 ,500 years ago. |
B.Its latest eruption occurred 2, 000 years ago. |
C.It is an active, destructive volcano. |
D.It is where the city Naples is located. |
A.Path. | B.Heat. | C.Fear . | D.Eruption. |
A.ancient layers of ash and mud |
B.animal footprints |
C.abandoned villages |
D.human skeletons |
A.City Pompeii has been rebuilt now. |
B.City Naples isn’t suitable for living. |
C.Mount Vesuvius will not erupt in a hundred years. |
D.Mount Vesuvius is a potential danger to Naples. |
A.introduce Mount Vesuvius |
B.describe the city Naples |
C.present new discoveries by researchers |
D.propose a plan for escape |
【推荐2】Antarctica is the most distant part of the world, but it is a center of scientific discovery and environmental change.
Early explorers were attracted there by the secret of Terra Australis. Others sought money from catching whales. Still others wanted to understand Earth’s pole in order to better sail the seas. I am a geologist (地质学家) who studies the timing and extent of past ice ages. I’ve been very lucky to conduct five season of research there under the protection of the Antarctic Treaty (条约), an international agreement that encourages scientific cooperation (合作) and environmental protection.
Antarctica is the only continent that was actually discovered, because it has no native human population. British explorer Sir James Cook sailed around the continent in 1772-1775, but saw only some outlying islands (离岛). Cook said that if there were any land, it would be “never to give way to the warmth of the sun.” But Cook also reported that Antarctic waters were rich with wildlife.
Today parts of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet are particularly close to collapse (坍塌). Recent research show sea level could rise by 1 meter by 2100 and 15 meters by 2500 if the greenhouse effect continues and the ice sheet experiences a rapid collapse, as it has in the past. Despite the environmental disaster in Antarctica, the continent also shows that nations can cooperate to find solutions. “I believe the Antarctic Treaty System is the world’s most important example of peaceful and scientific international cooperation. Thanks to it, 10% of Earth’s land surface is protected for wildlife.”
Yet in these bad environments, life finds a way to survive—showing that there are solutions to even the most difficult challenges. If Antarctica has taught me anything in 200 years, it’s that we can work together to deal with problems. As Ernest Shackleton once said, “Difficulties are just things to solve, after all.”
1. What is the author’s purpose of going to Antarctica?A.To observe whales in Antarctic waters. |
B.To unlock the secret of Terra Australis. |
C.To conduct his geological research. |
D.To sign an international agreement. |
A.It includes some tiny islands. |
B.It is terribly cold all day long. |
C.It provides good places to circumnavigate. |
D.It is one of the remotest areas of the world. |
A.Doubtful. | B.Favorable. |
C.Shocked. | D.Disappointed. |
A.Life should be given a purpose. |
B.It’s time to explore nature. |
C.Cooperation matters. |
D.Science wins all. |
【推荐3】Last fall, the Great Salt Lake hit its lowest level since record keeping began. The lake sank to nearly six meters below the long-term average. The lake’s shrinking threatens to upend the ecosystem, disturbing the migration and survival of 10 million birds, including ducks and geese.
Duck hunters aren’t the only ones worried about the Great Salt Lake. The decades-long decline in lake level is raising alarm bells for millions of people who live in the region. The low lake level and increasing salts in the lake water threaten to destroy economic mainstays like agriculture, tourism and mining. Exposed salts can also reduce air quality and so threaten public health.
Saline lakes (咸水湖) are terminal lakes. They have no rivers flowing out of them. As water disappears, salts are left behind. At the same time, the people who live in these deserts use freshwater for crops, homes and industry. Residents get water from streams and rivers into canals, pipelines or reservoirs before it reaches the lakes. And as the lakes shrink, the salt in water increases.
Lake Poopo, a highland lake in Bolivia that used to stretch 90 kilometers long and 32 kilometers wide, is now a salty mud flat. The Aral Sea shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, once the world’s fourth largest lake, has at times in recent decades shrunk to a tenth of its historic 68,000-square-kilometer surface area. Some saline lakes, like Nevada’s Winnemucca Lake, dried up so long ago — the waters that fed it were led to agricultural fields — that most people have forgotten they were ever wet.
The good news is that people still have time to halt the Great Salt Lake’s decline by using less water. Cutting agricultural and other outdoor water use by a third to half through a combination of voluntary conservation measures and policy changes would allow the lake to refill enough to support the region’s economy, ecology and quality of life. If this succeeds, the Great Salt Lake can be a model for how to save other saline lakes around the world.
1. What do we know about the Great Salt Lake from the first two paragraphs?A.It is home to ducks. | B.It will disappear soon. |
C.It will be less important. | D.It’s been shrinking for years. |
A.Their current states. | B.The challenges they face. |
C.Measures to restore them. | D.Reasons why they become saltier. |
A.Stop. | B.Boost. | C.Adapt. | D.Learn. |
A.The Great Salt Lake Is Getting Smaller |
B.The World Is Becoming Drier and Drier |
C.Saline Lakes Need Freshwater Deadly |
D.Many Lakes in the World will Disappear |
When a teen can combine an understanding of WIIFM with a sense of passion about achieving a goal, barriers will start to fall away. At our teen summer camps, we arrange an event near the end of the 10-day session that helps campers identify an important life goal and mentally break through their biggest barrier to achieving the goal. We pass around 12-by-12-inch pine boards. We tell campers that this activity is not about breaking a piece of wood. It’s about how you can get what you want in your life. It’s about breaking barriers to grab on to your goals.
They have the power to break through any barrier. It has nothing to do with body size or physical condition. The skinniest, smallest teens will break through the board almost as easily as the big ones.
We talk to the campers about the reasons they might have had for not reaching their goals in the past. Maybe they got lazy and decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Maybe they failed and let their fear of failure hold them back. But this exercise is about putting the past where it belongs. Today is about making new choices.
By this point in the program, we ask them to think of the goal they’ve set or themselves and write their goals on the boards. Then they write the possible obstacles which may hold them back on the opposite sides. An inch of pine now stands between them and their dreams.
The facilitators and their teammates gather around. The support is strong. One by one, they break through the barriers and grab their goals! All around us teens are laughing, crying, hugging, and holding up the broken pieces of their boards. The confidence shown on their faces is beautiful.
While arranging such an activity in one’s home is almost unrealistic for parents, the value of helping a teen break through a personal hairier simply by being there as moral support can not be overestimated. More help for parents in the form of videos and articles is available at our website, in our blogs and in a monthly e-newsletter.
1. The 12-by-12-inch pine boards are used as ______.
A.materials to test one’s muscles | B.signs of goals in one’s life |
C.assessments to show one’s progress | D.symbols of barriers in one’s life |
A.become hard-working | B.get moral support |
C.gain confidence | D.set right goals |
A.The Power of WIIFM | B.What’s in It for Me |
C.The Importance of Goals | D.Motivational Strategies |
A.teens | B.parents | C.campers | D.tutors |
【推荐2】Nearly one in four Americans made money over the last 12 months by using their personal computers or other devices connected to the Internet. The Pew Research Center, an independent research group in Washington, found that people are using the Internet to find extra work. They go online to sell things such as used books and furniture or they offer to provide services such as babysitting, house cleaning or computer repairs.
Pew found that income earned on the Internet can come in many forms. Some said they had jobs that paid a few pennies each to take surveys. In these surveys, people are asked for their opinions of different products or well-known people. About two percent of Americans earned money from ride-sharing companies such as Uber and Lyft. When drivers are ready to pick up passengers, they use their ride-share company’s app. The computer program lets them know when passengers are ready to be picked up and how to reach them. Some people make their homes, apartments, or rooms inside their homes, available for money to people visiting their cities.
About 60 percent of people say the income they earn is important to them. But just one in five people who sell things online say the income is enough to be important to their lives. Only 16 percent believe doing online work will lead to a meaningful career. But 37 percent say the extra income earned from online jobs helps them make up for shortages in money.
The number one reason people gave for taking online jobs was that the work gave them something to do and was fun. What kind of people work online or use online devices to find work?The answer appears to be: mostly people who already have jobs.
1. What is the main idea of paragraph 1?A.How to sell used books. |
B.How to find extra work online. |
C.A new way of making money. |
D.A new research on the Internet. |
A.1. | B.2. |
C.3. | D.4. |
A.By listing numbers. | B.By asking questions. |
C.By telling stories. | D.By doing surveys. |
A.Many people have found jobs using the Internet. |
B.Those who have jobs enjoy making money online. |
C.The future of the Internet is questioned. |
D.More people will lose their job soon. |
【推荐3】Experts believe that the best time to teach kids language skills is when they are babies. Most times the task is easily accomplished with parents reading or talking to their babies. However, in some cases that is not possible due to busy work schedules or when kids are born deaf. Now, an adorable blue-eyed robot, a human avatar (化身), may be able to assist parents with this developmental task.
The Robot AVatar Thermal-Enhanced system, or RAVE, is the brainchild of a team of revsearchers led by Laura Ann Petitto, an educational scientist. The learning process begins when the robot’s thermal (热感应的) camera, which is focused on the baby’s face, detects tiny changes in his/ her body temperature. This, combined with the baby’s facial expression, causes the robot to turn its head and guide the baby’s attention to a computer screen. Then, a human avatar starts to communicate with the baby, much like a parent would. If the baby points towards the screen, it might respond and follow that up with a nursery rhyme or fairy tale, all in American sign language (ASL). The “conversation” continues until the kid loses interest.
The researchers, who have been testing the system for three years, found that babies as young as 6 to 8 months old began to move their hands in a rhythm similar to ASL after interacting (互动) with RAVE for just a few minutes. Petitto says natural language, whether communicated through speech or sign, activates the same parts of the brain and believes the rhythmic motion proves the babies are learning the basic elements of communication.
What sets this technique apart from other methods, such as showing educational videos or television shows, is its interactive nature and real-time response to the baby’s actions. The researchers say that while it is too early to find out the system’s long-term effect on baby communication, the initial response has been very encouraging. Next, they plan to introduce an avatar that can both sign and speak to babies.
1. What does the human avatar do?A.Cure deafness. | B.Help parents teach kids. |
C.Improve babies’ writing skills. | D.Make a schedule for busy parents. |
A.The baby. | B.The camera. |
C.The human avatar. | D.The computer screen. |
A.It goes smoothly. | B.It suits active babies. |
C.It takes much more time. | D.It works better through speech. |
A.It can both sign and speak. |
B.It is interactive and real-time. |
C.It can show educational videos or TV shows. |
D.It has lasting effect on baby communication. |
【推荐1】In hot countries the woods are not like our woods. They are great dark forests, where the trees grow so closely together, and are so tall, that if you looked up you could hardly see the sky.
Then there are a great many climbing plants, which twist themselves round and round the trunks and branches of the trees. They are called vegetable cables, because they are so much like ropes. They reach from one tree to another, and almost fill up the spaces between. Troops of monkeys run along the vegetable cables from one tree to another, or swing from the branches by their tails, making a noise all the time as if they are talking to each other. When night comes they roll themselves into a ball, gathered together as close as may be, to keep themselves warm.
Dangers of every kind lie in the forest. The poisonous snake may lie coiled among the bushes, or traces of the wild American tiger may be seen upon the path.
Then there are all sorts of wonderful birds, such as we never see in our country, except in cages. Birds, beasts, and insects live there, for the most part, undisturbed. It is their home; and on every side they are at work, hunting their prey, or escaping from danger. For though man seldom wages war upon them, these wild creatures of the forest are engaged in constant warfare with each other; and the weak are always using some plan to protect themselves from the strong.
There are a great many curious things to be seen in these South American forests.
1. Why are the forests in hot countries so dark?A.Because it is cloudy and rainy in the woods. |
B.Because there is no sunshine shinning there. |
C.Because it is night time there all year around. |
D.Because the trees are tall and grow closely together. |
A.Twisting trunks. | B.Vegetable cables. |
C.Rolling ropes. | D.Grape branches. |
A.By their talking. | B.By their running. |
C.By their noises. | D.By their tails. |
A.rolled | B.injured |
C.climbed | D.poisoned |
A.Trees, trunks and branches. | B.Monkeys, snakes and tigers. |
C.Birds, beasts, and insects. | D.Man, fruits and vegetables. |
【推荐2】Our world is full of sounds. Sound is so essential to life and survival that it made Tel Aviv University researcher Lilach Hadany ask: What if it wasn't just animals that could sense sound—what if plants could, too?
“Sounds are a natural resource-one that plants would be wasting if they didn’t take advantage of it as animals do,”said Hadany. If plants had a way of hearing and responding to sound, she figured, it could help them survive and reproduce.
Hadany's team started their study by investigating flowers. Evening primrose(夜来香), which grows wild on the beaches and in parks around Tel Aviv, emerged as a good candidate, since it has a long bloom time and produces measurable quantities of nectar(花蜜).
To test the primroses in the lab, Hadany's team exposed plants to five sound treatments: silence, recordings of a honeybee from four inches away, and computer generated sounds in low, intermediate(中等的), and high frequencies. Plants given the silent treatment had no significant increase in nectar sugar concentration. The same went for plants exposed to high-frequency(158 to 160 kilohertz)and intermediate-frequency(34 to 35 kilohertz)sounds.
But for plants exposed to playbacks of bee sounds(0.2 to 0.5 kilohertz)and similarly low-frequency sounds(0.05 to 1 kilohertz), the final analysis revealed an unmistakable response. Within three minutes of exposure to these recordings, nectar sugar concentration in the plants increased by 20 percent.
A sweeter treat for pollinators(传粉者), their theory goes, may draw in more insects, potentially increasing the chances of successful cross-pollination. Indeed, in field observations, researchers found that pollinators were more than nine times more common around plants another pollinator had visited within the previous six minutes.
“We were quite surprised when we found out that it actually worked.” said Hadany.“But after repeating it in other situations, in different seasons, and with plants grown both indoors and outdoors, we feel very confident in the result.”
1. Why did Hadany's team expose plants to sound treatments?A.To see if they would respond to sound. |
B.To develop their ability to receive sound. |
C.To help them benefit from different sounds. |
D.To detect the difference between plants and animals. |
A.Flowers like primroses | B.Sounds like those of bees. |
C.Visits from other pollinators. | D.Exposure to different sounds |
A.Plants can identify different sounds. | B.Sound attracts more pollinators to flowers. |
C.Plants produce nectar when pollinators come. | D.Sound plays an important role in insects’ survival. |
A.It was doubtful. | B.It was unexpected. | C.It was acceptable | D.It was satisfactory. |
【推荐3】Trees are “social creature” that communicate with each other in cooperative ways that hold lessons for humans, too, ecologist Suzanne Simard says. Simard grew up in Canadian forests as a child of loggers before becoming an ecologist. She's now a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia.
Trees are linked to neighboring trees by a network of fungi below the surface of the earth that resembles the nervous networks in the brain, she explains. In one study, Simard watched as a Douglas fir tree that had been injured by insects appeared to send chemical warning signals to a pine nearby. The pine tree then produced defense enzymes to protect against the insect.
“This was a breakthrough,” Simard says. The trees were sharing “information that actually is important to the health of the whole forest.”
In addition to warning each other of danger, Simard says that trees have been known to share nutrients at critical times to keep each other healthy. She says the trees in a forest are often linked to each other via an older tree she calls a “mother” or “hub” tree.
“In connecting with all the trees of different ages, the mother trees can actually ease the growth of these young trees,” she says. “The young trees will link into the network of the old trees and benefit from that huge resource capacity. And the old trees would also pass a little bit of carbon and nutrients and water to the young trees, at crucial times in their lives, that actually help them survive.”
The study of trees took on a new resonance for Simard when she suffered from breast cancer. During her treatment, she learned that one of the medicines she relied on was actually obtained from what some trees produce for their own mutual defense. She explains her research on cooperation in the forest, and shares her personal story in the new book Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.
1. How could a Douglas fir tree send chemical warning signals to a pine nearby?A.By an underground network of fungi. | B.By the nervous networks in the brain. |
C.By making cooperation with each other. | D.By holding lessons to it as human beings. |
A.Simard was-brought up in Canadian forests. | B.She became a professor of forest ecology. |
C.The pine tree produced defense enzymes. | D.Vital information was shared among trees. |
A.Her rich knowledge of trees. | B.Her childhood in the forest. |
C.Her medicine gained from trees. | D.Her research on cooperation. |
A.communicating cooperatively | B.warning each other of danger |
C.sharing nutrients at critical times | D.sacrificing mother trees for survival |