【推荐1】Perhaps you’ve had to put up with a moody, uncooperative teenager, or you may well have been one yourself. A new study suggests that dogs go through a similar stage of stubbornness (固执) and disobedience (不顺从) when they hit adolescence (青春期) at about eight months old.

Looking at the behaviour of a total of 378 canines (犬), researchers found that the animals were more obedient and more responsive either side of that eight-month mark—but only when it came to their owners, not to less familiar trainers.

So not only do dogs appear to have a difficult adolescence just like we do, they also share the disappointment that we often feel towards our parents or caregivers when we hit our teenage years. That has big impacts for long-term canine care and sheltering.

“This is a very important time in a dog’s life,” says animal behaviour researcher Lucy Asher, from Newcastle University in the UK. “This is when dogs are often rehomed because they are no longer a cute little puppy and suddenly, their owners find they are more challenging and they can no longer control them or train them.” “But as with human teenage children, owners need to be aware that their dog is going through a special stage and it will pass.”

In one experiment with 93 Labrador retrievers (狗), golden retrievers and their cross breeds (杂交品种), the dogs at eight months old were found to take longer and be loather to respond to a “sit” command given by their caregiver than they were when just five months old. The eight-month-olds didn’t show the same stubbornness when the command was given by a stranger, though.

The researchers found further evidence of this effect in survey data gathered on 285 Labradors, golden retrievers, German shepherds and their cross breeds. Dog owners and trainers less familiar with the dogs were asked to evaluate the animals ‘trainability’ by answering questions on obedience and how quickly commands were responded to.

Again, the caregivers ranked their dogs as less obedient at eight months old compared with five months old or 12 months old. The trainers reported that obedience increased between the ages of five months and eight months.

1. What is the function of the first sentence in the first paragraph?

A．To raise a problem of teenagers.	B．To lead to the main topic of the passage.
C．To give the background information of the passage.	D．To generalize the whole passage.

2. What is true according to the passage?

A．Dog’s special stage is everlasting.

B．Dogs are more obedient at 5 months old compared with 12 months old.

C．Dogs of 8 months tend to listen to a stranger only.

D．Dogs’ owners may find it more challenging to control the dogs of 8 months.

3. Which one can replace the underlined word in the fifth paragraph?

A．more obedient	B．more likely
C．more satisfied	D．more unwilling

4. Which can be a suitable title for the text?

A．Dog’s obedience.	B．Dog’s stubbornness.
C．Dog’s adolescence.	D．Dog’s trainability.

【推荐2】In the green hills of northern Thailand, a woman painstakingly picks coffee beans out of a pile of elephant dung (粪便). They are preparing an essential ingredient of one of the world’s most expensive drinks.

This remote corner of Thailand is better known for drug trafficking than coffee, but Blake Dinkin decided it was a perfect place for him to combine wildlife conservation with business.     1     The company uses elephant dung to create a wonderful coffee.

Initially, Dinkin considered using a kind of cat to make coffee, but he found the cats were usually kept in cages and force-fed beans.     2     Eventually, Dinkin settled on elephants after discovering that the animals sometimes eat coffee. He also teamed up with an elephant rescue charity which saves the animals from the tourist trade.

    3     “I thought it would be as simple as taking the beans, giving them to the elephants and out will come great coffee,” said Dinkin, adding that the initial result was “horrible”. It took him another nine years to actually succeed in doing what he wanted.

According to Dinkin, the enzymes (酶) in the elephant’s stomach function as a kind of slow cooker and the stomach acid takes the bitterness out of the beans. The elephant riders’ wives collect the coffee beans from the dung, before washing and drying them in the sun.

The rewards, however, are worth all the work. At around $1,880 per kilogram, the coffee doesn’t come cheap.     4     This helps its sales a lot.

A．The 44-year-old Canadian founded Black Ivory Coffee.

B．The local elephant riders considered the project a crazy idea.

C．Its unique taste and special processing cycle give the product a romantic appeal.

D．Making coffee from elephant dung, however, turned out to be harder than expected.

E．To make a kilogram of coffee, the elephants have to eat about 33 kilograms of the beans.

F．This is against the businessman’s desire to support rather than damage the environment.

【推荐3】A remarkable variety of insects live on this planet. More species of insects exist than all other animal species together. Insects have survived on earth for more than 300 million years，and may possess the ability to survive for millions more.

Insects can be found almost everywhere—on the highest mountains and on the bottom of rushing streams, in the cold South Pole and in bubbling hot springs. They dig through the ground, jump and sing in the trees, and run and dance in the air. They come in many different colors and various shapes. Insects are extremely useful to humans, pollinating (授粉) our crops as well as flowers in meadows, forests, deserts and other areas. But ticks and some insects, such as mosquitoes and fleas, can transmit disease.

There are many reasons why insects are so successful at surviving. Their amazing ability to adapt permits them to live in extreme ranges of temperatures and environments. The one place they have not yet been found to any major extent is in the open oceans. Insects can survive on a wide range of natural and artificial foods—paint, pepper, glue, books, grain, cotton, other insects, plants and animals. Because they are small, they can hide in tiny spaces.

A strong, hard but flexible shell covers their soft organs and is resistant to chemicals, water and physical impact. Their wings give them the option of flying away from dangerous situations or toward food or mates. Also, insects have an enormous reproductive capacity: An African ant queen can lay as many as 43,000 eggs a day.

Another reason for their success is the strategy of protective color. An insect may be right before our eyes, but nearly invisible because it is cleverly disguised like a green leaf, lump of brown soil, gray lichen (青苔), a seed or some other natural object. Some insects use bright, bold colors to send warning signals that they taste bad, sting or are poisonous. Others have wing patterns that look like the eyes of a huge predator, confusing their enemies. Some insects also imitate bitter-tasting insects; hungry enemies are fooled into avoiding them.

1. Insects protect themselves from chemicals by ______.

A．hiding in tiny spaces	B．flying away when necessary
C．having a strong shell	D．changing colors or shapes

2. Some insects disguise like natural objects so as to ______.

A．avoid being discovered	B．frighten away their enemies
C．send warning signals	D．look bitter-tasting

3. The passage is mainly about ______.

A．how insects survive in different places	B．why insects can survive so successfully
C．what insects can do to the environment	D．where insects can be found in quantity

【推荐1】In most parts of the world, many students help their schools make less pollution. They join “environment clubs”. In an environment club, people work together to make our environment clean.
Here are some things students often do.
No-garbage (垃圾) lunches. How much do you throw away after lunch? Environment clubs ask students to bring their lunches in bags that can be used again. Every week they will choose the classes that make the least garbage and report them to the whole school.
No-car day. On a no-car day, nobody comes to school in a car. Not the students and not the teachers! Cars give pollution to our air, so remember: work jump, bike and run. Use your legs! It’s lots of fun..
Turn off the water! Did you know that some toilets can waste twenty to forty cubic(立方) meters of water an hour? In a year, that would fill a small river! In environment clubs, students mend those broken toilets. We love our environment. Let’s work together to make it clean.
1. Environment clubs ask students __________.

A．to run to school every day

B．to take exercise every day

C．not to forget to take cars

D．to use lunch bags

2. From the passage we know the students usually have lunch_________.

A．at school	B．in shops
C．in chubs	D．at home

3. After students mend toilets, they save__________.

A．a small river	B．a club
C．water in cubic meters	D．a toilet

4. The writer wrote the passage to ask the students to___________.

A．clean school	B．make less pollution
C．join clubs	D．help teachers

5. Which of the following statements is true?

A．On No-car day, only the teachers can go to school in their cars.

B．In the clubs, students usually work together to make the earth less polluted.

C．The water in the toilet can fill a river.

D．Students can take their lunch in paper, so they can throw it after lunch.

【推荐3】Researchers recently found that hackers took control of 300,000 home routers(路由器). Once your home router has been controlled, hackers could redirect your network to malicious websites controlled by hi-tech thieves who could then steal your online back details and other sensitive data. However, there are some simple steps you can take to protect your router.
Say no to 12345 passwords
First, never leave your router open without a password and make sure you change both your Wi-Fi and router login password from the default one it comes with. If you use the default password , this could give someone access to the router setup, which could allow them to change your router settings, including viewing any security keys.
Don't broadcast it
Make sure you don't show up in other people's wireless network scans. Know your network name so you can easily enter it into any devices you want to access that network. Other people do not need to know your network name. To prevent outsiders from seeing your network's name and attempting to join your wireless network, turn off broadcasting in your router's settings.
Invite only please
One way you can ensure no one else joins your network without your permission is to enable your router to only allow certain devices to connect, and ban all others. To do that you can filter by media access control (MAC) addresses.
Turn it off
This is a simple piece of advice that can go a very long way in keeping you safe. Simply turn off your router when you're not using your network. If you're at work all day and no one's home, why keep it running?
Build a firewall
The firewall built into your router prevents hackers on the internet from getting access to your PC so it's always worth enabling it to help add an extra layer of security. However, it does nothing to stop people in range of your Wi-Fi signal from getting onto your network – and as said, a router in the wrong place means your Wi-Fi signal could reach pretty far.
For further protection, you should run software firewalls on the individual PCs on your networks.
1. If you use the default password, ______________.

A．your home router will be linked to some bad websites

B．you will find it’s very convenient to surf the Internet

C．your home router will be changed for new settings

D．you will fail to use your own login password

2. What should be done to shelter your wireless network?

A．To build a firewall into your router.

B．To think out a complicated login password and use it.

C．To shut off your router when you find it not safe.

D．To switch off broadcasting in your router settings.

3. The purpose of the passage is to tell____________.

A．how to keep your Wi-Fi network secure

B．how to deal with your home router efficiently

C．how to locate the hackers on the Internet

D．how to prevent others from joining your network.