Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is road testing a new way to keep winter roads ice-free – by spreading on them cheese brine, the salty liquid used to make soft cheese, like mozzarella.
Wisconsin, also called “America’s Dairyland,” is famous for its cheese. The state produced 2.8 billion pounds of cheese last year! a result, there was a lot of leftover cheese brine. Disposing of(处置)the brine can be expensive. So what should cheese makers do with the waste?
Normally, towns use rock salt to de-ice streets. The salt lowers waters’ freezing point, causing ice to melt(融化). But using cheese brine could help both cheese producers and cities save money, while keeping roads safe. Cheese brine has salt in it, which, like the rock salt, helps lower water’s freezing point.
In addition to saving money, cheese brine could also be a more environment-friendly option. Many people suspect that all the rock salt used every winter is harming the environment.
Rock salt is made of sodium chloride, the sane con-pound (化合物)in ordinary table salt. Sounds harmless, right? But while you probably add only a small amount of salt to your food, road crews spread about 20 million tons of salt on U.S. Roads every year!
The chemical washes off roads and goes into the ground. There it can pollute drinking water, harm plants. and eat away soil. By spreading cheese brine on streets before adding a layer of rock salt, Milwaukee may be able to cut its rock salt use by 30 percent.
Cheese brine has a downside too – a shell similar to that of bad milk. “I don’t really mind it,” Emil Norby told Modern Farmer magazine. He works for one of Wisconsin’s county highway commissions and came up with the idea of using cheese brine. “Our roads smell like Wisconsin!” he said.
Why can cheese brine help keep winter roads ice-free?| A．It is soft. |
| B．It contains salt. |
| C．It is warm. |
| D．It has milk in it. |
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【推荐2】Companies which sell liquids like drinks or shampoo rely on bottles for their packaging. Usually these bottles are made of plastic or glass. But as customers have become more concerned about the environment, many companies have begun working to develop paper bottles.
Paper bottles are easy to recycle. They also weigh less than glass or plastic, meaning they’ll require less energy to produce and to move around. They’re usually made from wood pulp (纸浆), which is pressed into a mold (模具) to create the bottle shape. Since paper is soft and easy to mold, companies can design their bottles to take almost any shape they choose.
What’s the main purpose of developing paper bottles?
| A．To make packaging less heavy. |
| B．To reduce the use of raw materials. |
| C．To be more environmentally friendly. |
| D．To cut down on the costs of packaging. |
【推荐3】The United States rose to global power on the strength of its technology, and the lifeblood of that technology has long been electricity. By providing long-distance communication and energy, electricity created the modern world. Yet properly understood, the age of electricity is merely the second stage in the age of steam, which began a century earlier.
“It is curious that no one has put together a history of both the steam and electric revolutions.”writes Maury Klein in his book The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern America. Klein, a noted historian of technology, spins a narrative (叙述) so lively that at times it reads like a novel.
The story begins in the last years of the 18th century in Scotland, where Watt perfected “the machine that changed the world”. Klein writes,“America did not invent the steam engine, but once they grasped its possibility they put it to more uses than anyone else.”
Meanwhile, over the course of 19th century, electricity went from mere curiosity to a basic necessity. Morse invented a code for sending messages over an electromagnetic circuit. Bell then gave the telegraph a voice. Edison perfected an incandescent bulb (白炽灯泡) that brought electric light into the American home.
Most importantly, Edison realized that success depended on mass electrification,which he showed in New York City. With help from Tesla,Westinghouse’s firm developed a system using alternating current (交流电), which soon became the major form of power delivery.
To frame his story, Klein creates the character of Ned, a fictional witness to the progress brought about by the steam and electric revolutions in America during one man’s lifetime. It’s a technique that helps turn a long narrative into an interesting one.
What can be inferred about Ned?
| A．He was born in New York City. |
| B．He wrote many interesting stories, |
| C．He created an electricity company. |
| D．He lived mainly in the 19th century. |
In the 1400s and 1500s, Peru was the centre of the powerful ancient Inca Empire. The Inca emperor lived in the now-famous site Machu Picchu. Spain took control of Peru in the 16th century and ruled until 1821. It is for this reason that Spanish is the main official language of Peru.
TRAVEL PERU
Amazon Rainforest Tour
A short flight from Cusco takes you from the Andes into the Amazon rainforest. From there, you’ll spend one day travelling by boat to your accommodation in the middle of the forest. You can then spend three days exploring the rainforest with a local guide and enjoying the plants and animals unique to the rainforest.
Machu Picchu Tour
This fourday walking tour will take you on amazing paths through the Andes Mountains on the way to the city of Machu Picchu. After reaching your destination you will have a day to explore and be amazed by this ancient city. Especially amazing is the Incas’ dry stone method of building. Inca builders cut stones to exact sizes so that nothing was needed to hold walls together other than the perfect fit of the stones.
Cusco Tour
Spend four days enjoying the unique Spanish and local Indian culture high in the Andes at Cusco, the capital of the Inca Empire from the 13th until the 16th century. Stay in a local hotel, visit the museums, admire the architecture, enjoy the excellent local food, and go shopping at the local markets.
Lake Titicaca Tour
Enjoy the beautiful countryside as you spend a day driving along the new highway connecting Cusco to Lake Titicaca. There, a boat will take you to stay with a local Uros family on an island for three days. Both the island and the Uros homes are made of water plants from the lake.
So come and experience what Peru has to offer: everything from the ancient Inca culture and centuriesold Spanish villages to deep rainforests, high mountains, and a beautiful coastline.
For more brochures about other package tours around Peru, contact us at tourinfo@travelperu. org.
1. What’s the main idea of the first text?| A．Introducing the Pacific coast. |
| B．Introducing the geographical location, the history and the official language of Peru. |
| C．Introducing the ancient Inca Empire. |
| D．Introducing the Andes Mountains. |
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3. What can we learn from the first text?
| A．Peru is a coastal country with a pleasant living condition. |
| B．Spain controlled Peru for about three centuries. |
| C．The Andes Mountains surround Peru. |
| D．Spanish is the second language of Peru. |
| A．Enough space for people or things. |
| B．A very strong emotion that you can’t control. |
| C．The way that something is suitable for a particular person, space, etc. |
| D．A short period of time when someone stops working. |
| A．To recommend four tourist attractions of Peru. |
| B．To tell people to travel as often as possible. |
| C．To encourage people to do outdoor activities. |
| D．To help people learn more about Peru. |
| A．An agricultural magazine. |
| B．A medical journey. |
| C．An engineering textbook. |
| D．A tourist brochure. |
①PERU is a country on the Pacific coast of South America with three main areas: narrow, dry, flat land running along the coast, the Andes Mountains, and the Amazon rainforest. narrow, dry, flat
②You can then spend three days exploring the rainforest with a local guide and enjoying the plants and animals unique to the rainforest. enjoy the plants and animals; unique
8. 细读短文并找出描写交通方式的句子
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【推荐2】The engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology（MIT）have taken it a step further — changing the actual composition of plants in order to get them to perform diverse, even unusual functions. These include plants that have sensors printed onto their leaves to show when they’re short of water and a plant that can detect harmful chemicals in groundwater. ＂We’re thinking about how we can engineer plants to replace functions of the things that we use every day,＂explained Michael Strano, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT.
What is the function of the sensors printed on plant leaves by MIT engineers?
| A．To detect plants’ lack of water. | B．To change compositions of plants. |
| C．To make the life of plants longer. | D．To test chemicals in plants. |
【推荐3】“Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn’t save money,”reported researchers. “It was a small surprise, for it is against the common belief,” said Pieter van Baal, who led the study. “But it makes sense. If you live longer, then your costs of the health system will be more.”
The researchers found that from age 20 to 56, fat people had the most expensive health costs. But on average, healthy people lived 84 years. Smokers lived about 77 years, and fat people about 80 years. Smokers and fat people tended to have more heart disease than healthy people. Therefore, in the long run, the thin and healthy group spent about $417,000, from age 20 on. Smokers spent about $ 326,000 and fat people $371,000.
“The result throws a bucket of cold water onto the idea, based on guesswork, that obesity is going to cost trillions of dollars,” said Patrick Basham, a professor of health politics. “If we’re going to worry about the future of obesity, we should stop worrying about its financial impact,” he said.
“The benefit of obesity prevention may not be seen immediately in terms of cost saving in tomorrow’s budget, but there are long-term gains,” said Baal. “These are often immeasurable when it comes to people living longer and healthier lives.” In the meanwhile, he said that governments should recognize that successful smoking and obesity prevention programs mean that people will have a higher chance of dying of something more expensive later in life.
“Lung cancer is a cheap disease to treat because people don’t survive very long. But if they are old enough to get Alzheimer’s (早年性痴呆症) one day, they may survive longer and cost more. We are not advising that governments stop trying to prevent obesity,” Baal said.” But they should do it for the right reasons.”
Among middle-aged people, whose costs of the health system is the most?| A．Those who are heavy smokers. |
| B．Those who are overweight. |
| C．Those who are too thin. |
| D．Those who are suffering from heart attacks. |
