Most of the new diseases we humans have faced in the past several decades have come from animals. The more we come into contact with wild animals, the more we risk a so-called disease “spillover” from animals to humans.
“As people move and wildlife move in response to a changing environment, humans and wildlife and animals will come in contact more regularly,” said Jeanne Fair from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Fair argues that by shifting animal habitats, climate change will also make the opportunities for disease spillover more frequent (频繁的). “Everything is sort of shifting and will shift into the future as the environment changes through climate change,” Fair said.
Scientists, including climatologists and epidemiologists on Fair’s team at Las Alamoe, are beginning to model how changes to the climate will impact the spread of infectious diseases. It’s early days for this kind of research, but previous studies suggest that extreme weather has already played a role in at least one outbreak. Scientists say drought and deforestation have combined to force bats out of rainforests and into orchards (果园) in Malaysia to find food. Those bats, a common disease reservoir, then passed the Nipah virus through pigs to humans for the first time in the late 1990s.
“We’re going by the past data to really predict what’s going to happen in the future,” Fair said. “And so, anytime you increase that wildlife-human interface, that’s sort of an emerging disease hot spot. And so, that’s just increasing as we go forward.”
Jeffrey Shaman, head of the climate and health program at Columbia University’s public health school, argues we don’t yet know whether climate change will cause a net increase in infectious disease rates globally. For example, mosquitoes carry disease that affects (影响) millions of people across the world every year. As their habitats expand in some parts of the world, they might contract diseases elsewhere. Shaman says what we know for certain about climate change is that it will make it harder to predict where disease outbreaks will pop up.
1. How does climate change affect the spread of disease according to Fair?| A．By breaking animals’ habits. | B．By increasing animals’ numbers. |
| C．By improving animals’ breeding (繁殖). | D．By changing animals’ living environment. |
| A．Explaining the influence of Nipah virus. |
| B．Proving the harm of bats to human beings. |
| C．Showing the effects of climate change on disease. |
| D．Presenting scientists’ early study about the cause of disease. |
| A．Humans should give up studying animals. |
| B．Frequent contact with animals can cause disease outbreaks. |
| C．Disease hot spots will disappear if animals die out. |
| D．Past data can solve the problems in the future. |
| A．Climate Change and Disease Spillover | B．Animals’ Interaction with Humans |
| C．Scientists’ Prediction for Disease Outbreaks | D．Early Studies about Extreme Weather |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Why are some people successful and others aren’t? What’s the secret of success? You can get the answers in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers.
Gladwell thinks practice makes you good. The “10,000-hour rule” is central to the book. It means that if you want to be among the best in the world, you need to practise something for 10,000 hours, about three hours a day for 10 years. For example, the Beatles practised playing music in Hamburg more than 1,200 times between 1960 and 1964, which is more than 10,000 hours of playing time.
Gladwell also thinks that intelligence (智力) alone will not lead to success. Christopher Langan, who is mentioned in the book, got an IQ of between 195 and 210. As a boy at school, Langan passed an exam in a foreign language after looking through a text book for three minutes. But Langan never made any achievements his whole life. This shows that besides intelligence, you need hard work, support, and chances.
However, it isn’t just a question of time and support. According to the book, you still need luck. Of course, many people say that you can create your own “luck” if you’re active enough.
So, are you putting in the hours? Carry on! You could get lucky!
1. Why did the writer ask questions in the first paragraph?| A．To ask others for help. | B．To list some examples. |
| C．To draw readers’ attention. | D．To introduce successful people. |
| A．Intelligence alone will not lead to success. |
| B．Success has nothing to do with hard work. |
| C．Whether we will succeed depends on our IQ. |
| D．We can learn a foreign language well in minutes. |
| A．Outliers: The Secret of Success |
| B．Intelligence: The Key to Success |
| C．Success: A Question of Time and Support |
| D．The Beatles: Creator of the 10,000-hour Rule |
【推荐2】On a sunny day, a yellow school bus headed to Elver Park in Madison, Wisconsin. The seventh graders brought their rocket (火箭), notebooks, pencils and tools. Two at a time, they waited for their teacher to tell them to start the countdown: 5,4.3.2,1...GO! They were preparing their rocket for take-off.
With the rocket unit, I teach the basic principles (原理) of physics, explains David Ropa. He teaches science at Spring Harbor Middle School. However, he wants his students to know science isn’t just for scientists.
“Kids, like all humans, are doing science all the time,” says Ropa. They discover the world through play whether they’re playing with toys or playing with sand on the beach. They have an idea. They set up a test. They study the results. Then they improve their methods.
Science takes many forms (形式) and helps with more jobs than you may think. Cooks, musicians and gardeners often use the scientific method, though they may not call it science. Their jobs-and many more-use textbook knowledge of science in the real world.
Leslie Hunter is also interested in science. But she’s growing plants, not building airplanes. She stared her own vegetable garden at age eight. Her parents prepared the land, and she was doing all else.
In college, Hunter learned the science of growing flowers, fruit and vegetables. Today she works in lowa, at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden. Hunter uses science to grow plants. The science of plants helps her manage the garden well.
1. What were the seventh graders doing?| A．Doing research with scientists. |
| B．Having a science class in the park. |
| C．Taking part in after-class activities. |
| D．Watching a video of a rocket’s take-off. |
| A．Children should be allowed to play freely. |
| B．Doing science is an interesting job. |
| C．Kids can give scientists some great ideas. |
| D．Science can be learned through play. |
| A．She is famous in the field of gardening. |
| B．She uses science to take care of plants. |
| C．She shows how a scientist does his/her work. |
| D．She became interested in science when young. |
| A．Science isn’t just for scientists. |
| B．Science education is necessary. |
| C．Science is popular among people. |
| D．Science helps change people’s life. |
At this moment in different (不同的) places of the world people are doing different things.
In Beijing it’s early morning. People are sleeping.
In London people are leaving work to go home. They are waiting for buses or catching trains. Some people are driving their cars. Some are having afternoon tea at home or walking to the pubs to have a drink.
In Moscow it’s evening and people are having supper at home or in restaurants. Some are going to watch a ballet (芭蕾舞剧). Some are drinking in the pubs.
In Los Angeles it’s morning. People are working in their offices. Children are starting their lessons.
New York is midday now. People aren’t working but having lunch. They are eating hamburgers or hot dogs and drinking coffee or cola. Some people are visiting friends or shopping.
1. From the passage, we can know the time in New York now is ________.| A．6:00 a.m. | B．9:00 a.m. | C．10:00 a.m. | D．12:00 noon |
| A．watching a ballet | B．drinking in the pubs | C．visiting friends | D．having tea |
| A．They are sleeping. | B．They are having supper. |
| C．They are going to work. | D．They are having lunch. |
| A．Science | B．Holidays | C．Time Difference | D．Life in Western Countries |
【推荐1】Sea grasses are flowering plants that grow in waters near coasts. They grow together in thick fields, known as meadows. Sea grass meadows help clean the ocean’s water. They also provide food for animals like fish. The climate change and human pollution are threatening sea grass meadows in many places around the world. But the huge sea grass meadow in Shark Bay, off the coast of Western Australia, seems to be growing very well. It’s a kind of sea grass called Posidonia australis, and it has spread widely all through Shark Bay.
Scientists from The University of Western Australia and Flinders University wanted to study the sea grass, so they took samples (样本) from 10 different parts of this huge meadow. By comparing the DNA from their samples, the scientists hoped to get an idea of how many different sea grass plants there were in the meadow. What they learned shocked them—all of the grass samples had almost exactly the same DNA. It meant that they were all just one plant. One big sea grass plant spread out over 200 square kilometers. This makes it the largest known plant in the world, by far.
So how has the Shark Bay sea grass grown so large? Instead of spreading with flowers and seeds (种子), it spreads by cloning (克隆) itself. As its roots (根) spread out under the sea flour, new plants shoot up from those roots. The Shark Bay sea grass generally grows and spreads about 35 centimeters a year. From this, the scientists believe that the plant is about 4,500 years old.
1. What does the underlined word “threatening” in the first paragraph mean?| A．Giving help to. | B．Bringing danger to. | C．Planting more. | D．Improving. |
| A．The area it covers. | B．The reason why it has grown so large. |
| C．The water pollution it faces. | D．The number of the sea grass types of it. |
| A．From its roots. | B．From its seeds. | C．From its flowers. | D．From another plant. |
| A．By cloning it. | B．By studying its DNA. |
| C．By judging its growth speed. | D．By testing the water temperature. |
| A．An experiment. | B．A discovery. | C．A new law. | D．A theory. |
【推荐2】People who are cheerful and relaxed are less likely to suffer from colds. It’s possible that being full of energy helps the body fight illnesses, say the researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh. “We need to take more seriously the possibility that a positive emotional style is a major player in disease risk,” says psychologist Sheldon Cohen, the study’s lead researcher. In a previous study, Cohen and his colleagues found that people who tended to be cheerful and lively were least likely to develop sniffles, coughs, and other cold symptoms(症状).
Those findings were interesting, but they didn’t prove that a person’s attitude influences whether he or she gets sick. Instead, it was still probable that a person’s underlying personality is what matters. Evidence suggests, for example, that certain people are naturally more likely to be outgoing and optimistic, with high self-respect and a sense of control over life. This would mean that who we are, not how we feel, finally decides our chances of catching colds.
To figure out which mattered more (personality or emotions), the CMU team interviewed 193 healthy adults. The researchers talked to each person over the phone every evening for 2 weeks. They told the researchers about the positive and negative feelings they had experienced that day. The results showed that everyone in the study was equally likely to get infected(传染).
Their symptoms, however, differed depending on the types of emotions that they had reported over the previous 2 weeks. Among those who reported good moods and had been infected with the flu virus, for example, 28 percent developed coughs and stuffy(堵塞)noses. On the other hand, those symptoms struck 41 percent of people who had been less positive. Scientists argue about whether negative emotions or positive emotions have a stronger effect on how healthy we are. For now, it can’t hurt to look on the bright side more often than not!
1. What is the text mainly about?| A．how to get rid of colds |
| B．Attitude determines life |
| C．Smiles turn away colds |
| D．Different opinions about colds |
| A．health. | B．personality. | C．quality | D．mood |
| A．positive emotions are as good as negative emotions |
| B．it is not necessarily good for you if you always look at problems positively |
| C．it will be good for your health to always keep up an optimistic state of mind |
| D．the saying---every coin has two sides |
| A．A science report | B．A medical report | C．An environment report | D．Advice on illness |
【推荐3】Safer Internet Day is on the second Tuesday of February every year. On this day, people in around 170 countries take part in activities to try to make the Internet a safer place for children and young people.
Safer Internet Day celebrates all the great things about being online. We can use the Internet to learn new things, video call family members who live far away, chat to friends, listen to music, watch videos and play games.
What is online bullying? It is when someone uses the Internet to make another person feel bad, often with bad messages on messaging apps (程序) or social media. Online bullying can also happen in games when players post unkind messages in the chat box.
What do people usually do on Safer Internet Day in the UK? Children often do activities at school, at home and in other places. They do small tests, read stories, watch films, make posters and have discussions about how to stay safe online.
Here are some tips on how to stay safe online:
1. If you see something online that makes you scared or worried, or if you know that someone is being bullied, tell a parent, a teacher or another adult who you trust. If someone is unkind while you are playing a game, an adult can help you report that player.
2. Don’t meet people who you only know online. It’s possible that some people you meet online may make up stories. It can be dangerous to go to meet them in real life.
3. Don’t believe everything you read online! Not everything you read online is true. When you look for information, make sure that you use a website you can trust. And only share things with your friends if you know that they are true.
1. What’s the purpose of Safer Internet Day?| A．To ask people to take part in the activities. |
| B．To celebrate the things about being online. |
| C．To make people know that the Internet is safer than before. |
| D．To make the Internet a safer place for children and young people. |
| A．So it is safe when we use the Internet. |
| B．What can we do about online bullying? |
| C．That means we can do a lot of things online. |
| D．But there can also be dangers when we are online |
① do small tests ②listen to the music ③have discussions ④play games ⑤make posters
| A．①③⑤ | B．②③④ | C．①②③ | D．②③⑤ |
| A．We can use the Internet to learn new things. |
| B．Online bully happens when you play games. |
| C．If you are scared or worried, ask adults for help. |
| D．Don’t send bad messages to the people you meet online. |
| A．Friends Online | B．Online Bullying |
| C．Stay Safer Online | D．Safer Internet Day in the UK |
