1 . In late May, storms flooded streets in Florida. The floods made cars sink and turned roads into brown rivers. Flash flooding can happen when storm drains get blocked up and, especially during hurricanes, overflow into streets. It’s the leading cause of weather-related deaths.
A team of local middle-school students has a plan to stop this ongoing problem. Alyssa, Bianca and Jose are sixth-graders. The Doral students designed a device to warn city workers when and where there is a danger of flooding. The team is one of five grand-prize winners of the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Contest. The contest asked for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) solutions to the biggest challenge facing a school community.
“I’ve been living here my entire life, and all of us have encountered problems with flooding,” says Bianca. “We knew that was the problem we were going to tackle.”
The students’ device uses a laser system called lidar, which stands for “light detection and ranging.” The device, if approved by the city government, could be attached to Doral’s 2,575 storm and manhole drains — one device per drain. If a drain gets blocked with sediment (沉积物), the device could send a warning message to the city’s stormwater management office. Then the stormwater manager could send someone to clean the drain.
Starting in March, the school was closed, so team meetings went virtual. Luckily, says Bianca, “We already had a prototype device, and we just had to adjust it some more ” They also had to pitch their idea virtually to contest judges.
Twenty finalist teams were cut down to the five grand-prize-winning teams. Each of the five teams won $100 000 for technology and supplies for their science classrooms. “We put m a lot of effort and had to trust each other and that each one knew what they were talking about,” says Alyssa.
1. How does the author start the text?| A．With an image. |
| B．With some figures. |
| C．By raising questions. |
| D．By stating a phenomenon. |
| A．It is made up of five middle school students. |
| B．Its aim is to solve the problem of the drain flooding, |
| C．It has won first prize in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Contest. |
| D．Its members are trained in science, technology, engineering and math. |
| A．To list their challenges. |
| B．To explore their motivation. |
| C．To express their determination. |
| D．To prove their responsibility. |
| A．To inform the authorities when a drain is blocked. |
| B．To arrange for someone to clean the drain. |
| C．To prevent the drain from being blocked. |
| D．To help clear away sediment in the drain. |
2 . Zika virus. Malaria. West Nile virus. Dengue fever. Have you ever heard of these illnesses? If so, you likely know what they all have in common. These are a few of the diseases spread by one of the greatest pests known to humankind一the mosquito.
Much of the time, mosquito bites are just itchy. Nothing ruins a backyard barbecue faster than a mass of these bloodsucking insects. However, some mosquitoes carry viruses that cause deadly ilnesses. In fact, some experts say mosquitoes are a bigger threat to human life than any other organism.
Over the centuries, mosquitoes are thought to have caused the deaths of 52 billion people. That’s half the people who have ever lived on Earth! Even today, ilnesses spread by mosquitoes kill more people each year than war does.
It should be no surprise that many people would like to get rid of mosquitoes. What if we could wipe out the entire mosquito population? No more malaria. No more Zika. No more itchy bumps after a summer day spent outdoors. Doesn’t that sound great?
Not so fast. Sure, some species of mosquitoes harm humans. But others don’t pose any threat at al! In fact, some of these mosquitoes play important parts in their ecosystems. Let’s look at a few ways.
Many of our Wonder Friends already know that bees play an important part in pollination（授粉）. It turns out, mosquitoes do, too! Most mosquitoes actually drink nectar（ 花蜜） instead of blood. When they do so, they help pollinate the plants they feed on.
It’s also important to remember that even mosquitoes are part of an ecosystem. Without them, the food chain would be disturbed.
Adult mosquitoes are a food source for bats, birds, spiders, and small mammals. Without them, these animals would need to find something else to eat. Some experts even think mosquitoes could be used to help humans.
1. What do Zika virus, Malaria, West Nile virus, and Dengue fever have in common?| A．They are all pests from the wild forest. | B．They can not be cured by human beings. |
| C．They can all be spread by mosquitoes. | D．They are all caused by bacteria. |
| A．Kill something completely. | B．Bring up in large numbers. |
| C．Control something completely. | D．Rely on something completely. |
| A．Positive. | B．Negative. | C．Critical. | D．Objective. |
| A．How mosquitoes are harmful to human beings. |
| B．How mosquitoes are helpful to human beings. |
| C．How mosquitoes cause various ilness to mankind. |
| D．How mosquitoes are eaten by small mammals. |
3 . When I worked as a global media coordinator(协调员)for the United Nations several years ago, I organized biweekly conference calls,during which I would ask my colleagues around the world to provide information by particular deadlines. My colleagues almost always responded with a yes. but all too often, the deadlines came and went without the requested material. Finally, my South African boss had to explain what would never have occurred to me: in many cultures, it is rude lo say no. So some people would say yes to anything I asked, regardless of whether they had any intention of delivering.
If communicating internally at the UN was challenging, interacting with the outside world was much harder. How would we reach people in places where newspapers are televisions are still not widely available? How could we generate media coverage there? Communicating globally may require changing the way you interviewing senior communication professionals in 31 countries about how they help clients modify their messages and strategies for particular cultures. I have found that some of the biggest factors to consider when communicating in a new culture involve emotion, context and social expectations.
As an example of emotional differences, if I were to do a media interview in the US and become visibly angry at a reporter’s question, I would be seen as unstable. By contrast, in the Middle East (an area including the countries of Southwest Asia and Northeast Africa),when people are talking about a heated issue, they tend to display powerful feelings—those who stay cool and calm while discussing such a problem may be viewed as untrustworthy.
Another big cultural difference revolves around the level of “context” provided in a conversation. As an American, I am what is known as a low-context communicator (who communicates information in a direct manner that relies mainly on words rather than contextual elements such as tones and body language), so if I want something done, I say so frankly. In high-context cultures, as in Asia, people may do the opposite. You have to pick up on body language, tones, and other contextual cues to realize that your colleague who just said yes to you has actually communicated that she does not agree to your plan.
1. How did the author probably feel about those colleagues according to Paragraph 1?| A．Confused and upset. | B．Ashamed and guilty. |
| C．Satisfied and delighted. | D．Doubtful and uncertain. |
| A．Mild curiosity. | B．Remarkable ease. |
| C．Emotional responses. | D．Confident calmness. |
| A．She may be€ from the United States. |
| B．She may prefer to speak in a direct way. |
| C．She may be a high-context communicator. |
| D．She may he influenced by low-context cultures. |
| A．The main content of the author's book. |
| B．Cultural differences of social expectations. |
| C．Different meanings of yes in different cultures. |
| D．Important skills of communicating with colleagues. |
4 . It’s summertime. That means long hot days, no school--- and summer camps. Lots of kids spend at least some of the summer at camps. Some kids spend the whole year playing one sport. And what do they do during the summer? They go to a camp and keep playing that sport. So what’s wrong with that?
A study published in the journal Sports Health found that “for most sports, there is no evidence that intense (集中的) training and playing one sport before 13 or 14 are necessary to achieve elite (精英的)status.” How big is the risk of injury if you specialize in one sport? A Loyola University Chicago study of 1, 200 youth athletes found that kids who specialized in one sport were 70 percent to 93 percent more likely to be injured than multi-sport athletes. That’s a lot. Kids who specialize in one sport also get burned out. An Ohio State University study found that kids who played a single sport were more likely to quit their sport and be physically inactive as adults.
But don’t you have to specialize in one sport when you’re a kid to have a chance to play in college or be a professional? No! Sorry, but I have to talk about another study. This one was a survey of college athletes by the American Society of Sports Medicine. The study found that 88 percent of college athletes played more than one sport when they were kids.
Look at this year’s National Football League (NFL) draft, 26 of the 31 first- round picks, including Jared Goff, the player drafted ahead of all the others, had been multi-sport athletes in high school, according to Tracking Football. It wasn’t just the first round: 224 of the 256 draft picks had played more than one sport in high school. More than a third of the drafted players were three-sport athletes.
So if you are a year-round baseball kid, try soccer this summer. It will get you into great shape and help you move your feet in the field. Or if you’re a soccer kid, try tennis or rock climbing. Have some fun, and try something new. It’s summertime.
1. What’s the purpose of the author writing the text?| A．To invite more kids to play sports. |
| B．To inspire kids to play sports for fun. |
| C．To encourage kids to try more types of sports. |
| D．To give kids advice on becoming professional athletes. |
| A．Playing one sport is suitable for adults. |
| B．Too much training doesn’t lift sport spirits. |
| C．70%-93% kids get injuries from playing sports. |
| D．Kids’ sport specialization doesn’t promise future success. |
| A．Most of them were multi-sport players. |
| B．They are college students. |
| C．They are professional athletes. |
| D．Most of them were summer-camping lovers. |
A． | B． |
C． | D． |
5 . It’s true that quite a few most respected scientific authorities have confirmed that the world is becoming hotter and hotter. There’s also strong evidence that humans are contributing to the warming. Countless recent reports have proved the same thing. For instance, a 2010 summary about the climate science by the Royal Society noted that: “The global warming over the last half-century has been caused mainly by human activity.”
You may not believe that humans could change the planet’s climate, but the basic science is well understood. Each year, billions of tons of greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere because of human activity. As has been known for years, these gases hold heat that would otherwise escape to space, wrapping the planet in an invisible blanket.
Of course, the earth’s climate has always been changing due to “natural” factors such as volcanic eruption or changes in solar, or cycles concerning the Earth’s going around the sun. According to the scientific research, however, the warming observed by now matches the pattern of warming we would expect from a build-up of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere—not the warming we would expect from other possible causes.
Even if scientists did discover another reasonable explanation for the warming recorded so far, that would give birth to a difficult question. As Robert Henson puts it: “If some newly discovered factor is to blame for the climate change, then why aren’t carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases producing the warming that basic physics tells us they should be?”
The only way to prove with 100% certainty that humans are responsible for global warming would be to run an experiment with two identical Earths — one with human influence and one without. That obviously isn’t possible, and so most scientists are careful not to state human influence as an absolute certainty.
1. The text is developed by ________.| A．giving typical examples |
| B．following the order of space |
| C．comparing and finding differences |
| D．analyzing a theory and arguing it |
| A．Few scientific authorities have confirmed the existence of global warming. |
| B．Greenhouse gases prevent heat in the atmosphere from escaping to space. |
| C．Some new factors for the climate change have been discovered by scientists. |
| D．Scientists are absolutely sure about the human influence on the earth’s climate. |
| A．exactly the same | B．totally different |
| C．extremely important | D．partly independent |
| A．Are Humans Definitely Causing Global Warming? |
| B．Are All the Scientists Really Scientific? |
| C．Where Is Global Warming Leading Us to? |
| D．What’s the Relation of Global Warming and Greenhouse Gases? |
6 . We tend to believe that older people are more positive and younger people are more sensitive to social cues (暗示).
Recently scientists investigated this idea by testing 10,000 men and women. They wanted to see if age affected a person’s ability to identify subtle facial emotions, such as fear and anger.
The researchers from McLean Hospital in the US used a Web-based platform to collect happiness data. It showed the participants two headshots (头部特写) of random people. They were then asked to identify which subject was angrier, happier, or more fearful. The research found that younger people were able to better identify angry and fearful facial cues than older people.
“From the previous studies , we know that the everyday experiences of an adolescent are different from an older person, but we wanted to understand how these experiences might be linked with differences in basic emotion understanding,” wrote Laura Germine, the study’s senior author.
But what is it that makes young people more sensitive?
“This is the exact age when young people are most sensitive to forms of negative social cues, such as bullying,” Lauren Rutter, the study’s lead author, told Science Daily. “The normal development of anger sensitivity can contribute to some of the challenges that arise during this phase of development.”
On the contrary, across the whole 10,000-person survey, researchers found no decline in the perception (感知)of happiness among older participants.
“What’s remarkable is that we see declines in many visual perceptual abilities as we get older, but here we did not see such declines in the perception of happiness,” Germine told Neuro Science News.
She added that these findings fit well with other research, showing that older adults tend to have more positive emotions and a positive outlook.
Following the paper’s release, Rutter told Neuro Science News that gathering their primary research online allowed the team to tap into a “much larger and more diverse sample set” than previous studies.
1. What is the result of the research?| A．We are often bullied while young. |
| B．We become less positive as we get older. |
| C．The younger we are, the happier we feel. |
| D．The younger, the more sensitive; the older, the more positive. |
| A．Their family backgrounds. | B．Their negative experiences. |
| C．People around them. | D．Their visual perceptual abilities. |
| A．By giving examples. | B．By stating arguments. |
| C．By explaining statistical data. | D．By providing results. |
| A．An announcement. | B．A science magazine. |
| C．A travel guide. | D．An official report. |
7 . Rivers are the veins of the Earth, transporting the water and nutrients (营养物) needed to support the planet’s ecosystems, including human life. While many nutrients are essential to the survival of life, there is one element transported by water in rivers that holds the key to life and to the future of our planet — carbon.
Carbon is everywhere and understanding the way it moves and is either released or stored by the Earth system is a complex science in itself. Carbon starts its journey downstream when natural acid rain, which contains carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, melts minerals in rocks. This helps transform carbon dioxide to bicarbonate (碳酸氢盐) in the water that then flows in our rivers. This is a very long process, which is one of the main ways carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. Carbon is transported by rivers to oceans and once that carbon reaches the ocean, it is stored naturally in deep sea sediments (沉淀物) for millions of years.
As carbon travels down a river, different processes may impact whether it continues to flow downstream or whether it is released into the atmosphere. For example, human engineering, like extensive dam construction, will result in dramatic changes to how water and sediments travel down the river. Some carbon that fails to reach the sea may return to the atmosphere in some way, which causes more warming.
Earth’s climate is closely related to the carbon cycle. We all know about the essential role of plants in consuming carbon dioxide, but do we know enough about rivers? Changing the chemistry and the course of rivers may have significant impacts on how they transport carbon. Remember: wherever we live, we all live downstream.
1. Where is the carbon in rivers originally from?| A．The atmosphere. | B．The rocks. |
| C．The acid rain. | D．The upstream areas. |
| A．To show how important to life carbon is. |
| B．To explain how necessary it is to build dams. |
| C．To show how a natural process is interrupted. |
| D．To explain how humans fight global warming. |
| A．We’d better move upstream to live. |
| B．We should protect plants along rivers. |
| C．We’d better seek more help from plants. |
| D．We should be cautious about river management. |
| A．What Humans Do with Rivers |
| B．How Rivers’ Transporting Carbon Counts |
| C．What the Carbon Cycle Means to Us |
| D．How Living Downstream Affects the Earth |
8 . Careers in zoology are extremely varied and unique, and can provide incredible learning and work opportunities for anyone devoted to animal studies and welfare. Zoology, or the study of animals, is a wide field with many specialties, including research, conservation, veterinary (兽医的) medicine, and the care of animals. For people with a love of animals and some training, dreams of careers in zoology may come true.
Some careers in zoology focus on research and scientific studies. These careers may allow those with a good theoretical science background to develop and run studies that improve human understanding of the animal world. Research in zoology can help create safer and more effective products for animals or can teach humans more about animal behavior in order to aid in conservation, breeding programs, and habitat preservation.
Careers in zoology that focus on conservation attach great importance to the continued survival and increased protection of animal species. Conservationists may work with political groups or governments to help make laws to protect and preserve animals, or may work in the field gathering information on potential threats to the health of global ecosystems. Some conservationists work in educational fields, trying to improve human efforts to save animals from extinction.
Animals are subject to illness and injury, and some careers in zoology help to create a safe, stable animal population. Veterinary medicine is an important specialty field, and may take several years of intensive training to qualify as a certified veterinarian. While many veterinarians focus on the small-animal practice of domestic pets, vets in rural areas often work with large farm animals and more adventurous veterinarians may work with exotic species in zoos and wildlife preserves. .
Humans love to observe animals, and modern-day zoos and wildlife preserves help meet that interest while providing facilities to assist with conservation programs. Zoology careers in zoos can range from overseeing breeding programs, to creating the proper diet for a deer, to cleaning the tiger’s cage. Many volunteer and entry-level jobs are available for people that love animals.
1. What is the purpose of researching on animals in zoology?| A．To help governments make laws. |
| B．To improve researchers’ scientific knowledge. |
| C．To create safe and effective products for humans. |
| D．To educate people to protect animals. |
| A．Better understand animals. | B．Protect animals’ health. |
| C．Clean the animals’ cages. | D．Increase the number of animals. |
(P1=paragraph 1; P2= paragraph 2; P3= paragraph 3; P4= paragraph 1; P5= paragraph 5;)
A． | B． |
C． | D． |
| A．Volunteers’ passion for zoology. |
| B．A new idea of careers in zoology. |
| C．Different types of careers in zoology. |
| D．Effective measures of animal protection. |
9 . As Internet users become more dependent on the Internet to store information, are people remember less? If you know your computer will save information, why store it in your own personal memory, your brain? Experts are wondering if the Internet is changing what we remember and how.
In a recent study, Professor Betsy Sparrow conducted some experiments. She and her research team wanted to know the Internet is changing memory. In the first experiment, they gave people 40 unimportant facts to type into a computer. The first group of people understood that the computer would save the information. The second group understood that the computer would not save it. Later, the second group remembered the information better. People in the first group knew they could find the information again, so they did not try to remember it.
In another experiment, the researchers gave people facts to remember, and told them where to find the information on the Internet. The information was in a specific computer folder (文件夹). Surprisingly, people later remember the folder location (位置) better than the facts. When people use the Internet, they do not remember the information. Rather, they remember how to find it. This is called “transactive memory (交互记忆)”
According to Sparrow, we are not becoming people with poor memories as a result of the Internet. Instead, computer users are developing stronger transactive memories; that is, people are learning how to organize huge quantities of information so that they are able to access it at a later date. This doesn’t mean we are becoming either more or less intelligent, but there is no doubt that the way we use memory is changing.
1. The passage begins with two questions to ________.| A．introduce the main topic | B．show the author’s attitude |
| C．describe how to use the Internet | D．explain how to store information |
| A．Sparrow’s team typed the information into a computer. |
| B．The two groups remembered the information equally well. |
| C．The first group did not try to remember the formation. |
| D．The second group did not understand the information. |
| A．keep the information in mind |
| B．change the quantity of information |
| C．organize information like a computer |
| D．remember how to find the information |
| A．We are using memory differently. |
| B．We are becoming more intelligent. |
| C．We have poorer memories than before. |
| D．We need a better way to access information. |
