1 . Patients often come into my office and ask, “How can I look younger?” While I always suggest healthy living — a balanced diet and regular exercise — in order to look and feel younger, I have never thought of facial exercises as part of that plan. That is, until a recent study, published in JAMA Dermatology (皮肤学), showed promising results that routine facial exercise may slow the merciless tide of time.
The theory behind the study originates from the fact that a major part of facial aging is due to the loss of fat and soft tissue, which leads to the growth and spread of wrinkles. If we can lift weights at the gym and enlarge muscles in arms, why couldn’t the same be done for muscles in our faces, therefore to create a more youthful face?
The concept of facial exercise is not a new one. A simple Internet search will produce a lot of blog posts and books on the subject, as well as various programmes that promise to be the next fountain of youth. What the JAMA Dermatology researchers did in their study, which was the first of its kind, was to examine this question from a more strict scientific aspect. They enrolled 27 women between the ages of 40 and 65 to perform daily, 30-minute exercises for eight weeks, and then continue every other day for a total of 20 weeks.
Dermatologists who did not know the participants were asked to rate their photographs before and after the exercise. The dermatologists found an improvement in cheek fullness and estimated the age of the participants at 51 years of age at the start of the programme and 48 at the end of the 20-week study. Furthermore, all the participants felt improvement in their own facial appearance at the end of the study.
While these results seem exalting, the study has some obvious limitations. Of the 27 patients involved, 11 gave up before completing the study. One reason may be that the programme was to time-consuming, clocking in at 30 minutes a day. The overall small size of the study also limits its generalizability to the larger population. In addition, there was also no control group, which would have helped reduce the possibility that this improvement happened by chance.
It’s also hard to draw conclusions about the longevity of these results. Probably the exercises must be continued to keep their effects. But for how long? And how frequently? Which exercises are most effective? Most studies are need to answer these questions.
1. According to the passage, which statement is true?| A．Though the concept of facial exercise is new, much information about it can be found on the Internet. |
| B．Some participants did not feel improvement in their facial appearance at the end of the study. |
| C．If there is a control group, the possibility that the improvement in the facial appearance happened by chance will be increased. |
| D．The reason why some participants quit the study before it was completely may be that they had not enough time. |
| A．Calming. | B．Challenging. | C．Frustrating. | D．Exciting. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Positive. | C．Opposed. | D．Indifferent (中立的). |
| A．The study published in JAMA Dermatology is not reliable. |
| B．Healthy living is the only way to make someone look and feel young. |
| C．More studies are needed to further the present study on facial exercises. |
| D．As a dermatologist, the author was involved in the research project on facial exercises. |
Now rewind this picture 1,839 years. You are in the same seat, only you are watching classical Greek entertainment.
The city of Athens is a fun mix of the old and the new, the classic and the modern. Often a little shop is located next to the ruins of a temple, which is only a block from a large, air-conditioned hotel. The great city of 2,500 years ago is still visible today.
Ruins are the most obvious sign of ancient Athens, and the most famous of these is the Acropolis(卫城). The Acropolis is a large hill that was the center of life in Athens. On its slopes were temples, monuments, and theaters. From the top, you can see how the urban area of Athens stretches out in every direction.
On the top of the Acropolis is the Parthenon. This was once a huge temple to Athena, the city’s patron. It was first completed in 432 B.C., but has been damaged and destroyed several times. However, visitors can still see the “tricks” used in building the Parthenon. The columns along the outside lean inward, and are slightly fatter in the middle. The temple is also higher in the middle than on the sides. All these effects make the Parthenon look perfectly straight from a distance.
Only a block away from the Acropolis is the neighborhood of Plaka. The area, with its little shops and restaurants, is very popular with both tourists and locals, and is an important part of modern Athenian culture. Many great thinkers, writers, and political leaders lived in ancient Athens. The ruins of their homes and favorite spots are scattered throughout the busy port city. The hill where St. Paul addressed early Christian Athenians is located near the Acropolis. Great thinkers such as Perikles and Demosthenes spoke to the civil assemblies held at the Pnyx Hill. Today the Pnyx is an open-air theater for light and sound shows.
Tourism is very important to people who live in modern-day Athens. Thousands of people come every year to see these ruins and to tour the many museums that house artifacts from ancient times. This provides many jobs and brings money into Athens, which helps the city pay for improvements. Athenians take pride in the accomplishments of their ancestors, and people from all around the world come to admire them. By looking around the city today, we can imagine what life was like in ancient Athens.
1. Which of the following statements is INCORRECT about the city of Athens?| A．The culture of the city is a mixture of the old and modern. |
| B．Traces of the ancient city can still be found |
| C．Ruins and modern hotels co-exist in the city. |
| D．All the temples are not far away from air-conditioned hotels. |
| A．naughty acts | B．confusing constructing skills |
| C．skillful constructing methods | D．constructing materials |
| A．offering job opportunities to Athenians |
| B．enriching Athenians by providing accommodation for tourists |
| C．enabling Athenians to improve the infrastructures |
| D．making Athenians proud of their ancestors |
| A．Tourism in Athens | B．Athens: Then and Now |
| C．Historic Interests in Athens | D．The Magic of Ancient Athens |
3 . The story of chocolate begins with the discovery of America in 1492. Columbus was the first European to come into contact with cacao. Columbus was struck by how much value the Indians placed on them as he did not know the beans were used by currency. It is unlikely that Columbus brought any of these beans back to Spain and it was not until about 25 years later that Cortez grasped the commercial possibilities when he found the Aztecs using the beans to make the royal drink “chocolate”.
The Spanish, in general, were not fond of the bitter drink so Cortez and his followers made it more palatable by adding cane sugar and later cinnamon and vanilla were added. Spanish monks let the secret out back home and, although the Spanish hid it from their neighbors for a hundred years, finally chocolate’s popularity grew until it was their fashionable drink at the French court and the wise choice of customers at London meeting houses.
The cacao tree is strictly a tropical plant only in hot, rainy climates. Thus, its cultivation is limited to countries not more than 20 degrees north or south of the equator (赤道). The cacao tree is very delicate and sensitive. It needs protection from the wind and requires a fair amount of shade under most conditions. This is true especially in its first two or three years of growth. A newly planted young cacao tree is often sheltered by a different type of trees. It is normal to plant food crops for shade such as bananas, plantain, coconuts or cocoyams. Rubber trees and forest trees are also used for shade. Once established, however, cacao trees can grow in full sunlight, provided there are fertile soil conditions and intensive farming. With cutting and careful cultivation, the trees of strains will begin bearing fruit in the fifth year. With extreme care, some strains can be stimulated to produce good crops in the third and fourth year.
The process of turning cacao into chocolate hasn’t changed much since the Swiss made the major breakthroughs in the process in the late 1800s. First the beans go through a process of fermentation ( 发酵 ) and drying. They are then sorted by hand before cleaning and then roasting. Winnowing ( 风 扬 ) follows which removes the hard outer layers and leaves what is as the “grains”. A crushing and heating process known as Hunte’s Process is then used to remove nearly half of the cocoa butter from the nibs. This makes unsweetened chocolate. Basic eating chocolate is made from a mixture of the unsweetened chocolate with some of the cocoa butter along with other ingredients such as sugar and vanilla. The resulting product is then “purified” and this purifying gives chocolate the silky texture that we know so well. The finished result is then shaped, cooled, packaged by machine, distributed, sold and of course, eaten!
1. Why didn’t Columbus bring beans back to Spain at once when he found cacao?| A．Because he couldn’t afford to buy the cacao bean. |
| B．Because he didn’t know how to turn cacao bean into chocolate. |
| C．Because he was not aware of the monetary value of cacao bean then. |
| D．Because Spaniards then didn’t favour the chocolate that the Aztecs originally drank. |
| A．affordable | B．agreeable | C．patent | D．portable |
| A．Cacao trees need a lot of looking after to be used commercially. |
| B．Cacao trees require hot, rainy climates and adequate sunlight. |
| C．Cacao trees won’t produce fruit until the fifth year. |
| D．Cacao trees can grow well in all continents. |
① The chocolate is reheated to melt it, put into patterns and then cooled to make its final shapes.
② The beans are harvested on the farm.
③ Some cocoa butter is then obtained using Hunte’s Process to make cooking chocolate.
④ The cooking chocolate is then mixed with other ingredients to make the various types of eating chocolate available today.
⑤ The beans are winnowed after fermentation and drying and these two processes produce the grains.
⑥ The finished product is wrapped, sent to shops and then sold.
| A．②①③④⑤⑥ | B．②③①⑤④⑥ | C．②④⑤①③⑥ | D．②⑤③④①⑥ |
4 . Trade has a pretty bad name in some quarters. Trade robs poor people of a proper living, and keeps them trapped in poverty. There is a widely held popular view that trade is unfair.
Though many claim that a freer trade would change the current indecent reputation of world market, the cure-all free trade is the dream of most textbook economists. In fact, “free trade” has been used successfully by powerful countries to land their mass-produced goods on fresh overseas dumping grounds and squeeze out local household businesses and craftsmanship.
At home the story is different. Large firms have little appetite for free trade and competition in their own backyard. They prefer to enjoy the advantages and protections for which they have carefully earned. Free thus fierce competition has little appeal for those who understand that they will make more profit if they can corner the market, whether at home or abroad.
By contrast, making trade fairer is about addressing both outcomes and processes of trade. Fairness is not just moral request. It affects behaviour. Actually the concept of fairness increases steadily as societies achieve greater market uprightness: Businessmen from upright societies are willing to punish those who do not play fair, even if this is costly to themselves.
Fairer trade rather than freer trade could partly mend mal-administering of resources in certain areas. Though thought of as evil economic policies in the west world, carefully planned special preferences and protectionism could be used intelligently to help to block the economic robbery of the rich class in African countries, and to improve the lives of the bottom billion.
Fairness is also important in the control of trade. The current International trade negotiations have resulted in rules favoring the powerful. The rules are made in negotiations in which the countries in control call the shots, and do not always do so in good faith. Industrialized countries were often found to have obtained definite and far-reaching commitments from developing countries, in exchange for vague promises, such as to liberalise agriculture, which they have not kept. On the other hand, the essence of the fair trade lies in the promise that every party benefit from the business, rich or poor, powerful or weak.
Making trade fairer is important to avoid a further public hate against trade. It is also important so as better to balance trade goals with other important national goals such as environmental and social protection. Finally, the so-called free trade system needs to be made fairer so that it does not block competition, and crush innovation and business spirit. It needs to offer a more level playing field to commercial newcomers and competitors in rich and poor countries alike.
1. Free trade is a concept at rich countries’ service to________.| A．open up new markets abroad |
| B．define trade in the economic textbooks |
| C．dump pollutants in poor countries |
| D．learn the skills from local household businesses. |
| A．punishing the rich countries when they cheat the poor countries |
| B．making sure that rich countries provide more chances for poor countries |
| C．promoting special preferences and protectionism in poor areas |
| D．guaranteeing the common interests of all the dealers |
| A．macro-management |
| B．overall collection |
| C．uneven distribution |
| D．negative mining |
| A．Large firms earn huge profits from free trade on domestic markets. |
| B．Honest dealers would sacrifice their own interest to discipline the dishonest. |
| C．Special preferences and protectionism are occasionally adopted in western countries. |
| D．A fairer trade helps to ease competition between the rich and the poor. |
5 . How Plants Branch Out to Access Water
New research has discovered how plant roots sense the availability of water in soil and then adapt their shape to acquire water. The discovery could enable crops to be bred which are more adaptive to changes in climate conditions, such as water scarcity, and help ensure food security in the future.
These findings, published in the journal Science, describe a new mechanism discovered by cooperating teams at the universities of Nottingham and Durham.
Roots are critical for plants to acquire water and nutrients from the soil. Water is essential for plant growth, yet changing climatic conditions makes acquiring water from soil even more challenging. Plants are able to adapt to different soil moisture(湿润) conditions by altering their root architecture, but up until now, it was not understood how this is done.
The researchers discovered that plant roots lacking a branching master gene were no longer able to branch out. They found that when roots are exposed to moisture, the certain gene remains active and promotes root branching, but when exposed to air, the gene is inactivated, blocking root branching.
Professor Sadanandom explained: ''Plants are relatively immobile and therefore their growth is very much dependent on their environment. Our research has identified the particular protein which can inactivate root branching, therefore limiting plant growth and development. ''
''This is hugely exciting as it opens up the possibility for us to help develop plants that could continue to branch roots even in challenging conditions such as water scarcity. ''
Professor Bennett concluded: ''Water is critical for plant growth, development and their survival. By studying how plant roots change their branching in response to water availability, we have uncovered a novel mechanism. This represents a major step forward and opens the way for breeders to develop new crops better adapted to climate change and helping deliver global food security. ''
It is absolutely imperative to ensure food security worldwide. Crop production must double by 2050 to keep pace with global population growth. This target is even more challenging given the impact of climate change on water availability and the drive to reduce fertilizers to make agriculture become more environmentally sustainable. In both cases, developing crops with better ability to acquire water would provide a solution.
1. The findings of the research may have a positive effect on several global issues EXCEPT ________.| A．solving water scarcity | B．increasing crop production |
| C．preserving the agriculture | D．ensuring food security |
| A．branch out without a special gene | B．grow in challenging conditions |
| C．alter inactivated roots | D．breed soluble nutrients |
| A．fascinating | B．influential |
| C．enormous | D．urgent |
| A．Why plants have different abilities to adapt to soil moisture conditions. |
| B．How a branching master gene responds to a particular fertilizer. |
| C．How plant roots alter their shape according to the soil moisture. |
| D．How the particular protein inactivates root branching when exposed to water. |
6 . When I travel the country speaking to high school and college students about exactly what they need to do to become financially successful in life, I always begin my presentation by asking three questions:
“How many want to be financially successful in life?”
“How many think they will be financially successful in life?”
Almost every time I ask the first two questions every hand rises in the air. Then I ask the magic third question:
“How many have taken a course in school on how to be financially successful in life?”
Not one hand rises in the air, ever. Clearly every student wants to be successful and thinks they will be successful but none have been taught by their parents or their school system how to be financially successful in life. Not only are there no courses on basic financial success principles but there are no structured courses teaching basic financial literacy. We are raising our children to be financially illiterate and to fail in life. Is it any wonder that most Americans live paycheck to paycheck? That most Americans accumulate more debt than assets? That many Americans lose their homes when they lose their job? Is it any wonder that most Americans cannot afford college for their children and that student loan debt is now the largest type of consumer debt?
What's worse is what our children are being taught by their parents, the school system, politicians and the media. They are teaching our children that the wealthy are corrupt, greedy, have too much wealth and that this wealth needs to be redistributed. What kind of a message do you think that sends to America's future generation? It is teaching them that seeking financial success by pursuing the American Dreams is a bad thing.
The statistics from my five-year study on the daily habits that separate the wealthy from the poor illustrate the fact that the poor are poor because they have too many Poverty Habits and too few Rich Habits. Poor parents teach their children the Poverty Habits and wealthy parents teach their children the Rich Habits. We don't have a wealth gap in this country, we have a parent gap. We don't have income inequality, we have parent inequality.
Parents and our schools need to work together to instill good daily success habits as follows:
•Limit T. V., social media and cell phone use to no more than one hour a day.
• Require that children read one to two educational books a month.
• Require that children set monthly, annual and 5-year goals.
• Require that children save at least 25% of their earnings or gifts they receive.
• Teach children the importance of relationship building by requiring them to call friends, family, teachers, coaches etc. on their birthdays and to send thank you cards for gifts or help they received from anyone.
• Reassure children that mistakes are good not bad.
• Children need to learn how to manage money.
• Teach children how to manage their time.
1. What's the writer's purpose of raising the three questions at the beginning of the presentation?| A．To show children's ambition to lead a successful life. |
| B．To attach importance to financial success. |
| C．To blame parents, teachers, and the media for the lack of courses about money management. |
| D．To emphasize the association between financial success and financial literacy. |
| A．Get used to. | B．Increase. | C．Pay back. | D．Borrow. |
| A．Parents open up a checking account or savings account for children and force them to use their savings to buy the things they want. |
| B．Children understand that the very foundation of success in life is built on learning from parents' mistakes. |
| C．Children spend no more than 1 hour per day on Internet use. |
| D．Children are required to create daily “to do” lists and these lists are monitored by parents. |
7 . On Thursday, some scientists will find themselves in the media spotlight as the latest winners of a prize for discoveries celebrated the world over. No, it is not the Nobel Prize. It is the Ig Nobel Prizes, whose stated aim is to ''honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think''.
Since their launch in 1991 by a US-based science magazine Annals of Improbable Research, the ''Igs'' have become a highlight of the scientific calendar, taking place a few days before the announcement of the real Nobels. The prizes are handed out by real Nobel winners at Harvard University, with many of the winners turning up to accept their award in person.
The range of breakthroughs is certainly impressive. In 2001 the physics award went to Dr David Schmidt of the University of Massachusetts for his research into why shower curtains tend to billow inward, while the 2005 Ig for psychology went to a team at Keio University, Japan, for training pigeons to tell the difference between the paintings of Picasso and Monet. Not everyone has seen the funny side of the Ig Nobels, however. In 1995 a team of British researchers won the physics Ig for research into why breakfast cereal goes soft and wet, prompting some newspapers to ask why taxpayers' money was being wasted on such trivial(琐碎的,无价值的)research. In fact,the project had been funded by a leading cereal maker rather than the UK taxpayer.
Even so the controversy(争议)led Britain's chief scientist, professor Sir Robert May, to ask the organizers not to award any more Igs to UK researchers,who were emerging as embarrassingly frequent winners of the prizes. With maintenance of reputation being so important among scientists these days, Sir Robert's request was understandable. But it also ignores the fact that many major scientific advances have come from research into ''trivial'' questions.
The best-known example is Newton's discovery of the law of gravity after he saw an apple fall in his mother's garden. More recently, the sight of a plate spinning through the air in a university cafeteria was enough to set the American physicist Richard Feynman on his way to a Nobel Prize. Interested in its rapid wobbling(摇晃), Dr Feynman analyzed the problem mathematically and showed that as long as the wobbles are small, they occur at twice the spin rate of the plate. Delighted by his discovery, he told his friend and colleague Hans Bethe who thought it was all rather, well, trivial. Yet it inspired Dr Feynman to investigate the spin of the electron which, in turn, led to work on quantum electrodynamics for which he won a share of the 1965 Nobel Prize for physics.
Some of the scientists who find themselves awarded Igs on Thursday might prefer to have won the ''real'' thing. They might even worry about being looked down upon by their peers. Yet whether it is the spinning of a plate or the fall of an apple, the truth is that nature herself doesn't understand the meaning of ''trivial''.
1. Which of the following statements is NOT true about the Ig Nobel Prizes?| A．They are given for researches which first make people laugh and then make them think. |
| B．They are presented by real Nobel winners at Harvard University. |
| C．They are awarded to winners a few months before the announcement of the real Nobels. |
| D．They were launched in 1991 by a science magazine which is based in the United States. |
| A．Causing. | B．Protesting. | C．Reminding. | D．Pumping. |
| A．demonstrate the law of gravity was discovered by Newton accidentally. |
| B．show us how scientists investigated the spin of the electron. |
| C．explain reasons why Ig Nobel Prizes winners are looked down upon by other people. |
| D．prove that many major scientific advances have come from research into small questions. |
8 . Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor and industrialist, was a man of many contrasts He was the son of a bankrupt, but became a millionaire; a scientist with a love of literature, an industrialist who managed to remain an idealist. He made a fortune but lived a very simple life, and although cheerful in company he was often sad in private. A lover of mankind, he never had a wife or family to love him; a patriotic son of his native land, he died alone on foreign soil. He invented a new explosive, dynamite, to improve the peacetime industries of mining and road building, but saw it was used as a weapon of war to kill and injure his fellow men. During his useful life he often felt he was useless: ''Alfred Nobel, '' he once wrote of himself, ''ought to have been put to death by a kind doctor as soon as, with a cry, he entered life. '' ''World-famous for his works he was never personally well-known, for throughout his life he avoided publicity. “I do not see, '' he once said, ''that I have deserved any fame and I have no taste for it, '' but since his death his name has brought fame and glory to others. He was born in Stockholm on October 21, 1833 but moved to Russia with his parents in 1842, where his father, Immanuel, made a strong position for himself in the engineering industry. Immanuel Nobel invented the landmine and made a lot of money from government orders for it during the Crimean War, but went bankrupt soon after.
Most of the family returned to Sweden in 1859, where Alfred rejoined them in 1863, beginning his own study of explosives in his father's laboratory. He had never been to school or university but had studied privately. And by the time he was twenty, he was a skillful chemist and excellent linguist, speaking Swedish, Russian, German, French and English. Like his father, Alfred Nobel was imaginative and inventive, but he had better luck in business and showed more financial sense. He was quick to see industrial openings for his scientific inventions and built up over 80 companies in 20 different countries. Indeed his greatness lay in his outstanding ability to combine the qualities of an original scientist with those of a forward-looking industrialist. But Nobel's main concern was never with making money or even with making scientific discoveries. Seldom happy, he was always searching for a meaning to life, and from his youth had taken a serious interest in literature and philosophy. Perhaps he could not find ordinary human love - he never married he came to care deeply about the whole of mankind. He was always generous to the poor: ''I'd rather take care of. the stomachs of the living than the glory of the dead in the form of stone materials, '' he once said. His greatest wish, however, was to see an end to wars, and thus peace between nations, and he spent much time and money working for this cause until his death in Italy in 1896. His famous will, in which he left money to provide prizes for outstanding work in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology, Medicine, Literature and Peace, is a memorial to his interests and ideals. And so, the man who felt he should have died at birth is remembered and respected long after his death.
1. What was the original purpose of Alfred Nobel's inventing the dynamite?| A．To improve mining and road building. |
| B．To help defend his native land. |
| C．To develop a weapon of war. |
| D．To make a strong position for himself. |
| A．Modest. | B．Loyal. | C．Gifted. | D．Long-lost. |
| A．Because he thought that his actions contrasted sharply with his hopes. |
| B．Because he wished he had never invented the explosive, which was used in war to kill. |
| C．Because he felt he was useless for not having made enough contributions to mankind. |
| D．Because he felt he had led a meaningless life and owed a lot to others. |
| A．Far-sighted. | B．Generous. | C．Low-profile. | D．Contrasting. |
9 . How and why, roughly 2 million years ago, early human ancestors evolved large brains and began fashioning relatively advanced stone tools, is one of the great mysteries of evolution. Some researchers argue these changes were brought about by the invention of cooking. They point out that our bite weakened around the same time as our larger brains evolved, and that it takes less energy to absorb nutrients from cooked food. As a result, once they had mastered the art, early chefs could invest less in their digestive systems and thus invest the resulting energy savings in building larger brains capable of complex thought. There is, however, a problem with the cooking theory. Most archaeologists (考古学家）believe the evidence of controlled fire stretches back no more than 790,000 years.
Roger Summons of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has a solution. Together with his team, he analyzed 1.7 million-year-old sand-stones that formed in an ancient river at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. The region is famous for the large number of human fossils (化石) that have been discovered there, alongside an impressive assembly of stone tools. The sand-stones themselves have previously yielded some of the world’s earliest complex hand axes — large tear-drop-shaped stone tools that are associated with Homo erectus (直立人) . Creating an axe by repeatedly knocking thin pieces off a raw stone in order to create two sharp cutting edges requires a significant amount of planning. Their appearance is therefore thought to mark an important moment in intellectual evolution. Trapped inside the Olduvai sand-stones, the researchers found distinctive but unusual biological molecules（分子）that are often interpreted as biomarkers for heat-tolerant bacteria. Some of these live in water between 85°C and 95°C. The molecules’ presence suggests that an ancient river within the Gorge was once fed by one or more hot springs.
Dr. Summons and his colleagues say the hot springs would have provided a convenient “pre-fire” means of cooking food. In New Zealand，the Maori have traditionally cooked food in hot springs, either by lowering it into the boiling water or by digging a hole in the hot earth. Similar methods exist in Japan and Iceland, so it is plausible, if difficult to prove, that early humans might have used hot springs to cook meat and roots. Richard Wrangham, who devised the cooking theory, is fascinated by the idea. Nonetheless, fire would have offered a distinct advantage to humans, once they had mastered the art of controlling it since, unlike a hot spring, it is a transportable resource.
1. All of the following statements can support the cooking theory EXCEPT__________.| A．cooking enabled early humans to invest less in digestive system |
| B．cooking enabled early humans to devote more energy to building big brains |
| C．our brain became larger around the same time our digestive system weakened |
| D．the controlled fire wasn’t mastered until about 790,000 years ago |
| A．they suggested a possible means of cooking without fire |
| B．they cast light on how early Homo erectus lived |
| C．they provided a convenient way of studying stone tools |
| D．they made studies of pre-historic cultures possible |
| A．noticeable | B．applicable |
| C．reasonable | D．affordable |
| A．Early humans were capable of making complex stone tools. |
| B．Hot springs help explain how human brains got so big. |
| C．Homo erectus were adaptable to tough and complex territories. |
| D．Human brains are highly advanced as shown by their size. |
10 . A sensational new scientific discovery in the ocean near Australia may explain the most massive extinction of living things in Earth’s history. For years, scholars have been frustrated in trying to analyze why 90 to 95 percent of sea life and 75 percent of and life vanished about 250 million years ago. The extinctions were so enormous that they are called The Great Dying. To date, some authorities on ancient life thought that a volcanic eruption or a sudden change in the environment affected all life on Earth. Other specialists have doubted these theories, maintaining that it was not plausible that a solo volcano could bring about such chaos. From the outset, critics believed these claims were exaggerated.
By contrast, there is wide acceptance of the idea that a meteor (流星)which hit Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago was the primary cause of the dinosaurs’ extinction. Nevertheless, until now they had no evidence of an intense meteor impact 185 mill on years earlier. Now they do.
American geologists have been examining rock samples from a deep sea crater (火山口)near the northwest coast of Australia. The samples were initially collected and preserved by petroleum technicians seeking oil. Now the geologists and their colleagues believe that the precise splits in the rock’s structure show a typical pattern for meteors. There is a clear distinction from volcanic patterns. In fact, a spokesperson went so far as to say that these rocks completely revise the way scientists perceive the mass extinctions from the ancient era. Academics say that the meteor’s crater s the size of Mount Qomolangma, the highest mountain on Earth! Literally, the meteor made a mark on Earth as it drowned in the sea. The Earth could not absorb such a harsh blow without sustaining global devastation. Things must have come to a standstill. Evidently, the blow was fatal for many forms of life.
Bear in mind that all this was long before mammals---including humans--emerged in Earth’s history. Still, we would be wise to pay attention to the damage a meteor can cause. Fortunately, meteor strikes on Earth are few and far between.
1. The word “plausible” (paragraph 1) is closest in meaning to “______”.| A．available | B．incredible |
| C．reasonable | D．ridiculous |
| A．Because they were very resistant | B．Because there weren’t any then |
| C．Because they lived in isolated areas | D．Because they hid themselves in the caves |
| A．Scholars agreed that a single volcano caused The Great Dying |
| B．75 percent of land life continued 250 million years ago |
| C．Volcanic rocks and meteors have different patterns |
| D．When the meteor hit land Mount Qomolangma sprang up. |
| A．The Dinosaurs’ End | B．Crater on Qomolangma |
| C．Contradictory Claims | D．A Meteor’s Impact |
