1 . Great Barrier Reef Choking on Pollutants
Attempts to protect the Great Barrier Reef are failing. A report released Monday by the government in Australia says water quality in the Great Barrier Reef is far below what it should be. It showed that pollution have decreased, but not enough to reach environmental targets.
Sediment (沉淀物) and chemicals can weaken coral, hurting its ability to feed and grow. Coral are live animals that take root in the ocean floor, but they are not plants. Reefs are the hard skeletons (骨架) left at the bottom of the sea by small marine creatures called polyps (珊瑚虫). The polyps then form the larger structure of a reef. Corals also are some of the most diverse ecosystems on the entire planet. They can make a home for invertebrates, crustaceans, fish, and sea snakes.
Steve Miles is Queensland’s environment minister. He says the research shows the Reef needs more protection. “Over that five-year period, we did see some progress towards our targets. Sediment is down 12 percent and pesticides (杀虫剂) loads are down 30 percent. But what is most disturbing is that these results are far from our targets. Progress towards these targets flat-lined in the period 2013-2014. If one of my kids came home with a report card like this, I would be a bit disappointed. There is more bad news here than good news. ” said Steve Miles.
The report also found that fewer than one-third of Queensland’s sugar plantations used techniques to reduce the use of pesticides. Only 28 percent of land managers managed their land properly. They had reduced harmful water run off to protect the health of the Reef. The official target is a 90 percent reduction in pesticide use within three years.
Scientists at the University of Queensland and the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences published their findings Wednesday, July 18 in the journal Science Advances. It found between 1992 and 2010, the recovery rate dropped by an average of 84 percent. But there is hope. The study also found some corals can recover quickly if “acute and chronic stressors” are lessened.
Meanwhile, the Australian government released its updated reef protection plan Friday. It clearly states global temperatures must be stopped from rising in order to save the world’s largest living structure.
1. What does the underlined word “They” in Paragraph 2 refer to?| A．Diverse ecosystems. | B．Sediment and chemicals. |
| C．Reefs and corals. | D．Small sea creatures. |
| A．He is satisfied with the protection of the Reef. |
| B．He thinks that the Reef needs more protection. |
| C．He feels angry with what his children did. |
| D．He is very happy about the Reef progress protection. |
| A．Not increase significantly. | B．Disappear. |
| C．Speed up. | D．Miss the chance. |
| A．were tough to deal with | B．failed to manage their land properly |
| C．reduced the amount of harmful water | D．were eager to quit pesticide soon |
| A．A news report. | B．A science fiction. |
| C．A book review. | D．A guide book. |
2 . We recognize our friends’ faces. And we’re not alone. Many social animals can identify individuals of their own species by features of their faces. That's important, because they need to be able to change their behavior depending on who they meet. And a recent research has shown that some species of monkeys, birds, and domesticated (家养的) animals can even tell different faces apart by looking at photographs alone.
Ethologist Léa Lansade of the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment did an experiment to find out how well horses can recognize individual people in photographs.
She and her team first taught the horses how to “choose” between two side-by-side pictures by touching their noses to a computer screen. The horses were then shown photos of their present keeper alongside faces of unfamiliar humans. They had never seen photos of any of the people before. The horses correctly identified their current keeper and ignored (忽视) the stranger’s face about 75%of the time. In fact, even though the horses didn't get it right every single time, they were at least as correct in picking out their earlier keeper as they were at identifying their present one.
The results suggest that not only can horses differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar human faces, they also naturally understand that photographs are two dimensional representations (二维呈现) of real life, without any other intimations such as smell or sound. And they’re even better at this than our oldest animal parter, the domestic dog.
In addition, horses seem to have a strong long-term memory for human faces, like their long lifespan and history of domestication. In future experiments, the researchers would like to test whether looking at photos of people that they have had bad experiences with in the past might cause horses to act anxious or even avoidance. So maybe think twice before doing anything that might give a horse a long face.
1. Why did researchers show the horses both the keeper’s photos and the strangers’?| A．To find out what horses would do in the experiment. |
| B．To see why horses could recognize the keeper in the pictures. |
| C．To test whether horses could recognize the strangers in pictures. |
| D．To study to what degree horses can make out different people in pictures. |
| A．Clues. | B．Differences. |
| C．Photographs. | D．Senses. |
| A．Whether horses can live longer than other animals. |
| B．Whether horses can remember human's faces for a long time. |
| C．Whether horses can show their emotions at the sight of photos. |
| D．Whether horses are better at recognizing photos than other animals. |
| A．To talk about animals’ species. |
| B．To explain animals’ facial features. |
| C．To show animals’ behaviour for adaptation. |
| D．To introduce animals’ ability to identifying faces. |
3 . By the end of the century, if not sooner, the world’s oceans will be bluer and greener thanks to a warming climate, according to a new study.
At the heart of the phenomenon lie tiny marine microorganisms (海洋微生物) called phytoplankton. Because of the way light reflects off the organisms, these phytoplankton create colourful patterns at the ocean surface. Ocean colour varies from green to blue, depending on the type and concentration of phytoplankton. Climate change will fuel the growth of phytoplankton in some areas, while reducing it in other spots, leading to changes in the ocean’s appearance.
Phytoplankton live at the ocean surface, where they pull carbon dioxide (二氧化碳) into the ocean while giving off oxygen. When these organisms die, they bury carbon in the deep ocean, an important process that helps to regulate the global climate. But phytoplankton are vulnerable to the ocean’s warming trend. Warming changes key characteristics of the ocean and can affect phytoplankton growth, since they need not only sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow, but also nutrients.
Stephanie Dutkiewicz, a scientist in MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, built a climate model thatprojectschanges to the oceans throughout the century. In a world that warms up by 39C, it found that multiple changes to the colour of the oceans would occur. The model projects that currently blue areas with little phytoplankton could become even bluer. But in some waters, such as those of the Arctic, a warming will make conditions riper for phytoplankton, and these areas will turn greener.” Not only are the quantities of phytoplankton in the ocean changing,” she said, “but the type of phytoplankton is changing.”
And why does that matter? Phytoplankton are the base of the food web. If certain kinds begin to disappear from the ocean, Dutkiewicz said, “it will change the type of fish that will be able to survive.” Those kinds of changes could affect the food chain.
Whatever colour changes the ocean experiences in the coming decades will probably be too gradual and unnoticeable, but they could mean significant changes. “It’ll be a while before we can statistically show that the changes are happening because of climate change,” Dutkiewicz said, “ but the change in the colour of the ocean will be one of the early warning signals that we really have changed our planet.”
1. What directly makes the change of the ocean’s appearance?| A．The increase of phytoplankton. |
| B．The way light reflects off the organisms. |
| C．The type and concentration of phytoplankton. |
| D．The decline of phytoplankton. |
| A．Control. | B．Use. |
| C．Predict. | D．Discover. |
| A．Phytoplankton are sensitive to the ocean’s warming trend. |
| B．Phytoplankton absorb carbon dioxide at the bottom of the ocean. |
| C．Oceans with more phytoplankton may appear bluer |
| D．Data have been found to show the change in the colour of the ocean |
| A．To introduce a new method to study phytoplankton. |
| B．To explain the effect of climate change on oceans. |
| C．To analyze the consequences of ocean colour changes. |
| D．To analyze the composition of the ocean food chain. |
4 . As part of doing business globally and operating across culture, we often want to predict how others are going to behave. Our typical heuristic(启发式教育法) is culture. We learn about how Germans or Chinese or Italians are different from us---how they think or act or even express emotions in a different way — and we feel like we’ve done our homework. We feel prepared.
But we’re surprised to discover that the person in question acts in a completely different way from how we expected. Instead of being silent, our colleague from Asia is actually quite loud and confrontational( 对抗的). Instead of behaving aggressively, our Israeli supplier is mild-mannered. We wonder where we went wrong.
The problem comes from the questions we ask ourselves. The obvious one is “What culture does this person come from?” This question is not important. National cultural differences do matter. But culture isn’t everything. It turns out that if we ask ourselves a better, more focused set of questions, we’ll be far more successful at predicting how people will act.
Question 1: What do you know about the region? Just as it is useful to learn something about culture norms(标准) when diagnosing(诊断、判断) your situation, it is good practice to learn something about region norms. For example, if you were doing business in the America and assumed that people from the Northeast would be similar to people from the Midwest, you might be surprised.
Question 2: What do you know about the company or industry? Like countries and regions, companies and industries also have distinctive cultures. How you would interact with a boss at Google is quite different from how you would interact with a boss at Microsoft or Intel.
Finding the answers to these questions before you cross cultures can be tricky, but it is possible. One of the best ways to anticipate what you’ll encounter is by talking with expats: people similar to you who have studied, lived, or worked in the country in question. These individuals will often give you some insight into these nuances.
1. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?| A．When trading globally, we can predict cultural differences successfully. |
| B．Israeli supplier should be mild-mannered instead of being ill-tempered. |
| C．People don’t care about what culture this person comes from? |
| D．It is not necessarily reasonable to stress national cultural differences only. |
| A．learning culture norms is more important than learning region norms |
| B．Asian people are actually quite loud and confrontational (对抗的) |
| C．Trying to know about the region is as necessary as knowing about cultural norms. |
| D．Doing business across cultures differs from doing business in the local region. |
| A．Employees | B．Immigrants |
| C．Experts | D．Employers |
| A．How to diagnose cultural differences. |
| B．How to get along with a person from different cultures. |
| C．How to manage cross- cultural corporation. |
| D．How to learn about a distinctive culture. |
5 . It is well-known that twins are closer to each other than most brothers and sisters -- after all, they probably spend more time with each other. Parents of twins often notice that they develop special ways of communicating: they invent their own words and one can often finish the other's sentence. In exceptional(例外) circumstances(情况), this closeness becomes more extreme: they invent a whole language of their own, as in the case of Grace and Virginia Kennedy from Georgia in the USA, who communicated so successfully in their own special language that they did not speak any English at all until after they started school.
However, these special relationships are the result of lives spent almost entirely in each other's company. What happens when twins do not grow up together, when they are separated at birth for some reason? Are they just like any other strangers, or are there still special similarities between them? Professor Tom Bouchard of the University of Minnesota set out to find the answer to this question. He traced(追踪) sixteen pairs of twins, who were adopted by different families when they were babies, and often brought up in very different circumstances. Each twin was then interviewed about every small detail of their life.
The results of this research make a surprising reading. Many of the twins were found to have the same hobbies, many have suffered the same illnesses, and some have even had the same type of accident at the same point in their lives. One pair of middle-aged women arrived for their first meeting in similar dresses, another pair were wearing similar jewellery. The most incredible (unbelievable) similarities are to be found in the case of Jim Springer and Jim Lewis from Ohio in the USA. The story of the 'Jim Twins' made headline news across USA. Born to an immigrant woman in 1939, and adopted by different families at birth, both babies were named Jim by their new parents.
But what can be the explanation for these remarkable similarities? Is it all pure coincidence, or is the explanation in some way genetic? Research into the lives of twins is forcing some experts to admit that our personalities may be at least partly due to 'nature'. On the other hand, analysts are also anxious to emphasis(强调) that incredible coincidences do happen all the time, not just in the lives of twins.
1. The case of Grace and Virginia Kennedy (Para. 1) is to show that ______.| A．twins communicate with each other in an unusual way. |
| B．twins are more likely to suffer from speaking problems. |
| C．most twins have exceptional abilities to invent a new language. |
| D．twins won’t have an effective communication until they go to school. |
| A．what will happen if twins spend lives entirely in the same company. |
| B．why the 16 pairs of twins have been adopted by different families. |
| C．whether separated growing up has effect on twins’ special similarities. |
| D．when the special similarities come into being during their growing up. |
| A．Book. | B．Explanation. |
| C．Literature. | D．Measurement. |
| A．depend on what the twins enjoy and suffer from. |
| B．can not be proved or accepted by all the experts. |
| C．result from the twins’ growing up and development. |
| D．are not closely linked with where the twins are raised. |
6 . Saving the giant panda from extinction isn't just good for the bears-it's good for the bottom line too,a new analysis by an international team of scientist shows.
The results,published in the journal Current Biology,highlight the economic benefits that they say go hand in hand with environmental conservation. In order to protect giant pandas,the government must protect their forests,which provide a host of often-under appreciated services to the communities that live in and around them. For example,forests allow for the growing of crops and the grazing(放牧）of animals,store clean fresh water and supply firewood,lumber(木材）and many useful plants.They manage storm runoff and help prevent erosion(侵蚀）。
The pandas themselves also hold enormous cultural value that has risen rapidly in recent decades among Chinese residents,the study also points out. "From 1980 to 2010,the cultural values of pandas and their reserves almost doubled,largely driven by tourism use,rising 500-fold from 1980 to 2010, "they said.
Taking all of these factors into account,the scientists calculated a total economic value of Approximately $2. 6 billion in 2010 in China. Keep in mind,the costs of preserving panda habitat at current levels come to about$255 million. The study authors said that including the global cultural Value of the animals would increase the total economic value to $6. 9 billion per year-or about 27 times the cost of habitat preservation.
The researchers also noted that the investment in panda habitat has improved the living conditions of local residents. They pointed to data from the Chinese Statistical Yearbook showing that the annual income in Sichuan, Shanxi and Gansu provinces,which sit next to panda reserves,rose by an average of 56%from 2000 to 2010. Farmers in counties within these provinces that were next to the panda reserves saw their annual incomes rise by 64%,on average.
The findings provide a promising example of how conservation efforts can pay off,and they could be applied to many other threatened and endangered species,the study authors said.
1. What does the underlined words "bottom line"refer lo in the first paragraph?| A．Moral standard. | B．Economic profits. |
| C．Overall development. | D．Environmental conservation. |
| A．Less farmland. | B．More foreign trade. |
| C．More forest fires. | D．Better farming conditions, |
| A．26. | B．10. |
| C．4. | D．3. |
| A．Protecting pandas takes great efforts. |
| B．Pandas are a major tourism attraction in China. |
| C．Conservation of pandas is economically rewarding. |
| D．Pandas make great contributions to the environment. |
7 . 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. |
8 . Traveling with kids is 90 percent reminding yourself to live in the moment and 10 percent making up your mind to never again leave your house.
I have an uncanny ability to forget this as soon as we return home from a trip and I've finished washing piles of dirty clothes in our luggage and cleaning all the messy caused by the kids. Extremely tired and annoyed, I would actually begin to miss the place we just left!
Family travel is like childbirth, I suppose. Painful, loud, messy, sort of awful, actually, but also wonderful. And you remember only the wonderful—until you’re back on a plane and your kids are fighting over who gets the aisle seat. Then you remember the bad stuff.
Last weekend, my kids and I flew to Texas for a trip we would have nothing to complain(抱怨) about—big hotel, wonderful view.
And yet—we found things to complain about. The pool was bigger in that other hotel! Why do you get to shower first? They call this coffee?! Luckily, I’ve learned to put my metaphorical coat of armor (盔甲) on as soon as we land somewhere, and it forces complaints to bounce off me and land in a pile at my feet.
For three days, genuine fun was had and annoying complaints were heard and ignored. Until it was time to catch a plane and fly home.
Unfortunately, our flight was canceled. We spent hours finding a hotel room. We hit the hotel pool before bed and swam well into the night, my kids making up songs and laughing so hard at their silly lyrics (歌词) and their crazy good fortune to be swimming at 10: 30 on a school night.
And that was when it hit me that family travel is all those things I said before but it’s also a lot more. It’s taking your kids to parts of the world that will open their eyes and finding that actually, yours need opening too. It’s remembering that joy and memories are where you make them, not where you find them.
1. The underlined word “uncanny” in Paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to .| A．unknown. | B．uncertain. |
| C．unexpected. | D．unusual. |
| A．they both cause financial trouble and pain. |
| B．they are both hard as well as rewarding. |
| C．childhood memories come flooding back when they travel. |
| D．both of them need many preparations. |
| A．she tries to deal with the complaints more wisely and properly. |
| B．she turns those annoying complaints into a means to educate kids. |
| C．she has improved her language skills when handling the complaints. |
| D．she has succeeded in escaping kids’ fighting thanks to the armor. |
| A．family vacation benefits her kids as well as her. |
| B．joy and memories should be created rather than discovered. |
| C．the most unforgettable memory for her is about the complaints. |
| D．she has to spend some time on housework after the family vacation. |
9 . It’s normal for teens to want to stay connected with friends and social circle, but what about that happening in the middle of the night? The Journal of Youth Studies recently published new research showing that one in five teens from 12 to 15 regularly wake to spend all night on social media (社会媒体). Not surprisingly, the research also showed that these social night owls were three times more likely than others to feel tired at school and that girls were more likely than boys to be called to office.
The blue light produced by cell phones and computers makes the brain to stay awake, so it's easy to see why a teen might be up all night. A study in Psychological Science showed the same brain reaction: when teens saw large numbers of “likes” on their posts, they stayed awake with excitement as if they had eaten chocolates or won money. Besides not catching up on sleep and interrupting their sleep cycle, teens may never fully enter deep sleep that may be responsible for brain development and learning.
Considering about 72 percent of children from 6 to 17 sleep with some electronic media in their bedrooms, parents need to set rules sooner rather than later.
“Providing access (使用机会) to social media is a favor that children can earn and also lose,” Janie Feldman, an expert who treats sleep disorders (紊乱), reminds parents, “The bad effect is clear. So teens and parents should discuss and agree on its use, timing and access. When teenagers agree to the rules, it’s easier for parents to control how much time they use the phones or computers.”
1. What does the underlined part “night owls” in paragraph 1 refer to?| A．Girls often called to office. |
| B．Teens who stay up late on social media. |
| C．Teens who are busy with their homework at night. |
| D．Boys regularly waking in the middle of the night. |
| A．They are too excited to go to sleep. |
| B．They fall asleep easily and happily. |
| C．They are too excited to go to school. |
| D．They decide to make more good friends. |
| A．Making rules about media access together with their children. |
| B．Getting their children to do homework through computers. |
| C．Encouraging their children to stay connected with online friends. |
| D．Stopping their children from using cell phones. |
| A．Deep sleep makes a big difference to brain development. |
| B．Kids are trying to win back the trust of their parents. |
| C．Social media may have a bad effect on all kinds of people. |
| D．Social media may cause teens’ sleep disorders. |
10 . Over the past half-century, North America has lost more than a quarter of its entire bird population, or around 3 billion birds.
“We saw this great net loss across the entire bird community,” says Ken Rosenberg, a scientist in Ithaca, N.Y. “But we also knew that other bird populations were increasing. And what we didn’t know is whether there was a net change.”
Common birds with decreasing populations include dark-eyed juncos and red-winged blackbirds, says Rosenberg. Grassland birds have suffered a 53% decrease, and more than a third of the shorebird population has been lost. Bird populations that have increased include raptors (猛禽), like the bald eagle, and waterfowl.
“The numbers of ducks and geese are larger than they’ve ever been, and that’s not an accident,” says Rosenberg. It’s because hunters who mainly want to see healthy waterfowl populations for sportful hunting have raised their voices.
“People are doing a wonderful effort to try and understand our bird populations with a lot of uncertainty, but the actual systems that we have in place to try and answer really tough questions like this are really far short of what we need,” Ted Simons in North Carolina State University says.
“In all, the conclusions weren’t necessarily surprising,” says Kristen Ruegg, a biologist at Colorado State University. There have been hints (暗示) that the loss was this large from all kinds of sources over the past few years. But in most cases, these were species-specific records of local extinctions or models of projected losses, resulting from things like climate change. This really sort of wakes people up to the idea that this is happening.
Elise Zipkin, a quantitative ecologist at Michigan State University, says the loss can be a big problem. “Just because a species hasn’t gone extinct (灭绝) or isn’t even necessarily close to extinction, it might still be in trouble,” she says. We need to be thinking about conservation (保护) efforts for that.”
1. Which of the following becomes more than before?| A．Dark-eyed juncos. | B．The bald eagle. |
| C．Grassland birds. | D．The shorebirds. |
| A．To hunt for fun. | B．To provide rich foods. |
| C．To escape net loss. | D．To keep people healthy. |
| A．Extra. | B．Interesting. |
| C．Difficult. | D．Official. |
| A．Bird loss can be a big problem. | B．Climate change causes part of bird loss. |
| C．Protecting birds is quite necessary. | D．What is happening is worth considering. |
| A．By giving examples. | B．By showing ideas. |
| C．By explaining numbers. | D．By providing research results. |
