A.J. shut the door of the truck. “Ready，” he said. His dad started the truck. It was six o'clock and freezing, but the strong morning sun promised warmer temperatures. It had been colder than normal over the past week, and the ground and ponds were already frozen.
“After we check on the cows，” Dad said, “you should have some time to practice roping.” A.J. wanted to enter the rodeos(竞技表演) in which cowboys rode wild horses, and caught cattle with ropes.
The best professionals could break from the gate on horseback, rope a calf(小牛), and hogtie the calf in less than ten seconds. So far, A.J. needed nearly a minute and a half, but he’d only been at it a few months.
The truck bounced down the dirt road. In a few minutes, they turned through the field gate. A.J. pulled a pair of telescopes(望远镜). The black spots of cows on the far hill took shape. The cows gathered around the pond. A.J. guessed they wanted the water locked under the ice. The windmillpowered water pumps sometimes froze, leaving the cows with nothing to drink.
As they reached the top of the hill, they heard extremely frightened shouts from one cow and an answering bellow from another. Dad stopped the truck, and he and A.J. stared at the frozen pond anxiously.
A calf lay on the ice in the middle of the pond. A cow, no doubt the calf’s mother, stood onshore, shouting desperately. The calf struggled to get up but slipped and fell each time.
Suddenly, the morning sun seemed warmer. Too warmer. A.J. knew that the situation was urgent. If the calf lay there too long, she could fall through the ice and drown.
Dad eased the pickup down the hill and stopped at the edge of the pond. “No telling how long she’s been there，” he said.”The ice could be about to melt through. I don’t think we can risk it.”
“But, Dad...” Dad shook his head. “It’s just not safe.”
Paragraph 1:
A.J. watched the calf, whose eyes were wide with fright.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Paragraph 2:
It would be just like rodeo practice, A.J. thought, trying to stay calm.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
2 . For as long as we’ve known about it, humans have searched for a cure for cancer. Across the world, countless amounts of time and money have been spent on researching a way to stop this terrible disease. But now, it seems like the answer could have been inside our own bodies the whole time.
Recently, the Food and Drug Administration(FDA) in the US, a government agency that’s responsible for healthcare, approved a new form of gene therapy(疗法) that could mean the end of a certain type of cancer.
The therapy allows scientists to “train” the immune(有免疫力的) cells of sick patients to fight leukemia(白血病) — a form of blood cancer that mostly affects young people.
The exciting new treatment works by removing healthy immune cells from the patient, known as T-cells, which are then changed to be able to “hunt down” cancer cells.
The cells are then put back into the patient before they begin to get rid of the patient’s leukemia over time, similar to how the body fights off other illnesses.
“This is truly an exciting new day for cancer patients,” Louis J. DeGennaro, president of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, said in a news release.
Up until now, a long and painful marrow transplant(骨髓移植) was the only option for many leukemia patients.
In this procedure, healthy blood cells are taken from a donator and placed into the sick patient, who also has to go through chemotherapy (化疗) to allow their body to adjust to the new cells.
But with a recovery rate of around 83% — according to a news release published by the FDA — it’s hoped that the days of painful trips to the hospital, or even death, are over for leukemia sufferers.
“We’re entering a new frontier in medical innovation(创新) with the ability to reprogram a patient’s own cells to attack a deadly cancer,” FDA representative Scott Gottlieb said in the release. “New technologies such as gene and cell therapies hold the potential to transform medicine and our ability to treat and even cure many incurable illnesses.”
1. What is the author’s main purpose in writing the passage?| A．To compare different ways of curing leukemia. |
| B．To report on a breakthrough in cancer treatment. |
| C．To explore the potential of gene and cell therapies. |
| D．To show scientists’ efforts in search of a cure for cancer. |
| A．By using changed T-cells to destroy cancer cells. |
| B．By replacing sick blood cells with healthy ones. |
| C．By removing sick blood cells during marrow transplant. |
| D．By using chemotherapy to improve the patient’s immune system. |
| A．It can save them many more trips to the hospital. |
| B．It can improve their ability to fight off all kinds of cancer. |
| C．It can give them a better chance of survival and recovery. |
| D．It can reduce their pain in the process of marrow transplant. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Optimistic. | C．Worried. | D．Casual. |
