1 . Chemists in mid-1500s Nuremburg had discovered that bird droppings were a rich source of saltpetre, a vital ingredient in the making of gunpowder. As a consequence pigeon droppings used to be almost as valuable as silver. Understandably, by the middle of the following century, there were an estimated 26,000 pigeon houses in Britain.
The practice of keeping the pigeon was introduced to Britain by the Romans. The Normans kept pigeons in specially constructed niches in castles and courtyards. When the pigeon houses in Britain were built, they were a vital source of meat and feathers. The latter were particularly prized as a source of warmth. Droppings gathered from the pigeon houses was a rich fertilizer, too.
The pigeon house was not only a source of food and revenue in medieval times, but also a status symbol. The privilege of building or owning pigeon houses was reserved for the rich. Towards the end of her rule, Queen Elizabeth I decided to open pigeon-breeding to the free market. Then, pigeon houses sprang up all over the countryside.
The number of pigeon houses across the British countryside was not universally welcomed. Each day the birds flew off to feed themselves on other people’s crops. By the middle of the 17th century, the problem of pigeons was so great that people feared that the destructive pigeons would turn England into a desert.
Luckily, an agricultural revolutionary, Charles Townsend, had introduced the turnip to Britain around 1700, keeping farm livestock fat enough to eat through the dark winter months. Later, vast quantities of natural saltpetre were discovered in Chile and California. Keeping pigeons went out of fashion.
Now, the homeless pigeons flew off to find somewhere else to live. One species discovered that Britain’s rapidly growing towns and cities were full of the sort of rock-faces they liked to rest on—humans called them “buildings”. Over time they’d become the wild urban pigeon that we know today.
1. Which of the following people in Britain would be least likely to keep pigeons in the late Middle Ages?| A．Fruit growers. | B．The nobles. | C．Gunpowder makers. | D．The miners. |
| A．Farm livestock used to be too thin for lack of food in the dark months in Britain. |
| B．Townsend revolutionized agricultural development in Britain around 1700. |
| C．The Normans set an undesirable example of raising pigeons for the British people. |
| D．England was once faced with the threat of disappearance because of pigeons. |
| A．Because people think it a sign of status and keep them to show off. |
| B．Because pigeons like to stay on hard surfaces which can be abundantly found in cities. |
| C．Because pigeons find enough food supplies when tourists and citizens feed them in squares. |
| D．Because the government encourages pigeon raising as a profitable investment. |
| A．A brief history of pigeon houses in Britain. |
| B．From function to fashion — the pigeon houses in Britain. |
| C．Profitable pigeon houses in Britain. |
| D．Pigeon houses in Britain as valuable as silver. |
2 . There was a time when we thought humans were special in so many ways. Now we know better. We are not the only species that feels emotions, or follows a moral code. Neither are we the only ones with personalities, cultures and the ability to design and use tools. Yet we have all agree that one thing, at least, makes us unique: we alone have the ability of language.
It turns out that we are not so special in this aspect either. Key to the revolutionary reassessment of our talent for communication is the way we think about language itself. Where once it was seen as an unusual object, today scientists find it is more productive to think of language as a group of abilities. Viewed this way, it becomes apparent that the component parts of language are not as unique as the whole.
Take gesture, arguably the starting point for language. Until recently, it was considered uniquely human - but not any more. Mike Tomasello of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and others have collected a list of gestures observed in monkeys and some other animals, which reveals that gestures plays a large role in their communication. Ape(猿) gestures can involve touch, vocalising or eye movement, and individuals wait until they have another ape’s attention before making visual or auditory gestures. If their gestures go unacknowledged, they will often repeat them.
In an experiment carried out in 2006 by Erica Cartmill and Richard Byrne from the University of St Andrews in the UK, they got a person to sit on a chair with some highly desirable food such as banana to one side of apes and some undesirable food such as vegetables to the other. The apes, who could see the person and the food from their enclosures, gestured at their human partners to encourage them to push the desirable food their way. If the person showed incomprehension and offered the vegetables, the animals would change their gestures - just as a human would in a similar situation. If the human seemed to understand while being somewhat confused, giving only half the preferred food, the apes would repeat and exaggerate their gestures - again in exactly the same way a human would. Such findings highlight the fact that the gestures of the animals are not merely inborn but are learned, flexible and under voluntary control - all characteristics that are considered preconditions for human-like communication.
1. It is agreed that compared with all the other animals, only human beings ________.| A．own the ability to show their personalities |
| B．are capable of using language to communicate |
| C．have moral standards and follow them in society |
| D．are intelligent enough to release and control emotions |
| A．involve some abilities that can be mastered by animals |
| B．is a talent impossibly owned by other animals |
| C．can be divided into different components |
| D．are productive for some talented animals |
| A．Apes can use language to communicate with the help of humans. |
| B．Repeating and exaggerating gestures is vital in language communication. |
| C．Some animals can learn to express and communicate through some trials. |
| D．The preferred food stimulates some animals to use language to communicate. |
| A．Language involves gestures! | B．Animals language - gestures! |
| C．So you think humans are unique? | D．The similarity between humans and apes. |
The benefits of a degree are not obvious to people who live on this remote island. Families have a
Today two villages remain with a population of just 1,400. People there are used to the
4 . In the United States alone,over 100 million cell-phones are thrown away each year.Cell-phones are part of a growing mountain of electronic waste like computers and personal digital assistants.The electronic waste stream is increasing three times taster than traditional garbage as a whole.
Electronic devices contain valuable metals such as gold and silver.A Swiss study reported that while the weight of electronic goods represented by precious metals was relatively small in comparison to total waste,the concentration（含量）of gold and other precious metals was higher in So-called e-waste than in naturally occurring minerals.
Electronic wastes also contain many poisonous metals.Even when the machines are recycled and the harmful metals removed,the recycling process often is carried out in poor countries,in practically uncontrolled ways which allow many poisonous substances to escape into the environment.
Creating products out of raw materials creates much more waste material,up to 100 times more,than the material contained in the finished products.Consider again the cell-phone,and imagine the mines that produced those metals,the factories needed to make the box and packaging（包装）it came in.Many wastes produced in the producing process are harmful as well.
The U.S Environmental Protection Agency notes that most waste is dangerous in that"the production, distribution,and use of products-as well as management of the resulting waste-all result in greenhouse gas release." Individuals can reduce their contribution by creating less waste at the start-for instance,buying reusable products and recycling.
In many countries the concept of extended producer responsibility is being considered or has been put in place as an incentive（动机）for reducing waste.If producers are required to take back packaging they use to sell their products,would they reduce the packaging in the first place?
Governments' incentive to require producers to take responsibility for the packaging they produce is usually based on money.Why,they ask,should cities or towns be responsible for paying to deal with the bubble wrap（气泡垫）that encased your television?
From the governments' point of view,a primary goal of laws requiring extended producer responsibility is to transfer both the costs and the physical responsibility of waste management from the government and tax-payers back to the producers.
1. By mentioning the Swiss study,the author intends to tell us that .| A．the weight of e-goods is rather small |
| B．natural minerals contain more precious metals |
| C．E-waste deserves to be made good use of |
| D．the percentage of precious metals is heavy in e-waste |
| A．from producers to governments |
| B．from governments to producers |
| C．from individuals to distributors |
| D．from distributors to governments |
| A．The increase in e-waste. | B．The creation of e-waste. |
| C．The seriousness of e-waste. | D．The management of e-waste. |
5 . Racket, din, clamor, noise, whatever you want to call it, unwanted sound is America's most wide spread nuisance. But noise is more that just a nuisance. It constitutes a real and present danger to people's health. Day and night, at home, at work, and at play, noise can produce serious physical and psychological
The
Of many health hazards of noise, hearing loss is the most clearly observable and
Noise affects us throughout our lives. For example, there are
Why, then, is there not greater
| A．stress | B．consequence | C．influence | D．risk |
| A．identifying | B．rejecting | C．ignoring | D．emphasizing |
| A．case | B．relief | C．hatred | D．tension |
| A．annoyance | B．ignorance | C．frustration | D．grief |
| A．category | B．symptom | C．property | D．code |
| A．outcome | B．reason | C．effect | D．basis |
| A．particularly | B．traditionally | C．enormously | D．frequently |
| A．Therefore | B．Moreover | C．Actually | D．Nevertheless |
| A．accessible | B．renewable | C．measurable | D．available |
| A．resistance | B．exposure | C．opposition | D．objection |
| A．indications | B．clues | C．catalogues | D．distinctions |
| A．restricted | B．exposed | C．related | D．addicted |
| A．alarm | B．panic | C．expectation | D．suspicion |
| A．necessarily | B．especially | C．initially | D．conclusively |
| A．differentiate | B．deliberate | C．dismiss | D．discredit |
6 . He was wandering in a rice field of dreams.
Then Yuan Longping woke up, laughing.
The figures spoke for themselves.
For this he won the Medal of the Republic, China’s highest, and the World Food Prize. An asteroid was named after him. There was talk of the Nobel, too.
He was far happier in his short-sleeved work-shirts, out in his rice, or stripped off swimming in any wild river he could find, than in a tang suit in some conference hall.
| A．Nothing but the continuous development of his beloved country seemed to attract him |
| B．With his new hybrid rice the annual yield was 20-30% higher, so at least 60m more people could be fed every year. |
| C．His dreams focused on his people and his country, where all enjoyed food and wealth. |
| D．All that seemed just smoke to him. |
| E．The plants were taller than men. Each grain is as big as a peanut. |
| F．The rice plants he had tended for decades at Anjiang and then Changsha, sowing and nurturing them, visiting daily on his motorbike to inspect them, were not quite there yet. |
7 . The Water Angel
Even if you’ve never been to Phoenix, you know this about the place: it’s hot. From June to September, the temperature can easily turn the earth into a boiler.
Cullymore was on the mountain one day in 2015 when a British tourist died after being lost for nearly six hours in the July heat.
| A．Many people turn a blind eye to the warnings. |
| B．One hiker who was offered a precious bottle of water agrees. |
| C．Previous hikers have warned people not to risk their lives any more. |
| D．Those who feel like conquering the city’s famous Camelback Mountain must be crazy. |
| E．But that doesn’t stop hikers from attempting the 1.3-mile track to the top of the city’s famous Camelback Mountain. |
| F．That experience inspired him to start helping people who are dangerously unprepared to deal with Arizona’s unforgiving version of Mother Nature. |
In Venice, it is not uncommon to see tourists carry suitcases through waist-high water, or sit at tables in Piazza San Marco
We are used to thinking of Venice as a city in danger, a glorious relic of human creativity that is about to sink any day suddenly the end looks
People barely notice
In their art, the people of Venice are as happy on water as on land. Vittore Carpaccio's painting Hunting on the Lagoon shows young Venetians standing easily balanced in low-sided boats
The palaces
On Horseback Among the Eagle Hunters
| A. bond B. covered C. outwardly D. demanding E. famed F. currently G. deserted H. traditionally I. accessing J. extent K. tending |
Nine-year-old Dastan, the son of a Kazakh (哈萨克族) eagle hunter, rode his pony alongside mine, running effortlessly without a saddle (马鞍) and giggling at my attempts to show my pony some affection. Surrounding us was the vast,
I spent almost three years living and working in northern Iraq, where I
Deep in the Altai Mountains, the Kazakh people have for centuries developed a special
In recent generations, many Kazakh families have migrated from the countryside to the country’s urban areas. This is partly because of the difficulties in
Training and caring for golden eagles is just one aspect of an animal herder’s life. Others include training young horses,
10 . The ocean bottom - a region nearly 2.5 times greater than the total land area of the Earth - is a vast frontier that even today is largely unexplored and uncharted. Until about a century ago, the deep-ocean floor was completely inaccessible, hidden beneath waters averaging over 36, 000 meters deep. In complete darkness and subjected to intense pressures hundreds of times greater than at the Earth's surface, the deep-ocean bottom is an unfriendly environment to humans, in some ways as forbidding and remote as outer space.
Although researchers have taken samples of deep-ocean rocks and sediments (沉淀物) for over a century now, the first detailed global investigation of the ocean bottom did not actually start until 1968, with the beginning of the National Science Foundation's Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) . Using techniques first developed for the offshore oil and gas industry, the DSDP's drill ship, the Glomar Challenger, was able to maintain a steady position on the ocean's surface and drill in very deep waters, pulling out samples of sediment and rock from the ocean floor.
The Glomar Challenger completed 96 voyages in a 15-year research program that ended in November 1983. During this time, the vessel logged 600, 000 kilometers and took almost 20, 000 core samples of seabed sediments and rocks at 624 drilling sites around the world. The Glomar Challenger's core samples have allowed geologists to reconstruct what the planet looked like hundreds of millions of years ago and to calculate what it will probably look like millions of years in the future. Today, largely on the strength of evidence gathered during the Glomar Challenger's voyages, nearly all earth scientists agree on the theories of plate tectonics (板块构造学说) and continental drift that explain many of the geological processes that have come to shape the Earth.
The cores of sediment drilled by the Glomar Challenger have also produced information critical to understanding the world's past climates. Deep-ocean sediments provide a climatic record that stretches back for hundreds of millions of years, because they are largely isolated from the mechanical erosion (侵蚀) and the intense chemical and biological activity that rapidly destroy much land-based evidence of past climates. This record has already provided insights into the patterns and causes of past climatic change—information that may be used to predict future climates.
1. The author refers to the ocean bottom as a "frontier" in Paragraph 1 because it ______.| A．is an unknown territory | B．attracts courageous explorers |
| C．contains wide variety of life forms | D．is not a popular area for scientific research |
| A．It is an ongoing project. | B．It is a type of submarine. |
| C．It has gone on over 100 voyages. | D．It made its first DSDP voyage in 1968. |
| A．funded entirely by the gas and oil industry |
| B．an attempt to find new sources of oil and gas |
| C．composed of geologists from all over the world |
| D．the first extensive exploration of the ocean bottom |
| A．Biologists observed forms of marine life never before seen. |
| B．Information was revealed about the Earth's past climatic changes. |
| C．Two geological theories became more widely accepted by scientists. |
| D．Geologists were able to determine the Earth's appearance hundreds of millions of years ago. |
