1 . Animals might not be able to speak or master advanced language techniques, but they certainly have other ways of communicating. Whale song, wolf howls, frog cries — even the fast dance of the honeybee or the friendly waves of a dog’s tail — are among so many ways animals pass on information to each other and to other living things of the animal kingdom.
When it comes to hearing communication, not every member of a species is just alike. Animals in different places have often been sounding off in different dialects. For example, one study shows that blue whales produce different types of sounds depending on where they are from. Some bird species are the same way. And what about those birds that live on the border between territories (领地) of different songbirds? They are often able to communicate in a way accepted by each of their groups of neighbors.
Communication between different species can play important roles as well. One study shows that iguanas (鬣蜥蜴) do not communicate by making sound, but their well-developed ears help them hear well the warning calls of the flycatcher (a type of small bird). The two species have nothing in common except for the fact that they share a general habitat and enemies. So when an iguana hears a bird make a signal of danger for other birds, it probably knows to be watchful for arriving enemies, too.
However, as noise pollution has become a serious problem all across the globe, many animals are now under fire. Increased shipping traffic over the last century has greatly affected the spread of whale song around the ocean basin. Studies have found that songbirds, too, suffer from noisy city surroundings. Some species have had to change their singing styles, producing songs that sound louder, in order to be heard above the noise. Their new voices usually lead to stranger and somewhat worse styles of singing that female birds find decidedly less sexy.
1. What does the author mainly tell us in Paragraph 2?| A．Various dialects can also happen to the same animals. |
| B．Animals communicate with each other in different ways. |
| C．Different animals have different ways of communicating. |
| D．Animals from different places may make the same sound. |
| A．They communicate by singing. |
| B．They are born with poor hearing. |
| C．They often bring bad luck to humans. |
| D．They get along well with flycatchers. |
| A．they refuse to communicate with others |
| B．they cannot communicate effectively |
| C．they are now in danger of dying out |
| D．they don’t make a sound any more |
| A．find it hard to attract the opposite sex |
| B．produce more songs that sound sad |
| C．begin to communicate by dancing |
| D．can not find food easily any more |
| A．by raising questions |
| B．by following time order |
| C．by providing examples |
| D．by analyzing the data |
2 . Priscilla Ouchida’s “energy efficient” house turned out to be a horrible dream. When she and her engineer husband married a few years ago, they built a $100,000 three-bedroom home in California. Tightly sealed to prevent air leaks, the house was equipped with small double-paned windows and several other energy-saving features. Problems began as soon as the couple moved in, however. Priscilla’s eyes burned. Her throat was constantly dry. She suffered from headaches and could hardly sleep. It was as though she had suddenly developed a strange illness.
Experts finally traced the cause of her illness. The level of formaldehyde gas in her kitchen was twice the maximum allowed by federal standards for chemical workers. The source of the gas? Her new kitchen cabinets and wall-to-wall carpeting.
The Ouchidas are victims of indoor air pollution, which is not given sufficient attention partly because of the nation’s drive to save energy. The problem itself isn’t new. “The indoor environment was dirty long before energy conservation came along,” says Moschandreas, a pollution scientist at Geomet Technologies in Maryland. “Energy conservation has tended to accentuate the situation in some cases.”
The problem appears to be more troublesome in newly constructed homes rather than old ones. Back in the days when energy was cheap, home builders didn’t worry much about unsealed cracks. Because of such leaks, the air in an average home was replaced by fresh outdoor air about once an hour. As a result, the pollutants generated in most households seldom built up to dangerous levels.
1. It can be learned from the passage that the Ouchidas’ house ________.| A．is well worth the money spent on its construction |
| B．is almost faultless from the point of energy conservation |
| C．failed to meet energy conservation standards |
| D．was designed and constructed in a scientific way |
| A．Poor quality of the air inside. | B．Poor quality of the construction. |
| C．Gas leakage in the kitchen. | D．The newly painted walls. |
| A．relieve | B．accelerate | C．worsen | D．improve |
| A．Because indoor cleanliness was not emphasized. |
| B．Because energy used to be inexpensive. |
| C．Because environmental protection was given top priority. |
| D．Because they were technically unavoidable. |
| A．Energy Conservation | B．House Building Crisis |
| C．Air Pollution Indoors | D．Traps in Building Construction |
3 . It seems that we are one step closer to finding alien life and maybe a future home for humanity. Scientists from NASA have found a new solar system filled with planets that look like the Earth and could even support life.
The group of seven planets, which orbits a star called Trappist-1, is 39 light years away from the Earth in the constellation of Aquarius(水瓶座). And three of them are in the “habitable zone” - the area around a star where water is most likely to be found. This is important because water is necessary for life.
“This is an amazing planetary(行星的) system - not only because we have found so many planets, but because they are all surprisingly similar in size to the Earth”, astronomer Michael Gillon from the University of Liege in Belgium told The Independent.
Trappist-1 is a “dwarf star(矮星)” which is colder and shines dimmer than our sun. If a person were on one of the seven planets, everything would look a lot darker than usual. The amount of light heading toward our eyes would be about 200 times less than we get from the sun, according to The Independent.
Because of that, Trappist-1, together with many other dwarf stars, was never on the list of places where scientists looked for alien life. But Michael Gillon, lead researcher behind the discovery, decided to give dwarf stars a chance. He built a telescope in Chile to observe 60 of the closest dwarf stars, and it turned out that Trappist-1 was worthy of the effort.
The researchers hope that they can spend more time watching the newly found planets to learn more about them. Even though more research is needed before determining whether these planets could really support life, the discovery is still encouraging. It shows just how many Earth-size planets could be out there.
“[The discovery] gives us a hint that finding a second Earth is not just a matter of if, but when,” NASA scientist Thomas Zurbuchen told The Telegraph.
1. What can be learned about the new solar system from the text?| A．It contains a sun and planets like the Earth. |
| B．Seven planets move around Trappist-1. |
| C．Water can be found on all of the planets. |
| D．There are aliens on the planets. |
| A．The size of the planets is similar to that of the Earth. |
| B．It has the same number of planets as our solar system. |
| C．Scientists have found alien life in the new solar system. |
| D．The planets are more suitable for humans to live than the Earth. |
| A．It is impossible to find alien life on the planets of Trappist-1 and other dwarf stars. |
| B．Scientists did not find a good place to observe dwarf stars according to the passage. |
| C．Trappist-1 and other dwarf stars don't provide as much heat and light as our sun can. |
| D．Scientists have observed dwarf stars, but they failed to find the possibility of survival. |
| A．Stronger | B．More powerful | C．Less bright | D．Less beautiful. |
| A．Scientists have found a second Earth. |
| B．People will move to another Earth soon. |
| C．Scientists are planning to explore another planet. |
| D．A new solar system may become home for humans. |
4 . Created in the 1920s by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the architect who designed the red public telephone boxes, which can be seen all over the UK, are regarded as one of the most typical symbols of this country.
However, public phones have had their day despite their lovely appearance. While coin-operated and card-operated telephones are on the edge of extinction (灭绝), mobile phones are playing a significant role in people’s lives. Though they are more portable, flexible and widely used, mobile phones have their kryptonite: battery life. Instead of destroying the phone booths, a project was then promoted to recycle and reuse them. To meet the environment-friendly need, people are allowed to rent or use the red phone boxes in a new way. Therefore, they are making an unusual comeback.
When you take a walk down Tottenham Court Road in London and find your mobile phone in a low-battery condition, there happens to be a green option for you. The abandoned phone booths are being reused as free charging stations powered by solar energy.
Inside the booths, which are newly painted green, there are various adaptors (适配器) that can be connected to different brands and models of mobile phones. Just walk in, plug your phone in, and charge it up whenever it needs power. Most people would stay inside the boxes while they charge. Fully aware of this when starting the project, Solarbox can now reach a large number of people by displaying ads on solid equipment (实体设备). Its advertisers include well-known companies like Uber.
Apart from changing phone booths into solar-powered charging stations, other forms of changes can be found in and outside the UK. For example, there is medical equipment or minilibraries adapted from phone booths, while in America, thousands of phone booths have been transformed into wi-fi hot spots.
1. What does the underlined word “kryptonite” in Paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Interest. | B．Strength. |
| C．Weakness. | D．Feature. |
| A．New function. | B．Advertising profit. |
| C．People’s love. | D．Companies’ support. |
| A．Useless. | B．Troublesome. |
| C．Costly. | D．Convenient. |
| A．The future of the public phone. | B．The comeback of the phone boxes. |
| C．The rise and fall of the red boxes. | D．The ups and downs of the payphone. |
5 . My wife and I moved into our home nine years ago. We have a yard a “rock garden”. There the rocks appear to be just thrown up onto the dirt as if someone were in a hurry to finish. Very often when we have more flowers, Denise or I would plant them between the rocks, just to bring some color to the area.
Last summer I found, in the rock garden, a tiny little plant that I could not immediately recognize. I knew I didn’t plant it and Denise said she didn’t either. We decided to let it continue growing until we could find out what it was.
Weeks passed and as I made my way back to the strange plant, it appeared to be a sunflower. It looked thin and tall with only one head on it. I decided to baby it along and weed (除草) around it. As I pulled rocks from the area to get to the weeds, I noticed something unusual. The sunflower had not started where I saw it begin. It actually had begun under a big rock and grown under and around it to reach the sun.
If a tiny little sunflower didn’t let a big rock stand in its way of developing, we too have the ability to do the same thing. If we believe in ourselves like that little sunflower, we can reach where we aim to go and get what we need for growth.
We need to believe in ourselves knowing we have the ability to achieve our goals. Like the sunflower, it knew it had the ability to get over the rocks because it had faith in itself that it would succeed. Stand tall like the sunflower and be proud of who and what we are, then other things will begin to support us. We will find a way to go under or around any “rocks” in order to realize our goals.
1. The family planted flowers in the yard ________.| A．to attract visitors | B．to remove the rocks |
| C．to please their neighbors | D．to make the area colorful |
| A．to see how long it could live | B．to see how big it could grow |
| C．to find out what it actually was | D．to know if his wife had planted it |
| A．it was very thin and tall | B．it had only one head on it |
| C．it grew on top of a big rock | D．it began to grow under a rock |
| A．rocks cannot prevent us from success |
| B．we can get over difficulties if we trust ourselves |
| C．we should take good care of the rock gardens |
| D．sunflowers are able to grow everywhere |
| A．Stand Tall Like the Sunflower | B．The Sunflower and My Family |
| C．Being Proud of the Sunflower | D．The Secret of the Sunflower |
| A．Sunny. | B．Rainy. | C．Cloudy. |
7 . Wind power is a very clean source of energy. This is how wind power works. Wind makes windmills spin(旋转). When the windmills spin, they make electricity. Then we can use the electricity.
A lot of people think that wind power is new, but that’s not true. For thousands of years, people have used wind to sail boats and move water. We still do those things today, but these days we mostly use wind power to make electricity.
Wind power is a very popular source of energy. Most people think that we should use it more and more. First of all, it’s clean. Windmills don’t pollute the environment at all. Second, we can use wind power forever. After all, we will always have wind. Also, wind power is cheap, and it’s getting even cheaper.
A lot of people don’t understand wind power very well. They believe that there are problems with wind power, but many of those problems are not real. For example, some people say that windmills are dangerous for birds. They used to be true, but it isn’t true anymore. Old windmills killed birds because they spun very fast. New windmills spin slowly, and they aren’t dangerous for birds.
However, there are real problems with windmills. One problem is that many people think windmills are very ugly. This is a problem for people, because windmills are often in very pretty areas. Also, wind doesn’t blow all the time, so we can’t use wind power all the time. Finally, windmills are noisy.
Wind power is becoming more and more common. Right now, more than 80 countries use wind power. About 2.5 percent of the world’s power comes from the wind. For some countries, that number is a lot higher. Wind power gives Denmark more than 25 percent of its electricity.
1. Why DON’T new windmills kill birds? Because ________.| A．birds don’t fly near them | B．they are shorter than old windmills |
| C．they spin slowly | D．new windmills don’t spin |
| A．Over 1,000 years ago. | B．About 500 years ago. |
| C．About 80 years ago. | D．About 25 years ago. |
| A．We can’t use windmills at night |
| B．Windmills break all the time |
| C．Wind doesn’t blow all the time |
| D．Windmills are too expensive to use all the time |
| A．Most people don’t like it. | B．Denmark doesn’t use it. |
| C．It’s getting more expensive. | D．It’s getting cheaper. |
| A．Dangerous Birds | B．Popular and Clean Wind Power |
| C．Cheap and Clean Energy | D．Expensive Windmills |
8 . In order to save the rare northern spotted owl, biologists are doing something that goes against their heart — shooting another owl that’s rapidly taking over spotted owls’ territory (领地) across the northwest.
During the 1990s, a few barred owls showed up in an area of forests along Redwood Creek that was spotted owls’ territory. Barred owls, which reproduce much faster than spotted owls, now claim nearly all this territory. No spotted owls have nested here in recent years.
“It’s very annoying and there’s nothing that’s going to stop this expansion of barred owls,” says Diller, who has studied spotted owls for 25 years. The only possible solution forces him to go against his nature.
Diller’s a hunter, but he was taught never to kill a bird or anything you didn’t plan to eat. Diller remembers the first time he took a shot. “I was so nervous about what I was doing that I had to steady myself against a tree.” Over the past five years, Diller has killed more than 70 barred owls with a shotgun. “I hate it every time I go out and do it,” he says. People recognized that there’s a crisis for spotted owls and those barred owls are part of the cause of that crisis. So, they unwillingly attempted to kill the barred owls.
A group, Friends of Animals, doesn’t believe the government can make a moral argument for shooting an animal, even if it would benefit another animal.
“I don’t see that as being a solution. At some point you have to allow these species to either figure out a way to coexist or for nature to run its course,” says Michael Harris, director of Friends of Animals.
But Diller argues that is an absurd thing to say after all the way humans have changed nature. People cut down most of the forests that used to host barred owls. They made lots of changes to the Great Plains, which he believes helped the barred owl move across the continent.
For Diller, seeing rare spotted owls increase in the forests is worth the pain of shooting barred owls.
“Probably what makes spotted owls so special is the fact that they fly right up to you,” Diller says. “You get to interact with them. It’s almost impossible for a biologist not to fall in love with these birds — they’re just the neatest animal.”
1. According to the passage, spotted owls lost their habitats directly because ________.| A．the Great Plains was changed greatly |
| B．they are invaded by barred owls |
| C．people cut down many trees in the forests |
| D．people shot spotted owls a lot |
| A．he thought it wrong to do it |
| B．he planned to eat a barred owl |
| C．he was afraid of frightening owls |
| D．he used a shotgun for the first time |
| A．shooting an animal is a moral choice |
| B．humans shouldn’t interfere with natural selection |
| C．it is foolish to expect animals to coexist |
| D．thousands of barred owls should be killed |
| A．all people will love spotted owls at the first sight |
| B．biologists consider spotted owls the cleverest animals |
| C．spotted owls can be the favorite pets of people |
| D．people can get close to spotted owls |
| A．Removing barred owls is easier than thought |
| B．Spotted owls are becoming endangered birds |
| C．Another species is shot to save threatened owls |
| D．Shooting invasive animals is becoming effective |
| A．Sunny. | B．Rainy. | C．Cloudy. |
10 . The worldwide 20th century “Green Revolution”, which saw huge year-by-year increases in global grain yields (产量),was fueled by the development in the 1960s of new high-yielding dwarfed (矮小) varieties known as Green Revolution Varieties (GRVs).
These dwarfed GRVs are common all over the world in today’s wheat and rice crops. Because they are dwarfed, with short stems, GRVs devote relatively more resources than tall plants to the growth of grains rather than stems, and are less likely to suffer yield losses from wind and rain damage. However, the growth of GRVs requires farmers to use large amounts of nitrogen fertilizers (氮肥) in their fields. These fertilizers are costly to farmers and cause extensive damage to the natural environment. The development of new GRVs combining high yields with reduced fertilizer requirements is thus a global agricultural goal.
Researchers at the University of Oxford and the Chinese Academy of Science have discovered for the first time a gene that can help reach the goal. Comparing 36 different dwarfed rice varieties, the researchers identified a novel natural gene that helps increase the rate at which plants make use of nitrogen from the soil. This gene, called GRF4, can increase the amount of a protein (蛋白质) in plant cells. GRF4 is actually a promoter that encourages the activity of other genes—genes that promote nitrogen uptake (摄入). Professor Harberd said, “Increasing GRF4 levels could contribute to an increase in the grain yields of GRVs, especially at low fertilizer input levels.”
The researchers say the latest rice variety containing GRVs should now become a major target for farmers in increasing crop yields and fertilizer use efficiency, with the aim of achieving the global grain yield increases necessary to feed a growing world population at a reduced environmental cost. It is very urgent at the moment.
Professor Harberd added, “This study is an example of how studying fundamental science objectives can lead rapidly to potential solutions to global challenges. It shows how the discovery can enable chances for food security and future new green revolutions.”
1. What can we know about dwarfed GRVs?| A．They have higher yield and taller stems. |
| B．They are a “double-edged sword”. |
| C．They are environmentally friendly. |
| D．They can be easily affected by weather. |
| A．Increasing the rate of nitrogen use. |
| B．Producing cheaper nitrogen fertilizers. |
| C．Using fewer fertilizers to produce more grains. |
| D．Finding a gene to solve agricultural problems. |
| A．It promotes other genes' activity. |
| B．It increases the output of crops. |
| C．It takes in nitrogen from the soil. |
| D．It lowers fertilizer input levels. |
| A．Decreasing the amount of fertilizers required by GRVs. |
| B．Encouraging farmers to adopt the new rice variety. |
| C．Calling on farmers to use effective fertilizers. |
| D．Focusing on the improvement of GRF4. |
| A．GRVs—a potential measure to achieve global food security. |
| B．The influence of agricultural development on the environment. |
| C．The importance of raising public awareness of global issues. |
| D．GRF4—foundation for new green revolutions. |
