1. What disaster hit Nah a yesterday?
| A．A typhoon. | B．A snowstorm. | C．An earthquake. |
| A．700. | B．500. | C．160. |
| A．Her schoolmate. | B．Her father. | C．The police. |
| A．Music. | B．Sports. | C．Weather. |
2 . Scientists have not found any signs of life on Mars yet,but they say a robotic vehicle called “Curiosity” is helping them learn a lot about the planet’s history and climate.
Curiosity landed on Mars in August 2012 after travelling through space for more than eight months.It was sent to Mars by scientists from NASA in the United States.
Curiosity is about the size of a car and has six wheels.It also has a robotic arm,cameras,and instruments that allow it to examine things it finds on the surface.Then it sends the information back to the earth.
Curiosity’s main task is to find out if anything could live on Mars,either now or in the past.On Nov.2,NASA scientists held a press conference (新闻发布会) to discuss what Curiosity had found in its first two months on Mars.
Curiosity has found soil that is similar to the sand formed by volcanoes (火山) on the earth.Scientists say that studying the minerals in Martian soil will help them understand what conditions were like on the planet in the past.Curiosity also found smooth stones like the ones found on river beds and seashores on the earth,where their rough edges have been worn down by water.Mars is very cold and dry now,but scientists say the smooth stones tell them that a river used to run through the place where they were found.
Curiosity has been testing the atmosphere around Mars for a type of gas called methane (甲烷),but so far it has not found any.On the earth,most methane is produced by plants or animals.Methane on Mars might indicate that some type of tiny plants or animals lived there.
Curiosity is the fourth robotic vehicle to be sent to Mars.It will continue to explore the planet for about two years.
1. Which of the following descriptions about Curiosity is TRUE?| A．It landed on Mars in January 2012. |
| B．It is small in size and has four arms. |
| C．It took over eight months to arrive in Mars. |
| D．It was sent to Mars by scientists from Russia. |
| A．there’s no air on Mars | B．Mars is warm and wet now |
| C．the soil on Mars is rich | D．there used to be water on Mars |
| A．smooth stones | B．rivers |
| C．robotic vehicles | D．volcanoes |
| A．some tiny animals once lived on Mars |
| B．there are no plants or animals on Mars now |
| C．the atmosphere around Mars is full of methane |
| D．Curiosity is designed to test the atmosphere around the earth |
| A．Humans benefit a lot by going to Mars. |
| B．Scientists will stop the research on Mars soon. |
| C．It is possible to build an earth-like environment on Mars. |
| D．A robotic vehicle helps scientists get useful information from Mars. |
3 . Bamboo is one of the nature's most surprising plants. Many people call this plant a tree, but it is a kind of grass.
Like other kinds of grass, a bamboo plant may be cut very low to the ground, but it will grow back very quickly. A Japanese scientist recorded one bamboo plant that grew almost 1.5 meters in 24 hours! Bamboo grows almost everywhere in the world except Europe. There are more than 1,000 kinds of bamboo that grow around the world on both mountains and plains (平原)．
Not all bamboo looks the same. Some bamboo plants are very thin. They may only grow to be a few centimeters wide while others may grow to more than 30 centimeters across. This plant also comes in different colors, from yellow to black to green.
Many Asian countries have been using bamboo for hundreds of years. They often use bamboo for building new buildings. As a matter of fact, the cables (绳索) that hold up the hanging bridge across the Min River in Sichuan are made of bamboo. The bridge has been in use for more than 1,000 years, and is still holding strong.
In Africa, engineers are teaching poor farmers how to find water using bamboo. These African countries need cheap ways to find water because they have no money，and their fields often die from no rain and no water. It seems that bamboo is one of the best things they can use. Bamboo pipes and drills (钻) can help to make the poor thirsty fields to be watered.
1. How is bamboo like grass?| A．It is thin and easy to cut. | B．It grows everywhere. |
| C．It grows quickly after its cut short. | D．It is short and green. |
| A．short | B．strong | C．thick | D．tall |
| A．most people call bamboo plant trees |
| B．bamboo plant may grow 4.5 meters in three days |
| C．the bamboo plant changes its colors when it grows |
| D．a bridge held by bamboo cable was built thousands of years ago |
| A．Because it is cheap. | B．Because it is colorful. |
| C．Because it drills fast. | D．Because it is used by Asians. |
4 . Most people can't wait for spring to arrive. It means flowers and warmer weather, all welcome changes from the dark winter days. Now we know that spring is arriving sooner in the Northern Hemisphere (北半球）than it was in the past, thanks to a study published in Scientific Reports.
For example, Los Angeles may experience spring only a day earlier than it did 10 years ago, but further north, in Seattle or Chicago, spring will arrive four days earlier. If you lived in the Arctic, spring could arrive 16 days earlier than it used to.
To determine how springtime is starting earlier, researchers looked at temperature records and 743 earlier studies over 86 years. These studies were about various biological indicators of spring, including birds migrating, plants flowering and amphibians（两栖动物）sounding their mating calls. Researchers then studied these data to see if they were occurring earlier. The result showed that not only is spring making itself known sooner but it's warmer, too.
Before you go out in a happy springtime hike, spring arriving sooner isn't so good. The livelihood of migratory birds, for instance, may be concerned.
“The food that birds rely on when they move to the north might not be reliable if the beginning of spring at these higher latitudes（维度）is expanded by future warming." said Eric Post. He is a fellow of the John Muir Institute and a polar ecologist.
Animals relying on Arctic sea ice, like polar bears, probably aren't crazy about things warming up sooner, either, because it impacts on their ability to hunt. Spring's early arrival could cause disorder in the delicate balance of various ecosystems~~not to mention how soon you'll need to buy allergy medicine.
1. We learn from the study published in Scientific Reports that.| A．spring comes earliest in Los Angeles |
| B．Los Angeles is further north than Seattle |
| C．spring comes 12 days earlier in Arctic than in Chicago |
| D．the further north a place lies, the sooner spring comes than before |
| A．comparing related data available |
| B．conducting research and test |
| C．calculating the exact length of each spring |
| D．observing animal's behavior all year round |
| A．Concerns over spring's early arrival. |
| B．Springtime emergence of creatures. |
| C．Early springtime's impacts on humans. |
| D．Disorder in the balance of ecosystems. |
| A．Medical Report. | B．Survival Stories. |
| C．Scientific Discoveries. | D．Natural environment |
5 . It was a lifesaving task as thrilling as any in the months-long battle against the wildfires that have torn through the Australian bush. But instead of a race to save humans or animals, a specialized team of Australian firefighters was bent on saving invaluable plant life: hidden groves (树林) of the Wollemi pine, a prehistoric tree species.
Wollemi pines peaked in abundance 34 million to 65 million years ago, before a steady decline. Today, only 200 of the trees exist in their natural environment. The trees are so rare that they were thought to die out until 1994. That’s the year when David Noble, an officer with the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service, came across a grove of large trees he didn’t recognize.
Noble brought back a few branches and showed them to other biologists and botanists. A month later, Noble returned to the grove with some scientists. It was then that they realized what they had found: “a prehistoric tree species that has outlived the dinosaurs.” the American Scientist explains. So when Australia’s wildfires started burning toward Wollemi National Park in recent weeks, firefighters from the parks and wildlife service put a carefully planned operation into action.
Large air tankers dropped fire retardant (阻燃剂) around the pines. Firefighters set up an irrigation (灌溉) system around the trees to keep them wet. “If the fire did go through, we wanted it to be a cool burn as opposed to a hot burn to give them the best chance of survival,” Kean said. The fire did sweep through the groves where these trees have somehow survived for millions of years. For a few days, the smoke was so thick that it wasn’t clear whether the plan had worked. At last the smoke eased off. A few trees had been burned by the flames, and two died. But the efforts had paid off. “Finally,” Kean said, “we were able to get in there and see that, thank goodness, the trees were saved.”
1. What do we know about Wollemi pines?| A．Scientists searched for them in the wild. |
| B．They used to grow in parts of Australia. |
| C．There were a considerable number of them long ago. |
| D．Firefighters and biologists cooperated to keep them alive. |
| A．been superior to. | B．been related to. |
| C．died earlier than. | D．existed longer than. |
| A．It was cool to drop retardant over the fire. |
| B．It wasn’t clear whether the trees were saved. |
| C．It helped the trees survive to keep them wet. |
| D．It worked best for the trees to keep a hot burn. |
| A．An investigation into Wollemi pines. |
| B．A hard-won battle against the wildfires. |
| C．Constructing a firefighting system for the trees. |
| D．Saving world’s rare pine species from wildfires. |
6 . The Great Barrier Reef has seen its third mass bleaching (大规模白化) event in five years. For the first time, all three sections of the Australian reef have been badly affected. The damage happened in February when the area was exposed to the hottest month of water temperatures on record.
Surveys conducted by Terry Hughes at James Cook University in Australia and his team during March made it known that 25 percent of the reef had been badly bleached and 35 percent bleached to some degree. The northern, central and southern sections of the reef were all hit.
Terrible bleaching also struck in 1998, 2002, 2016 and 2017, but was limited to one or two sections. This is the first time that all three sections have experienced terrible bleaching at exactly the same time, says Hughes. “It’s heartbreaking.”
Some of the damaged corals（珊瑚）will survive, including more heat-resistant（耐热的） species. But many others were probably “literally cooked” at the peak of the heatwave in early 2020, says Hughes. Others will die more slowly from stress over the next few months, he adds. Hughes has serious concern about the southern reef, which was mostly unaffected in former bleaching events and hasn’t developed the same heat resistance as other parts.
The 2016 and 2017 events killed about half the coral on the reef. It usually takes a decade for even fast-growing corals to recover, meaning the latest damage will seriously weaken the reef’s ability to recover, says Hughes. The high frequency of mass bleaching in recent years has been driven by climate change, which results from human activity and is steadily raising ocean temperatures. The only way to deal with the problem is to immediately reduce the release of greenhouse gases, says Hughes.
1. What can we learn from the surveys by Hughes and his team?| A．The entire reef has experienced bleaching. |
| B．The surveys about the reef are done once a year. |
| C．The hottest month of water temperatures is February. |
| D．60 percent of the reef suffered from serious bleaching. |
| A．Many corals will die slowly from stress. |
| B．It has been badly bleached for several years. |
| C．It hasn’t formed the ability to fight against the heat. |
| D．The government hasn’t shown any concern about it. |
| A．Surveys on reef bleaching. |
| B．A report on climate change. |
| C．An investigation into global warming. |
| D．Warning messages on human activities. |
7 . Many people believe that language belongs to human beings. However, cats have developed a language not for each other, but for the human beings who have them as pets.
When communicating with each other, cats "talk" with a system of signals. Their tails, rather than any kind of “speech", act as an important way to express themselves. They also touch each other to express their feelings. With other cats, they will use their voice only to express pain. Unbelievably, all of that changes when a human walks into the room. Cats use many different kinds of vocal （声音的）expressions when they communicate with a person. Since these vocal expressions are not used to communicate with other cats, it seems that cats have developed this "language" to communicate with their human owners.
This fact is shown more clearly when researchers are watching rooms that have only one cat and those with several cats. And when there is only one cat in the room, it is usually very vocal, since the only creature around with whom the cat can communicate is its owner. Cats with other cats, though, are much quieter. If they want to have a conversation, they only need go to other cats and communicate in their natural way.
Since cats have learned to meow（ 喵喵叫） for the only purpose of communicating with human owners, their owners should take the time to learn what their different meows mean. If an owner knows, to name just a few examples, which meow means the cat is hungry, which means the cat .wants to be petted, and which means the cat wants to have a little "conversation" , the relationship between cats and owners will be closer.
1. If a cat, together with other cats, finds its body hurts, it may express it with its _______.| A．tail | B．eyes |
| C．head | D．voice |
| A．Stop making any noise. | B．Use their tails to show love. |
| C．Begin .to use vocal expressions. | D．Stop communicating with each other. |
| A．Communicate more with cats. | B．Learn to meow in different ways. |
| C．Encourage cats to talk with each other. | D．Teach cats to understand human language. |
| A．The language of cats. | B．Advice on keeping pets. |
| C．Pets* different expressions. | D．Communication among cats. |
Having trouble recognizing one furry panda from another? A facial recognition app will make it easy
The giant panda was discovered 150 years ago and named in the city of Ya'an, Sichuan. It
9 . Sun bears usually live alone and are happy to spend most of their time by themselves when not looking for a mate. They spend their days in scarce of fruit, nuts, birds and insects in Southeast Asia's tropical forests.
Although sun bears mostly live alone, scientists recently discover they have developed a surprising social skill. They can make some facial expressions by mimicking other bears as a form of communication. Researchers studied 22 sun bears during natural social play at the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Center in Malaysia. Usually, this kind of skill is found in humans, gorillas（大猩猩）, some monkeys and even pet dogs. But until now, only humans and gorillas show the ability to exactly copy complex faces. The study found that sun bears, however, are just as good at it as humans and gorillas. This surprised researchers; not only do sun bears usually live alone, they also are not closely related to humans.
Sun bears have a black coat and a white or golden color on their mid-section. They live in trees and eat both plants and animals. Sun bears are the smallest of the world's eight bear species, and can grow to be up to 1.4 meters in height and 65 kilograms in weight. Although they live alone in the wild, the bears in the study often played gently with each other. Sometimes they played with faster actions and behaviors such as hitting and hitting.
Decry Taylor is a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Portsmouth in England. He is one of the writers of the study, which was published in Scientific Reports. Taylor said, "It seems that some forms of communication are much more widely shared among mammals than we previously thought. Let remains uncertain what messages the bears were sending to one another." But the facial copying might be a signal that they are ready to move from gentle to rougher play, Taylor suggested.
1. What does the underlined word "mimicking" in paragraph 2 mean?| A．Attacking. | B．Copying. |
| C．Teaching. | D．Escaping. |
| A．Sun bears are closely related to humans. |
| B．Gorillas live alone in the wild just like sun bears. |
| C．Gorillas have the ability to copy complex faces. |
| D．Sun bears are able to copy facial expressions. |
| A．They are the smallest mammals in the world. |
| B．They never communicate with each other. |
| C．They live in trees and feed on plants and animals. |
| D．They often hit and bite each other fiercely. |
| A．Mammals' communication forms need to be further explored. |
| B．What messages sun bears send to each other is certain. |
| C．Sun bears send messages mainly by copying other bears. |
| D．Sun bears prefer to play roughly with each other. |
10 . Many of us know about Russia’s Lake Baikal from our textbooks, or by listening to Chinese singer Li Jian’s hit song, Lake Baika. But over the past decade, the world’s deepest freshwater lake has been in the spotlight for an extreme sport.
Each March since 2005, about 150 people from around the world sign up for the Baikal Ice Marathon. They come to explore the lake’s breathtaking beauty and challenge themselves in unpredictable conditions. The 26-mile (41.84-kilometers) journey starts on the lake’s eastern shore. In March, the ice is a meter thick and iron-hard. Runners cross this frozen surface, finishing on the western side of the lake.
Known as the “blue eye of Siberia”, Lake Baikal has exceptionally clear waters. This means its ice is almost perfectly transparent (透明的). “Seen from above, a runner on the ice looks as if he or she were jogging through space.” The New York Times noted.
The landscape might be beautiful, but it’s also harsh. Strong winds blast (侵袭) across the lake and frostbite can occur within half an hour. Runners say the cold climate is what draws them. They want to test their limits.
“When you are in such an environment, you don’t have cars around you, and you don’t have the noise around. I think these extreme races allow you to be alone with nature.” Alicja Barahona, a 64-year-old runner from the US, told ABC news.
The location offers some strange and unique characteristics for this marathon. The finishing line is visible from the start, but the endless white offers no progress markers. The race also ends with little fanfare (隆重的欢迎). Tourists crowding the ice are mostly addicted to snapping selfies (自拍) and just ignore the runners.
For some runners, the absence of spectators makes the race more challenging, because it’s lonely. They must fight with themselves. “You are alone on Baikal. It is your race. You are alone with yourself. All you need to do is to defeat yourself.” Veronique Messina, a French runner, told the Telegraph.
1. What can we know about the Baikal Ice Marathon from the article?| A．It takes runners from the northern end to the southern end of the lake. |
| B．It involves extreme weather and beautiful scenery. |
| C．It attracts more and more participants each year. |
| D．It is about 26 kilometers in length. |
| A．Only men are allowed to run in this race. |
| B．The runners are often distracted by tourists. |
| C．There are many progress markers on the ice. |
| D．The runners can see the finishing line from the start. |
| A．The cold climate. | B．The long distance. |
| C．Noisy surroundings. | D．Loneliness. |
| A．5. | B．4. |
| C．3. | D．2. |
