1 . Pre-school children who spend time together take on one another's personalities, a new research has found. The study shows that environment plays a key role in shaping people's personalities. While genetics still forms the central part of the human psyche (心理), the research finds that personality traits (特征) are "contagious" (传染的) among children. "Our finding flies in the face of common assumptions that personality can't be changed," said Dr. Jennifer Neal, co-author of the study.
The researchers studied the personalities and social networks of two pre-school classes for a full school year. One of the classes was a set of three-year-olds, and the other a set of four-year-olds. Children whose friends were hard-working or outgoing gradually took on these personality traits over time. Psychology expert Dr. Emily Dublin said kids are having a far bigger effect on each other than people may realize.
The new study is not the first to explore the contagious effects of personality traits. A 2015 psychology study found that rudeness at work can be contagious as it travels from person to person "like a disease". The study found that seeing a boss being rude to an employee was enough to cause people to be rude to those around them.
The researchers questioned 6,000 people on the social "climate" in their workplaces, which included offices, hotels and restaurants. They found 75 percent of those who took part said they had been treated rudely at least once in the past year. And the study also suggests that merely seeing other people being subjected to rudeness made it more likely that a person would treat their colleagues in the same way. Rudeness could include leaving someone off an invite to a company event, sending unkind emails, finding fault with others or failing to give praise.
Dr. Torkelson believes companies need to be more aware of the harm that rudeness in the workplace can do as it can damage the working environment. She said better training could help to fight against the problem.
1. What does the underlined part "flies in the face of" in Paragraph1mean?| A．Leads to. | B．Results from. |
| C．Goes against. | D．Agrees with. |
| A．Their parents. | B．Their friends. |
| C．The researchers. | D．The psychologists. |
| A．Ignoring the faults of co-workers. |
| B．Not sending emails to workmates. |
| C．Seeking praise from colleagues and bosses. |
| D．Not inviting a colleague to a company party. |
| A．One's personality is hard to change. |
| B．One's personality is shaped by genes. |
| C．One's personality traits can spread to others. |
| D．One's personality traits can change overnight. |
| A．a science report | B．a study guide |
| C．a school textbook | D．a technical journal |
2 . If you were bringing friends home to visit, you could show them the way. You know the landmarks—a big red house or a bus-stop sign. But what if you were swimming in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? Could you still find your way home? A loggerhead turtle（海 龟）could.
According to Dr. Ken Lohmann, loggerheads have a magnetic（磁力的）sense based on Earth’s magnetic field. It helps them locate the best spots for finding food and their home beaches.
Scientists already know that several other animals, such as whales and honeybees, can detect（探测到）magnetic fields. The difference between them and loggerheads, however, is the way they learn to use their magnetic sense. Young whales and honeybees can learn from adults. Loggerheads are abandoned as eggs.
As newborn loggerheads have no adults to learn from, what helps them figure out how to use their magnetic sense? Lohmann thinks one of the cues was light on the sea.
Baby loggerheads hatch only at night. However, a small amount of light reflects off the ocean. The light makes that region brighter. Heading toward the light helps them get quickly out to sea, where they can find food. Lohmann tested whether newborn loggerheads use this light source to set their magnetic “compasses”（罗盘）. He and his team put some newborns in a water tank and recorded which way they swam. Around the tank, the scientists created a magnetic field that matched the Earth’s. They set a weak light to the east of the magnetic field. Then they let the newborns go.
At first, the newborns swam toward the light. After the scientists turned off the light, the turtles that had seen the light in the east always swam toward east. When the researchers reversed（颠倒）the magnetic field, these turtles turned around and swam toward the new “east”.
This and the follow-up experiments all showed that loggerheads use light from the outside world to set their magnetic “compasses” and then remember the “correct” direction. If a turtle hatches on a brightly-lit beach, that would damage its magnetic sense forever and make survival hard for the turtle.
Lohmann’s work has led others to protect the habitat of this endangered species. Yet many questions about these creatures remain unanswered, and researchers have a lot to study.
1. Loggerheads and whales differ in the way they______.| A．bring up their young |
| B．recognize landmarks |
| C．detect magnetic fields |
| D．learn to find directions |
| A．Weak light reflected off the ocean. | B．Help from adult loggerheads. |
| C．Bright sunlight from the sky. | D．Food in warmer waters. |
| A．the light |
| B．the magnetic field |
| C．other unknown factors |
| D．the light and the magnetic field |
| A．It enables researchers to keep track of turtles. |
| B．It contributes to the studies of the magnetic field. |
| C．It offers a new solution to environmental pollution. |
| D．It helps protect the loggerheads’ living environment. |
| A．Experiments on Loggerheads |
| B．The Survival of the Sea Turtle |
| C．The Loggerhead’s Built-in “Compass” |
| D．Comparison of Loggerheads and Other Animals |
3 . How does an ecosystem(生态系统) work? What makes the populations of different species the way they are? Why are there so many flies and so few wolves? To find an answer, scientists have built mathematical models of food webs, noting who eats whom and how much each one eats.
With such models, scientists have found out some key principles operating in food webs. Most food webs, for instance, consist of many weak links rather than a few strong ones. When a predator(掠食动物) always eats huge numbers of a single prey(猎物), the two species are strongly linked; when a predator lives on various species, they are weakly linked. Food webs may be dominated by many weak links because that arrangement is more stable over the long term. If a predator can eat several species, it can survive the extinction(灭绝) of one of them. And if a predator can move on to another species that is easier to find when a prey species becomes rare, the switch allows the original prey to recover. The weak links may thus keep species from driving one another to extinction.
Mathematical models have also revealed that food webs may be unstable, where small changes of top predators can lead to big effects throughout entire ecosystems. In the 1960s, scientists proposed that predators at the top of a food web had a surprising amount of control over the size of populations of other species—including species they did not directly attack.
And unplanned human activities have proved the idea of top-down control by top predators to be true. In the ocean, we fished for top predators such as cod on an industrial scale, while on land, we killed off large predators such as wolves. These actions have greatly affected the ecological balance.
Scientists have built an early-warning system based on mathematical models. Ideally, the system would tell us when to adapt human activities that are pushing an ecosystem toward a breakdown or would even allow us to pull an ecosystem back from the borderline. Prevention is key, scientists say, because once ecosystems pass their tipping point(临界点), it is remarkably difficult for them to return.
1. What have scientists discovered with the help of mathematical models of food webs?| A．The living habits of species in food webs. |
| B．The rules governing food webs of the ecosystems. |
| C．The approaches to studying the species in the ecosystems. |
| D．The differences between weak and strong links in food webs. |
| A．has a wide food choice |
| B．can easily find new prey |
| C．sticks to one prey species |
| D．can quickly move to another place |
| A．The prey species they directly attack will die out. |
| B．The species they indirectly attack will turn into top predators. |
| C．The living environment of other species will remain unchanged. |
| D．The populations of other species will experience unexpected changes. |
| A．Uncontrolled human activities greatly upset ecosystems. |
| B．Rapid economic development threatens animal habitats. |
| C．Species of commercial value dominate other species. |
| D．Industrial activities help keep food webs stable. |
| A．By getting illegal practices under control. |
| B．By stopping us from killing large predators. |
| C．By bringing the broken-down ecosystems back to normal. |
| D．By signaling the urgent need for taking preventive action. |
4 . The city of Rome has passed a new law to prevent cruelty to animals. All goldfish bowls are no longer allowed and dog owners must walk their dogs.
This comes after a national law was passed to give prison sentences to people who desert cats or dogs.
“The civilization of a city can be measured by this,” said Monica Carina, the councilor (议员) behind the new law.
“It’s good to do whatever we can for our animals who in exchange for a little love fill our existence with their attention,” she told a Rome newspaper.
The newspaper reported that round bowls don’t give enough oxygen for fish and may make them go blind.
“Rome has tried to protect fish more than anywhere else in the world. It stands out for recognizing that fish are interesting animals who deserve (值得) over respect and compassion every bit as much as dogs and cats and other animals,” said Karin Robertson, a director of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Last year a law was passed in Italy that gives people who desert pets big fines (罚款) and prison sentences. Since then local governments have added their own animal protection rules.
The northern city of Turin passed a law in April to give pet owners fines of up to ＄598 if they do not walk their dogs three times a day.
The new law in Rome also says that owners mustn’t leave their dogs in hot cars or cut their dogs’ tails to make them look lovelier. The law also gives legal recognition to the “cat ladies” who feed homeless cats. The cats live all over the city from ancient ruins to modern office car parks.
1. The new law passed in Rome will ________.| A．help improve fishing environment |
| B．guarantee better conditions for goldfish |
| C．stop people from catching goldfish |
| D．discourage keeping goldfish at home |
| A．pity | B．praise | C．support | D．popularity |
| A．keep their dogs or cats in cars |
| B．feed homeless animals in car parks |
| C．raise their cats near ancient ruins |
| D．shut their dogs home all day long |
5 . Give yourself a test. Which way is the wind blowing? How many kinds of wildflowers can be seen from your front door? If your awareness is as sharp as it could be, you’ll have no trouble answering these questions.
Most of us observed much more as children than we do as adults. A child’s day is filled with fascination, newness and wonder. Curiosity gave us all a natural awareness. But distinctions that were sharp to us as children become unclear; we are numb(麻木的）to new stimulation(刺激), new ideas. Relearning the art of seeing the world around us is quite simple, although it takes practice and requires breaking some bad habits.
The first step in awakening senses is to stop predicting what we are going to see and feel before it occurs. This blocks awareness. One chilly night when I was hiking in the Rocky Mountains with some students, I mentioned that we were going to cross a mountain stream. The students began complaining about how cold it would be. We reached the stream, and they unwillingly walked ahead. They were almost knee-deep when they realized it was a hot spring. Later they all admitted they’d felt cold water at first.
Another block to awareness is the obsession(痴迷) many of us have with naming things. I saw bird watchers who spotted a bird, immediately looked it up in field guides, and said, a "ruby-crowned kinglet" and checked it off. They no longer paid attention to the bird and never learned what it was doing.
The pressures of "time" and "destination" are further blocks to awareness. I encountered many hikers who were headed to a distant camp-ground with just enough time to get there before dark. It seldom occurred to them to wander a bit, to take a moment to see what’s around them. I asked them what they’d seen. "Oh, a few birds," they said. They seemed bent on their destinations.
Nature seems to unfold to people who watch and wait. Next time you take a walk, no matter where it is, take in all the sights, sounds and sensations. Wander in this frame of mind and you will open a new dimension to your life.z.xxk
1. According to Paragraph 2, compared with adults, children are more ____________.| A．anxious to do wonders |
| B．sensitive to others’ feelings |
| C．likely to develop unpleasant habits |
| D．eager to explore the world around them |
| A．To avoid jumping to conclusions. |
| B．To stop complaining all the time. |
| C．To follow the teacher’s advice. |
| D．To admit mistakes honestly. |
| A．are very patient in their observation |
| B．are really fascinated by nature |
| C．care only about the names of birds |
| D．question the accuracy of the field guides |
| A．The natural beauty isn’t attractive to them. |
| B．They focus on arriving at the camp in time. |
| C．The forest in the dark is dangerous for them. |
| D．They are keen to see rare birds at the destination. |
| A．fill our senses to feel the wonders of the world |
| B．get rid of some bad habits in our daily life |
| C．open our mind to new things and ideas |
| D．try our best to protect nature |
6 . Last night’s meteor (流星) shower left many people in the community dissatisfied and demanding answers. According to Gabe Rothschild, Emerald Valley’s mayor, people gathered in the suburbs of the city, carrying heavy telescopes, expecting to watch the brightly burning meteors passing through the sky. What they found instead was a sky so brightened by the city’s lights that it darkened the light of the meteors passing overhead.
“My family was so frustrated,” admitted town resident Duane Cosby, “We wanted to make this an unforgettable family outing, but it turned out to be a huge disappointment.”
Astronomers — scientists who study stars and planets — have been complaining about this problem for decades. They say that light pollution prevents them from seeing objects in the sky that they could see quite easily in the past. They call on people and the government to take measures to fight against it.
There is yet a population besides professional and amateur star observers that suffers even more from light pollution. This population consists of birds, bats, frogs, snakes, etc. For example, outdoor lighting severely affects migrating (迁徙的) birds. According to the International Dark-Sky Association, “100 million birds a year throughout North America die in crashes with lighted buildings and towers.”
Countless more animal casualties (伤亡) result from the use of artificial lighting. Clearly, people enjoy the benefits of lighting their evenings. But some scientists think it can be harmful for humans, too. They worry that exposure to light while sleeping can increase a person’s chances of getting cancer.
Emerald Valley is only one community that is becoming aware of the negative effects of light pollution. For years, Flagstaff, Arizona, has enforced lighting regulations in its city in order to assist astronomers at the Lowell Observatory. Similar efforts have been made worldwide, and a movement is underway to remind us to turn off lights when we are not using them, so that other creatures can share the night.
1. It happened last night that _____.| A．the city’s lights affected the meteor watching |
| B．the meteors flew past before being noticed |
| C．the city light show attracted many people |
| D．the meteor watching ended up a social outing |
| A．Meteor showers occur less often than before. |
| B．Their observation equipment is in poor repair. |
| C．Light pollution has remained unsolved for years. |
| D．Their eyesight is failing due to artificial lighting. |
| A．Birds may take other migration paths. |
| B．Animals’ living habits may change suddenly |
| C．Varieties of animals will become sharply reduced |
| D．Animals’ survival is threatened by outdoor lighting. |
| A．lessen the chance of getting cancer |
| B．create an ideal observation condition |
| C．ensure citizens a good sleep at night |
| D．enable all creatures to live in harmony |
| A．Saving wildlife is saving ourselves. |
| B．Great efforts should be made to save energy. |
| C．Human activities should be environmentally friendly. |
| D．New equipment should be introduced for space study.. |
7 . I fell in love with Yosemite National Park the first time I saw it, when I was 13. My parents took us there for camping. On the way out, I asked them to wait while I ran up to E1 Capitan, a
About 15 years ago I started seeing a lot of
I tried
As a rock-climbing guide, I knew
Each year volunteers come for the cleanup from everywhere. In 2007 alone, 2,945 people picked up 42,330 pounds of trash and
I often hear people
| A．distant | B．huge | C．narrow | D．loose |
| A．immediately | B．finally | C．gradually | D．recently |
| A．imagining | B．painting | C．describing | D．climbing |
| A．garden | B．home | C．lab | D．palace |
| A．material | B．resources | C．waste | D．goods |
| A．beyond | B．against | C．over | D．within |
| A．more | B．most | C．less | D．least |
| A．throwing away | B．picking up | C．breaking down | D．digging out |
| A．kill | B．save | C．wait | D．spend |
| A．satisfied with | B．delighted in | C．tired of | D．used to |
| A．something | B．anything | C．everything | D．nothing |
| A．cleanup | B．party | C．picnic | D．concert |
| A．dropped out | B．showed up | C．looked around | D．called back |
| A．demand | B．receive | C．accomplish | D．overcome |
| A．plan | B．visit | C．contact | D．difference |
| A．crossed | B．measured | C．covered | D．designed |
| A．talk | B．complain | C．argue | D．quarrel |
| A．doing | B．thinking | C．questioning | D．watching |
| A．method | B．explanation | C．example | D．research |
| A．although | B．if | C．when | D．unless |
阅读下面短文，并按照题目要求用英语回答问题。
When Dan Shaw gets up from the sofa in his home, Cuddles is never far away. When he wants to go outside, he doesn’t take Cuddles out for walk—Cuddles takes him for a walk. Cuddles is clearly no ordinary family pet. It is a two-foot-high miniature horse and serves as the guiding eyes of Shaw, who is blind.
When Shaw lost his sight, his wife suggested he apply for a guide dog. Shaw, an animal lover, said he couldn’t bear to part with a dog (which usually lives about eight to ten years) and get used to a new one, perhaps several times in his life.
Then Shaw heard of a program about the tiny guide horses. He learned that the horse possess many qualities that make them an excellent choice for guiding people. They are clean friendly, smart and have great memories. They can be trained to remain calm in noisy and crowded places. Best of all, they live for 25-25years, which would enable Shaw to have the same guide companion for most or all of his life.
Shaw immediately applied to be and was accepted as the first person to receive a guide horse. The instant he met Cuddles, he knew he was making the right choice. Then he began his training.
Through training ,Shaw and Cuddles learned to find way on busy streets, step over curbs（便道沿儿）and find elevator buttons. Cuddles even demonstrated（显示）its ability to step in front of Shaw and block him, to prevent him from walking into a dangerous situation. The little horse also expertly led Shaw through busy shopping malls. They got along without any difficulties. Now Shaw is confident that Cuddles will change his life for the better.
1. What’s the meaning of the underlined word “miniature” in Paragraph 1?(No more than 2 words)
2. Why didn’t Shaw want to choose a dog as his guide? (No more than 15 words)
3. What does Paragraph 3 mainly tell us? (No more than 10 words)
4. How does Shaw feel about his future life with the help of Cuddles? (No more than 10 words)
5. In your opinion, what is the ideal relationship between man and animals? (No more than 20 words)
