2 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词括号内单词的正确形式。

The first domestic chickens we have found lived no earlier than 3,670 years ago, suggesting they have a far shorter history than we thought. These birds don’t seem to have been raised for their meat,     1     (make) it unclear what drove domestication. The chickens alive today descend from a wild bird native to South-East Asia     2     (call) the red jungle fowl, but exactly     3     domestication occurred was unclear. Some researchers have estimated that the first domestic chicken lived more than 6000 years ago, while others claim     4     (find) chicken bones at 10,000-year-old sites.     5     analysis by Ophelie Lebrasseur at the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse in France and her team concludes that the     6     (early) clear evidence of domestic chickens appeared between 1,650 BC and 1,250 BC at a site called Ban Non Wat in central Thailand. Not only     7     (be) chicken bones superabundant at the site, but there are signs that people were buried with the birds,     8     Lebrasseur says makes a domestic relationship clear. Lebrasseur and her team suspect chicken domestication might have been triggered by the       9     (appear) of cereal fanning in South-East Asia. “This created a more open, less tree-covered environment, which is actually an environment where red jungle fowl thrive,” she says, “And they could have fed     10     the waste from human societies.”

3 . Before you worry about bacon and how much it may cost when new animal welfare laws go into effect next year, let’s talk about the pigs that gave their lives for it.

California has been on the forefront of protecting animals who live short lives on factory farms either to produce food for us or to be slaughtered and sold as food. The latest advance came in November 2018, when 62.7% of the state’s voters supported Proposition 12, the Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act. The law began going into effect last year, requiring hens and veal calves to be given more space to live in. Starting on Jan. 1st, the law will require that all eggs sold in California come from cage-free hens and that pork sold in the state come from breeding pigs that are not held in cages. These are humane steps designed to lift these animals out of structures that barely allow them to move.

Pork producers have had the longest time to comply (遵守). Some big companies like Hormel Foods have pledged to do so fully, but others have spent the last few years fighting the law rather than figuring out how to put it into practice. They say that the law will significantly raise the price of pork and that it violates the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which gives Congress sole power over interstate business activity. So far, that fight has been a waste of time that pork producers could have better spent figuring out how to retrofit (翻新)their farms.

They also complain that the regulations on the law are not set. But the California Department of Food and Agriculture, which has yet to finalize the regulations, says that the delay should not have prevented producers from retrofitting their housing for breeding pigs. The agency has publicly posted draft regulations, which mostly concern record-keeping, certification and definitions of terms.

For fans of bacon and other pork, any rise in cost is the price of not having a pig suffer before it’s killed for food. It’s a price the animals shouldn’t have to pay.

1. What do we know about Proposition 12?

A．The law will come into force next year.

B．More space is required for raising hens and pigs.

C．Raising hens and pigs in limited space is humane.

D．Half of the state’s voters subscribed to Proposition 12.

2. What does the underlined word “pledged” in paragraph 3 mean?

A．Suspect.

B．Refuse.

C．Promise.

D．Hesitate.

3. Which of the following is TRUE according to paragraph 3?

A．Some pork producers have raised the price of pork.

B．All the pork producers don’t comply with the law.

C．Pork producers have wasted a lot of time retrofitting their farms.

D．Pork producers resist the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

4. Which word can best describe the author's attitude to the new animal welfare laws?

A．Skeptical.

B．Conservative

C．Tolerant.

D．Favorable.

4 . Bonobos (倭黑猩猩) display responsibility toward grooming (梳理) partners, which is similar to that of people working together on a task, a new study suggests. Until now, investigations have shown that only humans can work collaboratively toward a common goal supposed to require back and-forth exchanges and an appreciation of being responsible for a partner.

Biologist Raphael a Hessen of Durham University in England and colleagues studied 15 of the endangered great apes at a French zoological park. The researchers interrupted 85 instances of social grooming, in which one ape cleaned another’s fur, and 26 instances of self-grooming. Interruptions consisted either of a keeper calling one bonobo in a grooming pair to come over for a food reward or a keeper rapidly opening and closing a sliding door to an indoor enclosure, which typically signaled mealtime and thus attracted both bonobos.

Social grooming resumed (恢复), on average, 80 percent of the time after food rewards and 83 percent of the time after sliding door disruptions. In contrast, self-grooming or playing alone was resumed only around 50 percent of the time, on average.

Bonobos generally resumed social grooming with the same partner within one minute of an interruption, usually near the original grooming spot. Groomers frequently took up where they had left off on a partner's body. And bonobos more often cried, gestured or otherwise communicated when restarting social grooming if they had been the one responsible for staring the session or interrupting it for a food reward. That was especially true of higher-ranking bonobos in the community, suggesting some awareness of having broken a common commitment and wanting to signal friendly intentions when rejoining lower-ranking grooming partners. Still, it’s likely that bonobos think in less complex ways than people do about joint commitments. In previous studies, even 3-year old children were much less willing to interrupt joint tasks for rewards than bonobos were in the new experiments.

1. What does the underlined word “collaboratively” in paragraph 1 mean?

A．corporately

B．actively

C．successfully

D．entirely

2. Hearing the sound of opening and closing the door, the bonobos were _________.

A．shocked to stop grooming	B．curious about what happened
C．aware that it was time to take meals	D．attracted to come over for fun rewards

3. What can we infer from the last paragraph?

A．Groomers are responsible for interruption.

B．Young kids are more committed than bonobos.

C．People communicate with bonobos in more complex ways.

D．Lower-ranking bonobos like breaking a common commitment

4. What is the main idea of the text?

A．Bonobos’ responsibility is better than people’s.

B．Bonobos show promise to complete a joint task.

C．Bonobos can complete the very same work as people.

D．Bonobos resume self-grooming faster than social grooming.

6 . Earthquakes have rocked the planet for many years. Studying the quakes of the past could help scientists better understand modern earthquakes, but tools to do such work are exiguous.

Enter zircons. Researchers used this special means to home in on the temperatures within a fault (地壳断层) during earthquakes millions of years ago. The method offers insights into the strength of long-ago quakes, and can improve the understanding of how today’s earthquakes release energy, the researchers reported in the April Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.

“The more we understand about the past, the more we can understand what might happen in the future,” said Emma Armstrong, a professor specializing in earthquakes at Utah State University in Logan. Armstrong and his colleagues focused on California’s Punchbowl Fault. That now-quiet portion of the larger San Andreas Fault was probably active between 1 million to 10 million years ago, Armstrong said.

Heat from friction (摩擦) is generated in a fault when it slips and touches off an earthquake. Previous analyses of preserved organic material suggested that temperatures within the Punchbowl Fault peaked between 465℃ and 1065℃. The researchers suspected that zircons in rocks from the fault could narrow that broad window. Zircons often contain the radioactive chemical elements uranium (U) and thorium ( Th), which decay (衰变) to helium (He) at a predictable rate. That helium (He) then builds up in the crystals. But when a zircon is heated past a temperature criticality value—the size of which depends on the zircon’s composition—the accumulated helium (He) escapes.

Measuring the amounts of the three elements in zircons from the fault suggests that the most in-tense earthquake generated temperatures lower than 800℃. That roughly halves the range previously reported. The finding provides useful clues to the amount of heat released by quakes, something difficult to measure for modern earthquakes because they often occur at great depths. Armstrong plans to continue studying zircons, in the hope of finding more ways to take advantage of them for details about ancient quakes.

1. What does the underlined word “exiguous” in Paragraph 1 mean?

A．Scarce.

B．Difficult.

C．Pricey.

D．Extraordinary.

2. What are the researcher’s assumptions about the zircons in rocks?

A．They can lead to various earthquakes.	B．They determine how much of their energy.
C．They can reduce the fault temperature range.	D．They would decay over long periods.

3. What might Emma Armstrong study next?

A．Impact of changing earthquakes on zircons.

B．Origin and development of enter zircons.

C．Difference between modern and ancient quakes.

D．More ways to use zircons for ancient quake study.

4. Which of the following can be the best title for the text?

A．Earthquakes Bring about Global W arming

B．Ancient Zircons Help to Unearth Earthquakes

C．An Innovative Means Makes a Hit in Studying

D．Zircons Changed Our Views of Earthquakes

8 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

The Lion Rock mountain stands not only as one of the most famous scenic spots in Hong Kong,     1     has become a spiritual symbol representing the persistent efforts of ordinary Hong Kong people     2     (live) a better life.

The Lion Rock spirit has also     3     (deep) touched those outside Hong Kong, such as Cui Xiaodong,     4     ink artist and director of the Yan Huang Art Museum in Bejing. “The mountain stands like a giant, symbolizing the industrious and persistent spirit which, over the past decades,     5     (pull) people in Hong Kong together through hard times. It is a recollection of the youth and vigor (活力) of a generation of people in Hong Kong     6     struggled to make the city what it is today.” he says.

Cui created Lion Rock in Hong Kong, a colored ink painting. In his painting, Cui depicts (描绘) the cliffs of the Lion Rock, surrounded by blooming trees and     7     (overlook) the city’s skyscrapers. Made earlier this year, the painting is now     8     show at Greater Bay Area in the Eyes of Artists, a display marking the 25th anniversary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The     9     (exhibit) displayed there hail (向……致敬) the ecological diversity of the area and also presents to the audience     10     (success) reformative accomplishments since 1997.

9 . Microbiologists have designed a sustainable way to remove polluting microplastics from the environment by using bacteria. Initial design as it is, it paves the way for sustainably lowering plastic pollution levels and stop the “plastification”.

Bacteria naturally tend to group together and stick to surfaces, and this creates a sticky material called “biofilm”. Researchers at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) want to use this adhesive bacteria character and capture microplastics in polluted water to form an easily disposable and recyclable blob(团) .

Sylvia Lang Liu, microbiology researcher at PolyU and lead researcher on this project, together with his team, has engineered a bacterial biofilm, which can fix and absorb microplastics floating around in the water, and make them sink to the bottom of the water. Then the researchers can separate the microplastics from the bacteria traps and get them ready to recycle.

Microplastics are the plastic fragments, usually smaller than 5mm, which are accidentally released into the environment during production and breakdown of grocery bags or water bottles, or during everyday activities such as washing synthetic (合成的) clothes or using personal care products with scrubbing microbeads in them. Microplastics are visually tiny, making it challenging to develop effective solutions to trap, collect, and recycle them.

Microplastics are not easily biodegradable (生物降解的), so they stick around for long and absorb and accumulate poisonous chemicals. They spread into wastewater and into the oceans, endangering marine animals and eventually threatening human health, Microplastics had been found in more than 114 species living in the water and also salt, lettuce, apples, and more in 2018 according to the International Maritime Organization.

“This is an innovative application of biofilm engineering l0 address the plastio pollution crisis,” said Dr Joanna Sadler, researcher at University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in this study. “One of the biggest challenges in dealing with microplastics is capturing such small particles. Liu and co-workers have denmonstrated an elegant solution to this problem, which holds great potential to be further developed into a real-world wastewater treatment technology.”

1. Which of the following best explains the underlined word “adhesive” in Paragraph 2?

A．Floating.

B．Sticky.

C．Diverse.

D．Visual.

2. Why are microplastics hard to capture?

A．They are visually too small.	B．They are hard to biodegrade.
C．They continue to exist for long.	D．They are poisonous chemicals.

3. What can be learned from the last paragraph?

A．Small particles are essential to address water pollution

B．Biofilm bas been widely used to settle plastic pollution.

C．Sadler thinks little of the biofilm engineering application.

D．Biofilm application is promising for wastewater treatment.

4. What is the text mainly about?

A．Microplastic removal.	B．Uses of bacteria.
C．Wastewater treatment.	D．Plastic pollution.