1 . Huge crowds are forming on Monday at the US Botanic Garden in Washington, DC. Usually, it’s a place to see flowers that look pretty, smell fantastic and bloom (开花) annually. But today, the so-called “corpse plants” on show are the opposite in all aspects.
Native to the rain forests of Sumatra, Indonesia, the corpse plants don’t bloom on a regular cycle -- the length of time between blooms ranges from a few years to a few decades and they are ugly and smelly.
“Last night it started out like a good French cheese, stinky but delightful. Then it moved on to a lazy boy’s socks. At last, it was junior high school gym followed by full-on rotten fish. Finally, it moved all the way to a rotting meat smell that was so thick and heavy that I experienced a sore throat, burning eyes and had a bitter taste in my mouth.” said John Clements, one of the garden employees,
“It smells bad to us, but it smells great to flies. It makes them think there’s rotten meat somewhere to lay their eggs, and that helps the corpse plant to get pollinated (授粉),” says Rob Raguso, a professor at Cornell University. “Since it takes a lot of energy for the plant to produce the smell, it puts it on reserve during the day, and will put it out in full strength from 9 pm to 3 am when the air is still and the smell can travel more easily.”
The smell comes from a number of chemicals that smell differently on their own, and that together draw flies to the plant’s cup-like flower. One of these, timethylamine, smells like rotting fish. Another, isovaleric acid, is responsible for the terrible smell of sweaty gym socks.
“It also heats up. The flower actually reaches human body temperature, making it all the more convincing to flesh-loving insects,”adds Rob Raguso.
1. What does John Clements mainly talk about?| A．Lazy boys’ socks. | B．Delightful French cheese. |
| C．The smell of a flower. | D．The taste of corpse plants. |
| A．At noon | B．At dusk. | C．In the afternoon. | D．After midnight. |
| A．To reserve energy. | B．To attract pollinators. |
| C．To heat the environment | D．To send the smell further. |
| A．What Makes Corpse Plants Smell So Bad? |
| B．How Do Corpse Plants Appeal to Insects? |
| C．When Do Corpse Plants Bloom in Full Strength? |
| D．Why Can Flies Find Corpse Plants in the Darkness? |
2 . About 17 years ago, I became allergic to Delhi's air. My doctors told me that my lung function had gone down to 70 percent. My doctor told me that there were three plants, with which I could grow all the fresh air indoors to keep me healthy.
The three plants are Areca palm, Mother-in-law's Tongue and money plant. Areca palm is a plant which removes CO2 and turns it into oxygen. We need four shoulder-high plants every person. The second plant is Mother-in-law's Tongue. It is called a bedroom plant because it turns CO, into oxygen at night. And we need six to eight waist-high plants every person. The third plant is money plant, and it preferably grows in hydroponics. This particular plant removes some harmful chemicals.
My team and I have tried these plants at our own building in Delhi, which is a 50,000-square-feet, 20-yearold building. And it has close to 1,200 such plants for 300 families. Our studies have found that there is a 42 percent probability of one's blood oxygen going up by one percent if one stays indoors in this building for 10 hours. Our experience also points to an amazing reduction in energy requirements in the building by an outstanding 15 percent. The government has published a study to show that this is the healthiest building in Delhi. And the study has also shown that, compared to other buildings, there is a reduced incidence of headaches by 24 percent.
In my opinion, these studies above are also important for the environment because the world’s energy requirements are expected to grow by 30 percent in the next decade. 40 percent of the world's energy is taken up by buildings currently, and 60 percent of the world's population will be living in buildings in cities with a population of over one million in the next 15 years. And there is a growing preference for living and working in air-conditioned places.
1. What is the function of the first paragraph?| A．To show the results of growing plants. | B．To give the reason for the author's studies. |
| C．To introduce the author's life. | D．To praise the author's doctor. |
| A．CO2. | B．Oxygen. | C．Money plant. | D．Mother-in-law's Tongue. |
| A．The building with the three plants is the healthiest in Delhi |
| B．The possibility of headaches reduces by 40 percent. |
| C．The energy requirements in the building drop by 42 percent. |
| D．People can stay in the building for only 10 hours. |
| A．Complex. | B．Boring. | C．Meaningful. | D．Useless. |
3 . Topher White spends a lot of time walking in the forest and thinking about how quickly we’re losing it. He is making an effort to stop global deforestation (滥伐). Founder of the San Francisco— based Nonprofit Rainforest Connection, White has developed a simple but ingenious strategy: using old cell phones to listen for the sound of destruction.
Forests are disappearing worldwide and fast, which not only harms wildlife, including many species that live nowhere else, but also contributes to climate change. “I didn’t know any of this stuff when I started,” says White, who began his journey in 2011, when he traveled to Indonesian Borneo to help decreasing gibbons (长臂猿).
Between 50 and 90 percent of the logging (采伐) that happens in the world’s rain forests is illegal, according to White, yet detecting that activity can be tough. So he has developed a system in which he uses a cell phone staying charged by solar cells and an extra microphone. From there, the device can detect the sounds of chainsaws (电锯) nearly a mile away.
Because it’s unfeasible to have people listening to the devices all the time, he added some “old-school data analysis,” so that the cell phone’s computers can distinguish a chainsaw’s sound from others in the forest. This way, his device can automatically detect logging activity and send a text alert to authorities who can determine if it’s illegal and then stop it.
So far, his monitoring system has been used in Cameroon, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil and will soon be deployed in Bolivia. It’s not just about listening for logging. Also, it can pick out the sounds of specific birds, which is why White sees the forest recordings as a potential science tool. He is urging biologists and ecologists to use his monitoring system anywhere, whether it’s a remote forest or a park in London. “The more we learn about these places,” he says, “the easier it will be to protect them.”
1. What made Topher White decide to stop global deforestation?| A．The problem of global climate change. |
| B．The association of Nonprofit Rainforest Connection. |
| C．The experience of travelling to Indonesian Borneo in 2011. |
| D．The desire to find new uses for old cell phones. |
| A．Impractical. | B．Unwilling. | C．Impassive. | D．Unnecessary. |
| A．updating advanced technology | B．our better understanding of it |
| C．developing strong teamwork spirit | D．growing environmental awareness |
| A．A Creative Way Is Used to Protect Wildlife |
| B．Measures Should Be Taken to Preserve Nature |
| C．Forests Are Disappearing Worldwide |
| D．Your Old Cell Phones Can Help Save the Rain Forest |
4 . The earliest tomatoes were little sour berries. They grew among low bushes in dry, sunny places in the Andes Mountains in South America. It was about 350 million years ago.
Tomato plants are relative to nightshade (茄属植物), which has poison. The leaves and stems of tomato plants have poison , but the berries are good to eat. The berries are red so that animals can find them easily and eat them. The animals carry the seeds to other places. That was how earliest tomato plants found new places to grow. Tomatoes are also relative to tobacco, chili peppers and potatoes.
When people first came to South America about 20,000 years ago, they ate these tiny wild tomatoes. Travelers brought a few kinds of wild tomato plants from the Andes to Central America, there the ancestors of the Maya began to farm them. Nobody knows exactly when people began farming tomatoes, but it probably was much later than corn and beans, and it was surely before 500 BC. These Central American fanners bred tomatoes to be bigger and sweeter than the wild ones.
By the time Spanish explorers got to Tenochtitlan in Mexico in 1521 AD, the Aztec people ere eating a lot of tomatoes, made a sauce of chopped (剁碎的)tomatoes, onions, salt and chili peppers that was a lot like our salsa. The word “tomato” comes from their Nahuatl word “tomato”.
Because tomatoes weren't farmed until pretty late, farmers further north had not yet been able to adapt heir growing season to working in North America. Even today, it's pretty hard to get your tomatoes ripe in the northern parts of North America before the growing season ends.
1. What do we know about the earliest tomatoes?| A．They were big sweet berries. |
| B．They grew in Central America. |
| C．They grew in dry, sunny places. |
| D．They grew about 35 million years ago. |
| A．People grew them in new places. |
| B．They grew in new places naturally. |
| C．Their seeds were carried away by wind. |
| D．Their seeds were carried away by animals. |
| A．The farmers sold them to others. |
| B．The farmers disliked their taste. |
| C．The farmers tried to improve them. |
| D．The farmers showed no interest in them. |
| A．How to grow tomatoes. |
| B．The history of tomatoes. |
| C．When to grow tomatoes. |
| D．The places where tomatoes grow. |
