1 . In the late 1970s, archaeologists (考古学家) uncovered the remains of a woman and a young dog, her hand resting on the puppy’s chest in a 12,000-year-old village.
The find is some of the earliest evidence of the bond between humans and dogs. But even after years of study researchers are divided on how this bond began. Did it arise over thousands of years, as early dogs became tamer (驯服的) and more accustomed to human behaviors? Or was this fire already burning in the ancestors of dogs: the gray wolf?
Christina Hansen Wheat, a behavioral ecologist at Stockholm University, and workmates hand-raised 10 gray wolves from the time they were 10 days old. When the animals were 23 weeks old, a caregiver led them one at a time into a mostly empty room. Over the course of several minutes, the caregiver exited and entered the room, sometimes leaving the wolf alone, sometimes leaving it with a complete stranger. The team repeated the experiment with 12 23-week-old Alaskan huskies (哈士奇), which they’d raised similarly since puppyhood.
For the most part, the scientists saw few differences between the wolves and the dogs. When their caregiver entered the room, both species scored 4.6 on a five-point scale of “greeting behavior”—a desire to be around the human. When the stranger entered, dog greeting behavior dropped to 4.2 and wolf to 3.5, on average, suggesting both animals made a distinction between the person they knew and the one they didn’t. It’s this distinction that the team counts as a sign of attachment.
In addition, dogs barely paced—a sign of stress—during the test, while wolves paced at least part of the time. However, the wolves stopped pacing almost entirely when a stranger left the room and their caretaker returned. Hansen Wheat says that’s never been seen before in wolves. It could be a sign, she says, that the animals view the humans who raised them as a “social buffer”.
For her, that’s the most interesting part of the study. “If this is true, this sort of attachment is not what separates dogs from wolves,” she says. In other words, it didn’t have to be bred into them by humans, but could have been the seed we selected for, and then strengthened over thousands of years.
1. What’s the purpose of Hansen Wheat’s experiment?| A．To find out what makes gray wolves and dogs different. |
| B．To explain the reasons why humans raised dogs from ancient times. |
| C．To argue gray wolves after being tamed are easier to keep than dogs. |
| D．To prove whether gray wolves can make doglike attachment to people. |
| A．Researchers began to raise gray wolves from their birth. |
| B．Researchers used equal numbers of gray wolves and dogs. |
| C．Gray wolves felt more stressful than dogs when a stranger came. |
| D．“Greeting behavior” of the two animals was significantly different. |
| A．A reminder of feeding. | B．A sign of social attachment. |
| C．A source of comfort and support. | D．A warning of stopping pace. |
| A．Dogs are more attached to humans than gray wolves. |
| B．It is the attachment to humans that sets gray wolves apart from dogs. |
| C．The attachment between dogs and humans is the result of being tamed. |
| D．The attachment to humans plays a role in the choice of dogs or gray wolves. |
2 . We may think we're a culture that gets rid of our worn technology at the first sight of something shiny and new, but a new study shows that we keep using our old devices(装置) well after they go out of style. That’s bad news for the environment — and our wallets — as these outdated devices consume much more energy than the newer ones that do the same things.
To figure out how much power these devices are using, Callie Babbitt and her colleagues at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York tracked the environmental costs for each product throughout its life — from when its minerals are mined to when we stop using the device. This method provided a readout for how home energy use has evolved since the early 1990s. Devices were grouped by generation — Desktop computers, basic mobile phones, and box-set TVs defined 1992. Digital cameras arrived on the scene in 1997. And MP3 players, smart phones, and LCD TVs entered homes in 2002, before tablets and e-readers showed up in 2007.
As we accumulated more devices, however, we didn't throw out our old ones. "The living-room television is replaced and gets planted in the kids' room, and suddenly one day, you have a TV in every room of the house," said one researcher. The average number of electronic devices rose from four per household in 1992 to 13 in 2007. We're not just keeping these old devices — we continue to use them. According to the analysis of Babbitt's team, old desktop monitors and box TVs with cathode ray tubes are the worst devices with their energy consumption and contribution to greenhouse gas emissions（排放）more than doubling during the 1992 to 2007 window.
So what's the solution（解决方案）? The team's data only went up to 2007, but the researchers also explored what would happen if consumers replaced old products with new electronics that serve more than one function, such as a tablet for word processing and TV viewing. They found that more on-demand entertainment viewing on tablets instead of TVs and desktop computers could cut energy consumption by 44%.
1. What does the author think of new devices?| A．They are environment-friendly. | B．They are no better than the old. |
| C．They cost more to use at home. | D．They go out of style quickly. |
| A．To reduce the cost of minerals. |
| B．To test the life cycle of a product. |
| C．To update consumers on new technology. |
| D．To find out electricity consumption of the devices. |
| A．The box-set TV. | B．The tablet. |
| C．The LCD TV. | D．The desktop computer. |
| A．Stop using them. | B．Take them apart. |
| C．Upgrade them. | D．Recycle them. |
3 . We’ve all been there: in a lift, in line at the bank or on an airplane, surrounded by people who are, like us, deeply focused on their smartphones or, worse, struggling with the uncomfortable silence.
What’s the problem? It’s possible that we all have compromised conversational intelligence. It’s more likely that none of us start a conversation because it’s awkward and challenging, or we think it’s annoying and unnecessary. But the next time you find yourself among strangers, consider that small talk is worth the trouble. Experts say it’s an invaluable social practice that results in big benefits.
Dismissing small talk as unimportant is easy, but we can’t forget that deep relationships wouldn’t
even exist if it weren’t for casual conversation. Small talk is the grease(润滑剂) for social communication, says Bernardo Carducci, director of the Shyness Research Institute at Indiana University Southeast. ＂Almost every great love story and each big business deal begins with small talk,＂ he explains. ＂The key to successful small talk is learning how to connect with others, not just communicate with them.＂
In a 2014 study, Elizabeth Dunn, associate professor of psychology at UBC, invited people on their way into a coffee shop. One group was asked to seek out an interaction(互动) with its waiter; the other, to speak only when necessary. The results showed that those who chatted with their server reported significantly higher positive feelings and a better coffee shop experience. ＂It’s not that talking to the waiter is better than talking to your husband,＂ says Dunn. ＂But interactions with peripheral(边缘的) members of our social network matter for our well-being also.＂
Dunn believes that people who reach out to strangers feel a significantly greater sense of belonging, a bond with others. Carducci believes developing such a sense of belonging starts with small talk. ＂Small talk is the basis of good manners,＂ he says.
1. What phenomenon is described in the first paragraph?| A．Addiction to smartphones. |
| B．Inappropriate behaviours in public places. |
| C．Absence of communication between strangers. |
| D．Impatience with slow service. |
| A．Showing good manners. | B．Relating to other people. |
| C．Focusing on a topic. | D．Making business deals. |
| A．It improves family relationships. | B．It raises people’s confidence. |
| C．It matters as much as a formal talk. | D．It makes people feel good. |
| A．Conversation Counts | B．Ways of Making Small Talk |
| C．Benefits of Small Talk | D．Uncomfortable Silence |
1. What did the scientists do to the road？
| A．They repaired it. | B．They painted it. | C．They blocked it |
| A．It's warm. | B．It's brown. | C．It's smooth. |
| A．To keep the birds there for a whole year. |
| B．To help students study the birds well. |
| C．To prevent the birds from being killed. |
5 . Koko the gorilla knew over 1,000 signs based on American Sign Language, and used them to do everything from asking for food to joking around. Her trainer and long-term companion, Penny Patterson, thought Koko went further still, signing in novel ways and showing complex emotions. According to Ms Patterson, when a cat that Koko loved was killed in an accident, Koko signed: “Cat, cry, have-sorry, Koko-love.” When Koko died last month, some of her obituaries (讣告) mourned the gorilla who had “mastered American sign language.”
Then came the backlash, from linguists and experts in sign languages. Sign languages have complex grammars, equivalent to spoken tongues in expressiveness. Koko’s ability, it was pointed out, fell well short of a fluent human signer. Moreover, Ms Patterson was her interpreter, a role that invited the question of how much she was inferring what Koko “must have meant,” and explaining away random signs. It was hard to be sure: Ms Patterson preferred speaking to journalists over sharing her video and raw data about Koko with fellow researchers.
There is no doubt that animals communicate. Animals from one region can share sounds that differ from groups in another, leading researchers to talk of animal “dialects.” Then there are the remarkable achievements of Koko and her primate predecessors, including a chimp delightfully named Nim Chimpsky. Yet there is an important distinction between communication and language. Take the misleading term “body language.” It is sometimes claimed that words convey just 7% of meaning, and that body language and tone of voice do the rest. This wildly overstretches an old study which found that most emotional messaging — as opposed to the propositional kind — comes from tone and body language, especially when a neutral word such as “maybe” was used. But try conveying a fact like “It will rain on Tuesday” with your eyebrows, and the difference becomes clear. Language allows for clear statements, questions and commands.
Nim Chimpsky’s near-namesake, Noam Chomsky, has argued that people have a kind of “universal grammar”, and that all humankind’s languages are mere variations on a theme. Mr Chomsky has changed his mind repeatedly on what constitutes the core of human language, but one obvious candidate is syntax — rules, not just words, which allow the construction of a huge variety of meaningful utterances (所说的话). This capacity may even be infinite. Any statement in English, for example, can be made longer by adding “He said that …” at the beginning. This property is called recursion: a simple statement (“It’s cold”) is embedded in a more complicated one (“He said that it’s cold”). Human syntax also allows for hypotheticals (“If she hadn’t arrived …”), talking precisely about events distant from the present, and so much more.
That gorillas lack syntax should not blind humans to their magnificence. But the fact that Koko could communicate should not mislead observers into thinking she possessed language.
1. Which statement about KOKO the gorilla is true?| A．Koko’s ability was similar to a fluent human signer. |
| B．Koko could ask for food using sign language. |
| C．Koko was able to show complex feelings using sign language. |
| D．Koko was killed in an accident. |
| A．approval | B．bias | C．opposition | D．evidence |
| A．Koko was not as expressive as a human signer |
| B．Koko seldom needed an interpreter |
| C．Koko was able to communicate with journalists |
| D．Koko failed to speak several animal “dialects” |
| A．Humans can express past events using language while apes cannot. |
| B．Tone and body language play a dominant role in human communication. |
| C．Words enable humans to convey clear meanings. |
| D．Gorillas are still magnificent in terms of their ability to communicate. |
| A．Nim Chimpsky and Noam Chomsky — Who Has the Upper Hand? |
| B．Syntax — What Separates Humans and Apes. |
| C．Koko the Gorilla — A Magnificent Communicator. |
| D．Great Apes — Language and Communication Are Not the Same Thing. |
6 . “Two centuries ago, Lewis and Clark left St. Louis to explore the new lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase,” George W. Bush said, announcing his desire for a program to send men and women to Mars. They made that journey in the spirit of discovery. America has ventured forth into space for the same reasons.
Yet there are vital differences between Lewis and Clark’s expedition and a Mars mission. First, they were headed to a place where hundreds of thousands of people were already living. Second, they were certain to discover places and things of immediate value to the new nation. Third, their venture cost next to nothing by today’s standards. A Mars mission may be the single most expensive non-wartime undertaking in U.S. history.
Appealing as the thought of travel to Mars is, it does not mean the journey makes sense, even considering the human calling to explore. And Mars as a destination for people makes absolutely no sense with current technology.
Present systems for getting from Earth’s surface to low-Earth orbit are so fantastically expensive that merely launching the 1,000 tons or so of spacecraft and equipment a Mars mission would require could be accomplished only by cutting health-care benefits, education spending, or other important programs—or by raising taxes. Absent (缺乏)some remarkable discovery, astronauts, geologists, and biologists once on Mars could do little more than analyze rocks and feel awestruck (敬畏的) staring into the sky of another world. Yet rocks can be analyzed by automated probes without risk to human life, and at a tiny portion of the cost of sending people.
It is interesting to note that when President Bush unveiled (公开) his proposal, he listed these recent major achievements of space exploration: pictures of evidence of water on Mars, discovery of more than 100 planets outside our solar system, and study of the soil of Mars. All these accomplishments came from automated probes or automated space telescopes. Bush’s proposal, which calls for reprogramming some of NASA’s present budget into the Mars effort, might actually lead to a reduction in such unmanned science—the one aspect of space exploration that’s working really well.
Rather than spend hundreds of billions of dollars to hurl (投) tons toward Mars using current technology, why not take a decade or two or however much time is required researching new launch systems and advanced propulsion (推进力)? If new launch systems could put weight into orbit affordably, and advanced propulsion could speed up that long, slow transit (运输) to Mars, the dream of stepping onto the red planet might become reality. Mars will still be there when the technology is ready.
1. What do Lewis and Clark’s expedition and a Mars mission have in common?| A．Instant value. | B．Human inhabitance. |
| C．Venture cost. | D．Exploring spirit. |
| A．great achievements have already been made in Mars exploration in America. |
| B．American people’s well-being will suffer a lot if it is carried out. |
| C．its expense is too huge for the government to afford. |
| D．unmanned Mars exploration sounds more practical and economical for the moment. |
| A．Going to Mars using current technology is quite sensible. |
| B．A Mars mission will in turn promote the development of unmanned program. |
| C．Bush’s proposal is based on three recent great achievements of space exploration. |
| D．The achievements in space exploration show how well manned science has developed. |
| A．Risky as it is, a Mars mission helps maintain America’s position as a technological leader. |
| B．A Mars mission is so costly that it may lead to an economic disaster in America. |
| C．Someday people may go to Mars but not until it makes technological sense. |
| D．A Mars mission is unnecessary since the scientists once there won’t make great discoveries. |
| A．how | B．when |
| C．where | D．why |
| A．It; that | B．What; that | C．As; which | D．What; which |
| A．were; would carry on | B．would be; carry on |
| C．would be; carried on | D．should be; carried on |
China plans to complete the construction of a space station and have
“The main goal of the construction or the space station is to enable China to become a country
The space station will be built as China’s main platform for space science research
