1 . When John Todd was a child, he loved to explore the woods around his house, observing how nature solved problems. A dirty stream, for example, often became clear after flowing through plants and along rocks where tiny creatures lived. When he got older, John started to wonder if this process could be used to clean up the messes people were making.
After studying agriculture, medicine, and fisheries in college, John went back to observing nature and asking questions. Why can certain plants trap harmful bacteria (细菌)? Which kinds of fish can eat cancer-causing chemicals? With the right combination of animals and plants, he figured, maybe he could clean up waste the way nature did. He decided to build what he would later call an eco-machine.
The task John set for himself was to remove harmful substances from some sludge (污泥). First, he constructed a series of clear fiberglass tanks connected to each other. Then he went around to local ponds and streams and brought back some plants and animals. He placed them in the tanks and waited. Little by little, these different kinds of life got used to one another and formed their own ecosystem. After a few weeks, John added the sludge.
He was amazed at the results. The plants and animals in the eco-machine took the sludge as food and began to eat it! Within weeks, it had all been digested, and all that was left was pure water.
Over the years, John has taken on many big jobs. He developed a greenhouse — like facility that treated sewage (污水) from 1,600 homes in South Burlington. He also designed an eco-machine to clean canal water in Fuzhou, a city in southeast China.
“Ecological design” is the name John gives to what he does. “Life on Earth is kind of a box of spare parts for the inventor,” he says. “You put organisms in new relationships and observe what’s happening. Then you let these new systems develop their own ways to self-repair.”
1. What can we learn about John from the first two paragraphs?A.He was fond of traveling. | B.He enjoyed being alone. |
C.He had an inquiring mind. | D.He longed to be a doctor. |
A.To feed the animals. | B.To build an ecosystem. |
C.To protect the plants. | D.To test the eco-machine. |
A.To review John’s research plans. | B.To show an application of John’s idea. |
C.To compare John’s different jobs. | D.To erase doubts about John’s invention. |
A.Nature can repair itself. | B.Organisms need water to survive. |
C.Life on Earth is diverse. | D.Most tiny creatures live in groups. |
2 . Turning soil, pulling weeds, and harvesting cabbage sound like tough work for middle and high school kids. And at first it is, says Abby Jaramillo, who with another teacher started Urban Sprouts, a school garden program at four low-income schools. The program aims to help students develop science skills, environmental awareness, and healthy lifestyles.
Jaramillo’s students live in neighborhoods where fresh food and green space are not easy to find and fast food restaurants outnumber grocery stores. “The kids literally come to school with bags of snacks and large bottles of soft drinks,” she says. “They come to us thinking vegetables are awful, dirt is awful, insects are awful.” Though some are initially scared of the insects and turned off by the dirt, most are eager to try something new.
Urban Sprouts’ classes, at two middle schools and two high schools, include hands-on experiments such as soil testing, flower-and-seed dissection, tastings of fresh or dried produce, and work in the garden. Several times a year, students cook the vegetables they grow, and they occasionally make salads for their entire schools.
Program evaluations show that kids eat more vegetables as a result of the classes. “We have students who say they went home and talked to their parents and now they’re eating differently,” Jaramillo says.
She adds that the program’s benefits go beyond nutrition. Some students get so interested in gardening that they bring home seeds to start their own vegetable gardens. Besides, working in the garden seems to have a calming effect on Jaramillo’s special education students, many of whom have emotional control issues. “They get outside,” she says, “and they feel successful.”
1. What do we know about Abby Jaramillo?A.She used to be a health worker. | B.She grew up in a low-income family. |
C.She owns a fast food restaurant. | D.She is an initiator of Urban Sprouts. |
A.The kids’ parents distrusted her. | B.Students had little time for her classes. |
C.Some kids disliked garden work. | D.There was no space for school gardens. |
A.Far-reaching. | B.Predictable. |
C.Short-lived. | D.Unidentifiable. |
A.Rescuing School Gardens | B.Experiencing Country Life |
C.Growing Vegetable Lovers | D.Changing Local Landscape |
For thousands of years, people have told fables (寓言)
Carson uses a simple, direct style common to fable. In fact, her style and tone (口吻) are seemingly directed at children. “There was once a town in the heart of America,
The themes of traditional fables often deal with simple truths about everyday life. However, Carson’s theme is a more weighty
4 . Human speech contains more than 2,000 different sounds, from the common “m” and “a” to the rare clicks of some southern African languages. But why are certain sounds more common than others? A ground-breaking, five-year study shows that diet-related changes in human bite led to new speech sounds that are now found in half the world’s languages.
More than 30 years ago, the scholar Charles Hockett noted that speech sounds called labiodentals, such as “f” and “v”, were more common in the languages of societies that ate softer foods. Now a team of researchers led by Damián Blasi at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, has found how and why this trend arose.
They discovered that the upper and lower front teeth of ancient human adults were aligned (对齐), making it hard to produce labiodentals, which are formed by touching the lower lip to the upper teeth. Later, our jaws changed to an overbite structure (结构), making it easier to produce such sounds.
The team showed that this change in bite was connected with the development of agriculture in the Neolithic period. Food became easier to chew at this point. The jawbone didn’t have to do as much work and so didn’t grow to be so large.
Analyses of a language database also confirmed that there was a global change in the sound of world languages after the Neolithic age, with the use of “f” and “v” increasing remarkably during the last few thousand years. These sounds are still not found in the languages of many hunter-gatherer people today.
This research overturns the popular view that all human speech sounds were present when human beings evolved around 300,000 years ago. “The set of speech sounds we use has not necessarily remained stable since the appearance of human beings, but rather the huge variety of speech sounds that we find today is the product of a complex interplay of things like biological change and cultural evolution,” said Steven Moran, a member of the research team.
1. Which aspect of the human speech sound does Damián Blasi’s research focus on?A.Its variety. | B.Its distribution. | C.Its quantity. | D.Its development. |
A.They had fewer upper teeth than lower teeth. |
B.They could not open and close their lips easily. |
C.Their jaws were not conveniently structured. |
D.Their lower front teeth were not large enough. |
A.Supporting evidence for the research results. |
B.Potential application of the research findings. |
C.A further explanation of the research methods. |
D.A reasonable doubt about the research process. |
A.It is key to effective communication. | B.It contributes much to cultural diversity. |
C.It is a complex and dynamic system. | D.It drives the evolution of human beings. |
5 . Grizzly bears, which may grow to about 2.5 m long and weigh over 400 kg, occupy a conflicted corner of the American psyche — we revere (敬畏) them even as they give us frightening dreams. Ask the tourists from around the world that flood into Yellowstone National Park what they most hope to see, and their answer is often the same: a grizzly bear.
“Grizzly bears are re-occupying large areas of their former range,” says bear biologist Chris Servheen. As grizzly bears expand their range into places where they haven’t been seen in a century or more, they’re increasingly being sighted by humans.
The western half of the US was full of grizzlies when Europeans came, with a rough number of 50,000 or more living alongside Native Americans. By the early 1970s, after centuries of cruel and continuous hunting by settlers, 600 to 800 grizzlies remained on a mere 2 percent of their former range in the Northern Rockies. In 1975, grizzlies were listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Today, there are about 2,000 or more grizzly bears in the US. Their recovery has been so successful that the US Fish and Wildlife Service has twice attempted to delist grizzlies, which would loosen legal protections and allow them to be hunted. Both efforts were overturned due to lawsuits from conservation groups. For now, grizzlies remain listed.
Obviously, if precautions (预防) aren’t taken, grizzlies can become troublesome, sometimes killing farm animals or walking through yards in search of food. If people remove food and attractants from their yards and campsites, grizzlies will typically pass by without trouble. Putting electric fencing around chicken houses and other farm animal quarters is also highly effective at getting grizzlies away. “Our hope is to have a clean, attractant-free place where bears can pass through without learning bad habits,” says James Jonkel, longtime biologist who manages bears in and around Missoula.
1. How do Americans look at grizzlies?A.They cause mixed feelings in people. |
B.They should be kept in national parks. |
C.They are of high scientific value. |
D.They are a symbol of American culture. |
A.The European settlers’ behavior. |
B.The expansion of bears’ range. |
C.The protection by law since 1975. |
D.The support of Native Americans. |
A.The opposition of conservation groups. |
B.The successful comeback of grizzlies. |
C.The voice of the biologists. |
D.The local farmers’ advocates. |
A.Food should be provided for grizzlies. |
B.People can live in harmony with grizzlies. |
C.A special path should be built for grizzlies. |
D.Technology can be introduced to protect grizzlies. |
6 . An Australian professor is developing a robot to monitor the health of grazing cattle, a development that could bring big changes to a profession that's relied largely on a low-tech approach for decades but is facing a labor shortage.
Salah Sukkarieh, a professor at the University of Sydney, sees robots as necessary given how cattlemen are aging. He is building a four-wheeled robot that will run on solar and electric power. It will use cameras and sensors to monitor the animals. A computer system will analyze the video to determine whether a cow is sick. Radio tags (标签) on the animals will measure temperature changes. The quality of grassland will be tracked by monitoring the shape, color and texture (质地) of grass. That way, cattlemen will know whether they need to move their cattle to another field for nutrition purposes.
Machines have largely taken over planting, watering and harvesting crops such as com and wheat, but the monitoring of cattle has gone through fewer changes.
For Texas cattleman Pete Bonds, it's increasingly difficult to find workers interested in watching cattle. But Bonds doesn't believe a robot is right for the job. Years of experience in the industry - and failed attempts to use technology - have convinced him that the best way to check cattle is with a man on a horse. Bonds, who bought his first cattle almost 50 years ago, still has each of his cowboys inspect 300 or 400 cattle daily and look for signs that an animal is getting sick.
Other cattlemen see more promise in robots. Michael Kelsey Paris, vice president of the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association, said a robot could be extremely useful given rising concerns about cattle theft. Cattle tend to be kept in remote places and their value has risen, making them appealing targets.
1. What is a problem with the cattle-raising industry?A.Soil pollution. | B.Lack of workers. |
C.Aging machines. | D.Low profitability. |
A.Monitor the quality of grass. | B.Cure the diseased cattle. |
C.Move cattle to another field. | D.Predict weather changes. |
A.He wants to help them earn a living. | B.He thinks men can do the job better. |
C.He is inexperienced in using robots. | D.He enjoys the traditional way of life. |
A.Increase the value of cattle. | B.Bring down the cost of labor. |
C.Make the job more appealing. | D.Keep cattle from being stolen. |
7 . Imagine a child standing on a diving board four feet high and asking himself the question: “Should I jump?” This is what motivation or the lack of it can do. Motivation and goal setting are the two sides of same coin.
You also need to judge the quality and depth of your motivation. This is quite important, because it is directly related to your commitment. There are times when your heart is not in your work.
Another way of setting realistic goals is to analyze your short and long term objectives, keeping in mind your beliefs, values and strengths. Remember that goals are flexible.
Your personal circumstances are equally important. For example, you may want to be a pilot but can’t become one because your eyesight is not good enough.
You will surely need to overcome some difficulties, some planned, but most unplanned. You cannot overcome them without ample motivation. Make sure that you plan for these difficulties at the time of setting your goals.
A.This can affect your work. |
B.So how should you motivate yourself? |
C.However, this should not discourage you. |
D.So why should we try to set specific goals? |
E.They can change according to circumstances. |
F.Motivation is what you need most to do a good job. |
G.Without motivation, you can neither set a goal nor reach it. |
8 . We live in a town with three beaches. There are two parts less than 10 minutes’ walk from home where neighborhood children gather to play. However, what my children want to do after school is pick up a screen — any screen — and stare at it for hours. They are not alone. Today’s children spend an average of four and a half hours a day looking at screens, split between watching television and using the Internet.
In the past few years, an increasing number of people and organisations have begun coming up with plans to counter this trend. A couple of years ago film-maker David Bond realised that his children, then aged five and three, were attached to screens to the point where he was able to say “chocolate” into his three-year-old son’s ear without getting a response. He realised that something needed to change, and, being a London media type, appointed himself “marketing director from Nature”. He documented his journey as he set about treating nature as a brand to be marketed to young people. The result was Project Wild Thing, a film which charts the birth of the World Network, a group of organisations with the common goal of getting children out into nature.
“Just five more minutes outdoors can make a difference,” David Bond says. “There is a lot of really interesting evidence which seems to be suggesting that if children are inspired up to the age of seven, then being outdoors will be on habit for life.” His own children have got into the habit of playing outside now: “We just send them out into the garden and tell them not to come back in for a while.”
Summer is upon us. There is an amazing world out there, and it needs our children as much as they need it. Let us get them out and let them play.
1. What is the problem with the author’s children?A.They often annoy their neighbours. | B.They are tired of doing their homework. |
C.They have no friends to play with | D.They stay in front of screens for too long. |
A.By making a documentary film. | B.By organizing outdoor activities. |
C.By advertising in London media. | D.By creating a network of friends. |
A.records | B.predicts | C.delays | D.confirms |
A.Let Children Have Fun | B.Young Children Need More Free Time |
C.Market Nature to Children | D.David Bond: A Role Model for Children |
A music concert “Echoes of Ancient Tang Poems” jointly performed by iSING! Suzhou and the Philadelphia Orchestra was staged at Kimmel Performing Arts Center in Philadelphia on Jan. 6.
Another concert featuring Tang poetry was
The iSING! Suzhou International Young Artists Festival
The performances were also held to commemorate(纪念) the
1. 音乐会特点;
2. 观看感受;
3. 意见建议。
注意:1. 写作词数应为80左右;
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
This online concert is absolutely fantastic.
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