1 . New Zealand plans to put a price on sheep and cow burps (打嗝) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (排放). If the plan is passed, New Zealand will become the first country to tax (征税) farmers on each burp of their cattle, since the burps give out methane (甲烷) into the atmosphere.
“There is no question that we need to cut the amount of methane we are putting into the atmosphere, and an effective emissions pricing system for agriculture will play a key part in how we achieve that,” Climate Change Minister James Shaw said.
Animal agriculture is one of the leading causes of global warming. It is reportedly responsible for at least 14.5% of the world’s emissions. Moreover, cows are by far the biggest contributors. This is so because they produce 40% of global methane when they burp, fart (放屁) and produce waste. Also, methane is 80 times more warming than CO2 although it’s shorter-lived in the atmosphere.
New Zealand, which has a population of five million people, has around 10 million cattle and 26 million sheep. “Almost half the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, mainly methane,” the draft plan explained.
The “burp tax” is expected to take effect in 2025. Mr. Shaw wants farming to be more environmentally friendly. He also wants farmers to change the way they farm. He wants them to feed their animals on seaweed instead of grass. This will produce fewer emissions. Mr. Shaw also said farmers can reduce the tax they pay by planting more trees. Another suggestion is for cows to wear special masks.
New Zealand’s farmers support the government. They want to do their bit to help the environment.
1. Why will cattle’s burps be taxed?| A．To raise more money. | B．To feed more cattle. |
| C．To limit cattle’s price. | D．To better the environment. |
| A．Its cows produce 40% of global methane. |
| B．Its agriculture affects greenhouse gas emissions. |
| C．It is responsible for at least 14.5% of the world’s emissions. |
| D．There is 80 times more methane than CO2. |
| A．Plant more trees. | B．Correct their way to farm. |
| C．Feed their animals on grass. | D．Wear special masks when farming. |
| A．New Zealand reducing greenhouse gas emissions |
| B．New Zealand’s greenhouse emissions and animal farming |
| C．New Zealand introducing a new tax to help the environment |
| D．New Zealand’s farmers joining in the fight against climate change |
2 . One Monday afternoon in April, 45-year-old Rene Compean set out for a hike in Angeles National Forest in Southern California.
Rene parked his car near the Buckhorn Campground and headed up a trail in the Mt. Waterman area. Later, he texted a picture of setting foot on a rock to a friend, and the unclear image ended up saving his life!
A few hours into the hike, Rene took a wrong turn because a path marker was missing due to recent forest fires. He realized he was lost and texted his friend for help, explaining that he had no idea where he was and his phone was about to die. Unfortunately, he didn’t have location services on his mobile phone, so search and rescue teams couldn’t find him using GPS.
Rene was reported missing around 6 p.m. Temperatures dropped rapidly in the mountains, and rescuers searched through the night with no success.
When they set out in search of Rene the next morning, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office posted Rene’s picture to their social media pages, asking the public to help them identify the area.
Thankfully, the photo made its way to satellite mapping enthusiast Benjamin Kuo. As luck would have it, Ben has “a very strange hobby” that came into use in this situation. “I love taking a look at photos and figuring out where they’re taken,” Ben explained.
He studied the area below Rene’s legs for clues and came up with coordinates (坐标) for where he thought the hiker was. He then provided the details to the Sheriff’s Office. Thankfully, Ben’s coordinates had exactly pointed out his location! Believe it or not, officials found the hiker within three-quarters of a mile of the GPS coordinates Ben sent them. A helicopter was sent to the site, and there was Rene, tired out and cold from his night outside but otherwise unharmed.
1. What made it difficult for search and rescue teams to find Rene?| A．Fires broke out in the forest. | B．The path marker was not correct. |
| C．Rene couldn’t be located by GPS. | D．Rene’s picture was not clear enough. |
| A．To help locate Rene’s position. | B．To attract the attention of the readers. |
| C．To seek satellite mapping enthusiasts. | D．To inform people of Rene’s getting lost. |
| A．Because he loved hiking and taking photos. |
| B．Because he was quite familiar with the area. |
| C．Because he was sent to the site by a helicopter. |
| D．Because he was good at finding clues from photos. |
| A．The bravery and calmness of Rene. | B．The extraordinary talent of Benjamin. |
| C．The excellent photography skill of Rene. | D．The search and rescue teams’ rich experience. |
3 . T. S. Eliot wrote of “Distracted from distraction by distraction /Filled with fancies and empty of meaning.” T. S. Eliot never had a smartphone.
Neither did I for a long time. No Facebook account; not even email. But according to my date of manufacture, I’m supposed to be a digital native. Perhaps it’s because by the age of 20 I was living in the Welsh countryside with no signal and no Wi-Fi.
When I finally fell into the digital world, I fell hard. Unlike my friends for whom social media and mobile technology had grown and flowered around them, for me it was a sudden immersion. I got Facebook, Twitter and Gmail accounts at the same time that I got an iPhone 4. I would check my phone; five minutes later I would check my phone again. I was addicted and it started to affect my relationships with friends and family
One night, without a word, I abandoned my iPhone and bought a Nokia 3310 and became the talk of the town. Soon I became aware that not only had I stolen secret time back from the hurried days, but somehow a secret space as well. I could stretch out, free to think again, to be wholly creative and to learn meaningfully.
But, wherever I went I got bloody lost. Wandering blindly around London, only to miss appointments, became a frequent pastime (消遣). What did we do before Google Maps? I was useless. The change was worth it, though. I’ll sound like an overstatement but I think it changed my life. My choices are broader and healthier because I’m not being screamed at all day.
I bought a new Samsung phone last week. I had been scared of the rate of progress, crying: “Stop the train! Stop the madness.” But I want to be part of building the future, and to do that, you’ve got to swim in contemporary waters. Rejecting the modern world doesn’t help anyone. It slows you down and I need to be efficient. Time will tell whether I’ve mastered the wisdom to reject constantly checking my phone.
1. What can be learned about the author when she lived in the Welsh countryside?| A．She read a lot of T. S. Eliot. | B．She had no friends to talk with. |
| C．She had no access to the Internet. | D．She was afraid of the digital world. |
| A．She thought she needed a spare phone. | B．She found her iPhone stopped working. |
| C．She wanted to attract people’s attention. | D．She hoped to break her smartphone addiction. |
| A．She led a simple and healthy life. | B．She found her life was in a mess. |
| C．She spent more time with her friends. | D．She became an example for other people. |
| A．To seek wisdom. | B．To stop her madness. |
| C．To keep pace with the times. | D．To get back to the real world. |
1. What did the man study in college?
| A．Art history. | B．Medicine. | C．Business. |
| A．They’re neighbors. |
| B．They’re salesman and customer. |
| C．They’re teacher and student. |
| A．Doing what her father suggests. |
| B．Exploring all the possibilities. |
| C．Making a decision as early as possible. |
Meet Hagen, a 6-year-old boy who recently celebrated his sixth birthday. Hagen is traveling with his family to Dallas with his amazing Buzz Lightyear(巴斯光年) toy. Traveling with kids is always busy, and the family had other things on their minds, so the tiny toy was unfortunately left behind.
Hagen’s mother said that when they landed, they thought they had gathered all their things and they headed to the taxi. It wasn’t until they were in the taxi that Hagen started crazily asking for his Buzz and his mother quickly realized that they did not have Buzz and he was still on the plane. Hagen was upset because he saw the toy as his best friend.
When the family understood this, it was too late to turn around their car heading for the family gathering as the plane had already departed(启程) for Little Rock, Arkansas. Hagen’s mother knows that losing a toy is never a pleasant feeling, especially for a 6-year-old and the toy is a big talking Buzz Lightyear action figure. So she had to lie that Buzz was on an awesome space task, and Hagen would get reunited with Buzz some day.
Well, LIT Ramp Agent Jason noticed Buzz all alone on the plane and his first idea was that he was probably here on a mission—and a mission did actually happen. Together with another colleague, Beth, Jason found out whose Buzz this was—there was a name on the foot and the airline’s contact information, so it wasn’t too hard—and they took Buzz on an adventure before sending him back.
Jason located Hagen according to name printed on the bottom of Buzz’s boot, ‘Hagen’. Only one passenger had flown on the plane with that name. That allowed them to locate the email of Hagen’s mother from their reservations. Then they posted the amazing pictures that Jason had taken with Buzz on his personal Facebook. The address of Hagen’s mother was given to Jason and he let Hagen’s mother know he’d be mailing him back to them.
Para. 1: Hagen got the package some days later.
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Para. 2: Hagen wrote a thank-you letter to Jason to express his feelings.
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6 . Portugal’s white storks (鹳) were once a migratory bird (候鸟), known to leave the area each winter to travel to Africa’s warmer climate, but recently they have been staying put.
Surprisingly, though, the storks’ number has actually been on the rise. There are now thought to be more than 14,000 birds in Portugal in winter — a ten-time increase over the last 20 years. Any unusual change of an animal’s natural behavior often has negative influences.
It has been thought that their increase has a close relationship with a growing number of landfill sites (垃圾填埋场) in the area, providing the birds with a supply of fatty and dirty rubbish to eat, including junk food. Was it the junk food that stopped them migrating, or is Europe’s warming climate to criticize? Researchers sought to figure out exactly why their natural behavior had changed in this way. To understand, a team kept an eye on 48 white storks by equipping them with small GPS computers, which recorded their movements five times a day, checking how often they traveled to landfill sites as well as how fast they flew.
The conclusions were shocking. The birds also established more homes next to landfill sites — the team said that 80% of white storks were spending most of their time by the rubbish all year round, according to the results. The storks eat almost anything. “Every time after a truck with rubbish came, they collected what they could,” says Aldina Franco of the University of East Anglia in the UK. The storks have even been known to eat plastic, including old computer parts. “Really what they are trying to get at is rubbish that we throw away... like hamburgers, burnt meat and fish,” said Franco.
This rich and colorful supply of food will soon become hard to find, though, as new laws from European Union (EU) order that waste food be recycled. Open-air landfills will also be replaced by covered equipment, which birds will not be able to eat.
The white storks therefore face an uncertain future. Will they migrate to Africa as they had done for hundreds of years before, or will they stay put? No one knows. “I wonder what the Portuguese storks will do once the landfill sites are all closed, and we are going to continue to watch these storks and see how they will respond to the changes,” said Aldina Franco.
1. What do you know about the team’s research?| A．Researchers equipped 48 small computers on white storks. |
| B．The GPS computers were used to record white storks’ movements. |
| C．The conclusions the team got were the same as they predicted. |
| D．Researchers found Europe’s warming climate accounted for storks’ staying put. |
| A．The landfill made the storks lose their homes. |
| B．The landfill helped increase the number of storks. |
| C．Open-air landfills will be replaced and storks will die out. |
| D．The landfill gave the storks food and in turn, influenced where they lived. |
| A．He will continue to do research on white storks. |
| B．The Portuguese storks can eat whatever we throw away. |
| C．People should prepare more healthy food for white storks. |
| D．White storks will migrate to Africa if the landfill sites are closed. |
| A．White Stork Will Migrate Again After Rubbish Is Recycled |
| B．White Storks’ Staying Put Contributed to Rubbish Recycling |
| C．White Storks’ Staying Put in Winter Concerned Scientists |
| D．Climate Change will Be the Test for White Storks’ Migration |
8 . On Jan. 3, a netizen (网民) nicknamed “Programmer Humor” published a short story on his micro-blog. It said that there was an old lady who swept nearly every inch of his Internet company. When she passed by a programmer, she took a look at the codes on the programmer’s computer and kindly reminded him, “Be careful, the stack is overfilled!”
Certainly, it is a casual and fictitious (虚构的) story made up by the micro-blogger. However, no one would have guessed that the short blog would eventually cause the first great Internet meme (网络快速爆红现象) of 2011 in China. Suddenly, the mysterious “Sweeping Old Lady” is showing up nearly everywhere and reminding professionals of their mistakes. From 8 a. m. on Jan. 5, some netizens collected stories of the “Sweeping Old Lady” and found she had appeared to give advice in 150 kinds of careers. A netizen even said he had met with a similar situation in real life.
Actually, the “Sweeping Old Lady” is not new figure, but is based on the “sweeping monk (和尚)”in Louis Cha’s famous Kung fu novel of “Tian Long Ba Bu”. The “sweeping monk” is an old monk and does the lowest class of work in Shaolin Temple, but he is actually the No. 1 master in the noel both in Kung fu and in the study of Buddhism.
The “Sweeping Old Lady” is also a great modest master. Lots of netizens wish that they could have such a lady beside them to give them precious suggestions at a key time.
Although there may be 1,000 “Sweeping Old Ladies” in 1,000 people’s minds, it cannot prevent the “Sweeping Old Lady” from becoming the most popular figure on the Internet.
“Programmer Humor” said he is just a programmer in the real world and once he saw the story about the “Sweeping Old Lady,” he wrote it down in his micro-blog because it was funny. He never knew who the original writer of the story was and never thought the story could be so popular.
1. What quality does the “Sweeping Old Lady” have?| A．Honest and knowledgeable. | B．Modest and patient. |
| C．Modest and knowledgeable. | D．Honest and patient. |
| A．She is an old lady good at sweeping the Internet. |
| B．She is just an imaginary figure created by a netizen. |
| C．She is well-know as the old “sweeping monk.” |
| D．She likes to give instructions everywhere. |
| A．The sweeping old lady is always looking down on the people around her. |
| B．We should ask sweeping old lady for advice when meeting with difficulties. |
| C．People want to have a “Sweeping Old Lady” nearby to do the cleaning. |
| D．We shouldn’t judge a person by his or her appearance and we’d better respect everyone. |
| A．She should be praised and respected. |
| B．She shouldn’t mind others’ business. |
| C．She should go in for network. |
| D．She shouldn’t show off before professionals. |
1. challenging adj.
2. pressure n.
3. voluntary adj.
4. actually adv.
5. frequency n.
6. in particular
7. attractive adj.
8. seek vt.
9. prevent vt.
10. make an effort
| A．except for | B．except | C．besides | D．but |
