Every year there are hundreds of earthquakes in different parts of the world. In September, 1923, Tokyo and Yokohama were 
both destroyed by an earthquake and the fires that followed it. They had to be completely rebuilt. One of the most serious earthquakes was in 
China’s Shanxi province in 1556. It killed almost one million people.
We measure an earthquake’s strength on the Richter Scale. The Richter Scale was introduced in 1935 in Southern California in the USA. It measures earthquakes on a scale of one to ten. Any earthquake measuring five or more is usually serious.
The Earth’s crust(地壳) is made up of rock called plates. As these plates move, they sometimes crash against each other, causing the crust to quake. In cities such as Tokyo, where small quakes happen quite often, many modern buildings are designed to be flexible so when the Earth moves, they move with it.
Earthquakes can also break up gas and oil pipes. This can cause fires to break out, which can do as much damage as the earthquake itself.
Another effect of earthquakes is tsunamis. These are huge waves created by earthquakes beneath the sea. They can be many meters high and cause great damage to coastal towns and cities, China, Japan, Russia and the USA have the highest occurrence(发生) of earthquakes in the world.The passage is mainly about .
| A．scientists who study earthquakes | B．the way of measuring earthquakes |
| C．a usual natural disaster | D．what people should do in the earthquake |
The earthquake in Shanxi Province , which in NOT true?
| A．happened in 1556 | B．killed one million people |
| C．was the only earthquake in China | D．caused a lot of damage |
Earthquakes
| A．don’t cause much damage | B．are not serious |
| C．most possibly happen in Japan | D．happen all over the world |
According to the passage we know that tsunamis .
| A．can cause earthquakes |
| B．are caused by earthquakes |
| C．only happen on land |
| D．are a way of measuring earthquakes |
In most towns today, you can see teenagers standing over electronic machines with flashing lights, shooting at spaceships from other planets and dropping bombs on strange monsters（恶魔）.The machines have names like Space Warrior, Dark Invader and so on. It used to be believed that damage was done only to those strange visitors from outer space, but now it seems that they are striking back.
Many teenagers like electronic games so much that they can't stop playing. They spend hours tightly holding the joystick controls and constantly pressing buttons marked “fire”.They develop pains on their fingers because of the constant pressure. They play and play so that the pains have no chance to cure properly. The rapid wrist movement required to guide the spaceship across the screen causes another problem: The muscles of the wrist and arm become so inflamed and swollen(充血红肿)that they press against the bones. This condition is what doctors now call “Space Warriar's Wrist”.Other strange aches and pains also are likely to affect（影响）the elbows and shoulders.
Another even more alarming problem is shown by the case of a 17-year-old girl which was recently in the British Medical Journal. She had been playing all kinds of electronic games for more than two hours a day. Her father repaired games and machines and she could use the cassettes and systems in his workshop as often as she liked. One day, after playing a game called Dark Invader, she lost consciousness(晕倒)and fell to the floor.
Doctors who examined her found she was suffering from an unusual illness caused by lights flashing at a particular frequency.“Space Warrior's Wrist”is caused by_______.
| A．constantly pressing the buttons |
| B．rapidly moving across the screen |
| C．tightly holding the joystick controls |
| D．inflamed and swollen muscles of the wrist |
The case of a 17-year-old girl by the writer shows that the writer_______.
| A．supports playing electronic games |
| B．feels very sorry for the girl |
| C．disagrees with young people's playing electronic games |
| D．feels worried about young people's poor health |
From the passage we can conclude that playing electronic games is _______.
| A．enjoyable and helpful to the study |
| B．exciting but harmful to the health and study |
| C．interesting but harmless to the eyes |
| D．amusing and satisfying |
You are a German living in Berlin. One day you’ re walking down the street, minding your own business, when suddenly a stranger comes up with a smile on his face. After stopping you, he holds a small electronic device (装置) close to his face and speaks slowly into it, saying, in English," Can you tell me where I can buy some sauerkraut?" What should you do? (a) Run away; (b) Call the police; or (c) Listen closely for the device to say in German," Konnen Sie mir bitte sagen, welches sauerkraut haufen kann?"
The most proper answer would be (c) because the person in front of you is only a tourist trying to enjoy himself. The device is said to be the world’s first portable(便携的) translator — a hand-held microcomputer that at the same time translates one spoken language into another. The four-pound, battery-operated product is called the Voice, and it is the invention of Advanced Products and Technologies, an American electronics company. When the Voice is introduced in the Unite States in late April — at a price of (1,500 — it will be used to translate spoken English into Italian, German, French and Spanish. The product comes with separate cartridges(盒式存储器) for each of the four languages, which can be changed when the user travels from one country to another. It will be sold in Europe soon after the US introduction, with cartridges that translate Italian, German, French and Spanish into English.
The Voice uses a microchip(微型集成电路片) to translate languages. It is Started by voice command and produces voice output through a built-in speaker. When the user makes a statement or asks a question, the Voice immediately repeats what has been said in another language.The device held by the stranger is probably a kind of________.
| A．a two-way radio | B．language translator |
| C．easily-carried speaker | D．a multi-functioned computer |
What does the last sentence of the first paragraph mean?
| A．Can you tell me where I can buy some sauerkraut? |
| B．Can I ask for some information from the police? |
| C．Would you like to try my device? |
| D．Would you not run away if I ask you where to buy some sauerkraut? |
When the stranger says," Can you tell... sauerkraut?" he is ________.
| A．learning German from his device |
| B．asking you the way to the sauerkraut shop |
| C．making fun of you with his device |
| D．testing his device for fun |
Which of the following is not mentioned in the text?
| A．The price of the hand-held microcomputer. |
| B．The function of the product Voice. |
| C．The producer pf the small electronic device. |
| D．The number of the device sold to the European countries. |
Andrew Ritchie, inventor of the Brompton folding bicycle, once said that the perfect portable bike would be “like a magic carpet…You could fold it up and put it into your pocket or handbag”. Then he paused: “But you’ll always be limited by the size of the wheels. And so far no one has invented a folding wheel.”
It was a rare — indeed unique — occasion when I was able to put Ritchie right. A 19th-century inventor, William Henry James Grout, did in fact design a folding wheel. His bike, predictably named the Grout Portable, had a frame that split into two and a larger wheel that could be separated into four pieces. All the bits fitted into Grout’s Wonderful Bag, a leather case.
Grout’s aim: to solve the problems of carrying a bike on a train. Now doesn’t that sound familiar? Grout intended to find a way of making a bike small enough for train travel: his bike was a huge beast. And importantly, the design of early bicycles gave him an advantage: in Grout’s day, tyres were solid, which made the business of splitting a wheel into four separate parts relatively simple. You couldn’t do the same with a wheel fitted with a one-piece inflated （充气的） tyre.
So, in a 21st-century context, is the idea of the folding wheel dead? It is not. A British design engineer, Duncan Fitzsimons, has developed a wheel that can be squashed into something like a slender ellipse （椭圆）. Throughout, the tyre remains inflated.
Will the young Fitzsimons’s folding wheel make it into production? I haven’t the foggiest idea. But his inventiveness shows two things. First, people have been saying for more than a century that bike design has reached its limit, except for gradual advances. It’s as silly a concept now as it was 100 years ago: there’s plenty still to go for. Second, it is in the field of folding bikes that we are seeing the most interesting inventions. You can buy a folding bike for less than £1,000 that can be knocked down so small that it can be carried on a plane — minus wheels, of course — as hand baggage.
Folding wheels would make all manner of things possible. Have we yet got the magic carpet of Andrew Ritchie’s imagination? No. But it’s progress.We can infer from Paragraph 1 that the Brompton folding bike .
| A．was portable |
| B．had a folding wheel |
| C．could be put in a pocket |
| D．looked like a magic carpet |
We can learn from the text that the wheels of the Grout Portable .
| A．were difficult to separate |
| B．could be split into 6 pieces |
| C．were fitted with solid tyres |
| D．were hard to carry on a train |
We can learn from the text that Fitzsimons’s invention .
| A．kept the tyre as a whole piece |
| B．was made into production soon |
| C．left little room for improvement |
| D．changed our views on bag design |
Which of the following would be the best title for the text?
| A．Three folding bike inventors |
| B．The making of a folding bike |
| C．Progress in folding bike design |
| D．Ways of separating a bike wheel |
People diet to look more attractive. Fish diet to avoid being beaten up, thrown out of their social group, and getting eaten as a result. That is the fascinating conclusion of the latest research into fish behavior by a team of Australian scientists.
The research team have discovered that subordinate fish voluntarily diet to avoid challenging their larger competitors. “In studying gobies we noticed that only the largest two individuals, a male and female, had breeding （繁殖） rights within the group,” explains Marian Wong. “All other group members are nonbreeding females, each being 5-10% smaller than its next largest competitor. We wanted to find out how they maintain this precise size separation.”
The reason for the size difference was easy to see. Once a subordinate fish grows to within 5-10% of the size of its larger competitor, it causes a fight which usually ends in the smaller goby being driven away from the group. More often than not, the evicted fish is then eaten up.
It appeared that the smaller fish were keeping themselves small in order to avoid challenging the boss fish. Whether they did so voluntarily, by restraining how much they ate, was not clear. The research team decided to do an experiment. They tried to fatten up some of the subordinate gobies to see what happened. To their surprise, the gobies simply refused the extra food they were offered, clearly preferring to remain small and avoid fights, over having a feast.
The discovery challenges the traditional scientific view of how boss individuals keep their position in a group. Previously it was thought that large individuals simply used their weight and size to threaten their subordinates and take more of the food for themselves, so keeping their competitors small.
While the habits of gobies may seem a little mysterious, Dr. Wong explains that understanding the relationships between boss and subordinate animals is important to understanding how hierarchical （等级的） societies remain stable.
The research has proved the fact that voluntary dieting is a habit far from exclusive to humans. “As yet, we lack a complete understanding of how widespread the voluntary reduction of food intake is in nature,” the researchers comment. “Data on human dieting suggests that, while humans generally diet to improve health or increase attractiveness, rarely does it improve long-term health and males regularly prefer females that are fatter than the females’ own ideal.”When a goby grows to within 5-10% of the size of its larger competitor, it .
| A．faces danger | B．has breeding rights |
| C．eats its competitor | D．leaves the group itself |
The underlined words “the evicted fish” in Paragraph 3 refer to .
| A．the fish beaten up | B．the fish found out |
| C．the fish fattened up | D．the fish driven away |
The experiment showed that the smaller fish .
| A．fought over a feast | B．went on diet willingly |
| C．preferred some extra food | D．challenged the boss fish |
What is the text mainly about?
| A．Fish dieting and human dieting. |
| B．Dieting and health. |
| C．Human dieting. |
| D．Fish dieting. |
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I’ve read online about your amazing customer service, and I must say I’m now a true believer. — B.L.How long does it take the battery to charge up an iPhone?
| A．15 minutes. | B．30 minutes. | C．1.5 hours. | D．3 hours. |
What is special about the battery?
| A．It is built in an iPhone. |
| B．It is the smallest of its kind. |
| C．It can also be used as a charger. |
| D．It keeps power for about 30 days. |
Who mentions the transporting of the battery?
A. P.S. B. B.L. C. M.C. D. T.K.The customer comments on the battery are mainly about its _______.
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