The Grand Canyon (峡谷) in Arizona extends four hundred fifty kilometers. The canyons look as if they formed as the earth split apart. They were actually cut by rivers.
Looking at the Grand Canyon is like looking back in time. Forty million years ago, the Colorado River began cutting through the area. At the same time, the surrounding land was pushed up by forces deep within the Earth. Rain, snow, ice, wind, and plant roots rubbed away at the top of the new canyon. Below, the flowing river continued to uncover more and more levels of ancient rock. Their appearance changes endlessly -- with the light, the time of year, and the weather.
The Grand Canyon has several weather environments. The top is often much different from the bottom. On some winter days, for example, you may find cold winds and snow at the top. But at the bottom, you may find warm winds and flowers.
The Grand Canyon is known as one of the seven wonders of the natural world. About five million people visit the canyon each year. Most visitors walk along paths part way down into the canyon. Some visitors ride mules to the bottom and back.
There are several other ways to visit the Grand Canyon. Hundreds of thousands of people see the canyon by air each year. They pay a helicopter or airplane pilot to fly them above and around the canyon.
About twenty thousand people a year see the Grand Canyon from the Colorado River itself. They ride boats over the rapid, rocky water. These trips last from one week to three weeks.
Visitors can see the Grand Canyon in still another way. A huge glass walkway, called the Skywalk, extends from the edge and is hanging above the bottom of the canyon.
Some people say the Skywalk is an engineering wonder. However, other people have criticized the Skywalk and future development. They say it harms a national treasure and reduces the enjoyment of nature in the Grand Canyon.
1. We can learn from the first paragraph ____________.
A. the Grand Canyon is the most beautiful place in America
B. the Grand Canyon is four hundred fifty kilometers long
C. the Grand Canyon used to be a dried river
D. the Grand Canyon used to be a deep opening in the earth
2. According to the passage, people can visit the Grand Canyon in ______ ways.
A. 3 B. 4 C. 5 D. 6
3. We can learn that the author of the passage hold a(n) ______ attitude towards the Skywalk.
A. positive B. negative C. objective D. critical
4. All the following are true about the Grand Canyon EXCEPT ____________.
A. The top of the Grand Canyon is always cold.
B. The Grand Canyon displays different colors in different times.
C. The Grand Canyon is as old as forty million years old.
D. Every year more people see the Grand Canyon by air than by boat.
London-Lazy students can now give up on work altogether as two Oxford University students have made scores of A-grade essays on the website for students to copy.
The essays are on the new website, “revise.it”
The website includes an “EssayLab” designed to make cheating (舞弊) as effective and effortless as possible.
Its homepage announces to surfers (网上冲浪者): “The revise.it EssayLab is a bank of hundreds of A-Level essays covering popular topics.”
“Next time you are asked to write an essay, why not see what we have on the subject-if you are in a lazy state of mind you can even use our guide to writing the essays and then just hand them in.”
Nick Rose and Jordan Mayo, both 19 and first from Manchester, spent much of their first year as students at the university setting up the website. There is no charge for downloading the essays.
“I have never been very good at essay writing,” Rose admitted. “We don’t see essay bank as a cheating way. It’s a surprising valuable resource. You can learn a lot by reading other people’s work on the subject.”
Among other tips, the website suggests inventing important speeches to give essays extra weight: “Popular people to quote (引用) are Douglass Hurd or Disraeli.”
Hurd was a foreign secretary in the 1980s and Disraeli was a 19th century prime minister.
Teachers are expressing their opinions by e-mail that they are angry about the website that “encourages students to cheat”, but students disagree.
According to Rose: “Exams are a fight. It’s us against them.”It can be inferred from this passage that ______.
| A．students who visit the website “revise. it” are all lazy |
| B．students in Oxford University are all lazy |
| C．websites in Oxford University are all set up by students |
| D．websites can provide people with different kinds of information |
Nick Rose and Jordan Mayo set up their website for the purpose of ______.
| A．helping students to cheat in exams |
| B．helping students to improve their writing |
| C．making money to pay for their schooling |
| D．making their teacher free |
What Rose said at last suggests that in England ______.
| A．it is difficult for students to pass their exams |
| B．it is difficult for teachers to finish their teaching |
| C．students are not satisfied with the education system |
| D．students are too lazy to learn anything |
Sharpen your axe (斧头)
A young man approached the foreman (工头)of a logging crew and asked for a job.
“That ” replied the foreman. “Let’s see you fell this tree.”
The young man stepped forward and skillfully a great tree. , the foreman exclaimed, “You can start Monday.”
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and on Thursday afternoon the foreman approached the young man and said, “You can pick up your on the way out today.” , the young man replied, “I thought you paid on Friday.”
“ we do,” said the foreman. “But we’re letting you go today because you’ve . Our daily felling charts show that you’ve from first place on Monday to last place today.”
“But I’m a worker,” the young man objected. “I arrive first, leave last, and have worked through my coffee breaks!”
The foreman, the young man’s honesty, thought for a minute and then asked, “Have you ____ your axe?”
The young man replied, “No, sir, I’ve been working too hard to take time for !”
Our lives are like that. We sometimes get so that we don’t take time to sharpen the axe. In today’s world, it seems that everyone is busier than ever, but happy than ever. Why is that? Could it be that we have forgotten how to sharp?
There’s nothing wrong with activity and hard work. But we all need time to , to think and meditate(谋划), to learn and . If we don’t take time to sharpen the axe, we will become and lose our effectiveness.
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How do people traditionally manufacture (制造) things? They usually start with a sheet of metal, wood or other material and cut, drill (钻) and shave it to create a desired shape. Sometimes, they use a mold (模具) made of metal or sand, pour liquid plastic or metal into it and let it cool to create a solid part.
Now, a completely different method is gaining popularity.
On Oct. 9, 2013, London Science Museum kicked off its new exhibition, 3-D: Printing the Future, with over 600 3-D printed objects on display, including space probes (探测器), toy dolls and even human organs – basically any product you can think of, reported Live Science.
You might find it hard to believe that an object can actually be “printed out” like a picture. But it is not that hard to understand how it works. Just as a traditional printer sprays (喷洒) ink onto paper line by line, modern 3-D printers spread material onto a surface layer by layer, from the bottom to the top, gradually building up a shape.
Instead of ink, the materials the 3-D printer uses are mainly plastic, resin (树脂) and certain metals. The thinner each layer is – from a millimeter to less than the width of a hair – the smoother and finer the object will be. And objects always come out in one piece, sparing you the trouble of putting different parts together afterward.
For example, 10 years ago a desktop 3-D printer might have cost ￡20,000 (200,000 yuan), while now it costs only about ￡1,000, according to the BBC. In fact, 3-D printers have been around for some time, but until recently they hadn’t been very popular since few people could afford them. Last year, though, saw a big decrease in the price of 3-D printers.
However, as 3-D printing technology becomes more commonplace, it may trigger certain problems. One of them is piracy (盗版). “Once you can download a coffee maker, or print out a new set of kitchen utensils (餐具) on your personal 3-D printer, who will visit a retail (零售的) store again?” an expert on 3-D printing told Forbes News.
Even more frightening, the world’s first 3-D printed gun was successfully fired in the US in May of this year, which means that 3-D printing could potentially give more people access to weapons.
According to the article, in the future, 3-D printing technology will probably ______.
| A．change the way people make products |
| B．be applied as widely in our daily lives as computers |
| C．forbid many countries to make purchases of weapons |
| D．take the place of normal printers and save lots of energy |
What was the big event that happened in the 3-D printing industry last year?
| A．Over 600 3-D printed objects were on display in an exhibition. |
| B．3-D printing technology came to be used in various fields. |
| C．The world’s first 3-D printed gun was successfully made. |
| D．The 3-D printer became more affordable for consumers. |
What is the author’s attitude toward 3-D printing technology?
| A．Amused. | B．Objective. |
| C．Supportive. | D．Negative. |
Unlike chemists and physicists, who usually do their experiments using machines, biologists and medical researchers have to use living things like rats. But there are three Nobel prize-winning scientists who actually chose to experiment on themselves – all in the name of science, reported The Telegraph.
● Werner Forssmann (Nobel prize winner in 1956)
Forssmann was a German scientist. He studied how to put a pipe inside the heart to measure the pressure inside and decide whether a patient needs surgery (手术).
Experiments had been done on horses before, so he wanted to try with human patients. But it was not permitted because the experiment was considered too dangerous.
Not giving up, Forssmann decided to experiment on himself. He anaesthetized (麻醉) his own arm and made a cut, putting the pipe 30 centimeters into his vein (血管). He then climbed two floors to the X-ray room before pushing the pipe all the way into his heart.
● Barry Marshall (Nobel prize winner in 2005)
Most doctors in the mid-20th century believed that gastritis was down to stress, spicy food or an unusually large amount of stomach acid (胃酸). But in 1979 an Australian scientist named Robin Warren found that the disease might be related to a bacteria (细菌) called Helicobacter pylori. So he teamed up with his colleague, Barry Marshall, to continue the study. When their request to experiment on patients was denied, Marshall bravely drank some of the bacteria. Five days later, he lost his appetite and soon was vomiting (呕吐) each morning – he indeed had gastritis.
● Ralph Steinman (Nobel prize winner in 2011)
This Canadian scientist discovered a new type of immune system cell (免疫细胞) called the dendritic cell. He believed that it had the ability to fight against cancer.
Steinman knew he couldn’t yet use his method to treat patients. So in 2007, when doctors told him that he had cancer and that it was unlikely for him to live longer than a year, he saw an opportunity.
With the help of his colleagues, he gave himself three different vaccines (疫苗) based on his research and a total of eight experimental therapies (疗法). Even though Steinman eventually died from his cancer, he lived four and a half years, much longer than doctors had said he would.The main purpose of the article is to ______.
| A．list some famous Nobel prize winners. |
| B．introduce a few Nobel prize winners who did experiments on themselves. |
| C．describe some dangerous experiments that Nobel prize-winners did on themselves. |
| D．list some difficulties that scientists go through to make important discoveries in biology . |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the article?
| A．Forssmann’s experiment ended in failure. |
| B．Forssmann had the pipe pushed all the way into his heart. |
| C．Barry Marshall succeeded by drinking some Helicobacter pylori. |
| D．Barry Marshall was given full responsibility for the study on gastritis at first. |
The underlined word “gastritis” in Paragraph 5 probably means ______.
| A．a kind of stomach disease |
| B．a kind of immune cell |
| C．a new type of therapy |
| D．a type of leg cancer |
From the text, we can conclude that Ralph Steinman ______.
| A．had his request to experiment on patients denied |
| B．believed that cancer comes from stress and spicy food |
| C．discovered a new type of cancer cell called the dendritic cell |
| D．tried different therapies containing the dendritic cell on himself |
I have this old clock that belonged to my mom. My dad gave it to me years ago after mom passed away.
I have mixed feelings about keeping the clock. I love it because it was my mom’s, but it also holds some bad memories.
You see, it chimes (打钟报时). It counts out the hour and rings once on the half hour. Or at least it used to. Now you never know what number it will ring.
When my mother was at home dying from cancer, she asked for the clock to be unplugged (拔去插头等). Hearing the hours count down really angered and frightened her.
Mom passed away. I decided I wanted to get the clock fixed so I could remember the good hours we had with her.
I took it to a local clock shop the other day.
“I know this has no particular value as a clock, but it was my mom’s and I need to get it fixed,” I said to the shop owner.
I went on to describe the problem.
“We get a lot of these in,” he told me. “Here’s what I do. We remove the clock works (机件) and replace it with a battery -operated movement (机芯) that chimes electronically,” he told me.
“You can’t fix this?” “No, we don’t have the time nor the parts.”
I thanked him and went home. I called a few other places and was told the same thing.
“How incredibly sad,” I told the last one disappointedly.
We copy the original instead of creating something new. We duplicate (复制); we don’t originate (发明). How incredibly sad that we have become a society that replaces craftsmanship (手艺) with convenience and easy fixes.
Sadly, this is also our attitude toward life itself.
Each of us is an original, one of a kind. But we find it so much easier to copy another’s style than to develop our own.
We are wannabes (崇拜别人的人) rather than “hey-world-look-at-me”s.
We fail to see the real value in who we are, so we spend our lives trying to be someone else.
The author decided to get the clock fixed because it ______.
| A．was a really old and valuable clock |
| B．left the author with mixed feelings |
| C．was the only thing that his mother had left him |
| D．brought him memories of being with his mother |
What did the clock shop owners tell the author?
| A．It would cost a lot to repair the clock. |
| B．They could only make the clock electronic. |
| C．The parts that the clock needed were electronic. |
| D．They had never repaired a clock like this before. |
The purpose of the article is to criticize ______.
| A．the irresponsible clock shop owners |
| B．people who do not value things with a history |
| C．people who do not have a creative attitude toward life |
| D．people’s ignorance (无知) of traditional craftsmanship |