D
A husband-and-wife team from California reached the Pacific Ocean after a 4,900- mile-cross
-country walk, becoming the first to backpack the American Discovery Trail in one continuous
walk.
Marcia and Ken powers, of Pleasanton, started the travel across 13 states, through 14 national parks and 16 national forests on Feb. 27 from Cape Henlopen in Delaware. Nearly eight months later, the excited couple walked through water into the Pacific Ocean at Point Reyes, a day ahead of time.
“We are a little sad that a great adventure is over. It was a fantastic adventure. And now we go home and just do housework. It's really sad.” Marcia, who said she's in her 50s, and her 60-year-old husband traversed cities, desert, mountains and farmland before reaching the Pacifics alone with arms around each other' s backpacks.
They overcame deep snow in the East, a quicksand in Utah, close lightning strikes in the Mid- west and strong desert sandstorms in the West while averaging 22 miles a day and taking only four days off. But they enjoyed the French history of St. Louis' the beauty of the Colorado Rockies and the kindness of strangers they met along the way. They particularly remember two brothers ---- a
doctor and dentist-------who put them up in their homes, after terrible days, and a motorcyclist who gave them water after they failed to find any on Utah's lonely Wah Wah Desert.
“Americans are truly warm-hearted and wonderful people.” Marcia Powers said. “We got to meet people that we would never meet in our daily living at home. We got to touch it with our feet and hands and smell all its scents and hear its wildlife. It' s an amazing country,” she added.
68. Which of the following about couple's walk is TRUE?
A. The walk covered more than 13 states.
B. The walk lasted about half a year.
C. The walk didn't meet any desert.
D. The walk might end before October 27.
69. The underlined word “traversed” in the third paragraph means “____________.”
A. enjoy B. move across, through or over
C. overcome D. look at
70. According to the text, we can infer that during the walk the couple __________.
A. were treated warm-heartedly by the local people
B. never stopped to have a rest
C. were ever caught in a heavy rain and became ill
D. felt the quicksand in Utah was very interesting
71. The couple went through many places except ____________.
A. big rivers B. desert C. hills D. fields
Ask someone what they have done to help the environment recently and they will almost certainly mention recycling. Recycling in the home is very important of course. However, being forced to recycle often means we already have more material than we need. We are dealing with the results of that over-consumption in the greenest way possible, but it would be far better if we did not need to bring so much material home in the first place.
The total amount of packaging increased by 12% between 1999 and 2005. It now makes up a third of a typical household’s waste in the UK. In many supermarkets nowadays food items are packaged twice with plastic and cardboard.
Too much packaging is doing serious damage to the environment. The UK, for example, is running out of it for carrying this unnecessary waste. If such packaging is burnt, it gives off greenhouse gases which go on to cause the greenhouse effect. Recycling helps, but the process itself uses energy. The solution is not to produce such items in the first place. Food waste is a serious problem, too. Too many supermarkets encourage customers to buy more than they need. However, a few of them are coming round to the idea that this cannot continue, encouraging customers to reuse their plastic bags, for example.
But this is not just about supermarkets. It is about all of us. We have learned to associate packaging with quality. We have learned to think that something unpackaged is of poor quality. This is especially true of food. But it also applies to a wide range of consumer products, which often have far more packaging than necessary.
There are signs of hope. As more of us recycle, we are beginning to realize just how much unnecessary materials are collecting. We need to face the wastefulness of our consumer culture, but we have a mountain to climb.
44. What does the underlined phrase “over-consumption” refer to?
A. Using too much packaging. B. Recycling too many wastes.
C. Making more products than necessary. D. Having more material than is needed.
45. The author uses figures in Paragraph 2 to show _______.
A. the tendency of cutting household waste B. the increase of packaging recycling
C. the rapid growth of super markets D. the fact of packaging overuse
46. According to the text, recycling ______.
A. helps control the greenhouse effect
B. means burning packaging for energy
C. is the solution to gas shortage
D. leads to a waste of land
47. What can we learn from the last paragraph?
A. Fighting wastefulness is difficult.
B. Needless material is mostly recycled.
C. People like collecting recyclable waste.
D. The author is proud of their consumer culture.
Life will probably be very different in 2050. First of all, it looks as though TV channels will have disappeared by 2050. Instead, people will choose a program from a “menu” and a computer will send the program directly to the television. Today, we can use the World Wide Web to read newspaper stories and see pictures on a computer thousands of kilometers away. By 2050, music, films, programmers, newspapers and books will come to us in this way.
In many places, agriculture is developing quickly and people are growing fruit and vegetables for export. This uses a lot of water. Therefore, there could be serious shortages. Some futurologists (未来学家) predict that water could be the cause of wars if we don’t act now.
In future, cars will run on new，clean fuels and they will go very fast. Cars will have computers to control the speed and there won’t be any accidents. Today, many cars have computers that tell drivers exactly where they are．By 2050, the computer will control the car and drive it to your destination. Also, by 2050, space planes will fly people from Los Angeles to Tokyo in just two hours.
A number of large companies now use robots instead of people who ask for pay rises, or go on strike, and can not work 24 hours a day. By 2050, we will see robots everywhere—in factories, schools, offices, hospitals, shops and homes.
By 2050, we will be able to help blind and deaf people see and hear again. In the last few years, scientists have discovered how to control genes and have already produced clones of animals. By 2050，scientists will be able to produce clones of people and decide how they look, how they behave and how much intelligence they have. Scientists will be able to do these things, but should they?
40. By 2050, people will get information mainly by _______.
A. watching TV B. reading newspapers
C. listening to the radioD. turning to a website
41. From the second paragraph, we learn that _______.
A. the demand for water will increase a lot in the future
B. future wars will lead to an increasing need for water
C. there can be no agriculture without enough water
D. the population will decrease for lack of water
42. Which of the following is NOT a reality at the present time?
A. Scientists have found out how to control some genes.
B. Cars have computers which tell drivers their positions.
C. People can learn about what has happened anywhere on the Internet.
D. Robots have completely replaced humans in some factories.
43. What will play the biggest part in the quality of life in the future?
A. Medicine. B. Technology. C. Education. D. Agriculture.
第二部分阅读理解 (共两节，满分40分)
第一节（共15小题；每小题2分，满分30分）
阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项(A、B、C和D)中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
Once upon a time there was a wise man that used to go to the sea to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work. One day he was walking along the shore. As he looked down at the beach, he saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought that someone would dance on the beach. So he began to walk faster to catch up. As he got closer, he saw that it was a young man and the young man wasn’t dancing, but instead he was reaching down to the shore, picking up something and throwing it into the ocean. As he got closer, he called out, “Good morning! What are you doing?’’
The young man paused, looked up and replied, “Throwing starfishes (海星) in the ocean.”
“I guess I should have asked, why are you throwing starfishes in the ocean?”
“The sun is up and the tide is going out. And if I don’t throw them in, they’ll die”
“But, young man, don’t you realize that there are miles and miles of beach and starfishes all along it. You can’t possibly make a difference!”
The young man listened politely. Then he bent down, picked another starfish and threw it into the sea, and said, “It made a difference for that one.” There is something very special in each and every one of us. We have all been gifted with the ability to make a difference. And if we can know that gift, we will gain through the strength of our vision the power (力量) to shape the future.
We must each find our starfish. And if we throw our starfish wisely and well, the world will be better.
36. One day, the wise man saw a young man _______.
A. dancing along the beach B. walking with a dancer
C. picking up starfish for sale D. trying to save as many starfishes as possible
37. The underlined words “something very special” refers to ________.
A. the gifts from friends B. the strength of making decision
C. our own starfish D. the ability to make a difference
38. From the last two paragraphs, we can learn that ________.
A. the wise man realized something new and important
B. the wise man thought it was foolish of the young man to throw starfishes in the ocean.
C. the young man had the ability to make a difference
D. it is necessary for us to save starfish on the beach
39. The writer told this story to show us _____.
A. how and where we can write a good article
B. everyone can do something for the future
C. wise men are sometimes stupid
D. young men are in fact wiser than old people
The researchers, led by Hwang Woo-suk, insist they cloned an Afghan hound, only to help investigate (研究) human disease, including the possibility of cloning stem cells (干细胞) for treatment purposes.
But others immediately renewed calls for a global ban (禁令)on human reproductive cloning before the technology moves any farther.
"Successful cloning of an increasing number of species confirms the general impression that it would be possible to clone any species of mammals, including humans," said Ian Wilmut, a reproductive biologist at the University of Edinburgh who produced the first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep, from an adult cell nearly a decade ago.
Researchers have since cloned cats, goats, cows, mice, pigs, rabbits, horses, deer, mules and gaur, a large wild ox of Southeast Asia. So far, efforts to clone a monkey or another primate with the same techniques have failed.
Uncertainties about the health and life span (寿命) of cloned animals continue to exist; Dolly died at a young age in 2003 after developing cancer and arthritis.
Wilmut and others complimented Hwang's achievement, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature. But they said politicians and scientists must face the larger issue — how to go on with the research without crossing the moral boundary of copying human life in the lab.
"The ability to use the technology is hopeful," said Robert Schenken, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. "However, the paper also points out that in dogs as in most species, cloning for reproductive purposes is unsafe."
The cloned puppy was the lone success from more than 100 dogs implanted (嵌入)with more than 1,000 cloned embryos.
In a news conference in Seoul, the cloning team also condemned(谴责)the reproductive cloning of humans as "unsafe and inefficient." Human reproductive cloning already is banned in South Korea. Other nations, including the United States, are divided on whether to ban just human cloning or cloning of all kinds, including the production of stem cells.
56. An Afghan hound is a kind of ______.
A. catB. goat c. cow D. dog
57. A ______ is a large wild ox of Southeast Asia.
A. horse B. deer C. mules D. gaur
58. Accrding to the passage, scientists haven’t been able to clone a ______ so far.
A. deer B. mule C. mouse D. monkey
59. The underlined word complimented is probably similar in meaning to ______.
A. praised B. doubted C. refused D. gave up
60. The cloning of human beings is banned in ______.
A. South Korea B. the United States
C. both South Korea and the United States D. neither South Korea nor the United States
Jane Austen, a famous English writer, was born at Steventon, Hampshire, on December 16, 1775, and died on July 18,1817. She began writing early in life, although the prejudices of her times forced her to have her books published anonymously(匿名地)
But Jane Austen is perhaps the best known and best loved of Bath's many famous local people and visitors. She paid two long visits here during the last five years of the eighteenth century and from 1801 to 1806, Bath was her home. Her deep knowledge of the city is fully seen in two of her novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, which are largely set in Bath. The city is still very much as Jane Austen knew it, keeping in its streets and public buildings the well-ordered world that she described so well in her novels. Now the pleasure of learning Jane Austen's Bath can be enhanced (增强)by visiting the Jane Austen Centre in Gay Street. Here, in a Georgian town house in the heart of the city, you can find out more about Bath in Jane Austen's time and the importance of Bath in her life and work.
The Centre has been set up with the help and guidance of members of the Jane Austen Society. After your visit to the Centre, you can look round the attractive shop, which offers a huge collection of Jane Austen related books, cards and many specially designed gifts. Jane Austen quizzes are offered to keep the children busy.
You can also have walking tours of Jane Austen's Bath, which is a great way to find out more about Jane Austen and discover the wonderful Georgian City of Bath. The tour lasts about one and a half hours, The experienced guides will take you to the places where Jane lived, walked and shopped.
51. Jane Austen paid two long visits to Bath ______.
A. in her early twenties B. in her early teens
C. in her late twenties D. in her late teens
52. What can we learn about Bath from the passage?
A. Bath has greatly changed since Jane Austen's death.
B. The city has changed as much as Jane Austen knew it.
C. Bath remains almost the same as in Jane Austen's time.
D. No changes have taken place in Bath since Jane Austen's time.
53. Which of the following statements is wrong?
A. Jane Austen published her books using a different name.
B. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion are mostly about Bath.
C. Steventon was Jane Austen’s birthplace.
D. Jane Austen Centre has been set up by the government
54. The author writes this passage in order to ______.
A. attract readers to visit the city of Bath
B. ask readers to buy Austen's books
C. tell readers about lane Austen' s experience
D. give a brief introduction to the Jane Austen Society
55. It takes you about one and a half hours ______.
A. to get to the Jane Austen Centre in Gay Street
B. to buy Jane Austen related books, cards and gifts
C. to find a guide to take you to the Centre
D. to took around the city of Bath on foot