Far from the land of Antarctica(南极洲), a huge shelf of ice meets the ocean. At the underside of the shelf there lives a small fish, the Antarctic cod.
For forty years scientists have been curious about that fish. How does it live where most fish would freeze to death? It must have some secret. The Antarctic is not a comfortable place to work and research has been slow. Now it seems we have an answer.
Research was begun by cutting holes in the ice and catching the fish. Scientists studied the fish’s blood and measured its freezing point.
The fish were taken from seawater that had a temperature of -1.88℃ and many tiny pieces of ice floating in it. The blood of the fish did not begin to freeze until its temperature was lowered to -2.05℃. That small difference is enough for the fish to live at the freezing temperature of the ice-salt mixture.
The scientists’ next research job was clear: Find out what in the fish’s blood kept it from freezing. Their search led to some really strange thing made up of a protein(蛋白质) never before seen in the blood of a fish. When it was removed, the blood froze at seawater temperature. When it was put back, the blood again had its antifreeze quality and a lowered freezing point.
Study showed that it is an unusual kind of protein. It has many small sugar molecules(分子) held in special positions within each big protein molecule. Because of its sugar content, it is called a glycoprotein. So it has come to be called the antifreeze fish glycoprotein, or AFGP.
68. What is the text mainly about?
A. The terrible conditions in the Antarctic.
B. A special fish living in freezing waters.
C. The ice shelf around Antarctica.
D. Protection of the Antarctic cod.
69. Why can the Antarctic cod live at the freezing temperature?
A. The seawater has a temperature of -1.88℃.
B. It loves to live in the ice-salt mixture.
C. A special protein keeps it from freezing.
D. Its blood has a temperature lower than -2.05℃.
70. What does the underlined word “it” in Paragraph 5 refer to?
A. A type of ice-salt mixture. B. A newly found protein.
C. Fish blood. D. Sugar molecule.
71. What does “glycol-” in the underlined word “glycoprotein” in the last paragraph mean?
A. sugar B. ice C. blood D. molecule
Personal computers and the Internet give people new choices about how to spend their time.
Some may use this freedom to share less time with certain friends or family members, but new technology will also let them stay in closer touch with those they care most about. I know this from personal experience.
E-mail makes it easy to work at home, which is where I now spend most weekends and evenings. My working hours aren’t necessarily much shorter than they once were but I spend fewer of them at the office. This lets me share more time with my young daughter than I might have if she’d been born before electronic mail became such a practical tool.
The Internet also makes it easy to share thoughts with a group of friends. Say you do something fun see a great movie perhaps-and there are four or five friends who might want to hear about it. If you call each one, you may tire of telling the story.
With E-mail, you just write one note about your experience, at your convenience, and address it to all the friends you think might be interested. They can read your message when they have time, and read only as much as they want to. They can reply at their convenience, and you can read what they have to say at your convenience.
E-mail is also an inexpensive way stay in close touch with people who live far away. More than a few parents use E-mail to keep in touch, even daily touch, with their children off at college.
We just have to keep in mind that computers and the Internet offer another way of staying in touch. They don’t take the place of any of the old ways.The purpose of this passage is to ________.
| A．explain how to use the Internet |
| B．describe the writer’ s joy of keeping up with the latest technology |
| C．tell the merits(价值) and usefulness of the Internet |
| D．introduce the reader to basic knowledge about personal computers and the Internet |
The use of E-mail has made it possible for the writer to ________.
| A．spend less time working |
| B．have more free time with his child |
| C．work at home on weekends |
| D．work at a speed comfortable to him |
According to the writer, E-mail has an obvious advantage over the telephone because the former helps one ________.
| A．reach a group of people at one time conveniently |
| B．keep one’s communication as personal as possible |
| C．pass on much more information than the later |
| D．get in touch with one’s friends faster than the later |
The best title for this passage is ________.
| A．Computer: New Technological Advances |
| B．Internet: New Tool to Maintain Good Friendship |
| C．Computers Have Made Life Easier |
| D．Internet: a Convenient Tool for Communication |
Today many people say that women have the same chance as men in society. But this was not always so. In the past, women all over the world had to fight to get the same chance as men in education and jobs. Many people said that women should not receive much education because they would not do as well as men when they went to work.
One woman who showed that women should have the same chance was Marie, a scientist. In the 1800s scientists knew that a metal, uranium, gave off radiation. They also knew how much radiation came from his element. But they didn’t know what this radiation was like; they wondered why and how uranium gave off radiation. Marie Curie set out to answer these questions. In one of her experiments she was studying a certain material which, she knew, contained uranium, But it gave off 4 times as much radiation as usually does. What could explain this fact? Marie Curie thought that there must be another source of radiation in this material.
In 1898 Marie Curie set out to find out this new source of radiation, which she named “radium”. Her husband, who was also a scientist, helped her. They set up a laboratory in an old building behind a school. For four years Curies searched, doing many experiments, And one morning in 1902 Marie found the source of the radiation.
Marie Curie proved to the world that there was element that gave off radiation. And she also proved to the world that, if women are given truly equal chance, they can really help society.The scientists of Marie Curie’s day knew .
| A．that uranium gave off radiation |
| B．that radium gave off radiation |
| C．that there was some radium in uranium |
| D．that uranium and radium both gave off radiation |
The Curies found the element radium .
| A．with other scientists’ help | B．by asking some famous scientists |
| C．by doing many experiments | D．with their teachers’ help |
In the past many people thought .
| A．that women must get the same chance as men in education and jobs |
| B．that women should receive much education |
| C．that women should get good jobs |
| D．that women could not do the work well |
Marie Curie proved to people .
| A．that there was a new element uranium |
| B．that there was a new element radium |
| C．that women could do their work as well as men if they were really given the same conditions |
| D．both B and C |
Bushwick is a tough place to grow up. This part of Brooklyn, in New York City, has a lot of crime. More than half of its 100,000 residents rely on aid from the government. Only 50% of students at Bushwick High School graduate in four years.
Some people might say, “We should help these poor kids who have so many challenges.” But Malaak Compton-Rock looks at the teens in Bushwick and says, “ Go to help kids who have even bigger challenges than you do.” She believes that once young people see the power they have to make things better, they can handle their own problems more easily. So her service group, the Angel Rock Project, took 30 Bushwick kids to Soweto, in South Africa, to help poor families there. Soweto is a township outside the city of Johannesburg. The effort, called Journey for Change, aims to show that any kid can change the world.
“Kids in Bushwick face pressure to drop out of school or become involved in gangs and drugs.” Says Compton-Rock. “We want them to live a life of purpose and service.”
In Soweto, many parents have died of AIDS, a deadly disease. When that happens, a grandparent or a child must lead the family. The Bushwick volunteers helped such families. They tended vegetable gardens, cared for babies and bought groceries.
“The saddest thing was when we visited an orphanage (孤儿院) and I helped a little boy who had been abandoned because he had HIV, the virus that causes AIDS,” says Queen Clyde, 12. “It‘s been good to be on this trip. But what’s also important is what we do when it’s finished. That’s what counts.” “ I never appreciated what I had until I saw some people who had nothing,” says Sadara Lewis, 12 “It’s really changed my attitude. I want to make a difference.”
The trip was two weeks long. But the kids, aged 12 to 15, will spend all year speaking about their experience, fund-raising and more.What’s the main idea of the first paragraph?
| A．Bushwick is the poorest place in New York City. |
| B．Bushwick still needs more care from the government. |
| C．It is children who suffer most in New York City. |
| D．Children in Bushwick are living in a bad situation. |
In Compton-Rock’s opinion, the Bushwick kids __________.
| A．have few challenges |
| B．should be kept out of schools |
| C．can learn to deal with their own problems by helping others |
| D．are living much better than people in Africa |
Compared to Bushwick kids, some children in Soweto __________.
| A．may have bigger challenges |
| B．receive no care from the government |
| C．are much more independent |
| D．are able to lead the family |
According to the passage, “Journey for Change” can be best seen as the saying “________”.
| A．God helps those who help themselves |
| B．saying and doing are two things |
| C．one stone kills two birds |
| D．a friend in need is a friend indeed |
From the passage we know that __________.
| A．there are few students in Bushwick High School |
| B．the trip to Soweto will have a long influence in spite of its short time. |
| C．most children are suffering from AIDS in Soweto |
| D．kids with HIV will be abandoned in Soweto |
It was Thanksgiving morning and in the crowded kitchen of my small home I was busy preparing the traditional Thanksgiving turkey when the doorbell rang. I opened the front door and saw two small children in rags huddling together. “Any old papers, lady?” asked one of them.
I was busy. I wanted to say “no” until I looked down at their feet. They were wearing thin little sandals, wet with heavy snow.
“Come in and I’ll make you a cup of hot cocoa.”
They walked over and sat down at the table. Their wet sandals left marks upon the floor. I served them cocoa and bread with jam to fight against the cold outside. Then I went back to the kitchen and started again on my household budget.
The silence in the front room struck me. I looked in. The girl held the empty cup in her hands, looking at it. The boy asked in a flat voice, “Lady, are you rich?”
I looked at my shabby slipcovers. The girl put her cup back in its saucer carefully and said, “Your cups match your saucers.” Her voice was hungry with a need that no amount of food could supply. They left after that, holding their bundles of papers against the wind. They hadn’t said “Thank you.” They didn’t need to. They had reminded me that I had so much for which to be grateful. Plain blue china cups and saucers were only worth five pence. But they matched.
I tasted the potatoes and stirred the meat soup. Potatoes and brown meat soup, a roof over our heads, my man with a good steady job—these matched, too.
I moved the chairs back from the fire and cleaned the living room. The muddy prints of small sandals were still wet upon my floor. Let them be for a while, I thought, just in case I should begin to forget how rich I am. Two children came to the writer’s front door because _________________.
| A．it was Thanksgiving Day | B．they were beggars |
| C．they wanted old papers | D．they wanted a cup of cocoa |
Why did the writer let the children in?
| A．She showed great pity on them |
| B．She had old papers to sell |
| C．She wanted to invite them to her Thanksgiving feast |
| D．She wanted them to see how rich she was |
The girl thought the writer was rich perhaps because ________________.
| A．she saw that the lady’s room was comfortable |
| B．she saw the cups matched the saucers |
| C．the writer’s slipcovers were very new |
| D．the writer was preparing a big meal while she was too hungry. |
From the passage, we can infer that whether you are rich depends on ________.
| A．how much money you have had |
| B．how you feel about your life |
| C．how you have helped others |
| D．what job your husband is doing |
The writer left the muddy prints of small sandals on the floor for a while to ____________.
| A．show her husband that someone had come |
| B．remind her that she had helped two children |
| C．remind her that she was very rich in the neighborhood |
| D．remind her how life should be |
When an ant dies, other ants move the dead insect out. Sometimes, the dead ant get moved away very soon—within an hour of dying. This behavior is interesting to scientists, who wonder how ants know for sure—and so soon—that another ant is dead.
One scientist recently came up with a way to explain this ant behavior. Dong-Hwan Choe is a biologist. Choe found that Argentine ants have a chemical on the outside of their bodies that signals to other ants, “I’m dead—take me away.”
But there’s a twist to Choe’s discovery. Choe says that the living ants—not just the dead ones—have this death chemical. In other words, while an ant crawls around, perhaps in a picnic or home, it’s telling other ants that it’s dead.
What keeps ants from dragging away the living ants？Choe found that Argentine ants have two additional chemicals on their bodies, and these tell nearby ants something like, “Wait—I’m not dead yet.” So Choe’s research turned up two sets of chemical signals in ants: one says, “I’m dead,” and the other set says, “I’m not dead yet.”
Other scientists have tried to figure out how ants know when another ant is dead. If an ant is knocked unconscious, for example, other ants leave it alone until it wakes up. That means ants know that unmoving ants can still be alive.
Choe suspects that when an Argentine ant dies, the chemical that says “Wait-I’m not dead yet” quickly goes away. Once that chemical is gone, only the one that says “I’m dead” is left. “It’s because the dead ant no longer smells like a living ant that it gets carried to the graveyard, not because its body releases(释放) new unique chemicals after death,” said Choe. When other ants detect the “dead” chemical without the “not dead yet” chemical, they drag away the body.
Understanding this behavior may help scientists figure out how to stop Argentine ants from invading new places and causing problems. Choe would like to find a way to use the newly discovered chemicals to spread ant killer to Argentine ant nests.
The ants’ removal behavior is important to the overall health of the nest. “Being able to quickly remove dead individuals and other possible sources of disease is extremely important to all animals living in societies, including us,” says Choe. “Think about all the effort and money that we invest daily in waste management.”The underlined word “twist” in Paragraph 3 means .
| A．an unexpected change | B．a clear mistake |
| C．an important key | D．a shocking conclusion |
Ants judge whether another one is dead or not depending on .
| A．the sense of taste | B．the sense of smell |
| C．the sense of touch | D．the sense of sight |
The result of the research can be used to .
| A．kill troublesome pests |
| B．solve the problem of endangered species |
| C．prevent further expansion of the ants’ territory |
| D．keep the balance of nature |
Why is it important to remove dead individuals?
| A．Because it is easier to manage the living. |
| B．Because it can save money to deal with the waste. |
| C．Because it can provide more space for the living. |
| D．Because it can keep the living from suffering disease. |
What might be the best title of the text?
| A．Dead or living? It is easy to judge |
| B．Pulling away the dead ants is a difficult task |
| C．Ant nests have great undertaking capacity |
| D．Leaving it alone or taking it away? Ants feel puzzled |