Recently there was a major discovery in the scientific research — the mapping of all DNA in a human gene(基因) is complete. Couple of years ago, this seems an impossible task for scientist to accomplish. All this progress in science leads us to believe that the day, when the human being will be cloned, is not far away. Human cloning has always been a topic of argument, in terms of morality(道德) or religion.
Taking a look at why cloning might be beneficial, among many cases, it is arguable that parents who are known to be at risk of passing a genetic limitation to a child could make use of cloning. If the clone was free of genetic limitations, then the other clone would be as well. The latter could be inserted in the woman and allowed to ripen to term. Moreover, cloning would enable women, who can’t get pregnant, to have children of their own.
Cloning humans would also mean that organs could be cloned, so it would be a source of perfect transfer organs. This surely would be greatly beneficial to millions of unfortunate people around the world that are expected to lose their lives due to failure of single (or more) organ(s). It is also arguable that a ban on cloning may be unlawful and would rob people of the right to reproduce and limit the freedom of scientists.
Arguments against cloning are also on a perfectly practical side. Primarily, I believe that cloning would step in the normal “cycle” of life. There would be a large number of same genes, which reduce the chances of improvement, and, in turn, development — the fundamental reason how living things naturally adapt to the ever-changing environment. Life processes failing to do so might result in untimely disappearance. Furthermore, cloning would make the uniqueness that each one of us possesses disappear, thus leading to creation of genetically engineered groups of people for specific purposes, and chances are that those individuals would be regarded as “objects” rather than people in the society.
Scientists haven’t 100% guaranteed that the first cloned humans will be normal. Thus, this could result in introduction of additional limitations in the human “gene-pool”.
Regarding such arguable topics in “black or white” approach seems very innocent to me personally. We should rather try to look at all “shades” of it. I believe that cloning is only legal if its purpose is for cloning organs; not humans. Then we could regard this as for “saving life” instead of “creating life”. I believe cloning humans is morally and socially unacceptable. Which of the following is true according to the passage？
| A．Genetic limitation will be beneficial for some women |
| B．A large number of genes will prevent us from developing |
| C．Prohibition(禁止) of cloning might limit the freedom of scientists |
| D．First cloned humans might be normal according to scientists |
What’s the author’s opinion on cloning?
| A．Cloning should be entirely banned |
| B．Cloning should be used in creating life |
| C．Cloning will take away the right to reproduce |
| D．Cloning is acceptable if it is used for cloning organs |
Which of the following shows the structure of the passage
Every New Year brings renewed(更新的) expectation for a change, for a better life and for a better you. That’s a wonderful thing, because this fresh start gives us a chance to reinvent our lives and ourselves. Here’s how.
Let go
Many times we are held back by our previous failures,emotions and barriers(障碍). This is all old baggage. Let everything unhappy from the past go. Let go of failures. Let go of fears you’ve built up. Let go of your ideas about what your life has to be like. Let go of long-held beliefs and habits which seem to be burdens(负担) to you.
Clear away distractions(分心)
Clear away email, your favourite blogs and news websites. Clearaway the iPhone or Blackberry, and clear away all the chores that pull at your attention. In fact, if you can, shut off the Internet for a while. You can come back to it after you take a break.
Decide what matters most today
Forget about your goals for all of this year. Instead, decide what you want to do today. What matters most to you and your life? What are you most passionate(热情的) about right now? What excites you? What gives you the most fulfillment(满足感)? Often the answer would be in creating something, making something new, helping others, becoming a better person, and working on a project that you will be proud of. But whatever your answer, have it clear in your mind at the beginning of the day.
Reinvent yourself every day
Every day, you are reborn.Reinvent yourself and your life. Do what matters most to you. It might be the same thing that mattered most yesterday, or it might not be. That isn’t important. What’s important is today---right now! Be passionate, and be happy!
You’ll have a fresh start every single day---not just on January 1 of a new year.Writing this passage, the author seems to be ________.
| A．strict | B．peaceful | C．nervous | D．confident |
The underlined word “chores” refers to ______.
| A．modern technology | B．unimportant things |
| C．online information | D．fashinable devices |
Which of the following is the writer’s suggestion according to the passage?
| A．Stopping using hi-tech devices to avoid troubles in your life. |
| B．Seizing the moment, but not to make a plan for the far future. |
| C．Forgetting everything about and from the past |
| D．Making yourself a person reborn every day. |
The most suitable title for the passage is “ ________”.
| A．Work Effectively in a New Year |
| B．Reduce Stress in a New Year |
| C．Freshen the Start of Every New Day |
| D．Live a Better Life in Every New Day |
Since the Internet came into homes, the daily life has never been the same again. But the thing that worries most of us is that we can get viruses from the Internet. But can we catch viruses on our cell phones? A new study in the journal Science says yes, but the spread of such mobile software that can bring harm to our cell phones won’t reach dangerous levels until more cell phones are on the same operating system.
Computers are easily attacked by viruses because they share data, especially over the Internet. Of course, nowadays, more people are using their cell phones more and more frequently. They use them for emailing, text messaging and downloading troublesome ring tones, etc.,so it is obvious that cell phone viruses are a threat as well.
Scientists used nameless call data from more than six million cell phone users to help model a possible outbreak. And they concluded that viruses that spread from phone to phone by Bluetooth are not much concerned, because users have to be in close physical relation for their phones to “see” one another. However, viruses that spread through multimedia messaging services can move much faster, because they can come in disguise（伪装）, such as a cool tune sent by a friend. The good news is that to be effective, these viruses need their victims(受害人) to all use the same operating system, which not enough of us do. Because there is no Microsoft operating system for mobile phones, yet. Thank goodness.What is the passage mainly about?
| A．The operating system of cell phones. |
| B．The threat of cell phone viruses. |
| C．The wide use of cell phones. |
| D．Computer viruses. |
When ______, cell phone viruses can be dangerous.
| A．all the cell phones work on the same operating system |
| B．Microsoft operating system for cell phones is created |
| C．users can see each other on the phones |
| D．Bluetooth is widely used |
What can we infer about Bluetooth according to the scientists?
| A．It can increase the chances of cell phone viruses greatly. |
| B．It can help us to stop the spreading of cell phone viruses. |
| C．It won’t possibly cause the outbreak of cell phone viruses. |
| D．It can make users have close physical relation with one another. |
We can learn from the passage that ______.
| A．it is impossible to catch viruses on our cell phones |
| B．cell phones are not well connected with the Internet |
| C．it is dangerous for people to download ring tones to cell phones |
| D．more than one operating system is used for cell phones now |
As a school teacher, Inderjit Khurana used to take the train to work. And one day, at the station, she saw dozens of children who spent their days begging from train passengers rather than going to school. She learned that it was not a rare problem and that millions of children in India lived on the streets.
Realizing that these children would never be able to escape poor life and homelessness without education, and that it would be impossible to send these children to school, Inderjit decided to create a model program---taking the school to the most out- of-school children.
Khurana’s train platform schools aim to provide a creative school form and give children the basic levels of education. Her last goals reach far beyond the 20 platform schools she and her colleagues have created in India’s Bhubaneswar region. She is determined that her program will become a model for changing the lives of the poorest children throughout India and the world.
Khurana founded the Ruchika Social Service Organization(RSSO) in 1985. The teachers gather the children together between the stops of the train for reading, writing, maths and history taught through songs and other teaching tools.
Khurana recently comes to realize that the education of these children is impossible when the most basic needs of their families are not being met. So she also provides food and medicine for their families.
Khurana insists that every child have the right to an education and that if a child cannot come to the school, then the school must come to him or her.Khurana’s final aim is to.
| A．make the poorest children’s lives better |
| B．put an end to the problem of children’s dropout(辍学) |
| C．attract more students to her platform schools |
| D．set up 20 platform schools throughout India |
What can we learn about the RSSO?
| A．It has a history of more than 30 years. |
| B．It provides jobs for the poorest children. |
| C．It gives money to the out-of-school children. |
| D．Its work doesn’t only include free education for the street children. |
Khurana also offers free food and medicine to the children because_____.
| A．the basic family needs are included in her model program |
| B．she hopes to draw more people’s attention to the RSSO |
| C．they are the necessities for the out-of-school children |
| D．she wishes to improve local people’s living standard |
Researchers at the University of Kansas say that people can accurately judge 90 percent of a stranger’s personality simply by looking at the person’s shoes.
“Shoes convey a thin but useful piece of information about their wearers,” the authors wrote in the new study published in the Journal of Research in Personality. “Shoes serve a practical purpose, and also serve as nonverbal(非语言的) indications with symbolic messages. People tend to pay attention to the shoes they and others wear.”
Medical Daily notes that the details detected in the study include a person’s general age, sex, income, political affiliation(派别), and other personality characteristics, including someone’s emotional stability.
Lead researcher Omri Gillath said the judgments were based on the style, cost, color, and condition of someone’s shoes. In the study, 63 University of Kansas students looked at pictures showing 208 different pairs of shoes worn by the study’s participants. Volunteers in the study were photographed in their most commonly worn shoes, and then filled out a personality questionnaire.
So, some of the results were expected: People with higher incomes most commonly wore expensive shoes, and flashier footwear was typically worn by extroverts(外向者).
However, some of the more specific results are interesting. For example, “practical and functional” shoes were generally worn by more “agreeable” people, while ankle boots went more closely with “aggressive” personalities.
The strangers of all may be that those who wore “uncomfortable looking” shoes tend to have “calm” personalities.
And if you have several pairs of new shoes or take exceptional care of them, you may suffer from “attachment anxiety”, spending a large amount of time worrying about what other people think of your appearance.
There was even a political calculation in the mix with more liberal types wearing “shabbier and less expensive” shoes.
The researchers noted that some people will choose shoe styles to mask their actual personality characteristics, but researchers noted that volunteers were also likely to be unaware that their footwear choices were showing deep awareness into their personalities.According to Omri Gillath, a stranger’s personality can be judged by ___.
| A．the age and sex of the person |
| B．the personality questionnaire by the person |
| C．the emotional stability of the person |
| D．the shoes the person wearst |
We can infer from Paragraph 2 that ___.
| A．a practical purpose is to wear shoes |
| B．people want to buy new shoes they pay attention to |
| C．shoes are vital to their wearers |
| D．the Journal of Research in Personality is a magazine |
The underlined word “agreeable” is closest in meaning to __.
| A．gentle | B．weak | C．generous | D．considerate |
Which might be the best title for the passage?
| A．Good Shoes, Good Character |
| B．Bad Shoes, Bad Personality |
| C．Shoes and Their Wearers’ Personality |
| D．Shoes Shape A Person’s Character |
We know that the earth has become warmer over the last century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group established by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program, reports that the average surface temperature of the earth has increased during the twentieth century by 0.6°+ 0.2°C.(The + 0.2°C means that the increase might be as small as 0.4°C or as great as 0.8°C). This may seem like a small shift, but although regional and short—term temperatures do fluctuate(变动) over a wide range, global temperatures are generally quite stable. In fact, the difference between today’s average global temperature and the average global temperature during the last Ice Age is only about 5 degrees C. Indeed, it’s warmer today around the world than at any time during the past 1,000years, and the warmest years of the previous century have occurred within the past decade.
We also know that human activities—primarily the burning of fossil fuels—have increased the greenhouse gas content of the earth’s atmosphere significantly over the same period. Carbon dioxide is one of the most important greenhouse gases, which trap heat near the planet’s surface.
The vast majority of climate researchers agree with these overall findings. The scientific disagreements that do still exist primarily concern detailed aspects of the processes that make up these largely accepted general themes.
You can think of this website as a window into the world of scientific research. In this primer, you’ll find a general discussion of the physical processes underlying the earth’s climate, an outline of the kinds of data that may shed light on how the climate is changing—and the role of human activity in these changes—and a description a some of the questions and uncertainties that researchers continue to explore. This primer is organized into four interconnected sections: the Atmosphere; the Hydrosphere(水圈); the Cryosphere(低温层); and the Biosphere(生物层).We know from the text that “IPCC”___.
| A．engages in the climate and changes about the earth. |
| B．is a group by scientists who like to walk around the moon |
| C．works in the World Meteorological Organization |
| D．often greets the passers-by from the outer space |
We know from the text that carbon dioxide ___.
| A．is one of the most important greenhouse gases |
| B．has fossil fuels |
| C．traps cold near the planet’s surface |
| D．exist in human activities |
From the text, we know when we say the temperature of something has increased by about 0.7+ 0.2°C, the + 0.2°C means___.
| A．the increase might by as small as 0.3°C or as great as 0.7°C |
| B．the increase might by as small as 0.5°C or as great as 0.8°C |
| C．the increase might by as small as 0.5°C or as great as 0.9°C |
| D．the increase might by as small as 0.4 C or as great as 0.8°C |
What would be the best title for this text?
| A．What Are the Scientific Disagreements |
| B．You Can Think of This Website |
| C．What Do We Know about Global Climate Change? |
| D．The Vast Majority of Climate Researchers |