I got interested in the idea of standing desks about a year ago. The health advantages of standing instead of sitting for eight hours a day are clear, so when the company Ergotron invited me to review their WorkFit C-Mod Dual Desk, I jumped out of my chair---really.
After several hours putting the desk together, I finally got to try it out. The standing desk had a desktop that I could use for writing.
At first I absolutely loved it. Standing during the day instead of sitting was fantastic. Although I felt more tired after all that standing during the day, I knew the health benefits were worth the slight discomfort. However, after the initial novelty (新奇)of the desk wore off, I realized that I could not use it in the long term.
It was just not practical. While using the desk for a month , I could definitely foresee problems arising from using it full time.
I enjoy having a lot of things on my desk. The standing desk just did not have enough room for all of my things.
I can easily foresee awkward situations when I put that desk in an office space. When someone comes into your office, does your guest have to stand as well? If you office is big enough, maybe you have room for two chairs for you and a visitor, which is great. Yet for the ordinary worker in a small office, the standing desk creates a very awkward situation.
Additionally, the amount of money I would have to spend to replace my current workspace with a standing desk was another issue. The desks I have looked at were highly expensive.
Yes, spending the day standing can offset(抵消) many of the negative effects of too much sitting, but we humans are designed for movement. Through activity changes like taking the stairs instead of the elevator, you can easily increase the time you spend on your feet. Best of all, those options are completely free.When the author was asked to try the standing desk out, he was ____.
| A．excited | B．surprised | C．unhappy | D．uninterested |
When first using the standing desk, the author ___.
| A．thought it was boring | B．thought it was wonderful |
| C．felt less tired than usual | D．felt quite uncomfortable |
According to the author, a standing desk ____.
| A．takes up too much space | B．is suitable for long-term use |
| C．is cheaper than traditional desks | D．is impractical though good for health |
What does the author mainly tell us in the text?
| A．How to use the standing desk. | B．What he does during the workday. |
| C．His opinion on the standing desk. | D．The advantage of the standing desk. |
A Battery’s Nightmare
Portable electronics that can be carried about easily are only as good as their batteries (电池) and, let’s face it, batteries aren’t very good, especially when compared with, say, petrol, which packs 100 times a battery’s energy into an equal space. That’s why a large group of mechanical engineers (centered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but with partners at other universities and companies) are hard at work in an effort to replace batteries with a tiny engine that runs on fuel. Imagine a battery-free life! When the fuel runs out in your mobile phone, you just fill up and go.
The engine---about the size of a ten-cent coin---starts with a combustion chamber (燃烧室) that burns hydrogen. Its tiny parts are etched (蚀刻) onto silicon wafers (硅片) in the same manner that computer parts are etched onto integrated circuits (集成电路). The first engine is made up of five wafers. And since these wafers could be produced in much the same way as computer chips, they could probably be produced quite cheaply.
But the devil in all this nice detail is efficiency. Tiny engine parts don’t always behave like the bigger parts of the first engine. Something between the parts can slow down the works, according to Columbia University Professor LucFrechette, one of the engine’s designers. Extreme heat from the combustion chamber is also a problem, often leaking to other parts of the engine.
The scientists’ goal is to create an engine that will operate 10 times better than batteries operate. Frechette says that a complete system, with all parts in place and working, will be set up in the next couple of years, but commercial models aren’t likely until at least the end of the next ten years.
60. According to the passage, the title suggests that _______ .
A. batteries should be greatly improved
B. petrol will be used instead of batteries
C. the time of batteries will be gone forever
D. pollution problems caused by batteries must be solved
61. What’s the meaning of the underlined word “devil” in paragraph 3?
A. Problem B. Advantage C. Invention D. Technique
62. What can we infer from the passage?
A. The new invention doesn’t need any fuel.
B. The new engine has been produced in large quantities.
C. The new invention is much cheaper than the battery.
D. The new engine needs to be improved before it’s on sale.
第三部分: 阅读理解（共20小题；每小题2分, 共40分）
阅读下列短文, 从每题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中, 选出最佳选项, 并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
Dear mommy and daddy,
I write this letter to you in hopes that you should consider your method of parenting me before I arrive. I am a joyous child. I expect love and respect, order and discipline. When I arrive, I will seem very small to you. Even though I don’t look like an adult, please understand that I am a human being.
Even though I will not speak words to you, I will know you with my heart. I will feel all your feelings, absorb your thoughts. I will come to know you more than you may know yourself. Do not be misled (误导) by my silence. I am open, growing and learning more rapidly than you can imagine.
I will keep in heart all that I see, so please give me sweet music and language that tells me how much I am loved. Give me silence to rest my ears. I will absorb all that I feel, so please wrap life in love.
I am waiting patiently to be with you. I am so happy to have the opportunity to be alive. Maybe when you see me you will remember how precious life is too!
Your joyous child
56. According to the letter, why did the child write this letter?
A. Because the child wanted to apologize to its parents.
B. Because the child wanted t
he parents to consider the method of being parents.
C. Because the child expressed the happiness of having such
parents.
D. Because the child wanted to show how much it understood its parents.
57. According to the text, we can infer the “child” is in fact _______ .
A. a lovely boy B.
a joyous child
C. an unborn baby D. a lovely girl
58. The child in the text required all the following EXCEPT that ________ .
A. it should be looked on as a human being
B. it would like to be loved by its parents
C. it wanted to be with the parents an soon as possible
D. it wanted a place full of beautiful music and love language
59. The letter is likely to be printed in the part of ______ in a magazine.
A. “Baby’s world” B. “Current news”
C. “Young parent center” D. “Science and our life”
As parents we like to make sure that our children are eating well and getting all the nutrients（营养）they need. Children need two to three kinds of vegetables every day.
A simple way to get our children to eat vegetables is by eating them ourselves. Following our example, they may start eating vegetables themselves. Don’t say things like, “If you eat your vegetables, you can have dessert. ” These methods work for a little while but can possibly lead them to hate vegetables more. Give your children new varieties of foods which will help them develop a taste for trying new things.
Sometimes the simple things just don’t work. We have to start becoming a little creative to make our children eat vegetables. By doing this in the beginning when children are small, we will help them learn to love vegetables.
Think of creative ways to make children eat vegetables. For example, cut up vegetables like carrots, cucumbers and place them in a creative way on a plate for an afternoon snack. Or try using cheese sauce either by dipping the vegetables in it or by putting the cheese right on top of cooked or raw vegetables.
If you prefer, you can also add a teaspoon of sugar on top of cooked green beans and peas to make them taste a little sweeter. Doing this shouldn’t lead to a sweet tooth as long as you only give them a small amount.
If you have children that refuse to eat vegetables, some of these suggestions I’ve listed will help to turn that around. In the end, you’re not only just getting them to eat vegetables, you’re also helping them to live a healthier lifestyle.According to the passage, all the following ways to get children to eat vegetables are creative EXCEPT _____.
| A．preparing carrots in an attractive way |
| B．adding some cheese sauce to vegetables |
| C．putting cheese on top of vegetables |
| D．making vegetables much sweeter |
If you want your children to develop the habit of eating vegetables, you should _____.
| A．set an example to them | |
| B．be very patient to them | |
C．give dessert to them as an award |
D．cut vegetables into different types to meet their tastes |
The best title for the passage would probably be “_____”.
| A．Vegetables are very important for children’s health |
| B．How to make children eat more vegetables |
| C．More and more children like eating vegetables |
| D．There are many kinds of vegetables for children |
French surgeons have performed what they said on Wednesday was the world's first partial face transplant--- giving a new nose, chin and lips to a woman attacked by a dog.
Specialists from two French hospitals carried out the operation on a 38-year-old woman on Sunday in the northern city of Amiens by taking the face from a brain-dead woman, who had hanged herself just hours before the operation. Her family agreed on the operation.
“The patient is in an excellent state and the transplant looks normal,” the hospitals said in a brief statement after waiting three days to announce the pioneering surgery.
The woman had been left without a nose and lips after the dog attacked her last May, and was unable to talk or chew properly. Such injuries are “extremely difficult, if not impossible” to repair using normal surgical techniques, the statement said.
The statement did not say what the woman would look like when she had fully recovered, but medical experts said she was unlikely to resemble the woman who had been the source of her new face.
The operation was led by Jean-Michel Dubernard, a specialist from a hospital in Lyon who has also carried out hand transplants,
Skin transplants have long been used to treat burns and other injuries, but operations around the mouth and nose have been considered very difficult because of the area's high sensitivity to foreign tissue.
Teams in France, the United States and Britain had been developing techniques to make face transplants a reality
There was a short-term risk for the patient if blood vessels became blocked, a medium-term danger of her body rejecting the new skin and a long-term possibility that the drugs used could cause cancers.
Experts say that although such medical advances should be celebrated, the transplant had thrown up moral（道德的）and ethical(伦理的)issues. Little is known about the psychological effect of the transplant.The best title for the passage would be ________.
| A．French Woman has First Partial Face Transplant |
| B．First Face Transplant Opens Debate |
| C．Risks and Ethical Problems of a Face Transplant |
| D．A Complete Face Transplant of a French Woman |
Why did the woman need such an operation?
| A．Her face had been bitten by a dog |
| B．Her face had been burnt in a fire. |
| C．She was born especially ugly |
| D．She wanted to test such an operation. |
The underlined word "resemble" means ________.
| A．to remember forever |
| B．to recognize immediately |
| C．to set as an example |
| D．to present similarity or likeness to |
What can we learn about the operation?
| A．The woman had used the dead woman' s whole face. |
| B．There has arisen a debate about the operation. |
| C．The woman will suffer from psychological damage soon. |
| D．Such transplants have been performed by doctors. |
The United Nations says forty million people or so around the world went hungry in 2008, mainly because of higher food prices. Early estimates from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) show that 963 million people did not get enough to eat.
World food prices have dropped since early 2008. Prices of major crops have decreased by more than half from their height earlier last year. But they remain high compared to earlier years.
But FAO official Hafez Ghanem says lower prices have failed to end the food crisis (危机) in many poor countries. “For millions in developing countries,” he says, “getting enough food every day to live an active and healthy life is a distant dream. ”
The FAO says food shortage is a threat to people's health. Today, two-thirds of the world's undernourished people live in just a few countries. These are India, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Ethiopia and so on.
A report on food insecurity warns that the current economic crisis could send even more people into hunger and poverty.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the percentage of the people who continually go hungry fell from 34% in 1997 to 30% in 2008. But the FAO says Ghana is the only country that has reached two sets of hunger reduction targets. These were set by the 1996 World Food Summit and the Millennium Development Goals. The main reason is the growth in agricultural production in Ghana.
The FAO says some countries in Southeast Asia like Thailand and Vietnam have made progress in hunger reduction goals. But South Asia and Central Asia haven't, and North Korea is still in hot water.What FAO official Hafez Ghanem says implies（暗示）__________
| A．it's easy but takes long to provide people with enough food |
| B．enough food can make people more active and healthier |
| C．there is difficulty solving the food shortage in a short time |
| D．people in developing countries will never get enough food |
The underlined word "undernourished" in Para. 4 probably means ________.
| A．hungry and unhappy | B．unhealthy for lack of food |
| C．not fat because of poverty | D．undeveloped and poor |
What is the best title of this passage?
| A．The food production of the world |
| B．The hunger reduction target of the FAO |
| C．The food shortage around the world |
| D．The solution to the global food shortage |