Using too much water or throwing rubbish into our rivers are clear ways that humans can put our water supply in danger ,but we also affect our water supply in less obvious ways.
You may wonder how paving(铺砌) a road can lead to less usable fresh water. A major part of the water we use every day is groundwater. Groundwater does not come from lakes or rivers .It come from underground. The more roads and parking lots we pave, the less water can flow into the ground to become groundwater.
Human activity is not responsible for all water shortages(短缺). Driver climates are of course more likely to have droughts(干旱)than areas with more rainfall, but in any case, good management can help to make sure there is enough water to meet our basic needs.
Thinking about the way we use water everyday can make a big difference, too. In the United States, a family of four can use 1.5 tons of water a day! This shows how much we depend on water to live, but there’s a lot we can do to lower the number.
You can take steps to save water in your home. To start with, use the same glass for your drinking water all day. Wash it only once a day .Run your dishwasher (洗碗机)only when it is full. Help your parents fix any leaks in your home. You can even help to keep our water supply clean by recycling batteries instead of throwing them away. Which of the following is most likely to lead to less groundwater?
| A．Using river water. |
| B．Throwing batteries away. |
| C．paving parking lots. |
| D．Throwing rubbish into lakes. |
What can be inferred from the text?
| A．All water shortages are due to human behavior. |
| B．It takes a lot of effort to meet our water needs. |
| C．There is much we can do to reduce family size. |
| D．The average family in America makes proper use of water . |
The last paragraph is intended to .
| A．show us how to fix leaks at home |
| B．tell us how to run a dishwasher |
| C．prove what drinking glass is best for us |
| D．suggest what we do to save water at home |
The text is mainly about .
| A．Why paving roads reduces our water |
| B．how much we depend on water to live |
| C．why droughts occur more in dry climates |
| D．how human activity affects our water supply |
Everyone becomes a little more forgetful as they get older, but men's minds decline more than women's, according to the results of a worldwide survey.
Certain differences seem to be inherent in male and female brains: Men are better at maintaining and dealing with mental images (useful in mathematical reasoning and spatial skills), while women tend to excel (擅长) at recalling information from their brain's files (helpful with language skills and remembering the locations of objects).
Many studies have looked for a connection between sex and the amount of mental decline (衰退) people experience as they age, but the results have been mixed.
Some studies found more age-related decline in men than in women, while others saw the opposite or even no relationship at all between sex and mental decline. Those results could be improper because the studies involved older people, and women live longer than men: The men tested are the survivors, "so they're the ones that may not have shown such cognitive decline," said study team leader Elizabeth of the University of Warwick in England.
People surveyed completed four tasks that tested sex-related cognitive skills: matching an object to its rotated form, matching lines shown from the same angle, typing as many words in a particular category (范畴) as possible in the given time, e.g. "object usually colored gray", and recalling the location of objects in a line drawing. The first two were tasks at which men usually excel; the latter are typically dominated by women.
Within each age group studied, men and women performed better in their separate categories on average. And though performance declined with age for both genders, women showed obviously less decline than men overall. The underlined word in the second paragraph means_________.
| A．natural |
| B．great |
| C．obvious |
| D．absolute |
Which of the following statements is true according the article?
| A．Men do better than women when it comes to learning English. |
| B．Women stand out at remembering people’s names. |
| C．Men excel at typing as many words in a particular category as possible in the given time. |
| D．Women excel at dealing mathematic problems. |
One important factor that affects the correctness of the results is that _________.
| A．the old men tested may not have shown such cognitive decline |
| B．people surveyed are all old |
| C．people taking part in this test came from all over the world |
| D．women live longer than men |
The author aims to tell us that __________.
| A．women’s minds perform better than men’s |
| B．men’s minds decline more with age |
| C．everyone becomes a little more forgetful as they get older |
| D．a survey on human’s mind decline was done recently |
Tokyo: The world’s oldest man, retired Japanese silkworm breeder（饲养员） Yukichi Chuganji, died in his home at the age of 114, on Monday. Family members found him dead on his mattress. Born on March 23, 1889, Chuganji worked as a silkworm breeder and bank employee after leaving school. He also served as a community welfare officer. He had been in good health, talking daily with his family members.
Washington: Every American dislikes people who talk on cell phones while driving, even those who do that kind of act. In the State of New Jersey, 84 percent of 968 cell phone owners said in recent telephone survey that they would support a state ban (禁令) on the use of cell phones while driving. However, 42 percent of cell phone owners also said they used the devices “very often” or “sometimes” while driving. Although most agree that the banning is good, only 38 percent believed such a ban would be easy to enforce(实施).
New York: A woman in the US who was being attacked by a dog said she was saved from further harm when her 13-year-old daughter distracted the dog by screaming “You want a piece of me?” and kicked it repeatedly in the head. Jane Howell said she and her daughter, Elizabeth, were taking a walk around the neighborhood on Saturday evening when they came across the big dog, unchained. The main idea of the second news is _____.
| A．most Americans don’t like cell phone |
| B．a ban on the use of cell phones has been made |
| C．few people use cell phones while driving |
| D．using cell phones while driving will be banned because most Americans don’t like it |
The three pieces of news are all about .
| A．science |
| B．daily life |
| C．sports |
| D．law |
The woman in the US ____.
| A．was not harmed by the dog |
| B．raised the dog, which attacked her later |
| C．was protected from being seriously hurt by her daughter |
| D．had escaped when her daughter was kicking the dog |
From the news we can infer ____.
| A．Chuganji was living alone when he died |
| B．the woman’s 13-year-old daughter was very brave |
| C．cell phones are not good devices |
| D．it’s easy to enforce the ban n the use of cell phones while driving |
下面文章中有5处（第1~5题）需要添加小标题，请从以下选项中选出符合各段意思的小标题，选项中一项为多余选项.
| A. Slow Down Your Life B. Escape Now and Then C. Separate Your Actions D. Allow Yourself to Be Weak E. Relieve Pressure by Firmly Saying " No" F. Stop Expecting Everything to Be Perfect |
How to Simplify Your Life
Less is more. This is why we say: reduce things by half instead of doubling them, get rid of junk instead of piling it up, relax instead of stressing, slow down instead of speeding up. Apply these principles in your everyday life in a conscious way. You will then find yourself well along on your journey to simplification.When you concentrate on one task, you find you have energy that you didn't even know you had. Just imagine: you are at a fair and you have to carry two heavy pigs over 100 yards. If you keep grabbing one and then the other, it will take forever, because one of them will keep slipping out from under your arm and running off. But if you tie one pig in a place, pick up the other, gather all your strength and make a dash for the finish line, pause for a moment, run bock and get the other one, and with great determination, carry the second pig to the finish line, then you can be sure of success.
______
The pressure at work is on the increase in all occupations. In the modem nuclear family, the expectations that formerly would have been shared among all the relatives are now concentrated on the individual partner.
If you have the feeling that 24 hours per day are not enough for nil the things you need to do, then it’s not because the day has too few hours, but because you have too many activities. A simple fact that overloaded people often tend to forget. The solution is equally simple; refuse to accept so many work assignments in your private life or your working life.
“I can handle stress” is regarded as a positive statement in the world of work. People who can handle stress are given more and more to cope with — until one day they break.
Pay careful attention to the signs that tell you that you arc under more stress than you can cope with. These signals came from various areas of life. You become ill, or your work efficiency decreases.
If you have any of these symptoms, change your life goals and decrease your tolerance of stress. Say quite openly, "I can't manage that. ""If only I were slimmer, more beautiful, richer, more clever, then I would be happier. " This is a dream that makes a lot of people ill, depressed, and unhappy. Life has its flaws, defects, comets, and edges. Only those who accept this reality can lead a really full life.
Of course there are activities in which errors are dangerous; driving a car, crossing the road. But life doesn't consist entirely of these things. In among them there is a lot of room for small and large mistakes.
Successful people all have their own places where they can withdraw in order to work. Find out which places improve your creativity. For me it's the train. When I know that I'm going to be traveling for four hours without phone calls and people knocking on my door, I find my mind is free and I can read or write complex articles. There can be problems working on the train, of course: if the person sitting opposite you keeps talking away, or if train trips make you tired (some people fall asleep after a few miles).
Modern man has cleared the forests for farmland and for wood, and has also carelessly burned them. More than that, though, he has also interfered (干涉) with the invisible bonds between the living things in
the forests. There are many examples of this kind of destruction. The harmfulness of man's interference can be seen in what happened many years ago in the forest of the Kaibab plateau (凯亚巴布高原) of northern Arizona. Man tried to improve on the natural web of forest life and destroyed it instead.
The Kaibab had a storybook forest of large sized pine, Douglas fir, white fir, blue and Engelmann spruce. In 1882 a visitor noted," We, who... have wandered through its forests and parks, have come to regard it as
the most enchanting region it has ever been our privilege (特权) to visit." This was also the living place of the Rocky Mountain mule deer. Indians hunted there every autumn to gather meat and skins. The forest also had
mountain lions, timber wolves and bobcats that kept the deer from multiplying too rapidly.
Then, in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt made the Kaibab a national game preserve. Deer hunting was forbidden. Government hunters started killing off the deer's enemies. In 25 years' time, 6,250 mountain lions, wolves and bobcats were killed. Before the program, there were about 4,000 deer in the Kaibab, by 1924, there were about 100,000.
The deer ate every leaf and twig they could reach. But there was not nearly enough food. Hunting of deer was permitted again. This caused a slight decrease in the deer herd (鹿群),but a far greater loss resulted from starvation (饥饿) and disease. Some 60 percent of the deer herd died in two winters. By 1930 the herd had dropped to 20,000 animals. By 1942 it was down to 8,000. The destruction of the environment of the Kaibab resulted from _____.
| A．turning the forest into cultivated land |
| B．interfering with natural cycle of forest life |
| C．forest fires caused by man's carelessness |
| D．cutting the trees for building materials |
"Engelmann spruce"(Para. 2) is most likely the name of _____.
| A．a tree |
| B．an animal |
| C．a mountain |
| D．a game |
The number of the deer in the Kaibab had increased enormously in _____ years' time.
| A．25 |
| B．6 |
| C．18 |
| D．12 |
Years later, large numbers of deer in the Kaibab died mainly because of _____.
| A．the cold |
| B．the organized kill |
| C．the shortage of food |
| D．the poor management |
Your glasses may someday replace your smartphone, and some New Yorkers are ready for the switch. Some in the city can't wait to try them on and use the maps and GPS that the futuristic eyewear is likely to include.
" I'd use it if I were hanging out with friends at 3 a. m. and going to the bar and wanted to see what was open," said Walter Choo, 40, of Fort Greene.
The smartphone-like glasses will likely come out this year and cost between $250 and $600, the Times said, possibly including a variation of augmented(增强的) reality, a technology already available on smartphones and tablets (平板电脑) that overlays information onto the screen about one's surroundings. So, for example, if you were walking down a street, indicators would pop up showing you the nearest coffee shop or directions could be plotted out and come into view right on the sidewalk in front of you.
" As far as a mainstream consumer product, this just isn't something anybody needs," said Sam Biddle, who writes for Gizmodo.com. " We're accustomed to having one thing in our pocket to do all these things," he added, "and the average consumer isn't gonna be able to afford another device (装置) that's hundreds and hundreds of dollars. "
9to5Google publisher Seth Weintraub, who has been reporting on the smartphone-like glasses since late last year, said he is confident that this type of wearable device will eventually be as common as smartphones.
"It's just like smartphones 10 years ago," Weintraub said. "A few people started getting emails on their phones, and people thought that was crazy. Same kind of thing. We see people bending their heads to look at their smartphones, and it's unnatural," he said. " There's gonna be improvements to that, and this a step there. " One of the possible functions of the smartphone-like glasses is to ____.
| A．program the opening hours of a bar |
| B．supply you with a picture of the future |
| C．provide information about your surroundings |
| D．update the maps and GPS in your smartphones |
The underlined phrase "pop up" in the third paragraph probably means " ____".
| A．develop rapidly |
| B．get round quickly |
| C．appear immediately |
| D．go over automatically |
According to Sam Biddle, the smartphone-like glasses are ____.
| A．necessary for teenagers |
| B．attractive to New Yorkers |
| C．available to people worldwide |
| D．expensive for average consumers |
We can learn from the last two paragraphs that the smartphone-like glasses ____.
| A．may have a potential market |
| B．are as common as smartphones |
| C．are popular among young adults |
| D．will be improved by a new technology |