The Chinese Antarctica(南极洲)expedition(探险队)returned to Shanghai on March 20 following a month living on the ice. It was the first time Chinese scientists had visited the Amery Ice Shelf—the longest ice shelf in the world.
The team collected ice samples and data on temperatures, which are necessary for research on global warming.
So far, about 27 countries have visited Antarctica for scientific research. Although the living conditions are very hard, many scientists have to stay there for long periods of time. So, how do they manage their lives on the ice?
Well, during the summer, the temperature in Antarctica reaches about-20℃. It falls to about-60℃ in winter. So, even if there are 24 hours of sunshine, scientists must keep wearing all the correct clothes to protect them from the cold. These clothes include jeans, running shoes, jackets, long underwears, boots and woolen socks.
Although highly technical clothing provides much protection against the extreme cold, scientists often need to go outside when there is an icy wind blowing and the temperature is-30℃. Natural protection such as facial hair can also help.
“That’s why many researchers wear a beard. It really does keep you warm，”says German explorer Arved Fuchs.
Usually, the polar researchers have good meals. Some even have feasts(盛宴)on holidays like Christmas and New Year’s Day. Vegetables are always welcome and usually finished the quickest.
Life on the ice means living with other researchers in tight living space. Most people sleep in dorm(宿舍)style rooms. More remote field camps use separate tents. So, at least some researchers don’t have to put up with annoying snorers(打鼾者)．
But what do they do for fun in their spare time? There are actually a lot of things they can do. They watch movies, read tons of books, listen to music, have saunas(桑拿浴)，paint and ski. Some female researchers might even do some knitting.
It is important for a polar researcher to be in good physical condition. They can be required to climb to heights of more than 3, 000 meters. And the Antarctic atmosphere has less oxygen than that of any other continent. In which month of this year did the Chinese Antarctica expedition mentioned in the passage reach the Amery Ice Shelf?
| A．February. |
| B．March. |
| C．January. |
| D．December. |
Why do some polar researchers wear beards? Because _______.
| A．they have no time to shave(刮脸)their beards |
| B．beards are helpful to keep warm |
| C．beards will come out soon when they are shaved |
| D．they think beards will make them look handsome |
The underlined phrase “put up with” probably means _______.
| A．hear |
| B．turn down |
| C．let out |
| D．suffer from |
Which of the following do you think is the most important one to a polar researcher?
| A．Clothes. |
| B．Meals. |
| C．Tents. |
| D．Health. |
The best title of the passage is _______.
| A．The Antarctica |
| B．The Chinese Antarctica Expedition Explored the Antarctica |
| C．Life in Antarctica |
| D．The Exploration of Antarctica |
About five years ago, an American electrical engineer named Scott Brusaw and his wife Julie came up with the idea of putting solar panels (控制板) on the ground rather than the roof. Then they began to develop the Solar Roadway. The Solar Roadway is an intelligent road that provides clean renewable energy using power from the sun while providing safer driving conditions, along with power and data delivery. They predict that the Solar Roadway will pay for itself through the generation of electricity along with other forms of income and that the same money that is being used to build and resurface current roads can be used to build the Solar Roadways.
Each Solar Road Panel measures roughly 4 meters by 4 meters and contains a microprocessor (微处理器) that monitors and controls the panel, while communicating with neighboring panels and the vehicles traveling overhead. The inventors suggest that this provides a communications device every 4 meters on every road which could be used for example to warn drivers of cars which are moving across a centre line and various other speed control problems. The top of the Solar Road panels is made of super-strong glass that would offer vehicles the tractions (抓地力) they need.
According to the inventors, the Solar Roadway creates and carries clean renewable electricity and therefore electric vehicles can be recharged at any conveniently located rest stop, or at any business that has paved Solar Road Panels in their parking lots.
The inventors say their Solar Roadway has many functions and advantages from main roads to driveways, parking lots, bike paths, sidewalks and runways. The Federal Highway Administration has given Brusaw ＄100,000 to develop the invention and Brusaw hopes to build a smart-road parking lot in the coming spring .In the inventors’ opinion, the Solar Roadway .
| A．is too expensive to build at present |
| B．costs no more money than current roads |
| C．can provide as many data as present computers |
| D．will bring them a large sum of money |
The underlined word “they” in Paragraph 2 refers to.
| A．the panels | B．the inventors | C．the researchers | D．the vehicles |
The Solar Roadway includes all the following advantages except .
| A．providing safer driving conditions |
| B．helping drivers communicate with each other while driving |
| C．creating and carrying clean renewable electricity |
| D．warning drivers of various speed control problems |
It can be inferred from the text that .
| A．the Solar Roadway has already been put into use |
| B．＄100,000 is only enough to build a smart-road parking lot |
| C．the Solar Roadway is not available for gas-powered cars |
| D．future electric vehicles can be charged anytime and anywhere |
What can be the best title for the text?
| A．Solar-powered smart road of the future |
| B．The great changes on the roadway |
| C．The influence the Solar Roadway has on people |
| D．The Solar Road—a much faster road |
A person, like a commodity (商品), needs packaging. But going too far is absolutely undesirable. A little exaggeration(夸张), however, does no harm when it shows the person's unique qualities to their advantages. To show personal attractiveness in a casual and natural way, it is important for one to have a clear knowledge of oneself. A skilled packager knows how to add art to nature without any signs of embellishment, so that the person so packaged is not a commodity but a human being, lively and lovely.
A young person, especially a female, shining with beauty and full of life, has all the favor granted. Youth, however, comes and goes in a flash. Packaging for the middle-aged is primarily to hide the marks made by years. If you still enjoy life enough to keep self-confidence and work at pioneering work, you are unique in your natural qualities, and your attractiveness and grace will remain. Elderly people are beautiful if their river of life has been, through plains, mountains and jungles, running its course as it should. You have really lived your life, which now arrives at a self - satisfied stage of quietness and calmness with no interest in fame or wealth. There is no need to make use of hair dyeing. The snow-capped mountain itself is a beautiful scene of fairyland. Let your looks change from young to old in step with the natural ageing process so as to keep in harmony with nature, for harmony itself is beauty, while the other way round will only end in unpleasantness. To be in the company of the elderly is like reading a thick book of good edition, which attracts one so much that one is unwilling to part with it. As long as one finds where one stands, one knows how to package oneself, just as a commodity sets up its brand by the right packaging.The underlined word in the first paragraph is closest to the word ______ in meaning.
| A．decoration | B．clarification |
| C．movement | D．recognition |
It can be concluded from the text that ______.
| A．people should be packaged at all ages |
| B．people should be packaged in a special way |
| C．elderly people also care about packaging |
| D．proper packaging makes people attractive |
For the middle-aged, attractiveness ______ .
| A．hardly exists | B．is the strongest |
| C．comes from the inside | D．comes from the appearance |
According to the author, if you want to keep in harmony with nature, you should ______.
| A．dye your hair | B．make up at a young age |
| C．follow the ageing process | D．give up fame and wealth |
The underlined sentence means that elderly people ______.
| A．are usually packaged like a finely-made book |
| B．experience a lot and have rich knowledge of life |
| C．do a lot of traveling and can give you much information |
| D．enjoy reading thick books about beautiful nature and fairyland |
A small piece of fish each day may keep the heart doctor away. That’s the finding of a study of Dutch men in which deaths from heart disease were more than 50 percent lower among those who consumed at least an ounce of salt water fish per day compared to those who never ate fish.
The Dutch research is one of three human studies that give strong scientific support to the long held belief that eating fish can provide health benefits, particularly to the heart.
Heart disease is the number-one killer in the United States, with more than 550,000 deaths occurring from heart attacks each year. But researchers previously have noticed that the incidence (发生率) of heart disease is lower in cultures that consume more fish than Americans do. There are fewer heart disease deaths, for example, among the Eskimos of Greenland, who consume about 14 ounces of fish a day, and among the Japanese, whose daily fish consumption averages more than 3 ounces.
For 20 years, the Dutch study followed 852 middle-aged men, 20 percent of whom ate no fish.
At the start of the study, average fish consumption was about two-thirds of an ounce each day, with more men eating lean fish than fatty fish.
During the next two decades, 78 of the men died from heart disease. The fewest deaths were among the group who regularly ate fish, even at levels far lower than those of the Japanese or Eskimos. This relationship was true regardless of other factors such as age, high blood pressure, or blood cholesterol（胆固醇）levels. The passage is mainly about _________.
| A．the high incidence of heart disease in some countries |
| B．the changes in people’s diet |
| C．the effect of fish eating on people’s health |
| D．the daily fish consumption of people in different cultures |
We can infer from the passage that there are fewer heart disease deaths ________.
| A．in the countries with high consumption of fish |
| B．in highly-developed countries |
| C．in countries of the yellow-skin race |
| D．in the countries with good production of fish |
The phrase “this relationship” in paragraph 6 refers to the connection between ______ and the incidence of heart disease.
| A．the amount of fish eaten | B．regular fish-eating |
| C．the kind of fish eaten | D．people of different areas |
“If you talk to the plants, they will grow faster and the effect is even better if you’re a woman.” Researchers at Royal Horticultural Society carried out an experiment to find that the voice of a woman gardener makes plants grow faster.
The experiment lasted a month and by the end of the study scientists managed to discover that tomato plants grew up two inches taller when women gardeners talked to them instead of male.
Sarah Darwin was the one making the plants registered the best growth. Her voice was the most “inspiring” for plants than those of nine other gardeners when reading a passage from The Origin of Species. The great-great-granddaughter of the famous botanist(植物学家) Charles Darwin found that her plant grew about two inches taller than the plant of the best male gardener.
Colin Crosbie, Garden Superintendent at RHS, said that the finding cannot yet be explained. He assumes that women have a greater range of pitch（音高） and tone（音调） which might have a certain effect on the sound waves that reach the plant. “Sound waves are an environmental effect just like rain or light ,”said Mr Grosbie.
The study began in April at RHS Garden Wisley in Survey. Scientists started with open auditions(听力) for the people who were asked to record passages from John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer's Night Dream and Darwin's The Origin of Species.
Afterwards researchers selected a number of different voices and played them to 10 tomato plants during a period of a month. Each plant had headphones（耳机） connected to it. Through the headphones the sound waves could hit the plants. It was discovered that plants that “listened” to female voices on average grew taller by an inch in comparison to plants that heard male voices.
Miss Darwin said, “I think it is an honor to have a voice that can make tomatoes grow, and especially fitting because for a number of years I have been studying wild tomatoes from the Galapagos Island at the Natural History Museum in London.”What does the passage talk about?
| A．Plants enjoy men’s voices than women’s. |
| B．A botanical experiment in a museum. |
| C．Voice’s influence on plant growing. |
| D．Strange phenomenon（现象） at Royal Horticultural Society. |
What does the underlined sentence in paragraph 4 mean?
| A．Plants need sound as well as rain and light. |
| B．Sound is basic for the plant to grow. |
| C．Sound has a good effect as rain or light does. |
| D．Plants can’t live without sound, rain or light. |
Sarah Darwin is most likely a (an)_____.
| A．botanist | B．gardener |
| C．astronomer | D．environmentalist |
What can we learn from the passage?
| A．The experiment ended in May. |
| B．Scientist can explain the findings clearly. |
| C．Plants enjoy listening to the passages from masterpieces. |
| D．The findings are of great importance to human beings. |
Everyone knows that eating too much junk food is not good to our health. Yet, what is it about junk food that is so completely irresistible(无可抗拒的)? For one thing, it’s everywhere. From chips in fast food restaurants to candy in supermarkets, junk food always seems available. Thankfully, science is now providing new clues to help us reduce snacking.
Make friends with dainty(讲究的) eaters.
Studies have found that people tend to increase or reduce the amount of food they eat depending on what their companions are taking in.
See happy movies… and always get the smaller bag of popcorn(爆米花).
According to some experts, people eat up to 29% more popcorn if they are watching a sad or serious movie, compared to when they are watching a comedy. Viewers consumed almost 200 calories more when snacking from a large bucket, as opposed to when given a medium-sized container.
Eat breakfast.
Nutritionists have gone back and forth（来来回回）about the question of how much to eat in the morning, but new studies suggest that consuming a good breakfast is a must. Surveys on long-term weight-loss show that two key factors in keeping weight down are eating breakfast and exercising.
Divide your food and conquer overeating.
Any kind of dividing your food into portions slows down your eating. Any kind of marker makes you aware of what you’re eating and of portion size. Researchers advise reallocating（再分配）snack foods into small plastic bags. It sounds simplistic, but it works.Why do people eat too much junk food though it is bad for our health?
| A．Because it’s available here and there. |
| B．It’s delicious from chips to candy. |
| C．It’s easily taken everywhere. |
| D．It’s easily bought in fast food restaurants. |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．If people are watching a tragedy, they eat up to 29% more popcorn. |
| B．People are likely to eat more food when staying with friends. |
| C．Nutritionists have the same opinion about how much to eat in the morning. |
| D．People prefer to snake from a large bucket. |
What will he or she do if he or she wants to lose weight?
| A．To eat nothing in the morning. |
| B．To get up early and to go to bed late. |
| C．To eat breakfast and exercise. |
| D．To snack from a medium-size bucket. |
What is the text mainly about the rule(s)?
| A．how to make friends with dainty eaters. |
| B．how much to eat in the morning. |
| C．how to control overeating. |
| D．how to eat properly and healthily. |