It’s never a real problem for us when the weather gets cold. We can put on more clothes, stay next to a fireplace, turn on the air conditioner or simply travel to a warmer city to spend the winter – people have many different ways of dealing with the cold.
But things are not as easy for plants. Unlike humans, plants can’t move to escape the cold or generate heat ( 发热) to keep themselves warm. So how do they manage to survive the freezing winter?
It turns out that plants have their own strategies （策略） too, said a study published on Dec 22 in the journal Nature.
According to researcher Amy Zanne of George Washington University, US, the cold is a big challenge for plants. Their living tissues （活组织） can be damaged when they freeze. “It’s like a plant’s equivalent to frostbite ( 相当于冻疮),” Zanne told Science Daily. Also, the process of freezing and thawing (解冻) can cause air bubbles （气泡） to form in the plant’s water transport system. “If enough of these air bubbles come together as water thaws they can block the flow of water from the roots to the leaves and kill the plant,” she explained.
To live through cold weather, plants have developed three traits （特性） , according to the study. Some plants, such as oak trees（橡树）, avoid freezing damage by dropping their leaves before the winter chill sets in – effectively shutting off the flow of water between roots and leaves – and growing new leaves and water transport cells when the warm spring returns.
Other plants, pine trees（松树） for example, protect themselves by narrowing their water transport cells, which makes it easier for cells to travel among air bubbles.
The third strategy is also the most extreme – some plants die on the ground in winter and start growing as new plants from seeds when conditions get warmer.
However, the study also found that these smart strategies were developed very slowly – over millions
of years of evolution （ 进化）. This leads scientists to worry that plants may not be able to deal with human-caused climate change, which has only started occurring over the past few decades.
Scientists are hoping that this study can help people find possible ways to save plants from the threat
of climate change.
What is the article mainly about?
| A．Why plants are not afraid of the winter chill. |
| B．The ways that plants survive cold weather. |
| C．Changes in plants’ water transport system in winter. |
| D．How plants evolve to keep up with climate change. |
According to the article, if a plant freezes in the winter, ______.
| A．it produces more living tissues to stay alive |
| B．its leaves quickly fall out and its roots begin to die |
| C．lots of air bubbles form in its water transport system |
| D．its water transport system could be blocked in the spring |
What are scientists worried about when it comes to plants according to the article?
| A．Plants may not be able to adapt to the increasingly cold climate. |
| B．Human activities might have a great impact on the pace of plants’ evolution. |
| C．Plants may not be able to evolve fast enough to adapt to human-caused climate change. |
| D．The strategies plants develop are not good enough to protect them against cold. |
It’s 4 am, and Danilo C. Dequina is already awake. Holding a flashlight and a bucket, he is walking in the pre-dawn darkness along the shore of Old Poblacion Beach in the town of Maitum, Sarangani, in the far south of the Philippines.
A few minutes later, he spots a patch of sand that appears to have been disturbed by a turtle. Dequina studies the area carefully, figuring out where the eggs have been buried, and then starts digging slowly. After clearing away several centimeters of sand, he uncovers a large group of eggs, roughly the size of ping-pong balls. He picks them up and puts them in the bucket.
Dequina carries the eggs to his hatchery (孵卵所), some 50 meters away from the seashore. The hatchery is really just a sandy patch of land under the coconut trees enclosed by a black fence. It is here that he buries the turtle eggs he has collected. Today, Dequina scoops a hole, puts the eggs in it, and covers them with sand. After 45 to 70 days, the eggs will hatch. Dequina will then carry the hatchlings to the shore, and release them into the sea. He admits to feeling sorrow as he sets the hatchlings free -- most are hunted down by natural predators, and just one percent survive to adulthood.
According to the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), eight species of sea turtles face extinction, including four that come to the shores of Sarangani to lay their eggs -- the Hawksbill, Olive Ridley, Loggerhead and Green Turtles.
After learning about their plight (困境), Dequina attended a DENR training session on turtle conservation and decided to take action. He helped the local government to set up the Pawikan Nesting Sanctuary next to his house in 2003.
The hatchery drew the attention of the locals. “They started to change their attitudes towards sea turtles,” 52-year-old Dequina says. “If they see turtle eggs, they will either bring them to me or inform me of the nesting places.” Over the past ten years, more than 3,000 hatchlings have been released to the ocean.Dequina walks along the shore to ________.
| A．release small turtles |
| B．bury turtle eggs deeper |
| C．look for newly laid turtle eggs |
| D．clear away trash from the seaside |
When Dequina finds turtle eggs along the shore, he will ________.
| A．put them into the sea instantly |
| B．just bury them |
| C．pick them up and put them in the bucket |
| D．take them and go to his house |
What is the attitude of local people toward Dequina’s efforts?
| A．Doubtful. | B．Disappointed. |
| C．Opposed. | D．Supportive. |
What do we learn from the passage?
| A．Dequina feels sad when he releases hatchlings. |
| B．Dequina has worked for the hatchery for six years. |
| C．The hatchery is far from Dequina’s house. |
| D．The hatchery mainly protects injured turtles. |
In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and preparing for the worst, Australian adventurer Peter Seiter wrote a farewell note to his family, put it in a bottle and threw it overboard. With a sense of bad feeling he wrote: “The ocean has a personality of its own. The place can be such a peaceful environment to be in, yet it can be frightfully violent. I’ve experienced both.” Fearing he wouldn’t make it home, he placed the note -- dated June 11, 1998 -- in a wine bottle and covered the bottle.
“I included my geographical coordinates, so if anything happened to me, they’d know my last place when I threw the bottle into the ocean,” says Peter, who was then sailing from the Azores in Portugal to New York and knew the Atlantic could be dangerous. He also included some money with his message, asking whoever found it to use the money to post the letter to his family.
Seventeen days later he reached his destination, having survived the dangerous seas, but he assumed his message in the bottle had not -- until it was found on shore, 11 years later!
Recently, American woman Katherine Ginn and her friend came across the bottle on a deserted beach in the Bahamas. “Alongside it they’d found a life jacket and, assuming the worst, opened the bottle and spent 24 hours drying it out so they could read my story and write to my family as I requested,” says Peter, 44. “I couldn’t believe it -- that after all these years my bottle had turned up with its contents, still undamaged.”
Overjoyed, he wrote to the pair, saying he was alive and living in Australia with his family.
Katherine posted him his letter, money and some broken glass of his bottle placed in a tiny box as a special souvenir. These special items now share pride of place among photos of Peter’s Atlantic voyage. “I can’t express what this old letter means to me,” Peter says. “It gives me a sense of hope and belief. It’s something special to share with my children as they grow up.” Why did Peter have the idea of a message bottle?
| A．He missed his family very much then. |
| B．He hoped to share his experience with his family. |
| C．He regretted taking a risk on the ocean. |
| D．He thought he might lose his life on the voyage. |
As for the survival of the message bottle, Peter ________.
| A．felt very certain about it |
| B．thought it had little chance of reaching land |
| C．took a long time to search for it |
| D．wrote a letter to Katherine |
What can be inferred about the message bottle according to Paragraph 3 and 4?
| A．Katherine found it by chance on a crowded beach. |
| B．It was 11 years before they came across it at sea. |
| C．Perhaps there was water in it when Katherine found it. |
| D．Peter couldn’t believe more that it was not damaged. |
From the passage, we can learn that ________.
| A．this was Peter’s first voyage in the Atlantic |
| B．Peter spent eleven days in the Atlantic |
| C．without the life jacket, the bottle wouldn’t have survived |
| D．Katherine was a caring and careful person |
What should you think about when trying to find your career? You are probably better at some school subjects than others. These may show strengths that you can use in your work. A boy who is good at mathematics can use that in an engineering career. A girl who spells well and likes English may be good at office work. So it is important to know the subjects you do well in at school. On the other hand, you may not have any specially strong subjects but your records show a general satisfactory standard. Although not all subjects can be used directly in a job, they may have indirect value. A knowledge of history is not required for most jobs but if history is one of your good subjects you will have learned to remember facts and details. This is an ability that can be useful in many jobs.
Your school may have taught you skills, such as typing or technical drawing, which you can use in your work. You may be good at metalwork or cookery and look for a job where you can improve these skills. If you have had a part-time job on Saturdays or in the summer, think what you gained from it. If nothing else, you may have learned how to get to work on time, to follow rules and to get on with older workers. You may have learned to give correct change in a shop, for example. Just as important, you may become interested in a particular career you see from the inside in a part-time job.
Facing your weak points is also part of knowing yourself. You may be all thumbs when you handle tools; perhaps you are a poor speller or cannot add up a number of figures. It is better to face any weakness than to pretend they do not exist. Your school record, for instance, may not be too good, yet it is an important part of your background. You should not be apologetic(认错的) about it but instead recognize that you will have a chance of a fresh start at work.What is the passage mainly about?
| A．The importance of working hard at school. |
| B．Choosing a career according to one’s strengths. |
| C．How to face one’s weakness. |
| D．The value of school work. |
The writer thinks that for a student to have a part-time job is probably __________.
| A．a good way to find out his weak points |
| B．one of the best ways of earning extra money |
| C．of great use for his work in the future |
| D．a waste of time he could have spent on study |
From the passage we learn that if a student’s school performance is not good, he _________.
| A．should pay more attention to learning skills and developing abilities |
| B．will be regretful about his bad results |
| C．may also do well in his future work |
| D．should restart his study in school |
The underlined phrase “be all thumbs” (in para. 3) probably means “_______”.
| A．be not good at doing things |
| B．be skillful in doing things |
| C．be not interested in certain things |
| D．be easily bored in doing things |
The spread of Western eating habits around the world is bad for human health and the environment. These findings come from a new report in the journal Nature.
David Tillman, a professor of ecology at the University of Minnesota, America, examined information from 100 countries to identify what people ate and how diet affected health. He noted a movement beginning in the 1960s. He found that as nations industrialized, population increased and earnings rose, more people began to adopt(采纳) what has been called the Western diet.
The Western diet is high in sugar, fat, oil and meat. By eating these foods, people began to get fatter and sicker. David Tillman says overweight people are at greater risk for non-infectious diseases like diabetes（糖尿病）and heart disease.
Unfortunately when people become industrialized, if they adopt this Western diet, they are going to have these health problems, especially in developing countries in Asia. China is an example where the number of diabetes cases has been jumping from less than one percent to 10 percent of the population as they began to industrialize over a 20-year period. And that is happening all across the world, in Mexico, in Nigeria and so on.
And, a diet bad for human beings, is also bad for the environment. As the world's population grows, more forests and tropical（热带的）areas will become farmland for crops or grasslands for cattle. We are likely to have more greenhouse gas in the future from agriculture than that coming out of all forms of transportation right now.
Mr. Tillman calls the link between diet, the environment and human health, "a trilemma": a problem offering a difficult choice. He says one possible settlement is leaving the Western diet behind.According to the passage, more greenhouse gas might be given off in the future from ____________.
| A．transportation | B．developing countries |
| C．agriculture | D．developed countries |
David Tilman believes that__________.
| A．diet, the environment and human health are closely connected |
| B．the Western diet is the only choice as the nation industrializes |
| C．people in tropical areas are more likely to have heart disease |
| D．traditional diets are more balanced than the Western diet |
We can infer from the passage that ___________.
| A．Nigeria has the largest number of diabetes cases |
| B．overweight people are at higher risk of infectious diseases |
| C．the examined information comes from developing countries |
| D．industrialization contributes to the spread of the Western diet |
The main purpose of the passage is to___________.
| A．call on us to protect the environment |
| B．warn us of the danger of the Western diet |
| C．remind us of the importance of health |
| D．advise us to have a balanced diet |
The Gold Wax(蜡像) Museum is one of the Gold Coast's longest running attractions. It's a collection of famous figures. It's Australia's largest museum of its kind, featuring more than 110 life-size wax figures copies of British and Australian History.
The Wax Museum is visited by many thousands of people each year who are shocked at the amazing realism of the life-size figures in authentic costumes（真实的服装）. This is your invitation to wander through at your leisure and meet many important and famous people's figures on Queensland's Gold Coast.
Come face to face with such celebrities as Michael Jackson, President Obama, past President John F. Kennedy, King Hussein, members of the Royal Family, and many others whose lives have all left a great mark on our world. Information cards are located alongside each figure.
The Gold Coast Wax Museum contains figures which have been made by leading local and overseas sculptors （雕塑家） to international standards, equal in quality to the world's best, as seen in Europe, the United Kingdom, and U. S. A. The detail in the figures is amazing and includes hair applied one strand（一缕） at a time, requiring many working hours for one hand, and the eyes are so real that they seem to follow the viewer around.
Price
Child (1-3yrs) free
Child (4-12yrs) $ 22. 00
Adult $ 29. 00
Family (2 Adults + 1 Child) $68.00
Opening hours
Open 7 days a week, 10 a. m. to l0 p. m.
Closed at Christmas Day (25 Dec.) and Anzac Day (25 Apr.)
Location
Ferny Ave, Surfers Paradise ( Gold Coast ) QLD
How to get there
You can choose any of the Gold Coast airport transfers, car rentals, shuttles and private transfers to/from your hotel. Many coach operators also offer Gold Coast transfers to surrounding attractions, beaches, and the more distant destinations, throughout the day.
What to bring
Bring your sense of adventure and your camera and see something exciting and quite unique.
For further information, please click here to see more about the Gold Coast Wax Museum.If you visit the Gold Coast Wax Museum, you can___________.
| A．talk with many members of the Royal Family face to face in the Museum |
| B．enjoy some world-class max-works in the Museum |
| C．meet many leading local and international sculptors in the Museum |
| D．come at any time of the year except at Christmas Day |
If a couple and their l0-year-old son visit the Gold Coast Wax Museum, they may pay__________.
| A．$87 | B．$80 | C．$68 | D．$58 |
You will most probably find this passage ____________.
| A．in a guidebook | B．in a magazine |
| C．in a text book | D．on a webpage |