Transport has a lot to answer for when it comes to harming the planet．While cars and trains are moving towards greener，electric power，emissions from air travel are expected to increase massively by 2050．If we want big green sky solutions，we need blue sky thinking．Fortunately，there's plenty of that happening right now，particularly the short﹣haul flights powered by batteries．
Harbour Air is the largest seaplane airline in North America，flying 30，000 commercial flights in 40 seaplanes each year．Significantly，all Harbour Air routes last less than 30 minutes，making it perfectly fit for electric engines．"As an airline，we're currently in the process of turning all our planes into electric airplanes．" says CEO Greg McDougall．To make this happen，the airline has partnered up with MagniX to create the world's first commercial flight with an electric engine．
Making the skies electric isn't just good for the environment，it also makes sound financial sense：a small aircraft uses ﹩400 on conventional fuel for a 100﹣mile flight，while an electric one costs ﹩8﹣ 12 for the same distance，and that's before you factor in the higher maintenance costs of a traditional engine．There's also the added bonus that electric planes are just much more pleasant to fly in．No loud engine noise，no smell of fuel，just environmentally friendly peace and quiet．
While there has been real progress in the e﹣plane industry，the technical challenges that remain are keeping everyone's feet firmly on the ground．A battery，even a lithium one，only provides 250 watt﹣hours per kilogram；compare this to liquid fuel，which has a specific energy of 11，890 watt﹣hours per kilogram．Carrying adequate batteries， however，would make the plane too heavy to get off the ground．In aircraft，where every bit of weight counts，this can't just be ignored．
The transition（过渡） from gas to electric in the automobile industry has been made easier by hybrids﹣ vehicles powered by both fuel and electricity．Many believe the same pattern could be followed in the air．Fuel consumption could be reduced as the electric component is switched on at key parts of the journey，especially on take﹣off and landing．
It's certainly an exciting time for electric flying．With companies like Harbour Air taking the lead，battery﹣powered planes，especially on short﹣haul journeys，are set to become a reality in the next few years．
（1）According to Para.1， what is happening in air transport？
A．New explorations of the sky are being launched．
B．Pollution caused by batteries is being controlled．
C．Efforts are being made to make air travel greener．
D．Demand for short﹣haul flights is increasing massively．
（2）Why is Harbour Air fit for electric flights？
A．It runs short routes．
B．It has a strong partner．
C．Its planes can land on the sea．
D．It has planes with powerful engines．
（3）The expression "added bonus" refers to the fact that electric planes ．
A．give passengers more pleasant views
B．bring airlines more financial benefits
C．offer more enjoyable flying experiences
D．cost less in maintenance than traditional ones
（4）What might be the biggest challenge of electric flying？
A．To improve the ground service for e﹣planes．
B．To find qualified technicians for e﹣plane industry．
C．To calculate the energy needed to power e﹣planes．
D．To balance power and weight of batteries in e﹣planes．
（5）What could be done during the transition from gas to electric in air flight？
A．To produce new electric components．
B．To increase battery consumption．
C．To use mixed﹣power technology．
D．To expand the landing field．
（6）What is the author's attitude towards the prospect of electric flying？
A．Short﹣sighted．
B．Wait﹣and﹣see．
C．Optimistic．
D．Skeptical．
Below is a selection about Guinness（吉尼斯） World Records.
Top 6 Unusual Guinness World Records
♦ Fastest 100 m running on all fours
The 2008 Guinness World Records Day was, according to CWR, their biggest day of record-breaking ever, I- h more than 290.000 people taking put in record attempts in 15 different countries. Kenichi Ito's record attempt was port of this special day. He is just another example of Japanese with "super powers". His "super power" is to run with great speed on all fours. Kenichi Ito ran 100 m on all fours in 18.58 seconds. The Japanese set this record at Setagaya Kuritsu Sogo Undojyo, Tokyo, in 2008.
♦ Most people inside a soap bubble
The Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, Califomia celebrated this year the 15th anniversary of the Bubble (泡泡) Festival. A bubble's math principles and science were presented and demonstrated at the three-week-long exhibition. The intriguing Bubble Show was also part of the program. Fan Yang and Deni Yang impressed the audience with their awesome skills for bubble making. The Yang family cooperated with the Discovery Science Center to set a new Guinness World Record for mow people inside a scup bubble and they succeeded.
The family that has been working with soap bubbles for 27 years created a huge soap bubble and got 118 people inside it. The record was set or. April 4, 2011.
♦ Longest ears on a dog
A bloodhound from Illinois has the longest ears ever measured a dog. The right ear is 13.75 inches long and the left one 13.5 inches. The dog named Tigger earned this title in 2004 and is owned by Christina and Bryan Flessner.
Mr. Jeffries is the previous record holder of this title. Each of his ears measured approximately 11. 5 inches long. His grandfather used to hold this amazing world record, but when he died Mr.Jeffries look over.
♦ Most living generations
Did you ever wonder what is the Guinness World Record for most living generation in one family? Seven is the answer.
The ultimate authority on record-breaking mentions on the website that the youngest great-great- great-great grandparent of this family was Augusta Bung "aged 109 years 97 days, followed by her daughter aged 89, her granddaughter aged 70, her great grand-daughter aged 52, her great-great grand-daughter aged 33 and her great-great-great granddaughter aged 15 on the birth of her great-great-great-great grandson on January 21, 1989".
♦ Most T shirts worn at once
Believe it or not, there is a record also for this category. Krunoslav Budiseli set a new world record on May 22, 2010 for wearing 245 T-shirts at the same time. The nun from Croatia was officially recognized as the new record bolder by Guinness World Records after he managed to put on 245 different T-shirts in 1ess than two hours.The T-shirts weighted 68 KG and Budiseli said he began struggling around T-shirt No. 120. He dethroned the Swedish Guinness record holder who wore 238 T-shirts.
♦Heaviest pumpkin
Guinness World Records confirmed on October 9. 2010 that a gigantic pumpkin （南瓜） grown in Wisconcin was officially the world's heaviest. It weighed 1,810 pounds 8 ounces and was unveiled by Chris Stevens at the Stillwater Harvest Festival in Minnesota. Stevens' pumpkin was 85 pounds Javier than the previous re I, another huge pumpkin grown in Ohio. The proud farmer said his secret is a precise of rain, cow mature, good soil, sea grass and fish emulsion. Some of the world's heaviest pumpkins, including the record bolder, were on public display at the Bronx Botanical Gardens in New Yost for a dozen days.
| 1． |
Why is Kenichi Ito described «s a man with a "super power"?
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| 2． |
Jeffries is the name of.
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| 3． |
How many T-shirts had Krunoslav Budiseli put on before he felt it difficult to go on?
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| 4． |
According to the given information. which Guinness World Record was most recently set?
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Easter(复活节) is still a great day for worship, randy in baskets and running around the yard finding eggs, but every year it gets quite a bit worse for bunnies.
And no, not because the kids like to pull their ears. The culprit is climate change, and some researchers found that rising temperatures arc having harmful effects on at least five species of rabbit in the US.
Take the Lower Keys March rabbit, for instance. An endangered species that lives in the Lower Florida Keys, this species of cottontail is a great swimmer — it lives on the islands! — but it is already severely affected by development and now by rising levels. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, an ocean level rise of only 0. 6 meters will send these guys jumping to higher ground and a 0.9-meter rise would wipe out their habitat (栖息地) completely.
The snowshoe hare, on the other hand, has a color issue. Most of these rabbits change their fur color from white in the wintertime to brown in the summer, each designed to give them better cover from predators（捕食者）. As the number of days with snow decreases all across the country, however, more and more bunnies arc being left in white fur during brown dirt days of both fall and spring, making them an easier mark for predators. Researchers know that the color change is controlled by the number of hours of sunlight, but whether the rabbit will be able to adapt quick enough to survive is a big question. The National Wildlife Federation has reported that hunters have noticed their numbers are already markedly down.
American pikas or rock rabbits, a relative of rabbits and hares, might be the firs' of these species to go extinct due to climate change. About 7-8 inches long, pikas live high in the cool, damp mountains west of the Rocky Mountains. As global temperatures rise, they would naturally migrate (迁徙) to higher ground — but they already occupy the mountaintops. They can't go any higher. The National Wildlife Federation reports that they might not be able to stand the new temperatures as their habitat beats up.
The volcano rabbit has the same problem. These rabbits live on the slopes of volcanoes in Mexico, and recent studies have shown that the lower range of their habitat has already shifted upward about 700 meters, but there are not suitable plants for them to move higher, so they are stuck in the middle. Scientists are concerned about their populations.
Native to the US, pygmy rabbits weigh less than 1 pound and live in the American West. They are believed to be the smallest rabbits in the world. Their habitats have been destroyed by development. Several populations, such as the Columbia Basin pygmy, almost went extinct and were saved by zoo breeding programs. Pygmy rabbits also rely on winter cover by digging tunnels through the snow to escape predators, but lesser snowfall is leaving them exposed.
All of this gives new meaning to dressing up in a giant bunny costume this Easter. The writer mentions Easter at the beginning of the passage in order to_______.
| A．show the importance of Easter Day |
| B．introduce the issue about bunnies |
| C．remind people of Easter traditions |
| D．discuss the relationship between Easter and bunnies |
The word "culprit" ( Paragraph 2) is closest in meaning to______.
| A．criminal | B．judge | C．victim | D．producer |
According to the passage, some rabbits can now be easily Uncovered by predators because they_______
| A．are exposed lo more skillful hunters |
| B．have moved to habitats with fewer plants |
| C．haven't adapted themselves to climate change |
| D．can't change their fur color into white in the fall and the spring |
The problem faced by volcano rabbets and rock rabbits is that________.
| A．both are affected by 1ess snow |
| B．both are affected by rising sea levels |
| C．neither can find enough food |
| D．neither can migrate to higher places |
Which best describes the writer's tone in the postage?
| A．Approving. | B．Concerned. | C．Enthusiastic. | D．Doubtful. |
In his 1930 essay "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren ", John Keynes, a famous economist, wrote that human needs fall into two classes: absolute needs ,which are independent of what others have , and relative needs ,which make us feel superior to our fellows. He thought that although relative needs may indeed be insatiable (无止境的) , this is not true of absolute needs.
Keynes was surely correct that only a small part of total spending is decided by the desire for superiority. He was greatly mistaken, however, in seeing this desire as the only source of insatiable demands.
Decisions to spend are also driven by ideas of quality which can influence the demands for almost all goods, including even basic goods like food. When a couple goes out for an anniversary dinner, for example, the thought of feeling superior to others probably never comes to them. Their goal is to share a special meal that stands out from other meals.
There are no obvious limits to the escalation of demand for quality. For example, Porsche, a famous car producer, has a model which was considered perhaps the best sport car on the market Priced at over $120,000, it handles perfectly well and has great speed acceleration. But in 2004, the producer introduced some changes which made the model slightly better in handling and acceleration. People who really care about cars find these small improvements exciting. To get them, however, they must pay almost four times the price.
By placing the desire to be superior to others at the heart of his description of insatiable demands, Keynes actually reduced such demands. However, the desire for higher quality has no natural limits.
| 1． |
According to the passage, John Keynes believed that.
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| 2． |
What do we know about the couple in Paragraph 3?
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| 3． |
What does the underlined word "escalation" in Paragraph 4 probably mean?
|
| 4． |
The author of the passage argues that.
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To take the apple as a forbidden fruit is the most unlikely story the Christians（基督教徒）ever cooked up. For them, the forbidden fruit from Eden is evil（邪恶的）. So when Columbus brought the tomato back from South America, a land mistakenly considered to be Eden, everyone jumped to be the obvious conclusion. Wrongly taken as the apple of Eden, the tomato was shut out of the door of Europeans.
What made it particularly terrifying was its similarity to the mandrake, a plant that was thought to have come from Hell（地狱）.What earned the plant its awful reputation was its roots which looked like a dried-up human body occupied by evil spirits. Tough the tomato and the mandrake were quite different except that both had bright red or yellow fruit, the general population considered them one and the same, too terrible to touch.
Cautious Europeans long ignored the tomato, and until the early 1700s most of the Western people continued to drag their feet. In the 1880s, the daughter of a well-known plant expert wrote that the most interesting part of an afternoon tea at her father’s house had been the “introduction of this wonderful new fruit—or is it a vegetable?” As late as the twentieth century some writers still classed tomatoes with mandrakes as an “evil fruit”.
But in the end tomatoes carried the day. The hero of the tomato was an American named Robert Johnson, and when he was publicly going to eat the tomato in 1820, people journeyed for hundreds of miles to watch him drop dead. “What are you afraid of?” he shouted. “I’ll show you fools that these things are good to eat!” Then he bit into the tomato. Some people fainted. But he survived and, according to a local story, set up a tomato-canning factory.The tomato was shut out of the door of early Europeans mainly because ______.
| A．it made Christians evil. |
| B．it was the apple of Eden |
| C．it came from a forbidden land |
| D．it was religiously unacceptable |
What can we infer the underlined part in Paragraph 3 ?
| A．The process of ignoring the tomato slowed down |
| B．There was little progress in the study of the tomato |
| C．The tomato was still refused in most western countries |
| D．Most western people continued to get rid of the tomato |
What is the main reason for Robert Johnson to eat the tomato publicly?
| A．To make himself a hero |
| B．To remove people’s fear of the tomato |
| C．To speed up the popularity of the tomato |
| D．To persuade people to buy products from his factory |
What is the main purpose of the passage ?
| A．To challenge people’s fixed concepts of the tomato |
| B．To give an explanation to people’s dislike of the tomato |
| C．To present the change of people’s attitudes to the tomato |
| D．To show the process of freeing the tomato from religious influence |
There is no better way to enjoy Scottish traditions than going fishing and tasting a little bit of whisky(威士忌)at a quiet place like the Inverlochy Castle. When Queen Victoria visited the castle in 1873, she wrote in her diary, “I never saw a lovelier spot ,” And she didn’t even go fishing.
Scotland is not easily defined. In certain moments, this quiet land of lakes and grasses and mountains changes before your very eyes. When evening gently sweeps the hillside into orange light, the rivers, teeming with fish, can turn into streams of gold . As you settle down with just a fishing pole and a basket on the bank of River Orchy, near the Inverlochy Castle , any frustration(烦恼) will float away as gently as the circling water. It’s just you and purple, pink, white flowers, seeking a perfect harmony. If you are a new comer to fishing, learning the basics from a fishing guide may leave you with a lifetime’s fun. For many, fishing is more than a sport; it is an art.
Scotland offers interesting place where you can rest after a long day’s fishing. Set against a wild mountain and hidden behind woodland, the beautiful Inverlochy Castle Hotel below the Nevis is a perfect place to see the beauty of Scotland’s mountains. Ben Nevis is the highest of all British mountains, and reaching its 1343-metre top is a challenge. But it’s not just what goes up matters; what comes down is unique. More than 900 metres high, on the mountain’s north face, lies an all-important source of pure water. Its name comes from the Gaelic language “usquebaugh” or “water of life”; and it is the single most important ingredient(原料) in Scotland’s best known drink: whisky.The story of Queen Victoria is to show that _____.
| A．the queen is rich in tour experience |
| B．the Castle is a good place to go in Scotland |
| C．tasting whisky is better than going fishing |
| D．1873 is a special year for the queen |
How is Paragraph 2 mainly developed?
| A．By giving descriptions. | B．By following time order. |
| C．By analyzing causes. | D．By making comparisons. |
What is Ben Nevis special for?
| A．The Inverlochy Castle Hotel . |
| B．The beauty of its surroundings. |
| C．The water from the mountain. |
| D．The challenge up to its top. |
What is the main purpose of the passage?
| A．To introduce Scottish traditions to tourists. |
| B．To show the attractions of Scotland to readers. |
| C．To explore geographical characteristics of Scotland. |
| D．To describe the pleasures of life in Scotland. |