1. The doctors have abandoned the hope to rescue the old man.
A. turned up
B. given up
C. turned down
D. give out
2. It is so urgent that you have to start immediately.
3. It seems that the boss is always finding fault with my work.
4. Even if in those developed countries, manual work is still necessary sometimes.
5. He checked the luggage thoroughly to make sure that nothing important is left.
6. He spent one week to draft the commercial contract.
7. The dentist has decided to extract her bad tooth.
A. take out
B. take in
C. turn out
D. turn in
8. The government warned the people of being careful about this kind of contagious disease.
9. Many fine cooks insist on ingredients of the highest quality.
10. In order to improve our standard of living, we have to accelerate production.
A. step up
B. speed up
C. take up
D. hold up
11. The energy companies launched urgent studies of the Arctic environment.
12. We had an unusually heavy rainfall due to the typhoon, and for a while, traffic becameparalyzed.
13. The scenery on the way was truly spectacular, with beautiful mountains, rivers and valleys,and I took a lot of pictures from the window.
14. Establishment of a sound insurance system is essential for deepening economic reforms.
15. A cup of whole milk provides roughly one hundred and sixty-six calories of energy.
Study Helps Predict Big Mediterranean Quake
Scientists have found evidence that an overlooked fault in the eastern Mediterranean is likely to produce an earthquake and tsunami every 800 years as powerful as the one that destroyed Alexandria in AD 365.
Using radiocarbon dating techniques, simulations and computer models, the researchers recreated the ancient disaster in order to identify the responsible fault. ‘We are saying there is probably a repeat time of 800 years for this kind of earthquake,' said Ms Beth Shaw, an earthquake scientist at the University of Cambridge, who led the study. Scientists study past earthquakes in order to determine the future possibility of similar large shocks.
Identifying the fault for the AD 365 earthquake and tsunami is important for the tens of millions of people in the region, Ms. Shaw said. The fault close to the southwest coast of Crete last produced a big enough quake to generate a tsunami about 1300, which means the next powerful one could come in the next 100 years, she added in a telephone interview.
Ms. Shaw and her colleagues calculate the likely intervals by measuring the motion of either side of the fault to find how often such large earthquakes would have to occur to account for that level of motion, she said. Their computer model suggested an 8 magnitude quake on the fault would produce a tsunami that floods the coastal regions of Alexandria and North Africa, the southern coast of Greece and Sicily all the way up the Adriati to Dubrovnik. This would be similar to the ancient quake in AD 365 that caused widespread destruction in much of Greece and unleashed a tsunami that flooded Alexandria and the Nile Delta, likely killing tens of thousands of people, she said.
16. The fault, which was overlooked before, has been closely studied by scientists.
A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mentioned
17. It is fun to identify the fault for the AD 365 earthquake and tsunami.
A Right B. Wrong C. Not mentioned
18. Radiocarbon dating techniques can be used to identify the age of the earth.
A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mentioned
19. Scientists predict that the next powerful earthquake in the eastern Mediterranean may take place some time before 2100.
A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mentioned
20. Ms. Shaw has her colleagues help her in the study of earthquake prediction.
A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mentioned
21. Ms. Shaw measured the movement of either side of the fault to identify the magnitude of the earthquake taking place in AD 365.
A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mentioned
22. The earthquake prediction devices developed by Ms. Shaw are being widely used in the world. A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mentioned
A Strong Greenhouse Gas
Methane is a colorless, odorless gas; it is also a potent greenhouse gas, and once released into the atmosphere1, it absorbs heat radiating from Earth’s surface. That’s why methane is a major contributor to the planet’s increasing temperature rise-or global warming. Molecule for molecule, methane’s heat-trapping power in the atmosphere is 21 times stronger than carbon dioxide2, the most abundant greenhouse gas.
With 13 billion cows belching almost constantly around the world (100 million in the U. S. alone), it’s no surprise that methane released by livestock is one of the chief global sources of the gas. Other prime methane sources: petroleum, drilling, coal mining, solid-waste landfills and wet lands.
Greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide make up only a small part of Earth’s atmosphere, which is 78 percent nitrogen and nearly 21 percent oxygen. And without greenhouse gases to trap the sun’s heat and warm the planet, life as we know it couldn’t exist3. But in the last 200 years, human activity that requires burning oil, natural gas, and coal for energy has magnified the greenhouse effect.
Atmospheric concentrations of methane have more than doubled in the last two centuries. Blame for this often focuses on big industries and gas-guzzling vehicles. But agriculture plays a major role, too. In the past 40 years alone, the global cattle population has doubled.
Cows munch mostly grasses and hay-yet they grow big and hefty. Why? Because of the rumen. The rumen holds 160 liters of food and billions of microbes. These microscopic bacteria and break down cellulose and fiber into digestible nutrients. A cow couldn’t live without its microbes. As the microbes digest cellulose, they release methane. The process occurs in all animals with a rumen (cows, sheep, and goats, for example), and it make them very gassy. It’s part of their normal digestion process. When they chew their cud, they regurgitate some food to rechew it, and all this gas comes out. The average cow expels 600 liters of methane a day.
That’s why we say livestock gas is also a major factor of causing the global warming.
23. Paragraph 1______
24. Paragraph 2______
25. Paragraph 4______
26. Paragraph 5______
A. Life of Microscopic Bacteria in Livestock’s Rumen
B. Ways to Reduce Methane’s Heat-Trapping Power
C. Agriculture Also Contributes to Increased Concentrations of Methane in the Atmosphere
D. Why Livestock Releases Methane
E. Methane as a Strong Greenhouse Gas
F. Livestock as a Prime Factor of the Greenhouse Effect
27. Methane is to the intensifying greenhouse effect_____.
28.Greenhouse gases are indispensable to mankind, but the problem mankind is faced with is_____.
29. Generally people heap criticism on______for the planet’s temperature rise.
30. Nothing has been mentioned in the passage about_____.
A. one of the major contributors
B. the ever-increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases
C. big and hefty cows
D. livestock’s normal digestion process
E. how to cut down the cattle populations
F. big industries and gas-guzzling vehicles
A team of researchers in California has developed a way to predict what kinds of objects people are looking at by scanning what’s happening in their brains.
When you look at something, your eyes send a signal about that object to your brain. Different regions of the brain process the information your eyes send. Cells in your brain called neurons are responsible for this processing.
The fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) brain scans could generally match electrical activity in the brain to the basic shape of a picture that someone was looking at.
Like calls anywhere else in your body, active neurons use oxygen. Blood bring oxygen to the neurons, and the more active a neuron is, the more oxygen it will consume. The more active a region of the brain, the more active its neurons, and in turn, the more blood will travel to that region. And by using fMRI, scientists can visualize which parts of the brain receive more oxygen-rich blood-and therefore, which parts are working to process information.
An fMRI machine is a device that scans the brain and measures changes in blood flow to the brain. The technology shows researchers how brain activity changes when a person thinks, looks at something, or carries out an activity like speaking or reading. By highlighting the areas of the brain at work when a person looks at different images, fMRI may help scientists determine specific patterns of brain activity associated with different kinds of images.
The California researchers tested brain activity by having two volunteers view hundreds of pictures of everyday objects, like people, animals, and fruits. The scientists used an fMRI machine to record the volunteers’ brain activity with each photograph they looked at. Different objects caused different regions of the volunteers’ brains to light up on the scan, indicating activity. The scientists used this information to build a model to predict how the brain might respond to any image the eyes see.
In a second test, the scientists asked the volunteers to look at 120 new pictures. Like before, their brains were scanned every time they looked at a new image. This time, the scientists used their model to match the fMRI scans to the image. For example, if a scan in the second test showed the same pattern of brain activity that was strongly related to pictures of apples in the first test, their model would have predicted the volunteers were looking at apples.
31. What is responsible for processing the information sent by your eyes?
A. A small region of the brain.
B. The central part of the brain.
C. Neurons in the brain.
D. Oxygen-rich blood.
32. Which of the following statements is NOT meant by the writer?
A. Cells in your brain are called neurons.
B. The more oxygen a neuron consumes, the more blood it needs.
C. fMRI helps scientists to discover which parts of the brain process information.
D. fMRI helps scientists to discover how the brain develops intelligently.
33. “Highlighting the areas of the brain at work” means _____.
A. “marking the parts of the brain that are processing information”
B. “giving light to the parts of the brain that are processing information”
C. “putting the parts of the brain to work”
D. “stopping the parts of the brain from working”
34. What did the researchers experiment on?
A. Animals, objects, and fruits.
B. Two volunteers.
C. fMRI machines.
D. Thousands of pictures.
35. Which of the following can be the best replacement of the title?
A. The Recent Development in Science and Technology.
B. Your Thoughts Can Be Scanned.
C. A Technological Dream.
D. A Device that can Help You Calculate.
“Don’t Drink Alone” Gets New Meaning
In what may be bad news for bars ans pubs, an European research group has found that people drinking alcohol outside of meals have a significantly higher risk of cancer in the mouth and neck than do those taking their libations with food. Luigino Dal Maso and his colleagues studied the drinking patterns of 1, 500 patients from four cancer studies and another 3, 500 adults who had never had cancer.
After the researchers accounted for the amount of alcohol consumed, they found that individuals who downed a significant share of their alcohol outside of meals faced at least a 50 to 80 percent risk of cancer in the oral cavity, pharynx, and esophagus, when compared with people who drank only at meals. Consuming alcohol without food also increased by at least 20 percent the likelihood of laryngeal cancer. “Roughly 95 percent of cancers at these four sites traced to smoking or drinking by the study volunteers,” Dal Maso says. The discouraging news, his team reports, is that drinking with meals didn’t eliminate cancer risk at any of the sites.
For their new analysis, the European scientists divided people in the study into four groups, based on how many drinks they reported having in an average week. The lowest-intake group included people who averaged up to 20 drinks a week. The highest group reported downing at least 56 servings of alcohol weekly for an average of eight or more per day. Cancer risks for the mouth and neck sites rose steadily with consumption even for people who reported drinking only with meals. For instance, compared with people in the lowest-consumption group, participants who drank 21 to 34 alcohol servings a week at least doubled their cancer risk for all sites other than the larynx. If people in these consumption groups took some of those drinks outside meals, those in the higher conumption group at least quadrupled their risk for oral cavity and esophageal cancers.
People in the highest-consumption group who drank only with meals had 10 times the risk of oral cancer, 7 times the risk of pharyngeal cancer, and 16 times the risk of esophageal cancer compared with those who averaged 20 or fewer drinks a week with meals. Incontrast, laryngeal cancer risk in the high-intake, with-meals-only group was only triple that in the low-intake consumers who drank with meals.
“Alcohol can inflame tissues. Over time, that inflammation can trigger cancer.” Dal Maso says. He suspects that food reduced cancer risk either bypartially coating digestive-tract tissues of by scrubbing alcohol off those tissues. He speculates that the reason laryngeal risks were dramatically lower for all study participants traces to the tissue’s lower exposure to alcohol.
36. Researchers have found that the risk of cancer in the mouth and neck is higher with people_____
A. who drink alcohol outside of meals
B. who drink alcohol at meals
C. who never drink alcohol
D. who drink alcohol at bars and pubs
37. Which of the following is NOT the conclusion made by the researchers about “drinking with meals”?
A. It has a lower risk of cancer than drinking without food
B. It may also be a cause of cancer
C. It increases by 20 percent the possibility of cancer in all sites
D. It does not eliminate cancer risk at any of the sites
38. Approximately how many drinks do the lowest-intake group average per day?
A. 3 drinks B. 8 drinks C. 20 drinks D. 56 drinks
39. Which cancer risk is the lowest among all the four kinds of cancer mentioned in the passage?
A. Oral cancer B. Laryngeal C. Pharyngeal cancer D. Esophageal cancer
40. According to the last paragraph, tissue’s lower exposure to alcohol_____
A. explains why inflammation triggers cancer
B. account for why food can coat digestive-tract tissues
C. is the reason why food can scrub alcohol off tissues
D. reduces the risk of laryngeal cancer
Factory farming could soon enter a new era of mass production. Companies in the US are developing the technology needed to “clone” chickens on a massive scale. Once a chicken with desirable traits has been bred or genetically engineered, tens of thousands of eggs, which will hatch into identical copies, could roll off the production lines every hour. Billions of clones could be produced each year to supply chicken farms with birds that all grow at the same rate, have the same amount of meat and taste the same.
This, at least, is the vision of the US’s National Institute of Science and Technology, which has given Origen Therapeutics of Burlingame, California, and Embrex of North Carolina $4.7 million to help fund research. The prospect has alarmed animal welfare groups, who fear it could increase the suffering of farm birds.
That’s unlikely to put off the poultry industry, however, which wants disease resistant birds that grow faster on less food. “Producers would like the same meat quantity but to use reduced inputs to get there,” says Mike Fitzgerald of Origen. To meet this demand, Origen aims to “create an animal that is effectively a clone”, he says. Normal cloning doesn’t work in birds because eggs can’t be removed and implanted, Instead, the company is trying to bulk-grow embryonic stem cells taken from fertilized eggs as soon as they’re laid. “The trick is to culture the cells without them starting to distinguish, so they remain pluripotent,” says Fitzgerald.
Using a long-established technique, these donor cells will then be injected into the embryo of a freshly laid, fertilized recipient egg, forming a chick that is a “chimera”. Strictly speaking a chimera isn’t a clone, because it contains cells from both donor and recipient. But Fitzgerald says it will be enough if, say, 95 percent of a chicken’s body develops from donor cells. “In the poultry world, it doesn’t matter if it’s not 100 percent,” he says.
Another challenge for Origen is to scale up production. To do this, it has teamed up with Embrex, which produces machines that can inject vaccines into up to 50,000 eggs an hour. Embrex is now trying to modify the machines to locate the embryo and inject the cells into precisely the right spot without killing it.
In future, Origen imagines freezing stem cells from different strains of chicken. If orders come in for a particular strain, millions of eggs could be produced in months or even weeks. At present, maintaining all the varieties the market might call for is too expensive for breeders, and it takes years to bread enough chickens to produce the billions of eggs that farmers need.
41.Which statement is the best description of the new era of factory farming according to the first paragraph?
A. Eggs are all genetically engineered
B. Thousands of eggs are produced every hour
C. Cloned chickens are bulk-produced with the same growth rate, weight and taste.
D. Identical eggs can be hatched on the production lines
42. Which institution has offered $4.7 million to fund the research?
A. The US’s National Institute of Science and Technology.
B. Origen Therapeutics of Burlingame, California
C. Embrex of North Carolina
D. Animal welfare groups
43. In the third paragraph, by saying “Producers would like the same meat quantity but to use reduced inputs to get there.” Mike Fitzgerald means that he wishes_____.
A. chickens’ quality could be maintained but with less investment
B. chickens’ taste could be improved but at less costs
C. chickens’ growth are could be quickened but with less inputs
D. chickens could grow to the same weight but with less feed.
44. Which of the following statements about Origen and Embrex is correct according to the fifth paragraph?
A. Origen and Embrex will jointly invent machines to increase production
B. Origen wants to purchase an efficient donor cells injecting machine
C. Origen has joined hands with Embrex in producing cell-injecting machines.
D. Origen is the leading company in producing embryo-locating machines
45. The technology of freezing stem cells from different strains of chicken can do all the following EXCEPT that_____.
A. farmers can order certain strains of chicken only
B. Origen can supply all the strains of chicken the market might need
C. chicken farmers order certain strains of chicken for economic reason
D. chicken famers can be supplied with whatever strain they need
Driving involves sharp eyes and keen ears, analyzing with a brain, and coordination between hands, feet and brain. A man has sharp eyes and keen ears, analyzes through his brain, and maintains coordination between his hands and brains. He can control a fast-moving car with different parts of his body. 46 Apparently there isn’t anyone in the driver’s cab, but there is in fact a virtual driver. This virtual driver has eyes, brains, hands and feet too. The minicameras on each side of the car are its eyes and are responsible for observing the road conditions ahead of it as well as the traffic to its left and right. If you open the boot, you can see the most important part of the automatic driving system: a built-in computer. 47 The brain is responsible for calculating the speeds objects surrounding the car are moving at, analyzing their position on the road, choosing the right path, and giving orders to the wheel and the control system.
In comparison with the human brain, the virtual driver’s best advantage is that it reacts quickly. 48 However, it takes the world’s best racecar driver at least one second to react, and this doesn’t include the time he needs to take action.
With its rapid reaction and accurate control, the virtual driver can reduce the accident rate on expressways considerably. In this case, is it possible for us to let it have the wheel3 at any time and in any place? 49 With its limited ability to recognize things, the car can now only travel on expressways.
The intelligent car determines its direction by the clear lines that mark the lanes clearly and recognizes vehicles according to their regular shapes. 50 This being the case, people still have high hopes about driverless cars, and think highly intelligent cars are what the cars of the future should be like.
A. Experts say that we cannot do that just yet.
B. In the near future, intelligent cars will be put into commercial operation.
C. This is the brain of the car.
D. But how does an intelligent car control itself?
E. It completes the processing of the images sent by the cameras within 100 milliseconds.
F. However, it cannot recognize moving people and bicycles on ordinary roads that have no clear markings on them.
Free Statins With Fast Food Could Neutralize Heart Risk
Fast food outlets could provide statin drugs free of 51 so that customers can reduce the heart disease dangers of fatty food, researchers at Imperial College London 52 in a new study.
Statins reduce the 53 of unhealthy ”LDL” cholesterol in the blood. A wealth of trial data has proven them to be highly effective at lowering a person’s heart attack 54 .
In a paper published in the American Journal of Cardiology，Dr Darrel Francis and colleagues calculate that the reduction in heart attack risk offered by a statin is 55 to offset the increase in heart attack risk from 56 a cheeseburger and drinking a milkshake.
Dr Francis, from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London，who is the senior author of the study, said:”Statins don’t cut out a11 of the 57 effects of cheeseburgers and French fries. It’s better to avoid fatty food altogether. But we’ve worked out that in terms of your 58 of having a heart attack. Taking a statin can reduce your risk to more or less the same 59 as a fast food meal increases it.” “It’s ironic that people are free to take as many unhealthv condiments in fast food outlets as they 60 , but statins, which are beneficial to heart health, have to be prescribed. It makes sense to make risk-reducing statins available just as easily as the unhealthy condiments that are 61 free of charge. It would cost less than 5 pence per 62 -not much different to a sachet of sugar.” Dr Francis said.
When people engage in risky behaviours like driving or smoking, they’re encouraged to take 63 that lower their risk, 1ike 64 a seatbelt or choosing cigarettes with filters. Taking a statin is a rational way of 65 some of the risks of eating a fatty meal.
51. A. change B. charge C. chain D. chance
52. A. trust B. decide C. suggest D. calculate
53. A. number B. amount C. volume D. product
54. A. frequency B. treatment C. diagnosis D. risk
55. A. severe B. enough C. weak D. active
56. A. buying B. preparing C. eating D. cooking
57. A. unhealthy B. strong C. different D. doubtful
58. A. examination B. suffering C. determination D. possibility
59. A. degree B. dimension C. angle D. range
60. A. use B. hate C. reject D. like
61. A. transported B. provided C. preserved D. convened
62. A. cook B. patient C. customer D. visitor
63. A. measures B. care C. advantages D. turns
64. A. buying B. wearing C. cleaning D. changing
65. A. increasing B. finding C. lowering D. taking