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If you are afraid of the dark，it’s not a big deal．It’s perfectly normal to feel afraid. After all，animals do too. “Fear matters，”says Karen Warkentin，an ecologist．“It’s a good thing，” she adds, “because fear makes you do things that keep you alive.”
Like kids，many animals experience fear and they respond to the feeling in a variety of ways．A frightened turtle pulls its head and legs inside its shell．A small fish will swim away when a big，hungry fish approaches．
Some animals respond to fear in ways you might not expect．The first example is that the fear of being eaten can scare some frogs right out of their eggs. Warkentin made the surprising discovery while studying red—eyed tree frogs in Costa Rica.
In this species，female frogs attach jellylike clumps（果冻一样的块状物）of their eggs to the undersides of leaves．The leaves hang on branches that dangle（悬挂）over ponds．After they hatch from the eggs，the tadpoles（蝌蚪）then fall into the water，where they eventually grow into adult frogs.
Tree frog eggs usually grow for 6 days before hatching．If they sense that a hungry snake is about to attack，however，they can hatch up to 2 days ahead of schedule. As the snakes are unable to swim，by falling into the water early，the tadpoles can escape.
If hatching early helps protect red—eyed tree frogs from snakes，you might wonder why their eggs don’t always hatch sooner．It turns out that hatching early brings its own danger．Once tadpoles land in the water，hungry fish and other animals like to eat them too．Staying in their eggs for a full 6 days, then, allows frog embryos（胚胎）to grow big and strong．This extra growth improves their chances of surviving in the water．
1．It can be inferred from the passage that fears________.
A．help animals grow bigger and stronger
B．are less common among young animals
C．help animals move a lot to fit the environment
D．are more or less important in order for animals to survive
2．We are told in the passage that tree frogs _______.
A．face danger both inside their eggs and in the water
B．will grow fast if they fall into the water later
C．are surprisingly clever when inside their eggs
D．stay in their eggs longer if they are frightened
3．What do you think would be discussed in the following paragraph?
A．Further explanations as to why tree frogs hatch ahead of schedule．
B．How the unborn frogs know when a snake is about to attack them．
C．Another example of animals that responds to fear in an unexpected way．
D．How tree frogs improve their chances of survival before falling into the water.
WASHINGTON---Think you’re savvy about food safety? That you wash your hands well, scrub away germs, cook your meat properly?
Guess again.
Scientists put cameras in the kitchens of 100 families in Logan, Utah. What was caught on tape in this middle-class, well-educated college town suggests why food poisoning hits so many Americans.
People skipped soap when hand-washing. Used the same towel to wipe up raw meat juice as to dry their hands. Made a salad without washing the lettuce. Undercooked the meat loaf. One even tasted the marinade in which bacteria-ridden raw fish had soaked.
Not to mention the mom who handled raw chicken and then fixed her infant a bottle without washing her hands.
Or another mom who merely rinsed(冲洗) her baby’s juice bottle after it fell into raw eggs---no soap against the salmonella(沙门氏菌) that can lurk(潜伏) in eggs.
“Shocking,” was Utah State University nutritionist Janet Anderson’s reaction.
Specialists call this typical of the average U.S. household: Everybody commits at least some safety sins(罪恶) when they are hurried, distracted by fussy children or ringing phones, simply not thinking about germs. Even Anderson made changes in her kitchen after watching the tapes.
The Food and Drug Administration funded Anderson’s $50,000 study to detect how cooks slip up. The goal is to improve consumers’ knowledge of how to protect themselves from the food poisoning that strikes 76 million Americans each year.
“One of the great barriers in getting people to change is they think they’re doing such a good job already,” said FDA consumer research chief Alan Levy.
Surveys show most Americans blame restaurants for food-borne illnesses. Asked if they follow basic bacteria-fighting tips---listed on the Internet at www.fightbac.org---most insist they’re careful in their kitchens.
Levy says most food poisonings probably occur at home. The videotapes suggest why. People have no idea that they’re messing up, Anderson said. “You just go in the kitchen, and it’s something you don’t think about.”
She described preliminary(初步的) study results at a food meeting last week. Having promised the families anonymity, she didn’t show the tapes.
For $50 and free groceries, families agreed to be filmed. Their kitchens looked clean and presumably(perhaps) they were on their best behavior, but they didn’t know it was a safety study. Hoping to see real-life hygiene, scientists called the experiment “market research” on how people cooked a special recipe.
Scientists bought ingredients for a salad plus either Mexican meat loaf, marinaded halibut or herb-breaded chicken breasts with mustard sauce---recipes designed to catch safety slip-ups.
Cameras started rolling as the cooks put away the groceries.
There was mistake No. 1: Only a quarter stored raw meat and seafood on the refrigerator’s bottom shelf so other foods don’t get contaminated(污染) by dripping juices.
Mistake No. 2: Before starting to cook, only 45 percent washed their hands. Of those, 16 percent didn’t use soap. You’re supposed to wash hands often while cooking, especially after handling raw meat. But on average, each cook skipped seven times that Anderson said they should have washed. Only a third consistently used soap---many just rinsed and wiped their hands on a dish towel. That dish towel became Anderson’s nightmare. Using paper towels to clean up raw meat juice is safest. But dozens wiped the countertop(台面板) with that cloth dish towel---further spreading germs the next time they dried their hands.
Thirty percent didn’t wash the lettuce; others placed salad ingredients on meat-contaminated counters.
Scientists checked the finished meal with thermometers, and Anderson found “alarming” results: 35 percent who made the meat loaf undercooked it, 42 percent undercooked the chicken and 17 percent undercooked the fish.
Must you use a thermometer? Anderson says just because the meat isn’t pink doesn’t always mean it got hot enough to kill bacteria.
Anderson’s study found gaps in food-safety campaigns. FDA’s “Fight Bac” antibacterial program doesn’t stress washing vegetables. Levy calls those dirty dish towels troubling; expect more advice stressing paper towels.
Anderson’s main message: “If people would simply wash their hands and clean food surfaces after handling raw meat, so many of the errors would be taken care of.”Where did this article most likely come from?
| A．The Internet. | B．A newspaper. | C．A Textbook. | D．A brochure. |
What is the purpose of Paragraphs 4 through 6?
| A．To present the author’s opinion about the study. |
| B．To explain how the study was conducted. |
| C．To state the reason for the food safety study. |
| D．To describe things observed in the study. |
What prevents many Americans practicing better food safety in their kitchen?
| A．They don’t trust the Food and Drug Administration. |
| B．They’ve followed basic bacteria-fighting tips on the Internet. |
| C．They think they are being careful enough already. |
| D．They believe they are well-informed and well-educated enough. |
Which of the following would prevent most cases of food poisoning in the home?
| A．Washing hands and cleaning surfaces after handling raw meat. |
| B．Strictly following recipes and cooking meat long enough. |
| C．Storing raw meat on the bottom shelf in the refrigerator. |
| D．Using paper towels t clean up raw meat juice. |
What is the main purpose of this article?
| A．To discourage people from cooking so much meat at home. |
| B．To criticize the families who participated in the study. |
| C．To introduce the Food and Drug Administration’s food safety campaigns. |
| D．To report the results of a study about the causes of food poisoning. |
Below is a passages adapted from a website.
| Tayka Hotel De Sal Where: Tahua, Bolivia  How much: About $95 a night Why it’s cool: You’ve stayed at hotels made of brick or wood, but salt? That’s something few can claim. Tayka Hotel de Sal is made totally of salt---including the beds (though you’ll sleep on regular mattresses (床垫) and blankets). The hotel sits on the Salar de Uyuni, a prehistoric dried-up lake that’s the world’s biggest salt flat. Builders use the salt from the 4,633-square-mile flat to make the bricks, and glue them together with a paste of wet salt that hardens when it dries. When rain starts to dissolve the hotel, the owners just mix up more salt paste to strengthen the bricks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------- Green Magic Nature Resort Where: Vythiri, India  How much: About $240 a night Why it’s cool: Taking a pulley(滑轮)-operated lift 86 feet to your treetop room is just the start of your adventure. As you look out of your open window---there is no glass!---you watch monkeys and birds in the rain forest canopy(罩蓬). Later you might test your fear of heights by crossing the handmade rope bridge to the main part of the hotel, or just sit on your bamboo bed and read. You don’t even have to come down for breakfast---the hotel will send it up on the pulley-drawn “elevator”. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------- Dog Bark Park Inn B&B Where: Cottonwood, Idaho  How much: $92 a night Why it’s cool: This doghouse isn’t just for the family pet. Sweet Willy is a 30-foot-tall dog with guest rooms in his belly. Climb the wooden stairs beside his hind leg to enter the door in his side．You can relax in the main bedroom, go up a few steps of the loft(阁楼）in Willy’s head, or hang out inside his nose. Although you have a full private bathroom in your quarters, there is also a toilet in the 12-foot-tall fire hydrant (消防栓）outside. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------- Gamirasu Cave Hotel Where: Ayvali, Turkey  How much: Between $130 and $475 a night. Why it’s cool: This is caveman cool! Experience what it was like 5,000 years ago, when people lived in these mountain caves formed by volcanic ash. But your stay will be much more modern. Bathrooms and electricity provide what you expect from a modern hotel, and the white volcanic ash, called tufa, keeps the rooms cool, about 65℉in summer. (Don’t worry---there is heat in winter.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------- Treebones Resort Where: California, America  How much: $100 a night Why it’s cool: You can sleep in a “room” any night, but how often do you get the chance to sleep in a yurt. What’s a yurt? Good question. Yurts are the name given to guest rooms at the Treebones Resort. These spaces provide all of the accessibility to nature you’d enjoy in a tent, but with all the comforts of a cabin. In one of sixteen yurts, you will doze off(打盹儿) while gazing at the stars that can be seen through a sky dome. |
What is the main purpose of this passage?
| A．To sell the hotels. |
| B．To attract guests. |
| C．To offer good service. |
| D．To get popular. |
If you want to experience a thrilling life, you’d better go to ____________.
| A．Treebones Resort |
| B．Gamirasu Cave Hotel |
| C．Dog Bark Park Inn B&B |
| D．Green Magic Nature Resort |
Sweet Willy is the name of ____________.
| A．a doghouse for the family pet |
| B．a thirty-foot-tall family dog |
| C．the building of Dog Bark Park Inn B&B |
| D．the guest rooms in Dog Bark Park Inn B&B |
Which of the following words can best describe all the five hotels in the passage?
| A．Unique. | B．Ordinary. | C．Costly. | D．Natural. |
It’s nearly noon on a Saturday and you can’t believe it: your teenager is still in bed, sleeping away. But before you wake him up---mumbling to yourself that you can’t believe what a lazybones he is---you should know that he probably needs all the zzzs he can get.
As much as nine hours of sleep a night, in fact. Furthermore, teens’ circadian rhythms (i.e., processes that occur once a day) mean that young people would rather stay up past midnight and rise after 9 a.m. The result? Many teens stay up late, drag themselves out of bed early for school and try to make up the sleep debt on the weekends---or in class!
“There’s a biological reason why teens stay up late and want to sleep late,” says Dr. Stan Kutcher, the Sun Life Chair of Adolescent Mental Health at Dalhousie University in Halifax. “Their natural sleep-wake cycle changes as part of the maturation process. And because of changes in their social activities, recovering from sleep debt is more problematic.”
Teens need extra sleep for several reasons. First, their brains are changing. “The brain is reorganizing itself, laying down new pathways. What we’re seeing is a relationship between brain redevelopment and an increased need for sleep,” says Kutcher. As well, growth hormones are released during sleep, so adequate sleep is crucial for adolescents’ physical development. In addition, everything adolescents have learned in school that day is being processed and locked into long-term memory during sleep. Sufficient sleep also plays a key role in overall physical health. The immune system, for example, needs deep sleep to become and remain robust(healthy).
Staying up late on school nights means that, on average, teens get between six and a half and seven hours of sleep a night---about two hours less than they need. As a result, many either doze off in class or have trouble concentrating. Some of the behavioural problems and irritability in teens can be linked directly to sleep deprivation(损失), Kutcher says.
Then there’s the breakfast issue. Dr. Carlyle Smith, a sleep researcher and a psychology professor at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., adds that many teens simply cannot tolerate food when they first wake up, so skipping breakfast becomes another factor in reduced alertness in class. The most obvious solution to the teen sleep problem is to have school start later in the day, but initiatives(积极性) toward this across the country have gone nowhere, Smith says, mainly because of costs and resistance from school boards and teachers.
So for now, just sympathize with your teens. Encourage them to go to bed, if not early, then at least at a regular time, so they won’t develop insomnia from erratic(不稳定的) schedules. Warn them not to have too many caffeinated drinks before bed. And don’t let sleeping away the weekend become an issue to fight over. Schedule family activities to take place later in the day on weekends and let them sleep in. “If you want your kids to grow and remember stuff, let them sleep,” says Smith. “It’s not laziness. Their brains are working really, really hard.” The word “zzzs” (Paragraph 1) most probably means __________.
| A．food | B．sleep | C．energy | D．blame |
What causes teenagers to be less sleepy late at night and more sleepy early in the morning?
| A．Caffeinated drinks. |
| B．Too much family activities. |
| C．Circadian rhythms. |
| D．Too much homework. |
How many reason why teens need extra sleep are mentioned in Paragraph 4?
| A．Three. | B．Four. | C．Five. | D．Six. |
One of the reasons why many teenagers fail to have better performances in class is that __________.
| A．teenagers go to bed early and sleep late |
| B．teenagers stay up late and get up late |
| C．teenagers participate in too many social activities at night |
| D．teenagers skip breakfast because of sleeping in |
The author wrote this article to __________.
| A．advise parents to let sleeping teenagers lie |
| B．explain why teenagers often sleep late |
| C．state schools should start late in the day |
| D．warn teenagers not to drink coffee before bed |
Audrey Hepburn is one of Hollywood’s all-time greatest actress. She is famous not only in the USA, but also in other parts of the world.
Hepburn was born in Belgium on May 4, 1929. She began taking ballet (芭蕾) lessons at a very young age. She loved dancing and her dream was to become a successful ballet dancer. She had put most of her effort into ballet training before she entered the film industry.
In 1951, Hepburn was chosen to play the lead role of a young princess in the Hollywood film Roman(罗马) Holiday. It was a big success and Hepburn became famous immediately. She won an Oscar for Best Actress for her role in this film.
During her life time, Hepburn earned four more Oscar nominations(提名). Some well-known films that she acted in include Funny Face, Breakfast at Tiffany and My Fair Lady.
Hepburn also devoted much of her time to charity(慈善). She spent the last few years of her life working closely with UNICEF to help poor children in different parts of the world. She was honoured with a number of awards(奖励) because of her efforts in helping them.Hepburn was born in ________.
| A．USA | B．Belguim | C．Italy | D．England |
Her dream was to become a successful ______ when she was very young.
| A．singer | B．trainer | C．dancer | D．director |
______ made Hepburn a big success.
| A．Roman Holidays | B．Funny Face | C．Breakfast at Tiffany’s | D．My Fair Lady |
Hepburn was honoured with a number of awards because she __________.
| A．acted in many films | B．was good at ballet |
| C．gave everything to others | D．did her best to help poor children |
Four students are talking about the future after class.
Deng Yu: In 2050, China will be richer than it is now. Beijing will be getting ready for the 40th Olympic Games in 2050. We will see the blue and clear sky and smell the fresh air. There will be more pandas living happily in China. I believe that 2050 will be the year of China.
Liu Yan: A holiday to the moon will no longer be a dream. We can also travel far to other planets and talk with spacemen. We might also eat something like pills instead of today’s meals. Everyone will enjoy a longer life.
Sun Wei: Robots will be more popular. They will do what people don’t want to do. We’ll build new homes on other planets. By then, I’ll be sixty years old.
Zhang Lan: By the year of 2050, cloning will have been used in many ways. It will bring back animals which disappeared many years ago. There will be no pollution. The whole world will be one big family. There will be no wars. We’ll live a much easier and better life.Which of the following is NOT true according to the text?
| A．China will be richer than it is now. |
| B．Shanghai will be getting ready for the 40th Olympic Games. |
| C．We will see the blue and clear sky and smell the fresh air. |
| D．More pandas will live happily in China. |
______ thinks that people can spend their holidays on the moon in the future.
| A．Deng Yu | B．Zhang Lan | C．Sun Wei | D．Liu Yan |
Zhang Lan thinks ________________ in the future.
| A．people will live in a world without wars |
| B．robots will do everything for people |
| C．people can talk with spacemen |
| D．2050 will be the year of China. |
What is the dialogue mainly about?
| A．the 40th Olympic Games | B．How to spend our holiday |
| C．the future | D．cloning |
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