The flag, the most common symbol of a nation in the modern world, is also one of the most ancient. With a clear symbolic meaning, the flag in the traditional form is still used today to mark buildings, ships and other vehicles related to a country.
The national flag as we know it today is in no way a primitive artifact. It is, rather, the product of thousands of years’ development. Historians believe that it had two major ancestors, of which the earlier served to show wind direction.
Early human beings used very fragile houses and boats. Often strong winds would tear roofs from houses or cause high waves that endangered travelers. People’s food supplies were similarly vulnerable. Even after they had learned how to plant grains, they still needed help from nature to ensure good harvests. Therefore they feared and depended on the power of the wind, which could bring warmth from one direction and cold from another.
Using a simple piece of cloth tied to the top of a post to tell the direction of the wind was more dependable than earlier methods, such as watching the rising of smoke from a fire. The connection of the flag with heavenly power was therefore reasonable. Early human societies began to fix long pieces of cloth to the tops of totems (图腾) before carrying them into battle. They believed that the power of the wind would be added to the good wishes of the gods and ancestors represented by the totems themselves.
These flags developed very slowly into modern flags. The first known flag of a nation or a ruler was unmarked: The king of China around 1,000 B.C. was known to have a white flag carried ahead of him. This practice might have been learned from Egyptians even further in the past, but it was from China that it spread over trade routes through India, then across Arab lands, and finally to Europe, where it met up with the other ancestor of the national flag. The underlined word “ vulnerable” in paragraph 3 means _______.
| A．easy to damage | B．likely to be protected |
| C．impossible to make sure of | D．difficult to find |
The earliest flags were connected with heavenly power because they _______.
| A．could tell wind direction | B．could bring good luck to fighters |
| C．were believed to stand for natural forces | D．were handed down by the ancestors |
What does the author know of the first national flag?
| A．He knows when it was sent to Europe. | B．He doubts where it started. |
| C．He thinks it came from China. | D．He believes it was made in Egypt. |
What will the author most probably talk about next?
| A．The role of China in the spread of the national flag. |
| B．The importance of modern flags. |
| C．The use of modern flags in Europe. |
| D．The second ancestor of the national flag. |
You know Australia is a big country, but you may not know how easy it is to get around. The untouched beaches that go for miles and deserts that touch the horizon are just there, waiting to be reached and explored. The following are the different ways you can explore our vast country.
Getting around Australia
Air
Flying is the best way to cover large distances in a short time. You can spend more time on the Australia's can't-miss landscapes and relaxing lifestyle. Moreover, competition among airlines makes great flying fees available for you.
Drive
Australia has a vast network of well-maintained roads and some of the most beautiful touring routes in the world. You have no difficulty finding car rental companies at major airports, central city locations, suburbs and attractions.
Bus
Bus travel in Australia is comfortable, easy and economical. Buses generally have air conditioning, reading lights, adjustable seats and videos. Services are frequent, affordable and efficient.
Rail
Train travel is the cheapest and gives you an insight into Australia's size and variety, all from the comfort of your carriage. Scheduled services are a great way to get quickly between our cities and regional centers.
Ferry(轮渡）
The Spirit of Tasmania runs a passenger and vehicle ferry service between Melbourne and Tasmania nightly. Extra sen ices are running during summer rush hours. Sea-link ferries connect South Australia and Kangaroo Island several times a day. Ferries connect suburbs in our capital cities.
Walk
With easy-on-the-feet pedestrian.(行人)streets, walking is a great way to get around our cities.
Besides all the above, you can also experience some of the longest: tracks and trails in the world in central Australia——impressive journeys of a thousand kilometers or more that can take several weeks to complete.The underlined word "untouched" in Paragraph 1 means .
| A．secure | B．special | C．natural | D．artificial |
Which of the following is true about travelling in Australia?
| A．You can easily rent a car to explore its beautiful touring routes. |
| B．More travellers make the flying fees among airlines higher than before. |
| C．Taking a bus tour is the most comfortable, economical and efficient way. |
| D．Train services can offer you more comfort than any other means of transport, |
Ferry service between Melbourne and Tasmania usually runs •
| A．several times a day | B．only at night hours |
| C．between different cities | D．only during rush hours |
From the passage, we know that.
| A．travelling in central Australia is time-consuming |
| B．central Australia has the world's shortest railway line |
| C．pedestrian walking is a great way to travel between cities |
| D．you have no choice but to walk over 1,000 kilometers in central Australia |
If you travel to a new exhibition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers, you will have chances to see some meat-eating plants. Take bladderworts, a kind of such plant, for example. They appear so small and grow in a quiet pond. "But these are the fastest known killers of the plant kingdom, able to capture a small insect in 1/50 of a second using a trap door!"
Once the trap door closes on the victim, the enzymes(酶）similar to those in the human stomach slowly digest the insert. When dinner is over, the plant opens the trap door and is ready to trap again.
Meat-eating plants grow mostly in wet areas with soil that doesn't offer much food nutrition. In such conditions, these amazing plants have developed insect traps to get their nutritional needs over thousands of years. North America has more such plants than any other continents.
Generally speaking, the traps may have attractive appearance to fool the eye, like pitcher plants, which get their name because they look like beautiful pitchers full of nectar(花蜜).
Hair-like growths along the pitcher walls ensure that nothing can escape, and the digestive enzymes can get to work. A tiny insect can be digested in a few hours, but a fly takes a couple of days.
Some of these pitchers are large enough to hold 7.5 liters. Meat-eating plants only eat people in science fiction movies, but sometimes a bird or other small animals will discover that a pitcher plant isn't a good place to get a drink.From Paragraph 1，we learn that bladderworts can_ .
| A．kill an insect in a second |
| B．digest a fly in a few hours |
| C．be found floating on a quiet lake |
| D．capture an insect in 1/50 of a second |
If the trap door of a meat-eating plant is closed, the plant is
| A．fooling insects into taking a sip |
| B．producing nectar |
| C．tempting insects to come close |
| D．enjoying a dinner |
Meat-eating plants can grow in wet and poor soil because they .
| A．can get nutrition from animals |
| B．don't need much food nutrition |
| C．can make the most of such conditions |
| D．have developed digestive enzymes |
What can be captured by meat-eating plants for food?
| A．A child. | B．A dog |
| C．A little bird. | D．A little fish. |
Our boat floated on between walls of forest. It was too thick for us to get a view of the land we were passing through, though we knew from the map that our river must be passing through chains of hills from time to time. Nowhere did we find a place where we could have landed: although the jungle did not actually spread right down into the river, banks of soft mud prevented us from going ashore. In any case, what would we have gained by landing? The country was full of snakes and other dangerous creatures and the jungle was so thick that one would be able to advance slowly, cutting one's way with knives the whole way. So we stayed in the boat, hoping that when we reached the sea, a friendly fisherman would pick us up and take us to civilization.
As for water, there was a choice. We could drink the muddy river water, or die of thirst. We drank the water. Men who have just escaped from what appeared to be certain death lost all worries about such small things as diseases caused by dirty water. In fact, none of us suffered from any illness as a result.
One day we passed another village, but fortunately nobody saw us. We did not wish to risk being taken prisoners a second time: we might not be so lucky as to escape in a stolen boat again. TOC \o "1-3" \h \z What they could see on the boat was only.
| A．high walls | B．chains of hills |
| C．heavy woods | D．vast land |
They couldn't land because.
| A．the mud on the shore was too soft |
| B．they could not find anyone |
| C．they could not find the mark on the map |
| D．the forest was too thick to go through |
From the passage, we can learn that.
| A．they were in an uninhabited area |
| B．they were on a journey home happily |
| C．the country was a civilized society |
| D．the country was a tropical jungle coutry |
The best title for this passage might he______
| A．I he Problem of Landing | B．Escape in the Jungle |
| C．An Entirely New Experience | D．Exploration of a River |
Treatment for HIV has become more widespread, especially in poorer countries. It’s also become cheaper, as medicine companies have lowered their prices for life-saving anti-retroviral drugs(抗逆转录病毒药物). But these drugs are still expensive and many countries are looking to create the biggest impact with limited resources. That’s where World Health Organization guidelines come in, says Rochelle Walensky, a disease researcher from Harvard.
Walensky and her colleagues used computer programs to model the most cost-effective disease interventions(干预), as well as collected data from clinics in Africa and India about what works best. They found that among the choices of what to do first, earlier anti-retroviral therapy (疗法)improved five-year survival dramatically and resulted in the longer life expectancy. But cost-effective doesn’t always mean affordable, especially for governments in poor countries. Countries still have to make difficult choices about how much treatment they can afford.
People in Nairobi, Kenya on Thursday, Dec. 9, 2010, protest a potential free trade area agreement between the EU and India that could see cheap anti-AIDS drugs phased out（逐步淘汰）. However, Walensky notes that first-line anti-retrovirals—those medicine given to newly diagnosed patients that can keep away from symptoms for years - are much cheaper than they were a decade ago. "Second-line therapy have come down quite a bit but not to the level of first-line and countries are having a hard time affording them and increasingly over time, people are going to fail first-line therapy and they’re going second-line therapy and then, eventually, they’re going to need third-line therapy, some of them."
According to Walensky, history has shown that drug prices can come down when international pressure is applied to drug makers. But for now, she says, countries should focus on treating as many people as they can, as early as possible
Her paper is published in the online journal PLoS Medicine. Which is the best title for the passage?
| A．HIV Has Spread in Poorer Countries |
| B．Rochelle Walensky’s Life |
| C．International Pressure to Drug Makers |
| D．Early HIV Treatment Saves Lives |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．Anti-retroviral drugs have become cheap now. |
| B．The cost-effective treatment may be a heavy expense. |
| C．Cheap anti-AIDS drugs have been phased out . |
| D．First-line therapy deals with the most severe disease. |
The research is done by .
| A．using computer programs and collecting data from clinics |
| B．giving medicine to newly diagnosed patients with AIDS |
| C．urging countries to focus on treating more patients earlier |
| D．publishing her paper in the online journal PLoS Medicine |
The passage serves as a（n）___________ to Rochelle Walensky ’s study.
| A．assessment | B．comment | C．introduction | D．background |
A severe heatwave sweeping India, with temperatures of almost 44ºC, the highest in 52 years, has killed at least 80 people this month, officials said on Sunday. The hot weather, which officials say would continue over northern, north-western and central India in the next 48 hours, also may have some impact on wheat production, exporters and flour-mill associations said.
New Delhi recorded a maximum temperature of 43.7ºC on Saturday, indicating a hot summer in the next two months in the nation’s capital and other parts of northern and eastern India. The highest temperature in the past 24 hours was 47ºC at Ganganagar city, in Rajasthan state. Summer temperatures have been 4ºC-6ºC above normal over most parts of northern and central India since March, weather officials said.
In the eastern state of Orissa, authorities have decided to shut down schools from next Tuesday, advancing the annual summer holiday. Authorities said they were investigating reports of 53 deaths from various parts of the state.
"District collectors have been asked to investigate and submit reports on other deaths," Bhimsen Gochhayat, a government official said. Other deaths were reported from northern state of Uttar Pradesh and central Madhya Pradesh states.
India is expected to produce about 82 million tons of wheat in 2009-2010, but there could be a shortage of 1-1.5 million tons due to the heatwave, said Veena Sharma, Secretary General of the Roller Flour Millers Federation of India. "Most of the harvesting is over, but there definitely will be a slight shortage of 1-1.5 million tons due to the extreme weather conditions," she told Reuters.
India is relying on an abundant wheat crop to make up for a 14.2% drop in rice output, the major summer-sown food grain, marred by the worst monsoon （季风）in 37 years last year. Weather officials say with summer temperatures in India set to remain above average, there were hopes of heavy rains at the start of the monsoon season that will help early sowing of rice, soybeans and lentils.
The purpose of the passage is ____________.
| A．to tell a piece of news of a heatwave |
| B．to record the highest temperature in India |
| C．to report the deaths in the heatwave |
| D．to inform people of a drop of rice output |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
A. The highest temperature in the history of India was 44ºC.
B. Schools were closed because of the hot weather throughout India.
C. India is expected to produce about 82 million tons of rice in 2009-2010.
D. India has a good harvest of wheat while the rice output is decreasing.
The underlined word “marred” in the last paragraph probably means “___________”.
| A．reduced | B．damaged | C．blown | D．followed |
What is the main idea of the passage?
| A．A severe heatwave would continue over India. |
| B．At least 80% people were killed in the disaster this month. |
| C．A severe heatwave swept India with a great loss. |
| D．A slight shortage of 1-1.5 million tons is due to the heatwave. |
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