Scientistshavelongpuzzledoverh

更新 2022-09-03
科目英语
题型阅读理解
难度中等
浏览 1913

Scientists have long puzzled over how iguanas, a group of lizards(蜥蜴) mostly found in the Americas, came to live in the isolated Pacific islands of Fiji and Tonga. Some scientists used to suppose that they must have traveled there on a raft, a journey of around 5,000 miles from South America to the islands. There are documented cases of iguanas reaching remote Caribbean islands and the Galapagos Islands on floating logs. But new research in January by Brice Noonan and Jack Sites suggested that iguanas may have simply walked to Fiji and Tonga when the islands were still a part of an ancient southern supercontinent.
The ancient supercontinent was made up of present-day Africa, Australia, Antarctica and parts of Asia. If that’s the case, the island species would need to be very old. Using “molecular (分子) clock” analysis of living iguanas’ DNA, Noonan and Sites found that, sure enough, the lineage of iguanas has been around for more than 60 million years—easily old enough to have been in the area when the islands were still connected by land bridges to Asia or Australia.
Fossils (化石) uncovered in Mongolia suggest that iguanid ancestors did once live in Asia. Though there’s currently no fossil evidence of iguanas in Australia, that doesn’t necessarily mean they were never there. “The fossil record of this continent is surprisingly poor and cannot be taken as evidence of true absence,” the authors write.
So if the iguanas simply walked to Fiji and Tonga from Asia or possibly Australia, why are they not also found on the rest of the Pacific islands? Noonan and Sites say fossil evidence suggests that iguana species did once inhabit other islands, but went extinct right around the time when humans settled in those islands. But Fiji and Tonga have a much shorter history of human presence, which may have helped the iguanas living there to escape extinction.
The researchers say that their study can’t completely rule out the rafting theory, but it does make the land bridge theory “far more reasonable than previously thought.”
What did some scientists previously believe about the iguanas?

A．They were once discovered in America.

B．They traveled by raft to Fiji and Tonga.

C．They could survive in poor living conditions.

D．They moved to Fiji and Tonga from Australia.

According to Noonan and Sites, 60 million years ago ____.

A．the land of the world was a supercontinent

B．Fiji and Tonga were connected to Asia or Australia

C．Africa, Australia and America were a continent

D．iguanas walked to Fiji and Tonga from Africa

The underline word “lineage” in Paragraph 2 probably refers to ____.

A．conditions in which creatures can survive

B．the change in ancient plants and animals.

C．the line of generations of an ancestor

D．the habitat of a type of an ancient animal

What is the main topic of this passage?

A．The life span of animals living on the ancient supercontinent.

B．The two islands being home to several iguana species in the Pacific region.

C．The fossil evidence suggesting iguanas’ ancestors’ swimming to Fiji and Tonga

D．By raft or by land — how did iguanas reach the tiny Pacific islands?

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Most of us use the telephone several times a day to talk with friends or make social arrangements. These calls are usually quite easy and require little planning.
Using the telephone for business purpose is different. In any organization the person on the telephone represents the company and gives an impression of the firm to the outside world.
If you want to ensure good public relations, you need to master effective telephone techniques.
You should try to give an impression of an efficient, friendly, progressive company eager to give good service.
Before calling
Choose the right time. Consider the cost, urgency and convenience. When calling overseas you need to consider the time difference.
Check the number. A great deal of money is wasted each year on dialing wrong numbers.
Plan your call. Make a list of points and questions to be raised.
Be prepared. Gather any files, papers or information that may be needed during the call. It is unprofessional to have to say “Hold on while I look for that.”
If you have to ask a caller to hold on, keep going back and assuring him/ her that you will be as quick as possible.
Avoid interruptions. Call at a time when you are unlikely to be distracted.
During the call
Be courteous, polite. Make time for suitable greetings like “How are you today, Jim?” and “Did you enjoy your holiday?”
Put a smile in your voice. Remember, your caller can’t see you, so use intonation to good effect and try to sound confident, decisive, helpful and interested.
Check your notes. Look back at your notes to ensure that you have covered everything and quote figures and other data correctly.
Obtain feedback. Make sure that caller understands the message correctly, especially where deadlines and actions that are involved.
Be courteous. Finish by thanking the caller for his or her time and trouble.
After the call
Make notes. Let it become a habit to make notes of the call and place them in an appropriate file.
Take actions. If you need to send a letter of confirmation or inform someone in your organization about any details of the call, do some immediately so that you do not forget important points.
1. What’s the main idea of this passage?
A. Using a telephone for business has strict rules.
B. While making a business phone call, you should be efficient first.
C. It’s necessary to learn how to use your phone for work.
D. The phone is playing a very important role in our daily life, especially in business.
2. Before calling, you have to ____.
A. stay at your company only.        B. learn important data and figures by heart
C. get things ready for the communication   D. choose the right time and place
3. What’s the meaning of the word “feedback”?
A. information         B. present          C. greeting            D. reply

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Turning on the TV, a wonderful scene comes to your eyes—a group of men, tall, strong and handsome, and women, young, beautiful and attractive, too. Together they eat in the finest restaurants, traveling everywhere around the world by luxurious planes and pleasure ships. They are models.
Do you envy them? What sort of life are models leading? Is it a wonderful life for a young lady or a young man?
A few models are well-known actors or actresses who can make a lot of money only by showing themselves off in commercials. But the majority of them are just curious to see what it is like. They’d like to be models just because they are attracted by what they imagine—models earn a lot of money and lead a glorious life. This is true for those who are very successful. However, most models find it difficult to get work. Very few can earn enough to live on, and for all models their expenses are high. Their agents claim about 20% of the earnings, and no model will get very far without a clever agent. Besides, they have to buy good clothing. They also have to pay to travel to interviews and reach the places where the work is to be done.
Interviews for a model job are known as cattle-markets in the modeling world, and not without a good reason. A top model can choose his or her work, demand and receive high fees and has his or her expenses paid. But for most models, the situation is quite different. And agent or employer inspects each model much as a farmer inspects cattle at a market. Intelligence, qualifications and personal characteristics count for little against good looks and tight figures. For all except the very few lucky ones, the life of a model is a continual search for work, trying to sell himself or herself in the face of fierce competition and, sometimes, not particularly moral standards on the part of some employers.
Immigration officials at airport look suspiciously at a girl whose passport shows her occupation as “Model”, and these are men and women of considerable experience of the world. It comes no surprise to find that some models prefer to put “Secretary” or “Businessman” as their jobs in their passports.
Modeling is a changeable world with great rewards for a tiny minority but not for the majority.
1. For models, their good looks and tight figures are ____, compared with their intelligence and qualifications.
A. more important B. less needed C. less essential D. more looked down upon
2. Which of the following can lead you to believe according to the passage?
A. A model’s traveling expenses are usually paid by his employer.
B. To be a model, good looks are the most important qualification.
C. Most models have a fairly easy way of life with high pay.
D. A model can hardly be successful without a good agent.
3. Models often put “Secretary” or “Businessman” instead of “Model” in their passports because ____.
A. they want to avoid being stopped to sign their names by fans
B. a person with the occupation of a model is easily attacked by black societies
C. models are sometimes looked down upon
D. secretaries and businessmen are free of custom duty
4. What may be the author’s attitude towards modeling?
A. It is a worthwhile life for a young lady or a young man.
B. He is in favour of young people to try modeling.
C. Before being crazy about a model job, young people should be aware of the difficulties.
D. It is a field in which everyone has a great chance to succeed.
5. The underlined word “suspiciously” can most probably be replaced by ____.
A. doubtfully B. excitedly C. proudly D. sadly

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Edmund Halley was an English scientist who lived over 200 years ago. He studied the observations of comets（慧星） which other scientist had made. The orbit（轨道） of one particular comet was a very difficult mathematical problem. He could not figure it out. Neither could other scientists who dealt with such problems.
However, Halley had a friend named Newton, who was a brilliant mathematician. Newton thought he had already worked out that problem, but he could not find the papers on which he had done it. He told Halley that the orbit of a comet had the same shape of an ellipse.（椭圆）
Now Halley set to work. He figured out the orbits of some of the comets that had been observed by scientists. He made a surprising discovery. The comets that had appeared in the years 1531, 1607, and 1682 all had the same orbit. Yet their appearances had been 75 or 76 years apart.
This seemed very strange to Halley. Three different comets followed the same orbit. The more Halley thought about it, the more he thought that there had not been three different comets, as people thought. He decided that they had simply seen the same comet three times. The comet had gone away and had come back again.
It was an astonishing idea! Halley felt certain enough to make a prediction of what would happen in the future. He decided that this comet would appear in the year 1758. There were 53 years to go before Halley’s prediction could be tested.
In 1758 the comet appeared in the sky. Halley did not see it, for he had died some years before. Ever since then that comet has been named Halley’s Comet, in his honour.
1. Edmund Halley figured out the orbit of        .
A. some different comets appearing several times
B. the same comet appearing at different times
C. three different comets appearing three times
D. several comets appearing at the same time
2. Halley made his discovery        .
A. by doing experiment
B. by means of his own careful observation
C. by using the work of other scientists
D. by chance
3. Halley made a surprising, but correct prediction in the year      .
A. 1704        B. 1705          C. 1706       D. 1707
4. This passage in general is about      .
A. Halley and other scientists         B. the orbit of a comet
C. Newton and Halley               D. Halley and his discovery

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第三部分：阅读理解（共20小题；每小题2分，满分40分）
阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项,并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
Helen Keller
For the first nineteen months of her life, Helen Keller was like other pretty happy babies. Then a sudden illness destroyed her sight and hearing. Because she could not hear what other people were saying, the child could not learn to speak. For the next seven years, she lived in a world of darkness, without sounds or words.
The person who changed Helen’s world was her teacher, Anne Sullivan, who entered her life on March 3, 1887. Miss Sullivan had accepted a job, which seemed impossible. She agreed to teach a blind child who had never leaned to act like a human being, because no one had over been able to guide her in any way. No one could control Helen. She acted like a young animal, rushing widely around, throwing things, and hitting anyone whom she could reach. Who could believe that such a child could be taught?
But Anne Sullivan was a very special kind of teacher. She had been blind during part of her own childhood and had learned to read Braille, a system of writing that uses raised dots which can be felt by the fingers of a blind person. She had learned to see again after seven operations, but she had never forgotten the experience of being blind.
Miss Sullivan understood Helen. She loved her and believed she could teach her.
1. Helen Keller was born            .
A. blind and deaf          B. natural              C. very weak         D. very pretty and happy
2. Before Miss Sullivan came, Helen was            .
A. very wild                 B. very sad     C. well mannered   D. like a school girl
3. Braille is            .
A. the language of Belgium                 B. the language used by deaf people
C. the language for the blind               D. a kind of sign language
4. Anne Sullivan was the person who           .
A. changed Helen’s life                       B. operated on Helen
C. made Helen feel happy                      D. accepted a job as Helen’s playmate
5. Anne became a good teacher because            .
A. she was very patient                       B. she was very kind
C. she knew how to read Braille           D. she knew and shared Helen’s suffering

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The film “Avatar” has received great popularity around the world. It turned out to be a great success. The film got ＄1 billion in ticket sales in a very short time. The story in the film happens on an alien planet called Pandora where many strange species live. Among the planet’s inhabitants(居民,栖息动物)，the one that has the most similarities with humans is the Na’vi, and it is the struggle between the Ma’vi and human invaders(入侵者) that forms the story of the film.
As to the factors(因素) leading to the film’s success, many think that the entertaining feast(盛宴) for the eyes and the wonderful story shouldn’t be forgotten, but the new language invented especially for the film which provides audiences with a new experience also plays an important part.
In order to increase the truthfulness of an alien race（外星人）, the film’s director James Cameron asked an expert in languages from the University of Southern California to invent a language for the Na’vi. Professor Paul Frommer combined the languages spoken among Indians, Africans and mid-Asians and worked with James Caneron for four years to create the Na’vi language based on the original 30 words that the director had already come up with.
According to Professor Frommer, the most important characteristic of the Na’vi language is that it could be pronounced. “This is an alien language but obviously it has to be spoken by human actors and actresses,” Professor Frommer told the BBC, “it has to sound natural and it should make human beings comfortable when using it.”
The language has a vocabulary of around 1000 words but Progessor Formmer hopes to enlarge the vocabulary in possible follow-ups to the film and in video games. The professor hopes that one day his creation will be as successful as the Klingon alien language from the “Star Trek”films. “There’s a translation of Hamlet into Klingon and it has received great popularity among the audiences,” says Professor Frommer，“if anything like this happens to the Na’vi language, I’d be very happy.”
1. What do we know about“Avatar” from this passage?
A. The story in it is a moving love story.
B. It brings the producer ＄1 billion in total.
C. The story in it happens on an alien planet.
D. It talks about humans and aliens’ friendship.
2. The director of “Avatar” James Cameron had a language invented for the Na’vi to
A. make the film a whole mystery          B. make the Na’vi more believable
C. make the Na’vi different from humans    D. make the film have specific characteristics
3. Who first created the basic words of the Na’vi language?
A. Paul Frommer.        B. An Indian.    C. James Cameron     D. Hamlet.
4. The important feature of the Na’vi language is that
A. it can be spoken by humans         B. it has just 30 original words
C. it has a vocabulary of 1000 words.    D. it is like the Klingon alien language
5. We can infer from the passage that
A. James Cameron will produce follow-ups to “Avatar”
B. the Na’vi language is another kind of the Klingon language
C. the director believes the Na’vi language will be popular
D. Paul Frommer hopes to add new words to the Na’vi language

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