Owls(猫头鹰) are some of the world’s greatest hunters. From head to feet, owls’ bodies are built to hunt. Scientists are studying all the things that make owls such great hunters.
Most owls hunt at night. The birds have excellent hearing, which helps them find their next meal in the dark.
Owls have one ear that is larger and set higher than the other. When an owl hears a sound, it listens closely. Is the sound lounder in its right ear or left ear? Does the upper or lower ear detect the sound first? The information helps the owl find the location of its prey without ever seeing it.
Owls don’t depend just on their hearing to hunt. After a sound draws an owl’s attention, it zeroes in with sight.
Many birds have eyes on either side of their heads. But an owl’s eyes face forward, like a person’s. Images from each eye combine to form a 3-D picture, similar to how we see. That helps owls better judge a prey’s size, distance, and speed.
An owl’s eyes are so large that they can gather lots of light. That helps the owl see better when hunting at night. An owl’s eyes are also fixed in their sockets(眼窝). It can’t roll them like we can. Instead, an owl keeps prey in its sight by turning its head.
Owls can move their beads nearly upside down and turn them 270 degrees around. Their necks have 14 vertebrae(椎骨). That’s twice as many neck bones as a person has.
The blood vessels(血管) thread through holes in an owl’s vertebrae. The researchers found that these holes are very large so that the extra space provides an air cushion that protects the vessels.
Detecting prey is only the first step for owls. Next they must catch their meals. An owl can fly inches over your head and you can’t hear anything. The secret to owls’ silent flight is their feathers. Fine “hairs” cover the surface of an owl’s wing feathers. And the feathers’ edges have soft barbs(羽支). Together, they make the sound of air rushing over the owl’s wings quieter and less clear. While hunting at night, owls first get a prey’s information by .
| A．seeing the shape | B．hearing the sound |
| C．detecting the smell | D．feeling the air move |
According to text, an owl’s eyes .
| A．are small but sharp |
| B．can function like a person’s |
| C．are on either side of its head |
| D．can tell how fast a prey is moving |
The shortcoming of an owl’s fixed eyes can be made up by its .
| A．large head | B．strong legs |
| C．body size | D．flexible neck |
What is the last paragraph mainly about?
| A．How owls find their prey. |
| B．Why owls can fly noiselessly. |
| C．The advantages of owls’ hearing |
| D．The secret of owls’ high-speed flight. |
For the 17 years my life was very happy. Then the first sad thing happened. My mother became very ill, and soon she knew that she was dying. Just before she died, she asked Elizabeth and me to go to her room. She held our hands and said, “Victor and Elizabeth, my children, I’m very happy because you love each other, and because one day you’ll get married. Everyone in the family loves you, Elizabeth. Will you take my place in the family, my dear? I can die happy if you look after them when I have gone.”
My mother died and we were very sad, because we loved her dearly. Elizabeth was brave and helped us; her sweet smile gave us some happiness in the unhappy days after my mother’s death. The time came for me to go to university. I didn’t want to leave my sad family, but we all knew that I should go. It was hard to leave, too, because the parents of my good friend Henry would not let him go to university with me. So I had gone alone.
On my first day at university I met my teacher, Professor Waldman, who was one of the greatest scientists in the world. He gave a wonderful talk to all the students who were starting at the university. He ended his talk by saying, “Some of you will become the greatest scientists of tomorrow. You must study hard and discover everything that you can. This is why God made you intelligent—to help other people.”
After the professor’s talk, I thought very carefully. I remembered the storm when I was 15; I remembered how the lightning had destroyed the tree. From then on, I wanted to use electricity to help people, and I wanted to discover the secrets of life. I decided to work on these two things.
I started to work the next day. I worked very hard and soon Professor Waldman and I realized that I could learn to be a very good scientist.
The professor helped me very much, and other important scientists who were his friends helped me, too. I was interested in my work and I did not take one day’s holiday during the next two years, I did not go home, and my letters to my family were very short.
After two years, I had discovered many things and I built a scientific machine that was the best in the university. My machine would help me answer the most important question of all. How does life begin? Is it possible to put life into dead things? To answer these questions about life I had to learn first about death. I had to watch bodies from the moment when they died and the warm life left them. In the hospital and in the university, I watched the dying and the dead. Day after day, month after month, I followed death, so it was a dark and terrible time.
I built a tall mast about 150 meters high, which is higher than the tallest building in the city, to catch lightning and send the electricity down to my machine in the lab. I believed I could use that electricity to give life to things that were dead.
Then one day, the answer came to me. Suddenly I was sure that I knew the secret of life.Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．Elizabeth married shortly after Victor’s mother died. |
| B．Elizabeth was a brave girl who loved Victor and gave him much help. |
| C．Victor’s mother was very angry when she knew he loved Elizabeth. |
| D．Victor did not want to leave his family because his mother died not long before. |
Victor did all the following during his research in the university EXCEPT that .
| A．he discovered many things and built a scientific machine |
| B．he learnt much about death both in the hospitals and in the university |
| C．he worked hard and took only one day’s holiday during the next two years |
| D．he built a tall mast to catch lightning and send the electricity down to the lab |
According to the author, the secret of life is to .
| A．give life to things that were dead |
| B．use electricity to help others |
| C．build the best machine to learn about death |
| D．become the greatest scientist of tomorrow |
Which is the correct order about the life of Victor?
① Victor’s mother passed away.
② Victor got help from the professor and other scientists.
③ Victor went to university and attended the professor’s talk.
④ Victor found the answer to giving life to things that were dead.
⑤ Victor experienced a storm, seeing the lightning destroying the tree.
| A．①②③④⑤ | B．⑤①②④③ | C．①③②⑤④ | D．⑤①③②④ |
At 2 p.m. on December 5, 1945, five Navy aircraft took off in perfect flying weather from a naval air installation in southeastern Florida, on a routine training mission over the Atlantic Ocean. Less than two hours later, the flight commander radioed that he was “completely lost”. Then there was silence. A rescue plane was sent to search for the missing aircraft, and it, too, disappeared. Despite one of history’s most extensive search efforts, involving more than 300 planes and dozens of ships, the Navy found nothing, not even an oil stain floating on the water.
This is just one of the many frightening stories told of “the Bermuda Triangle”, a mysterious area of the Atlantic Ocean roughly stretching southwest from Bermuda to the Florida coast and down to Puerto Rico. During the past 30 years, the triangle has claimed the lives of some 1,000 sailors and pilots.
Stranger yet are the numerous “ghost” ships that have been found floating crewless within the triangle. On one strange occasion in 1881, the cargo ship Ellen Austin discovered a small sailing ship, sails waving uselessly in the wind. The boat was full of wood with no one on deck. The captain of the Ellen Austin installed a new crew to sail it, but two days later, during a rough storm, the two ships temporarily lost sight of each other. When the captain again boarded the boat, he found his crew had disappeared. After a second crew was assigned, the ship was again lost in a fog bank. This time, no trace of the boat — or the crew — was ever found.
Charles Berlitz, a man with an interest in Atlantis, the legendary lost island, puts forward his theory that a giant solar crystal, which once was the power generator for Atlantis, lies on the ocean floor. From time to time, according to his theory, passing ships and planes set off the crystal, which confuses their instruments and engulfs them into the ocean.
Officially, the U.S. Navy does not recognize the triangle as a danger zone and is convinced that “the majority of disappearances in the triangle can be due to the unique features of the area’s environment.” These include the swift Gulf Stream current and the unexplored valleys under water of the Atlantic. Also, the triangle is one of only two places on earth where a compass needle points to true north rather than magnetic north, causing problems in navigation.
However, other scientists argue that beings from outer space have established a highly advanced civilization in the unexplored depths of the Atlantic inside the triangle. There, they believe, most of the missing vessels – and their crews – may still be on display for study by these higher intelligences.The author develops the first two paragraphs through _______.
| A．a series of events described in order of time |
| B．a general view supported by specific examples |
| C．a specific incident followed by a general introduction |
| D．a strange phenomenon followed by cause explanation |
What did the captain of Ellen Austin do when he discovered a small sailing ship floating crewless?
| A．He had all the wood transferred onto his own ship. |
| B．He had new powerful sails fixed on the small boat. |
| C．He sent a message that they were in danger and needed help. |
| D．He asked some of his sailors to get onto the boat to sail it. |
The underlined word “engulfs” in Paragraph 4 probably means ______.
| A．drops | B．sucks | C．puts | D．throws |
Which of the following could serve as the best title for this passage?
| A．The Mysterious Bermuda Triangle |
| B．The History of the Bermuda Triangle |
| C．A New Research on the Bermuda Triangle |
| D．A New Angle to Look at the Bermuda Triangle |
●What prevents depression：tea，coffee or hot chocolate?
Women who drink for or more cups of coffee a day are a fifth less likely to become depressed．Drinking two or three cups reduces the risk by 15 percent. This is the result of a study of 51,000 women over ten years, published in the Journal of the American Medicine Association.
One theory is that caffeine reduces the effect of the chemical adenosine(腺苷) in the brain, which can make us feel sleepy by slowing down nerve cell activity. Some anti-depressants also work by blocking the adenosine receptors. Coffee was found to be far more influential on depression levels than hot chocolate or tea due to the high caffeine content.
●How many eggs can we healthily eat: one a day or two a day?
Neither-eat them freely. We’ve long been warned to stick to two or three eggs a week because of their high cholesterol(胆固醇)content. But according to the Food Standards Agency, there is no recommended limit to how many eggs we can healthily eat, unless you have been told to cut down by your doctor.
There is no evidence that eating eggs raises cholesterol levels, and researchers found that eggs contain less cholesterol than in the past because hens are no longer given bone meal, which was banned in the 1990s after the BSE(疯牛病) cresis.
Research by the British Egg Council found that a medium egg gives you around 100 mg of cholesterol, a third of the 300mg recommended daily limit.What is considered to fight depression best?
| A．Tea． | B．Chocolate． | C．Adenosine． | D．Coffee． |
We can infer from the text that ．
| A．too much caffeine will probably make people sleepy |
| B．coffee contains less caffeine than tea or hot chocolate |
| C．one is depressed if his brain chemical adenosine is active |
| D．tea and hot chocolate have no effect on men’s depression |
What can we learn about eggs from the text?
| A．We should stick to two or three eggs a week in general． |
| B．Eat as many eggs as you like unless your doctor advises you not to． |
| C．Eggs contain more cholesterol at present than ever before． |
| D．One egg daily and you’ll get more cholesterol than recommended． |
Most people watching Jeremy Lin these past two months saw Jeremy Lin, New York Knicks star; but I, watching him, saw someone else. That was my elder brother, Bob, who is athletic and energetic. He could never sit still when he was in second grade; he had to get up every now and then and run around the room. And sure enough, he grew up to be a starting player for an N.C.A.A. championship lacrosse（长曲棍球）team. He was a Nike-endorsed marathoner, too, and reached the top of Mt. Everest, unguided, in his 50s.
And yet my family never watched his lacrosse games. We did watch some of his marathons, but that wasn’t until he was in his 20s. When Bob was in his glory days, our Shanghainese-born parents were bent on getting him into medical school. There was a loving aspect to it: I can remember my father working through math books with him, lesson by lesson, at the big blackboard in the attic. Bob never did become a doctor, though; and neither did I. It wasn’t until my younger sister came along that someone in the family finally wore a white coat.
Bob today could be the fittest 58-year-old on the planet. His doctor estimates his biological age at 35; he’s still climbing big mountains in the Himalayas. And, like Jeremy Lin, he’s charming. No one sees Bob without leaving with a laugh. He sometimes jokes he could be mayor of his building, and it’s true. To know him is to cheer for him.
And yet my parents did not cheer for him. What if my mother had sat on the sidelines with her statistics, like Jeremy Lin’s mother? What if my father had played videos of athletes for my brother to watch and imitate? It’s hard not to wonder.
And how did Jeremy Lin’s parents manage to do these remarkable things? Amy Chua, the tiger mother, recalls her immigrant father beating the kids whenever they mispronounced a Chinese word. How is it that Jeremy Lin’s immigrant father in particular, Gie-Ming Lin, encouraged his son to follow such an untraditional path? Bob’s glory days were those ________.
| A．when he was doing well in math |
| B．when he was in second grade |
| C．when he was made mayor of his building |
| D．when he showed his talents in sports |
From the passage we can tell that Bob is ____________.
| A．active and optimistic |
| B．clever and determined |
| C．brave and helpful |
| D．considerate and independent |
Which of the following statements is probably TRUE?
| A．Bob was always ignored by his parents |
| B．Bob could also have been a sport star. |
| C．Bob’s parents often watched his games. |
| D．Nobody in the author’s family was a doctor. |
From the last two paragraphs we can infer that ___________.
| A．parents should always study together with their children |
| B．parents should know how to educate their children properly |
| C．children should be punished when they do anything wrong |
| D．children should try to live up to the hopes of their parents |
Today, almost everyone has heard of Harry Potter. The books detailing his experiences at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry have aroused passion, creativity, and interest in reading throughout the world.
But have you ever considered why you are a fan of the Harry Potter series?
JK Rowling has created a list of characters and an environment for them to inhabit that appeals to both adults and children.
The fantasy aspect of the wizarding world expands the imagination, and takes the mind to new and exciting places. Anything could happen there. Her stories contain parts of the believable and unbelievable, changing the predictability that readers commonly come across and bear in fiction.
The main theme of the series, including good versus evil, prejudice, love, death, sacrifice, friendship and loyalty, in actuality contributes to the ever-lasting nature of the stories. At the same time, these themes remind us of classic literature, offering mature readers tales that wear like a comfortable pair of shoes, while introducing younger readers to concepts they will meet throughout their lives.
Much of the appeal also comes from the characters. In each book, JK Rowling introduces and describes the characters in such a way that we wonder not only about their futures, but also about their pasts. Even supporting characters are suddenly more than just extras in the background. And what of Harry Potter himself? We care about Harry, because we watch him grow from an innocent boy to a powerful wizard. We see him as both Hero and Victim. He experiences endless love and extreme pain, and as readers, we experience them with him.
This perfect combination of emotion, suspense and fantasy, together with the fact that JK Rowling is a superb storyteller is the reason why we are Harry potter fans. People are fond of Harry Potter series. With books like these, it’s hard not to be.Harry Potter series become popular partly because____________.
| A．they remind us of the childhood and environment we had in the past |
| B．they take us to a world beyond our imagination and expectation |
| C．they offer us ever-lasting nature of the stories |
| D．they set an example of hero for us to follow |
What does the underlined sentence in Paragraph 6 mean?
| A．The supporting characters are not necessary in the story. |
| B．Readers care only about Harry but not those supporting characters. |
| C．Even the supporting characters are attractive in the story. |
| D．Those supporting characters only appear all of a sudden. |
The themes of the Harry Potter series do not contain____________.
| A．prejudice and love | B．good and evil |
| C．death and sacrifice | D．safety and peace |
People care for Harry Potter because ____________.
| A．they think of classic literature when reading the story |
| B．they find different experiences from theirs on Harry |
| C．they share the experiences with Harry |
| D．they like JK Rowling’s description very much |
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