阅读理解 For almost two centuries now, scientists have noticed a place's suicide rate bears troubling links to the changing of the seasons and the friendliness of its climate.
In 1881, the Italian physician Enrico Morselli noted that suicide rates peak in the summer, deeming the effect "too great for it to be attributed to chance of the human will". Two decades later, the French sociologist Emile Durkheim noticed the same effect—though he also found the suicide rate was higher in Scandinavian countries.
Even today, CDC data confirms that suicides peak in the United States in the early summer. Now, scientists have identified one more way that climate shapes suicide—and, worryingly, they have projected that it will only become more pronounced as suicide rates rise in a rapidly warming world.
Unusually hot days cause the suicide rate to rise, according to a study published Monday in Nature Climate Change. If a month is 1 degree Celsius warmer than normal, then its suicide rate will increase by 0. 7 percent in the United States and 2. 1 percent in Mexico.
" It's sort of a brutal finding," says Marshall Burke, a professor of earth science at Stanford University and one of the authors of the paper. The finding has anxious implications for a world whose climate is rapidly changing. The authors project that roughly 14,000 people—and as many as 26,000—could die by suicide in the United States by 2050 if humanity does not reduce its emissions of greenhouse-gas pollution.
It also concludes that humans can do little about this suicide-climate link beyond developing better medical care to address suicide specifically. The normal ways that people adapt to high temperatures generally—by installing air conditioners, for instance—do not seem to affect the suicide rate.
Suicide is the second most-common cause of death among Americans between 10 and 34 years of age. In other words, more people are dying by suicide than used to.

单选题 21.The underlined sentence in Paragraph 2 most probably means that______.

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】语义理解题。这里的关键词是peak，有“山顶”的意思，分析句子会发现，这里的peak为动词，而后段也有一句提示it will only become more pronounced as suicide rates rise in a rapidly warming world，这里的pronounced意为“明显的，显著的”，再结合peak的名词意思可以推断出它的动词意思是“上升，达到顶峰”。[A]“人们爬到山顶自杀”，[C]“夏季自杀率最低”和[D]“冬季自杀率最低”都不正确，因此正确答案为[B]。

单选题 22.In Paragraph 5, why does Marshall Burke say it is a brutal finding?

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】推理判断题。题干的关键词是brutal“残忍的”，根据题干定位到第五段，再分析选项：[A]“因为美国的自杀率会上升到0．7％”，原文是说“上升0．7个百分点”，与原文不符，故错误；[B]“因为气候正迅速变化”，与“残忍”无关，故错误；[C]“到2050年，在美国大约会有多达26 000人可能会自杀身亡”，的确是原文出现的意思；[D]“文中没有提及”，很显然错误。由此可见，最恰当的是[C]。

单选题 23.Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】细节题。分析选项定位到第六段。第六段第一句提到：“除了发展更好的医疗服务以专门解决自杀问题之外，人类对这种自杀和气候之间的联系几乎毫无办法”。beyond表示“除了……以外”的意思，因此[A]“人类对这种自杀和气候之间的联系几乎毫无办法”意思正确；[B]“人类对这种自杀和气候之间的联系可以做很多”意思恰恰相反，错误；[C]“开展更好的医疗服务可以应对自杀现象”也正确；[D]“安装空调不能影响自杀率”也是本段后半部分的意思改写，也正确。因此错误的是[B]，故选[B]。

单选题 24.What is the most common cause of death among Americans between 10 and 34 years of age?

【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】细节题。根据题干定位到第七段。首句提到，“自杀是美国10岁至34岁之间人口死亡的第二大常见原因”，因此[A]“自杀”错误；[B]“癌症”，通读全文也没有找到合适的描述，因此错误；[C]“枪击”，文章也没有提到；文章其实只提到了第二大常见原因，没有提到第一原因是什么，因此应该选择[D]。

单选题 25.What can you conclude from the passage?

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】推理判断题。分析整篇文章可以得出什么结论?本文主要介绍的其实就是气候变化对自杀率的影响，这个在第一段就有所提及。[B]“科学家发现了另外一种气候影响自杀的方式”，[C]“初夏美国的自杀率达到顶峰”和[D]“斯堪的纳维亚地区国家的自杀率更高”这些说法都太过片面，没有总结性，只有[A]“反常的炎热天气对人的精神健康有深远的影响”最为贴切。