阅读理解Questions 21 to 30 are based on the following passage

阅读理解Directions:In this part of the test，there will be 5 passages for you to read. Each passage is followed by 4 questions or unfinished statements, and each question or unfinished statement is followed by four choices marked A, B, C and D. You are to decide on the best choice by blackening the corresponding letter on the ANSWER SHEET.Passage FourFrom beach balls, pool toys, and jump houses, inflatable technology takes a big step forward forits next frontier： space station. A new kind of tech will be aboard Space X’s eighth supply mission tothe International Space Station (ISS). A compressed living module will be delivered and attached to thestation where, in the void of space, it will expand into a new habitat for astronauts.Designed by Bigelow Aerospace, the inflatable space habitat is one area NASA is exploring forpotential deep space habitats and other advanced space missions.“The ‘ Bigelow Expandable Activity Module，or the BEAM, is an expandable habitat that will beused to investigate technology and understand the potential benefits of such habitats for human missionsto deep space，” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden wrote in a blog post. The habitats could be a wayto “dramatically increase” the space available for astronauts while also offering added protection fromthe dangers of space, like radiation and space debris, the NASA press release says.But how is an inflatable space station supposed to be a viable means of housing for space travelers?BEAMs are far more than balloon-like rooms where astronauts can take asylum. Technically, themodules don’t inflate — they expand, according to the company. And beyond just air, the habitats arereinforced with an internal metal structure. The outside is composed of multiple layers of materialincluding things like rubber and kevlar to protect form any speeding debris.Inside Space X’s Dragon spacecraft on the way to the ISS, the BEAM will be approximately 8 feetin diameter. It will expand once deployed in space to offer 565 cubic feet of space for astronauts. “It’llbe the first time human beings will actually step inside this expandable habitat in space,” formerastronaut George Zamka, who has worked for Bigelow Aerospace, told USA Today. “There won’t bethis sense of it being like a balloon. ”But astronauts won’t be getting inside the module for some time yet. The BEAM will be attachedto the Tranquility Node and deployed. Inside the module are a series of tools that will help the crew ofthe ISS monitor different aspects of the expandable area to see how it acts in space. The crew will watchheat, radiation, orbital debris, and provide information about the viability of using similar modules inthe future.The testing is scheduled to go on for a two-year time period, after which the module will bereleased and bum up in the atmosphere. NASA’s partnership with Bigelow fits Mr. Bolden’s desire tohelp grow a robust private sector industry to commercialize aspects of space — a process he sees as vitalif humans want to reach farther cosmic destinations. “ The world of low Earth orbit belongs toindustry,” Bolden said at a press conference in January 2015.

阅读理解Text 2 With the global population predicted to hit close to 10 billion by 2050, and forecasts that agricultural production in some regions will need to nearly double to keep pace, food security is increasingly making headlines

阅读理解A "radiative forcing" is any change imposed on the Earth that affect the planetary energy balance. Radiative forcings include changes in greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide and ozone), aerosols in the atmosphere, solar irradiance, and surface reflectivity. A forcing may result from either a natural or an anthropogenic cause, or from both, as in the case of atmospheric aerosol concentrations, which can be altered either by volcanic action or the burning of fossil fuels. Radiative forcings are typically specified for the purpose of theoretical global climate simulations. In contrast, radiative "feedbacks" are environmental changes resulting from climate changes and are calculated from scientific observation. Radiative feedbacks include changes in such phenomena as clouds, atmospheric water vapor, sea-ice cover, and snow cover. 　　The interplay between forcings and feedbacks can be quite complex. For example, an increase in the concentration of atmospheric water vapor increases solar irradiance, thereby warming the atmosphere and, in turn, increasing evaporation and the concentration of atmospheric water vapor. A related example of this complex interplay also shows the uncertainty of future climatic changes associated with forcings and feedbacks. Scientists are unsure how the reduction of ozone will ultimately affect clouds and, in turn, the Earth temperature. Clouds trap outgoing, cooling radiation, thereby providing a warming influence. However, they also reflect incoming solar radiation and thus provide a cooling influence. Currents measurements indicate that the net effect of clouds is to cool the Earth. However, scientists do not know how the balance might shift in the future as cloud formation and dispersion are affected by ozone reduction. 　　Contributing to this uncertainty is the complexity of the mechanisms at work in the process of ozone reduction. The amount of radiation reaching the earth''s surface and the amount of reradiated radiation that is trapped by the greenhouse effect influence the Earth''s temperature in opposite directions. Both mechanisms are affected by the vertical distribution of ozone. Also, the relative importance of these two competing mechanisms depends on the altitude at which ozone changes occur. In a recent NASA-sponsored aircraft study of the Antarctic ozone hole, chlorine monoxide was measured at varying altitudes. The measurements suggest that chlorine plays a greater role, and oxides of nitrogen a lesser role, than previously thought in the destruction of ozone in the lower atmosphere. The study concluded that simultaneous high-resolution measurements at many different altitudes (on the scale of 0.1 kilometer in vertical extent) are necessary to diagnose the operative mechanisms. These findings have called into question conventional explanations for ozone reduction, which fail to adequately account for the new evidence. (NASA=National Aeronautics and Space Administration 国家航空航天局)

阅读理解The sheets are damp with sweat. You’re cold, but your heart is racing as if a killer just chased you down a dark street. It was just a nightmare, you tell yourself; there’s nothing to be afraid of. But you’re still filled with【C1】________. Given how unsettling and haunting nightmares can be, is there a way for dreamers to【C2】________, or even turn off, these bad dreams as they happen? Research is【C3】________, but some studies suggest that people who can master lucid dreaming—that is, the ability to be【C4】________that a nightmare is happening and possibly even control it without waking up—may hold the【C5】________. Nightmares are part of the human experience, especially for kids. Doctors【C6】________don’t consider occasional nightmares a problem. They can just be symptoms of a sleep disorder that can【C7】________from an unpleasant experience, stress, or certain drugs. To treat the disorder, there are a number of medicines and therapies that are backed by【C8】________research, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, which analyzed the available research on the treatment of nightmare disorder in a recent【C9】________published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. However, nightmares are complicated, and researchers are still struggling to understand them, said Dr. Rachel Salas, an expert on sleep disorders and an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore. What we do know is that people【C10】________to have different kinds of nightmares at different points during the sleep cycle.A) amountB) answerC) avoidD) awareE) departF) drasticallyG) fear H) limitedI) mechanical J) result K) review L) rigorous M) tend N) timidity O) typically

阅读理解On the evening of his 18 th birthday, a teenager from a tiny village in northern Germany clicked send on his computers in hospitals and blanks in Hong Kong, china had crashed, and trains in Australia and the USA and stopped

阅读理解A "greenhouse effect" will raise the earth''s temperature enough by the year 2100 to cause dramatic climate changes, increase sea levels and disrupt food production, United States scientists said this week. 　　The earth''s atmosphere is heating at a rate that could mean temperature rises of two degrees centigrade by the middle of the 21st century and five degrees centigrade by the year 2100, according to a report issued by the US government''s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 　　"Substantial increases in global warming may occur sooner than most of us would like to believe," the EPA said. 　　The agency said the first effects might be felt as early as 1990, because temperatures would be rising more than seven times faster each decade between now and the year 2100 than they had been for the past 100 years. 　　"Temperature increases are likely to be accompanied by dramatic changes in precipitation and storm patterns and a rise in global average sea level," the EPA report said. 　　"As a result," the agency said, "agricultural conditions will be significantly altered, environmental and economic systems potentially disrupted." 　　The EPA report said the burning of fossil fuels was directly responsible for most of the atmosphere build-up of carbon dioxide but the current concentration is so great that even a worldwide ban on the use of such fuels would delay the warming effect for only a few years. 　　"A warmer climate will raise sea levels by heating and expanding the world''s oceans and causing glaciers to melt," the EPA said. 　　The agency estimated that sea levels could rise anything between 48 to 380 cm in the next 120 years. 　　"An increase of even 48 cm could flood or cause storm damage to many of the major ports of the world, disrupt transportation networks, alter underwater ecology systems and cause major shifts in land development patterns." 　　One study cited in the report suggested that if the average global temperature rose by 2.5 degrees centigrade, regional climatic conditions might be similar to those during the last interglacial period 120,000 years ago. 　　During this period, oceans were five to seven metres higher than today''s, flooding the shores of Europe and western Siberia and making Scandinavia an island. 　　The agency said that while the warming trend could have some beneficial effects, such as reducing heating costs and improving climate and growing seasons in some parts of the world, there would be difficulty in redirecting national economies to adapt to the new climate patterns. 　　The EPA said it seemed unlikely that the nations of the world would reach a consensus on step to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Instead, it urged more research on the greenhouse effect and stressed the need for better planning to cope with the changes the warming trend is expected to produce.

阅读理解Cancer may be cured with the cloning technology by___________. 

阅读理解Questions 41 to 45 are based on the following passage

阅读理解Passage One Questions 21 to 25are based on the following passage

阅读理解Letter-writing goes back to thousands of years but heated up during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Historically (perhaps now) letters were indicators of status and breeding. Like conversation, they were used to manipulate, embellish, entertain, threaten, seduce and of course do business. On the way home from discovering America, Christopher Columbus got caught in a storm and his mind turned—as a good bourgeois parent—to his two sons. Who would pay their school fees if he came to a watery end? He picked up a quill and documented his accomplishments on the voyage for his Spanish patrons, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, rolled up the letter in a wooden Madeira cask and threw it into the sea. This was not so much for posterity but rather what University of York professor William H. Sherman has called “a father’s desperate petition for the future support of his children.”The 18th century was strong on the epistolary book, which made authors’ quarrels especially amusing. Tobias Smollett wrote Travels Through France Italy (my favorite letter contains his description of French women: “As their faces are concealed under a false complexion, so their heads are covered with a vast load of false hair, frizzled at the forehead, so as exactly to resemble the woolly heads of the Guinea negroes”). His approach to anything foreign was considered so full of spleen by author Laurence Sterne that he was moved to write A Sentimental Journey. This satirical novel gives Smollett the name Smelfungus—a cantankerous man addicted to exaggeration, who talks of being “flay’d alive” by cannibals: “I’ll tell it, cried Smelfungus, to the world. You had better tell it, said I, to your physician.” Samuel Johnson, in referring to his own letters, claims “...his soul lies naked” but he had doubts about the truthfulness of others, writing that there was “no transaction which offers stronger temptations to fallacy and sophistication than epistolary intercourse.”How-to books abounded. Letters, apart from business ones, were seen as a feminine task, and templates addressed feminine problems. The New Academy of Complements, for example, published in 1671, titled the letter to be written by abandoned women “A Crack’t Virgin to Her Deceitful Friend.” Hand-writing is the motif. “Now you appear so foul, that nothing can be more monstrous; is this the fruit of your Promises and Vows... how comes it then to pass, that you forsake me, ruin my Reputation, and leave me to become the Map of Shame and Ignominy…” I long to use the Map of Shame bit but I suspect it was as unhelpful then as boiling bunnies is now.A Vanderbilt University study ways children taught cursive writing learn and express themselves better. If so, I have a few suggestions for our educators. How about letters “On Reprimanding a Person of Difference Without Incurring Hate Charges”, or “An Ailing Citizen to His Callous Minister of Health.” The possibilities are, sadly, limitless.

阅读理解Passage Three Using less energy around the home is easier than you might think, saving your money while creating a healthier, more comfortable living space for you and your family

阅读理解When they marry, husbands and wives have well-developed health histories and well-established congenital and developmental propensities toward good and ill health. Substantial research suggests that, given the existing health propensity and health condition of an individual at a particular time, his or her probability of better or worse future health is affected by a variety of socially mediated factors that are subject to influence or manipulation by his or her spouse.Spouses can promote each other’s health by ameliorating psychological stress. A substantial literature develops strong evidence that psychological stress causes illness, increase mortality risk, and serves as an important mechanism that links socioeconomic characteristics to health and mortality. Stress-reducing mechanisms include removal of sources of stress, and management of stress by talking about it to a trusted other person, psychological treatment, physical exercise,recreation and other means. A spouse can provide or encourage all of these stress-reducing behaviors.Spouses also can promote each other’s health by providing each other with supportive social contact, and they can facilitate or inhibit each other’s social contact with supportive others. Evidence suggests that health is greatly advanced by supportive social contacts, including positive interaction with relatives, friends, coworkers and acquaintances. Recent experimental data shows that persons with more diverse social networks are more resistant to experimentally introduced upper respiratory viruses than persons with less diverse social networks.Spouses can also promote each other’s health by providing each other with money income, and they can help each other manage money income effectively. Money does not buy health directly, but it can be used to purchase goods and services that make good health more likely. These goods and services include nutritious food, a hygienic and safe environment, medical care, and amenities that reduce psychological stress. Unless estranged or unusually wealthy, husbands and wives almost always share their financial resources and purchase and consume many of these health-promoting goods and services jointly. In short, there are many ways in which spouses can influence each other’s probability of good health.

阅读理解TEXT C Years of watching and comparing bright children and those not bright, or less bright, have shown that they are very different kinds of people

阅读理解Passage3 Question 11 to 15 are based on the following passage: Jayden Hairston was very disappointed

阅读理解Directions: There are 3 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice and write your answers on the Answer Sheet.Passage TwoThe Effect of Electricity on CancerCan electricity cause cancer? In a society that literally runs on electric power, the very idea seems preposterous. But for more than a decade, a growing band of scientists and journalists has pointed to studies that seem to link exposure to electromagnetic fields with increased risk of leukemia and other malignancies. The implications are unsettling, to say the least, since everyone comes into contact with such fields, which are generated by everything electrical, from power lines and antennas to personal computers and micro-wave ovens. Because evidence on the subject is inconclusive and often contradictory, it has been hard to decide whether concern about the health effects of electricity is legitimate—or the worst kind of paranoia.Now the alarmists have gained some qualified support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In the executive summary of a new scientific review, released in draft form late last week, the EPA has put forward what amounts to the most serious government warning to date. The agency tentatively concludes that scientific evidence “suggests a causal link” between extremely low-frequency electromagnetic fields—those having very long wave-lengths—and leukemia, lymphoma and brain cancer, While the report falls short of classifying ELF fields as probable carcinogens, it does identify the common 60-hertz magnetic field as “a possible, but not proven, cause of cancer in humans.”The report is no reason to panic—or even to lost sleep. If there is a cancer risk, it is a small one. The evidence is still so controversial that the draft stirred a great deal of debate within the Bush Administration, and the EPA released it over strong objections from the Pentagon and the White House. But now no one can deny that the issue must be taken seriously and that much more research is needed.At the heart of the debate is a simple and well-understood physical phenomenon: When an electric current passes through a wire, it generates an electromagnetic field that exerts forces on surrounding objects. For many years, scientists dismissed any suggestion that such forces might be harmful, primarily because they are so extraordinarily weak. The ELF magnetic field generated by a video terminal measures only a few mill gauss, or about one- hundredth the strength of the earth’s own magnetic field, the electric fields surrounding a power line can be as high as 10 kilovolts per meter, but the corresponding field induced in human cells will be only about 1 mill volt per meter. This is far less than the electric fields that the cells themselves generate.How could such minuscule forces pose a health danger? The consensus used to be that they could not, and for decades scientists concentrated on more powerful kinds of radiation, like X-rays, that pack sufficient wallop to knock electrons out of the molecules that make up the human body. Such “ionizing” radiations have been clearly linked to increased cancer risks and there are regulations to control emissions.But epidemiological studies, which find statistical associations between sets of data, do not prove cause and effect. Though there is a body of laboratory work showing that exposure to ELF fields can have biological effects on animal tissues, a mechanism by which those effects could lead to cancerous growths has never been found.The Pentagon is for from persuaded. In a blistering 33-page critique of the EPA report, Air Force scientists charge its authors with having “biased the entire document” toward proving a link. “Our reviewers are convinced that there is no suggestion that (electromagnetic fields) present in the environment induce or promote cancer,” the Air Force concludes. “It is astonishing that the EPA would lend its imprimatur on this report.” Then Pentagon’s concern is understandable. There is hardly a unit of the modern military that does not depend on the heavy use of some kind of electronic equipment, from huge ground-based radar towers to the defense systems built into every warship and plane.

阅读理解Text 2 Psychologists have known for a century that individuals vary in their cognitive ability

阅读理解Questions 51 to 60 are based on the following passage

阅读理解Archaeology as a profession faces two major problems

阅读理解You know how great those models look on the covers of magazines? And the photographs in nature magazines look too good to be true, too, dont they? Well, in almost every case, the photographs are too good because of the ability almost all graphic designers have today to edit photographs