题目内容
—Why,James,you look so tired!
---Well,I _____the house and I must finish the work tomorrow.
A.was painting B.will be painting C.have painted D.have been painting
D
An Australian man who has been donating his extremely rare kind of blood for 56 years has saved the lives of more than two million babies.
James Harrison has an antibody in his plasma(血浆)that stops babies dying from Rhesus disease, a form of severe anaemia. He has enabled countless mothers to give birth to healthy babies, including his own daughter, Tracey, who had a healthy son thanks to her father's blood.
Mr. Harrison has been giving blood every few weeks since he was 18 years old and has now racked up a total of 984 donations. When he started donating, his blood was deemed so special that his life was insured for one million Australian dollars.
He was also nicknamed the “man with the golden arm” or the “man in two million”. He said, “I've never thought about stopping. Never!” He made a pledge to be a donor aged 14 after undergoing major chest surgery in which he needed 13 liters of blood. “I was in hospital for three months,” he said. “The blood I received saved my life so I made a pledge to give blood when I was 18.”
Just after he started donating he was found to have the rare and life-saving antibody in his blood. At the time, thousands of babies in Australia were dying each year of Rhesus disease. Other newborns suffered permanent brain damage because of the condition. The disease creates an incompatibility between the mother's blood and her unborn baby's blood. It stems from one having Rh-positive blood and the other Rh-negative.
His blood has since led to the development of a vaccine called Anti-D. After his blood type was discovered, Mr. Harrison volunteered to undergo a series of tests to help develop the Anti-D vaccine. “They insured me for a million dollars so I knew my wife Barbara would be taken care of,” he said. “I wasn't scared. I was glad to help. I had to sign every form going and basically sign my life away.”
Mr. Harrison is Rh-negative and was given injections of Rh-positive blood. It was found his plasma could treat the condition and since then it has been given to hundreds of thousands of women. It has also been given to babies after they are born to stop them developing the disease.
It is estimated he has helped save 2.2 million babies so far. Mr. Harrison is still donating every few weeks now.
【小题1】What does the underlined phrase “two million” refer to?
A.mothers | B.babies | C.dollars | D.blood |
A.his daughter asked him to help her son |
B.he has a golden arm worth a million dollars |
C.a vaccine called Anti-D is to be developed |
D.someone else’s blood saved his life |
A.the mother and the baby have different types of blood |
B.babies suffer permanent brain damage before born |
C.Rhesus disease contributes to permanent brain damage |
D.all the patients have a rare antibody in their blood |
A.His wife Barbara needed to be taken care of badly then. |
B.Mr. Harrison was not glad to help develop a new vaccine. |
C.Some of the tests to develop the vaccine are dangerous. |
D.His blood type was accidentally discovered after tests |
For many blind people, computers are inaccessible. It can cost $1,000 to purchase “screen reader” software, but two blind computer programmers from Australia have solved this problem.
Queensland University of Technology (QUT) graduate James Teh and business partner Michael Curran developed a free, open-source program, called NVDA, which provides a voice to read the words on a computer screen as the cursor(光标) moves over them. NVDA won the blind inventors an award in the grand final program of the ABC’s New Inventors, which aired on September 23. They took home the award for an invention that “might make a real difference to people’s lives or the environment.”
“A sighted person takes for granted that they can sit down at any computer and use it,” Mr Teh said. “We really are in the information age — everything is online these days. So access to computers for the blind is very important, which is why we wanted our software to be free.”
Mr Teh, who majored in software engineering at QUT, said blind students typically didn’t have the money to purchase “screen reader” technology, at the time in their life when they most needed it. Now NVDA could be downloaded on to anyone’s personal computer free of charge.
“It can also be copied to a USB stick, which can be used on any PC at school or university, with no installation required,” he said.
Mr Teh and Mr Curran have drawn on their own experience as blind computer users to develop a product which has some unique features. For example, as the mouse moves up and down the screen, a sound becomes higher and lower to let you know where the cursor is located.
NVDA has been translated into 27 languages, thanks to volunteer translators. To date, there have been over 50,000 downloads.
Mr Teh and Mr Curran have been working on the project since 2006. They worked on their product without any pay for two years. When Mozilla offered some funding in 2008, Mr Teh was able to quit his day job and work full-time developing NVDA.
【小题1】NVDA won an award in the program of the ABC’s New Inventors because it _____.
A.causes no harm to the environment | B.influences people’ s lives |
C.is aiming at blind people | D.is easy to use |
A.They got funding from Mozilla. |
B.They belonged to a volunteer group. |
C.They wanted to help the blind. |
D.They wanted people to give up “screen reader” software. |
A.They are studying at QUT. | B.They are good at translating. |
C.They know how the blind feel. | D.They began to develop NVDA in 2008. |
An Australian man who has been donating(捐献) his extremely rare kind of blood(血液) for 56 years has saved the lives of more than two million babies.
James Harrison has an antibody(抗体) in his plasma(血浆) that stops babies dying from Rhesus disease, a form of severe anaemia(贫血). He has enabled countless mothers to give birth to healthy babies, including his own daughter, Tracey, who had a healthy son thanks to her father's blood.
Mr. Harrison has been giving blood every few weeks since he was 18 years old and has now racked up a total of 984 donations. When he started donating, his blood was deemed so special that his life was insured(保险) for one million Australian dollars.
He was also nicknamed the “man with the golden arm” or the “man in two million”. He said, “I've never thought about stopping. Never!” He made a pledge to be a donor aged 14 after undergoing major chest surgery in which he needed 13 liters of blood. “I was in hospital for three months,” he said. “The blood I received saved my life so I made a pledge to give blood when I was 18.”
Just after he started donating he was found to have the rare(稀有的) and life-saving antibody in his blood. At the time, thousands of babies in Australia were dying each year of Rhesus disease. Other newborns suffered permanent(永久的) brain damage because of the condition. The disease creates an incompatibility between the mother's blood and her unborn baby's blood. It stems from one having Rh-positive(阳性) blood and the other Rh-negative(阴性).
His blood has since led to the development of a vaccine called Anti-D. After his blood type was discovered, Mr. Harrison volunteered to undergo a series of tests to help develop the Anti-D vaccine. “They insured me for a million dollars so I knew my wife Barbara would be taken care of,” he said. “I wasn't scared. I was glad to help. I had to sign every form going and basically sign my life away.”
Mr. Harrison is Rh-negative and was given injections of Rh-positive blood. It was found his plasma could treat the condition and since then it has been given to hundreds of thousands of women. It has also been given to babies after they are born to stop them developing the disease.
It is estimated he has helped save 2.2 million babies so far. Mr. Harrison is still donating every few weeks now.
1.How old is James Harrison?
A.74 |
B.70. |
C.56 |
D.78 |
2.What does the underlined phrase “two million” refer to?
A.mothers |
B.babies |
C.dollars |
D.blood |
3.Why did James decide to donate his blood? Because _____.
A.his daughter asked him to help her son |
B.he has a golden arm worth a million dollars |
C.a vaccine called Anti-D is to be developed |
D.someone else’s blood saved his life |
4.The sentence “The disease creates an incompatibility between the mother's blood and her unborn baby's blood” (underlined in Paragraph 5) suggests that _____.
A.the mother and the baby have different types of blood |
B.babies suffer permanent brain damage before born |
C.Rhesus disease contributes to permanent brain damage |
D.all the patients have a rare antibody in their blood |
5.What can we infer from the sixth paragraph?
A.His wife Barbara needed to be taken care of badly then. |
B.Mr. Harrison was not glad to help develop a new vaccine. |
C.Some of the tests to develop the vaccine are dangerous. |
D.His blood type was accidentally discovered after tests. |