People are being tricked into Facebook with the promise of a fun, free service without realizing they’re paying for it by giving up loads of personal information.

Most Facebook users don’t realize this is happening. Even if they know what the company is up to, they still have no idea what they’re paying for Facebook because people don’t really know what their personal data is worth.

The biggest problem, however, is that the company keeps changing the rules early on you keep everything private. That was the great thing about Facebook. You could create your own little private network. Last year. The company changed its privacy rules so that many things; your city, your photo, your friends’ names were set, by default (默认)to be shared with everyone on the Internet.

According to Facebook’s vice-president Elliot Schrage, the company is simply making changes to improve its service, and if people don’t share information. They have a “less satisfying experience.

Some critics think this is more about Facebook looking to make more money. In original business model, which involved selling ads and putting them. At the side of the pages totally, who wants to took at ads when they’re online connecting with their friends?

The privacy issue has already landed Facebook in hot water in Washington. In April. Senator Charles Schumer called on Facebook to change its privacy policy. He also urged the Federal Trade Commission to set guidelines for social networking sites. “I think the senator rightly communicated that we had not been clear about what the new products were and how people could choose to use them or not to use them,” Schrage admits.

I suspect that whatever Facebook has done so far to invade our privacy, it’s only the beginning,which is why I’m considering cancelling my account. Facebook is a handy site, but I’m upset by the idea that my information is in the hands of people I don’t know. That’s too high a price to pay.

1.What do we learn about Facebook from the first paragraph?

A. It is a website that sends messages to users who want to get married.

B. It earns money by putting on advertisements.

C. It makes money by selling its users’ personal data.

D. It provides loads of information to its users.

2.What does the author say about most Facebook users?

A. They are unwilling to give up their personal information.

B. They don’t identify themselves when using the website.

C. They don’t know their personal data enriches Facebook.

D. They care very little about their personal information.

3.Why does Facebook make changes to its rules according to Elliot Schrage?

A. To obey the Federal guidelines.

B. To provide better service to its users.

C. To improve its users’ connection

D. To expand its business.

4.Why does the author plan to cancel his Facebook account?

A. He is dissatisfied with its present service.

B. He finds many of its users untrustworthy.

C. He is upset by its frequent rule changes.

D. He doesn’t want his personal data badly used.

Dolphins(海豚) live in a dark underwater world. It’s often impossible to see each other or anything else around them, so sound plays an important role in their survival. To communicate with each other, dolphins produce all kinds of sounds.

Only other dolphins understand what the sounds mean. Scientists haven’t uncovered their secret communication, except for one kind of whistle. It might last less than a second, but this whistle is a big deal. Why? Because these whistles are actually names of dolphins - and every dolphin has one. Scientists call these sounds a “signature whistle.” When other dolphins hear the whistle, they know which dolphin is calling.

Dolphins often hunt by themselves but still need to stay connected to the group. Since they can’t always see each other, dolphins use their signature whistles to check in with other dolphins hundreds of yards away. “In coastal areas, dolphins exchange whistles even when they’re a third of a mile apart,” says Greg Campbell, who studies animals. That means dolphins shout out to group members that might be nearly five football fields away.

What’s amazing is who names the baby dolphin. Not the mother. Not an auntie dolphin or another group member. Scientists believe the baby dolphin itself comes up with the signature whistle. Like human babies, a baby dolphin plays with sounds throughout its first year. While testing its sound skills, a baby dolphin is doing something amazing. It’s creating or figuring out its signature whistle. How or why it chooses its signature whistle is not clear. Studies show that most of the time the signature whistle is nothing like its mother’s or group members’ whistles.

When the baby dolphin is about a year old, its signature whistle is set. It repeats it of ten so the other dolphins learn to recognize it.

Deciphering(破译) dolphin names is just the beginning of figuring out what dolphins communicate about. Do they chat about sharks? Discuss the tides? Maybe they even have a name for people. Someday scientists to decipher the rest of dolphins’ communication.

1.Sound is important for dolphins because of ______.

A.their poor sense of direction

B.their living environment

C.their strong enemies

D.their big groups

2.The dolphin’s signature whistle ______.

A.lasts along time

B.can travel long distances

C.is especially helpful in hunting

D.can be recognized by other animals

3.The author writes the text mainly to ______.

A.encourage readers to study dolphins

B.tell reader s how dolphins communicate

C.show how lovely and clever dolphins are

D.introduce a special sound made by dolphins

4.A baby dolphin gets its name ______.

A.soon after it was born

B.according to its size

C.all by itself

D.with the help of its group

The dodo is among the most famous extinct creatures, and a poster child for human-caused extinction events. Despite its bad name, and the fact that the species was alive during recorded human history, little is actually known about how this animal lived, looked, and behaved. A new study of the only known complete skeleton(骨架) from a single bird takes advantage of modern 3-D laser scanning(扫描) technology to open a new window into the life of this famous extinct bird.

The study was presented at the 74th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Estrel, Berlin. Leon Claessens, Associate Professor at the College of the Holy Cross, and lead researcher on the study said that, "the 3-D laser surface scans we made of the fragile dodo skeletons enable us to reconstruct how the dodo walked, moved and lived to a level of detail that has never been possible before. There are so many outstanding questions about the dodo bird that we can answer with this new knowledge."

A complete dodo skeleton, found by an amateur collector and barber, Etienne Thirioux, on the island of Mauritius between 1899 and 1917, has remained unstudied, even though it is the only complete dodo skeleton from a single individual bird known to exist. All other skeletons are incomplete combinations, meaning that they are gathered from more than one individual. In addition, Thirioux constructed a second, partially combined skeleton, which contains many bones that also belong to a single bird. "Being able to examine the skeleton of a single, individual dodo, which is not made up from as many individual birds as there are bones, as is the case in all those other combined skeletons, truly allows us to appreciate the way the dodo looked and see how tall or fat it really was," said Juilan Hume, of the Natural History Museum UK, a co-author on the study.

The scans were performed on site in Durban, South Africa, and allow examination of the biology of this mysterious extinct bird in detail for the first time. Using the newest digital tools and techniques, the scans provide an insight into how the flightless dodo may have developed its giant size, and how it walked and lived in its forest home. According to Kenneth Rijsdijk, a biologist from University of Amsterdam, “the skull of the dodo is so large and its mouth so strong that it is easy to understand that the earliest naturalists thought it was related to sharks and other birds of prey(猛禽), rather than the pigeon family.”

1.The underlined phrase “a poster child” in Para. 1 is closest in meaning to “ ”.

A. a typical example

B. an endangered animal

C. a child who puts up posters on the board

D. a child posted in a newspaper as an advertisement

2.The researchers study the dodo skeleton to find out .

A. ways to save the dodo

B. the dodo’s living habits

C. the bird’s natural habitat

D. the cause of the dodo’s extinction

3.What is special about the dodo skeleton found by an amateur collector?

A. It is gathered from more than one individual.

B. It reminded unstudied between 1899 and 1917.

C. It is the only complete dodo skeleton from a single individual bird.

D. It can be examined with 3-D laser scanning technology.

4.What is the purpose of the author in writing this passage?

A. To call people’s attention to wildlife protection.

B. To criticize humans for the extinction events.

C. To introduce a new way of studying the dodo.

D. To give tips on how to study extinct creatures.

违法和不良信息举报电话:027-86699610 举报邮箱:58377363@163.com

精英家教网