The environmental group 350.org has launched a new campaign called Climate Name Change that proposes to revise to how hurricanes are named: call them after policymakers who say that humans are not to blame for global warming.

This will save the Katrinas and Sandys of the world from the injustice of having their names attached to major disaster, the group says. And, as a bonus, it will produce some peculiar weather reports.

“Rick Perry leaves trail of death,” appears under a broadcast titled “Rick Perry: The Tragedy.”

“Michelle Bachman is incredibly dangerous. If you value your life, please seek shelter from Michelle Bachman,” says an official while addressing a news conference.

The campaign is unlikely to influence the World Meteorological Organization, which has since 1954 named Atlantic tropical storms from an official list.

But the campaign’s goal seems less to actually name a hurricane after the speaker of the house, and more to call attention to an issue that this month has reached an alarming level of seriousness. The campaign comes just a month before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release its most recent report on the state of global warming and a week after a draft(草稿)of the report was given away to Reuters.

In the draft, scientists concluded with near certainty – about 95 percent sure – that humans are to blame for the worldwide temperature hikes over the last few decades. That was a revision from the 2007 report, which put scientific certainty that human activities were driving global climate change at about 90 percent.

And global warming, the report said, is not slowing down – it, actually, is accelerating. That means that sea levels could balloon upward as much as three feet by the end of the century, if emissions(排放量) continue at their current pace.

Still, as the Washington Post Climate notes, hurricanes are not the best sign of global warming. Though current data suggests that global warming will in the future stir up terrible super storms, there is still not enough evidence to support the idea that climate change strengthens the recent hurricanes that have torn at the US’s eastern coastline.

1.It can be inferred that__________ is one of the policymakers who believe that humans are not to blame for global warming.

A. Katrina                    B. Rick Perry                        C. Flossie                     D. Sandy

2.350.org has launched the campaign with the real purpose of _________________.

A. changing the ways of naming hurricanes

B. introducing the methods of naming hurricanes

C. reminding policymakers to change their attitudes

D. calling attention to the coming report on global warming

3.The draft of the global warming report tells us that _____________.

A. global warming is speeding up at the same rate

B. it is human beings that have caused global warming

C. the new report has a more accurate data than the one in 2007

D. human beings are not the only one to blame for global warming

4.The writer of the passage seems to believe that______________.

A. policymakers should be blamed for the global warming

B. the campaign will cause the change of naming hurricanes

C. global warming has no necessary relation to terrible hurricanes

D. global warming will surely cause terrible super storms in the future

 

Sub-Saharan Africa has the world’s highest hunger rate. But according to a new report, African farmers also have ideas that could help the world fight hunger and poverty. Danielle Nierenberg from the Worldwatch Institute in Washington spent a year visiting twenty-five countries south of the Sahara. In Nairobi, Kenya, for example, Ms Nierenberg found women farmers growing vegetables just outside their doorsteps in the Kibera settlement. She says they are finding ways to make their lives better. The women feed their families and sell their surplus. They use the money to send their children to school.

Last year, about 925,000,000 people worldwide did not get enough to eat. Half of all people in the world now live in and around cities. Researchers like Ms Nierenberg are looking increasingly at creative ideas to feed those who don’t have enough good food to eat. She says there are a lot of lessons that people in the Western world can learn from Africa. And what they are doing can certainly be done in other developing countries.

Farmers in the developing world lose between twenty and forty percent of their harvest before it ever reaches market. There are many reasons why food gets wasted. Farmers are without electricity and cold storage. They lack good seeds and fertilizer. They lack good roads. Conditions like these keep small farmers in poverty. Ms Nierenberg says more attention needs to be paid to protecting harvests. She says, “Given all that we invest in producing food in the first place, we need to devote the same amount of attention to making sure that it is not wasted.”

In Nigeria, village processing centers are helping farmers reduce their losses and earn more money. They centers process cassava, a root vegetable, into basic food products. In Uganda, the Worldwatch report says some schools are teaching children how to grow local kinds of crops. And in South Africa and Kenya the report praises the breeding(培育) of local kinds of livestock. These animals may produce less milk or meat than other breeds, but they can survive heat and drought conditions.

1.We could learn from the new report in Para.1 that         .

A.sub-Saharan Africa has the world’s highest hunger rate

B.African farmers have ideas to help fighting hunger and poverty

C.women farmers grow vegetables in the Kibera settlement

D.women farmers grow vegetables to send their children to school.

2.The underlined word “surplus” in Para.1 is closest in meaning to         .

A. private vegetables                        B. side products

C. leftover vegetables                      D. home-made products

3.Ms Nierenberg suggests that         .

A.the women spend more money on education instead of farming

B.more and more African people should live in and around cities

C.researchers find creative ideas to feed the people suffering hunger

D.people in the Western world do the same as the Africans have done

4.Which of the following statements is NOT true according to the passage?

A.Farmers in developing world often lose some of their harvest

B.Small farmers in developing countries often suffer poverty.

C.Farmers should pay more attention to protecting their harvest

D.Attention should be paid to saving food instead of producing food

5.The best title of this passage should be         .

A.A New Report About African Farmers Fighting Hunger

B.Creative Ideas to Feed Those Who Have No Enough Food

C.Looking to Africa for Ideas About How to Fight Hunger

D.Animals That Can Survive Heat and Drought Conditions

 

A new report said scientists may not be far from giving apes the ability to think and talk like humans. The report is about experiments which transplant human cells into animals for medical purposes.

It claimed that concerns about the creation of talking apes should be taken seriously. It should also draw people’s attention to the possibility that the medical research about creating “humanised” animals is going to generate monsters.

A regulatory(监管的)body is needed to closely monitor any experiments that many risk creating animals with human-like consciousness or giving them any appearance or behavioural traits that too closely resemble humans, the report said.

Scientists would, for example, be prevented from replacing a large number of an ape’s brain cells with human brain cells until more is known about the potential risks. This has already been done in simpler animals like mice, which is judged to be less risky.

Under the new UK guidelines, the power to regulate tests on animals containing human material would be transferred to a body with wider responsibility for animal testing in the Home Office.

While there is no risk from experiments currently being carried out in Britain, it is possible that ethical (道德的) boundaries could be crossed within the next few years if scientists are not careful, the experts said.

Professor Thomas Baldwin, a member of the Academy of Medical Sciences working group that produced the report, said the possibility of humanised apes should be taken seriously.

He said, “The fear is that if you start putting very large numbers of human brain cells into the brains of primates(灵长类动物)you might transform the primates into something that has some of the abilities that we regard as distinctly human, such as speech, or other ways of being able to manipulate or relate to us.”

Professor Martin Bobrow, chair of the academy working group that produced the report, said, “The very great majority of experiments present no issues beyond the general use of animals in research and these should continue to proceed under the current regulations.”

Lord Willis, chair of the Association of Medical Research Charities, said, “AMRC only supports research that is absolutely necessary and where no suitable alternative methods are available.”

1.What is the passage mainly about?

A.Ethical rules to limit humanised animals.

B.The potential results of humanised apes.

C.The possibility of humanised animals.

D.The danger of human-like animals.

2.The underlined word “manipulate” in the passage probably means “_______”.

A.appeal            B.possess           C.control           D.associate

3.Which of the following statements might Professor Thomas Baldwin agree with?

A.It is necessary to do some experiments about humanised animals.

B.Experiments about humanised animals should be done within the law.

C.It would be dangerous to do experiments about humanised animals.

D.It is urgent to ban experiment about humanised animals.

4.It can be inferred that _______.

A.people should be careful when creating talking apes

B.Thomas Baldwin and Lord Willis are from the same organization

C.creating humanised animals is difficult in Britain now

D.scientists must be cautious not to cross ethical boundaries

 

A new report says sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is melting more quickly than expected. American scientists say the ice is melting even faster than computer programs had estimated.

Scientists know that climate change has a major effect on the Arctic Ocean partly because sea ice is disappearing. They also know that areas of open seawater are expanding. Such areas are known to take in sunlight and increase temperatures. Scientists say this has helped to cause the loss of the Arctic’s ice cover.

For the study, the American scientists compared eighteen computer programs with observations made by satellites and other instruments. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used the computer programs to prepare its 2007 estimates of climate change.

The computer programs gave estimates of the amount of ice in the Arctic Ocean in the month of September. September is when the Arctic has the least ice, after the warm, summer months. The computer estimates suggested an ice loss of two and a half percent for every ten-year period between 1953 and 2006.  

Newer studies of the Arctic have used information gathered by aircraft, satellites and ships. This information showed a loss of September ice cover of almost eight percent for every ten-year period between 1953 and last year. This means the ice is disappearing about thirty years faster than the computer programs estimated.

The scientists say the programs might not have recognized the full effect of increased carbon dioxide and other gases in Earth’s atmosphere. They say their study suggests the gases may have more of an effect than had been thought.

1.It is reported that sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is melting more quickly than expected mainly because _________.

A. climate change                        B. sea ice’s disappearance  

C. seawater’s expansion              D. the loss of the Arctic’s ice cover

2. How did the scientists draw the conclusion that sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is melting more quickly than expected?

A. The scientists have been observing the Arctic Ocean for many years.

B. The scientists have compared the computer programs with observation made by satellites and other instruments.

C. The scientists have figured out many numbers with the help of computer.

D. The scientists have found that the seawater take in sunlight and increase temperatures.

3.If the ice melts at the present speed, by the end of this century the ice loss in the Arctic Ocean will be _________ according to newer studies.

A. 22.5%                B. 35%          C.72%         D. 100%

4.Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

A. The figures of the computer estimates are wrong.

B. Scientists study climate change through studying sea level.

C. Newer studies show gases may have more effect on sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.

D. The ice is melting even faster than satellites have estimated.

5.This report mainly warns human to _________.

A. prevent the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean from melting any more

B. pay more attention to the loss of the Arctic’s ice cover 

C. take necessary steps to protect the environment of our earth

D. stop summer sea ice in the Arctic from disappearing so fast

 

 

      People from East Asia tend to have more difficulty than those from Europe in distinguishing facial expressions — and a new report published online in Current Biology explains why.

      Rachael Jack, University of Glasgow researcher, said that rather than scanning evenly(均匀的) across a face as Westerners do, Easterners fix their attention on the eyes.

      "We show that Easterners and Westerners look at different face features to read facial expressions," Jack said. "Westerners look at the eyes and the mouth in equal measure, whereas Easterners favor the eyes and neglect (忽略) the mouth."

      According to Jack and her colleagues, the discovery shows that human communication of emotion is more complex than previously believed. As a result, facial expressions that had been considered universally recognizable cannot be used to reliably convey emotion in cross-cultural situations.

      The researchers studied cultural differences in the recognition of facial expressions by recording the eye movements of 13 Western Caucasian and 13 East Asian people while they observed pictures of. expressive faces and put them into categories: happy, sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, angry, or neutral. They compared how accurately participants read those facial expressions using their particular eye movement strategies.

      It turned out that Easterners focused much greater attention on the eyes and made significantly more errors than did Westerners. "The cultural difference in eye movements that they show is probably a reflection of cultural difference in facial expressions," Jack said. "Our data suggest that whereas Westerners use the whole face to convey emotion, Easterners use the eyes more and mouth less."

      In short, the data show that facial expressions are not universal signals of human emotion. From here on, examining how cultural factors have diversified these basic social skills will help our understanding of human emotion. Otherwise, when it comes to communicating emotions across cultures, Easterners and Westerners will find themselves lost in translation.

 

1.The discovery shows that Westerners         .

    A. pay equal attention to the eyes and the mouth

    B. consider facial expressions universally reliable

    C. observe the eyes and the mouth in different ways

    D. have more difficulty in recognizing facial expressions                                

2.What were the people asked to do in the study?

A. To make a face at each other.            B. To get their faces impressive.

C. To classify some face pictures.          D. To observe the researchers' faces.            

3.What does the underlined word "they" in Paragraph 6 refer to?

A. The participants in the study.

B. The researchers of the study.

C. The errors made during the study.

    D. The data collected from the study.                                                

4.In comparison with Westerners, Easterners are likely to         .

A. do translation more successfully

B. study the mouth more frequently

C. examine the eyes more attentively

D. read facial expressions more correctly                                          

5.What can be the best title for the passage?

    A. The Eye as the Window to the Soul

B. Cultural Differences in Reading Emotions

C. Effective Methods to Develop Social Skills

D. How to Increase Cross-cultural Understanding                                

 

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