The lack of clean drinking water is a major problem worldwide. The World Health Organization says more than one billion people live in areas where renewable （可再生的） water resources are not available. The problem is especially serious in Asia and the Pacific. A United Nations report says water availability in than area is the second lowest in the world, after Africa.

The U.N report notes that the world’s poorest countries are also the ones that use the most water for agriculture. Agriculture uses about eighty percent of the water in the Asia－Pacific area. There has also been an increase in water used for industry.

Millions of people worldwide have to drink unsafe water for lack of clean drinking water. This leads to an increase in diseases like diarrhea, the second leading cause of death in children under five.

The UN Millennium Development Goals（联合国新千年发展目标） for 2015 call for a fifty percent decrease in the number of people without safe drinking water and basic health conditions.

Scientists, governments and aid organizations around the world are increasing their efforts to meet these goals. Last month the U. N, called on the international community to work together to solve the water crisis.

Some American and South Korean researchers are experimenting with a new technology for turning sea water into drinking water. The new technology uses electricity to help separate electrically charged salt particles （微粒） from water to make it drinkable.

The researchers tested their desalination process on a computer chip, which removed ninety-nine percent of the salt and other harmful matters from water samples.  So far the method purifies only small amounts of water. But the researchers say it may someday be available as a personal water purification product.

1．What’s the main idea of this passage?

       A．The lack of drinking water is threatening the world.

       B．Many people in Asia and the Pacific lack safe drinking water.

       C．The UN calls on scientists to work together to solve water crisis.

       D．Scientists find a new way to turn sea water into drinking water.

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

       A．Water availability in Africa is the second lowest in the world.

       B．Industry is using more than 50% of water in the Asia – Pacific area.

       C．Diarshea is the most severe death – causing disease for children under five.

       D．UN hopes to reduce the number of people without safe drinking water by hall by 2015.

3．What do we know about the new technology according to the last two paragraphs?

       A．The process uses electricity to heat sea water so as to remove salt from it

       B．The researchers use a computer chip to help obtrude salt canticles of sea water

       C．The experimenting method could remove most of the salt and other harmful things.

       D．The technology has been able to purify enough water for daily personal use.

4．What’s the meaning of the underlined word in the last paragraph.

      A．Charging salt particles.                         B．Removing salt.

       C．Adding salt.                                         D．Producing salt.

With fears of a possible nuclear meltdown(核反应堆堆芯的熔毁) in Japan building up, evidence has come to light that the nation received warnings over the stability of its power plants from an international watchdog more than two years ago.
　　As the Telegraph is reporting, an official from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in December 2008 that safety rules were out of date, and strong earthquakes would cause a “serious problem” for the power stations.
　　A U.S. embassy document, by quoting（引用）an unnamed expert, states: “He (the IAEA official) explained that safety guides for earthquakes have only been updated three times in the last 35 years and that the IAEA is now re-examining them. Also, the presenter noted recent earthquakes in some cases have gone beyond the design basis for some nuclear plants, and that this is a serious problem that is now driving earthquake safety work.”
　　The Telegraph also reports that the government responded to the warnings by building an emergency response center at the Fukushima Daiichi plant designed to resist magnitude-7.0 earthquakes. Friday's earthquake, originally named a magnitude-8.9 shock, has since been upgraded to magnitude-9.0.
　　Other nuclear experts state IAEA officials had willingly ignored lessons from the Chernobyl disaster to protect the nuclear industry's expansion, reports Bloomberg. “After Chernobyl, all the force of the nuclear industry was directed to hide this event, for not creating damage to their reputation,”Russian nuclear accident specialist Iouli Andreyev tells Reuters, before noting that radiation from spent fuel rods（棒）stored close to reactors at Fukushima looked like an example of putting profit before safety. “The Japanese were very greedy, and they used every square inch of the space. But when you have a dense(密集的) placing of spent fuel in the basin, you have a high possibility of fire if the water is removed from the basin.”
【小题1】 From the passage, we know that ____________.

A．people fear that the nuclear meltdown will possibly become more and more serious in Japan

B．people are becoming more and more afraid of a possible nuclear meltdown in Japan

C．Japan made no response to the warnings over the safety of its power plants

D．Iouli Andreyev warned Japan not to store spent fuel rods close to reactors

The hole in the Earth's ozone layer (臭氧层) has until now protected Antarctica from the worst effects of global warming. But scientists have warned that as the hole closes up in the next few decades, temperatures on the continent could rise by around 3^oC on average, with melting ice contributing to a global sea level increase of up to 1.4 metres.
In the past decades the western Antarctic has seen rapid ice loss as the world has warmed, but the other parts of the continent have, paradoxically, been cooling, resulting in a 10% increase in ice in the seas around the region. This is because the hole in the ozone layer has increased cold winds in Antarctica, making much of the continent surface colder than usual.
But now that the gasses that cause the ozone hole have been banned, scientists expect the hole to repair itself within the next 50 to 60 years. By then the cooling effect will have faded out and the Antarctic will face the full impact of global warming. This means an increase in average air temperatures of around 3^OC and a reduction in sea ice by around a third.
The biggest threat to the continent comes from warming seas. Robert Johnson, a scientist who monitors Antarctica ice sheets, said, "The ice sheets in Antarctica are hundreds of metres thick. But once warm ocean waters start flowing underneath, the ice will begin thinning and could break up very quickly. "Thinning ice sheets cause ice to break away from the continent and to melt even faster. Escaping ice from western Antarctica has already resulted in a 10% rise in global sea level in recent decades.
Johnson believes that international action to reduce global warming is required immediately or it may be too late. "Everything is connected - Antarctica may be a long way away but it is an important part of the Earth's system," said Johnson. "It contains 90% of the world's ice, 70% of the world's fresh water and that is enough, if it melts completely, to raise sea levels by 63 metres."
Even in a worse-case situation scientists don't expect the ice to entirely disappear, but predict that, because of the melting ice sheets, average sea level rise will be around 1.4 metres higher by the end of the century.
【小题1】The underlined word "paradoxically" (in Paragraph 2) most probably means "_       _".

A small piece of fish each day may keep the heart doctor away. That's the finding of an extensive study of Dutch men in which deaths from heart disease were more than 50 percent lower among those who consumed(消费) at least an ounce of salt water fish per day than those who never ate fish.
The Dutch research is one of three human studies that give strong scientific backing to the long-held belief that eating fish can provide health benefits, particularly to the heart.
Heart disease is the number-one killer in the United States , with more than 550, 000 deaths occurring from heart attacks each year . But researchers previously have noticed that the incidence (发生率)of heart disease is lower in cultures that consume more fish than Americans do. There are fewer heart disease deaths, for example, among the Eskimos of Greenland, who consume about 14 ounces of fish a day, and among the Japanese, whose daily fish consumption averages more than 3 ounces.
During the next two decades, 78 of the men died from heart disease. The fewest deaths were among the group who regularly ate fish, even at levels far lower than those of the Japanese or Eskimos. This relationship was true regardless of other factors such as age , high blood pressure , or blood cholesterol (胆固醇) levels .
64. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?
A. The Dutch research has proved that eating fish can help to prevent heart disease.
B. There is a low incidence of heart disease in countries like Japan and Greenland.
C. Among all the diseases heart disease is the most dangerous in America.
D. Heart doctors won’t call your house so long as you keep eating fish each day.
65. The underlined phrase “this relationship” refers to the connection between _______ and the incidence of heart disease.
A. the amount of fish eaten   B. regular fish-eating
C. the kind of fish eaten          D. people of different regions
66. The passage is mainly about __________________.
A. the high incidence of heart disease in some countries
B. the changes in people’s diet in the United States
C. the daily fish consumption of people in different cultures  
D. the effect of fish eating regularly on people’s health
67. How many lives could probably be saved each year in the United States by eating fish according to the Dutch study?
A. 550, 000.              B. 110,000.      C. 275,000.            D. 852.