Space is a dangerous place. not only because of meteors (流星) but also because of rays from the sun and other stars. The Atmosphere again acts as our protective blanket on earth. Light gets through, and this is essential for plants to make the food which we eat. Heat, too, makes our environment endurable. Various kinds of rays come through the air from outer space, but enormous quantities of radiation from the sun are screened off. As soon as men leave the atmosphere they are exposed to this radiation but their spacesuits or the walls of their spacecraft, if they are inside, do prevent a lot of radiation damage.

    Radiation is the greatest known danger to explorers in space. The unit of radiation is called “rem”. Scientists have reason to think that a man can put up with far more radiation than 0.1 rem without being damaged; the figure of 60 rems has been agreed on. The trouble is that it is extremely difficult to be sure about radiation damage-a person may feel perfectly well, but the cells of his or her sex organs may be damaged, and this will not be discovered until the birth of deformed (畸形的) children or even grandchildren. Missions of the Apollo flights have had to cross belts of high radiation and, during the outward and return journeys, the Apollo crew accumulated a large amount of rems. So far, no dangerous amounts of radiation have been reported, but the Apollo missions have been quite short. We simply do not know yet how men are going to get on when they spend weeks and months outside the protection of the atmosphere, working in a space laboratory. Drugs might help to decrease the damage done by radiation, but no really effective ones have been found so far.

1. According to the first paragraph, the atmosphere is essential to man in that ______.

A. it protects him against the harmful rays from space    

B. it provides sufficient light for plant growth

C. it supplies the heat necessary for human survival      

D. it screens off the falling meteors

2. It can be inferred from the passage that ________.

A. the Apollo mission was very successful        

B. protection from space radiation is no easy job

C. astronauts will have deformed children or grandchildren

D. radiation is not a threat to well-protected space explorers

3. The best title for this passage would be ________.

A. The Atmosphere and Our Environment   B. Research on Radiation.

C. Effects of Space Radiation             D. Importance of Protection Against Radiation

Do you wake up every day feeling too tired, or even upset? If so, then a new alarm clock could be just for you．

The clock, called SteepSmart, measures your sleep cycle, and waits ____（36） you to be in your lightest phase of sleep ____（37） rousing you．Its makers say that should ______（38） you wake up feeling refreshed every morning．As you sleep you pass____（39） a sequence of sleep states---light sleep, deep sleep and REM（rapid eye movement） sleep---that ____（40） approximately every 90 minutes．The point in that cycle at which you wake can ____（41） how you feel later, and may ____（42） have a greater impact than how much or little you have slept．Being roused during a light phase ____（43） you are more likely to wake up energetic．

SleepSmart ____（44） the distinct pattern of brain waves _____（45） during each phase of sleep, via a headband equipped _____（46） electrodes and a microprocessor．This measures the electrical activity of the wearer’s brain, in much the ____（47） way as some machines used for medical and research ____（48）, and communicates wirelessly with a clock unit near the bed．You ____（49） the clock with the latest time at _____（50） you want to be wakened, and it _____（51） duly wakes you during the last light sleep phase before that．

The _____（52） was invented by a group of students at Brown University in Rhode Island ____（53） a friend complained of waking up tired and performing poorly on a test．“_____（54） sleep-deprived people ourselves, we started thinking of _____（55） to do about it．” Says Eric Shashoua, a recent college graduate and now chief executive officer of Axon Sleep Research Laboratories, a company created by students to develop their idea．

　　Do you know insurance? Buying insurance is a 1 by which people can protect themselves 2 large losses. Protection against fire is one kind of insurance. Large numbers of people pay 3 sums of money to an insurance company. Although thousands of people have paid for fire insurance, only 4 will lose their homes by fire. The insurance company will pay for these homes out of the sums of money it has 5 .

　　The first modern fire insurance company was 6 in London, England, in 1666. A great fire had just 7 most of the city, and people wanted protection against 8 losses. The first company 9 rapidly. Soon other companies were founded in other areas.

　　Bemjamin Franklin helped form the first fire insurance company in America in 1752. He also 10 a new kind of insurance for 11 . The new insurance would offer protection against the loss of crops 12 storms.

　　In 1795, Benjamin Franklin helped start 13 new insurance company in America. This company, 14 offered life insurance, collected some money 15 from many different men. 16 a man died, his family was given a large sum of money. Today, this company is 17 in business.

　　Over the years, people have 18 from many new kinds of insurance when they have suffered from 19 accidents as car and plane crashes. 20 , almost everyone has some kind of insurance.

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  The Meanings of Dreams
Sleep and dreams have interested people for centuries. Scientists are learning more about sleep, but they still know very little about why we dream.
   【小题1】   First, we have most of our dreams during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. At this time, the brain is very active. Second, everyone dreams – even if we cannot remember doing so when we awaken.    【小题2】   While we are asleep, it works more slowly and sometimes puts our thoughts and memories together in strange ways.
   【小题3】   Some believe that our dreams are associated with thoughts and feelings that we experience while we are awake. Many dream researchers think that a dream about death, for example, is really about an important life change.    【小题4】   Dreams about a car or travel often represent feelings about your own life. Dreams about teeth – especially broken or loose ones may indicate stress and fear. Dreams in which you are flying often represent freedom or escape.
Researchers think people in our dreams can tell us something about ourselves. If the person in the dream was yelling (叫喊), for example, maybe you are angry.    【小题5】   
There is still a lot about dreaming that we do not understand. By learning more about our dreams, we may learn more about ourselves.

If you dream in color, you’re not alone: the majority of people today claim to have colorful dreams. But it wasn’t always thus. Research conducted in the early part of the last century consistently found that people reported dreaming most often in black and white.

According to Eva Murzyn at the University of Dundee, there are at least two possible explanations for this strange situation.

The first is the methods used in the researches. The early studies tended to use questionnaires（问卷）, while more modern studies use dream diaries (filled in upon rising in the morning) or so-called “REM-awakening”, which involves interrupting people’s dream-filled periods of sleep to find out what they were dreaming about. People’s memories of their dreams are likely to be less accurate by using the questionnaire approach and they are more likely to reflect their beliefs about the form dreams generally take in an unclear way.

The second explanation has to do with black and white television and film. It's possible that the sudden increase in black and white film and television during the first half of the last century either affected the form of people’s dreams at that time, or affected their beliefs about the form dreams generally take.

According to Murzyn’s findings, it’s the explanation based on media exposure that carries more weight. She used both questionnaire and diary methods to study the dreams of 30 older (average age 64) and 30 younger people (average age 21).

The methodological technique made no difference to the type of dreams people reported. However, the extremely important thing was that, across both questionnaires and diaries, the older participants (who had had significant early life exposure to black and white media) reported experiencing significantly more black and white dreams over the last ten days than the younger participants (22 per cent vs. 4 per cent).

Another finding was that older participants reported black and white dreams and colorful dreams to be of equal clearness. By contrast, the younger participants reported that the quality of black and white dreams was poorer. This raises the possibility that the younger participants didn’t really have any black and white dreams at all, but were simply regarding poorly remembered dreams as black and white.

We learn from the text that ______.

       A. people in the first half of the last century never had colorful dreams

       B. older people are more likely to have black and white dreams

       C. the dreams of younger people are always colorful

       D. people today don’t have white and black dreams any more

What did Murxyn do to find out the explanations for the colors in people’s dreams?

       A. She applied both questionnaire and diary methods to study people’s dreams.

       B. She used diary methods to record people’s dreams.

       C. She chose 60 people to answer her questions about their dreams.

       D. She woke people up to record the colors of their dreams.

What does the underlined expression “carry more weight” in paragraph 5 mean?

       A. be heavier  B. be more powerful      C. be more important     D. be more useful

From Murxyn’s findings we can infer that ______.

       A. both older people and younger people could report colorful dreams clearly

       B. young people don’t have any black and white dreams in fact

       C. the color of a person’s dream is decided by one’s age

       D. it is probably the color of media that affects the color of one’s dream