Want to be a happy married couple? Consider having kids．

A new study found that having children boosts happiness．And the more, literally, the merrier．

But unmarried couples shouldn’t expect to find greater happiness through child-raising．The study, published in the Oct．14 online edition of the Journal of Happiness Studies, suggests that having children has little or no effect on boosting happiness among couples who aren’t hitched(和谐)．

The findings contradict previous research that suggested that having more offspring doesn't lead to greater happiness and might even make people less satisfied with their lives．One theory behind the conclusion is that parents don’t receive many rewards in return for the hard work of raising children．

The new study, however, notes that parents say children are one of the most important things in their lives, if not the most important．

The study found that life satisfaction for married people -- women especially -- goes up the more kids they have．Single, separated and co-habiting people, by contrast, report negative experiences．

“One is tempted to advance that children make people rich under the ‘right conditions’ -- a time in life when people feel that they are ready, or at least willing, to enter parenthood,” Dr．Luis Angeles, of the University of Glasgow in Scotland, said in a news release from the journal’s publisher．“This time can come at very different moments for different individuals, but a likely signal of its approach may well be the act of marriage．”

1．The underlined word “offspring” in the fourth paragraph can be replaced by _____．

     A．generation              B．children        

       C．mothers          D．marriage

2．The best title of this passage should be _______．

     A．Children Are the Source of Happiness

     B．Are You Happy Married Couple?

     C．Married with Children Paves Way to Happiness

     D．The Right Conditions of Having Children

3．Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

     A．The more children women have, the happier they are．

     B．The more children the married women have, the more unsatisfied they become．

     C．Raising kids can give any person happiness．

     D．Without marriage, one woman had better not raise kids．

4．In the passage, the underlined part ‘right conditions’ refers to _______．

     A．a time when the couple are ready and willing to become parents

     B．the situation where the family is rich enough to raise a child

     C．the situation where the couple are very happy

     D．a time when the couple thinks raising children can boost happiness

August was one of the nastiest months I can remember: torrential rain; a hailstorm or two; cold, bitter winds; and mists. But we are accustomed to such weather in England. Lord Byron used to say that an English summer begins on July 31 and ends on Aug. 1. He called 1816 "the year without a summer." He spent it gazing across Lake Geneva, watching the storms, with 18-year-old Mary Shelley. The lightening flickering across the lake inspired her Frankenstein, the tale of the man-made monster galvanized into life by electricity.
This summer's atrocious weather tempted me to tease a Green whom I know. "Well, what about your weather theory now?" (One of the characteristics of Greens is that they know no history.) He replied: "Yes, this weather is unprecedented. England has never had such an August before. It's global warming, of course." That's the Greens' stock response to anything weather-related. Too much sun? "Global warming." Too little sun? "Global warming." Drought? "Global warming." Floods? "Global warming." Freezing cold? "Global warming."
I wish the great philosopher Sir Karl Popper were alive to denounce the unscientific nature of global warming. He was a student when Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity was first published and then successfully tested. Einstein said that for his theory to be valid it would have to pass three tests. "If," Einstein wrote to British scientist Sir Arthur Eddington, "it were proved that this effect does not exist in nature, then the whole theory would have to be abandoned."
The idea that human beings have changed and are changing the basic climate system of the Earth through their industrial activities and burning of fossil fuels--the essence of the Greens' theory of global warming--has not much basis in science. Global warming, like Marxism, is a political theory of actions, demanding compliance with its rules.
Those who buy in to global warming wish to drastically curb human economic and industrial activities, regardless of the consequences for people, especially the poor. If the theory's conclusions are accepted and agreed upon, the destructive results will be felt most severely in those states that adhere to the rule of law and will observe restrictions most faithfully. The global warming activists' target is the U.S. If America is driven to accept crippling restraints on its economy it will rapidly become unable to shoulder its burdens as the world's sole superpower and ultimate defender of human freedoms. We shall all suffer, however, as progress falters and then ceases and living standards decline.
【小题1】 The writer of the passage is probably _______.

第二部分：英语知识及运用（共两节，满分35分）
第一节：完形填空（共10小题；每小题2分, 满分20分） 
阅读下面短文，从短文后所给各题的四个选项A、B、C和D中选出能填入相应空白处的最佳选项。
Rubber ducks are being used to help scientists understand global warming and melting glaciers. NASA researchers have  21   90 ducks into holes in Greenland's fastest moving glacier, the Jakobshavn Glacier between Greenland and Canada. The   22   have each been marked with the words "science experiment" along with an e-mail address. If they are found scientists will be able to  23   how the water moves through the ice and provide information about the   24   of glaciers. Scientists are still   25   about why glaciers speed up in summer and head towards the sea. One theory is that as the summer sun melts ice on top of the glacier's surface, the water moves to the bottom of the glacier, where it helps to   26   the movement of ice toward the coast. The Jakobshavn Glacier is believed to be the   27   of the iceberg that sank the Titanic in 1912. Robert Jones, the experiment organizer, said none of the ducks had been   28   yet. "We haven't heard back but it may take some time until somebody actually finds it and decides to send us a/an   29   that they have found it," he said. "These are places that are   30   so there aren't people walking around."
21. A. flown                 B. buried               C. hidden                     D. dropped
22. A. results             B. toys               C. glaciers          D. scientists
23. A. remember       B. invent            C. learn                 D. control
24. A. development    B. movement           C. growth        D. travels
25. A. unsure          B. excited          C. concerned       D. ignorant
26. A. reduce          B. control        C. speed         D. stop
27. A. position               B. source            C. reason            D. result
28. A. hurt                 B. eaten              C. missing         D. reported
29. A. email            B. card                  C.    fax          D. sign
30. A. hidden          B. lost                C.    remote       D. quiet

　　Lucky is the man who has no “skeleton in his closet”. When a man has done something in his life that he is ashamed of, that he wants to hide, he is said to have a “skeleton in his closet”. Some people may have more than one skeleton.

　　As we have noted many times, it is hard to find out how these expressions begin. Sometimes, we get some hard facts. But more often we have to depend on guesswork. And that is true of this phrase, which came from England.

　　Before 1932, English law did not permit a doctor to cut open a dead human body for scientific examination, unless it was the corpse(尸体) of an executed(处决) criminal.

　　But when it became legal, more and more doctors demanded skeletons for a more scientific study of medicine. It was helping in the advance of modern medicine. The demand had become so strong that men began to rob tombs and sell skeletons to doctors at high prices.

　　We are told that a doctor would usually buy just one skeleton for scientific study. It became very important in his work. But he had to keep it hidden because most people objected to keeping such a thing. As a rule, the doctor would keep his skeleton in some dark corner where it could not be seen, or hide it in a closet.

　　After a time, people began to suspect(怀疑) every doctor of hiding a skeleton in the closet. From this suspicion, the phrase “a skeleton in the closet” took on a broader, more general meaning to describe anything that a man wanted to keep others from discovering. It could be proof of a criminal act, or something much less serious. Well, that is one theory.

　　One writer, however, believes that the phrase might have come from something that really happened. It is his guess that a hidden closet in some old English country home may have turned up a real skeleton, clear proof of some old family shame or crime. Well, one man’s guess is as good as another. But this sounds like a story by the great French novelist, Balzac.

　　Baizac tells us of a man who suspected his wife of having a lover. The husband comes home by surprise. But she hears him and quickly hides her lover in the closet of her bedroom. He enters her room and asks her if she is hiding her lover. He says he will not open the door to the closet if she promises him there is no one there; He will believe her. She answers firmly that she is not hiding anyone in the closet.

　　The husband then begins to build a solid brick wall against the closet. His wife watches, knowing that her lover will never come out alive. But she will not change her story and admit her guilt.   

1. Which of the following situations is suitable for using the phrase “skeleton in the closet” ?

　　A. You have stolen something precious and don’t want it discovered.

　　B. You are a doctor and have to keep a skeleton for research.

　　C. If you have cut open a dead human body for scientific examination you should keep the skeleton secret.

　　D. You have done a crime or done something foolish, but you want to keep other from discovering it.

2. From the text we know that there are _______ theories about how the phrase “skeleton in the closet” came into being.

　　A. one 　　　　　      B. two 　　　　　      C. three 　　　　D. four

3. In Chinese the world “skeleton” means _______.

　　A. 尸体 　　　　　B. 标本 　　　　　C. 收藏 　　　　D. 骷髅

4. Which of the following is right according to the text?

　    A. In the 20th century, doctors realized the importance of anatomy(解剖) in the development of medicine.

　　B. The doctors of the ancient times liked to collect as many skeleton as possible.

　　C. The thieves stole skeletons from tombs in order to help the doctors.

　　D. It was legal that corpses of anybody were cut open for scientific examination in history.

5. From the story Balzac told we know that the wife’s lover must have become _______.

A. a corpse 　　　　B. a phrase 　　　　C. a skeleton 　　　D. a secret

Howling is a behavior commonly observed among a wolf nark. An animals, wolves work together to hunt and rely on howling was an important means of communication each other. There are different explants of a wolf’s howl and it appears that there may be more to discover.      One theory is that wolves howl to bend better together. It’s almost as if howling together helps the pack stay together. Perhaps something similar to people feeling a sense of involvement with each other when singing a song together . But this theory may be wrong, explains Fred H. Harington, a professor who studies wolf behavior.     Indeed, there have been tines when wolves have been seen one moment howling in a exhorts, and the next, quarreling anions each other. It appears that usually the lowest-tanking menthes of the pack may actually be “punished” for
Joining in the churs at times. So is howling a way to strcagthen a social boad or just a way to reconfirm status among its members? ——Why do welves howl for sure?
What is cleat, however, is that howling is often used among packmates to locate each other. Hunting grounds are distant and it happens that woloves may separate from one another at times. When this happens, howling appcars to be an ercellent means of gathering.
Howling, interestingly, is a contagious behaviour. When one wolf starts to howl, very likely others will follow. This is often seen to occat in the morning, as if wolves were doing some sotr of “roll rall”where wolves all howl togeter to howl, very likely others will follow. This is often seen to occar in the morning, as if wolves were doing w some sotr of “roll call”where wolves all howl together to repotr their pteence.
【小题1】.What the por similarity between wolves’ how humaes ting in chorus?