Ever wonder how much a cloud weighs? What about a hurricane? A meteorologist(气象学者) has done some estimates and the results might surprise you.

Let's start with a very simple white puffy cloud — a cumulus cloud（积云）. How much does the water in a cumulus cloud weigh? Peggy LeMone, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, did the numbers. "The water in the little cloud weighs about 550 tons," she calculates. "Or if you want to convert it to something that might be a little more meaningful … think of elephants."

The thought of a hundred elephants-worth of water suspended(悬浮的) in the sky begs another question — what keeps it up there?

"First of all, the water isn't in elephant-sized particles（微粒）, it's in tiny tiny tiny particles," explains LeMone. And those particles float on the warmer air that's rising below. But still, the concept of so much water floating in the sky was surprising even to a meteorologist like LeMone. "I had no idea how much a cloud would weigh, actually, when I started the calculations," she says.

So how many elephant units of water are inside a big storm cloud—10 times bigger all the way around than the "puffy" cumulus cloud? Again, LeMone did the numbers: About 200,000 elephants.

Now, ratchet up(略微调高) the calculations for a hurricane about the size of Missouri and the figures get really massive(巨大的). "What we're doing is weighing the water in one cubic meter theoretically pulled from a cloud and then multiplying by(乘上) the number of meters in a whole hurricane," she explains.

The result? Forty million elephants. That means the water in one hurricane weighs more than all the elephants on the planet. Perhaps even more than all the elephants that have ever lived on the planet.

1.The weight of      is NOT mentioned in the passage.

A. a cumulus cloud    B. a tornado

C. a hurricane   D. a storm cloud

2.How did Peggy LeMone feel about the result of her calculations?

A. She found it not convincing.

B. She thought it needed further calculations.

C. She was quite surprised at it.

D. She considered the calculations inaccurate.

3.What can be inferred from the passage?

A. A storm cloud weighs about 200,000 elephants.

B. The water in a hurricane weighs more than that in any other kind of cloud.

C. There are less than forty million elephants living on the earth.

D. The water in the cloud is in very tiny partials.

4.What is the best title for the passage?

A. How Much a Cloud Weighs   B. How Much a Hurricane Weighs

C. Surprising Results           D. Elephants in the Sky

A wife’s level of education positively influences both her own and her husband’s chances of having a long life, according to a new Swedish study.

In the study, researchers from the Swedish Institute for Social Research in Stockholm found that a woman’s level of education had a stronger connection to the likelihood of her husband dying over education. What’s more, they discovered that a husband’s social class, based on his occupation,  had a greater influence on his wife’s longevity（长寿）than her own class.

“Women traditionally take more responsibility for the home than men do, and, as a consequence, women’s levels of education might be more important for determining lifestyles－for example, in terms of food choices－than those of men,” say Srs. Robert Erikson and Jenny Torssander of the Swedish Institute for Social Research in Stockholm.

The results show that a husband’s level of education does not influence his longevity, but that men with partners who had quit studying after school were 25 per cent more likely to die early than men living with women hodling university degrees. In turn, those married to women with university degrees were 13 per cent more likely to die early than those whose wives had post-graduate qualifications.

According to the researchers, a woman with a good education may not marry a man who drinks and smokes too much or who drivers carelessly, and men with such habits may not prefer highly educated woman. Drs. Erikson and Torssander also suggest that better-educated woman may be more aware of what healthy eating and good health care consist of.

The findings suggest that education has a huge impact on how long and how well people live. It also reflects social factors, since educated individuals usually have better jobs, which allow them to afford healthier diets and lifestyles, as well as better health care.

68. In this passage the author intends to_______.

A. encourage women to get higher education

B. present the results of a study.

C. analyze the relationship between education and life

D. discuss why women usually live longer than men

69. A wife’s education has more effect on a family than a husband’s because______.

A. women make more sacrifices to their families than men do

B. most women have higher degrees than their husbands

C. most men marry women with higher degrees

D. women have a leading role in the home life of most families

70. A woman with higher education is likely to_____.

A. choose a husband with a higher degree than hers.

B. marry a man without many bad habits

C. earn more money than her husband

D. teach her children well

71. We learn from the passage that_______.

A. a man with a lot of education live longer than one with little.

B. a man’s longevity depends on not only his wife’s level of education but also his own.

C. educated wives tend to choose healthy lifestyles for their families.

D. highly-educated women don’t marry uneducated men.

US universities are among the best in the world. Since World War Ⅱ, American scientists --- mostly working in universties or colleges --- have won more than half of all Nobel Prizes in physics and medicine. Foreign students rush to the United States by the tens of thousands. Last year they earned more than one quarter of the doctoral degrees awarded in the country. Yet while American universities produce the great research and great graduate program, they sometimes pay little attention to the task that lies at their very core: the teaching of undergraduate students.
With the increase in fees, educators feel obliged to improve undergraduate teaching. In speeches and interviews the nation’s higher educators have rediscovered teaching. Robert Rosenzweig, president of the Association of American Universities,  said,  “Our organization was never very concerned about teaching. In the last 18 months, we have spent more time on undergraduate education than on any other subject.”
Despite such promising efforts, no one doubts that research still outranks teaching at some of the leading universities, not least because it is a surer and faster way to earn status. Some people don’t think it has to be that way. They argue that the reward system for college faculty can be changed, so that professors will be encouraged to devote more time and effort to teaching. They say that they are beginning to believe that the first ten years of the 21st century may come to be remembered as the decade of the undergraduate.
That would bring it full circle. For more than two centuries after the founding of Harvard College in 1636, the instruction of undergraduate students was an essential condition of American higher education.
【小题1】According to the passage, at some of the leading American universities ________.

The two Chinese scientists have made a wonderful discovery, which marks a major _______ in the basic research in the field.

A. reform                             B. approach                         C. boundary                         D. breakthrough

Professor Li has earned a world ____ with his pioneer research in biochemistry.

A. name      B. reputation    C. influence         D. feature