Watching bison up close is fascinating, like watching a grass fire about to leap out of control. With their huge, wedge-shaped heads and silver-dollar-size brown eyes, the 2,000-pound animals are symbols of another place and time. More than 100 bison now roam the 30,000-acre American Prairie Reserve in eastern Montana — the first time they’ve inhabited that region in a century. Direct descendants of the tens of millions of bison that once populated the Western plains, they represent an epic effort: to restore a piece of America’s prairie to the national grandeur that Lewis and Clark extolled two centuries ago. During that famous expedition across the Western states to the Pacific, the two explorers encountered so many bison that they had to wait hours for one herd to pass.
In order to protect what’s here and reintroduce long-gone wildlife (something the World Wildlife Fund is helping with), the American Prairie Foundation began purchasing land from local ranchers in 2004. It now owns 30,000 acres and has grazing privileges on another 57,000. Its goal over the next 25 years is to assemble three million acres, the largest area of land devoted to wildlife management in the continental United States.
Already, herds of elk, deer, and pronghorn antelope roam the grasslands, where visitors can camp, hike, and bike. Cottonwoods and willows are thriving along streams, creating habitats for bobcats, beavers, and other animals.
Not everyone shares APF’s vision. Some residents of Phillips County (pop. 3,904) worry that the area could become a prairie Disneyland, overcrowded with tourists. But the biggest obstacle is the ranchers themselves, whose cattle compete with prairie dogs and bison for grass and space.
“People like me have no intention of selling their ranches,” says Dale Veseth, who heads the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance of 35 families in Phillips County and whose family has been ranching here since 1886. “They’ve been a labor of love through the generations.” Instead, he wants APF to pay or subsidize ranchers to raise bison. This would be far less costly for the foundation, he argues, than buying the land directly.
【小题1】If you go to the American Prairie Reserve in eastern Montana, you will see ________.

Still waiting for little green men to make contact? Don't hold your breath.
A leading astronomer has concluded there probably aren't any aliens out there – meaning we are absolutely alone in the universe.
Even though there may be tens of thousands of other distant planets similar in size to Earth, the conditions on them are likely to be too hard to support life-forms such as ET.
Dr Howard Smith, a senior astrophysicist at Harvard University, believes there is very little hope of discovering aliens and, even if we did, it would be almost impossible to make contact.
So far astronomers have discovered a total of 500 planets in distant solar systems – known as extrasolar systems – although they believe billions of others exist.
But Dr Smith points out that many of these planets are either too close to the sun or too far away, meaning their surface temperatures are so bad that they could not support life. Others have unusual orbits which cause vast temperature variations, making it impossible for water to exist – the most important thing for life.
Dr Smith said, "We have found that most other planets and solar systems are wildly different from our own. It means it is highly unlikely there are any planets with intelligent life close enough for us to make contact." But his suggestions contradict other leading scientists who have claimed aliens almost certainly exist.
Only last month Professor Stephen Hawking said the fact that there are billions of galaxies out there made it reasonable to think there were other life-forms in the universe.
Researchers from the University of London have recently suggested that aliens could be living on as many as 40,000 other planets. But Dr Smith said: "Any hope of contact has to be limited to a relatively tiny space around the Earth, reaching maybe 1,250 light years out from our planet, where aliens might be able to pick up our signals or send us their own. But communicating would still take decades or centuries."
【小题1】By saying ＂don’t hold your breath＂, the author advised the reader not to _____.

Thousands of people have been killed in a massive(大规模的) earthquake in Japan. The quake -- the most powerful to hit Japan in more than 100 years -- caused massive damage and many people are missing and feared dead.
The 8.9 magnitude quake struck Friday(March 11) off Japan's eastern coast, and prompted(引发) tsunami warnings（海啸警报）across the Pacific as far away as South America and the U.S. West Coast. Several days after a 8.9-magnitude earthquake and resulting 10-meter-high tsunami devastated the coastline. The United States Geological Survey says it was the fifth largest earthquake since 1900. The largest, with a 9.5 magnitude, shook Chile(智利) in 1960.
　　In Japan, the tsunami swept away boats, cars and hundreds of houses in coastal areas north of Tokyo. The quake shook buildings in the Japanese capital and caused several fires. All train and subway traffic in Tokyo has been stopped, and thousands of people there were unable to get back home. People are just trying to find clean water. Food supplies are running out. In the convenience stores, there are no rice balls left. There is no bottled water left. People are facing a really serious situation in the days ahead for these people that are living in areas that were only moderately（普通的） damaged. The final death toll could range from the thousands to tens of thousands, depending on how many of these communities are gone.
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the government would do everything it can to minimize（使降到最低） the effects of the disaster. And in Washington, President Obama said the United States is ready to help the people of Japan.
【小题1】The underline word damage means_____________ in the article.

Tens of thousands of Chinese have joined a debate (辩论) on whether students should be separated into science（理科） and liberal arts（文科）classes in high school, a practice that allows them to stay competitive in college entrance exam by choosing preferred subjects. The debate came after the Ministry of Education began to ask for opinions from the public on Friday on whether it was necessary and possible to stop the dividing system, which has been accepted for decades.
In a survey started by www. qq. com, more than 260 000 people cast their votes, with 54 percent of those voted for the abolishment (废除)and 40 percent against.
A netizen from Chengdu said: “Sciences can activate the mind, while arts could strengthen their learning ability.”
But some people disagreed with him. A netizen nicknamed “gentle scholar” said the students would have more burden if they have more subjects to study. “You don’t even know how difficult the courses are. I suggest a survey among students.”
“Abolish the current system of division? We have to study nine subjects? Finally we will study everything and have learnt little,” wrote another netizen.
Li Yanling, an education expert in Beijing, called on education authorities to consider students’ school burden.
Chinese students are required to choose either arts or science subjects after ten years’ education, which include six years in primary school, three years in junior high school and one year in senior high school.
Besides the Chinese language, mathematics and English, which are must for everyone, science students are required to take physics, biology and chemistry, while arts students study politics, history and geography. Zxxk
【小题1】Choosing preferred subjects can help students __________.

Some fish form huge schools. Could fish set up schools and teach their children how to survive in the ocean? You may ask. No. Here the “schools” are not the places where you study. They are fish shoals (鱼群) that cover tens of kilometers. What causes hundreds of millions of fish to gather and move together is one of biology’s mysteries.
Darkness appears to be the first step to the creation of shoals, according to a study published in the March 27 journal Science. A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and five other institutions studied Atlantic herring (鲱鱼), which forms shoals on a fishing ground off Massachusetts. They used an underwater imaging technology and fish-finding sonar (声纳) to observe the herring over several days in autumn when they spawn (产卵).
They found that, as the sun set, fish in scattered (分散的) groups began swimming much closer to one another than they normally do. When the number of fish reached a certain point in an area, this set off a chain reaction of similar behavior that spread like a sound wave through the water.
The herring’s movement seemed to be started by sunset. The team didn’t record the breakup of these shoals, but a previous study suggested that as the sun rose, the shoals fell apart.
“When the light fades (逐渐消失), it’s safer for the fish to move away from the seabed,” says Nicholas Makris, a professor at MIT who led the research. “Once they have a certain number of other fish, they suddenly come together - forming a shoal covering tens of kilometers within tens of minutes.”
Herring form shoals to migrate during the autumn spawning season. Some shoals were 40 km across and 30 m from top to bottom. They formed in deep water and moved into more shallow waters to spawn.
Forming shoals helps protect them from predators (掠食者) by giving them simple strength in numbers. The ordered movement of the shoal means the fish can reach their spawning ground more quickly and more safely.
Scientists have never before gathered information on so many animals acting together. Understanding these herring shoals could lead to more ideas about what causes animals to move in schools, says Iain Couzin, a biologist at Princeton University, US.
1. Which school in the following expressions is used the same way as the underlined one in the first paragraph?
A. schools of thoughts       B. school a horse   C. a school of whales       D. a medical school
2. Which of the following statements is true?
A. There are more large shoals of herring at night than in the daytime.
B. The research on Atlantic herring was conducted independently by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
C. The larger the shoal of herring is, the more slowly it moves.
D. Scientists have found out the reason why fish gather and move together in huge shoals.
3. According to the research, herring tend to get together except ______.
A.when there are predators around  B. when they spawn C. when the sun sets  D. when the sun rises
4. What seems to be the main reason for herring to gather and move together?
A. To avoid the darkness.
B. To keep other kinds of fish out of their spawning ground.
C. To spawn in the shallow waters.
D. To make themselves feel safe.