For photographers lacking training, experience and even the ability to click a shutter button, they produce remarkable pictures.Under the sea, deep in the woods and high in the sky, furry, feathery and leathery-skinned creatures are opening up vistas(远景)by taking cameras where no human can go.

This is the world of animal-borne imagine celebrated last month at a conference sponsored(supported) by the National Geographic Society for the 20th anniversary of its Crittercam, the device that started it all.

Since its debut(首次公开露面)in 1987 on the back of a turtle, the Crittercam and similar devices developed by others have grown smaller and more powerful.

“It’s more than just a camera now,” said Greg Marshall, the marine biologist and now filmmaker who invented the Crittercam.“We are now including more instruments to gather more data while at the same time reducing everything in size.”

The idea of attaching video cameras to animals came to Mr.Marshall in 1986 on a dive off Belize when a shark apporached him.When the animal quickly turned away, he noticed a shark with a sucker fish on its belly.He came up with the idea that putting a camera in place of the sucker fish would allow people to witness the shark’s behavior without disturbing it.

Crittercams have been attached to sharks, sea lions and other marine animals, and, more recently, to land animals.

Birds are a new addition, Mr.Marshall said.Dr.Christian Rutz of Oxford recently reported on tiny cameras called feathercams that monitor the crows in the South Pacific.It has discovered that crows are smarter than anyone knew they not only use twigs(嫩枝)and grass stems as tools to root out food, but they also save their favorite tools to use again.

Tracey L.Rogers, director of the Australian Marine Mammal Research Center in Sydney, said crittercam was a powerful tool in her work with leopard seals(豹斑海豹)in Antarctica.“In studying animals,” Dr.Rogers said at the meeting, “you want to see how our animal models align(与……一致)with reality.With a camera, you actually see what they do.You don’t have to guess.”

What’s the text mainly about?

A.The advantages of crittercam.

B.The development of Crittercams in the past 20 years.

C.How crittercam was invented.

D.How crittercam works.

What inspired Marshall to invent crittercam?

A.The sight of sucker fish clinging to a shark on a dive.

B.The thought of how to photograph animals better.

C.Noticing a shark eating a sucker fish on a dive.

D.Seeing a shark with a camera on its belly on a dive.

According to Dr.Rogers, crittercam ____.

A.can clear up all your doubts about animals

B.is the most powerful tool in studying animals

C.enabled her to observe the crows in the South Pacific closely

D.helped a lot with her research on leopard seals in Antarctica

All of the following are improvements of crittercams EXCEPT that ____.

A.the size is becoming smaller

B.more instruments are involved to gather more data

C.they allow researchers to see where and how animals live

D.they are able to be applied to smaller animals such as birds

   Did you know that women’s brains are smaller than men’s? The average women’s brain weighs 10% less than men’s. Since research has shown that the bigger the brain, the cleverer the animal, men must be more intelligent(聪明的) than women. Right? Wrong. Men and women always score similarly on intelligence tests, despite the difference in brain size. Why? After years of study, researchers have concluded that it’s what’s inside that matters, not just the size of the brain. The brain consists of  “grey matter” and

It has been suggested that smaller brain appears to work faster, perhaps because the two sides of the brain are better connected in women. This means that little girls tend to learn to speak earlier, and that women can understand sorts of information from different sources at the same time. When it comes to talking to the boss on the phone, cooking dinner and keeping an eye on the baby all at the same time, it’s women who come out on top every time.

   There are other important differences between two sexes. As white matter is the key to spatial(空间的) tasks, men know better where things are in relation to other things. “A great footballer always knows where he is in relation to the other players, and he knows where to go,” says one researcher. That may explain one of life’s great mysteries: why men refuse to ask for directions … and women often need to!

   The differences begin when fetuses(胎儿) are about mine weeks old, which can be seen in the action of children ad young as one. A boy would try to climb a barrier (障碍物) before him or push it down while a girl would attract help from others. These brain differences also explain the fact that more men take up jobs that require good spatial skills, while more women speech skills. It may all go back to our ancestors(祖先) ,among whom women needed speech skills to take care of their babies and men needed spatial skills to hunt, according to one research.

   If all this disappoints you, it shouldn’t. “The brain changes throughout our lives according to what we do with it.” says a biologist.

Which of the following is true according to the first paragraph?

   A. Women’s brain is 10% less than men’s

   B. Grey matter plays the same role as white matter.

   C. Grey matter controls thinking in the brain.

   D. Both sexes have the same amount of white matter.

What can we infer from the second and third paragraphs?

   A. Women prefer doing many things at a time.

   B. Men do better dealing with one job at a time.   

   C. Women do not need to tell directions.

   D. Men have weaker spatial abilities.

Which of the following do you agree with according to the fourth paragraph?

   A. Young boys may be stronger than young girls.

   B. More women take up jobs requiring speech skills

   C. Women may have stronger feelings than men.

   D. Our ancestors needed more spatial skills.

What is the writer’s attitude in writing this passage?

A. Defensive.    B. Persuasive.    C. Supportive.   D. Objective.

 (09·湖南D篇)

Andrew Ritchie, inventor of the Brompton folding bicycle, once said that the perfect portable bike would be “like a magic carpet…You could fold it up and put it into your pocket or handbag”. Then he paused: “But you’ll always be limited by the size of the wheels. And so far no one has invented a folding wheel.”

It was a rare — indeed unique — occasion when I was able to put Ritchie right. A 19th-century inventor, William Henry James Grout, did in fact design a folding wheel. His bike, predictably named the Grout Portable, had a frame that split into two and a larger wheel that could be separated into four pieces. All the bits fitted into Grout’s Wonderful Bag, a leather case.

Grout’s aim: to solve the problems of carrying a bike on a train. Now doesn’t that sound familiar? Grout intended to find a way of making a bike small enough for train travel: his bike was a huge beast. And importantly, the design of early bicycles gave him an advantage: in Grout’s day, tyres were solid, which made the business of splitting a wheel into four separate parts relatively simple. You couldn’t do the same with a wheel fitted with a one-piece inflated (充气的) tyre.

So, in a 21st-century context, is the idea of the folding wheel dead? It is not. A British design engineer, Duncan Fitzsimons, has developed a wheel that can be squashed into something like a slender ellipse (椭圆). Throughout, the tyre remains inflated.

Will the young Fitzsimons’s folding wheel make it into production? I haven’t the foggiest idea. But his inventiveness shows two things. First, people have been saying for more than a century that bike design has reached its limit, except for gradual advances. It’s as silly a concept now as it was 100 years ago: there’s plenty still to go for. Second, it is in the field of folding bikes that we are seeing the most interesting inventions. You can buy a folding bike for less than £1,000 that can be knocked down so small that it can be carried on a plane — minus wheels, of course — as hand baggage.

Folding wheels would make all manner of things possible. Have we yet got the magic carpet of Andrew Ritchie’s imagination? No. But it’s progress.

69. We can infer from Paragraph 1 that the Brompton folding bike        .

A. was portable

B. had a folding wheel

C. could be put in a pocket

D. looked like a magic carpet

70. We can learn from the text that the wheels of the Grout Portable        .

A. were difficult to separate

B. could be split into 6 pieces

C. were fitted with solid tyres

D. were hard to carry on a train

71. We can learn from the text that Fitzsimons’s invention        .

A. kept the tyre as a whole piece

B. was made into production soon

C. left little room for improvement

D. changed our views on bag design

72. Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

A. Three folding bike inventors

B. The making of a folding bike

C. Progress in folding bike design

D. Ways of separating a bike wheel

When you’re an employee of a company, no matter the size, it’s common to see co-workers promoted, or transferred to a different department. But there is another way to move around—by creating a new position for yourself. I did this several years ago, though I wasn’t actively looking for a different job.

In 2007, I was hired at the Transamerica Life Insurance Company, as a customer service representative in the distributions services department. I processed requests for distributions from our annuity(养老金)policy holders around the country. Someone might have forgotten to sign a form, for example, or might have omitted security information. To solve the problem, I’d mail the person a letter.

The company had been through several combinations, so in our department alone we had a collection of about 140 templates(模板) for letters related to distributions. The longer I worked with the letters, the more I saw how they could be improved. Some had overlapping information and could be combined. Some had incorrect grammar or needed updating. I also noticed that industry terminology(专业术语) wasn’t standard across all the versions.

When I told my department supervisor about this in 2008, she agreed that the letters needed revamping. She said I should stop what I’d been doing and start the new work. In a relatively short time, I was able to make numerous improvements and reduce the number of letters to 70. It was an informal job change until a managers’ meeting several months later.

At that meeting, a vice president who was unaware of my new work mentioned that the division’s entire stock of 1,700 letters should be reviewed. My manager told her that she knew the perfect person for the job—me. The position was still considered temporary when I took on the extra tasks, but I was able to show that the work had value, and I was officially promoted and given a raise in November 2009.

1.According to Paragraph 1, which of the following statements is true?

A.The author admired those who got a promotion in his company.

B.It is no surprise to see people around us change their positions.

C.The author tried his best to get a promotion in his company

D.The author was eager to seek another job.

2.Which of the following problems with the letters is NOT mentioned in the passage?

A.Some information was overlooked.

B.Some information needed to be united.

C.Some had grammatical mistakes.

D.Industry terminology didn’t meet the standard.

3.The underlined word “revamping” in Paragraph 4 is closest in meaning to        .

A.repeating         B.rebuilding         C.improving         D.strengthening

4.The author started to review the letters when        .

A.he was hired by the company

B.he was promoted

C.he was recommended at a managers’ meeting

D.his department supervisor agreed his idea

5.Which of the following is the best title for the passage?

A.Where there is will, there is a way.

B.Creating a position, and earning a promotion.

C.Don’t let the chance go, when it comes.

D.Ways to get a promotion.

 

Bacteria(细菌) are extremely small living things. While we measure our own sizes in inches or centimeters, bacterial size is measured in micron. One micron is a thousandth of a millimeter; a pinhead is about a millimeter across, Rod-shaped bacteria are usually from two to four microns long, while rounded ones are generally one micron across. Thus, if you magnified a rounded bacterium a thousand times, it would be just the size of a pinhead, while a grown-up human enlarged by the same amount would be over a mile tall.

Even with an ordinary microscope(显微镜), you must look closely to see bacteria. Using a magnification of 100 times, one can hardly find bacteria. Nor can one make out anything of their structure(结构), of course. Only by using special colors, can one see that some bacteria have wavy-looking “hairs” called flagella. Others have only one flagellum. The flagella move round a central point, pushing the bacteria through the water. Many bacteria lack flagella and cannot move about by their own power, while others can move along over surface by some little-understood “machinery”.

From the bacterial point of view, the world is a very different place from what it is to humans. To a bacterium, water is as thick as molasses(糖浆) is to us. Bacteria are so small that they are affected by the movements of the chemical molecules(分子) around them. Bacteria under microscopes, even those with no flagella, often jump up and down in the water. This is because they knock with the water molecules and are pushed this way and that.

36. The underlined word magnified means _______________.

A. enlarged                                                      B. widened                  

C. killed                                                          D. caught

37. We know from the passage that _______________ is the smallest.

A. a pinhead                                            B. a rounded bacterium 

C. a microscope                                        D. a rod-shaped bacterium

38. The relationship between a bacterium and its flagella is most nearly like which of the following?

A. A rider jumping on a horse back 

B. A ball being hit by a bet

C. A boat powered by a motor    

D. A door closed by wind

39. Why does the writer compares water to molasses in the third paragraph?

A. To tell us how difficult it is for bacteria to move through water.

B. To suggest that bacteria are fond of different liquids.

C. To show different chemicals are of different structures.

D. To show that bacteria are the best swimmers.

40. Which of the following is the main topic of the passage?

A. The characteristic (特点) of bacteria.      

B. How bacteria reproduce.

C. The various parts of a bacterium’s body    

D. How bacteria cause diseases.            

 

违法和不良信息举报电话:027-86699610 举报邮箱:58377363@163.com

精英家教网