Scientists have always been interested in the high level of organization in ant societies. American researchers have watched ants build life-saving rafts to keep afloat during floods. They also have recorded how ants choose their next queen — the female whose job is to produce eggs.
New technology is helping to improve researchers’ understanding of the insects. But there is still a lot to be learned.
Fire ants living in Brazilian forests are perfectly at home in an environment where flooding is common. To save themselves, the insects connect their legs together and create floating rafts. Some ant rafts can be up to 20 centimeters wide.
David Hu is an engineer with the Georgia Institute of Technology, also known as Georgia Tech, saying, "If you have 100 ants, which means 600 legs, 99 percent of those legs will be connected to a neighbor. So they’re very, very good at keeping this network."
David Hu and other Georgia Tech researchers wanted to study ants and the secret of their engineering. They froze ant rafts and then looked at them with the help of computed technology, or CT images. The pictures showed that larger ants serve in central positions to which smaller ants hold. The larger ants create pockets of air that keep the insects afloat.
Scientists say small robots or materials that can change shape could be programmed in a similar way, working towards a shared goal.
Researchers at North Carolina State University are also studying ants. They examined how Indian jumping ants choose the leader of the colony when they lose their top female or queen.
1.The author takes fire ants as an example to tell us ________.
A. how ants survive B. how ants seek food
C. how ants communicate D. how ants live together
2.What can we know from what David Hu said in paragraph 4?
A. Ants know the way to keep in touch in the river.
B. Ants know the way to join together closely.
C. Ants know the way to look for each other.
D. Ants know the way to build a large raft.
3.Why did the larger ants serve in central positions in their ant rafts?
A. To stress their importance. B. To help all the ants float.
C. To fight against the enemies. D. To defend their top female.
4.What ideas do the ants give us according to the passage?
A. We can use similar-shaped machines in flooding areas.
B. We can combine small robots or materials into larger ones.
C. Small and shape-changeable things might work just like ants do.
D. Small robots or materials in the shape of ants can be made.
One day when I was 12, my mother gave me an order: I was to walk to the public library, and borrow at least one book for the summer. This was one more weapon for her to defeat my strange problem—inability to read.
In the library, I found my way into the “Children’s Room”. I sat down on the floor and pulled a few books off the shelf at random. The cover of a book caught my eye. It presented a picture of a beagle. I had recently had a beagle, the first and only animal companion I ever had as a child. He was my “secret sharer”, but one morning, he was gone, given away to someone who had the space and the money to care for him. I never forgot my beagle.
There on the book’s cover was a beagle which looked identical(相同的) to my dog. I ran my fingers over the picture of the dog on the cover. My eyes ran across the title, Amos: the Beagle with a Plan. Unknowingly, I had read the title. Without opening the book, I borrowed it from the library for the summer.
Under the shade of a brush, I started to read about Amos. I read very, very slowly with difficulty. Though pages were turned slowly, I got the main idea of the story about a dog who, like mine, had been separated from his family and who finally found his way back home. That dog was my dog, and I was the little boy in the book. At the end of the story, my mind continued the final scene of reunion, on and on, until my own lost dog and I were, in my mind, running together
My mother’s call returned me to the real world. I suddenly realized something: I had read a book, and I had loved reading that book. Everyone knew I could not read. But I had read it. Books could be incredibly wonderful and I was going to read them.
I never told my mother about my “miraculous(奇迹)” experience that summer, but she saw a slow but remarkable improvement in my classroom performance during the next year. And years later, she was proud that her son had read thousands of books, was awarded a PhD in literature, and authored his own books, articles, poetry and fiction. The power of the words has held.
1.The author’s mother told him to borrow a book in order to ________.
A. encourage him to do more walking B. let him spend a meaningful summer
C. help cure him of his reading problem D. make him learn more about weapons
2.The book caught the author’s eye because________.
A. it reminded him of his own dog
B. he found its title easy to understand
C. it contained pretty pictures of animals
D. he liked children’s stories very much
3.Why could the author manage to read the book through?
A. He was forced by his mother to read it.
B. He identified with（对某事有同感） the story in the book.
C. The book told the story of his pet dog.
D. The happy ending of the story attracted him.
4.Which one could be the best title of the passage?
A. My Passion for Reading B. Mum’s Strict Order
C. Reunion with My Beagle. D. The Charm of a Book.
Incredible Women You Didn't Learn About in History Class
Here are the stories of women you may not know about, but definitely should
◆Maria Sibylla Merian
Born in Germany in 1647, Merian was fascinated by insects, and she began collecting, studying, and drawing them when she was as young as 13. She was one of the few naturalists of her time to actually study live insects. It was through her study of caterpillars(毛毛虫) that she discovered the truth about their life cycles. Her work provided major contributions to the field of entomology（昆虫学）。
◆ Murasaki Shikibu
Murasaki Shikibu, a Japanese woman, was widely considered to be the world’s first novelist. She was a noble woman living in Japan around the year 1000 AD. She wrote a two-part novel called The Tale of Genji, which tells a riches-to-rags story about the son of a Japanese emperor forced to live as a common man. The Tale of Genji is widely considered to be a masterpiece of Japanese literature.
◆ Ada Lovelace
Ada was working to design early computing machines that she hoped would be able to quickly solve math problems. In addition to designing this early computer program, she also was first to suggest that these computers might be able to do more than, well, calculate. She imagined them doing everything, from producing images to composing music.
◆ Lucy Stone
Born in 1818, Stone married a fellow activist and changed her name, but decided to change it back a year later. She held the belief that "a wife should no more take her husband's name than hers." She became the first American married woman to keep her maiden name for her entire life. Stone was also one of the founding members of the American Equal Rights Association and fought for the ending of slavery.
1.What can readers learn about from The Tale of Genji?
A.Ancient Japanese culture.
B.Development of computer.
C.Research on living things.
D.Modern life of Japanese women.
2.What do Maria Sibylla Merian and Ada Lovelace have in common?
A.They were pioneers in computer.
B.They devoted themselves to science.
C.They created masterpieces of literature.
D.They made progress in studying Insects
3.Which of the following women fought for human rights?
A.Lucy Stone B.Ada Lovelace
C.Murasaki Shikibu D.Maria Sibylla Merlan
假设你是李华。你校学生会要招募一名英语导游，陪同今年寒假期间即将 来校访问的美国学生参观滨海新区。请你根据下列提示向你校负责招募工作的外 教Mr. Johnson用英语写一封自荐信。
(1)爱好英语，口语表达能力强，曾在学校举办的英语演讲比赛中获奖；
(2)性格开朗，善于与人沟通，责任心强；
(3)滨海新区出生，熟悉本地区的历史、文化。
注意：(1)词数:不少于100词；
(2)可适当加入细节，使内容充实，行文连贯：
(3)信的开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
参考词汇：英语演讲比赛the English Speech Contest
滨海新区 Binhai New Area
Dear Mr. Johnson,
I'm writing to apply for the English-speaking guide in this winter vacation.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Looking forward to your earliest reply.
Yours,
Li Hua
阅读短文，并按照题目要求用英语回答问题。
As a child growing up, I have very few memories of the times when we gathered as a family to sit down and eat dinner together. I grew up in a home where both of my parents worked. My mother taught school, and my father worked during the night at a local chemical plant. There was not much time available for us to sit down to eat dinner together due to my parents' conflicting work schedules and the extracurricular activities in which my sister and I participated.
It wasn't until I got married and had two children of my own that I began to realize the importance of eating dinner together. In my family there are elements that take us away from each other, day in and day out, but as a mother I feel it is my responsibility to bring us all back together again at the end of the day. In my house, dinner time is a time of thanks. I give thanks for the food we share, but I am more thankful for the family I share it with. Dinner time is a time for us to share our day, and reflect on our thoughts. It is also a time when we learn about honesty, perseverance, courage, sympathy and friendship. Above all it is a time when my family are able to connect with the ones they love.
As I look at the bread basket which sits on my kitchen table, I am reminded of how the basket's tight weave resembles the tightly woven strands （线）of my family. I believe that through our family dinner, we will not only pass around the meat and potatoes, but we will also hand round virtues that will shape and mold （塑造）us so that we can forever embrace one another just as the basket embraces the bread.
1.Why couldn't the author's family eat dinner together when she was young?(No more than 15 words)
2.What does the underlined word “it” in Paragraph 2 refer to?(No more than 2 words)
3.What does the author think the dinner time actually is for her family?(No more than 10 words)
4.What is the author's purpose in writing the passage?(No more than 15 words)
5.What do you think of eating dinner together with your family? Please give your reason.(No more than 25 words)
We walk, talk and sleep with our phones. But are we more — or less-connected? Just as remarkable as the power of mobility, over everything from love to global development, is how fast it all happened. It is hard to think of any tool, any instrument, any object in history with which so many developed so close a relationship so quickly as we have with our phones. Not the knife or match, the pen or page. Only money comes close—always at hand, don't leave home without it. But most of us don't take a wallet to bed with us. don't reach for it and check it every few minutes, and however useful money is in pursuit of fame, romance, revolution, it is inert compared with a smart phone — which can replace your wallet now anyway.
So how do we feel about this? To better understand attitudes about mass mobility, Time, in cooperation with Qualcomm, started the Time Mobility Poll, a survey of close to 5,000 people of all age groups and income levels in eight countries. Even the best survey can be only a snapshot in time, but this is revealing a lot about both where we are now and where the mobile wave is taking us next.
Not for a day — in most cases not even for an hour. In Time's Poll, 1 in 4 people check it every 30 minutes, 1 in 5 every 10 minutes. A third of respondents admitted that being without their mobile for even short periods leaves them feeling anxious. It is a form of sustenance, that constant feed of news and notes and nonsense, to be the point that twice as many people would pick their phones over their lunch if forced to choose. Three-quarters of 25-to 29-year-olds sleep with their phones.
Americans are grateful for the connection and convenience their phones provide, helping them search for a lower price, navigate a strange city, expand a customer base or track their health and finances, their family and friends. But in some ways Americans are still ambivalent （矛盾的）; more than 9 in 10 Brazilians and Indians agreed that being constantly connected is mostly a good thing. America's 76% was actually the lowest score.
1.What can have a comparison with phones?
A.A pen. B.A knife.
C.A match. D.Money.
2.It can be inferred that a smart phone can also have the function of ______
A.paying bills. B.helping sleep.
C.pursuit money. D.cutting things.
3.Why did Time start the Time Mobility Poll?
A.Because it wanted to cooperate with Qualcomm.
B.Because it wanted to know where the mobile wave was taking us.
C.Because it wanted to learn people's attitudes to mass mobility
D.Because it wanted to know how well the mobile wave went.
4.What does Paragraph 3 mainly tell us?
A.Mobile phones have become a tool to sleep with.
B.Mobile phones have become a way to get news.
C.Mobile phones have become a tool to order food.
D.Mobile phones have become a must in daily life.
5.According to the passage. Americans are less ______.
A.likely to show appreciation to their phones.
B.constantly connected than Indians.
C.likely to search for a lower price.
D.likely to find ways in a strange city.
