It's easy to imagine the Sahara as a lifeless and timeless place, where the merciless forces of nature rule over any sense of human history. However, that’s far from the truth. Some corners of the Western Sahara, found along the northwestern coast of Africa, are littered with hundreds of ancient stone monuments from centuries worth of human culture, some of which date back to over 10,000 years ago.
Between 2002 and 2009, the Western Sahara Project, led by the University of East Anglia in the UK, documented the archaeology(考古学) and environment of northwestern Sahara around the town of Tifariti. The monuments come in a variety of forms and were constructed by a number of different cultures across the centuries. Many appear to be little more than long rows of piled rocks, while others are purposefully placed large stones standing proudly in a circular pattern. Others are 5-meter-high (16 feet) dry stone wall constructions that could have only been built by human hands.
It’s unclear what most of the monuments are meant to represent, although most are assumed to be burial mounds(墓冢), used as part of a funerary ceremony, or sign at the presence of a grave. This desire to construct burial mounds is something that can be found in countless cultures across the planet, from the Scythians of ancient Siberia to the sea-faring Vikings of northern Europe, and it looks like the ancient people of Western Sahara were not different.
For one reason or another, this natural basin area managed to remain a place of human activity over the millennia, especially when times became tough in the surrounding areas. "One of our theories is that as the Sahara dried between five and six thousand years ago—this is one of the refugia(避难所), an area where water remained," Joanne Clarke, prehistoric archaeologist at the University of East Anglia, told Atlas Obscura.
1.How were the monuments constructed?
A.They are in different shapes.
B.They are piled up on one another.
C.They took about 500 years to complete.
D.Most of them are parallel to each other.
2.What will the researchers probably focus on about the monuments in future?
A.The way to build burial mounds.
B.The symbols of different monuments.
C.The original appearances of the monuments.
D.Their difference between the Sahara and other regions.
3.What does Joanne Clarke think of the Sahara in history?
A.It was the mere source of water in that area.
B.It used to be a shelter from sufferings for people.
C.People used to hold various activities in its honor.
D.It shouldn’t have dried five and six thousand years ago.
4.What can be the best title of the text?
A.The Sahara used to be a heaven for every culture.
B.The Sahara is really a lifeless and timeless place.
C.The burial bounds represent different cultures in the Sahara.
D.The Western Sahara is covered with mysterious ancient stone monuments.
It's hard to overstate the importance of rainforests in keeping the world a place we want to go on living in. Yet they are being cleared at a terrifying rate, in part because methods to check on their protection are failing. The Nature Conservancy think they have a solution by listening to the rainforests' voices, and researchers they have partnered with have published a paper in Science confirming its viability(可行性).
Forest monitors struggle to keep up with what is happening in areas that are large and remote from population centers. Satellite images can flag complete destruction, but they do a poor job of measuring when a forest's diversity is degraded. Researchers have started tying small, solar-powered sound recorders to trees, setting them to listen at regular intervals, particularly dawn and dusk when the rainforest is most alive. The recorders provide an indication(显示) of the animal sounds for hundreds of meters in all directions. This marks a major advance over camera traps, which of course only point in one direction and are blocked from seeing far.
Reviewing several studies on the workings of these, Dr. Zuzana Burivalova of Princeton University and co-authors report that these sound recorders supply an amount of information about the forests' true condition, far more than can be showed by other remote sensors. Moreover, it is far cheaper to visit an area once to put in a recorder than to stick around for larger measurements.
Burivalova and colleagues also note some less obvious advantages. Once the data is uploaded, it can be analyzed by anyone. Deep learning programs can be used to tie sounds to their makers. Calls can be assessed in many ways, revealing both the number of noisy animals in the recorders' vicinity(附近) and the diversity of species that make them. The authors call for "a global organization to host a global acoustic(声学) platform" to provide a massive database of rainforest sounds, allowing comparisons between healthy and degraded rainforests half a world apart.
1.What is the possible reason for the rainforests disappearing rapidly according to paragraph 1?
A.The climate changes have a bad effect on it.
B.People attach no importance to its protection.
C.Goods related to rainforests are popular among consumers.
D.There is a lack of good means to monitor its real condition.
2.What is the disadvantage of the Satellite images?
A.It cannot keep track of the wildlife in the forest.
B.It cannot predict the wildlife diversity with cameras.
C.It cannot figure out the wildlife diversity in the forest.
D.It cannot mark the disappearance of the rainforests clearly.
3.What can we learn from paragraph 3?
A.The forests' true condition is worse than expected.
B.The sound recorders are more efficient and reliable.
C.The remote sensors are far more effective than the sound recorders.
D.They need larger measurements to record the rainforest sounds.
4.What does the underlined word "them" in paragraph 4 refer to?
A.Animal calls. B.Obvious advantages.
C.Previous studies. D.Nearby recorders.
Like their ancient toga-wearing counterparts, modern philosophers continue to disagree on the nature of freewill. Do we really have any control over the choices we make and the things we desire, and if so, to what degree?
Theories of freewill vary, but the ancient words of Plato still line up with our modern perceptions(概念) of temptation and willpower. The respected Greek philosopher argued that the human experience is one of constant struggle between the intellect and the body, between rationality and desire. Along these lines, true freedom is only achievable when willpower unchains us from bodily, emotional, instinctual slavery.
You can find similar thoughts throughout world religions, most of which offer a particular and often difficult path to rise above our darker natures.
And science? Well, science mostly agrees with all of this. Willpower is all about overcoming your natural desires to eat cupcakes, skip your morning workout, play games on mobile phone, hit the snooze alarm and check your e-mail during a funeral.
Your willpower, however, is limited. If life were a video game, you'd see a glowing "willpower" or "ego"(自我) meter at the top of the screen next to your "life" meter. Successfully resist one temptation, and the meter drains a little. The next temptation drains the "willpower" meter even more, until there's nothing left at all.
Our modern scientific understanding of willpower in large part stems from a 1996 research experiment involving chocolate and radishes(小红萝卜). Psychologist Roy Baumeister led a study in which 67 test subjects were presented with tempting chocolate chip cookies and other chocolate-flavored treats before a persistence-testing puzzle. Here's the catch: The researchers asked some of the participants to withdraw from sweets and snack on radishes instead.
Baumeister's results told a fascinating story. The test subjects who resisted the sweet stuff in favor of radishes performed poorly on the persistence test. They simply didn't have the willpower left to resist slacking off(松懈).
The research inspired more than a thousand additional studies discussing everything from the influence of positive messages to the ego-sapping power of daily decisions.
Studies also show that cognitive capacity also affects our ability to hold out against temptation. Cognitive capacity is essentially your working memory, which you employ when resisting a temptation ... or holding a string of numbers in your head. A 1999 study from the University of Iowa professor Baba Shiv found that people tasked with remembering a two-digit number held out better than people remembering a seven-digit number when tempted with chocolate cake.
1.What do you understand by ‘freewill’?
A.The control we have over the choices.
B.The choices we make and the things we desire.
C.The choices that philosophers force us to make.
D.Our perception of temptation.
2.According to Plato, when is true freedom available?
A.Willpower to realize one’s own ego. B.Our ability to overcome temptation.
C.Our ability to remember things. D.The desire to give in to temptation.
3.What is meant by ‘cognitive capacity’?
A.When there is a struggle between the intellect and the body.
B.When our willpower helps us to overcome our basic instincts.
C.When we desire that which we cannot achieve.
D.When we have no control over our ego.
假定你是李华，你的英国朋友Terry一行人要来你市体验元宵节，他请你帮他们预订酒店，请你给他回一封电子邮件。要点如下：
1. 表示欢迎；
2. 询问到达时间；
3. 询问具体要求（价位、房间数等）。
注意：
1. 词数100左右；
2. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
参考词汇：元宵节the Lantern Festival
Dear Terry,
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours sincerely
Li Hua
假定英语课上老师要求同桌之间交换修改作文，请你修改你同桌写的以下作文。文中共有10处语言错误，每句中最多有两处。每处错误仅涉及一个单词的增加、删除或修改。
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号（∧），并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线（\）划掉。
修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1. 每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；
2. 只允许修改10处，多者（从第11处起）不计分。
Our school has witnessed quite a few change in the past few years. There used to being a playground on the one side of the main road. However, now that you can see is a new classroom building, so the playground is now in the front of the school. On the other side stood a new building—our library. Most of we students like to study in the library partly because its quiet learning environment is beneficial with our study. Another reason is that there is a large number of learning materials in the library that offer us a great deal of information. I think our school becomes beautiful than ever before.
根据句意及汉语提示，用单词的正确形式填空。
1.I will meet you at the main ________ (入口) to the school.
2.Would it be ________ (方便的) for you to pick me up at four o’clock and take me to the airport?
3.If you are lost in the mountains, stay ________ (镇静) in the face of darkness and the unknown.
4.Out of ________ (好奇心), he opened the letter secretly.
5.I would be ________ (感激的) if you could give me a kind consideration.
