阅读下面材料，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。
Agricultural experts say crop diversity is important to feed the1.(increase) population of our planet. They say having a large variety of plants also2.(help) to protect against possible crop diseases and future crises. But many experts say the number has decreased sharply during the past century.
One of the world's 3.(large) seed conservation projects has predicted further losses. The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership is warning that up to one hundred thousand plant species could 4. (permanent) disappear. The rich collection of genes5. decide their qualities would disappear with them.
Many experts blame climate change and loss of habitat, normal growth area, for damaging plant life. They say human6.(activity) and poorly planned, overly heavy use of land also are responsible. Modern business farming is responsible7.loss of farmers' traditional crop varieties. The "Green Revolution" of the twentieth century changed agriculture. Some experts say the use of modern commercial farming methods saved millions of people from8.(starve). Farmers planted, watered, and fertilized their crops with the help of machines. They treated their fields with chemicals9.(control) diseases and insects. Harvests grew larger and higher quality,10. another result was that some traditional crops were lost. Damage to the environment over the past century makes people believe that crop diversity also suffered.
As is known to all, most stories of kindness do not begin with formerly drug-addicted celebrity (名人) bad boys. Mine does.
When this ___took place, I was accompanying my grandmother at a huge garden party. Suddenly, Robert Downey Jr., in a nice cream-colored suit, came in. I pointed out this big movie star to Grandma ____, but she was far more interested in piling her paper plate with cheese.
As my 80-year-old grandmother rose for the _______after the party, she fell into a wheelchair ramp (坡道) nearby. The sharp ramp ______her leg open and it was bleeding.
I should have quickly taken control of the situation— but due to my blood faint, I didn’t. Luckily, Robert Downey Jr. _______.
He called an ambulance immediately, and asked someone to ____a blanket. He took off his suit and _____his suit around her leg. The cream color turned dark red. Robert surely knew how to speak to her, _____, distract her. He stayed with my grandmother until the ambulance came, _____her hand and telling her she was breaking his heart by leaving so early. I hurried into the ambulance without a word, feeling too shy to thank him.
Some 15 years after that garden party, and five years since he’d been set free from prison for possession of drugs in his car, I came across Robert in a fancy restaurant. I was ____to respect people’s privacy and never ______someone having a meal. But on this day, I decided to _______the code.
“I don’t have any ____if you remember this...” and I told him the story. “I just wanted to tell you that it was simply the kindest act I’ve ever ______.”
It’s never too late to express our appreciation for kindness which lies in everyone, even a celebrity bad boy. ______, appreciation itself is a sort of kindness.
1.A.party B.kindness C.accident D.story
2.A.excitedly B.surprisingly C.fortunately D.successfully
3.A.garden B.wheelchair C.star D.exit
4.A.tore B.broke C.cut D.pushed
5.A.got across B.turned up C.got ready D.calmed down
6.A.buy B.rent C.lend D.fetch
7.A.tied B.covered C.placed D.pulled
8.A.instead B.for example C.otherwise D.or rather
9.A.shaking B.waving C.holding D.pressing
10.A.persuaded B.born C.raised D.forced
11.A.bother B.talk to C.stare at D.upset
12.A.abandon B.set C.follow D.improve
13.A.idea B.trouble C.doubt D.interest
14.A.called for B.witnessed C.heard of D.performed
15.A.However B.After all C.Therefore D.On the contrary
A memorable science project
If someone tells you to remember a phone number or address, it feels like an easy task at first. You repeat the numbers to yourself, either aloud or in your mind. But after just a few seconds you might find yourself starting to doubt your own memory. 1. Thus, it will try to throw away information that seems old or irrelevant. There are ways of helping our minds retain (记住) information, however, and in this activity you will explore ways that we lose and keep memories
Short-term, or working memory, is a way of describing most people’s abilities to store a small amount of information for a brief period of time in a readily accessible form 2. People don’t have to stop and think to remember something in short term memory.
3. Such techniques include visualizing (观察) the information in a surprising way or linking pieces of information together so that one reminds you of the other. In the case of visualizing information, this could be as simple as remembering you parked your car on the fifth floor in the D section by picturing five dogs sitting in your car! 4. If you need to purchase cereal (谷物), milk, fruit, cheese and eggs, you could imagine the cereal in a bowl, with milk pouring over it and pieces of fruit on top. Then imagine cracking an egg over everything, and it’s full of melted cheese! These may seem simple or even silly. 5. In this activity you’ll test the recall of a few friends or family members, and learn a few tricks for improving memory!
A. There are many techniques for improving memory.
B. Our brain is always seeking new and useful information.
C. Short-term memory has a short duration but is quickly and easily accessed.
D. In addition, linking information could help you remember your grocery list.
E. Retaining that information over longer periods of time becomes difficult yet.
F. Your short-term memory has a limited amount of space to store information.
G. However, they are proved to be good ways for improving memory by scientist.
For grown-ups, an afternoon snooze (打盹) is often easier said than done. But many of us have probably experienced just how simple it can be to catch some sleep in a gently rocking hammock (吊床). By examining brain waves in sleeping adults, researchers reported in the June 21 issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, that they now have evidence to explain why that is.
“It is a common belief that rocking causes sleep: we fall asleep in a rocking chair soon and, since ancient times, we cradle our babies to sleep,” said Sophie Schwartz of the University of Geneva. “Yet, how this works had remained a mystery. The goal of our study was made up of two parts: to test whether rocking does indeed improve sleep, and to understand how this might work at the brain level.”
Schwartz, Michel Mühlethaler, and their colleagues Laurence Bayer and Irina Constantinescu asked twelve adult volunteers to nap on a custommade bed or “experimental hammock” that could either remain still or rock gently. All participants were good sleepers who didn’t typically nap and did not suffer from excessive sleepiness during the day. Each participant took two 45•minute afternoon naps, one with the bed still and one with the bed in motion, while their brain activity was monitored.
“We observed a faster transition to sleep in each and every subject in the swinging condition,” Mühlethaler said. “Surprisingly, we also observed a dramatic boosting of certain types of sleeprelated brain waves.”
More specifically, rocking increased the length of stage N2 sleep, a form of non•rapid eye movement sleep that normally occupies about half of a good night’s sleep. The rocking bed also had a lasting effect on brain activity, increasing slow brain waves and bursts of activity known as sleep spindles (纺锤体).
Schwartz and Mühlethaler say the next step is to find out whether rocking can improve longer periods of sleep and to find out whether it may be useful for the treatment of sleep disorders, such as insomnia (失眠).
1.What does the June 21 issue of Current Biology tell us according to Paragraph 1?
A.It is more difficult for grown•ups to fall asleep.
B.People today like to sleep in a rocking hammock.
C.Many people nowadays suffer from excessive sleepiness.
D.There comes the evidence for why rocking benefits people’s sleep.
2.What can we learn from Sophie Schwartz’s words?
A.Her team aimed to answer two questions.
B.The study is going to benefit babies a lot.
C.The study had been kept secret before being finished.
D.People used to believe rocking was bad for sleep.
3.What finding was beyond the researchers’ expectation?
A.The rocking seemed to improve participants’ sleep quality.
B.All the participants fell asleep faster in the swinging condition.
C.Some participants couldn’t fall asleep in the swinging condition.
D.Participants had a tendency to sleep excessively in the swinging bed.
4.What is the best title?
A.Take a Snooze Easier Said than Done
B.Want a Faster Sleep? Change Your Sleeping Habits
C.Need a Nap? Find Yourself a Hammock
D.Suffer from Sleep Disorder? New Treatment Found
This season, the bushfires in Australia have burned more than 12.35 million acres of land. At least 25 people have been killed and 2000 homes destroyed. According to the BBC, this is the most casualties(伤亡) from wildfires in the country since 2009. The University of Sydney estimates that 480 million animals have died in South Wales alone.
Zeke Hausfather, an energy systems analyst and climate researcher at Berkeley Earth, said warmer temperatures and extreme weather have made Australia more susceptible to fires and increased the length of the fire season. “The drier conditions combined with record high temperatures in 2019 created main conditions for the disastrous fires. Australia’s fires were worsened by the combination of those two. 2019 was the perfect storm for being the warmest year on record for Australia and the driest year on record for Australia,” Hausfather added on Friday.
Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, said warmer ocean temperatures are also contributed to more variable weather around the world. Trenberth believes that global warming contributed to energy imbalances and hot spots in the oceans, which can create a wave in the atmosphere that locks weather patterns in places, causing longer rain events in Indonesia, for example, and at the same time contributing to drought in Australia. He said that once an area experiences drought conditions for two months or more, it increases the risk of fires catching and spreading. Those changing weather patterns due to global warming make drought events longer.
Climate experts stress that climate change is not the only factor in the severity of wildfires. How land is managed can also impact the amount of fuel available for fires. Practices like controlled burns and other factors can impact the risk to people and property, such as warning systems and the type of development in a given area. Changing those policies has great potential to limit future damage from wildfires along with changes to how fire management resources are dispatched(派遣).
1.What do the numbers in paragraph 1 show?
A.The causes of Australian fires.
B.The results of Australian fires.
C.The damaged areas of Australian fires.
D.The property destruction of Australian fires.
2.Which of the following best explains “more susceptible to” underlined in the second paragraph?
A.Quick to adapt to. B.Sure to cause.
C.Sensitive to. D.Easy to be protected from.
3.What can we infer from Trenberth's research?
A.Global warming is the root cause of the bushfires.
B.Longer dry weather contributes to global warming.
C.Warmer ocean temperatures promote fires spreading.
D.The imbalanced energy leads to the temperature rising.
4.What does the author intend to do in the last paragraph?
A.To stress the effects of Australia fires.
B.To show the methods for controlling burns.
C.To predict the seriousness of Australia fires.
D.To provide some advice about reducing damage.
It was the small hours of the morning when we reached London Airport. I had cabled London from Amsterdam, and there was a hired car to meet, but there was one more unfortunate happening before I reached my flat. In all my travels I have never, but for that once, been required by the British customs to open a single bag or to do more than state that I carried no goods liable to duty. It was, of course, my fault; the extreme tiredness and nervous tension of the journey had destroyed my diplomacy (外交). I was, for whichever reason, so tired that I could hardly stand, and to the question, “have you read this?” I replied with extreme foolishness, “yes, hundreds of times.”
“And you have nothing to declare?” “Nothing.”
“How long have you been out of this country?” “About three months.”
“And during that time you have acquired nothing?” “Nothing but what is on the list I have given you.”
He seemed momentarily at a loss, but then he attacked. The attack, when it came, was utterly unexpected. “Where did you get that watch?’
I could have kicked myself. Two days before, when playing water games with a friend in the bath, I had forgotten to take off my ROLEX, and it had, not unnaturally, stopped. I had gone into the market and bought, for twelve shillings and six pence, an ugly time piece that made a strange noise. It had stopped twice, without any reason, during the journey.
I explained, but I had already lost face. I produced my own watch from a pocket, and added that I should be grateful if he would confiscate (没收) the replacement.
“It is not a question of confiscation,” he said, “there is a fine for failing to declare dutiable goods. And now may I please examine that Rolex?”
It took another quarter of an hour to persuade him that the Rolex was not contraband (走私货). Just when I let out a sigh of relief, he began to search my luggage!
1.When did the writer arrive at London Airport?
A.In the early morning. B.Late at night.
C.At noon. D.Late in the morning.
2.What can we conclude from the questions asked by the customs officer?
A.He was just doing his duty by asking the passenger some usual questions.
B.He must have noticed the writer's ugly watch.
C.He wanted to embarrass the writer.
D.He must have noticed the writer's tiredness.
3.What did the writer think of the watch he bought in the market?
A.He was fond of the watch because it was a Rolex.
B.He found the watch useful though it was very cheap.
C.He didn't like the watch at all.
D.He was interested in the watch.
4.After reading the story we can infer that the writer ______.
A.knew little about the customs regulations
B.spent a long time at the customs but was not fined
C.was punished because of carrying many contraband goods
D.must have failed in catching the hired car
