The government of Norway is planning to build an unusual storage center on an island in the Arctic Ocean. The place would be large enough to hold about two million seeds. The goal is to present all crops known to scientists. The British magazine New Scientist published details of the plan last month. The structure will be designed to protect the world’s food supply against nuclear war, climate change and other possible threats. It will be built in a mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. The mountain is less than one thousand kilometers from the North Pole, the northernmost position on earth.

     An international group called the Global Crop Diversity Trust is working on the project. The director of the group, Cary Fowler, spoke to New Scientist. He said the project would let the world rebuild agriculture if, in his word, “the worst came to the worst”. Norway is expected to start work next year. The project is expected to cost three million dollars. Workers will drill（钻孔） deep in the side of a sandstone mountain. Temperatures in the area never rise above 0ºC. The seeds will be protected behind walls a meter thick and high-security door.

     The magazine report says the collection will represent the products of ten thousand years of farming. Most of the seeds at first will e from collections at seed banks in Africa, Asia and Latin America. To last a long time, seeds need to be kept in very low temperatures. Workers will not be present all the time. But they plan to replace the air inside the storage space each winter. Winter temperatures on the island are about eighteen degrees below 0ºC. The cold weather would protect the seeds even if the air could not be replaced.

Mr. Fowler says the proposed structure will be the world’s safest gene bank. He says the plant seeds would only be used when all other seeds are gone for some reason. Norway first put forward the idea in the 1980s. But safety concerns delayed the plan. At that time, the Soviet Union was meeting in Rome of the Food and Agriculture Organization.

1.The project is meant to ______.

    A．increase the world’s food output in the future

    B．carry out some scientific experiments on plant genes

    C．build an exhibition centre of the world’s plant seeds

    D．protect crop seeds from dying out in case of possible disasters

2.Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the above passage?

    A．The government of Norway will perform the project alone.

    B．Seeds to be collected there were produced ten thousands years ago.

    C．Spitsbergen is chosen because it is free of the nuclear war forever.

    D．Temperature is a major consideration when choosing the storage place.

3.We can infer from the text that _______.

    A．Norway had meant to build the storage centre about 20 years before.   

B．The storage center will greatly promote world agriculture

    C．People will get newly-developed seeds from the center every year.

    D．There haven’t been any seed storage centres in the world before.

4.What is probably the best title of the passage?

    A．The Best Place to Store Seeds    

    B．Noah’s Ark（诺亚方舟）of Plant Seeds in Plan

    C．Concerns of World Food Supply  

    D．A New Way to Feed the World

More and more American parents, students, educators, political and business leaders have come to see the importance of Chinese on the world stage. As a result, Americans hoping to learn Chinese are growing in number though they face a lot of difficulties.

Liu Chuansheng, chairperson of the University Council at Beijing Normal University, talked about this situation. “There have been 300 million Chinese learning English, and I know that there are more and more Americans beginning to learn Chinese. I remember when I came to the U. S. there were only 250 schools offering Chinese classes; when I left in 2005, there were already 2,400 schools hoping to offer Chinese classes. Today more than 700 schools are offering Chinese classes, and 4,500 are planning to do so.”

“This is an important time in America. We have suffered from an economic crisis; there is swine flu(猪流感) ---- all part of our lives. We need to be competitive to deal with the world and make an effort to understand each other,” said Shuhan Wang, head of Chinese Language Initiatives at Asia Society. “The number of Chinese language teachers remains the key bottleneck,” she said. “And the need for specialized teachers becomes greater, as there is increasing popularity of early language learning ---- kindergarten through 8th grades.”

Jon M. Huntsman Jr., governor(州长) of Utah, has led his state to the front in teaching Chinese. “While math and science remain main studies,” he said, “language is going to be an important drive in education. Next year 82 schools will offer Chinese to 6,000 students.”

64. It is implied in the passage that the number of Americans learning Chinese is growing mainly because _______.

A. more and more Americans face a lot of difficulties

B. the number of Chinese learning English is growing

C. Chinese is widely used by actors all over the world

D. China is playing a more important role in the world

65. Liu Chuansheng’s talk mainly shows us _______.

A. how Americans are learning Chinese      B. why Americans are learning Chinese

C. that Chinese becomes popular in America  D. that China offers more Chinese classes there

66. The biggest problem with Americans learning Chinese is that _____.

A. the Chinese language is too difficult for them to learn

B. they don’t have enough teachers of Chinese in the USA

C. American children are not good at learning languages

D. teachers won’t work in kindergartens or primary schools

67. The proper title for the passage is _______.

A. Americans show great interest in learning Chinese

B. Americans show less interest in math and science

C. Chinese teachers get new chance to work in America

D. Chinese is widely used in some states of America

GUATEMALA CITY（Reuters）---- A fish that lives in mangrove swamps（红树沼泽）across the Americas can live out of water for months at a time, similar to how animals adapted（适应）to land millions of years ago, a new study shows.

The Mangrove Rivulus, a type of small killifish, lives in small pools of water in a certain type of empty nut or even old beer cans in the mangrove swamps of Belize, the United States and Brazil. When their living place dries up, they live on the land in logs（圆木）, said Scott Taylor, a researcher at the Brevard Endangered Lands Program in Florida .

The fish, whose scientific name is Rivulus marmoratus, can grow as large as three inches. They group together in logs and breathe air through their skin until they can find water again.

The new scientific discovery came after a trip to Belize.

“We kicked over a log and the fish just came crowding out,” Taylor told Reuters in neighboring Guatemala by telephone. He said he will make his study on the fish known to the public in an American magazine early next year.

In lab tests, Taylor said he found the fish can live up to 66 days out of water without eating.

Some other fish can live out of water for a short period of time. The walking catfish found in Southeast Asia can stay on land for hours at a time, while lungfish found in Australia, Africa and South America can live out of water, but only in an inactive state. But no other known fish can be out of water as long as the Mangrove Rivulus and remain active, according to Patricia Wright, a biologist at Canada’s University of Guelph.

Further studies of the fish may tell how animals changed over time.

“These animals live in conditions similar to those that existed millions of years ago, when animals began making the transition（过渡）form water onto land, ” Wright said.

1.The Mangrove Rivulus is a type of fish that ________.

A. likes eating nuts

B. prefers living in dry places

C. is the longest living fish on earth

D. can stay alive for two months out of water

2.Who will write up a report on mangrove Rivulus?

A. Patricia Wright.

B. Researchers in Guatemala.

C. Scientists from Belize.

D. Scott Taylor.

3.According to the text, lungfish can __________.

A. breathe through its skin

B. move freely on dry land

C. remain alive out of water

D. be as active on land as in water

4.What can we say about the discovery of Mangrove Rivulus?

A. It was made quite by accident.

B. It was based on a lab test of sea life.

C. It was supported by an American magazine.

D. It was helped by Patricia Wright.

In the eyes of dog lovers, the dog is man’s best friend. But for much wildlife, loose dogs may be a dangerous enemy, according to a study by a biologist from Utah State University in the US.
Based on much existing research and their own case studies, Julie Smith of Utah State University and four other scientists conclude that loose dogs may represent a huge danger to wildlife, especially endangered species, by hunting down or worrying them and by spreading diseases. They also found that dogs, their worldwide numbers around 500 million, can cause more damage to wildlife and livestock(牲畜) than wolves and other enemies of these animals.
Smith gave examples from the US state of Idaho, where research showed the presence of dogs reducing some deer populations. On the Navajo American Indians’ reservation in northeastern Arizona, packs of loose dogs are attacking livestock. They have killed populations of small animals such as rabbits and act as a disease carrier for rabies(狂犬病) among people and other animals, she said. Loose dogs also were to blame for distemper(温热病) outbreak leading to a die-off of endangered black-footed ferrets in northwestern Wyoming in the 1980s.
The phenomenon is not just limited to US; it’s a global problem. Julie Smith once studied three endangered species in central Asia: wild sheep, gazelles and antelope. The rate of injury and death to these animals by loose dogs was very high. In another case, Smith found that dogs, not wolves, as originally suspected, were responsible for a large number of livestock killings in the mountainous Basque country between Spain and France.
Authors of the new study said the problem is likely to worsen as communities expand. Then how to deal with it?
Indeed, in many countries, leash(拴狗的皮带) laws permit punishment of dog owners whose pets attack wildlife. But lawbreakers are rarely punished because the police lack both people and money.
Smith has low-cost solutions to the problem for dog lovers, though. They include public dog-training programs and vaccinating (预防接种) dogs against rabies and other illnesses.
【小题1】Julie Smith’s study mainly tells us that _______.