Barack Obama

In the past hundred years, the U.S. presidency has turned more and more to the left – not in policy, but in handedness. Barrack Obama is the latest to join a long list of left – handed presidents from the 20th century: James Garfield, Herbert Hoover, Henry Truman, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton were all southpaws.

What makes lefties so electable? Some experts think left-handed people have a greater aptitude for language skills, which may help them craft the rhetoric necessary for political office. And as for the bout of recent left-handed presidents, some think it’s because teachers only recently stopped working to convert lefties to rightist at an early age.

Bill Gates

Claiming the nation’s richest man among their number is a source of considerable pride for America’s society of southpaws. In fact, the Microsoft titan and philanthropist(巨头兼慈善家) is one of a surprising number of U.S. business moguls to be left-handed, including Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller and former IBM head Lou Gerstner. But the club seems to be a guys-only fraternity — research suggests that while left-handed men tend to earn more than their right-handed colleagues, there is no similar advantage for women. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research floated the idea that left-handed men favor "divergent" thinking, a form of creativity in which the brain moves "from conventional knowledge into unexplored association." Maybe that’s what it takes to develop a net worth estimated at $ 57 billion.

Oprah Winfrey

The talk-show queen doesn’t need much more to set her apart from the rest — what with her estimated $ 2.7 billion fortune and a magic ability to sell books just by glancing at them — but she also has the distinction of being a member of the left-handed club. Since men are more likely to be left-handed than women, that makes Oprah doubly impressive. She’s in good company: Other show-business ladies of the left – handed  persuasion include Whoopi Goldberg, Julia Roberts and Angelina Jolie

Marie Curie

Not only was atomic scientist Marie Curie left-handed, but she was the matriarch of a whole family of accomplished, southpaw scientists. Curie, who discovered the principles of radioactivity and won two Nobel Prizes, was married to fellow lefty Pierre Curie, who was instrumental in helping Marie’s atomic research and shared one of her Nobel awards. Historians believe their daughter, Irene, was also left-handed. Irene went on to win a Nobel Prize of her own with her husband — who, you guessed it, was also left-handed.

59．The underlined word “southpaws” in the last sentence of Paragraph 1 means_______.

A．people coming from the south B．powerful presidents

C．people who use their left hand D．forceful speakers

60．What makes it so easy for lefties to be elected as presidents according to the passage?

A．Their great gift for foreign language.

B．Their great language skills to make speeches.

C．The need of left – hinders in the political office.

D．Teachers stopping to force them to use their right hand.

61．It can be implied that Bill Gates, Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller and Lou Gerstne_______.

A．have creative thinking              B．have formed a special club.

C．earn more money than their wives   D．are wealthy philanthropists

62．The underlined sentence in Paragraph 4 “She is in good company” means “_______”.

A．she works in a very good company   B．she has many good friends

C．she has got on well with others        D．she is among many female lefties

完形填空（共10小题；每小题1分，满分10分）
阅读下面短文，掌握其大意，然后从第30至第40小题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
Would you like the chance to discover a place of mystery and beauty in the southwest of China? If your answer is “yes”, consider a trip to Shangri-la!
The world “Shangri-la” first  31  in the 1993 novel Lost Horizon by the British writer James Hilton. He described a beautiful kingdom where three  32  joined together, snow-capped mountains  33  to the sky,  34  fields of long grass covered the earth. In this perfect world lived people who had discovered how to stay  35  forever.
Three mountains are covered with snow, tower  36  the land. These snowy mountain tops  37  a beautiful picture that will make any viewer speechless.
Lakes, surrounded by vast grasslands, look  38  jewels. Sheep, cows and horses and animals feed  39  on the green grass and the forests around are  40  to lots of birds and animals. In this heavenly world, people live in perfect harmony with nature and the outside world is forgotten.
31  A  came           B  appeared             C  produced             D  found
32  A  lakes       B  countries             C  rivers              D  railways
33  A  reached         B  expanded             C  spread                 D  stretched
34  A  but              B  so                      C  because               D  and
35  A  calm            B  still                     C  young                  D  the same
36  A  over             B  above                 C  on                      D  beyond
37  A  are               B  form                  C  develop               D  show
38  A  as             B  if                     C  like                     D  for
39  A  simply         B  deeply                C  finally                D  mainly
40  A  family           B  room                   C  family                D  home

Four people in England back in 1953, stared at Photo 51,It wasn’t much—a picture showing a black X. But three of these people won the Nobel Prize for figuring out what the photo really showed –the shape of DNA The discovery brought fame and fortune to scientists James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins. The fourth, the one who actually made the picture, was left out.
Her name was Rosalind Franklin.”She should have been up there,” says historian Mary Bowden.” If her photos hadn’t been there, the others couldn’t have come up with the structure.” One reason Franklin was missing was that she had died of cancer four years before the Nobel decision. But now scholars doubt that Franklin was not only robbed of her life by disease but robbed of credit by her competitors
At Cambridge University in the 1950s, Watson and Click tried to make models by cutting up shapes of DNA’s parts and then putting them together. In the meantime, at King’s College in London, Franklin and Wilkins shone X-rays at the molecule(分子). The rays produced patterns reflection the shape.
But Wilkins and Franklin’s relationship was a lot rockier than the celebrated teamwork of Watson and Crick, Wilkins thought Franklin was hired to be his assistant .But the college actually employed her to take over the DNA project.
What she did was produce X-ray pictures that told Watson and Crick that one of their early models was inside out. And she was not shy about saying so. That angered Watson, who attacked her in return, “Mere inspection suggested that she would not easily bend. Clearly she had to to go or be put in her place.”
As Franklin’s competitors, Wilkins, Watson  and Crick had much to gain by cutting her out of the little group of researchers, says historian Pnina Abir-Am. In 1962 at the Nobel Prize awarding ceremony, Wilkins thanked 13 colleagues by name before he mentioned Franklin, Watson wrote his book laughing at her. Crick wrote in 1974 that  “Franklin was only two steps away  from the solution.”
No, Franklin was the solution. “She contributed more than any other player to solving the structure of  DNA . She must be considered a co-discoverer,” Abir-Am says. This was backed up by Aaron Klug, who worked with Franklin and later won a Nobel Prize himself. Once described as the  “Dark Lady of DNA”, Franklin is finally coming into the light.
【小题1】What is the text mainly about?
A. The disagreements among DNA researchers.
B. The unfair treatment of Franklin.
C. The process of discovering DNA.
D. The race between two teams of scientists.
【小题2】Watson was angry with Franklin because she     .

Four people in England back in 1953, stared at Photo 51,It wasn’t much—a picture showing a black X. But three of these people won the Nobel Prize for figuring out what the photo really showed –the shape of DNA The discovery brought fame and fortune to scientists James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins. The fourth, the one who actually made the picture, was left out.

Her name was Rosalind Franklin.”She should have been up there,” says historian Mary Bowden.” If her photos hadn’t been there, the others couldn’t have come up with the structure.” One reason Franklin was missing was that she had died of cancer four years before the Nobel decision. But now scholars doubt that Franklin was not only robbed of her life by disease but robbed of credit by her competitors

At Cambridge University in the 1950s, Watson and Click tried to make models by cutting up shapes of DNA’s parts and then putting them together. In the meantime, at King’s College in London, Franklin and Wilkins shone X-rays at the molecule(分子). The rays produced patterns reflection the shape.

But Wilkins and Franklin’s relationship was a lot rockier than the celebrated teamwork of Watson and Crick, Wilkins thought Franklin was hired to be his assistant .But the college actually employed her to take over the DNA project.

What she did was produce X-ray pictures that told Watson and Crick that one of their early models was inside out. And she was not shy about saying so. That angered Watson, who attacked her in return, “Mere inspection suggested that she would not easily bend. Clearly she had to to go or be put in her place.”

As Franklin’s competitors, Wilkins, Watson  and Crick had much to gain by cutting her out of the little group of researchers, says historian Pnina Abir-Am. In 1962 at the Nobel Prize awarding ceremony, Wilkins thanked 13 colleagues by name before he mentioned Franklin, Watson wrote his book laughing at her. Crick wrote in 1974 that  “Franklin was only two steps away  from the solution.”

 No, Franklin was the solution. “She contributed more than any other player to solving the structure of  DNA . She must be considered a co-discoverer,” Abir-Am says. This was backed up by Aaron Klug, who worked with Franklin and later won a Nobel Prize himself. Once described as the  “Dark Lady of DNA”, Franklin is finally coming into the light.

What is the text mainly about?

A. The disagreements among DNA researchers.

B. The unfair treatment of Franklin.

C. The process of discovering DNA.

D. The race between two teams of scientists.

Watson was angry with Franklin because she     .

A. took the lead in the competition     B. kept her results from him

C. proved some of his findings wrong    D. shared her data with other scientists

Why is Franklin described as  “Dark Lady of DNA”?

A. She developed pictures in dark labs.

B. She discovered the  black X-the shape of DNA.

C. Her name was forgotten after her death.

D. Her contribution was unknown to the public.

What is the writer’s attitude toward Wilkins, Watson and Crick?

A. Disapproving.       B. Respectful.        C.  Admiring.      D. Doubtful.

An Australian man who has been donating his extremely rare kind of blood for 56 years has saved the lives of more than two million babies.

James Harrison has an antibody in his plasma that stops babies dying from Rhesus disease, a form of severe anaemia. He has enabled countless mothers to give birth to healthy babies, including his own daughter, Tracey, who had a healthy son thanks to her father's blood.

Mr. Harrison has been giving blood every few weeks since he was 18 years old and has now racked up a total of 984 donations. When he started donating, his blood was deemed so special that his life was insured for one million Australian dollars.

He was also nicknamed the “man with the golden arm” or the “man in two million”. He said: “I've never thought about stopping. Never.” He made a pledge to be a donor aged 14 after undergoing major chest surgery in which he needed 13 litres of blood. “I was in hospital for three months,” he said. “The blood I received saved my life so I made a pledge to give blood when I was 18.”

Just after he started donating he was found to have the rare and life-saving antibody in his blood. At the time, thousands of babies in Australia were dying each year of Rhesus disease. Other newborns suffered permanent brain damage because of the condition. The disease creates an incompatibility between the mother's blood and her unborn baby's blood. It stems from one having Rh-positive blood and the other Rh-negative.

His blood has since led to the development of a vaccine called Anti-D. After his blood type was discovered, Mr. Harrison volunteered to undergo a series of tests to help develop the Anti-D vaccine. “They insured me for a million dollars so I knew my wife Barbara would be taken care of,” he said. “I wasn't scared. I was glad to help. I had to sign every form going and basically sign my life away.”

Mr. Harrison is Rh-negative and was given injections of Rh-positive blood. It was found his plasma could treat the condition and since then it has been given to hundreds of thousands of women. It has also been given to babies after they are born to stop them developing the disease.

It is estimated he has helped save 2.2 million babies so far. Mr. Harrison is still donating every few weeks now.

How old is James Harrison？

A. 56           B. 70           C. 74           D. 78

What does the underlined phrase “two million” refer to?

A. babies           B. mothers      C. dollars          D. all of the above

   Why did James decide to donate his blood? Because _____.

    A. his daughter asked him to help her son

    B. he has a golden arm worth a million dollars

    C. a vaccine called Anti-D is to be developed

    D. someone else’s blood saved his life

The sentence “The disease creates an incompatibility between the mother's blood and her unborn baby's blood” (underlined in Paragraph 5) suggests that _____.

    A. babies suffer permanent brain damage before born

    B. the mother and the baby have different types of blood

    C. Rhesus disease contributes to permanent brain damage

    D. all the patients have a rare antibody in their blood

   What can we infer from the sixth paragraph?

    A. Some of the tests to develop the vaccine are dangerous.

    B. His wife Barbara needed to be taken care of badly then.

    C. Mr. Harrison was glad to help develop a new vaccine.

    D. His blood type was accidentally discovered after tests.