How the big forest fire has          remains to be a mystery.

A．turned up         B．broken out        C．taken place        D．broken up

 

The marine environment is fascinating to study and work in due to its beauty, richness, and complexity. It covers three quarters of the surface of the Earth, yet we know more detail about the surface of Mars.

In the past, it was seen as both an inexhaustible resource and a bottomless sink for our wastes. Yet the increasing pressures of overpopulation, pollution and the threat to our natural environment mean that there is an increasing need for scientists who can understand how it all works, how it affects us, and how we are affecting it from global warming through to the smallest plankton.

From local issues to global concerns, we now know that the marine environment is inextricably linked to our lives, and to our future survival. It is an area where much remains to be discovered, and where only a multidisciplinary approach can cover the breadth of issues to be confronted. This is the approach taken on our Marine Environmental Science degree course.

This course takes a multi-disciplinary approach to explore and understand the marine environment. After an initial grounding in basic science, optional choices are available in specialist topics such as marine ecosystems and pollution, coastal navigation and oceanography, among others.

Our new harbor side marine laboratory is used for some of the specialist lectures, laboratory and project work, while a week's residential field course in the Isle of Man provides training to prepare for the research project conducted in your final year. There is an optional trip to Belize in the final year to study tropical marine environments.

1. From the passage, we can infer that ______.

A．people waste a lot of resource

B．marine environment covers 3/4 of the surface of Mars

C．marine environment is beautiful for its sufficient resources

D．the Earth is similar to Mars

2.The present environment of the Earth forces the experts and scholars to study ______.

A．the relationship between people’s actions and natural environment

B．the relationship between people’s actions and pollution

C．the relationship between people’s actions and overpopulation

D．the relationship between people’s actions and plankton

3. According to the passage, a multi-disciplinary approach is effective because _______.

A．we can choose some issues as optionally as we can

B．we have practiced the approach for a long time

C．the approach is linked to our future survival

D．the approach covers a lot of problems we will meet

4.We can divide the lectures of the course into ______ parts.

A．1

B．2

C．3

D．4

5.If a student choose marine Environmental Science degree course, he must ______.

A. make lectures about the issues to be confronted

B. provide training to get ready to do research project

C. take several days residential field in the Isle

travel to Belize to study tropical marine environments

Answers:

 

In recent years, the world has made progress in reducing deaths among children under the age of five. A new report says an estimated 6.9 million children worldwide died before their fifth birthday. That compares to about twelve million in1990.
The report says child mortality rates have fallen in all areas. It says the number of deaths is down by at least 50 percent in eastern, western and southeastern Asia. The number also fell in North Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Ties Boerma is head of the WHO’s Department of Health Statistics and Informatics. He says most child deaths happen in just a few areas.
TIES BOERMA: “Sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia face the greatest challenges in child survival. More than eighty percent of child deaths in the world occur in these two regions. About half of child deaths occur in just five countries—India, which actually takes twenty-four percent of the global total; Nigeria, eleven percent; the Democratic Republic of Congo, seven percent; Pakistan, five percent and China, four percent of under-five deaths in the world.”
Ties Boerma notes that, in developed countries, one child in one hundred fifty-two dies before his or her fifth birthday. But south of the Sahara Desert, one out of nine children dies before the age of five. In Asia, the mortality rate is one in sixteen.  
The report lists the top five causes of death among children under five worldwide. They are pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria and problems both before and during birth.
Tessa Wardlaw is with the U-N Children’s Fund. She is pleased with the progress being made in Sub-Saharan Africa. The area has the highest under-five mortality rate in the world. But she says the rate of decline in child deaths has more than doubled in Africa.
TESSA WARDLAW: “We welcome the widespread progress in child survival, but we importantly want to stress that there’s a lot of work that remains to be done. There’s unfinished business and the fact is that today on average, around nineteen thousand children are still dying every day from largely preventable causes.”
The World Health Organization says one way to solve these problems is to make sure health care services are available to women. In this way, medical problems can be avoided or treated when identified.
【小题1】Since 1990, the number of the children who died before 5 in the world has dropped by about__________.

A．6,900,000

B．12,000,000

C．1,200,000

D．5,100,000

【小题2】 What does the underlined word “mortality” ( in Paragraph 2)mean?

A．illness

B．reduction

C．death

D．problem

【小题3】According to the passage, the readers are likely to believe that __________.

A．child mortality rates have fallen just in five areas

B．Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest under-five mortality rate in the world

C．in developed countries, no children die before the age of five

D．the world has made little progress in reducing the rates of child mortality

【小题4】______ is the top-one cause of death among children under five worldwide.

A．Global warming

B．Malaria

C．Pneumonia

D．Diarrhea

【小题5】What will be probably referred to in the following paragraph?

A．Women do not want to have babies.

B．How more health care services are available to women.

C．Medical problems are completely solved.

D．The World Health Organization.

High Speed Book Scanner
Simply turning pages of a book quickly may not seem like the best way to scan it. A Japanese research group at Tokyo University has created new software that allows hundreds of pages to be scanned within minutes. Scanning text is normally a boring process with each page having to be inserted into a scanner, but the team led by Professor Masatoshi Ishikawa uses a high speed camera that takes 500 pictures a second to scan pages as they are turned by workers.
Normal scanners can only scan the information that is actually before them on the page. This high speed book scanner uses a camera that captures pages at 1000fps as they are turned. A system built in allows it to automatically correct any changes to the text due to the page bending as well as light differences due to shadows. “It takes a shot of the shape, then it calculates the shape and uses those calculations to film the scanning,” Ishikawa said, explaining the system used to reconstruct the original page.
The current system is able to scan an average 250-page book in a little over 60 seconds using basic computer hardware. While it now requires extra time to process the scanned images (影像), the researchers hope to eventually make the technology both faster and much smaller. “In the more distant future, once it becomes possible to put all of this processing on one chip (芯片) and then put that in an iPad or iPod, one could scan just using that chip. At that point, it becomes possible to scan something quickly to save for later reading,” Ishikawa said.
Being able to scan books with an iPhone may be further off, but Ishikawa says that a commercial version of the large-scale computer based scanning system could be available in two or three years. While the technology has the potential to take paper books into the digital age, it remains to be how publishers will react to people scanning their books while just turning pages quickly.
【小题1】According to the passage, the advantage of the new scanning software is that ______.

A．there is no need to scan every page

B．it can work much more effectively

C．no manpower is needed in operating the scanner

D．it can make the scanning process more interesting

【小题2】According to Ishikawa, the scanner works by_____.

A．changing the shape of the images

B．reducing the size of the images

C．reconstructing the original page

D．scanning several pages at the same time

【小题3】What is Ishikawa’s attitude towards the development of the scanning system?

A．Optimistic.

B．Uncertain.

C．Disapproving.

D．Cautious.

【小题4】What does the underlined sentence mean?

A．People will get any book they like more easily.

B．Publishers will refuse to comment on the new software.

C．Publishers will probably not welcome the new software.

D．People won’t need to buy books any more with an iPhone.

 

      Scientific experiments can sometimes go wrong and when they do the results may range from the disastrous to the troubling. One such experiment took place in South America about fifty years ago. Whether its final consequences will cause serious damage or nothing more than a small trouble still remains to be seen.

      The story began in 1956 when an American scientist working in Brazil decided to solve the problem of increasing the productivity of that country's bees. He imported a very active type of African bee from Tanzania and mated  (交配)  it with the more easy-going native variety to produce a new kind of bees. The new bees worked harder and produced twice as much honey. It seemed that Professor Kerr, for that was the scientist's name, had a total success on his hands.

      Then things began to go wrong. For some reason as yet unseen, but perhaps as a result of something in their environment, the new bees began to develop extremely attacking personalities. They became bad-tempered and easy to be angry, attacked the native bees and drove them from their living places.

      But worse was to follow. Having taken over the countryside, the new bees, with their dangerous stings (叮) , began to attack its neighbors -- cats, dogs, horses, chickens and finally man himself. A long period of terror began that has so far killed a great number of animals and about 150 human beings.

     This would have been bad enough if the bees had stayed in Brazil. But now they are on the move, heading northwards in countless millions towards Central and North America, and moving at the alarming speed of 200 miles a year. The countries that lie in their path are naturally worried because it looks as if nothing can be done to stop them.

1.The results of the South American experiment              .

     A. have caused a serious trouble        B. have proved to be wrong

     C. are not yet certain                 D. are not important

2.The experiment mentioned in this passage was designed to              .

     A. increase the amount of honey in Brazil      B. make Brazilian bees more easy-going

     C. increase the number of bees in Brazil       D. make African bees less active

3.Which of the following may be the cause of the new bees' attacking personalities?

     A. Their production of honey.        B. Their hard work.

     C. Their living environment.         D. Their bad temper.

4.The last paragraph implies that             .

     A. the bees have been driven to Central and North America

     B. the bees may bring about trouble in more countries

     C. the bees must be stopped from moving north

     D. the bees prefer to live in Brazil