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题型:阅读理解 题类:常考题 难易度:普通

江西省吉安市2019-2020学年高一上学期英语期末考试试卷

阅读理解

    Over the past half-century, North America has lost more than a quarter of its entire bird population, or around 3 billion birds.

    "We saw this great net loss across the entire bird community," says Ken Rosenberg, a scientist in Ithaca, N.Y. "But we also knew that other bird populations were increasing. And what we didn't know is whether there was a net change."

    Common birds with decreasing populations include dark-eyed juncos and red-winged blackbirds, says Rosenberg. Grassland birds have suffered a 53% decrease, and more than a third of the shorebird population has been lost. Bird populations that have increased include raptors (猛禽), like the bald eagle, and waterfowl.

    "The numbers of ducks and geese are larger than they've ever been, and that's not an accident," says Rosenberg. It's because hunters who mainly want to see healthy waterfowl populations for sportful hunting have raised their voices.

    "People are doing a wonderful effort to try and understand our bird populations with a lot of uncertainty, but the actual systems that we have in place to try and answer really tough questions like this are really far short of what we need," Ted Simons in North Carolina State University says.

    "In all, the conclusions weren't necessarily surprising," says Kristen Ruegg, a biologist at Colorado State University. There have been hints (暗示) that the loss was this large from all kinds of sources over the past few years. But in most cases, these were species-specific records of local extinctions or models of projected losses, resulting from things like climate change. This really sort of wakes people up to the idea that this is happening.

    Elise Zipkin, a quantitative ecologist at Michigan State University, says the loss can be a big problem. "Just because a species hasn't gone extinct (灭绝) or isn't even necessarily close to extinction, it might still be in trouble," she says. We need to be thinking about conservation (保护) efforts for that."

(1)、Which of the following becomes more than before?
A、Dark-eyed juncos. B、The bald eagle. C、Grassland birds. D、The shorebirds.
(2)、Why do duck and goose populations increase?
A、To hunt for fun. B、To provide rich foods. C、To escape net loss. D、To keep people healthy.
(3)、What does the underlined word "tough" mean in Paragraph 5?
A、Extra. B、Interesting. C、Difficult. D、Official.
(4)、What can we infer from Elise's words in the last paragraph?
A、Bird loss can be a big problem. B、Climate change causes part of bird loss. C、Protecting birds is quite necessary. D、What is happening is worth considering.
(5)、How does the author support the subject of the text?
A、By giving examples. B、By showing ideas. C、By explaining numbers. D、By providing research results.
举一反三
阅读理解

    In the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia, one scene shows an American newspaper reporter eagerly snapping photos of men robbing a damaged train. One of the robbers, Chief Auda abu Tayi of the Howeitat clan, suddenly notices the camera and snatches it. “Am I in this?” he asks, before smashing it open. To the dismayed reporter, Lawrence explains, “He thinks these things will steal his virtue. He thinks you're a kind of thief.”

As soon as colonizers and explorers began taking cameras into distant lands, stories began circulating about how native peoples saw them as tools for black magic. The “ignorant natives” may have had a point. When photography first became available, scientists welcomed it as a more objective way of recording faraway societies than early travelers' exaggerated accounts. But in some ways, anthropological(人类学的) photographs reveal more about the culture that holds the camera than the one that stares back. Up into the 1950s and 1960s, many ethnographer(人种学者) sought “pure” pictures of “primitive” cultures, routinely deleting modern articles for daily use such as clocks and Western dress. They paid men and women to re-enact rituals or to pose as members of war or hunting parties, often with little regard for truthfulness. Edward Curtis, the legendary photographer of North American Indians, for example, got one Makah man to pose as a whaler with a spear in 1915 — even though the Makah had not hunted whales in a generation.

    These photographs reinforced widely accepted stereotypes that native cultures were isolated, primitive, and unchanging. For instance, National Geographic magazine's photographs have taught millions of Americans about other cultures. As Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins point out in their 1993 book Reading National Geographic, the magazine since its founding in 1888 has kept a tradition of presenting beautiful photos that don't challenge white, middle-class American conventions. While dark-skinned women can be shown without tops, for example, white women's breasts are taboo. Photos that could unsettle or disturb, such as areas of the world torn apart by war or famine, are discarded in favor of those that reassure, to conform with the society's stated pledge to present only “kindly” visions of foreign societies. The result, Lutz and Collins say, is the display of “an idealized and exotic world relatively free of pain or class conflict.”

    Lutz actually likes National Geographic a lot. She read the magazine as a child, and its lush imagery influenced her eventual choice of anthropology as a career. She just thinks that as people look at the photographs of other cultures, they should be alert to the choice of composition and images.

阅读理解

    Neuroscientists have explained the risky, aggressive or just plain baffling behavior of teenagers as the product of a brain that is somehow compromised. Groundbreaking research in the past 10 years, however, shows that this view is wrong. The teen brain is not defective. It is not a half-baked adult brain, either. It has been forged by evolution to function differently from that of a child or an adult.

    The most important of the teen brain's features is its ability to change in response to the environment by modifying the communication networks that connect brain regions. It allows teenagers to make enormous progress in thinking and socialization. But the change also makes them sensitive to dangerous behavior and serious mental disorders.

    The most recent studies indicate that the riskiest behaviors arise from a mismatch between the maturation of networks in the limbic system(边缘系统), which drives emotions at adolescence, and the maturation of networks in the prefrontal cortex(前额皮质), which occurs later and promotes sound judgment and the control of impulses. Indeed, we now know that one's prefrontal cortex continues to change noticeably until his 20s. And yet adolescence seems to be starting earlier, extending the “mismatch years.”

    The plasticity of networks linking brain regions—and not the growth of those regions, as previously thought—is key to eventually behaving like an adult. Understanding that, and knowing that a widening gap between the development of emotional and judgment networks is happening in young people today, can help parents, teachers, counselors and teenagers themselves. People will better see that behavior such as risk-taking and turning away from parents and toward peers are not signs of cognitive or emotional problems. They are a natural result of brain development, a normal part of adolescents learning how to negotiate with a complex world.

    The same understanding can also help adults decide when to intervene. A 15-year-old girl's departure from her parents' tastes in clothing, music or politics may be a source of anxiety for Mom and Dad but does not indicate mental illness. A 16-year-old boy's tendency to skateboard without a helmet or to accept risky dares from friends is not unimportant but is more likely a sign of short-range thinking and peer pressure than a desire to hurt himself. Knowing more about the unique teen brain will help all of us learn how to separate unusual behavior that is age-appropriate from that which might indicate illness. Such awareness could help society reduce the rates of teen addiction, motor vehicle accidents and depression.

阅读理解

    A new keyboard can tell whether you are its owner. The keyboard records information about the typing pattern and sends it to a computer program. The program then checks to see if the pattern matches the right user. If not, an alarm sounds, and the computer locks the typist out. It locks out anyone else, even if the person knows password. What's more, this device needs no batteries. It harvests all the energy it needs from the action of your typing. Besides, the keyboard is also self-cleaning and the keys are free of damage from water, oil and dirt.

    The keys of the new keyboard are made of the same inexpensive plastic that might be found on any other standard keyboard. But instead of being smooth, the keys have millions of tiny plastic nanowires (纳米线) on their surface area to every key, increasing the effective contact area between the plastics and fingers. This ensures that there's enough power to run the keyboard as someone types.

    Liming Dai, a scientist, did not work on the new keyboard, but he thinks the design could be important in getting better performance from a variety of devices. “It could also be applied to a touch screen, for instance,” Dai says. “Then smart phones and notepads could harvest energy from the action of someone typing or drawing.”

    “Future work might make the keyboard even more useful,” Dai adds. “A later design might build tiny capacitors(电容器) onto the nanowires,” he suggests. Capacitors are little devices that temporarily store electric charges. Those might then LEDs to light a Keyboard in the dark.

    Zhonglin Wang is a co-designer of the new keyboard. His team has build a working model of the keyboard. “If a company decides to fund(投资) its production, this keyboard could be in stores in as little as two years,” says Wang.

阅读理解

    There are two kinds of secrets: secrets of nature and secrets about people. Natural secrets exist all around us; to find them, one must study some undiscovered aspect of the physical world. Secrets about people are different: they are things that people don't know about themselves or things they hide because they don't want others to know. So when thinking about what kind of company to build, there are two distinct questions to ask: What secrets is nature not telling you? What secrets are people not telling you?

    It's easy to assume that natural secrets are the most important: the people who look for them can sound authoritative (权威的).This is why physics PhDs are difficult to work with—because they know the most basic truths, they think they know all truths. But does understanding electronic theory automatically make you a great marriage counselor? Does a gravity theorist know more about your business than you do? At PayPal, I once interviewed a physics PhD for an engineering job. Halfway through my first question, he shouted, "Stop! I already know what you're going to ask!" But he was wrong. It was the easiest no-hire decision I've ever made. Secrets about people are relatively overlooked. Maybe that's because you don't need a dozen years of higher education to ask the questions that uncover them: What are people not allowed to talk about? What is forbidden or taboo?

    The best place to look for secrets is where no one else is looking. Most people think only in terms of what they've been taught; schooling itself aims to spread basic wisdom. So you might ask: are there any fields that matter but haven't been standardized? Physics, for example, is a real major at all major universities, and it's set in its ways. The opposite of physics might be astrology, but astrology doesn't matter. What about something like nutrition? Nutrition matters for everybody, but you can't major in it at Harvard. Most top scientists go into other fields. Most of the big studies were done 30 or 40 years ago, and most are seriously flawed (有缺陷的). The food pyramid that told us to eat low fat and large amounts of grains was probably produced by Big Food(美国著名食品公司)than real science; its chief impact has been to worsen our obesity(肥胖)problem. There's plenty more to learn: we know more about the physics of far away stars than we know about human nutrition. It won't be easy, but it's not obviously impossible: exactly the kind of field that could produce secrets.

阅读理解

    My challenge for you is this: to read a book for 15minutes every single day for a month.

    Let me explain a bit, by telling you where the challenge came from. I have many things in common with my dad, like music taste and sense of humor, but sadly reading isn't one of them. I can happily spend a whole day with a book, but my dad can't read a book for longer than about 5 minute. He reads emails, websites and papers for work, but not book. He's busy, so I think sitting down to read for just 15minutes a day is a good way to relax and to introduce him to reading.

    My dad is not the only person who avoids book. I know lots of people would rather relax on their computers or in front of the TV. Everyone is different and has their own interests, but I think there are lots of benefits to reading, which screen﹣based activities don't have.

    Firstly, it's better for your eye. Looking at screens can be very stressful for your eye muscles, and clearly you should avoid looking at screens for an hour before bed, to get a good night's sleep.

    One thing I personally love reading, is being transported to another world﹣I often forget the time or things around me! Reading is a great way to switch off before you go to bed, because you think more about the world of the book, rather than the real world, so you can truly relax. I know you can be transported to a different world in a film or a TV show, but I think books do it better.

    I also enjoy hearing what people are doing and finding out what they think. Reading gives me the chance to get to know hundreds of new people! It also teaches you to see things from other people's point of view, and understand other people's decisions or opinion. With a book, you can hear everything a character is thinking or feeling﹣you really can be inside someone else's head!

    So give it a go! Take 15 minutes when you are waking up, going to bed, eating lunch, or having a coffee. If you read a lot, why not try 15 minutes of an English book, or pass the challenge on to someone else? Good luck, and happy reading!

阅读理解

    Carri Kessler and her husband Will named their daughter Ottilie after a friend from the UK, who helped them a lot. However, right after their baby girl was born, the couple noticed a big problem: "No one could remember her name and no one could pronounce it, were going to keep having to introduce her!" Kessler told Today.com.

    The situation then grew worse as Kessler's grandmother admitted to sticking Post-it notes around the house to help remind her of Ottilie's name which can be pronounced either Ott-ill-ee or Oh-TEEL-ya. Three months after Ottilie was born, the Kesslers have decided to legally change their daughter's name. The couple came up with two possible names. They then settled on Margot after talking to a name expert.

    The Kesslers situation is not uncommon as an increasing number of parents experience the same as the Kesslers. According to Baby Center Canada, 11% of its users wish they could change their children's names due to being over popular mispronounced or simply unfitting. Parents care a lot more and think a lot more about names now than their parents.

    To deal with this, a number of name experts now offer services to help parents choose the right name. Couples have also looked for help from the Internet to choose their baby's name. However, parents can change their child's name in the event that they regret their choice. In Canada, the rules vary in each province. For instance, in Ontario, the child must have lived in the province for the past 12 months, or since birth if under the age of one. Each of the child's legal guardians(监护人)must also give permission.

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