-
In the famous fairy tale, Snow White eats the Queen's apple and falls victim to a curse（诅咒）;in Shakespeare's novel, Romeo drinks the poison and dies; some ancient Chinese emperors took pellets（药丸）that contained mercury（水银）, believing that it would make them immortal, but they died afterward.
Poison has long been an important ingredient in literature and history, and it seems to always be associated with evil, danger and death. But how much do you really know about poison?
An exhibition, The Power of Poison, opened last month at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, intended to give the audience a more vivid understanding of poison.
The museum tour starts in a rainforest setting, where you can see live examples of some of the most poisonous animals: caterpillars（毛毛虫）, frogs and spiders. Golden poison frogs, for instance, aren't much bigger than a coin, but their skin is covered with a poison that can cut off the signaling power of your nerves, and a single frog has enough venom to kill 10 grown humans.
"Poisons can be bad for some things," Michael Novacek, senior vice president of the museum, told NBC News. "Yet they can also be good for others."
A poisonous chemical found in the yew tree is effective against cancer, which is what led to the invention of a cancer-fighting drug called Taxol.
The benefits from natural poisons are not limited to just medicine. Believe it or not, many substances（物质）that we regularly ingest（摄入）-chili, coffee and chocolate-owe their special flavors or stimulating（提神的）effects to chemicals that plants make to poison insects.
1.What does the underlined word "immortal" in Paragraph 1 mean?
A. happy B. not moral
C. living forever D. sick
2.What is the main purpose of the exhibition The Power of Poison?
A. To give people more in-depth knowledge about poison.
B. To teach people how to handle poisonous animals.
C. To inform people about which animals are the most poisonous.
D. To show how poison has been used for medical treatment.
3.Which of the following statements about the Golden poison frog is TRUE according to the article?
A. Its skin can cut off the signaling power of your nerves.
B. It's about the size of a coin.
C. It's the most poisonous animal on display.
D. You can only see it in a rainforest setting of the museum.
4.The stimulating effects of coffee come from ________.
A. natural poison made by the plant
B. the substances that we regularly ingest
C. chemicals produced by poisonous insects
D. its special flavor
-
When my daughter Sally was five, I bought Grimm’s Fairy Tales and read Snow White to her one night. At the end of the original Grimm tale, Snow White’s stepmother is made to put on red-hot iron shoes and dance until she falls down dead.
This came as something of a shock. I always thought fairytales had happy endings. And I didn’t want my five-year-old daughter going to sleep thinking: “Thank goodness they tortured (折磨) that old woman to death.” That’s when I decided to write fairy tales.
In the years that followed, I wrote tales non-stop and read them to Sally at bedtime. The Corn Dolly was based on a child who was always complaining; The Silly King was just a silly story Sally loved; I wrote The Witch and the Rainbow Cat for Sally because of her enormous appetite for stories about witches while Dr Bonocolus’s Devil is a new version of the Faust legend．Nicobobinus, however, was different. I wrote this book when Sally was older and took up all things girls have to do — who’s friends with who, who stuck a sticker on the back of whose boyfriend, or whatever thing she felt funny.
Nicobobinus, the boy who could do anything, came out of my desire for a more innocent world. He lived a 1ong time ago, in a city called Venice. Only his best friend, Rosie, knew he could, and nobody took any notice of anything Rosie said, because she was always having wild ideas anyway. Nicobobinus was so different that it turned out to be an instant hit. The Times called me “an author setting out to rival the classic fairytales”. I asked Sally what she thought of Nicobobinus. She said it was her favourite.
1.What led the writer to start writing fairy tales for her daughter?
A. The frightening ends of past fairy tales.
B. His daughter’s strong interest in fairy tales.
C. His desire to let his daughter know more stories.
D. His attempt to fill his daughter’s bedtime with something.
2.We can infer from the third paragraph that the writer _____.
A. was a very productive fairy tale writer.
B. based all his stories on some old legends.
C. never described witches in his fairy tales.
D. created his stories out of his own interest.
3.When creating Nicobobinus, the first thing the writer considered was _____.
A. what story the publisher wanted to get.
B. the changes of his daughter’s interests.
C. ways to keep his daughter Sally innocent.
D. the difference of the story from other stories.
4.The underlined word “rival” in the last paragraph can be replaced by _____.
A. follow B. explore
C. challenge D. recommend
-
When my daughter Sally was five, I bought Grimm’s Fairy Tales and read Snow White to her one night. At the end of the original Grimm tale, Snow White’s stepmother is made to put on red-hot iron shoes and dance until she falls down dead.
This came as something of a shock. I always thought fairytales had happy endings. And I didn’t want my five-year-old daughter going to sleep thinking: “Thank goodness they tortured (折磨) that old woman to death.” That’s when I decided to write fairy tales.
In the years that followed, I wrote tales non-stop and read them to Sally at bedtime. The Corn Dolly was based on a child who was always complaining; The Silly King was just a silly story Sally loved; I wrote The Witch and the Rainbow Cat for Sally because of her enormous appetite for stories about witches while Dr Bonocolus’s Devil is a new version of the Faust legend．
Nifobobinus, however, was different. I wrote this book when Sally was older and took up all things girls have to do — who’s friends with who, who stuck a sticker on the back of whose boyfriend, or whatever thing she felt funny.
Nicobobinus, the boy who could do anything, came out of my desire for a more innocent world. He lived a 1ong time ago, in a city called Venice. Only his best friend, Rosie, knew he could, and nobody took any notice of anything Rosie said, because she was always having wild ideas anyway.
Nicobobinus was so different that it turned out to be an instant hit. The Times called me “an author setting out to rival the classic fairytales”. I asked Sally what she thought of Nicobobinus. She said it was her favourite.
1.What led the writer to start writing fairy tales for her daughter?
A. The frightening ends of past fairy tales.
B. His daughter’s strong interest in fairy tales.
C. His desire to let his daughter know more stories.
D. His attempt to fill his daughter’s bedtime with something.
2.We can infer from the third paragraph that the writer _____.
A. was a very productive fairy tale writer
B. based all his stories on some old legends
C. never described witches in his fairy tales
D. created his stories out of his own interest
3.When creating Nicobobinus, the first thing the writer considered was _____.
A. the changes of his daughter’s interests
B. what story the publisher wanted to get
C. ways to keep his daughter Sally innocent
D. the difference of the story from other stories
4.The underlined word “rival” in the last paragraph can be replaced by _____.
A. follow B. explore C. challenge D. recommend
-
Swan Lake is a famous ballet in four acts, _____ on a German fairy tale.
A. basing B. which is based C. bases D. to base
-
In fairy tales, it's usually the princess that needs protecting. At Google in Silicon Valley, the princess is the one defending the castle. Parisa Tabriz is a 31-year-old with perhaps the most unique job title in engineering- “Google Security Princess”. Her job is to hack into the most popular web browser（浏览器）on the planet, trying to find weaknesses in the system before the “black hats” do. To defeat Google's attackers, Tabriz must firstly think like them.
Tabriz's role has evolved dramatically in the eight years since she first started working at Google. Back then, the young graduate from Illinois University was one of 50 security engineers---today there are over 500.
Cybercrime（网络犯罪）has come a long way in the past decade - from the Nigerian Prince Scam to credit card theft. Tabriz's biggest concern now is the people who find bugs in Google's software, and sell the information to governments or criminals. To fight against this, the company has set up a Vulnerability Rewards Program, paying anywhere from $100 to $ 20, 000 for reported mistakes.
It's a world away from Tabriz's computer-free childhood home in Chicago. The daughter of an Iranian-American doctor father, and Polish-American nurse mother, Tabriz had little contact with computers until she started studying engineering at college. Gaze across a line-up of Google security staff today and you'll find women like Tabriz are few and far between（稀少的）--- though in the last few years she has hired more female tech geniuses. She admits there's an obvious gender disequilibrium in Silicon Valley.
Funnily enough, during training sessions Tabriz first asks new colleagues to hack into not a computer, but a vending machine. Tabriz's job is as much about technological know-how（专门知识）as understanding the psychology of attackers.
1.What can we learn about Tabriz from the passage?
A. She was the first female engineer at Google.
B. She must think differently so as to defeat the attackers.
C. Her job relates to not only technology but also psychology.
D. Her frequent contact with computers in childhood benefits her a lot.
2.Why has Google set up a Vulnerability Rewards Program?
A. To protect Google against cybercrime.
B. To monitor the normal operation of Google.
C. To help the government locate the cybercriminals.
D. To raise people's awareness of personal information safety.
3.What does the underlined word “disequilibrium” in Paragraph 4 refer to?
A. Imbalance. B. Preference.
C. Difference. D. Discrimination.
4.Which of the following could be the best title of this passage?
A. What leads to cybercrime
B. The “Security Princess” who guards Google
C. Measures taken by Google to protect its users
D. How to become an excellent security engineer
-
60. The witch ________ the prince a frog once in the fairy tales.
| A．changes; for | B．changed; into | C．changing; into | D．changes; for |
-
Talking plants might sound like characters in a fairy tale. But recent scientific studies have shown that plants communicate with each other and with other living things in a surprising number of ways. To understand them, scientists say, we just have to learn their language. Farmers are especially interested in what plants have to say.
“Plants are able to communicate with all sorts of organisms (有机体). They can communicate with giant bacteria, with other plants and with insects. They do this chemically，” said Cahill, an Ecology Professor of the University of Alberta in Canada.
Plant scientists are just beginning to understand this chemical “language”. Cahill says studies have shown, for example, that plants can evaluate (评估) conditions in their immediate environment and take appropriate actions. Plants have an ability, for example, to signal pain or discomfort caused by anything from temperature extremes to an insect attack. Jack Schultz, a professor of chemical ecology at the University of Missouri, says when a plant senses that it's being eaten, it cannot walk away from trouble; on the contrary, it will release a chemical vapor(蒸汽) that alerts other plants nearby.
“Their language is a chemical language, and it involves chemicals that move through the air that are easy to be changeable, and most of all are smells that we are familiar with，” Schultz explained.
“All plants responded to the attack by changing their chemistry to defend themselves，” Schultz recalled. “But we were quite surprised to find that nearby plants also changed their chemistry to defend themselves, even though they were not part of the experiment.”
Studies have also shown that plants under attack release pleasant chemicals. Those chemicals attract friendly insects that attack the pests eating the plant.
In the end, plants' ability to communicate their needs—and our ability to understand them—could help farmers reduce the use of poisonous chemicals, cut operating costs and limit damage to the environment.
1.The recent scientific studies have shown that plants can ______.
A．communicate with other living things in a chemical way
B．hardly react to any sudden change in temperature
C．use a very special chemica1 language which is familiar to us
D．respond to the attack by giving off poisonous chemicals
2.When being eaten by an insect, the plant will ________.
A．walk away from trouble
B．change its chemistry to kill the insect
C．release a chemical vapor to “ask” other plants for help
D．give off nice chemicals to attract friendly insects killing the pest
3.The underlined word “alert” most probably means “______”．
A．warn B．protect
C．threaten D．allow
4.Which would be the best title for the passage?
A．Communication between Plants
B．A Chemical “Language”
C．Plants Can Talk
D．How Plants Protect Themselves
-
A theme park featuring Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales will be built and open to public in Shanghai during the World Expo, which is ________ on May 1 next year in the city．
A．scheduling to start B．scheduled to start C．starting D．to being started
-
Imagine living in a city made of glass. No, this isn’t a fairy tale. If you could grab your diving gear and swim down 650 feet into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Washington State, you would witness the secret world of glass reefs.
The reef you’d be looking at is made up of glass sponges(海绵). But how can animals be made of glass? Well, glass is formed from a substance called silica. The sponges use the silica found in ocean waters to build glass structures that will give them shape and support. Be careful! Some of the fragile creatures are up to 200 years old.
When sponges die, new ones grow on top of the pile of old ones. Over centuries, a massive and complex reef takes shape. Some sponges look like wrinkled trumpets, while others look like overgrown cauliflower or mushrooms.
Dr. Paul Johnson, who discovered the Washington reef in 2007, also found other surprises such as bubbles of methane(甲烷) gas flowing out of the seafloor nearby. The methane feeds bacteria, and the bacteria feed the glass sponges.
“It’s a new ecosystem we know nothing about,” said Dr. Johnson.
The reef of yellow and orange glass sponges is crowded with crabs, shrimp, starfish, worms, snails, and rockfish. The glass reef is also a nursery for the babies of many of these creatures and was called a “kindergarten” by scientists.
Many animals that live in the reef hang around for a long time, just like the sponges. Rockfish, for example, live for more than 100 years. Scientists are just beginning to study all the species that call the reef home.
The Washington coast isn’t the only place where a living glass reef has been found. The first was discovered in Hecate Strait off the coast of British Columbia in 1991. Scientists all over the world were stunned to see it.
1.Which of the following is the best title for the passage?
A. Man-made cities under the sea B. The world under the sea
C. Glass “cities” under the sea D. Creatures under the sea
2.It can be learned that the glass reef _______.
A. is made up of a kind of materials called sponges
B. is a work of art made by some American scientists
C. is a new ecosystem people are not familiar with
D. was first discovered off the coast of Washington State
3.Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
A. The sponges must feel soft.
B. Silica comes from animals’ body fluid.
C. Methane is harmful to glass sponges.
D. Glass sponges depend on the bacteria for a living.
4.Why did scientists call the glass reef a “kindergarten”?
A. Because the babies of many sea creatures grow well there.
B. Because thousands of children visit it every year.
C. Because it is crowded with snails and rockfish, etc.
D. Because all the species call the reef home.
5.What does the underlined word “stunned” in the last paragraph mean?
A. Greatly surprised. B. Extremely scared.
C. Highly satisfied. D. Very pleased.
-
Pinocchio may be just a children's fairy tale, but Spanish scientists at the University of Granada recently investigated the so-called ''Pinocchio effect'' and found that our noses don't grow when we tell a lie, but actually shrink a bit.
Dr. Emilio Gómez Milán and his team developed a lie detector test that used thermography to tell if people were lying, and found that whenever participants in their research were being untruthful, the temperature of the tips of their noses dropped up to 1.2℃, while the temperature of their forehead increased up to 1.5℃. Scientists also found that drop in temperature at nose level actually caused it to slightly shrink, although the difference is undetected by the human eye.
''One has to think in order to lie, which rises the temperature of the forehead, '' Dr. Gomez Milan explained the findings. ''At the same time we feel anxious, which lowers the temperature of the nose. ''
For this study, researchers asked a number of 60 students to perform various tasks while being scanned by thermal imaging technology. One of these tasks involved calling a 3 to 4 minutes call to their parents, partner or a friend and telling a significant lie. Participants had to devise the lie by themselves during the call, and the thermal cameras picked up this ''reverse Pinocchio effect'' caused by the fluctuation (起伏) in temperature in the nose and forehead.
Interestingly, the thermal lie doctor picked up the temperature difference in 80 percent of test subjects, which is a better rate of success than that of any modern lie doctor.
''With this method we have achieved to increase accuracy and reduce the occurrence of 'false positives', something that is frequently with other methods such as the polygraph (测谎仪) , '' said Dr. Emilio Gómez Milán, who added that law enforcement interviewers could one day combine other lie detection technology with thermal imaging to achieve better results.
The thermal lie doctor has been the most reliable in the world, 10% more than the popular polygraph.
1.Why does the author mention ''Pinocchio'' at the beginning?
A.To tell a fairy story B.To warn us not to lie.
C.To introduce a research. D.To inspire us to doubt old beliefs.
2.According to the research, what might happen if you tell a lie?
A.Your nose gets longer.
B.Your nose becomes smaller.
C.Your temperature gets higher.
D.Your temperature remains stable.
3.What can we learn about the research?
A.Researchers conduct the study by interviewing.
B.Researchers design difference lies for participants.
C.The thermal lie detector will prove a popular one.
D.The thermal lie doctor may assist law enforcement.
4.Which might be the best title for the passage?
A.Will lie detectors tell the truth?
B.Will lying make your nose longer?
C.Will lying make your temperature rise?
D.Will thermal imaging technology be reliable?