New research has found that animals have memo...

New research has found that animals have memories, too —　　　　 , they might be much cleverer than we thought.

A. in other words　　　 B. above all

C. in many ways　　　 　 D. all in all

高二英语单项填空中等难度题查看答案及解析

New research has found that animals have memories, too —________, they might be much cleverer than we thought.

高二英语单项填空简单题查看答案及解析

Researchers in Singapore found that eating mushrooms over twice per week could help prevent memory and language problems later in life.

According to the study, published in The Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, there is a unique antioxidant (抗氧化物质) present in mushrooms that helps protect certain brain functions.

Researchers observed 663 Chinese adults aged over 60 whose diets and lifestyles were tracked from 2011 to 2017. In the study, the participants were asked how often they ate six different types of mushrooms: oyster, shiitake, white button, dried, golden and tinned. The findings showed that eating more than two shares of mushrooms per week somehow lowered the chances of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) by 50% against those who ate fewer than one share.

MCI is a condition that can make people forgetful, affect their memory and cause problems with language, attention and finding the exact position of objects in space. Changes in behavior can be not very noticeable and not serious enough to be known as dementia (痴呆).

Participants who ate more mushrooms were found to perform better in thinking and processing exams and also exhibited a faster processing speed. The advantage was reportedly more apparent in those who ate more than two shares a week or more than 300 grams.

The scientists pointed out, however, that they have yet to put up a direct link between the fungi(蘑菇) and brain function.

The researchers also acknowledged that since this study mainly relied on self-reported information on mushroom intake and other dietary factors, further studies may be required. Still, the lead study author Lei Feng is encouraged by their findings. ''This relevance is surprising and encouraging, '' Lei said.

Mushrooms are one of the richest dietary sources of ergothioneine (麦角硫茵氨基酸) — a substance which we humans can’t make on our own.

1.What aspect of research did researchers mainly do in paragraph 3?

A.Culture of diets. B.Existence of MCI.

C.The types of mushrooms. D.The benefit of eating mushrooms.

2.What can we know about MCI?

A.It can affect memory seriously.

B.It can result in language problems.

C.It can make people easy to be lost.

D.It can reduce the chance of forgetfulness.

3.What is the result if students often eat more mushrooms?

A.They love communicating with others.

B.Their thinking ability is quicker than the majority.

C.Their processing speed will be faster.

D.Their academic performance improves significantly.

4.Where is this passage most likely from?

A.A science report. B.An advertisement.

C.Adult’s literature. D.Scientific fiction.

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

A new study has found some secrets of people’s understanding of large numbers.

Researchers studied a group of people who were born deaf and never learned any spoken language or a formal sign language, but they have developed a gesture system to communicate with people around them. The gestures let them express approximate amounts, but not exact numbers.

“Up to three, they’re fine,” says Elizabet Spaepen, a researcher at the University of Chicago and an author of the study. “But past three, they start to fall apart.” In one test, Spaepen would knock her fist against a study participant’s fist a certain number of times and then ask them to respond with the same number of knocks. “If I were to knock four times on their fist, they might knock on my fist five times,” she says.

The finding offers a clue to just how much language affects our understanding of numbers. That has been a big question since 2004, when other researchers published data on two tribes in the Amazon whose members also lack words for big numbers. “What they have are words that mean one and two,” Spaepen says, “and then they have a word to mean many.”

Members of the Amazonian tribes also had trouble matching numbers larger than three or four. But some scholars felt that these earlier studies failed to prove that language was the reason. They pointed out that the tribes lived in groups that didn’t use money and had no need for exact numbers.

The new research appears to answer that criticism. “It proves that the kinds of problems in understanding numbers that we found in the Amazonian tribes are not due to just the cultural or environmental circumstances,” says Peter Gordon of Columbia University, one of the researchers involved in the earlier studies.

1.The participants of the new study ______.

A. cannot communicate with one another

B. use a formal sign language to express numbers

C. have some physical disability

D. come from a distant tribe

2. According to the passage, the new study _______.

A. ignored the cultural influence on the participants

B. is doubted by many people

C. has found it is harder to learn numbers than learning a sign language

D. has shown that our understanding of numbers is influenced by our mastering of language.

3. The tribes involved in earlier studies _________.

A. often dealt with big numbers.

B. didn’t use money in their daily life

C. didn’t have their own language

D. often made trouble for the researchers

4. What can we learn from the last paragraph?

A. Peter Gordon is a researcher of the University of Chicago.

B. Peter Gordon thinks less of the new study than his earlier studies.

C. Peter Gordon believes people’s understanding of numbers has nothing to do with cultural circumstances.

D. Peter Gordon is in favor of the finding of the new study.

5.In which part of a newspaper would you most probably find this passage?

A. Science　　　　　　　 B. Health

C. Politics　　　　　　 D. Lifestyle

高二英语阅读理解简单题查看答案及解析

Whale researchers believe they have found a new way to measure the amount of stress felt by whales when they experience serious threats, such as being hit by a ship, and they say the technique could help protect the huge sea creatures from dying off.

American Rosalind Rolland is the lead scientist on the project. She and her team are with the New England Aquarium in Boston, Massachusetts. They measured stress hormones (荷尔蒙 ) by studying baleen, a substance found in the upper part of the mouth of some kinds of whale. She explains that the baleen serves as a record that shows a spike in stress hormones when whales face dangers such as a changing climate and ship strikes. Scientists can then read these records, similar to reading the rings on a tree.

Understanding the information is important because whales who often feel stressed are less likely to be reproductive and more likely to become sick. That combination is not good for the whale population, which is already dangerously low.

The scientists did their work on a whale that had become trapped in fishing equipment, which some scientists estimate kills up to 300, 000 whales and dolphins annually. It was finally killed by Inuit hunters who found it trying to drag the fishing equipment. The hunters said the whale seemed to lack energy. When scientists examined the dead whale, they found its mouth showed an increase in stress hormones 20 times greater than normal.

Regina Asmutis-Silvia is a biologist with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation in Massachusetts. She didn’t participate in the research, but she says it is important. “We clearly understand that stress is bad for humans. We also need to understand that stress is bad for other animals, too,” she adds.

1.What does the text mainly tell us?

A.The dangers the whale often faces.

B.The measures to stop sea life being hit.

C.A discovery to measure stress on whales.

D.A way to protect the mouth of the whale.

2.Which of the following can best replace “spike” underlined in Paragraph 2?

A.Rise. B.Change. C.Crash. D.Slide.

3.What may a whale living a stressful life be like?

A.Calm and fierce. B.Unhealthy and unable to reproduce.

C.Uneasy and energetic. D.Sizeable and likely to lose appetite.

4.Why does the author mention the words by Regina?

A.To move on to another topic.

B.To stress the importance of the finding.

C.To tell the necessity of studying other animals.

D.To show the similarity between humans and animals.

高二英语阅读理解简单题查看答案及解析

A new study has found the amount of antibiotics（抗生素）given to farm animals is expected to increase by two-thirds over the next 15 years. Researchers are linking the growing dependence on the drugs to the increasing need for meat, milk and eggs. However, the drugs could quicken the development of antibiotic-resistant infections（感染）. Such infections are already a major public, health concern in the United States.

The World Health Organization notes when people stop living in poverty（贫困）, the first thing they want to do is eat better, rather than earn more money. For most people, that means their diet should contain more meat. With the rapid development of Asia, people there are eating nearly four times as much meat, milk and other milk products as they did 50 year ago.

To meet the need, farmers have put many animals into smaller spaces. As the animals are crowded together, the easiest way to deal with some of the problems of crowding is to give them antibiotics. It's clear that antibiotics help animals stay healthy in a crowded environment and grow faster. But bacteria can develop resistance to the drugs gradually.

Nowadays, doctors find antibiotics that once worked against the infections no longer work. The bacteria have learned ways to fight against the drugs. The heavy use of antibiotics in animals is responsible for the growth of antibiotic resistance worldwide. In the United States, at least two million people get drug-resistant infections each year and at least 23,000 die from an infection.

Europe has banned the use of antibiotics to increase animal growth. And the United States is hoping to persuade farmers to stop using antibiotics for that purpose.

1.What accounts for the increasing amount of antibiotics given to farm animals?

A.The desire for new drugs. B.The less effective antibiotics.

C.The outdated farm technology. D.The need for more various foods.

2.What do most people want to do first when they get rid of poverty according to the WHO?

A.Making a lot of money. B.Focusing more on health.

C.Having more meat in their diet. D.Living in a better environment.

3.What can be inferred from the passage?

A.Antibiotics do harm to animals.

B.Antibiotics help animals stay healthy.

C.Antibiotics are used heavily in Europe.

D.Antibiotic-resistant bacteria spread to people.

4.What's the passage mainly about?

A.A new way of raising farm animals.

B.The advantages of using antibiotics.

C.The reason for banning the use of antibiotics.

D.The negative effect of antibiotics in farm animals.

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

A new study by a Penn State College of Medicine research team found that honey is a better and safer treatment for children than cough medicines.

Ian Paul, the study’s lead researcher, was motivated to test honey because treating coughs in children has recently become a sticky subject. Coughing is the body’s way of clearing irritated (受刺激的) airways to help you breathe. But too much coughing can irritate your lungs and throat even more. It can also make it tough to get the sleep your body needs to heal. Hoping to ease the suffering of their children, parents often give them cough medicines.

But there have never been any good studies showing that they work. Cough and cold medicines may also cause serious side effects. Hundreds of kids die in the hospital each year after receiving too much cough medicine by mistake. Last October, the US Food and Drug Administration suggested that parents should not give cough medicines to children under 6.

In order to search for a different solution, Paul designed a study that involved 105 kids who were sick with coughs and other cold conditions. At bedtime, the kids took buckwheat (荞麦) honey, honey-flavored (蜂蜜味的) DM (one of the most common ingredients in cough medicines), or no treatment. Parents and kids in the no-

-treatment group knew they weren’t getting anything, but the other two groups weren’t told which treatment they were getting.

The surveys showed that kids who swallowed about 2 teaspoons of buckwheat honey before bedtime coughed less and slept better than kids in the other groups. “When parents want something for their kids to take,” Paul says, “honey seems like the best option”.

But what gives honey its healing power? Substances called antioxidants (抗氧化剂) may be part of the answer. All honey contains antioxidants that protect our cells from damage. Studies show that antioxidant levels in the body rise after someone swallows honey.

68. Which of the following can be the best title for this passage?

A. No cough medicines to children

B. Sweet solution to kids’ coughing

C. Best treatment for your cold

D. Cough medicines don’t work

69. We can learn from Paragraph 2 that coughing ______.

A. sometimes does good to people

B. can cure lung and throat diseases

C. is more harmful to children

D. helps improve children’s diet

70. During Paul’s experiment, the kids who received treatment ______.

A. seemed much worse than before

B. knew they weren’t getting anything

C. coughed less and slept better

D. had no idea what they swallowed

高二英语阅读理解简单题查看答案及解析

IT'S a mystery that has puzzled scientists. Five years ago, researchers found an area in the Atlantic Ocean seabed, where a part of the Earth's outer layer, or crust（地壳）, is　 missing. A thick layer of dark green rock, which is usually found deep inside the planet, lies exposed.

The crust, mantle(地幔) and core（地核） are the main layers that make up the planet. The mantle rests between the crust and the core.

Last month, a team of 12 British scientists set off on a six-week trip to study the hole in the crust.

The hole is about 4,800 meters below sea level and is believed to be more than 48,000 meters long and more than 48,000 meters wide. Scientists think that there are other nearby gaps. "It is like a window into the interior (内部) of the Earth," says scientist　　 Bramley Murton, who is part of the research team.

The site where the hole is located is part of a ridge (山脉) of undersea volcanoes.　 There, two of the plates that make up the Earth's surface meet. The plates are always　　 moving. When the plates move away from each other, lava rushes up from the mantle to　　 fill the gap and form a new crust. But this did not happen in the area where the hole is located.

The hole is giving researchers a good opportunity to study what's below the Earth's　　 surface. The team will use a special robotic tool to film the area and get samples of the exposed mantle. They hope to study everything from the chemistry of the oceans to how the Earth's surface behaves under the sea.

1. What's the title for the passage?

A. How to study the earth.

B. The formation of the earth.

C. A hole in the earth.

D. Studying the inside of the earth.

2.For the main layers of the earth, which one is right?

A. crust, mantle, core　　　　 B. seabed, crust, mantle

C. seabed, mantle, core　　　 D. crust, seabed, core

3.How does the hole come into being?

A. It's because of a volcano eruption.

B. It's because of the plates movements

C. It's because lava rushes up from the mantle

D. It's not clear from the passage.

4.By studying the hole, the scientists want to do the following except____.

A. knowing what's below the Earth's surface

B. getting samples of the exposed mantle

C. getting the film of the hole

D. studying the chemistry of the oceans

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

Plants have family values, too; it seems, with new research suggesting they can recognize close relatives in order to work together.

An ability to tell family from strangers is well known in animals, allowing them to cooperate and share resources, but plants may possess similar social skills, scientists believe.

Susan Dudley and Amanda File of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, report they have demonstrated for the first time that plants can recognize their kin.

This suggests that plants, though lacking recognition and memory, are capable of complex social interactions.

“Plants have this kind of hidden but complicated social life，” Dudley said.

The study found plants from the same species of beach­-dwelling wildflower grew aggressively alongside unrelated neighbors but were less competitive when they shared soil with their families.

Sea rocket, a North American species, showed stronger and healthier root growth when planted in pots with strangers than when raised with relatives from the same maternal(母系的) family, the study found.

This is an example of kin selection, a behavior common in animals in which closely related individuals take a group approach to succeeding in their environment, the researchers said.

Kin selection also applies to competition, because if family members compete less with each other, the group will do better overall. “Everywhere you look, plants are growing right up next to other plants，” Dudley said，“ Usually it’s a case of each plant for itself. But sometimes those plants are related, and there are benefits to not wasting resources on being competitive, and there is not really a cost to not being competitive as long as your neighbor is also not being competitive.”

Learning and memory appear to be important for kin recognition in animals, but this isn’t an option for plants, she noted.

Some researchers speculate(猜测) that plants communicate through their roots, identifying themselves using tiny chemical signatures specific to each plant’s family.

1.What’s the main idea of the message?

A．Studies find plants can recognize, communicate with relatives.

B．Kin selection is important for plants.

C．Animals can recognize and memorize their relatives.

D．Competition asks plants to recognize their relatives.

2.Which of the following is NOT right about animals’ social skill?

A．Animals can recognize and memorize their relatives.

B．Animals’ social skill is to cooperate and share resources.

C．Animals’ social skill can recognize close relatives in order to work together.

D．Animals’ social skill is no use at all.

3.Plants’ kin selection is to ________.

A．grow well                             B．compete with other kinds of plants

C．strengthen the relationship among siblings    D．find which one is the best

4.From the passage，we learn that ________.

A．sea rocket is a South American species

B．sea rocket grows aggressively alongside unrelated neighbors

C．sea rocket grows aggressively alongside its siblings

D．sea rocket is a kind of bush without flowers

5.How can the plants communicate with each other according to experts’ suppose?

A．Plants communicate by using tiny chemical signatures specific to each plant’s family.

B．Plants communicate with each other through their roots.

C．Plants communicate with each other by their leaves.

D．Plants communicate with each other with their flowers.

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

British researchers have found that children’s IQ predicts their probability of becoming vegetarians (素食者) as young adults.

Recent studies suggest that vegetarianism may be associated with lower cholesterol (胆固醇), reduced risk of overweight and heart disease.

“We know from other studies that brighter children tend to behave in a healthier fashion as adults—they’re less likely to smoke, less likely to be overweight，less likely to have high blood pressure and more likely to take exercise.” lead author Catharine Gale said, “This study provides further evidence that people  with a high IQ tend to have a healthier lifestyle.”

In the study, Gale’s team collected data on nearly 8,200 men and women aged 30, whose IQ had been tested when they were 10 years of age.

“Children who scored higher on IQ tests at age 10 were more likely than those who got lower scores to report that they were vegetarian at the age of 30.”Gale said.

The researchers found that 4.5 percent of participants were vegetarians. Of these, 2.5 percent were vegan, and 33.6 percent said they were vegetarian but also ate fish or chicken.

There was no difference in IQ score between strict vegetarians and those who said they were vegetarian but also ate fish or chicken，the researchers added.

One expert said the findings weren’t the whole answer，however.

“We don’t know the beliefs or attitudes of the parents of the children，nor do we know if there was a particular event that led these children to becoming vegetarian in their teens or adulthood.” said Lona Sandon, and assistant professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

1.From the article，we know that ________.

A．brighter children are likely to become vegetarians when they are ten.

B．people with a higher IQ will not be overweight

C．brighter children are likely to have a healthier lifestyle

D．overweight may cause high blood pressure

2.What does the underlined word “vegan” in the sixth paragraph mean?

A．Someone who only eats vegetables.

B．Someone who chooses not to eat meat or fish.

C．Someone who likes eating meat and fish.

D．Someone who likes eating vegetables.

3.This study left some unanswered questions EXCEPT “________”．

A．Did the vegetarian children grow up in a family with a vegetarian parent?

B．Did the children eat a primarily vegetarian diet at the age of 10?

C．Were meatless meals regularly served in the participants’ families?

D．Did the vegetarian children really have a high IQ?

4.The main idea of the passage is that ________.

A．the low IQ children will be unhealthier when they grow up

B．being vegetarians can reduce the risk of overweight and heart disease

C．IQ is important to vegetarians

D．high IQ children are more likely to become vegetarian when they grow up

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析