Scientists at Harvard University and Bates Co...

Scientists at Harvard University and Bates College find female chimpanzees (黑猩猩) appear to treat sticks as dolls, carrying them around until they have children of their own. Young males engage in such behavior much less frequently.

The new work by Sonya M. Kahlenberg and Richard W. Wrangham, described this week in the journal Current Biology, provides the first evidence of a wild non­human species playing with dolls, as well as the first known sex difference in a wild animal’s choice of playthings.

The two researchers say their work adds to a growing body of evidence that human children are probably born with their own ideas of how they want to behave, rather than simply mirroring other girls who play with dolls and boys who play with trucks. Doll play among humans could have its origins in object—carrying by earlier apes (猿类), they say, suggesting that toy selection is probably not due entirely to socialization.

“In humans, there are obvious sex differences in children’s toy play, and these are remarkably similar across cultures,” says Kahlenberg. “While socialization by elders and peers has been the primary explanation, our work suggests that biology may also have an important role to play in activity preferences.”

In 14 years of data on chimpanzee behavior at the Kibale National Park in Uganda, Kahlenberg and Wrangham counted more than 100 examples of stick­carrying. Some young chimpanzees carried sticks into the nest to sleep with them and on one occasion built a separate nest for the stick. “We have seen juveniles occasionally carrying sticks for many years, and because they sometimes treated them rather like dolls, we wanted to know if in general this behavior tended to represent something like playing with dolls,” says Wrangham, a Professor at Harvard. “If the doll hypothesis (假设) was right, we thought that females should carry sticks more than males do, and that the chimpanzees should stop carrying sticks when they had their first child. We have now watched enough young chimpanzees to prove both points.”

1.What does a female chimpanzee do with sticks?

2. What causes the different toy selection of chimpanzees, according to the passage?

3.We can infer from the fourth paragraph that ________.

4.It can be concluded from the passage that ________.

高三英语阅读理解困难题查看答案及解析

Scientists at Royal Holloway, University of London　 and Queen Mary, University of London have discovered that bees learn to fly the shortest possible route between flowers even if they discover the flowers in a different order. Bees are effectively solving the “traveling salesman problem”, and they are the first creatures found to do this.

The traveling salesman must find the shortest route that allows him to visit all locations on his route. Computers solve it by comparing the length of all possible routes and choosing the shortest, and it can keep computers busy for days. However, bees solve it without computer assistance using a brain the size of grass seed. Dr. Nigel Raine, from the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway explains, “Bees solve traveling salesman problems every day. They visit flowers at multiple locations and because bees use lots of energy to fly, they find a route which keeps flying to a minimum. ”

The team used the computer to control artificial flowers to test whether bees would follow a route defined by the order in which they discovered the flowers or if they would find the shortest route. After exploring the location of the flowers, bees quickly learned to fly the shortest route.

As well as improving our understanding of how bees move around the landscape pollinating(授粉)crops and wild flowers, this research, which is due to be published in The American Naturalist, has other applications. Our lifestyle relies on networks such as traffic on the roads, information flow on the Web and business supply chains. By understanding how bees can solve their problems with such a tiny brain, we can improve our management of these everyday networks without needing lots of computer time. Dr. Raine adds, “Despite their tiny brains, bees are capable of extraordinary feats of behavior. We need to understand how they can solve the traveling salesman problem without a computer. ”

1. What would be the best title of the passage?

A. Bees help salesmen travel

B. Tiny-brained bees solve a complex mathematical problem

C. How bees discover the flowers

D. How to solve the “traveling salesman problem”

2.We may infer from the second paragraph that the “traveling salesman problem” 　　.

A. can be solved by a computer easily

B. can’t even be solved by a computer

C. can puzzle both people and computers

D. remains to be solved by scientists

3. The main purpose of the last paragraph is to　　.

A. provide further proof for the research

B. tell us how bees can fly the shortest route between flowers

C. tell us how the research about bees’ flying route was conducted

D. explain the importance of the research

4. It can be concluded from the passage that　　.

A. all creatures are smarter than computers

B. the research about bees’ flying route can be applied to many fields

C. our networks are more complex than bees’ ones

D. with the help of the computer we can find out how bees can solve the “traveling salesman problem”

高三英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

Scientists, psychologists and English academics at Liverpool University have found that reading the works of the classical writers like Shakespeare and Wordsworth has a great effect on the mind, catches the reader’s attention and triggers moments of self-examination.

Using a special machine, they monitored the brain activity of 30 volunteers as they read works by William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, T.S. Eliot and others.

In the first part of the research, the brain activity of 30 volunteers was monitored as they read passages from Shakespeare’s plays, including King Lear, Othello, Coriolanus and Macbeth, and again as they read the text rewritten in a simpler form or modern language.

While reading the common texts, normal levels of electrical activity were shown in their brains. When they read the works of Shakespeare, however, the levels of activity jumped because of his use of words which were unfamiliar to them. The result of the test showed that the more challenging passages cause a greater degree of electrical activity in the brain than the common ones.

Scientists went on to study the brain activity as it responded to each word and recorded how it lit up as the readers came across unusual words, surprising phrases or difficult sentences in the classical works. As a result, this lightening up process of the mind lasted longer than that when volunteers read common texts, encouraging further reading.

The research also found that reading poetry especially increases activity in the right hemisphere (半球) of the brain, an area connected with “autobiographical memory”, driving the readers to think carefully about their own experiences based on what they have read. The academics said this meant the classical works of literature are more useful than self-help books.

Philip Davis, an English professor who has worked on the study in the university’s magnetic resonance center, announced this week: “Classical literature acts like a rocket-booster to the brain, which provides extra power for the brain. You may never imagine how powerful it is. The research shows such kind of literature can create new thoughts and connections in the young and the old.”

1.The underlined word “triggers” in Paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to“_______”.

A.stops B.keeps

C.interrupts D.causes

2.Which of the following is NOT true about reading classical literature?

A.It’s helpful for readers to come up with new ideas.

B.It’s an activity that is suitable for people of all ages.

C.It makes readers’ electrical activity of brain return to normal.

D.It makes readers’ brain more active than reading common texts.

3.From the research, we can learn that _______.

A.poetry increases left-brain activity more than other literary forms

B.the readers prefer Shakespeare’s works to the other writers’works

C.the words of classical works make it hard for volunteers to read further

D.reading classical works produces a good and long-lasting effect on the mind

4.What does the author mainly tell us in this passage?

A.Classical works help the brain develop better.

B.Poetry is useful for developing people’s brain.

C.Common books are unpopular anymore.

D.Shakespeare’s plays are worth reading.

高三英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

While studying at Jadavpur University, Banerjee wanted to find a creative and socially beneficial alternative to bricks. Along with his classmates, Banerjee created, a social enterprise called Qube in 2017. Its product is the Plastiqube-an alternative brick made from waste plastic.

Banerjee and his team work with waste collectors to gather garbage, including water bottles and abandoned bags. The garbage is then cleaned, cut up and pressed into blocks by hand. “Each Plastiqube brick costs 5 to 6 rupees （about 8 cents） to make，while the average clay brick sells for about 10 rupees (14 cents),” Banerjee says. What 's more, unlike traditional bricks, Plastiqubes don' t use any mortar (砂浆). “They are basically like Lego bricks,” explains Banerjee, now aged 22. He adds，“There are interlocking designs on the bottom and the top, and they lock between each other.

India is estimated to throw away over 25, 000 tons of plastic waste every day. Around 40% of it is left uncollected. “We’re building something sustainable (可持续的) out of garbage,” Banerjee says. By taking coal and mortar out of the brick making process, Banerjee claims Plastiqubes can reduce energy use by 70 percent, generating a much lower carbon foot-print than traditional bricks.

Each Plastiqube brick contains 1.6 kilograms of waste plastic. They haven't yet been tried out for practical purpose but tests on their fire resistance and long- term steadiness are now in progress. Banerjee believes they will last even longer than traditional clay bricks, while removing waste plastic from the environment for centuries.

Banerjee's innovation has, already won him recognition. He was a regional finalist for the United Nation's 2018 Young Champions of the Earth awards. He is also part of the Yunus and Yunus Global Fellowship. Banerjee will not only encourage young engineers to dream big, but also to think carefully about the environmental impact. “My advice is to start something while keeping a goal that it has to be sustainable in the long term,” he says.

1.Why did Banerjee invent Plastiqube ?

A.To reduce the cost of bricks. B.To protect the environment.

C.To control the usage of mortar. D.To raise his company 's reputation.

2.Which of the following makes the new bricks join together?

A.Mortar. B.Lego bricks.

C.Average clay. D.Interlocking design.

3.How does the text describe the characters of Plastiqube?

A.By explaining the process. B.By analyzing some cases.

C.By listing some data. D.By giving examples.

4.What can we learn from the text?

A.Banerjee has won lots of national awards.

B.Producing Plastiqube needs little labor force.

C.Plastiqube hasn't been used to build houses.

D.Banerjee likes inspiring teenagers to go for dreams.

高三英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

Two professors at Harvard University published a study of 3,300 new graduates, looking at ______ their names had any bearing on their academic performance.

A. that    B. how    C. why    D. whether

高三英语单项填空中等难度题查看答案及解析

Do you make friends1.(easy)? Do a wall-sit test and you’ll find out.

Researchers at the University of Oxford did 2.study with 101 participants aged between 18 and 34. Participants first 3.(fill) out questionnaires about their social lives, and they were then asked 4.(press)against a wall with their5.(knee) at right angles(直角)for as long as they could,6.can be really painful.

The results showed that the longer participants held the position, the bigger7.outer network---or distant friends they contacted once or twice a month—was. That was 8.the brain’s painkilling system is associated　 9.both pain tolerance and social bonding, which means that the more active this system is, the10.(good) you are at both.

高三英语短文填空困难题查看答案及解析

听下面一段较长对话，回答以下小题。

1.Where does this interview take place?

A.At Stanford University. B.At Harvard University. C.. At Georgetown University.

2.What does the man plan to major in?

A.Biology. B.Political Science. C.Environmental studies.

3.Why does the man admire his mother?

A.She has lived in many countries.

B.She learned English very quickly.

C.She gained success by overcoming great difficulties.

高三英语长对话中等难度题查看答案及解析

A team of engineers at Harvard University has been inspired by Nature to create the first robotic fly. The mechanical fly has become a platform for a series of new high-tech integrated systems. Designed to do what a fly does naturally, the tiny machine is the size of a fat housefly. Its mini wings allow it to stay in the air and perform controlled flight tasks.

“It’s extremely important for us to think about this as a whole system and not just the sum of a bunch of individual components (元件),” said Robert Wood, the Harvard engineering professor who has been working on the robotic fly project for over a decade. A few years ago, his team got the go-ahead to start piecing together the components. “The added difficulty with a project like this is that actually none of those components are off the shelf and so we have to develop them all on our own,” he said.

They engineered a series of systems to start and drive the robotic fly. “The seemingly simple system which just moves the wings has a number of interdependencies on the individual components, each of which individually has to perform well, but then has to be matched well to everything it’s connected to,” said Wood. The flight device was built into a set of power, computation, sensing and control systems. Wood says the success of the project proves that the flying robot with these tiny components can be built and manufactured.

While this first robotic flyer is linked to a small, off-board power source, the goal is eventually to equip it with a built-in power source, so that it might someday perform data-gathering work at rescue sites, in farmers’ fields or on the battlefield. “Basically it should be able to take off, land and fly around,” he said.

Wood says the design offers a new way to study flight mechanics and control at insect-scale. Yet, the power, sensing and computation technologies on board could have much broader applications. “You can start thinking about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult with the animals, but using these robots instead,” he said. “So there are a lot of technologies and open interesting scientific questions that are really what drives us on a day to day basis.”

1.The robotic fly project has been conducted __________.

A. just by accident

B. within a decade

C. just by a professor    　　　　　　　　　　

D. for more than ten years

2.The difficulty the team of engineers met with while making the robotic fly was that __________.

A. they had no model in their mind

B. they did not have sufficient time

C. they had no ready-made components

D. they could not assemble the components

3.Which of the following can be learned from the passage?

A. The robotic flyer is designed to learn about insects.

B. Animals are not allowed in biological experiments.

C. There used to be few ways to study how insects fly.

D. Wood’s design can replace animals in some experiments.

4.Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?

A. Father of Robotic Fly

B. Inspiration from Engineering Science

C. Robotic Fly Imitates Real Life Insect

D. Harvard Breaks Through in Insect Study

高三英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

Most academics would view a post at an elite university like Oxford or Harvard as the crowning achievement of a career—bringing both honour and access to better wine cellars. But scholars desire such places for reasons beyond glory. They believe perching on one of the topmost branches of the academic tree will also improve the quality of their work, by bringing them together with other geniuses with whom they can collaborate and who may help spark new ideas. This sounds reasonable. Unfortunately，as Albert Laszlo Barabasi of Northeastern University，in Boston (and also, it must be said, of Harvard), shows in a study published in Scientific Reports, it is not true.

Dr Barabasi and his team examined the careers of physicists who began publishing between 1950 and 1980 and continued to do so for at least 20 years. They ranked the impact of the institutions these people attended by counting the number of citations each institution’s papers received within five years of publication. By tracking the association of individual physicists and counting their citations in a similar way, Dr Barabasi was able to work out whether moving from a low to a high-ranking university improved a physicist’s impact. In total, he and his team analysed 2,725 careers.

They found that, though an average physicist moved once or twice during his career, moving from a low-rank university to an elite one did not increase his scientific impact. Going in the opposite direction, however, did have a small negative influence. The consequence is that elite university do not，at least as far as physicists are concerned，add value to output. That surprising conclusion is one which the authorities in countries such as Britain, who are seeking to concentrate expensive subjects such as physics in fewer, more elite institutions—partly to save money, but also to create what are seen as centers of excellence—might wish to consider.

1. What is the fundamental reason why scholars want to get a post at an elite university?

A. Their academic career can benefit from it.

B. It is an access to better wine cellars.

C. Reasons beside glory.

D. They can win honour.

2. On what basis did Dr Barabasi’s research team draw conclusions that getting a post at a higher-rank university won’t help scholastic impact?

A. His team examined the 20-year careers of physicists.

B. He came from Havard, a top-ranking university himself and knew it well.

C. Individual physicists’ citations by other authors increased within 5 years.

D. They ranked the physicists’ institutions according to citations to these universities’ paper.

3. Which of the following is true of Dr Barabasi’s research?

A. It proved that a post at an elite university helps academics.

B. It began in 1950 and ended in 1980.

C. It calculated the citations of the physicists’ institutions.

D. It is based on a lot more than 2,000 scholars of various fields.

高三英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

A team of engineers at Harvard University has been inspired by Nature to create the first robotic fly. The mechanical fly has become a platform for a series of new high-tech integrated systems. Designed to do what a fly does naturally, the tiny machine is the size of a fat housefly. Its mini wings allow it to stay in the air and perform controlled flight tasks.

“It’s extremely important for us to think about this as a whole system and not just the sum of a bunch of individual components (元件),” said Robert Wood, the Harvard engineering professor who has been working on the robotic fly project for over a decade. A few years ago, his team got the go-ahead to start piecing together the components. “The added difficulty with a project like this is that actually none of those components are off the shelf and so we have to develop them all on our own,” he said.

They engineered a series of systems to start and drive the robotic fly. “The seemingly simple system which just moves the wings has a number of interdependencies on the individual components, each of which individually has to perform well, but then has to be matched well to everything it’s connected to,” said Wood. The flight device was built into a set of power, computation, sensing and control systems. Wood says the success of the project proves that the flying robot with these tiny components can be built and manufactured.

While this first robotic flyer is linked to a small, off-board power source, the goal is eventually to equip it with a built-in power source, so that it might someday perform data-gathering work at rescue sites, in farmers’ fields or on the battlefield. “Basically it should be able to take off, land and fly around,” he said.

Wood says the design offers a new way to study flight mechanics and control at insect-scale. Yet, the power, sensing and computation technologies on board could have much broader applications. “You can start thinking about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult with the animals, but using these robots instead,” he said. “So there are a lot of technologies and open interesting scientific questions that are really what drives us on a day to day basis.”

1.The difficulty the team of engineers met with while making the robotic fly was that ________.

A. they had no model in their mind

B. they did not have sufficient time

C. they had no ready-made components

D. they could not assemble the components

2.It can be inferred from paragraphs 3 and 4 that the robotic fly ________.

A. consists of a flight device and a control system

B. can just fly in limited areas at the present time

C. can collect information from many sources

D. has been put into wide application

3.Which of the following can be learned from the passage?

A. The robotic flyer is designed to learn about insects.

B. Animals are not allowed in biological experiments.

C. There used to be few ways to study how insects fly.

D. Wood’s design can replace animals in some experiments.

4.Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?

A. Father of Robotic Fly

B. Inspiration from Engineering Science

C. Robotic Fly Imitates Real Life Insect

D. Harvard Breaks Through in Insect Study

高三英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析