Passage 1

Topic

航海时间测量发明

Content Review

P1 The reality was that in the 18th century no one had ever made a clock that could suffer the great rolling and pithing of a ship and the large changes in temperature whilst still keeping time accurately enough to be of any use. Navigators had been unable to determine their position at sea with accuracy and they faced the huge attendant risks of shipwreck or running out of supplies before reaching their destination. Indeed, most of the scientific community thought such clock impossibility.

P2 Longitude is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east-west position of a point on the Earth's surface. Until the mid-1750s, accurate navigation at sea out of sight of land was an unsolved problem due to the difficulty in calculating longitude. Navigators could determine their latitude by measuring the sun's angle at noon. To find their longitude, however, they needed a time standard that would work aboard a ship.

P3 In order to determine longitude, sailors had to measure the angle between Moon centre and a given star — lunar distance — together with height of both planets using the naval sextant. The sailors also had to calculate the Moon’s position if seen form the centre of Earth. The key to knowing how far around world you are from home is to know, at that very moment, what time it is back home. A comparison with your local time (easily found by checking the position of the Sun) will then tell you the time difference between you and home, and thus how far round the Earth you are from home.

P4 After 1714 when the British government offered the huge sum of ￡20,000 for a solution to the problem, with the prize to be administered by the splendidly titled Board of Longitude. If the solution was to be by timekeeper (and there were other methods since the prize was offered for any solution to the problem), then the timekeeping required to achieve this goal would have to be within 2.8 seconds a day, a performance considered impossible for any clock at sea and unthinkable for a watch, even under the very best conditions.

P5 John Harrison was born in Foulby, near Wakefield in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the first of five children in his family. His father worked as a carpenter at the nearby Nostell Priory estate. Following his father's trade as a carpenter, Harrison built and repaired clocks in his spare time. During the latter part of this early career, he worked with his Younger brother James. Their first major project was a revolutionary turret clock for the stables at Brocklesby Park, seat of the Pelham family. The clock was revolutionary because it required no oil.

P6 In 1730, Harrison designed a marine clock to compete for the Longitude Prize and travelled to London, seeking financial assistance. He presented his ideas to Edmond Halley, the Astronomer Royal, who in turn referred him to George Graham, the country's foremost clockmaker. Graham provided him money to assist his earlier work on sea clocks. This support was important to Harrison, as he was supposed to have found it difficult to communicate his ideas in a coherent manner.

P7 After several attempts to design a betterment of H1, Harrison believed that the solution to the longitude problem lay in an entirely different design. H4 is completely different from the other three timekeepers. It looks like a very large pocket watch. Harrison’s son William set sail for the West Indies, with H4, aboard the ship Deptford on 18 November 1761. It was a remarkable achievement but it would be some time before the Board of Longitude was sufficiently satisfied to award Harrison the prize.

P8 John Hadley, an English mathematician, developed sextant, who was a competitor of Harrison at that time for the luring prize. A sextant is an instrument used for measuring angles, for example between the sun and the horizon, so that the position of a ship or aeroplane can be calculated, Making this measurement is known as sighting the object, shooting the object, or taking a sight and it is an essential part of celestial navigation. The angle, and the time when it was measured, can be used to calculate a position line on a nautical or aeronautical chart. A sextant can also be used to measure the Lunar distance between the moon and another celestial object (eg. stars, planet) in order to determine Greenwich time which is important because it can then be used to determine the longitude.

P9 The majority within this next generation of chronometer pioneers were English, but the story is by no means wholly that of English achievement. One French name, Pierre Le Roy of Paris, stands out as a major presence in the early history of the chronometer. Another great name in the story is that of the Lancastrian, Thomas Earnshaw, a slightly younger contemporary of John Amold’s. It was Earnshaw who created the final form of chronometer escapement, the spring detent escapement, and finalized the format and the production system for the marine chronometer, making it truly an article of commerce, and a practical means of safer navigation at sea over the next century and half.

Questions & Answers

Questions 1-7 Matching

1. description of Harrison’s background   E 

2. problems caused by poor ocean navigation   A

3. the person who gave financial support   F

4. analysis of long-term importance of clock invention   I

5. definition of longitude   B

6. description of requirements of competition entries   D

7. examples of questions faced by timekeeping technology at sea   C

Questions 8-13 Sentence completion

8. Sailors was able to use the position of sun to calculate local time.

9. Any clock to win the competition, the invention can lose no more than 2.8 seconds.

10. John and James Harrison’s clock worked accurately without oil.

11. Harrison’s main competitor’s invention was known as sextant.

12. Hadley’s clock can use the position of sun to calculate.  

13. The modern version of Harrison’s invention is called marine chronometer.

Passage 2

Topic

沙漠化的影响

Content Review

How deserts are formed

A A desert is a barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs and consequently living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. Deserts have been defined and classified in a number of ways, generally combining total precipitation, number of days on which this falls, temperature, and humidity, and sometimes additional factors. (16题) In some areas, the deserts are separated by rivers, mountains or other landforms and in other areas, the borders of deserts cannot be determined. (21题，T)

B The raising of livestock is a major economic activity in semiarid lands, where grasses are generally the dominant type of natural vegetation. The consequences of an excessive number of livestock grazing in an area are the reduction of the vegetation cover and the trampling and pulverization of the soil. This is usually followed by the drying of the soil and accelerated erosion. (22题，T)

C Sand and dust storms are natural events that occur in arid regions where the land is not protected by a covering of vegetation. Dust storms usually start in desert margins rather than the deserts themselves where the finer materials have already been blown away. As a steady wind begins to blow, fine particles lying on the exposed ground begin to vibrate. At greater wind speeds, some particles are lifted into the air stream. When they land, they strike other particles which may be jerked into the air in their turn, starting a chain reaction. Once ejected, these particles move in one of three possible ways, depending on their size, shape and density. (14题)

D The cultivation of crops has expanded into progressively drier regions as population densities have grown. These regions are especially likely to have periods of severe dryness, so that crop failures are common. Since the raising of most crops necessitates the prior removal of the natural vegetation, crop failures leave extensive tracts of land devoid of a plant cover and susceptible to wind and water erosion. (20题)

E In a state of America in 20^th century, a large area of farmland had become desert. And measures have been taken to prevent the reoccurring of desertification. (15题)

F People have struggled to live in deserts and the surrounding semi-arid lands for millennia. Nomads have moved their flocks and herds to wherever grazing is available and oases have provided opportunities for a more settled way of life. The cultivation of semi-arid regions encourages erosion of soil and is one of the causes of increased desertification. Some nomads take the desert wherever they go. (18题)

G It is a misconception that the lack of rainfall causes the desertification. (23题，F) Even in some arid areas, the land will recover as soon as rain comes. More desertification is caused by human activities. In the West Africa, a serious desertification causes a large number of people to lose their lives. (24题，NG)

H Although there is tremendous publicity on the severity of desertification, (25题，F) the researchers have never reached a consensus on the reasons and process of desertification. (19题)

I Nowadays, new technologies are being applied to help solve desertification problems. (17题) Satellites have been put into use to study the impact of people and livestock on earth. (26题，F)However, other types of technology about the problems and process of desertification are still needed.

Questions & Answers

Questions 14-20 Matching

Which paragraph contains the following information?

14. the reference of irregular movement of particles   C

15. an account that a productive-land turned into a desert in 20th century   E

16. the types of deserts   A

17. the method of tackling the problems of deserts   I

18. the effect of migration on desertification   F

19. the lack of agreement among the scientists about the causes of desertification   H

20. the example of the fatal effects of faming practice   D

Questions 21-26

21. It is difficult to ascertain where the deserts begin in some areas.   T  

(A段说in other areas, the borders of deserts cannot be determined.)

22. Farming animals will increase soil erosion.   T

(B段提到livestock会accelerated erosion)

23. The most common cause of desertification is the lack of rainfall.   F

(G段提到It is a misconception that the lack of rainfall causes the desertification.)

24. The problems in West Africa are yet to be solved.   NG

(G段提到West Africa的问题,但是并未提及是否已经解决)

25. Media is uninterested in the problems of desertification.   F

(H段提到there is tremendous publicity on the severity of desertification.)

26. Technology studying the relationship of people, livestock and desertification is yet to be invented.   F

(I段提到Satellites have been put into use to study the impact of people and livestock on earth.)

Passage 3

Topic

两种睡眠模式比较

Content Review

The Science of Sleep

---Emma Bailey takes you to the curious world of deep sleep (or REM) and light sleep (or NREM).

P1 Sleeping is vital to humans as it repairs our body, and a person’s life has about 25-year time spent on sleeping in average, it is an activity that different from other behaviors.

P2 (过渡段) Animals also sleep in different length of time or depth of sleep according to their needs in life.

P3 Examples and details of sleeping behaviors of certain animals. They have similarities and differences compared with the sleep of humans. For example, baby animals generally spend more time on sleeping.

P4 Proposal of light sleep (REM) and deep sleep (NREM), and their different roles played on health of humans and different animals. 4 stages of sleep, and the transfer from REM to NREM.

P5 Current researches on the REM and NREM relevant to physiological change, brain activities, and body repair. People used to consider that the brain stops working when people are asleep.

P6 Doubt of the results obtained from the previous researches on REM and NREM, and some scientists claim that, human’s brain is still working during sleep but it runs less active during NREM.

P7 What brain activities are related to REM and NREM, such as the process of memorization, learning, and dreaming carried out in REM stage, in which the brain still works actively.

P8 The possible future research field on the sleep behaviors and the requirement of the improvement of relevant technologies, it is estimated that sleeping plays an irreplaceable role for humans.

Questions & Answers

Questions 27-32 Name matching (A-F选项每一个人名对应一个题目)

27. All the body could be repaired by one type of sleep.   C

28. Brain can benefits from one type of sleep in the early stage of life.   F

29. The time humans spend on sleeping is more than that in anything else.   A

30. Function of one type of sleep has altered as across the time.   D

31. The brain activity of a type of sleep is similar to that when humans are awake.   B

32. One type of sleep includes the learning from experience.   E

Questions 33-39 Gap filling (2 words)

Humans

33. Different from breathing and eating, the benefits of sleeping is shown in short term.

Animals

34. Certain animals have longer times when they are babies.

Research

35. It was considered that brain activity stopped when humans are in NREM.

36. The amount of REM rises with vigorous exercise.

37. Both metabolic rate and temperature of brain will decrease in NREM.

Future Study

38. Research of Sleep will be less mysterious as the development of scanning techniques is further improved.

39. Sleeping is vital, and it cannot be replaced by the use of new drug so far.

Question 40 Multiple Choice

40. The writer’s purpose in writing this article is:

A. Difference between animals and humans on the two types of sleep.

B. The reason some dreams are easily forgotton.

C. Why some people need more sleep than others.

D. Difference between light sleep (REM) and deep sleep (NREM).