第3部分：概括大意与完成句子(每题1分，共8分)
下面的短文后有2项测试任务：(1)第23～26题要求从所给的6个选项中为第3～6段每段选择1个最佳标题;(2)第27～30题要求从所给的6个选项中为每个句子确定1个最佳选项。
A Strong Greenhouse Gas
Methane is a colorless, odorless gas; it is also a potent greenhouse gas, and once released into the atmosphere1, it absorbs heat radiating from Earth’s surface. That’s why methane is a major contributor to the planet’s increasing temperature rise-or global warming. Molecule for molecule, methane’s heat-trapping power in the atmosphere is 21 times stronger than carbon dioxide2, the most abundant greenhouse gas.
With 13 billion cows belching almost constantly around the world (100 million in the U. S. alone), it’s no surprise that methane released by livestock is one of the chief global sources of the gas. Other prime methane sources: petroleum, drilling, coal mining, solid-waste landfills and wet lands.
Greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide make up only a small part of Earth’s atmosphere, which is 78 percent nitrogen and nearly 21 percent oxygen. And without greenhouse gases to trap the sun’s heat and warm the planet, life as we know it couldn’t exist3. But in the last 200 years, human activity that requires burning oil, natural gas, and coal for energy has magnified the greenhouse effect.
Atmospheric concentrations of methane have more than doubled in the last two centuries. Blame for this often focuses on big industries and gas-guzzling vehicles. But agriculture plays a major role, too. In the past 40 years alone, the global cattle population has doubled.
Cows munch mostly grasses and hay-yet they grow big and hefty. Why? Because of the rumen. The rumen holds 160 liters of food and billions of microbes. These microscopic bacteria and break down cellulose and fiber into digestible nutrients. A cow couldn’t live without its microbes. As the microbes digest cellulose, they release methane. The process occurs in all animals with a rumen (cows, sheep, and goats, for example), and it make them very gassy. It’s part of their normal digestion process. When they chew their cud, they regurgitate some food to rechew it, and all this gas comes out. The average cow expels 600 liters of methane a day.
That’s why we say livestock gas is also a major factor of causing the global warming.
23. Paragraph 1______
24. Paragraph 2______
25. Paragraph 4______
26. Paragraph 5______
A. Life of Microscopic Bacteria in Livestock’s Rumen
B. Ways to Reduce Methane’s Heat-Trapping Power
C. Agriculture Also Contributes to Increased Concentrations of Methane in the Atmosphere
D. Why Livestock Releases Methane
E. Methane as a Strong Greenhouse Gas
F. Livestock as a Prime Factor of the Greenhouse Effect
27. Methane is to the intensifying greenhouse effect_____.
28.Greenhouse gases are indispensable to mankind, but the problem mankind is faced with is_____.
29. Generally people heap criticism on______for the planet’s temperature rise.
30. Nothing has been mentioned in the passage about_____.
A. one of the major contributors
B. the ever-increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases
C. big and hefty cows
D. livestock’s normal digestion process
E. how to cut down the cattle populations
F. big industries and gas-guzzling vehicles
第4部分：阅读理解(第31～45题，每题3分，共45分)
下面有3篇短文，每篇短文后有5道题。请根据短文内容，为每题确定1个最佳选项。
第一篇
Mind-reading Machine
A team of researchers in California has developed a way to predict what kinds of objects people are looking at by scanning what’s happening in their brains.
When you look at something, your eyes send a signal about that object to your brain. Different regions of the brain process the information your eyes send. Cells in your brain called neurons are responsible for this processing.
The fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) brain scans could generally match electrical activity in the brain to the basic shape of a picture that someone was looking at.
Like calls anywhere else in your body, active neurons use oxygen. Blood bring oxygen to the neurons, and the more active a neuron is, the more oxygen it will consume. The more active a region of the brain, the more active its neurons, and in turn, the more blood will travel to that region. And by using fMRI, scientists can visualize which parts of the brain receive more oxygen-rich blood-and therefore, which parts are working to process information.
An fMRI machine is a device that scans the brain and measures changes in blood flow to the brain. The technology shows researchers how brain activity changes when a person thinks, looks at something, or carries out an activity like speaking or reading. By highlighting the areas of the brain at work when a person looks at different images, fMRI may help scientists determine specific patterns of brain activity associated with different kinds of images.
The California researchers tested brain activity by having two volunteers view hundreds of pictures of everyday objects, like people, animals, and fruits. The scientists used an fMRI machine to record the volunteers’ brain activity with each photograph they looked at. Different objects caused different regions of the volunteers’ brains to light up on the scan, indicating activity. The scientists used this information to build a model to predict how the brain might respond to any image the eyes see.
In a second test, the scientists asked the volunteers to look at 120 new pictures. Like before, their brains were scanned every time they looked at a new image. This time, the scientists used their model to match the fMRI scans to the image. For example, if a scan in the second test showed the same pattern of brain activity that was strongly related to pictures of apples in the first test, their model would have predicted the volunteers were looking at apples.
31. What is responsible for processing the information sent by your eyes?
A. A small region of the brain.
B. The central part of the brain.
C. Neurons in the brain.
D. Oxygen-rich blood.
32. Which of the following statements is NOT meant by the writer?
A. Cells in your brain are called neurons.
B. The more oxygen a neuron consumes, the more blood it needs.
C. fMRI helps scientists to discover which parts of the brain process information.
D. fMRI helps scientists to discover how the brain develops intelligently.
33. “Highlighting the areas of the brain at work” means _____.
A. “marking the parts of the brain that are processing information”
B. “giving light to the parts of the brain that are processing information”
C. “putting the parts of the brain to work”
D. “stopping the parts of the brain from working”
34. What did the researchers experiment on?
A. Animals, objects, and fruits.
B. Two volunteers.
C. fMRI machines.
D. Thousands of pictures.
35. Which of the following can be the best replacement of the title?
A. The Recent Development in Science and Technology.
B. Your Thoughts Can Be Scanned.
C. A Technological Dream.
D. A Device that can Help You Calculate.
