英语科技文选自考2017年10月真题及答案解析

     In 1997, the geoscientist Brian Toon and colleagues found that a space rock half a mile wide would produce an explosion that releases the energy equivalent of up to 100,000 million ions (Mt) of TNT. And a meteorite a mile in diameter might send enough pulverized rock into the stratosphere to block out sun-light and cause global cooling.

The object that killed off the dinosaurs was probably seven or eight miles wide, says Jay Melosh, a planetary physicist at Purdue University. Its impact would have ejected a dust smoke that spread clear around the planet and rained blazing-hot on to forests, igniting them. “The dinosaurs probably broiled to death,”he says.

Such a collision today would kill billions of people. Those who didn’t perish in the initial blast or the fires that followed would face long odds of finding sustenance. “People are going to starve to death,” Toon says. Still, a few would likely weather the apocalyptic storm. For a collision to wipe out the human race altogether, Toon estimates it would take a 60-mile-wide meteorite. He says, “That would burn everybody to death.”

My View on Robots

However, much of industry is concerned with batch production where perhaps one type of item is made during the morning and another during the afternoon. Human beings are very good in this environment. From a robotic point of view, they are light mobile structures with exceptionally good sensory perception and intelligence far above that of any current robot.

The car accident happened because the traffic lights were_______.

Hydrogen is the fuel of the future. Unfortunately, one problem (31): Hydrogen is a gas and cannot easily (32)pumped into a tank like gasoline. Storage(33)the form of solid hydrides, chemical compounds of hydrogen and a metal (34)semimetal, are good storage materials in principle, but have not been well suited (35)automotive applications. An American research team at the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn and the University of California, Los Angeles, has now (35) a novel hydride that could be a useful starting point for the development of future (37)hydrogen-storage materials. As Jun Yang and his team have(38)an “autocatalytic” reaction mechanism causes the composite made(39)three different hydrides to rapidly release hydrogen at lower temperatures and(40) dangerous by-products.

replete with

in memory of

stem from

opt for

within reach of

1、正确的决定来源于正确的判断。

2、李教授想在大学附近租一套公寓。

3、上水果前，每位用餐者都己经吃得很饱了。

4、选择职业时，父亲让我拿主意，我选择了教师职业。

5、为了纪念在这次战斗中牺牲的三位英雄，村民们修建了一座纪念碑。

He_______his imagination and personal experiences to write this novel.

Students were still ________the lecture in the hall when the bell rang.

Most trains would________passengers during the holiday season.

All he had was money, which he_______his retired grandfather.

She has been_______for the last five months, hunting for a job.

The doctor said his illness________the pressure of his work.

If she didn’t know what she wanted, she might______getting something she didn’t really want.

To me the necessity of zoos in cities is only found_______their educational purpose.

______fire, ring the alarm bell.

As these children were so hungry, this little food obviously could not_______them.

rhythm 有节奏地

The president is about to________his visit to China.

attractive 引诱剂

time 永横的

technology 生物技术

compass 包含

reverse 不可逆转性

literacy 无文化;文盲

fiction 虚构的

Which of the following is NOT mentioned about the B. dahlbomii species?

The phrase “come by” in line 4, paragraph 7，is closest in meaning to_______.

How did the buff-tailed bumblebees come to South America?

All of the following refer to the same thing in the passage EXCEPT_______.

(B)

I’ve seen some big bumblebees in my time, but nothing like South America’s Bombus dahlbomii. “It looks like a flying mouse,” says Sarina Jepsen, endangered species program director for the The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. “It’s huge, colorful and incredibly charismatic.”

B. dahlbomii is, in fact, the world’s largest bumblebee. Native to the Patagonia region of Argentina and Chile, the queens of the species can reach an amazing four centimeters in length. That’s eight times the size of one of the most recognizable North American species, the American bumblebee (B. pensylvanicus).

The Patagonian bumblebee’s notable size doesn’t offer them much protection, though. Over the past decade the species has been wiped out from much of its historic range. It’s unknown exactly how many remain.

So how did this massive species disappear in such a small amount of time? To answer that question, we need to go back to 1997. That’s the year that two European bumblebee species—large garden bumblebees (B. ruderatus) and buff-tailed bumblebees (B. terrestris)—were imported to Chile for the purpose of pollinating greenhouse agricultural crops. Some of the bees spread to the wild and they reached Patagonia in 2006.

That’s when the devastation started. Not only did the buff-tailed bumblebees present some competition for the native variety, they were also infected with a parasitic protozoan called Apicystis bombi that, as you might guess from its name, targets many honeybees and bumblebees. The parasite—which does not appear to afflict the buff-tailed bumblebees一infects the guts, then spreads to other parts of the body. Still poorly understood, it appears to cause behavioral changes that result in a high level of worker bee mortality and slows the establishment of new colonies.

“We need immediate action to help these bumblebees,” Jepsen says. The most important first steps will be to figure out how the pathogen is being transmitted among B. dahlbomii and how the invading species are competing with the natives for food and habitat.

The work to find that information begins soon. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has launched a fundraising campaign to help raise the money necessary to evaluate the health and risks of B. dahlbomii and 100 other little-studied bumblebee species. “Funding is difficult to come by and we need to fast-track the process,”says Paul Williams, chair of the IUCN Bumblebee Specialist Group. He says the group already has some funding but the outreach will-help to fill the gap and also serve to engage the public in the plight of the world’s bumblebees.

Meanwhile Jepsen worries about pathogens like this spreading to other species as bees are imported from country to country and continent to continent. She’s not alone; a 2013 paper published in the Journal of Applied Ecology warned that more than a million commercial bumblebee colonies are imported worldwide every year. Tests on colonies from three producers found that 77 percent of them carried microbial parasites, including A. bombi. The researchers dubbed the problem “Trojan hives.”As a result of that paper, the British Ecological Society and Bumblebee Conservation Trust called for strict controls of bumblebee imports in order to protect the U.K.’s native bees.

It’s obviously too late for new controls to protect the “flying mouse,”but research by the IUCN’s bumblebee team will now seek to find out how endangered the species has become. Hopefully in the process they can come up with solutions to help save it.

What does the passage mainly discuss?

“The Lancet” in line 2, paragraph 7, refers to_______.

Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

According to the passage, which of the following statements is NOT true?

(A)

In “Health and Climate Change: policy responses to protect public healthy” a group of European and Chinese academics built upon a 2009 report in The Lancet that outlined the expected public health impacts of climate change (full disclosure —the group of academics includes the author of this post). These impacts include increasing instances of respiratory, cardiovascular, and vector-borne diseases as well as under-nutrition and mental health challenges

.　　But, even more immediately, the authors discuss how moving away from carbon-intensive energy technologies could improve public health today by reducing other types of air pollution including particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen oxides (NOx).

The core of this discussion lies on the fact that energy technologies that produce greenhouse gases also often produce these other air pollutants simultaneously. For example, diesel and gasoline vehicles, coal power plants, biomass (for example, wood and charcoal) for cooking, and many industrial processes (for example, mining, cement manufacturing, and smelting) all produce both carbon dioxide and particulate matter (PM).

These other air pollutants lead to higher rates of illness and premature death in exposed populations.

In the United Kingdom, air pollution from coal power plants is responsible for an estimated ￡3.1 billion per year in added health costs to treat conditions including lung cancer and chronic bronchitis. Overall, air pollution from the UK’s power sector is responsible for approximately 3,800 premature deaths each year due to respiratory disease alone. Each year, pollution from the UK’s transportation sector leads to 7,500 premature deaths across the country.

The word “exposed” in line 1，paragraph 4, is closest in meaning to_______.