听力部分

　　1 truck

　　2 technology

　　3 bird

　　4 8.99

　　5 boxes

　　6 Temperature

　　7 rimona

　　8 gift

　　9 postage

　　10 message

　　填空题11-15：

　　11. money

　　12. Schools

　　13. specific period

　　14. a minimum period

　　15. must be good at sports/work with agriculture

　　16. stay with local family

　　三选一

　　17. C

　　18. A

　　19. B

　　20. A

　　填空 21-24

　　21. diploma

　　22. biology

　　23. young people

　　24. disability/disable

　　多选 25-30

　　25. B

　　26. B

　　27. A

　　28. A

　　29. A

　　30. C

　　31. net

　　32. rats

　　33.aware

　　34. smile

　　35. walking

　　36. newspaper

　　37. social

　　38. whistle

　　39. fight

　　40. instinctive

　　阅读部分

　　文章大意：从各个角度介绍珍珠

　　参考文章

　　The Pearl

　　A

　　Throughout history, pearls have held a unique presence within the wealthy and powerful. For instance, the pearl was the favored gem of the wealthy during the Roman Empire. This gift from the sea had been brought back from the orient by the Roman conquests. Roman women wore pearls to bed so they could be reminded of their wealth immediately upon waking up. Before jewelers learned to cut gems, the pearl was of greater value than the diamond. In the Orient and Persia Empire, pearls were ground into powders to cure anything from heart disease to epilepsy, with possible aphrodisiac uses as well. Pearls were once considered an exclusive privilege for royalty. A law in 1612 drawn up by the Duke of Saxony prohibited the wearing of pearls by nobility, professors, doctors or their wives in an effort to further distinguish royal appearance. American Indians also used freshwater pearls from the Mississippi River as decorations and jewelry.

　　B

　　There are essentially three types of pearls: natural, cultured and imitation. A natural pearl (often called an Oriental pearl) forms when an irritant, such as a piece of sand, works its way into a particular species of oyster, mussel, or clam. As a defense mechanism, the mollusk secretes a fluid to coat the irritant. Layer upon layer of this coating is deposited on the irritant until a lustrous pearl is formed.

　　C

　　The only difference natural pearls and cultured pearls is that the irritant is a surgically implanted bead or piece of shell called Mother of Pearl. Often, these shells are ground oyster shells that are worth significant amounts of money in their own right as irritant-catalysts for quality pearls. The resulting core is, much larger than in a natural pearl. Yet, as long as there are enough layers of nacre (the secreted fluid covering the irritant) to result in a beautiful, gem-quality pearl, the size of the nucleus is of no consequence to beauty or durability.

　　D

　　Pearls can come from either salt or freshwater sources. Typically, saltwater pearls tend to be higher quality, although there are several types of freshwater pearls that are considered high in quality as well. Freshwater pearls tend to be very irregular in shape, with a puffed rice appearance the most prevalent. Nevertheless, it is each individual pearls merits that determines value more than the source of the pearl. Saltwater pearl oysters are usually cultivated in protected lagoons or volcanic atolls. However, most freshwater cultured pearls sold today come from China. Cultured pearls are the response of the shell to a tissue implant. A tiny piece of mantle tissue from a donor shell is transplanted into a recipient shell. This graft will form a pearl sac and the tissue will precipitate calcium carbonate into this pocket. There are a number of options for producing cultured pearls: use freshwater or seawater shells, transplant the graft into the mantle or into the gonad, add a spherical bead or do it nonbeaded. The majority of saltwater cultured pearls are grown with beads.

　　E

　　Regardless of the method used to acquire a pearl, the process usually takes several years. Mussels must reach a mature age, which can take up t0 3 years, and then be implanted or naturally receive an irritant. Once the irritant is in place, it can take up to another 3 years for the pearl to reach its full size. Often, the irritant may be rejected, the pearl will be terrifically misshapen, or the oyster may simply die from disease or countless other complications. By the end of a 5 t0 10 year cycle, only 50% of the oysters will have survived. And of the pearls produced, only approximately 5% are of substantial quality for top jewelry makers. From the outset, a pearl fanner can figure on spending over $100 for every oyster that is farmed, of which many will produce nothing or die.

　　F

　　Imitation pearls are a different story altogether. In most cases, a glass bead is dipped into a solution made from fish scales. This coating is thin and may eventually wear off. One can usually tell an imitation by biting on it. Fakepearls glide across your teeth, while the layers of nacre on real pearls feel gritty. The Island of Mallorca (in Spain) is known for its imitation pearl industry. Quality natural pearls are very rare jewels. The actual value of a natural pearl is determined in the same way as it would be for other “precious” gems. The valuation factors include size, shape, color, quality of surface, orient and luster. In general, cultured pearls are less valuable than natural pearls, whereas imitation pearls almost have no value. One way that jewelers can determine whether a pearl is cultured or natural is to have a gem lab perform an x-ray of the pearl. If the x-ray reveals a nucleus, the pearl is likely a beadnucleated saltwater pearl. If no nucleus is present, but irregular and small dark inner spots indicating a cavity are visible, combined with concentric rings of organic substance, the pearl is likely a cultured freshwater. Cultured freshwater pearls can often be confused for natural pearls which present as homogeneous pictures which continuously darken toward the surface of the pearl. Natural pearls will often show larger cavities where organic matter has dried out and decomposed. Although imitation pearls look the part, they do not have the same weight or smoothness as real pearls, and their luster will also dim greatly. Among cultured pearls, Akoya pearls from Japan are some of the most lustrous. A good quality necklace of 40 Akoya pearls measuring 7mm in diameter sells for about $1,500, while a super- high quality strand sells for about $4,500. Size on the other hand, has to do with the age of the oyster that created the pearl (the more mature oysters produce larger pearls) and the location in which the pearl was cultured. The South Sea waters of Australia tend to produce the larger pearls; probably because the water along the coast line is supplied with rich nutrients from the ocean floor. Also, the type of mussel common to the area seems to possess a predilection for producing comparatively large pearls.

　　G

　　Historically, the world’s best pearls came from the Persian Gulf, especially around what is now Bahrain. The pearls of the Persian Gulf were natural created and collected by breath-hold divers. The secret to the special luster of Gulf pearls probably derived from the unique mixture of sweet and salt water around the island. Unfortunately, the natural pearl industry of the Persian Gulf ended abruptly in the early 1930’s with the discovery of large deposits of oil. Those who once dove for pearls sought prosperity in the economic boom ushered in by the oil industry. The water pollution resulting from spilled oil and indiscriminate over-fishing of oysters essentially ruined the once pristine pearl producing waters of the Gulf. Today, pearl diving is practiced only as a hobby. Still, Bahrain remains one of the foremost trading centers for high quality pearls. In fact, cultured pearls are banned from the Bahrain pearl market, in an effort to preserve the location’s heritage. Nowadays, the largest stock of natural pearls probably resides in India. Ironically, much of India’s stock of natural pearls came originally from Bahrain. Unlike Bahrain, which has essentially lost its pearl resource, traditional pearl fishing is still practiced on a small scale in India.

　　答案：

　　1. G

　　2. A

　　3. B

　　4. D

　　5. Persia

　　6. Bahrain

　　7. India

　　8. Monaco

　　9. Japan

　　10. Australia

　　11. TRUE

　　12. NOT GIVEN

　　13. TRUE

　　(答案仅供参考)

　　文章大意：主要讨论2003年6月以来，欧洲许多国家和地区持续炎热和干旱，意大利气温比以往同期高出6-10度;瑞士气温创200年来最高，意大利北部/法国南部地区遭受了50年甚至百年以来的重大旱灾。高温干旱致使河流、水位下降、航运受阻、农作物面临减产等，损失严重，虽然各地出现异常高温的具体原因不尽相同，但总体上看应与全球变暖有一定关系。

　　European Heat Wave

　　A

　　It was the summer, scientists now realize, when felt. We knew that summer 2003 was remarkable: global warming at last made itself unmistakably Britain experienced its record high temperature and continental Europe saw forest fires raging out of control, great rivers drying of a trickle and thousands of heat related deaths. But just how remarkable is only now becoming clean.

　　B

　　The three months of June, July and August were the warmest ever recorded in western and central Europe, with record national highs in Portugal, Germany and Switzerland as well as Britain. And they were the warmest by a very long way Over a great rectangular block of the earth stretching from west of Paris to northern Italy, taking in Switzerland and southern Germany, the average temperature for the summer months was 3.78℃ above the long-term norm, said the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, which is one of the world’s lending institutions for the monitoring and analysis of temperature records.

　　C

　　That excess might not seem a lot until you are aware of the context-but then you realise it is enormous. There is nothing like this in previous data, anywhere. It is considered so exceptional that Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director, is prepared to say openly-in a way few scientists have done before that the 2003 extreme may be directly attributed, not to natural climate variability, but to global warming caused by human actions.

　　D

　　Meteorologists have hitherto contented themselves with the formula that recent high temperatures are consistent with predictions” of climate change. For the great block of the map-that stretching between 35-50N and 0-20E-the CRU has reliable temperature records dating back to 1781. Using as a baseline the average summer temperature recorded between 1961 andl990, departures from the temperature norm, or “anomalies’: over the area as a whole can easily be plotted. As the graph shows, such is the variability of our climate that over the past 200 years, there have been at least half a dozen anomalies, in terms of excess temperature-the peaks on the graph denoting very hot years approaching, or even exceeding, 20 ℃ . But there has been nothing remotely like 2003，when the anomaly is nearly four degrees.

　　E

　　“This is quite remarkable,” Professor Jones told The Independent. “It’s very unusual in a statistical sense. If this series had a normal statistical distribution, you wouldn’t get this number. There turn period “how often it could be expected to recur” would be something like one in a thou-sand years. If we look at an excess above the average of nearly four degrees, then perhaps nearly three degrees of that is natural variability, because we’ve seen that in past summers. But the final degree of it is likely to be due to global warming, caused by human actions

　　参考答案

　　1.TRUE

　　2.FALSE

　　3.TRUE

　　4. NOT GIVEN

　　5.TRUE

　　6.NOT GIVEN

　　7. 1976 and 1995

　　8. 2000 floods

　　9. France

　　10. 1856

　　11. 1998 to 2002

　　12. 1990

　　13. 500

　　14. D

　　(答案仅供参考)

　　Passage 3：

　　题名：科学家

　　关键词：non scientists

　　题号：新题

　　文章大意：科学家应该怎么样，讨论了一下科学家的英雄主义

　　参考文章：暂无

　　写作部分

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