A篇
Every person yawns. So do many other vertebrate (有脊椎的) animals, including snakes, dogs, cats, sharks, and chimpanzees. While yawning is contagious (会传染的), not everyone catches a yawn. Around 60-70% of people yawn if they e another person yawn in real life or in a photo or even read about yawning. Contagious yawning also occurs in animals, but it doesn’t necessarily work the same way as in people.
Scientists have propod many theories for why we catch yawns. Probably the most popular theory is that yawning rves as a form of nonverbal communication. Catching a yawn shows you’re accustomed to a person’s emotions. Scientific evidence comes from a 2010 study at the University of Connecticut, which concluded yawning does not become contagious until a child is about four years old when empathy (共情) skills千里来相会打一字
develop. In the study, children with autism, who may have impaired empathy development, caught yawns less often than their peers.
Studying contagious yawning in other animals may provide clues to how people catch yawn
s. Contagious yawning in animals may rve as a means of communication. Siame fighting fish yawn when they e their mirror image or another fighting fish, generally水饺的包法
just prior to an attack.
Contagious yawning is linked to temperature, in both animals and people. Most scientists speculate it is a thermoregulatory behavior, while some rearchers believe it is ud to communicate a potential threat or stressful situation. A 2010 study of budgerigars (虎皮鹦鹉) found that yawning incread as temperature was raid near body temperature.
People commonly yawn when tired or bored. Similar behavior is en in animals. One study found the brain temperature in sleep deprived rats was higher than their core temperature. Yawning reduced brain temperature, possibly improving brain function. Rearchers will do further study on this.
1. What can we learn about yawning from Paragraph 1?
A．All animals yawn.
B．Reading about yawning may make a person yawn.
C．Only vertebrate animals yawn.
D．Yawning works the same for human and animals.
2. Why does the author mention children with autism in Paragraph 2?
A．To prove a theory.
B．To define a concept
C．To develop the theme.
D．To provide the background.
3. Siame fighting fish yawn to ________.
A．show kindness.
B．find a partner.
C．give a threat.
D．escape from danger.
4. What can be inferred from the passage?
A．More rearch in yawning will be carried out in the future.
B．Temperature is not a factor concerning yawning.
C．The cret to yawing has been worked out.
D．Yawning can improve brain function greatly.
B篇
Using the power of artificial intelligence (AI) , scientists have revealed new insights into the creation and destruction of mass extinction. Contrar重庆到昆明机票
y to conventional knowledge, their study suggests that larger extinctions are not always a form of "creative destruction" that
allows new organisms (生物体) to radiate and evolve. Instead, it suggests that mass extinction is rarely associated with new species of radiation.
Dr. Hoyal Cuthill, the lead study author from the University of Esx in the UK and the Tokyo Institute of Technology, said in a statement, “Some of the most challenging things to understand the history of life are the vast timelines involved and the number of species. New machine learning applications can help us understand this information in human-readable form. This means that we can, so to speak, hold the evolution of half a billion years in the palm of our hand and gain new insights from what we e.”
They concluded that mass extinction and later radiation were not connected as previously thought. Within 5 percent of the most significant periods of disruption (中断), AI detected “big five” mass extinctions, ven more mass extinctions, two mass extinction-radiation events, and 15 mass radiations. Most importantly, it discovers that massive radiation and extinction rarely occurred with each other, changing the view that greater extinction leads to a kind of deep cycle-like species radiation of nature. It appears that larger extinctions a
re certainly not the engine of evolutionary radiation. Take the Cambrian eruption for example and it was about 41 million years ago when a large group of animals first appeared on the record of the first fossil record and the dawn of a high mobile animal equipped with modern physical features.
This new study found that a handful of other notable explosions of biodiversity, including the Cambrian eruption, usually occurred at a time when they were largely isolated (隔离) from extinction. Dr. Nicholas Guttenberg, a study co-author from the Tokyo Institute of Technology explained, “Ecosystems are dynamic and you don't need anything to exist to allow something new to appear.”
1. What does the first paragraph rve as?
A. An explanation of artificial intelligence.
B. A background of rearchers' study.
C. The reasons for creative destruction.
D. The result of rearchers' new study.
2. What can we infer from Dr. Hoyal Cuthill's words?
A. AI contributes a lot to the study of evolution.
B. Understanding the history of life is very difficult.
C. New AI machines learn applications better.
D. Biological evolution can be controlled easily.
