定额市鞍钢阳光实验学校杭州外国语学校高考英语集训阅读理解每日一练22
倒数第六周星期二
A
In a surprising discovery about where higher life can survive, scientists have found a shrimp -like creature and a jellyfish swimming beneath an Antarctic ice sheet.
About 180 meters below the ice where no light can get through, scientists had figured nothing much more than a few microbes (微生物) could exist.
That’s why a NASA team was surprid when they lowered a video camera to get the first long look at the underbelly of an ice sheet in Antarctica. A curious shrimp-like creature came swimming by and then parked itlf on the camera’s cable. Scientists also pulled up a tentacle (触须) they believe came from a jellyfish.
“We were operating on the presumption that nothing’s there.” said NASA ice scientist Robert Bindschadler. “It was a shrimp you’d enjoy having on your plate.”
“We were just gaga (狂热的) over it,” he said when talking about the 7.5cm long, orange creature starring in their two-minute video. Technically, it’s not a shrimp. It’s a Lyssianasid amphipod, which is distantly related to the shrimp.
The video is likely to inspire experts to rethink what they know about life in harsh environments. And it has scientists thinking that if shrimp-like creatures can live below 180 meters of Antarctic ice in freezing dark water, what about other cold places? What about Europa, a frozen moon of Jupiter?
Cynan Ellis – Evans, a scientist of the British Antarctic Survey called the finding fascinating. He said it was possible the creatures swam in from far away and don’t live there permanently.
But Kim, who is a co-author of the study, doubts it. “The site in West Antarctica is at least 19 km from open as. Bindschadler drilled a 20 cm-wide hole and was looking at a tiny amount of water. That means it’s unlikely that two creatures swam from great distances and were captured randomly in that small area,” she said.
“Yet scientists were puzzled at what the food source would be for the creatures. While some microbes can make their own food out of chemicals in the ocean, complex life like the shrimp can’t,” Kim said.
“So how do they survive? That’s the key question.” Kim said.
“It’s pretty amazing when you find a huge puzzle like that on a planet where we thought we know everything.” Kim said.
41. Scientists had believed that harsh environments could only have been populated by ______ .
A. jellyfish B. mammals C. microbes D. shrimp-like creatures
42. According to Kim, the shrimp-like creature _________ .
A. swam great distances to Antarctic B. has always lived in the area
C. gradually evolved from shrimps D. has nothing in common with shrimps
43. The finding is significant in that __________.
A. it marks NASA’S first Antarctic biological study
B. it proves there is marine life in the Antarctic
C. it could inspire further study of life in harsh environments
D. it shows that Lyssianasid amphipod is cloly related to shrimps
44. The last three paragraphs suggest that __________.
A. rearchers will look at the places the creatures came from
B. ice scientists will drill deeper to find more creatures
C. scientists know very little about the planet they live on
D. further rearch will be done about what the creatures live on
B
Being a mother is apparently not like it was in the good old days.
Today’s parents yearn for the golden age that their own mothers enjoyed in the 1970s and 1980s, rearchers found. Mothers have less time to themlves and feel under greater pressure to handle work and family life than the previous generation. As a result, 88 per cent said they felt guilty about the lack of time they spent with their children.
The survey of 1,000 mothers also found that more than a third said they had less time to themlves than their mothers did – just three hours a week or 26 minutes a day. And 64 per cent said this was becau they felt they ‘had’ to go out to work, while nearly a third (29 per cent) said they were under constant pressure to be the ‘perfect mother’, the report found.
Other findings showed social networking and parenting websites, as well as technology such as Skype, were important in providing help and support among female communities. Kate Fox, a member of the Social Issues Rearch Centre, which conducted the survey for Procter & Gamble, said: ‘With increasing pressure on mothers to work a “double shift” —
to be the perfect mother as well as a wage-earner — support networks are more important than ever.
