Airlines.
23. What do we know about Southwest Airlines? A. It narrowly beat JetBlue.
B
On September 5, Earl Melchert was supposed to be at work managing a fertilizer plant but he forgot a diesel（柴油）can that he had needed to fill, so he left work and drove to his home in Alexandria, Minnesota, to grab it. As he prepared to head back to work, he saw something moving in his field about a half-mile away. “I thought at first it was a deer,” he said in an interview.
It turned out to be 15-year-old Jasmine Block, who had disappeared on August 8 from her home about 30 miles from Melchert’s home. “I could make out her face, and I went, ‘Oh my gosh, this is the girl from Alexandria that’s been gone for 29 days,’” Melchert said. “It’d been on the news. It’d been online. It went national. It was on posters, in stores, her face, her picture. Right way I recognized her.”
Jasmine had escaped from a nearby abandoned house, where the three man who abducted her had kept her for the previous few days. she swam across the lake near Melchert’s property to get to his house.
All three man involved in the kidnapping have been arrested. On Friday, the Alexandria Police Department presented Melchert, with a $7, 000 reward that had been offered for information leading to Jasmine’s return; $2, 000 had come from Jasmine’s family and $5, 000 from an anonymous donor. Melchert said he knew exactly what to do with the check. He gave it to Jasmine. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” said Melchert, who went to dinner with Jasmine and her family after the presentation on Friday. “The family needs the money,” he said. “To me, yeah, that’s a lot of money, but they need it way worse than I do.” 24. Where did Melchert spot the missing girl?
A. On his way home.
B. On his way to work.
B. It took the second place. D. It is the safest airline.
C. It is the best traditional airline.
C. In his house. D. In a fertilizer plant.
25. What does the underlined word “abducted” in Paragraph 3 mean? A. Taught someone a lesson. C. Played a trick on someone.
B. Took someone away by force. D. Reminded someone of something.
26. Which of the following words can best describe Melchert? A. Considerate and kind.
B. Adaptable and faithful. D. Ambitious and cooperative.
C. Humorous and professional.
27. What could be the best title of the text? A. A missing teenager.
C
Nature may be red in tooth and claw. But one caterpillar（毛毛虫）dresses in orange and black to avoid becoming somebody’s lunch. What’s really surprising, though, is that this distinctive set of stripes（条纹）can serve as both a warning and as disguise, depending on how far away it is from the viewer.
Animals can make use of color as a defense mechanism in a couple of ways. Some shades and patterns help animals combine into the background. However daring markings often work as a signal that an animal is uneatable.
So, these two strategies have often been considered not to coexist. But under natural conditions you find this distinction is less clear cut.
Jim Barnett of the University of Bristol, who led the study to explore whether the same coloration might do double duty, allowing an animal to be obvious under some conditions but unseen in others. They focused their attention on the caterpillars. Their bright appearance was believed to remind the birds that may have eaten others of their kind that they are none too tasty, thanks to their fixed diet.
The researchers took photos of the caterpillars in suburban green spaces around Bristol. And they used a visual modeling program to give them a “bird’s-eye view” of what the
B. Kidnappers arrested.
D. Melchert’s reward going to the victim.
C. A teenager resuced by the Internet.
caterpillars look like, either close-up or from farther away. What they found is that although at close range the caterpillar’s stripes are highly obvious—these bright colors distinguish it quite easily from its background—but when viewed from a distance they mix together to form a color which is actually quite difficult to tell from the background color. So, the caterpillar is getting the best of both worlds. Close up, the stripes may keep your distance. But from a distance, they allow the caterpillars to hide in plain sight.
The finding is a reminder: Don’t forget to step back and see things from a different perspective.
28. What is the function of the animals’ daring markings? A. To avoid being eaten.
B. To attack their enemies. D. To please their partners.
C. To distinguish themselves.
29. How does caterpillars’ coloration perform its double duty? A. By adapting to the environment or changing it.
B. By making their appearance attractive and bodies stronger. C. By frightening off enemies or avoiding being found easily. D. By changing their skin colors in case of peace and danger. 30. When viewed from a distance caterpillars appear to ________. A. show off their stripes C. transform their shapes
B. take on different colors D. combine into the surroundings
31. Which of the following does the author agree? A. Every coin has two sides. B. Put character before appearance. C. Try to view things from a different angle. D. One bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
D
In the basement of a landmark 27-story tower in Stockholm, Petterson is hoping to sow the seeds of an indoor urban farming revolution. He is the chief executive of Plantagon, a new
urban farming factory set to kick off operations in the basement of an office block in the Swedish capital.
He is by no means the first enthusiast for indoor farming, which has become increasingly fashionable in recent years. Claims for the practice of growing food in basements range from feeding people in desert environments to transforming the negative environmental effects of monoculture farming.
Plantagon’s early promises reflect this new optimism. Petterson calls the farm’s approach “agritechture”: the combination of agriculture, technology and architecture hoping to revolutionize how we live and eat.
The term may be new, but the concept isn’t. Indoor farming is made possible by agricultural technologies such as hydroponics (growing plants without soil) and aeroponics (in which plants are grown in air over containers). Food can be produced without direct sunlight or soil.
Platagon plans to grow high-value foods in a pumice-like material rather than soil. Water for the plants is measured precisely. It will also dehumidify（除湿）the air and reuse any extra water to ensure zero waste. Compared with conventional agriculture, it will need much less water to produce the same amount of crops.
Energy is also a key issue for indoor urban farms, which have to create artificial sunlight. Although advances in the efficiency of LED lights have helped bring down energy consumption in recent years, plants use only about 1 percent of the artificial light produced. This leads to a great waste of energy, most of which disappears as heat. The basement farm will capture around 70 percent of this wasted heat and pipe it into the heating system of the office block above. Oxygen produced by the plants will be sent to office workers via the building’s air conditioners. 32. What does Plantagon plan to do in the basement? A. Grow crops.
B. Do operations.
D. Give lectures about farming.
C. Open a seed company.
33. What does the underlined phrase “the term” in Paragraph 4 refer to?
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