D
The oddness of life in space never quite goes away. Here are some examples.
First consider something as simple as sleep. Its position presents its own challenges. The main question is whether you want your arms inside or outside the sleeping bag. If you leave your arms out, they float free in zero gravity, often giving a sleeping astronaut the look of a funny balled （芭蕾）dancer. "I'm an inside guy," Mike Hopkins says, who returned from a six-month tour on the International Space Station. "I like to be wrapped up."
On the station, the ordinary becomes strange. The exercise bike for the American astronauts has no handlebars. It also has no seat. With no gravity, it's just as easy to pedal violently. You can watch a movie while you pedal by floating a microcomputer anywhere you want. But station residents have to be careful about staying in one place too long. Without gravity to help circulate air, the carbon dioxide you exhale (呼气) has a tendency to form an invisible （隐形的）cloud around you head. You can end up with what astronauts call a carbon-dioxide headache.
Leroy Chiao, 54, an American retired astronaut after four flights, describes what happens even before you float out of your seat,"Your inner ear thinks your're falling . Meanwhile your eyes are telling you you're standing straight. That can be annoying-that's why some people feel sick." Within a couple days -truly terrible days for some -astronauts' brains learn to ignore the panicky signals from the inner ear, and space sickness disappears.
Space travel can be so delightful but at the same time invisibly dangerous. For instance, astronauts lose bone mass. That's why exercise is considered so vital that National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) puts it right on the workday schedule. The focus on fitness is as much about science and the future as it is about keeping any individual astronauts return home, and, more importantly, how to maintain strength and fitness for the two and a half years or more that it would take to make a round-trip to Mars.

【2015·北京卷】C
Life in the Clear
Transparent animals let light pass through their bodies the same way light passes through a window. These animals typically live between the surface of the ocean and a depth of about 3,300 feet—as far as most light can reach. Most of them are extremely delicate and can be damaged by a simple touch. Sonke Johnsen, a scientist in biology, says, “These animals live through their life alone. They never touch anything unless they’re eating it, or unless something is eating them.”
And they are as clear as glass. How does an animal become see-through? It’s trickier than you might think.
The objects around you are visible because they interact with light. Light typically travels in a straight line. But some materials slow and scatter(散射) light, bouncing it away from its original path. Others absorb light, stopping it dead in its tracks. Both scattering and absorption make an object look different from other objects around it, so you can see it easily.
But a transparent object doesn’t absorb or scatter light, at least not very much, Light can pass through it without bending or stopping. That means a transparent object doesn’t look very different from the surrounding air or water. You don’t see it ----you see the things behind it.
To become transparent, an animal needs to keep its body from absorbing or scattering light. Living materials can stop light because they contain pigments(色素) that absorb specific colors of light. But a transparent animal doesn’t have pigments, so its tissues won’t absorb light. According to Johnsen, avoiding absorption is actually easy. The real challenge is preventing light from scattering.
Animals are built of many different materials----skin, fat, and more----and light moves through each at a different speed. Every time light moves into a material with a new speed, it bends and scatters. Transparent animals use different tricks to fight scattering. Some animals are simply very small or extremely flat. Without much tissue to scatter light, it is easier to be see—through. Others build a large, clear mass of non-living jelly-lie(果冻状的)material and spread themselves over it .
Larger transparent animals have the biggest challenge, because they have to make all the different tissues in their bodies slow down light exactly as much as water does. They need to look uniform. But how they’re doing it is still unknown. One thing is clear for these larger animals, staying transparent is an active process. When they die, they turn a non-transparent milky white.
According to Paragraph 1, transparent animals_______.

The underlined word “dead” in Paragraph 3 means__________.

One way for an animal to become transparent is to ________.

The last paragraph tells us that larger transparent animals________.

【2015·江苏】B
In the United States alone, over 100 million cell-phones are thrown away each year. Cell-phones are part of a growing mountain of electronic waste like computers and personal digital assistants. The electronic waste stream is increasing three times faster than traditional garbage as a whole.
Electronic devices contain valuable metals such as gold and silver. A Swiss study reported that while the weight of electronic goods represented by precious metals was relatively small in comparison to total waste, the concentration (含量) of gold and other precious metals was higher in So-called e-waste than in naturally occurring minerals.
Electronic wastes also contain many poisonous metals. Even when the machines are recycled and the harmful metals removed, the recycling process often is carried out in poor countries, in practically uncontrolled ways which allow many poisonous substances to escape into the environment.
Creating products out of raw materials creates much more waste material, up to 100 times more, than the material contained in the finished products. Consider again the cell-phone, and imagine the mines that produced those metals, the factories needed to make the box and packaging(包装) it came in. Many wastes produced in the producing process are harmful as well.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency notes that most waste is dangerous in that “the production, distribution, and use of products — as well as management of the resulting waste — all result in greenhouse gas release.” Individuals can reduce their contribution by creating less waste at the start — for instance, buying reusable products and recycling.
In many countries the concept of extended producer responsibility is being considered or has been put in place as an incentive (动机) for reducing waste. If producers are required to take back packaging they use to sell their products, would they reduce the packaging in the first place?
Governments’ incentive to require producers to take responsibility for the packaging they produce is usually based on money. Why, they ask, should cities or towns be responsible for paying to deal with the bubble wrap (气泡垫) that encased your television?
From the governments’ point of view, a primary goal of laws requiring extended producer responsibility is to transfer both the costs and the physical responsibility of waste management from the government and tax-payers back to the producers.
By mentioning the Swiss study, the author intends to tell us that _________ .

The responsibility of e-waste treatment should be extended _________ .

What does the passage mainly talk about?

C
Suppose you become a leader in an organization. It’s very likely that you’ll want to have volunteers to help with the organization’s activities. To do so, it should help to understand why people undertake volunteer work and what keeps their interest in the work.
Let’s begin with the question of why people volunteer. Researchers have identified several factors that motivate people to get involved. For example, people volunteer to express personal values related to unselfishness, to expand their range of experiences, and to strengthen social relationships. If volunteer positions do not meet these needs, people may not wish to participate. To select volunteers, you may need to understand the motivations of the people you wish to attract.
People also volunteer because they are required to do so. To increase levels of community service, some schools have launched compulsory volunteer programs. Unfortunately, these programs can shift people’s wish of participation from an internal factor (e.g., “I volunteer because it’s important to me”) to an external factor (e.g., “I volunteer because I’m required to do so”). When that happens, people become less likely to volunteer in the future. People must be sensitive to this possibility when they make volunteer activities a must.
Once people begin to volunteer, what leads them to remain in their positions over time? To answer this question, researchers have conducted follow-up studies in which they track volunteers over time. For instance, one study followed 238 volunteers in Florida over a year. One of the most important factors that influenced their satisfaction as volunteers was the amount of suffering they experienced in their volunteer positions. Although this result may not surprise you, it leads to important practical advice. The researchers note that attention should be given to “training methods that would prepare volunteers for troublesome situations or provide them with strategies for coping with the problem they do experience”.
Another study of 302 volunteers at hospitals in Chicago focused on individual differences in the degree to which people view “volunteer” as an important social role. It was assumed that those people for whom the role of volunteer was most part of their personal identity would also be most likely to continue volunteer work. Participants indicated the degree to which the social role mattered by responding to statements such as “Volunteering in Hospital is an important part of who I am.” Consistent with the researchers’ expectations, they found a positive correlation (正相关) between the strength of role identity and the length of time people continued to volunteer. These results, once again, lead to concrete advice: “Once an individual begins volunteering, continued efforts might focus on developing a volunteer role identity.... Items like T-shirts that allow volunteers to be recognized publicly for their contributions can help strengthen role identity”.
People volunteer mainly out of ______ .

What can we learn from the Florida study?

What is most likely to motivate volunteers to continue their work?

What is the best title of the passage?

【2015·广东】C
Daniel Anderson, a famous psychologist, believes it’s important to distinguish television’s influences on children from those of the family. We tend to blame TV, he says, for problems it doesn’t really cause, overlooking our own roles in shaping children’s minds.
One traditional belief about television is that it reduces a child’s ability to think and to understand the world. While watching TV, children do not merely absorb words and images (影像). Instead, they learn both explicit and hidden meanings from what they see. Actually, children learn early the psychology of characters in TV shows. Furthermore, as many teachers agree, children understand far more when parents watch TV with them, explaining new words and ideas. Yet, most parents use an educational program as a chance to park their kids in front of the set and do something in another room.
Another argument against television is that it replaces reading as a form of entertainment. But according to Anderson, the amount of time spent watching television is not related to reading ability. TV doesn’t take the place of reading for most children; it takes the place of similar sorts of recreation, such as listening to the radio and playing sports. Things like parents’ educational background have a stronger influence on a child’s reading. “A child’s reading ability is best predicted by how much a parent reads.” Anderson says.
Traditional wisdom also has it that heavy television-watching lowers IQ (智商) scores and affects school performance. But here, too, Anderson notes that no studies have proved it. In fact, research suggests that it’s the other way around. “If you’re smart young, you’ll watch less TV when you’re older,” Anderson says. Yet, people of lower IQ tend to be lifelong television viewers.
For years researchers have attempted to show that television is dangerous to children. However, by showing that television promotes none of the dangerous effects as conventionally believed, Anderson suggests that television cannot be condemned without considering other influences.
By watching TV, children learn _________.

An educational program is best watched by a child _________.

Which of the following is most related to children’s reading ability?

Anderson believed that _________.

What is the main purpose of the passage?