单项选择题

Electricity from Wind

Since 1980, the use of wind to produce electricity has been growing rapidly. In 1994 there were nearly 20,000 wind turbines worldwide, most grouped in clusters called wind farms that collectively produced 3,000 megawatts of electricity. Most were in Denmark (which got 3 percent of its electricity from wind turbines) and California (where 17,000 machines produced 1 percent of the state’s electricity, enough to meet the residential needs of a city as large as San Francisco). In principle, all the power needs of the United States could be provided by exploiting the wind potential of just three states—North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas.

Large wind farms can be built in six months to a year and then easily expanded as needed. With a moderate to fairly high net energy yield, these systems emit no heat-trapping carbon dioxide or other air pollutants and need no water for cooling; manufacturing them produces little water pollution. The land under wind turbines can be used for grazing cattle and other purposes, and leasing land for wind turbines can provide extra income for farmers and ranchers.

Wind power has a significant cost advantage over nuclear power and has become competitive with coal-fired power plants in many places. With new technological advances and mass production, projected cost declines should make wind power one of the world’s cheapest ways to produce electricity. In the long run, electricity from large wind farms in remote areas might be used to make hydrogen gas from water during periods when there is less than peak demand for electricity. The hydrogen gas could then be fed into a storage system and used to generate electricity when additional or backup power is needed.

Wind power is most economical in areas with steady winds. In areas where the wind dies down, backup electricity from a utility company or from an energy storage system becomes necessary. Backup power could also be provided by linking wind farms with a solar cell, with conventional or pumped-storage hydropower, or with efficient natural-gas-burning turbines. Some drawbacks to wind farms include visual pollution and noise, although these can be overcome by improving their design and locating them in isolated areas.

Large wind farms might also interfere with the flight patterns of migratory birds in certain areas, and they have killed large birds of prey (especially hawks, falcons, and eagles) that prefer to hunt along the same ridge lines that are ideal for wind turbines. The killing of birds of prey by wind turbines has pitted environmentalists who champion wildlife protection against environmentalists who promote renewable wind energy. Researchers are evaluating how serious this problem is and hope to find ways to eliminate or sharply reduce this problem. Some analysts also contend that the number of birds killed by wind turbines is dwarfed by birds killed by other human-related sources and by the potential loss of entire bird species from possible global warming. Recorded deaths of birds of prey and other birds in wind farms in the United States currently amount to no more than 300 per year. By contrast, in the United States an estimated 97 million birds are killed each year when they collide with buildings made of plate glass, 57 million are killed on highways each year; at least 3.8 million die annually from pollution and poisoning; and millions of birds are electrocuted each year by transmission and distribution lines carrying power produced by nuclear and coal power plants.

The technology is in place for a major expansion of wind power worldwide. Wind power is a virtually unlimited source of energy at favorable sites, and even excluding environmentally sensitive areas, the global potential of wind power is much higher than the current world electricity use. In theory, Argentina, Canada, Chile, China, Russia, and the United Kingdom could use wind to meet all of their energy needs. Wind power experts project that by the middle of the twenty-first century wind power could supply more than 10 percent of the world’s electricity and 10-25 percent of the electricity used in the United States.

Based on the information in paragraph 3 and paragraph 4, what can be inferred about the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas mentioned at the end of paragraph 1

A.They rely largely on coal-fired power plants.
B.They contain remote areas where the winds rarely die down.
C.Over 1 percent of the electricity in these states is produced by wind farms.
D.Wind farms in these states are being expanded to meet the power needs of the United States


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1.单项选择题

Deer Populations of the Puget Sound

Two species of deer have been prevalent in the Puget Sound area of Washington State in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The black-tailed deer, lowland, west-side cousin of the mule deer of eastern Washington, is now the most common. The other species, the Columbian white-tailed deer, in earlier times was common in the open prairie country, it is now restricted to the low, marshy islands and flood plains along the lower Columbia River.

Nearly any kind of plant of the forest understory can be part of a deer's diet. Where the forest inhibits the growth of grass and other meadow plants, the black-tailed deer browses on huckleberry, salal, dogwood, and almost any other shrub or herb. But this is fair-weather feeding. What keeps the black-tailed deer alive in the harsher seasons of plant decay and dormancy One compensation for not hibernating is the built-in urge to migrate. Deer may move from high-elevation browse areas in summer down to the lowland areas in late fall. Even with snow on the ground, the high bushy understory is exposed; also snow and wind bring down leafy branches of cedar, hemlock, red alder, and other arboreal fodder.

The numbers of deer have fluctuated markedly since the entry of Europeans into Puget Sound country. The early explorers and settlers told of abundant deer in the early 1800s and yet almost in the same breath bemoaned the lack of this succulent game animal. Famous explorers of the north American frontier, Lewis and Clark had experienced great difficulty finding game west of the Rockies and not until the second of December did they kill their first elk. To keep 40 people alive that winter, they consumed approximately 150 elk and 20 deer. And when game moved out of the lowlands in early spring, the expedition decided to return east rather than face possible starvation. Later on in the early years of the nineteenth century, when Fort Vancouver became the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company, deer populations continued to fluctuate. David Douglas, Scottish botanical explorer of the 1830s found a disturbing change in the animal life around the fort during the period between his first visit in 1825 and his final contact with the fort in 1832. A recent Douglas biographer states:" The deer which once picturesquely dotted the meadows around the fort were gone [in 1832], hunted to extermination in order to protect the crops."

Reduction in numbers of game should have boded ill for their survival in later times. A worsening of the plight of deer was to be expected as settlers encroached on the land, logging, burning, and clearing, eventually replacing a wilderness landscape with roads, cities, towns, and factories. No doubt the numbers of deer declined still further. Recall the fate of the Columbian white-tailed deer, now in a protected status. But for the black-tailed deer, human pressure has had just the opposite effect. Wild life zoologist Hulmut Buechner(1953), in reviewing the nature of biotic changes in Washington through recorded time, Says that "since the early 1940s, the state has had more deer than at any other time in its history, the winter population fluctuating around approximately 320,000 deer (mule and black-tailed deer), which will yield about 65,000 of either sex and any age annually for an indefinite period.”

The causes of this population rebound are consequences of other human actions. First, the major predators of deer---wolves, cougar, and lynx--have been greatly reduced in numbers. Second, conservation has been insured by limiting times for and types of hunting. But the most profound reason for the restoration of high population numbers has been the gate of the forests. Great tracts of lowland country deforested by logging, fire, or both have become ideal feeding grounds of deer. In addition to finding an increase of suitable browse, like huckleberry and vine maple, Arthur Einarsen, longtime game biologist in the Pacific Northwest, found quality of browse in the open areas to be substantially more nutritive. The protein content of shade-grown vegetation, for example, was much lower than that for plants grown in clearings.

It can be inferred from the discussion in paragraph 2 that winter conditions

A.Cause some deer to hibernate
B.Make food unavailable in the highlands for deer
C.Make it easier for deer to locate understory plants
D.Prevent deer from migrating during the winter

2.单项选择题

Cave Art in Europe

The earliest discovered traces of art are beads and carvings, and then paintings, from sites dating back to the Upper Paleolithic period. We might expect that early artistic efforts would be crude, but the cave paintings of Spain and southern France show a marked degree of skill. So do the naturalistic paintings on slabs of stone excavated in southern Africa. Some of those slabs appear to have been painted as much as 28,000 years ago, which suggests that painting in Africa is as old as painting in Europe. But painting may be even older than that. The early Australians may have painted on the walls of rock shelters and cliff faces at least 30,000 years ago, and maybe as much as 60,000 years ago.

The researchers Peter Ucko and Andree Rosenfeld identified three principal locations of paintings in the caves of western Europe: (1) in obviously inhabited rock shelters and cave entrances; (2) in galleries immediately off the inhabited areas of caves; and (3) in the inner reaches of caves, whose difficulty of access has been interpreted by some as a sign that magical-religious activities were performed there.

The subjects of the paintings are mostly animals. The paintings rest on bare walls, with no backdrops or environmental trappings. Perhaps, like many contemporary peoples, Upper Paleolithic men and women believed that the drawing of a human image could cause death or injury, and if that were indeed their belief, it might explain why human figures are rarely depicted in cave art. Another explanation for the focus on animals might be that these people sought to improve their luck at hunting. This theory is suggested by evidence of chips in the painted figures, perhaps made by spears thrown at the drawings. But if improving their hunting luck was the chief motivation for the paintings, it is difficult to explain why only a few show signs of having been speared. Perhaps the paintings were inspired by the need to increase the supply of animals. Cave art seems to have reached a peak toward the end of the Upper Paleolithic period, when the herds of game were decreasing.

The particular symbolic significance of the cave paintings in southwestern France is more explicitly revealed, perhaps, by the results of a study conducted by researchers Patricia Rice and Ann Paterson. The data they present suggest that the animals portrayed in the cave paintings were mostly the ones that the painters preferred for meat and for materials such as hides. For example, wild cattle (bovines) and horses are portrayed more often than we would expect by chance, probably because they were larger and heavier (meatier) than other animals in the environment. In addition, the paintings mostly portray animals that the painters may have feared the most because of their size, speed, natural weapons such as tusks and horns, and the unpredictability of their behavior. That is, mammoths, bovines, and horses are portrayed more often than deer and reindeer. Thus, the paintings are consistent with the idea that the art is related to the importance of hunting in the economy of Upper Paleolithic people. Consistent with this idea, according to the investigators, is the fact that the art of the cultural period that followed the Upper Paleolithic also seems to reflect how people got their food. But in that period, when getting food no longer depended on hunting large game animals (because they were becoming extinct), the art ceased to focus on portrayals of animals.

Upper Paleolithic art was not confined to cave paintings. Many shafts of spears and similar objects were decorated with figures of animals. The anthropologist Alexander Marshack has an interesting interpretation of some of the engravings made during the Upper Paleolithic. He believes that as far back as 30.000 B.C., hunters may have used a system of notation, engraved on bone and stone, to mark phases of the Moon. If this is true, it would mean that Upper Paleolithic people were capable of complex thought and were consciously aware of their environment. In addition to other artworks, figurines representing the human female in exaggerated form have also been found at Upper Paleolithic sites. It has been suggested that these figurines were an ideal type or an expression of a desire for fertility.

The word “marked” in the passage is closest in meaning to

A.Considerable
B.Surprising
C.Limited
D.Adequate

3.单项选择题

Electricity from Wind

Since 1980, the use of wind to produce electricity has been growing rapidly. In 1994 there were nearly 20,000 wind turbines worldwide, most grouped in clusters called wind farms that collectively produced 3,000 megawatts of electricity. Most were in Denmark (which got 3 percent of its electricity from wind turbines) and California (where 17,000 machines produced 1 percent of the state’s electricity, enough to meet the residential needs of a city as large as San Francisco). In principle, all the power needs of the United States could be provided by exploiting the wind potential of just three states—North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas.

Large wind farms can be built in six months to a year and then easily expanded as needed. With a moderate to fairly high net energy yield, these systems emit no heat-trapping carbon dioxide or other air pollutants and need no water for cooling; manufacturing them produces little water pollution. The land under wind turbines can be used for grazing cattle and other purposes, and leasing land for wind turbines can provide extra income for farmers and ranchers.

Wind power has a significant cost advantage over nuclear power and has become competitive with coal-fired power plants in many places. With new technological advances and mass production, projected cost declines should make wind power one of the world’s cheapest ways to produce electricity. In the long run, electricity from large wind farms in remote areas might be used to make hydrogen gas from water during periods when there is less than peak demand for electricity. The hydrogen gas could then be fed into a storage system and used to generate electricity when additional or backup power is needed.

Wind power is most economical in areas with steady winds. In areas where the wind dies down, backup electricity from a utility company or from an energy storage system becomes necessary. Backup power could also be provided by linking wind farms with a solar cell, with conventional or pumped-storage hydropower, or with efficient natural-gas-burning turbines. Some drawbacks to wind farms include visual pollution and noise, although these can be overcome by improving their design and locating them in isolated areas.

Large wind farms might also interfere with the flight patterns of migratory birds in certain areas, and they have killed large birds of prey (especially hawks, falcons, and eagles) that prefer to hunt along the same ridge lines that are ideal for wind turbines. The killing of birds of prey by wind turbines has pitted environmentalists who champion wildlife protection against environmentalists who promote renewable wind energy. Researchers are evaluating how serious this problem is and hope to find ways to eliminate or sharply reduce this problem. Some analysts also contend that the number of birds killed by wind turbines is dwarfed by birds killed by other human-related sources and by the potential loss of entire bird species from possible global warming. Recorded deaths of birds of prey and other birds in wind farms in the United States currently amount to no more than 300 per year. By contrast, in the United States an estimated 97 million birds are killed each year when they collide with buildings made of plate glass, 57 million are killed on highways each year; at least 3.8 million die annually from pollution and poisoning; and millions of birds are electrocuted each year by transmission and distribution lines carrying power produced by nuclear and coal power plants.

The technology is in place for a major expansion of wind power worldwide. Wind power is a virtually unlimited source of energy at favorable sites, and even excluding environmentally sensitive areas, the global potential of wind power is much higher than the current world electricity use. In theory, Argentina, Canada, Chile, China, Russia, and the United Kingdom could use wind to meet all of their energy needs. Wind power experts project that by the middle of the twenty-first century wind power could supply more than 10 percent of the world’s electricity and 10-25 percent of the electricity used in the United States.

The word emit in the passage is closest in meaning to

A.Use
B.Require
C.Release
D.Destroy

4.单项选择题

Deer Populations of the Puget Sound

Two species of deer have been prevalent in the Puget Sound area of Washington State in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The black-tailed deer, lowland, west-side cousin of the mule deer of eastern Washington, is now the most common. The other species, the Columbian white-tailed deer, in earlier times was common in the open prairie country, it is now restricted to the low, marshy islands and flood plains along the lower Columbia River.

Nearly any kind of plant of the forest understory can be part of a deer's diet. Where the forest inhibits the growth of grass and other meadow plants, the black-tailed deer browses on huckleberry, salal, dogwood, and almost any other shrub or herb. But this is fair-weather feeding. What keeps the black-tailed deer alive in the harsher seasons of plant decay and dormancy One compensation for not hibernating is the built-in urge to migrate. Deer may move from high-elevation browse areas in summer down to the lowland areas in late fall. Even with snow on the ground, the high bushy understory is exposed; also snow and wind bring down leafy branches of cedar, hemlock, red alder, and other arboreal fodder.

The numbers of deer have fluctuated markedly since the entry of Europeans into Puget Sound country. The early explorers and settlers told of abundant deer in the early 1800s and yet almost in the same breath bemoaned the lack of this succulent game animal. Famous explorers of the north American frontier, Lewis and Clark had experienced great difficulty finding game west of the Rockies and not until the second of December did they kill their first elk. To keep 40 people alive that winter, they consumed approximately 150 elk and 20 deer. And when game moved out of the lowlands in early spring, the expedition decided to return east rather than face possible starvation. Later on in the early years of the nineteenth century, when Fort Vancouver became the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company, deer populations continued to fluctuate. David Douglas, Scottish botanical explorer of the 1830s found a disturbing change in the animal life around the fort during the period between his first visit in 1825 and his final contact with the fort in 1832. A recent Douglas biographer states:" The deer which once picturesquely dotted the meadows around the fort were gone [in 1832], hunted to extermination in order to protect the crops."

Reduction in numbers of game should have boded ill for their survival in later times. A worsening of the plight of deer was to be expected as settlers encroached on the land, logging, burning, and clearing, eventually replacing a wilderness landscape with roads, cities, towns, and factories. No doubt the numbers of deer declined still further. Recall the fate of the Columbian white-tailed deer, now in a protected status. But for the black-tailed deer, human pressure has had just the opposite effect. Wild life zoologist Hulmut Buechner(1953), in reviewing the nature of biotic changes in Washington through recorded time, Says that "since the early 1940s, the state has had more deer than at any other time in its history, the winter population fluctuating around approximately 320,000 deer (mule and black-tailed deer), which will yield about 65,000 of either sex and any age annually for an indefinite period.”

The causes of this population rebound are consequences of other human actions. First, the major predators of deer---wolves, cougar, and lynx--have been greatly reduced in numbers. Second, conservation has been insured by limiting times for and types of hunting. But the most profound reason for the restoration of high population numbers has been the gate of the forests. Great tracts of lowland country deforested by logging, fire, or both have become ideal feeding grounds of deer. In addition to finding an increase of suitable browse, like huckleberry and vine maple, Arthur Einarsen, longtime game biologist in the Pacific Northwest, found quality of browse in the open areas to be substantially more nutritive. The protein content of shade-grown vegetation, for example, was much lower than that for plants grown in clearings.

According to paragraph 1, which of the following is true of the white-tailed deer of Puget Sound

A.It is native to lowlands and marshes.
B.It is more closely related to the mule deer of eastern Washington than to other types of deer.
C.It has replaced the black-tailed deer in the open prairie.
D.It no longer lives in a particular type of habitat that it once occupied.

5.单项选择题

Electricity from Wind

Since 1980, the use of wind to produce electricity has been growing rapidly. In 1994 there were nearly 20,000 wind turbines worldwide, most grouped in clusters called wind farms that collectively produced 3,000 megawatts of electricity. Most were in Denmark (which got 3 percent of its electricity from wind turbines) and California (where 17,000 machines produced 1 percent of the state’s electricity, enough to meet the residential needs of a city as large as San Francisco). In principle, all the power needs of the United States could be provided by exploiting the wind potential of just three states—North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas.

Large wind farms can be built in six months to a year and then easily expanded as needed. With a moderate to fairly high net energy yield, these systems emit no heat-trapping carbon dioxide or other air pollutants and need no water for cooling; manufacturing them produces little water pollution. The land under wind turbines can be used for grazing cattle and other purposes, and leasing land for wind turbines can provide extra income for farmers and ranchers.

Wind power has a significant cost advantage over nuclear power and has become competitive with coal-fired power plants in many places. With new technological advances and mass production, projected cost declines should make wind power one of the world’s cheapest ways to produce electricity. In the long run, electricity from large wind farms in remote areas might be used to make hydrogen gas from water during periods when there is less than peak demand for electricity. The hydrogen gas could then be fed into a storage system and used to generate electricity when additional or backup power is needed.

Wind power is most economical in areas with steady winds. In areas where the wind dies down, backup electricity from a utility company or from an energy storage system becomes necessary. Backup power could also be provided by linking wind farms with a solar cell, with conventional or pumped-storage hydropower, or with efficient natural-gas-burning turbines. Some drawbacks to wind farms include visual pollution and noise, although these can be overcome by improving their design and locating them in isolated areas.

Large wind farms might also interfere with the flight patterns of migratory birds in certain areas, and they have killed large birds of prey (especially hawks, falcons, and eagles) that prefer to hunt along the same ridge lines that are ideal for wind turbines. The killing of birds of prey by wind turbines has pitted environmentalists who champion wildlife protection against environmentalists who promote renewable wind energy. Researchers are evaluating how serious this problem is and hope to find ways to eliminate or sharply reduce this problem. Some analysts also contend that the number of birds killed by wind turbines is dwarfed by birds killed by other human-related sources and by the potential loss of entire bird species from possible global warming. Recorded deaths of birds of prey and other birds in wind farms in the United States currently amount to no more than 300 per year. By contrast, in the United States an estimated 97 million birds are killed each year when they collide with buildings made of plate glass, 57 million are killed on highways each year; at least 3.8 million die annually from pollution and poisoning; and millions of birds are electrocuted each year by transmission and distribution lines carrying power produced by nuclear and coal power plants.

The technology is in place for a major expansion of wind power worldwide. Wind power is a virtually unlimited source of energy at favorable sites, and even excluding environmentally sensitive areas, the global potential of wind power is much higher than the current world electricity use. In theory, Argentina, Canada, Chile, China, Russia, and the United Kingdom could use wind to meet all of their energy needs. Wind power experts project that by the middle of the twenty-first century wind power could supply more than 10 percent of the world’s electricity and 10-25 percent of the electricity used in the United States.

Based on the information in paragraph 1, which of the following best explains the term wind farms

A.Farms using windmills to pump water
B.Research centers exploring the uses of wind
C.Types of power plant common in North Dakota
D.Collections of wind turbines producing electric power