备考2020年高考英语一轮复习31：说明文类阅读理解

Whatever your age or interests, Buxton has something to see or do to make your visit truly memorable.

High energy

If you desire physical activities, you can choose activities from swimming to horse riding. Explore the heights with Go Ape, the high wire forest adventure course, or journey beneath the earth at Poole's Cavern. And don't forget: we are surrounded by a natural playground just perfect for walking, caving, climbing and cycling.

High minded

Buxton is justifiably proud of its cultural life and you'll find much to suit all tastes with art, music, opera and the performing arts at Buxton Opera House & Pavilion Arts Centre and Green Man Gallery. There are plenty of opportunities for the creative person to become involved, including workshops and events.

Keeping the kids happy

Children love the small train and playgrounds in the Pavilion Gardens and there's plenty more to explore at the Buxton Museum. There's a new indoor play centre, plus the special events and workshops, and others during school holiday periods

How does an ecosystem（生态系统）work? What makes the populations of different species the way they are? Why are there so many flies and so few wolves? To find an answer, scientists have built mathematical models of food webs, noting who eats whom and how much each one eats.

With such models, scientists have found out some key principles operating in food webs. Most food webs, for instance, consist of many weak links rather than a few strong ones. When a predator（掠食动物）always eats huge numbers of a single prey（猎物）, the two species are strongly linked; when a predator lives on various species, they are weakly linked. Food webs may be dominated by many weak links because that arrangement is more stable over the long term. If a predator can eat several species, it can survive the extinction（灭绝）of one of them. And if a predator can move on to another species that is easier to find when a prey species becomes rare, the switch allows the original prey to recover. The weak links may thus keep species from driving one another to extinction.

Mathematical models have also revealed that food webs may be unstable, where small changes of top predators can lead to big effects throughout entire ecosystems. In the 1960s, scientists proposed that predators at the top of a food web had a surprising amount of control over the size of populations of other species—including species they did not directly attack.

And unplanned human activities have proved the idea of top-down control by top predators to be true. In the ocean, we fished for top predators such as cod on an industrial scale, while on land, we killed off large predators such as wolves. These actions have greatly affected the ecological balance.

Scientists have built an early-warning system based on mathematical models. Ideally, the system would tell us when to adapt human activities that are pushing an ecosystem toward a breakdown or would even allow us to pull an ecosystem back from the borderline. Prevention is key, scientists says because once ecosystems pass their tipping point（临界点）, it is remarkably difficult for them to return.

History Fair Competition

Understanding history is vital to understanding ourselves as a people and as a nation.

History is much more than the study of dusty old objects and events long past. It is an essential part of who we are today and who we will become. Thornton fiddle School History Fair Competition makes understanding history exciting, engaging, and fun！

This Year's Theme

All participants must address how communication or transportation technology has promoted the quality of life for Americans throughout history. To many people, technology means computers, hand-held devices, or vehicles that travel to distant planets. However, technology is also the application of scientific knowledge to solve a problem, touching lives in countless ways.

Individuals or groups may enter one of the following categories:

Performance

Documentary（纪实作品）

Essay Writing

Category Requirements

Performance: A dramatic presentation of the topic no more than 10 minutes long. If special clothes are used, they should truly represent a given period.

Documentary: A visual presentation（such as a video, slide show, or computer project）no more than 10 minutes long. A desktop computer, screen, projector, and loudspeakers will be available. Students must provide their presentations on CDs before Friday, March 23.

Essay Writing: An academic paper of 2, 000 to 2, 500 words. No illustrations（图解）are allowed. Please do not include covers. A list of references must be included.

Important Dates

January 5 Submit a topic proposal to your history teacher. The teacher may require a second proposal if the first is off-topic or unclear.

February 5 Submit a first draft of your essay, performance script（剧本）, or documentary highlights.

February 19 A committee of teachers will evaluate materials and give opinions. Students then have an opportunity to improve their products.

March 9 Submit a final draft of your essay.

March 15 Performance and documentary committee preview

March 24 Thornton Middle School History Fair Competition

7:00A. M-9:00A. M Participants signing in at the gym

10:00A. M. -6:00PM. Competition and judges' review

7:00P.M. Awards ceremony and picnic

Monkeys seem to have a way with numbers.

A team of researchers trained three Rhesus monkeys to associate 26 clearly different symbols consisting of numbers and selective letters with 0-25 drops of water or juice as a reward. The researchers then tested how the monkeys combined—or added—the symbols to get the reward.

Here's how Harvard Medical School scientist Margaret Livingstone, who led the team, described the experiment: In their cages the monkeys were provided with touch screens. On one part of the screen, a symbol would appear, and on the other side two symbols inside a circle were shown. For example, the number 7 would flash on one side of the screen and the other end would have 9 and 8. If the monkeys touched the left side of the screen they would be rewarded with seven drops of water or juice; if they went for the circle, they would be rewarded with the sum of the numbers—17 in this example.

After running hundreds of tests, the researchers noted that the monkeys would go for the higher values more than half the time, indicating that they were performing a calculation, not just memorizing the value of each combination.

When the team examined the results of the experiment more closely, they noticed that the monkeys tended to underestimate（低估）a sum compared with a single symbol when the two were close in value—sometimes choosing, for example, a 13 over the sum of 8 and 6. The underestimation was systematic: When adding two numbers, the monkeys always paid attention to the larger of the two, and then added only a fraction（小部分）of the smaller number to it.

"This indicates that there is a certain way quantity is represented in their brains, "Dr. Livingstone says. "But in this experiment what they're doing is paying more attention to the big number than the little one.”

Before the 1830s, most newspapers were sold through annual subscriptions in America, usually $8 to $10 a year. Today $8 or $10 seems a small amount of money, but at that time these amounts were forbidding to most citizens. Accordingly, newspapers were read almost only by rich people in politics or the trades. In addition, most newspapers had little in them that would appeal to a mass audience. They were dull and visually forbidding. But the revolution that was taking place in the 1830s would change all that.

The trend, then, was toward the "penny paper"-a term referring to papers made widely available to the public. It meant any inexpensive newspaper; perhaps more importantly it meant newspapers that could be bought in single copies on the street.

This development did not take place overnight. It had been possible(but not easy)to buy single copies of newspapers before 1830,but this usually meant the reader had to go down to the printer's office to purchase a copy. Street sales were almost unknown. However, within a few years, street sales of newspapers would be commonplace in eastern cities. At first the price of single copies was seldom a penny-usually two or three cents was charged-and some of the older well-known papers charged five or six cents. But the phrase "penny paper" caught the public's fancy, and soon there would be papers that did indeed sell for only a penny.

This new trend of newspapers for "the man on the street" did not begin well. Some of the early ventures(企业)were immediate failures. Publishers already in business, people who were owners of successful papers, had little desire to change the tradition. It took a few youthful and daring businessmen to get the ball rolling.

Choose the one that fits best according to the information given in the passage you have just read.

As data and identity theft becomes more and more common, the market is growing for biometric(生物测量)technologies—like fingerprint scans—to keep others out of private e-spaces. At present, these technologies are still expensive, though.

Researchers from Georgia Tech say that they have come up with a low-cost device(装置)that gets around this problem: a smart keyboard. This smart keyboard precisely measures the cadence(节奏)with which one types and the pressure fingers apply to each key. The keyboard could offer a strong layer of security by analyzing things like the force of a user's typing and the time between key presses. These patterns are unique to each person. Thus, the keyboard can determine people's identities, and by extension, whether they should be given access to the computer it's connected to—regardless of whether someone gets the password right.

It also doesn't require a new type of technology that people aren't already familiar with. Everybody uses a keyboard and everybody types differently.

In a study describing the technology, the researchers had 100 volunteers type the word "touch" four times using the smart keyboard. Data collected from the device could be used to recognize different participants based on how they typed, with very low error rates. The researchers say that the keyboard should be pretty straightforward to commercialize and is mostly made of inexpensive, plastic-like parts. The team hopes to make it to market in the near future.

Don't Drop the Ball

Drop prevention risk assessment is really important. Everyone knows objects get dropped on work sites – there's nothing radical about that. In Australia, mining has the third highest fatality rate of any industry (4.4 fatalities per 100,000 workers in 2015), and in less well-documented areas like India the fatality rate is even higher. A lot of these fatalities come from dropped objects. It's worth trying to address this and work out just how big the risk is and where it comes from. At the end of the day, safety should be a priority in any industry and it should come as no surprise that addressing safety issues early can actually save money, long-term, for companies. It doesn't look good for a mining company if people are getting injured and equipment damaged from falling objects.

The risks from dropped objects come from all sorts of areas; it's not just a matter of dropped tools. We're talking about sites characterized by a lot of activities, where all sorts of things can come loose or fall, whether its light fittings or objects like rocks falling off transporting belts. The risks are largely personal but are also financial: if a piece of equipment gets damaged it will need replacing. That's a pretty strong inspiration for companies to address these risks. In terms of frequency, here in Australia we're looking at around 18% of compensation claims coming from workers being hit by moving objects, but those are just the claims – the frequency is likely higher. Around 28% of deaths and injuries come from such incidents, too. As I said earlier, that's just Australia; some industries don't keep statistics, but I wouldn't be surprised to find other countries report comparable rates. That's a lot of accidents that could be prevented with adequate safety measures.

It's important to take an active approach. It's a lot easier and cheaper to address these risks during the installation or maintenance phases by adding barriers to the inside of guard railings on walkways and transporting systems and adding nets to fixed devices. There are safety mechanisms available, but it's up to the companies to install them. It is a lot more efficient to add barriers right from the start rather than waiting for an accident and then thinking, "Should we be safer?", when they should have reduced these risks from the start.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
		1000 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10028 211-535-7710www.metmuseum.org Entrances Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street Hours Open 7 days a week. Sunday-Thursday 10:00-17:30 Friday and Saturday 10:00-21:00 ClosedThanksgiving Day, December 25, January 1,and the first Monday in May.
Admission $25.00 recommended for adults, $12.00 recommended for students, includes the Main Building and The Cloisters(回廊）on the same day; free for children under 12 with an adult. Free with Admission All special exhibitions, as well as films, lectures, guided tours, concerts, gallery talks, and family/children's programs are free with admission. Ask about today's activities at the Great Hall Information Desk.
	The Cloisters Museum and Gardens The Cloisters museum and gardens is a branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of Europe in the Middle Ages. The extensive collection consists of masterworks in sculpture, colored glass, and precious objects from Europe dating from about the 9th to the 15th century.
Hours: Open 7 days a week. March-October10:00-17:15 November-February 10:00-16:45 ClosedThanksgiving Day, December 25, and January 1.

In the 1760s, Mathurin Roze opened a series of shops that boasted(享有）a special meat soup called consomme. Although the main attraction was the soup, Roze's chain shops also set a new standard for dining out, which helped to establish Roze as the inventor of the modern restaurant.

Today, scholars have generated large amounts of instructive research about restaurants. Take visual hints that influence what we eat: diners served themselves about 20 percent more pasta(意大利面食）when their plates matched their food. When a dark-colored cake was served on a black plate rather than a white one, customers recognized it as sweeter and more tasty.

Lighting matters, too. When Berlin restaurant customers ate in darkness, they couldn't tell how much they'd had: those given extra-large shares ate more than everyone else, but werenone the wiser—they didn't feel fuller, and they were just as ready for dessert.

Time is money, but that principle means different things for different types of restaurants. Unlike fast-food places, fine dining shops prefer customers to stay longer and spend. One way to encourage customers to stay and order that extra round: put on some Mozart(莫扎特）.When classical, rather than pop, music was playing, diners spent more. Fast music hurried diners out. Particular scents also have an effect: diners who got the scent of lavender(薰衣草）stayed longer and spent more than those who smelled lemon, or no scent.

Meanwhile, things that you might expect to discourage spending—"bad" tables, crowding, high prices — don't necessarily. Diners at bad tables — next to the kitchen door, say — spent nearly as much as others but soon fled. It can be concluded that restaurant keepers need not "be overly concerned about 'bad' tables," given that they're profitable. As for crowds, a Hong Kong study found that they increased a restaurant's reputation, suggesting great food at fair prices. And doubling a buffet's price led customers to say that its pizza was 11 percent tastier.

阅读下列短文，从每题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中，选出最佳选项。

Find Your Adventure at the Space and Aviation(航空) Center

If you're looking for a unique adventure, the Space and Aviation Center (SAC) is the place to be. The Center offers programs designed to challenge and inspire with hands-on tasks and lots of fun.

More than 750,000 have graduated from SAC, with many seeking employment in engineering, aviation, education, medicine and a wide variety of other professions. They come to camp, wanting to know what it is like to be an astronaut or a pilot, and they leave with real-world applications for what they're studying in the classroom.

For the trainees, the programs also offer a great way to earn merit badges(荣誉徽章). At Space Camp, trainees can earn their Space Exploration badge as they build and fire model rockets, learn about space tasks and try simulated(模拟) flying to space with the crew from all over the world. The Aviation Challenge program gives trainees the chance to earn their Aviation badge. They learn the principles of flight and test their operating skills in the cockpit(驾驶舱) of a variety of flight simulators. Trainees also get a good start on their Wilderness Survival badge as they learn about water- and land-survival through designed tasks and their search and rescue of ＂downed＂ pilot.

With all the programs, teamwork is key as trainees learn the importance of leadership and being part of a bigger task.

All this fun is available for ages 9 to 18. Families can enjoy the experience together, too, with Family Camp programs for families with children as young as 7.

Stay an hour or stay a week — there is something here for everyone!

For more details, please visit us online at www.oursac.com.

Fire Prevention Information

The University of Adelaide employs a full-time staff of fire prevention professionals. They inspect all campus buildings and test and maintain all sprinkler(喷水灭火装置）systems, fire alarms, and fire extinguishers (灭火器). They also provide educational programs or fire safety in the residence hall. Whenever you move to a new area, you should locate the fire alarm pull stations and the two exits nearest your room.

Fire Alarms

The floors of all campus buildings are equipped with manual(手动的）fire alarm systems which include fire alarm pull stations and pipes. Most are also equipped with automatic fire alarm systems consisting of heat detectors, smoke detectors and sprinklers. For your safety, never tamper with(胡乱摆弄）these systems. False fire alarms are illegal and may lead to imprisonment.

Fire Drills

A fire drill will be conducted in your residence hall every semester. During a fire drill, please do the following:

•Take your room key and ID, close and lock the door to your room.

•Exit immediately from the nearest emergency exit do not use a lift.

•Meet outside of your residence hall and wait for further instructions.

Fire Extinguishers

Fire extinguishers are located on each floor and in each apartment. Use a fire extinguisher only if you have been trained to do so. Irresponsible use of a fire extinguisher can create a dangerous situation for other residents and could result in damage to personal property. Misuse of a fire extinguisher will result in fines.

Smoke Detector

A smoke detector is on the ceiling in your room. Some buildings also have heat detectors on the ceilings. Do the following to ensure the safe operation of your smoke detector:

•If your smoke detector is working properly, the red light should be on. If the red light is not blinking（闪动），contact residence hall staff immediately.

•Do not cover or block your smoke detector in any way.

•If a smoke detector sets off an alarm and there is no fire or smoke, inform your hall staff.

In 1812, the year Charles Dickens was born, there were 66 novels published in Britain. People had been writing novels for a century—most experts date the first novel to Robinson Crusoe in 1719—but nobody wanted to do it professionally. The steam-powered printing press was still in its early stages; the literacy（识字） rate in England was under 50%. Many works of fiction appeared without the names of the authors, often with something like "By a lady." Novels, for the most part, were looked upon as silly, immoral, or just plain bad.

In 1870, when Dickens died, the world mourned him as its first professional writer and publisher, famous and beloved, who had led an explosion in both the publication of novels and their readership and whose characters — from Oliver Twist to Tiny Tim— were held up as moral touchstones. Today Dickens' greatness is unchallenged. Removing him from the pantheon（名人堂） of English literature would make about as much sense as the Louvre selling off theMona Lisa.

How did Dickens get to the top? For all the feelings readers attach to stories, literature is a numbers game, and the test of time is extremely difficult to pass. Some 60,000 novels were published during the Victorian age, from 1837 to 1901; today a casual reader might be able to name a half-dozen of them. It's partly true that Dickens' style of writing attracted audiences from all walks of life. It's partly that his writings rode a wave of social, political and scientific progress. But it's also that he rewrote the culture of literature and put himself at the center. No one will ever know what mix of talent, ambition, energy and luck made Dickens such a singular writer. But as the 200th anniversary of his birth approaches, it is possible — and important for our own culture—to understand how he made himself a lasting one.

While famous foreign architects are invited to lead the designs of landmark buildings in China such as the new CCTV tower and the National Center for the Performing Arts, many excellent Chinese architects are making great efforts to take the center stage.

Their efforts have been proven fruitful. Wang Shu, a 49-year-old Chinese architect, won the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize — which is often referred to as the Nobel Prize in architecture — on February 28. He is the first Chinese citizen to win this award.

Wang serves as head of the Architecture Department at the China Academy of Art (CAA). His office is located at the Xiangshan campus(校园) of the university in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Many buildings on the campus are his original creations.

The style of the campus is quite different from that of most Chinese universities. Many visitors were amazed by the complex architectural space and abundant building types. The curves(曲线) of the buildings perfectly match the rise and fall of hills, forming a unique view.

Wang collected more than 7 million abandoned bricks of different ages. He asked the workers to use traditional techniques to make the bricks into walls, roofs and corridors. This creation attracted a lot of attention thanks to its mixture of modern and traditional Chinese elements(元素).

Wang's works show a deep understanding of modern architecture and a good knowledge of traditions. Through such a balance, he had created a new type of Chinese architecture, said Tadao Ando, the winner of the 1995 Pritzker Prize.

Wang believes traditions should not be sealed in glass boxes at museums. "That is only evidence that traditions once existed," he said.

"Many Chinese people have a misunderstanding of traditions. They think tradition means old things from the past. In fact, tradition also refers to the things that have been developing and that are still being created," he said.

"Today, many Chinese people are learning Western styles and theories rather than focusing on Chinese traditions. Many people tend to talk about traditions without knowing what they really are, "said Wang.

The study of traditions should be combined with practice. Otherwise, the recreation of traditions would be artificial and empty, he said.

Many of us love July because it's the month when nature's berries and stone fruits are in abundance. These colourful and sweet jewels from British Columbia's fields are little powerhouses of nutritional protection.

Of the common berries, strawberries are highest in vitamin C, although, because of their seeds, raspberries contain a little more protein (蛋白质), iron and zinc (not that fruits have much protein). Blueberries are particularly high in antioxidants (抗氧化物质). The yellow and orange stone fruits such as peaches are high in the carotenoids we turn into vitamin A and which are antioxidants. As for cherries (樱桃), they are so delicious who cares? However, they are rich in vitamin C.

When combined with berries or slices of other fruits, frozen bananas make an excellent base for thick, cooling fruit shakes and low fat "ice cream". For this purpose, select ripe bananas for freezing as they are much sweeter. Remove the skin and place them in plastic bags or containers and freeze. If you like, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice on the bananas will prevent them turning brown. Frozen bananas will last several weeks, depending on their ripeness and the temperature of the freezer.

If you havea juicer, you can simply feed in frozen bananas and some berries or sliced fruit. Out comes a "soft-serve" creamy dessert, to be eaten right away. This makes a fun activity for a children's party; they love feeding the fruit and frozen bananas into the top of the machine and watching the ice cream come out below.

Teens and younger children are reading a lot less for fun, according to a Common Sense Media report published Monday.

While the decline over the past decade is steep for teen readers, some data in the report shows that reading remains a big part of many children's lives, and indicates how parents might help encourage more reading.

According to the report's key findings, "the proportion (比例) who say they 'hardly ever' read for fun has gone from 8 percent of 13-year-olds and 9 percent of 17-year-olds in 1984 to 22 percent and 27 percent respectively today."

The report data shows that pleasure reading levels for younger children, ages2-8, remain largely the same. But the amount of time spent in reading each session has declined, from closer to an hour or more to closer to a half hour per session.

When it comes to technology and reading, the report does little to counsel(建议)parenst looking for data about the effect of e-readers and tablets on reading. It does point out that many parents still limit electronic reading, mainly due to concerns about increased screen time.

The most hopeful data shared in the report shows clear evidence of parents serving as examples and important guides for their kids when it comes to reading. Data shows that kids and teens who do read frequently, compared to infrequent readers, have more books in the home, more books purchased for them, parents who read more often, and parents who set aside time for them to read.

As the end of school approaches, and school vacation reading lists loom(逼近)ahead, parents might take this chance to step in and make their own summer reading list and plan a family trip to the library or bookstore.

My college experience included this life-skill lesson: Drink alcohol on a full stomach. Or you will getinebriatedtoo quickly. Of course, most college students shouldn't be drinking at all, but we know from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism that close to 60 percent of college students aged 18 to 22 do consume alcohol, which makes harm-reducing approaches important.

Unfortunately, campus authorities and researchers are reporting a practice that turns the full-stomach drinking strategy on its head: rather than filling up before a night of partying, significant numbers of students refuse to eat all day before consuming alcohol.

This is a high-risk behavior called "drunkorexia," which is one part eating disorder, one part alcoholism—a very dangerous combination for college-age students. The term drunkorexia, which can also include excessive exercise or purging before consuming alcohol, was coined about 10 years ago, and it started showing up in medical research around 2012. Drunkorexia addresses the need to be the life of the party while staying extremely thin, pointing to a flawed mind-set about body image and alcoholism among college students, mostly women.

Imagine this scenario: A female college freshman doesn't eat anything all day, exercises on an empty stomach, then downs five shots of tequila in less than two hours. Because there's no food in her system to help slow the absorption of alcohol, those shots affect her rapidly, leading to inebriation and possibly passing out, vomiting or suffering alcohol poisoning. That's drunkorexia.

Tavis Glassman, professor of health education and public health at the University of Toledo in Ohio, researches drunkorexia and worries about scenarios such as the one described above: "With nothing in her system, alcohol hits quickly, and that brings up the same issues as with any high-risk drinking: getting home safely, sexual assault, unintentional injury, fights, hangovers that affect class attendance and grades, and possibly ending up in emergency because the alcohol hits so hard," he says.

"Alcohol can negatively affect the liver or gastrointestinal system, it can interfere with sleep, lower the immune system and is linked to several types of cancers," Hultin says.