题目
题型：湖北省高考真题难度：来源：
many animals are still hibernating (冬眠). It"s too bad that humans can"t hibernate. In fact, as a species, we
almost did.
Apparently, at times in the past, peasants in France liked a semi-state of human hibernation. So writes
Graham Robb, a British scholar who has studied the sleeping habits of the French peasants. As soon as the
weather turned cold, people all over France shut themselves away and practiced the forgotten art of doing
nothing at all for months on end.
In line with this, Jeff Warren, a producer at CBC Radio"s The Current, tells us that the way we sleep has
changed fundamentally since the invention of artificial (人造的) lighting and the electric bulb.
When historians began studying texts of the Middle Ages, they noticed something referred to as "first
sleep", which was not clarified, though. Now scientists are telling us our ancestors most likely slept in
separate periods. The business of eight hours" uninterrupted sleep is a modem invention.
In the past, without the artificial light of the city to bathe in, humans went to sleep when it became dark
and then woke themselves around midnight. The late night period was known as "The Watch". It was when
people actually kept watch against wild animals, although many of them simply moved around or visited
family and neighhours.
According to some sleep researchers, a short period of insomnia (失眠) at midnight is not a disorder. It
is normal. Humans can experience another state of consciousness around their sleeping, which occurs in the
brief period before we fall asleep or wake ourselves in the morning. This period can be an extraordinarily
creative time for some people. The impressive inventor, Thomas Edison, used this state to hit upon many of
his new ideas.
Playing with your sleep rhythms can be adventurous, as anxiety may set in. Medical science doesn"t help
much in this case. It offers us medicines for a full night"s continuous sleep, which sounds natural; however,
according to Warren"s theory, it is really the opposite of what we need.
B. there were signs of hibernation in human sleeping habits.
C. people tended to sleep more peacefully in cold weather.
D. winter was a season for people to sleep for months on end.
B. to wake up their family and neighbours.
C. to remind others of the time.
D. to guard against possible dangers.
B. Consult a doctor if they can"t sleep.
C. Follow their natural sleep rhythm.
D. Keep to the eight-hour sleep pattern.
B. To urge people to sleep less.
C. To analyze the sleep pattern of modem people.
D. To throw new light on human sleep.
答案
核心考点
试题【阅读理解。 Have you winterized your horse yet? Even though global warming may hav】；主要考察你对题材分类等知识点的理解。[详细]
举一反三
expressions-and a new report published online in Current Biology explains why.
Rachael Jack, University of Glasgow researcher, said that rather than scanning evenly (均匀的) across
a face as Westerners do, Easterners fix their attention on the eyes.
"We show that Easterners and Westerners look at different face features to read facial expressions,"
Jack said. "Westerners look at the eyes and the mouth in equal measure, whereas Easterners favor the eyes
and neglect (忽略) the mouth."
According to Jack and her colleagues, the discovery shows that human communication of emotion is
more complex than previously believed. As a result, facial expressions that had been considered universally
recognizable cannot be used to reliably convey emotion in cross-cultural situations.
The researchers studied cultural differences in the recognition of facial expressions by recording the eye
movements of 13 Western Caucasian and 13 East Asian people while they observed pictures of. expressive
faces and put them into categories: happy, sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, angry, or neutral. They compared
how accurately participants read those facial expressions using their particular eye movement strategies.
It turned out that Easterners focused much greater attention on the eyes and made significantly more
errors than did Westerners. "The cultural difference in eye movements that they show is probably a reflection
of cultural difference in facial expressions," Jack said. "Our data suggest that whereas Westerners use the
whole face to convey emotion, Easterners use the eyes more and mouth less."
In short, the data show that facial expressions are not universal signals of human emotion. From here on,
examining how cultural factors have diversified these basic social skills will help our understanding of human
emotion. Otherwise, when it comes to communicating emotions across cultures, Easterners and Westerners
will find themselves lost in translation.
B. consider facial expressions universally reliable
C. observe the eyes and the mouth in different ways
D. have more difficulty in recognizing facial expressions
B. To get their faces impressive.
C. To classify some face pictures.
D. To observe the researchers" faces.
B. The researchers of the study.
C. The errors made during the study.
D. The data collected from the study.
B. study the mouth more frequently
C. examine the eyes more attentively
D. read facial expressions more correctly
B. Cultural Differences in Reading Emotions
C. Effective Methods to Develop Social Skills
D. How to Increase Cross-cultural Understanding
direction. By trying out ideas and solving problems one by one, they are now getting closer to one answer.
One funny idea is that animals might have a built-in compass (指南针).
Our earth itself is a big magnet (磁体). So a little magnetic needle that swings freely lines itself with the big
earth magnet to point north and south. When people discovered that idea about a thousand years ago and
invented the compass,it allowed sailors to navigate (航海) on ocean voyages, even under cloudy skies.
Actually the idea of the living compass came just from observing animals in nature.
Many birds migrate twice a year between their summer homes and winter homes. Some of them fly for
thousands of kilometers and mostly at night. Experiments have shown that some birds can recognize star
patterns. But they can keep on course even under cloudy skies. How can they do that?
A common bird that does not migrate but is great at finding its way home is the homing pigeon. Not all
pigeons can find their way home. Those that can are very good at it, and they have been widely studied.
One interesting experiment was to attach little magnets to the birds" heads to block their magnetic sense-just
as a loud radio can keep you from hearing a call to dinner. On sunny days, that did not fool the pigeons.
Evidently they can use the sun to tell which way they are going. But on cloudy days,the pigeons with magnets
could not find their way. It was as if the magnets had blocked their magnetic sense.
Similar experiments with the same kind of results were done with honeybees. These insects also seem to
have a special sense of direction.
In spite of the experiments,the idea of an animal compass seemed pretty extraordinary. How would an
animal get the magnetic stuff for a compass.
An answer came from an unexpected source. A scientist was studying bacteria that live in the mud of ponds
and marshes. He found accidentally little rod-like bacteria that all swam together in one direction-north.
Further study showed that each little bacterium had a chain of dense particles inside,which proved magnetic. The bacteria had made themselves into little magnets that could line up with the earth"s magnet.
The big news was that a living thing,even a simple bacterium, can make magnetite. That led to a search to
see whether animals might have it.. By using a special instrument called magnetometer, scientists were able to
find magnetite in bees and birds, and even in fish. In each animal,except for the bee. The magnetic stuff was
always in or closer to the brain. Thus the idea of a built-in animal compass began to seem reasonable.
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| When I first entered university, my aunt, who is an English professor, gave me s new English dictionary. I was 1 to see that it was an English dictionary, also known as a monolingual dictionary. 2 it was a dictionary intended for non-native learners, none of my classmates had one 3 , to be honest, I found it extremely 4 to use at first. I would look up words in the dictionary and 5 not fully understand the meaning, I was used to the 6 bilingual dictionaries, in which the words are 7 both in English and Chinese, I really wondered why my aunt 8 to make things so difficult for me. Now, after studying English at university for three years, I 9 that monolingual dictionaries are 10 in learning a foreign language. As I found out, there is 11 often NO perfect equivalence (对应) between two 12 in two language. My aunt even goes so far as to 13 that a Chinese "equivalent" can never give you the 14 meaning of a word in English! 15 , she insisted that I read the definition (定义) of a world in a monolingual dictionary 16 I wanted to get a better understanding of its meaning. 17 , I have come to see what she meant. Using a monolingual dictionary for learners has helped me in another important way. This dictionary uses a(n) 18 number of words, around 2, 000, in its definitions. When I read these definitions, I am 19 exposed to (接触) the basic words and learn how they are used to explain objects and ideas. 20 this, I can express myself more easily in English. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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