A Nobel Prize is considered by most people one of the highest international honors a person can receive. As you know, the prizes were started by a Sweden called Sweden Alfred Nobel. Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, and lived from 1833 to 1896.
Alfred Nobel was a chemist and inventor. He made two important inventions, so he became very rich. Although he was rich, Nobel was not a happy man. He never married or had children. Also, he was a sick man in large part of his life. Nobel died at the age of sixty-three. When he died, he left a fund of $9,000,000. The money was to be used in giving prizes to those who made outstanding achievement in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and the promotion(促進(jìn))of the world peace.
The first Nobel Prize were given on December 10^th,1901, five years after Nobel’s death. Many famous people all over the world have been given Nobel Prizes for their achievements. Albert Einstein was one of them.
Each prize has three parts. The first part is a gold medal. Second, a winner of a Nobel Prize is given a diploma saying that he has been given the prize. The third part of the prize is a large amount of money---about $40，000.
Often a prize is given to just one person, but not always. Sometimes a prize is shared. It might be given to two or more people who have worked together. It is also sometimes true that a prize is not given at all if there is no outstanding achievement. In 1972, for example, not a Nobel Prize was given. It is the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm that decides whether to give the prize or not.
小題1:Most people think that Nobel Prize is ____ a person can receive.

A．the highest honor in the world

B．one of the highest international honors

C．a(chǎn) higher honor than others

D．a(chǎn)s high as any other honor

小題2:Alfred Nobel who started the Nobel Prize was _____.

A．a(chǎn) rich, happy and lucky man

B．a(chǎn) poor, unhappy and unlucky man

C．a(chǎn) poor, happy and lucky man

D．a(chǎn) rich unhappy and unlucky man

小題3:A Nobel Prize is made up of ___.

A．a(chǎn) gold medal and a large amount of money

B．a(chǎn) gold medal and a diploma

C．a(chǎn) gold medal and a diploma and a large amount of money

D．a(chǎn) diploma and a large amount of money

小題4:A Nobel Prize is given to ___ each year.

A．just one person	B．one person
C．not always one person	D．three persons

小題5:When he died, Nobel left an amount of money ____.

A．to his wife and children

B．to the university he used to study in

C．to his parents and his studies

D．to be spent on setting five prizes

What is your favorite color? Do you like yellow, orange, and red? If you do, you must be an optimist(樂觀者), a leader, an active person who enjoys life, people and excitement. Do you prefer grays and blues? Then you are probably quiet, shy and you would rather follow than lead. If you love green, you are strong-minded and determined. You wish to succeed and want other people to see you are successful. At least this is what psychologists tell us, and they should know, because they have been seriously studying the meaning of color preference(愛好), and the effect that colors have on human beings. They tell us that we don't choose our favorite color as we grow up. If you happen to love brown, you did so as soon as you opened your eyes, or at least as soon as you could see clearly.
A yellow room makes us feel more cheerful and more comfortable than a dark green one, and a red dress rings warmth and cheer to the saddest winter day. On the other hand, black is depressing(壓抑). Light and bright colors make people not only happier but more active. It is a fact that factory workers work better, harder, and have fewer accidents when their machines are painted orange rather than black or dark gray.
Remember, then, that if you feel low, you can always brighten your day or your life with a new shirt or a few colorful things. Remember also that you will know your friends and your enemies better when you find out what colors they like and dislike. And don't forget that anyone can guess a lot about your character when you choose a piece of handkerchief.
小題1:According to this passage,           .

A．one can choose his color preference

B．one is born with his color preference

C．one’s color preference is changeable

D．one has to choose his favorite color as soon as he can see clearly

小題2:The main idea of this passage is           .

A．one's color preference shows one's character

B．you can brighten your life with wonderful colors

C．psychologists have been studying the meaning of color preference

D．one's color preference has something to do with his character and colors have effects on human beings

小題3:The writer believes that in realizing the four modernizations of country, we need more people who love          .

A．yellow

B．red

C．green

D．black

A 7.0 magnitude（級）earthquake killed more than 230,000 people in Haiti. Then an 8.8 magnitude quake killed more than 900 people in Chile. And few weeks later, a 6.0 magnitude quake struck rural eastern Turkey, killing at least 57 people.
The earthquakes kept coming hard and fast.   1 It’s not. The problem is what’s happening above ground, not underground, experts say.
  2 They’re rapidly putting up buildings that can’t stand up to earth quakes, scientists believe.
And news reports and better earthquake monitoring make it seem as if earth quakes are increasing all the time.
On average, there are 134 earthquakes a year that have a magnitude between 6.0 and 6.9. So far this year there have been 40 earthquakes—more than in most years for that time period. But that’s because the 8.8 quake in Chile caused a large number of strong aftershocks.
Also, it’s not the number of quakes, but their destructive effects that gain attention. The death is largely due to building standards,   3  Paul Earle, a US seismologist, called for better building standards in the world’s big cities.
Of the 130 cities worldwide with populations of more than I million, more than half are likely to be hit by earthquakes.   4 “If you have a problem feeding yourself, you’re not really going to worry about earthquakes,” said Paul.
The earthquakes made everyone start to think   5  “People are paying attention to the violent planet we’re always lived on. Come back an another six moths if there has been no earthquakes, most people will have forgotten it again,” said US disaster researcher Dennis Mileti.

A．But it won’t last. B．More people are moving into big cities. C．Earthquakes don’t kill people, buildings do. D．There have been more deaths overt the past decade from earthquakes. E．Many people began to wonder if something terrible is happening underground. F．While it seems as if the are more earthquakes occurring, there really aren’t. G．But developing nations with growing populations don’t pay attention to earthquake preparedness.

Word Power
Author（s）: Kaplan $13,95
You'll never be at a loss for words again．Energize your vocabulary with must-know everyday words that are the essentials of a good vocabulary, engaging lessons to help you use words in text, hot words often found on tests, tips to help you figure out new words, roots, and more．
Grades: 8 & up Ages: 13 & up
Word Smart Junior
Author（s）: Russell Stauffer $ 17．95
Now this is the way to add new words to your vocabulary! Word Smart Junior will make you laugh so much．You'll be amazed that you've just learned more than 120 fascinating and very useful words! Parents, teachers, and friends will marvel at your eloquence （口才）!
Grades: 3-5 Ages: 8-10
Grammar Smart Junior
Author（s）: Marcia Reynolds $ 16．85
Do you quake when your teacher says, "Now it's time for grammar"? Do your verbs agree with your subjects?
Fear no more! A big Hollywood producer and a famous movie star will help you learn all those nasty （討厭的） elements of grammar．You'll be amazed at how quickly you learn, and how much fun it can be．You'll finally know your grammar backwards and forwards and you'll never have to worry about it again．
Grades: 7-9 Ages: 12-14
Grammar Smart: An Audio Guide to Perfect Usage
Author（s）: Julian Fleisher $ 12．68
The words you use say a lot about you ．．．but the way you put them together says even more．Your grammar makes an immediate and lasting impression on your teachers, and even your friends．So don't make the mistake of thinking that grammar is too complicated．We've created Grammar Smart to help you write and speak with clarity and confidence．
Grades: 6-8 Ages: 11-13
小題1:If a ten-year-old boy wants himself to be admired because of his speech ability, he may buy ____．

A．Word Power

B．Word Smart Junior

C．Grammar Smart Junior

D．Grammar Smart: An Audio Guide to Perfect Usage

小題2:By saying "You'll finally know your grammar backwards and forwards", the writer means "_____"．

A．You will be clearly familiar with grammar

B．You will know the history of grammar

C．You will know the make-up of grammar

D．You will learn about the future of grammar

小題3:The four books are all about ____．

A．fiction and mysteries	B．parenting and teaching
C．literature and arts	D．language study

Some people are pessimistic(悲觀的)when they think about the future. They say that, a hundred years from now, we will have used up most of the earths resources. We will have made our seas so dirty that we will not be able to eat fish from them. There will be so many people in the world that we will have to use all the countryside for housing; there will be no farmland left.
Other people have a different idea about the future. In their view, the city of the future will be a huge pyramid-shaped(金字塔形的) building, which will be floating on the surface of the sea. About 5,000 families will live there, and there will also be schools, shops in it.
In a hundred years’ time, people will not need to use oil. They will heat their homes with power from the sun.
Think of space. Perhaps a station will be set up on the moon; people will be able to visit the moon as tourists. They may even spend their holidays in space, travelling from planet to planet.
What an interesting picture!
Many people don't think about the future. “I don't care. I’ll be dead. ”they say. But it is our duty to care because the world of a hundred years’ time will be the world of our children’s and their children after them.
小題1:How many viewpoints are discussed here about the future?

A．Two

B．Three

C．Four

D．Five

小題2:In the pessimistic view, people will         in a hundred years ’time.

A．have to use power from the sea

B．have to live on the moon

C．be able to grow food on the sea

D．find it difficult to live on the earth

小題3:Where will people live in the future in the optimistic view?

A．On the moon

B．On the sea

C．In pyramids

D．On other planets

小題4:The writer of the article seems to agree        .  

A．with those who look at the bright side of the future

B．with those who take a pessimistic view about the future

C．with those who won’t trouble their heads about the future

D．to none of these viewpoints

Enter a typical high school, and the first thing you see is the front office， where the principal dwells and grades are stored. The front office also reinforces familiar hierarchy(等級制度): principal at the top, teachers in the middle, kids on the bottom, sitting with hands folded at their desks.
Now, imagine a school where the organizational structure is completely flat. At the New Country School in Henderson, Minn, there is no front office. Visitors are immediately embraced by an airy atrium that is the centerpiece of this one-room schoolhouse. And all around the room, 124 students sit at desks — real office desks — working at their own personal computers on their own projects.
When Dee Thomas and her colleagues got together 15 years ago to design a new high school, they knew there was one thing that had to go: The bell. "You don't go into your job in the morning and say, 'OK, for the first 45 minutes of my job, I'm going to do the math part.' And then a bell goes off, and you do the social history part of your job. You don't do that," Thomas said.
There are no teachers at New Country. Every few weeks, students must present projects they've been working on to the rest of the school community. To prepare for their presentations, they gather at tables in the middle of the school atrium and present their work to their "advisers."
Kids at New Country test better than their peers on the state tests and on the pre-college ACT. The school sends 90 percent of its graduates to college. But that doesn't tell the whole story. New Country struggles to keep its seniors from leaving. The school's senior project is demanding — 300 hours of work.
But for some students, New Country offers a rare alternative, a choice they can't find anywhere else. And the school is constantly visited by educators from around the world looking for new ideas. That's the foundation of efforts to reform American high schools today — that there's a need to experiment with an institution that is failing millions of students
小題1:The author mentioned the typical high school in the first paragraph ___________.
A. to tell us what the typical high school is like in USA.
B. to present a sharp contrast with the experimental school, New Country.
C. to introduce the topic, New Country, of the passage.
D. to call on students to register in the typical high school
小題2:The following statements about New Country are all true except________.

A．New Country students sit in an open environment that looks a lot like a typical office.

B．Students consult with "advisers", who "teach" in the traditional sense.

C．No bells in New Country, students choose how to spend their time.

D．No traditional classes, students work on projects they select themselves.

小題3:Compared with typical high school, New Country is well received for its_________.

A．high test scores	B．a(chǎn)lternative
C．comfortable conditions	D．teaching methods

小題4:The passage mainly tells us __________.

A．experimental school gets rid of classes and teachers.

B．typical high school and experimental School.

C．new schools in future in America.

D．education reform in America.

These days everyone is worried about the size of their carbon footprint. In order to reduce global warming we need to make our carbon footprints smaller. But how much CO₂ are we responsible for?
A new book by Mike Berners Lee, an expert, might be able to help. The carbon footprint looks at the different things we do and buy, and calculates the amount of CO₂ all of the following created: the ingredients, the electricity, the equipment, the travel and commuting of the beer, and the packaging. It’s amazing how many different things need to be included in each calculation. And it’s frightening how much carbon dioxide everything produces.
This can help us decide which beer to drink. From Berners Lee’s calculations, it’s clear that a pint (568ml) of locally brewed beer has a smaller carbon footprint than a bottle of imported beer. This is because the imported beer has been transported from far away, and it uses more packaging. The local beer only produces 300g of CO₂, but the imported beer produces 900g! So, one pint of local beer is better for the environment.
Berners Lee has even calculated the carbon footprint of cycling to work. Nothing is more environmentally friendly than riding a bike, surely? Well, it depends on what you’ve had to eat before. To ride a bike we need energy and for energy we need food. So if we eat a banana and then ride a kilometer, our footprint is 65g of CO₂. However, if we eat bacon before the ride, it’s 200g. In fact, bananas are good because they don’t need packaging, they can be transported by boat and they grow in natural sunlight.
So, does this mean that cycling is bad for the environment? Absolutely not, for a start, if you cycle, you don’t use your car, and the fewer cars on the road, the fewer traffic jams. And cars in traffic jams produce three times more CO₂ than cars traveling at speed. Cycling also makes you healthy and less likely to go to hospital. So maybe it’s time for us all to start making some changes. Pass me a banana and a pint of local beer, please.
小題1:Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

A．Everything produces carbon dioxide equally.

B．The imported beer is much better than the local beer in quality.

C．Actually bananas are good in general because they produce less CO2.

D．To make our carbon footprints smaller, we should often drink more beer.

小題2:The underlined word “brew” in Paragraph 3 most probably means “___________”.

A．make

B．put

C．look after

D．take place

小題3:What’s the main purpose of writing this passage?

A．To tell the differences among bikes, beer and bananas.

B．To call on us to take action to make carbon footprint smaller.

C．To introduce what CO2 really is in our life.

D．To remind us to start healthy eating habits.

小題4:Where can we probably read this passage?

A．In a science fiction story.	B．In a newspaper advertisement.
C．In a science research report.	D．In a travel magazine.

Many people consider their pets members of the family and are very sad when they die, but what if you could clone your dog, cat or bird?
A scientist in New Orleans, who has proved his ability to clone other animals, is now offering the possibility to pet owners here in Wisconsin．
Scientists have not been able to clone dogs, cats or other pets, but if and when the time comes, several companies will be ready and able to do the job．
The question is: Are you ready to clone your pet? Brett Reggio is betting on it．He is working on his Ph. D at Louisian State University. He's successfully cloned a goat five times and wants to try the process on family pets．  So he started a business called Lazaron． “What Lazaron provides is the first step in the cloning process． ”He said．“It’s for curing and storing the fiberglass cells that will be used for cloning．”
“Your first reaction is yeah! I think I’d like that．” said Donna Schacht, a pet owner．
“I don’t believe you can ever replace a special love,” pet owner Paulette Callattion said．
Most pet owners will tell you freezing your pet’s  DNA in hopes of one day cloning it is a personal decision．
Scientists say that cloning your own pet doesn’t mean that the offspring（后代） will have the same intelligence, temperament（性情） or other qualities that your pet has．
小題1:From the passage we know that scientists have ______．

A．tried to clone animals

B．cloned many kinds of animals

C．been able to clone pets for people

D．once cloned goats successfully

小題2:Brett Reggio started a business in order to _____．

A．clone pets for people

B．store the DAN of people’s pets for cloning one day

C．make pets members of a family

D．collect different ideas on cloning from people

小題3:Some people seem not interested in cloning pets because___________．

A．they think it would be too expensive

B．they don’t think scientists will one day be able to clone their pets

C．they think the cloned pet would not be the one they once had

D．they don’t want to give any love to the cloned pet

小題4:If you cloned a pet, your might find that it_____．

A．looked different from the pet you once had

B．turned out to be another kind of animal

C．had a different character

D．were just the same pet your once had

People who are hit by lightning and survive often have long-term effects. These may include memory loss, sleep disorders, muscle pain and depression(郁悶).
Experts tell people to seek(尋找) the safety of a building or a hard-top vehicle any time they hear thunder, even if it is not raining. They say lightning can strike as far as sixteen kilometers from any rainfall. Lightning can travel sideways. And at least ten percent of lightning happens without any clouds overhead that you can see.
People who are outdoors should make sure they are not the tallest thing around. Bend(屈身) low to the ground, but do not lie down. And do not stand near a tree or any tall object. Get away from water and anything made of metal. A car is safe, but do not touch any metal inside.
Safety experts say people in buildings should stay away from anything with wires or pipes that lead to the outside. The National Weather Service says if you plan to disconnect any electronic equipment, do so before the storm arrives. Do not use a wired telephone. Do not use water. All these can carry electricity.
Some people think a person struck by lightning carries an electrical charge （電荷） afterward. Experts say this is not true. It is safe to begin emergency treatment.
Each year about four hundred people in the United States are struck by lightning. Last year forty four people died. The average(平均) is close to seventy. The National Weather Service says that is more than the number of people killed by severe storms.
小題1:According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true?

A．Lightning can happen even if there is no cloud.

B．Lightning won’t do harm to people’s health.

C．Lightning can travel sideways.

D．Lightning can strike very far.

小題2:The underlined word “disconnect” (in Paragraph 4) refers to “_______”.

A．cut out

B．interrupt

C．disturb

D．cut off

小題3:Which of the following mustn’t you do in order to seek lightning safety?

A．Hide in a building.	B．Sit in a car.
C．Bend low to the ground.	D．Lie under a tall tree.

小題4:Which of the following is the main idea of the passage?

A．The latest information about lightning.

B．Some common knowledge about lightning safety.

C．How lightning comes into being.

D．Where we should hide in case of lightning.

There are some things humans can go without. We can lose a kidney or a lung, an arm or two and still live perfectly well. But some fish put us to shame. They can get by without stomachs.
One such fish is the stout longtom. The group it belongs to carries a more appropriate name: the needlefish. All needlefish lack stomachs. Their ancestors had them, but later they were lost.
The stout longtom can reach 1.3 meters in length, and lives near the sea surface. Like all needlefish, it can jump out of the water to escape its enemies. Tropical fishermen are sometimes injured by needlefish. In 1977, a 10-year-old Hawaiian boy was killed when a needlefish jumped through his brain. The longtom eats smaller fish. It teeth are not good at cutting fish into pieces, so it swallows fish whole.
Ryan Day from Australia and his colleagues wanted to know how the longtom digests its meaty meals without a stomach, so they ran some chemical tests about the fish.
Day’s results show that the longtom can consume food without the help of a stomach. It uses a special material called trypsin that can break down proteins without acid — although the approach is less efficient than using a stomach.
Because it’s a meat-eating animal, the longtom gets a lot of protein in its food, so it can afford this slightly less efficient system for absorbing it. Two plant-eating fish that Day studies actually had higher levels of trypsin in their body, as their food was low in protein.
Day thinks that the longtom and its stomachless relatives might actually have arrived at an energy-saving solution. He says that although the stomach is critical to many kinds of animal, the organ is “a fairly expensive organ to run”. This perhaps explains why some animals have got rid of theirs.
小題1:What does the underlined phrase “get by” mean?

A．Recover.

B．Fight.

C．Hunt.

D．Live.

小題2:Ryan Day ran the chemical tests in order to find out how the longtom ______.

A．catches smaller fish in the water	B．digests the smaller fish in its body
C．can jump so high to escape its enemies	D．uses acid to break down the protein

小題3:What plays a key role in the longtom’s digestion process?

A．Trypsin.

B．Acid

C．The stomach.

D．Protein in its body.

小題4:Ryan Day’s results show that ______.

A．the longtom can make acid easily

B．the longtom often waste energy

C．the longtom’s high-protein food helps its unique way of consuming food.

D．meat –eating fish have higher levels of trypsin in their bodies than plant-eating fish