第三部分：阅读理解（共20小题；每小题2分，满分40分）

阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。

A

The storage of classified (分类的) research at all 24 labs run by the US Department of Energy was shut down this week after officials decided that the security (安全) problems recently found at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico might also exist elsewhere.

Several computer disks went missing at Los Alamos earlier this month, forcing Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to stop all work at the lab until the problems are found out. As of 26 July, two missing disks had still not been found, and 15 employees had been suspended in connection with the disappearance.

Now all energy labs will stop doing classified research that involves(需要) removable storage devices --- such as computer disks ---  until all the devices are given explanation for and new procedures are in place for monitoring their handling by laboratory employees.

"While we have no evidence that the problems being investigated are present elsewhere, we have a responsibility to take all necessary action to prevent such problems,"Abraham said on 23 July.

The shut-down isn't quite as dramatic（惊人的）as it sounds, experts say. Only two labs will be seriously affected: Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in  California. Together with Los Alamos, these two labs conduct the most part of the country's nuclearweapon programmes. At Livermore, 876 employees will be suspended during the storage of some 12,000 items of classified removable
material.

At other labs, far fewer people will be affected. "The impact (影响) should be the smallest,"says Martha Krebs, former director of the energy department's science office.

56. Why was the storage of classified research at all 24 labs shut down?
A. Because the security problems might be present elsewhere.
B. Because the security problems existed elsewhere.
C. Because two missing computer disks had still not be found.
D. Because officials decided to stop doing such research.

57. How many labs conduct the country's nuclear weapon programmes according to the text?
A. About 24. B. Only 2. C. More than 2. D. Over 15.

58. The underlined word "suspended"in the second paragraph probably means "______”.
A. hung from above  B. stopped from holding a position C. doubted D. fired

59. It can be inferred from the text that _____.
A. the computer disks must have been stolen by terrorists
B. the people living in the United States have little security
C. the United States is a country whose security is very bad
D. the missing of the computer disks caused great fear among Americans

B

On the New York set of the film Hide and Seek, ten-year-old Dakota Fanning spends her time playing a deeply disturbed girl who deals with her mother's suicide (自杀) by creating an imaginary friend, who may not frighten her family.

Today, though, she has the day off. "This week I only worked two days,"says Fanning, sitting in a sofa in her hotel's library, "but I get bored when I'm not working. Especially because it's cold here and I can't do anything, you know? So, I've been knitting (编织) --- all day, every day."The actress, who's held her own opposite Oscar winners such as Sean Penn and Denzel Washington, recently mastered the fine art of scarves (围巾). Though she's about ready to move on to hats, she first plans to make a souvenir (纪念品) scarf for Robert De Niro, who plays her father in the film. "He's the nicest guy you'd ever meet in your entire life,"she says, her voice dropping to a whisper. "I would make him a brown one.”

Like any other fifth-grader, Fanning spends several hours a day going to school. In addition to her personal trailer (活动住房) --- which is kept well-supplied with hot chocolate packets, lemon Gatorade, and a TV that doesn't always work --- she has another trailer where her teacher, Jan, conducts classes in history, spelling, reading, math, science and health. "We have this big board where we have a calendar (日历),"Fanning says. "When we were here in January, I wrote the calendar in all blue. February was red, and March was green.”

On this particular morning, she had a spelling test. "There was a topic for each of the word lists,"she says, sitting on her knees. "This one was flowers --- they were all names like oxygen, carbon dioxide, chrysanthemum (菊花)..."Chrysanthemum? "Well, they didn't make me spell that one. They just had me fill in the ‘e'. But I can spell it: c-h-r-y-s-a-n-t-h-e-m-u-m.”

60. Which of the following is NOT true?
A. Dakota Fanning is a young gifted actress.
B. Dakota Fanning is a lonely orphan.
C. Dakota Fanning is a creative pupil.
D. Dakota Fanning has many interests.

61. Dakota Fanning has to knit all day in order to _____.
A. kill time   B. make money C. master a skill D. make a scarf for her boyfriend

62. By saying that "He's the nicest guy you'd ever meet in your entire life”, Dakota Fanning really means that _____.
A. she is the daughter of Robert De Niro
B. she has fallen in love with Robert De Niro
C. she is in love with Robert De Niro
D. she admires Robert De Niro very much

63. What would be the best title for the text?
A. Dakota Fanning's Role
B. Dakota Fanning's Knitting Art
C. Dakota Fanning's Day Off
D. Dakota Fanning's Spelling Test

C

Every year landslides (滑坡) cause 25 to 50 deaths and $1.5 billion in damage in the United States. They account for 15 percent of the deaths from natural disasters in Europe. And in December, a single event killed more than 200 people in the Philippines. Sending workers to stabilize (加固) mountainsides using steel bars and cement (水泥) can help prevent disaster, but it introduces new difficulties. Shaking drills produce harmful dust and loosen heavy, dangerous debris (岩屑). "It's quite a risky job,"says Giorgio Pezzuto of D'Appolonia, an engineering company in Italy.

D'Appolonia, working with eight other companies, may have an answer: a three-ton robot called Roboclimber. "The idea is to operate a machine far away that can drill without a human being on board,"says Pezzuto, manager for the project, which is supported by the European Commission. Engineers claim that the machine will be faster and cheaper than manual labor. The robot, a large radio-controlled four-legged mechanical spider(蜘蛛), has cost at least $2 million so far. The final product should be able to climb unstable mountainsides, drill holes, insert bars and cement, and collect data on the slope's stability. Testing should begin in May.

64. The underlined word "event"(in Paragraph 1) refers to _____.
A. landslide B. machine  C. earthquake D. flood

65. The purpose in writing this text is _____.
A. to tell people how serious the damage caused by landslides is
B. to tell people that sending workers to stabilize mountainsides is a risky job
C. to introduce a product that can be used to stabilize mountainsides
D. to show people how to use a new product

66. What does the robot look like?
A. A human being.  B. A spider. C. A truck.  D. A drill.

67. The biggest advantage of this product is that _____.
A. it will be faster and cheaper than manual labor
B. it can climb mountainsides, drill holes, insert bars and cement
C. it can collect data on the slope's stability
D. it can drill without a human being on board

D

Don't go to Kauai. Go to any of the other Hawaiian Islands --- Maui, Lanai, the Big Island --- but leave Kauai for us. The weather on Kauai is so unpredictable (不可预测的) that sometimes it rains all day --- in fact, it's the second-wettest spot on the earth. Yes, there are giant double rainbows all the time, and the sunlight through the clouds is magical. But if you are not interested in these, go somewhere else. You just can't control the nature on Kauai, and who wants to surrender (屈服) to the nature when you could be at a fine hotel, lying in a comfortable chair next to a swimming pool, with food served upon request?

So what if Kauai produces surf champions the way Texas produces cowboys？Most of its 300 white-sand beaches are unmarked. Unless you connect with the local people, the hidden spots are hard to find. While Hanalei is the most beautiful town you've ever dreamed of, you can forget about discos and clubs. Worse, it doesn't have one single four-star restaurant. What it does have is the original drive-through places where you pass by a rambutan tree (红毛丹树), and pick a piece of fruit.

Shopping in Kauai? Forget it --- unless you are interested in shell necklaces and beautifully carved wood bowls. Kauai is not about pampering. It's about going natural and finding the nature within you. It's a do-it-yourself place that offers walking along the coast, diving and swimming in the Pacific Ocean, and lying on the beach.

Don't go to Kauai unless you have a lot of time, because there's only one road, which can be slightly dull. It winds through the beautiful scenery of waterfalls, rivers flowing into the ocean, and taro (芋头) fields. You have no choice but to look at everything, because the speed limit is 35 m.p.h.

If you're not interested in color, don't bother with Kauai, because that's what you get --- red roads, blue oceans, and a hundred different shades of green. It's like diving on land. Many people on Kauai believe that this is Lemuria --- a lost island in the Atlantic. Can you imagine? Those Hawaiians, surfers, New Agers, and people who love nature and beauty and want a different quality of life --- what do they know, anyway? Forget about it --- you're not going to like it. Go somewhere else. Leave Kauai for us.

68. After reading the text, we come to know that it is _____.
A. a piece of shocking news B. an exciting story
C. an interesting introduction D. a moving advertisement

69. It can be learned from the text that _____.
A. Kauai is an island near the Hawaiian Islands  
B. Kauai is another name of the Hawaiian Islands
C. Kauai is one of the Hawaiian Islands
D. Kauai does not belong to the Hawaiian Islands

70. In the writer's real opinion, Kauai _____.
A. is not worth visiting at all B. is well worth visiting
C. is not a beautiful island D. is a dangerous island

71. Who would like to visit Kauai?
A. Those who love nature. B. Those who love city life.
C. Those who love the comfort in a fine hotel. D. Those who love going shopping.

E

An annoying problem for humans, who like to boast (夸耀) about all the distant planets and moons we have explored, is that we've never taken a good look right under our noses. The inside of the earth is relatively close, but how can we get there?

The deepest oil well enters a mere six miles into the crust (地壳) (the center of the earth is about 4,000 miles deeper). Russian scientists dug the deepest hole in Siberia, but bottomed out at about 7.5 miles below the surface. The Mohole project, a U.S. plan in the 1950s, called for drilling a hole 25 miles down to the boundary between the hard rocks of the crust and the soft mantle (地幔). Sadly the project involved government supporting.

It gets harder and harder to drill deep into the earth because rocks get softer and softer. Hard but easily broken at the surface, rocks become plastic at depth, and the pressure caused by the weight of the overlaying crust ---  about 52,800 pounds per square inch at a depth of ten miles, makes further drilling impossible.

What little we know about the inside of the earth (like the fact that there's a crust, a mantle, and a core) comes from indirect evidence, such as the analysis of earthquakes.

So maybe it's time for a thorough new method to explore the earth's inside. Scientist David Stevenson says we should forget about drilling holes. Instead, we should open a crack (裂缝).

Stevenson suggests digging a crack about a half mile long, a yard wide, and a half mile deep (not with a shovel) but with an explosion on the scale of a nuclear bomb. Next, he'd pour a few hundred thousand tons of molten (熔化的) iron into the crack, along with a robot. The iron, thicker than the surrounding crust, would move downward at about 16 feet per second, carrying the robot with it and opening the crack deeper and deeper. The iron mass would drop for about a week and 2,000 miles to the outer edge of the earth core, the robot sending out data to the surface.

Stevenson compares his idea to space exploration. "We're going somewhere we haven't been before,"he says. "In all possibility, there will be surprises.”

This idea can probably be put in the drawer marked with Isn't Going To Happen. The robot would have to survive temperatures that would melt pretty much anything. But Stevenson's idea may inspire a new look at an old problem. Great things can come from what seems like impossible ideas.

72. Going inside the earth is _____ than going into space.
A. more interesting B. more possible C. easier  D. more challenging

73. How deep have we gone into the earth until now?
A. 6 miles.  B. 4,000 miles. C. 7.5 miles.  D. 25 miles.

74. Which of the following is TRUE about David Stevenson's idea?
A. It is an inspiring but not practical idea now.
B. It is a practical proposal that has come into use now.
C. It is a good proposal that will soon be put into practice.
D. It is a false theory that cannot be carried out at all.

75. What might be the most suitable title for the text?
A. An Annoying Problem for Humans
B. To the Center of the Earth
C. The Mohole Project
D. David Stevenson's Proposal