Satellites(卫星) are an important part of our ordinary lives．For example, the information for weather forecasts is sent by satellite．Some satellites have cameras which take photographs of the Earth to show how clouds are moving．Satellites are also used to connect our international phone calls．
Computer connections of the World Wide Web and Internet also use satellites. Many of our TV programs come to us through satellites．Airplane pilots also sometimes use a satellite to help them find their exact location．
We use satellites to send television pictures from one part of the world to another．They are usually 35，880 kilometers above the equator（赤道）．Sometimes we can see a satellite in the sky and it seems to stay in the same place．This is because it is moving around the world at 11，000 kilometers an hour—exactly the same speed that the earth rotates．A satellite must orbit the Earth with its antennae(天线)facing the earth．Sometimes, it moves away from its orbit（轨道），So there are little rockets on it which are used to put the satellite back in the right position．This usually happens about every five or six days．
Space is not empty! Every week, more and more satellites are sent into space to orbit the Earth．A satellite usually works for about 10-12 years．Satellites which are broken are sometimes repaired by astronauts or sometimes brought back to Earth to be repaired．Often，very old or broken satellites are left in space to orbit the Earth for a very long time．This is very serious because some satellites use nuclear power and they can crash（撞）into each other．
【小题1】Which of the following is NOT done by satellites according to the passage?

A．Sending information for weather forecast．

B．Taking photographs of the Earth．

C．Sending TV pictures．

D．Providing food for airplane pilots．

【小题2】What’s the speed the earth rotates at?

A．35,880 kilometers per hour．

B．335,880 kilometers per hour．

C．11,000 kilometers per hour．

D．110,000 kilometers per hour

【小题3】Why does the satellite move around the world at the same speed as the Earth rotates?

A．In order to take photographs．

B．In order to stay in a certain position in the orbit．

C．In order to move away from its orbit．

D．In order to send television pictures．

【小题4】What does the underlined word “This” in the 3rd paragraph refer to?

A．A satellite．

B．A little rocket．

C．A satellite seems to stay in the same place in the sky．

D．The satellite puts the rockets in the right position．

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Global warming could make humans shorter, warn scientists who are said 【小题1】（find）evidence that it caused the world’s first horses to shrink nearly 50 million years ago.

In fact, a team from the universities of Florida and Nebraska says it has found a link between the earth 【小题2】（heat）up and the size of mammals — horses. The scientists used fossils to follow the evolution（进化）of horses from their earliest 【小题3】（appear）56 million years ago.

“As temperatures went up, 【小题4】（they）size went down, and vice versa; at one point they were as small as a house cat,” said Dr. Jonathan Bloch, curator of the Florida Museum of Natural History. The scientists say that the current warming could have the same effect 【小题5】 mammals — and could even make humans 【小题6】（small）.

Horses 【小题7】（start）out small, about the size of a small dog like a miniature schnauzer.【小题8】 is surprising is that after they first appeared, they then became even smaller and then dramatically increased in size, and that 【小题9】（exact）agrees with the global warming event. “It had been known that mammals were small when it was warm,【小题10】 we hadn’t understood that the temperature really was driving the evolution of body size,” Dr. Bloch said in the Science journal.

   It is a familiar scene these days: employees taking newly laid-off co-workers out for a drink for comfort. But which side deserves more sympathy，the jobless or the still employed？On March 6，researchers at a conference at the University of Cambridge suggested it was the latter.

Brendan Burchell，a Cambridge sociologist，presented his analysis based on various surveys conducted across Europe. The data suggest that employed people who feel insecure in their jobs show similar levels of anxiety and depression as those who are unemployed. Although a newly jobless person's mental health may“bottom out”after about six months，and then may even begin to improve，the mental state of people who are continuously worried about losing their own job“just continues to get worse and worse”, Burchell says.

Psychologists support this theory by arguing that human beings feel more stressed during times of insecurity because they sense an immediate but invisible threat. Patients have been known to experience higher levels of anxiety, for example, while waiting for examination results than knowing what they are suffering from—even if the results are cancer. It's better to get the bad news and start doing something about it rather than wait with anxiety.  When the uncertainty continues, people stay in a nonstop“fight or flight”response, which leads to damaging stress.

But not every employee in insecure industries has such a discouraging view, Burchell says. In general, women get on better. While reporting higher levels of anxiety than men when directly questioned, women score lower in stress on the 12-item General Health Questionnaire, even when they have a job they feel insecure about losing.  As Burchell explains,“For women, most studies show that any job—it doesn't matter whether it is secure or insecure—gives psychological improvement over unemployment.”He supposes that the difference in men is that they tend to feel pressure not only to be employed, but also to be the primary breadwinners, and that more of a man's self-worth depends on his job.

【小题1】Why do researchers think the still employed deserve more sympathy?

A．They have to do more work since then.

B．They have no chance to find better jobs.

C．They have to work with inexperienced workers.

D．They constantly worry about losing their jobs.

【小题2】What is most likely to cause a“fight or flight”response?

A．Not having a paid job.

B．Poor job conditions.

C．Not knowing what will happen.

D．Pressure to work longer hours.

【小题3】What will the writer talk about following the last paragraph?

A．Advice on preparing for a job interview.

B．Advice on handling pressure from insecure industries.

C．Some knowledge of psychology.

D．Difference in men and women.

【小题4】What is the main idea of the passage?

A．Is it less stressful to get laid off than staying on?

B．Should more sympathy be given to the jobless?

C．Do employees bear more stress than ever before?

D．Do men or women show higher levels of anxiety?

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Even after centuries of 【小题1】(science) research, no one knows for sure why human beings laugh.
Charles Darwin guessed that laughter, 【小题2】 begins in infants as young as three months old, served as a"reward"to parental care-giving. Laughter of infants sounded and felt so different from crying, and he believed that even prehistoric(史前的) parents must have regarded it 【小题3】 a sign of well-being. The parents enjoyed the laughter, which encouraged them 【小题4】(continue) caring for the child.
One of the most interesting things researchers have learned is the powerful healing effect of laughter. Well,actually they're re-learning it after centuries of neglect:in the Middle Ages, doctors "treated" their 【小题5】(patient) by telling them jokes.
Scientists 【小题6】(learn) a lot about laughter so far.You use 15 different muscles in your face to laugh. The sound of laughter is created when you breathe in deeply 【小题7】 then breathe out the air. The typical laugh is made up of pulses(节奏)of sound that are about 1/15th of a second long and 1/5th of a second apart.When tape-recorded and 【小题8】(play) backward,laughing sounds 【小题9】(virtual) the same as it does when it is played forward. 【小题10】 was also found that the most laughter took place when males were talking and females were listening, and the least took place when females were talking and males were listening.

   A new study says that the faces on Lego minifigures have become less happy and more often mad or sad. The study was designed to find out if the Lego characters have become grumpier over the years.

Christoph Bartneck works at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He loves Lego and even worked for the company in the 1990s. He worked with another researcher on the project. They looked at all of the 6,000 figures made between 1975 and 2010. They made a note of each figure’s facial expression: happy, grumpy, afraid, surprised or satL They discovered that while in 1980, all of the figures were described as “smiley”, and that by 1990, only about 80 per cent of them had been “smiley” . And by 2010, just 50 per cent of the figures had had a smile on their little plastic faces.

The researchers are wondering how the increasingly sad, angry and unhappy faces on the Lego figures will affect the children who play with them. “Children’s toys can have an important influence on children,” said Bartneck on the university’s website. While Lego hasn’t issued an official response to the study, Bartneck said he thought the reason why Lego was producing angrier-faced characters was that children wanted them. He said it was likely that people wanted Lego characters to have different expressions, rather than just being sunny all the time. He said most of the unhappy faces were on characters based on a specific theme such as Harry Potter or pirates (海盗).

Bartneck will present his findings at the International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction in Sapporo.

【小题1】What does the underlined word “grumpier” probably mean?

A．Happier.	B．Angrier.
C．Smarter.	D．Prettier.

【小题2】It can be learned that since 1980 ________.

A．Bartneck has been studying Lego figures

B．the quality of Lego figures has gone from bad to worse

C．more and more Lego figures have lost their smiles

D．Lego figures’ facial expressions have become less rich

【小题3】What can we learn about Bartneck?

A．He likes to design different Lego figures.

B．He is a professor who studies facial expressions.

C．He wants to know the influence of unhappy figures on children.

D．He writes to the government to explain why children love angry Lego figures.

【小题4】The text mainly tells the readers ________ .

A．the history of the development of Lego figures

B．Lego characters are getting angrier

C．how Bartneck carried out his study

D．the angrier expressions on Lego figures do great harm to children