For the most part, you are probably only exposed to the music that is played on your favorite radio stations and TV shows, music Web sites, or the music that your friends and family members enjoy. While you probably know a lot about your favorite type of music, it can be a rewarding experience to enlarge your horizons（眼界）, discovering artists and types of music that you’re not familiar with. Who knows, you might discover you like certain types of music you never even considered.
Have you ever wondered about the history and influences of your favorite types of music ? For example, did you know that rock ‘n’ roll originated（起源）from the blues, and that the blues began as a form of musical expression for African Americans during slavery（奴隸制度）？Did you know that most hip-hop is heavily influenced by early rhythm blues and jazz ?
There are many fun ways to learn about different musical styles and their historical roots. For example, if you like hip-hop, listen to some of your favorite CDs and take note of the samples the performers used to create the songs. There is a possibility that the artist used parts of older songs to create the music. You can go to the library or online to learn more about the artists and listen to more of their music by checking out CDs from the library or downloading songs online for a small fee.
You can learn so much about culture and history just by paying attention to different types of music and what is being expressed in the songs. There are so many different styles of music to learn about, and you owe（欠）it to yourself to make an effort to listen to and learn about them.
【小題1】The main topic of this passage is _____.

Thank you for your interest in helping animals! Volunteering is a wonderful way to learn, have fun and give back to your community（社區(qū)）. There are many ways to care for the animals at PAWS.
Youth Work Party
If you are ten years or older, you can join the Youth Work Party Team with a parent to work on different projects around PAWS in Lynnwood, WA. For example, you can build boxes for frightened, injured wildlife to hide in. Ask your parent to sign up to join a work party. If you are eighteen years or older, you can join the Youth Work Party Team independently.
PAWSwalk
PAWSwalk is our biggest fundraising（籌款）event of the year, held at the end of the summer to raise money to care for the animals. You can collect money with the help of your family, friends and school, and then walk in the event.
Cookie Sale
Selling homemade dog cookies is a wonderful way to help the animals. PAWS can provide brochures（小冊子）to give out when you sell the cookies prepared by you and your parents, so people can learn about PAWS at the same time. You can find homemade dog cookie cooking instructions on the Internet or by checking out cookbooks for dogs at the library.
Movie Night
Invite friends, family, neighbors and classmates to watch your favorite animal movie, like Babe or Charlotte’s Web. Ask them to bring an “entrance fee” of donations or supplies for the animals.
Thanks again for your interest in PAWS and helping animals. Share your ideas with your parents and invite a few friends to join you in helping make a difference for animals. If you have any questions, call 425-787-2500-261.
【小題1】Who may work in the Youth Work Party Team by himself/herself ?

Let's face it．No one drinks diet soda for the taste．People drink diet soda in the hope that it will help them lose weight or at least keep them from gaining it．Yet it seems to have exactly the opposite effect, according to a new study．
Researchers from the University of Texas said those who drank two or more diet sodas a day had waist size increases that were six times greater than those who didn't drink diet soda．"What we saw was that the more diet sodas a person drank, the more weight they were likely to gain," said Sharon Fowler．
The study was based on data from 474 participants in a large, ongoing research project, where the participants were followed for nearly l0 years．
While the findings are surprising, they also offer some explanations．
Nutrition expert, Melanie Rogers, who works with overweight patients in New York, has found that when patients are switched from regular to diet soda, they don't lose weight at all．"We weren't seeing weight loss necessarily, and that was confusing to us," said Rogers．
So why would diet soda cause weight gain? No one knows for sure yet, but it could be that people think they can eat more if they drink diet soda, and so over-compensate for the missing calories．
A related study found some sweeteners （甜味劑） raised blood sugar levels in some mice．"Data from this and other potential studies suggest that the promotion of diet sodas and artificial sweeteners may be risky," said Helen P．Hazuda, professor at the University of Texas's school of medicine．"They may be free of calories, but not of consequences．"
【小題1】People drink diet soda to _____．

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?

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?

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 ______．

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?

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?

What will man be like in the future — in 5,000 or even 50,000 years from now? We can only make guesses, of course, but we can be sure that he will be different from what he is today, for man is slowly changing all the time.
Let us take an obvious example. Man, even five hundred years ago, was shorter than he is today. Now, on average, men are about three inches taller. Five hundred years is relatively a short period of time, so we may suppose that man will continue to grow taller. Again, in the modern world we use our brains a great deal. Even so, we still make use of only about 20% of the brain’s capacity(容量). As time goes on, however, we shall have to use our brains more and more, and finally we shall need our brains more and more, and finally we shall need larger ones! This is likely to bring a physical change too: the head, in particular the forehead, will grow larger.
Nowadays our eyes are in constant use. In fact, we use them so much that very often they become weaker and we have to wear glasses. But over long period of time it is likely that man’s eyes will grow stronger.
On the other hand, we tend to make less use of our arms and legs. These, as a result, are likely to grow weaker. At the same time, however, our fingers will grow more sensitive because they are used a great deal in modern life.
But what about hair? This will probably disappear from the body altogether in course of time because it does not serve a useful purpose any longer. In the future, then, both sexes are likely to be bald.
Perhaps all this gives the impression that future man will not be a very attractive creature to look at! This may well be true. All the same, in spite of all these changes, future man will still have a lot in common with us. He will still be a human being, with thoughts and motions similar to our own.
【小題1】The passage mainly tells us that __________.

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.