Not all vegetables need lots of sunshine. Mark Hoffman and his wife own a bed-and-breakfast guesthouse in rural Kempton, Illinois. They often serve their guests fresh products from the garden.
The Hoffmans have been growing food and flowers for twenty-five years. For almost ten of those years, Mr. Hoffman has been experimenting and working with shade (陰涼) plantings. He says, “The bottom line here is that most plants will produce more in full sun. But if you do not have full sun, there are other choices.”
For example, he grows tomatoes near oak trees. Oak trees can produce a lot of shade. But Mr. Hoffman says his tomato plants grow as long as they get five hours’ direct sunshine a day, especially morning sun. Not only does this go against the traditional advice that tomatoes need six, eight, even twelve hours’ full sun a day. It also shows how plants and tree roots can share nutrients and water.
Mr. Hoffman says plants with wider leaves seem to do better in shady environments. He also found that his potatoes did better partly in shade than in full sun.
Moving them out of the sun helped control an insect problem. Mr. Hoffman does not use pesticide (農(nóng)藥). Instead, he planted the potatoes in the shade, especially on the east side of the tree. The potatoes get morning sun, but they are shaded during the hottest part of the day. Some insects dislike shade, and the hottest part day is when they do the worst of their damage.
Time of day, sun intensity (強(qiáng)度), shadows from trees, walls and buildings all influence how much sunlight falls on plants. And people interested in shade planting should also remember something else. The term “shade” can describe different amounts of darkness. It can even mean different things in different parts of the world.
【小題1】How many hours of sunshine are enough to keep tomato plants growing in Hoffman’s garden?

When I first got an email account ten years ago, I received communications only from family, friends, and colleagues. Now it seems that every time I check my e-mail, I have an endless series of advertisement and other correspondence that do not interest the at all. If we want e-mail to continue to be useful, we need special laws that make spamming(發(fā)送垃圾郵件) a crime.
If lawmakers do not do something soon to prohibit spam, the problem will certainly get much worse. Computer programs allow spammers to spend hundreds of millions of e-mails almost instantly. As more and more advertisers turn to spam to sell their products, individual e-mail boxes are often flooded with spam e-mails. Would people continue to use e-mail if they had to deal with an annoying amount of spam each time?
This problem is troubling for individuals and companies as well. Many spam emails contain computer viruses that can shut down the entire network of a company. Companies rely on e-mail on for their employees to communicate with each other. Spam frequently causes failures in their local communications networks, and their employees are thus unable to communicate effectively. Such a situation results in a loss of productivity and requires companies to repeatedly repair their networks. These computer problems raise production costs of companies, which are, in the end, passed on to the consumer.
For these reasons, I believe that lawmakers need to legislate (立法) against spam. Spammers should be fined, and perhaps sent to prison if they continue to disturb people. E-mail is a tool which helps people all over the world to communicate conveniently, but spam is destroying this convenience.
【小題1】What does the underlined word “correspondence” in the Paragraph 1 probably mean?                                                          

Psychologists(心理學(xué)家) have known that what's going on inside our head affects our senses. For example, poorer children think coins are larger than they are, and hungry people think pictures of food are brighter. Professor Remi Radel wanted to investigate(look into) how this happens -- whether it's right away, as the brain receives signals from the eyes, or a little later, as the brain's higher-level thinking processes get involved.
Radel chose 42 students and each student was told to arrive at the lab at noon after three or four hours of not eating on the day of the test. Then they were told there was a delay. Some were told to come back in 10 minutes; others were given an hour to get lunch. So half the students were hungry when they did the experiment and the other half had just eaten.
For the experiment, the participant looked at a computer screen. One by one, 80 words flashed on the screen. A quarter of the words were food-related. After each word, the person was asked how bright the word was and asked to choose which of two words they'd seen -- a food-related word like gateau (cake) or a neutral (中性的) word like bateau (boat).
Hungry people saw the food-related words as brighter and were better at identifying food-related words. Because the word appeared too quickly for them to be reliably seen, this means that the difference is in perception (直覺), Radel says—it's not because of some kind of processing happening in the brain after you've already figured out what you're looking at.
"This is something great to me, that humans can really realize what they need or what they hope for, to know that our brain can really arrange for our motives and needs," Radel says. "There is something inside us that selects information in the world to make life easier.”
【小題1】The purpose of Radel's research is to let us know ____.

閱讀短文,根據(jù)所讀內(nèi)容, 在下表中的空格處填上適當(dāng)?shù)膯卧~或短語, 每空不超過3個單詞。
Cloning has caused much debate..On the one hand , some scientists think valuable tissues and organs can be used to save human lives .On the other hand , some fear that mankind may produce a monster .
Carter: I believe that human cloning is totally immoral . If we interfere with nature, we will have to deal with the consequences .Who knows what could happen? We could produce a monster .Human life would no longer be unique .Human race is using up Earth’s resources . Surely we should be having fewer babies in order to reduce Earth’s population , not cloning more .I feel sorry for ladies who cannot have babies ,but there are many children with no parents ,who would be delighted to have new parents . Ladies who cannot have babies can  adopt children with no parents
Jake :I think cloning is fantastic. It is a great scientific advance.  After all ,scientists have been challenging questions of morality for centuries .On a personal note ,cloning will change my life .My daughter died of heart failure 7 years ago .I miss her very much and hope to clone a new daughter to be with me .That would be nice. .

In today's world, almost everyone knows that air pollution（污染）and water pollution are harmful to people's health. However, not all the persons know that noise is also a kind of pollution, and that is harmful to human health, too.
People who work and live under noisy conditions usually become deaf（聾）. Today, however, scientists believe that 10 percent of workers in Britain are being deafened by the noise where they work. Many of the workers who print newspapers and books, and who weave（織）cloth become deaf. Quite a few people living near airports also become deaf. Recently it was discovered that many teenagers（幾十歲的人）in America could hear no better than 65-year-old persons, for these young people like to listen to pop music and most of pop music is a kind of noise. Besides, noise produced by jet planes or machines will make people's life difficult and unpleasant, or even make people ill or even drive them mad.
It is said that a continuous noise of over 85 decibels（分貝）can make people deaf. Now The governments in many countries have made laws to control noise and make it less than 85 decibels. In China, the government is trying to solve not only air and water pollution problems but also noise pollution problems.
【小題1】The text is mainly about    ____________ .

Did you know that a turtle（烏龜）can lay 12 eggs in one minute? A large sea turtle lays around 150 eggs at a time. She lays all these eggs in just a few minutes.
Large sea turtles live in the warm seas of the world. Except for when they lay their eggs, they spend their whole lives in the water. When it is time to lay their eggs, the females(雌性) swim to land.
They usually return to the place where they themselves were born. How they find their way back there is unknown.
When they reach shore, the big, heavy turtles crawl slowly up to the high water mark. Using their flippers, they pull themselves along the sand. They must struggle like mountain climbers.
When they finally reach dry sand, they rest before beginning the difficult task of laying eggs.
The turtles lay the eggs in deep holes and cover them with warm sand. The sand protects the eggs from harm. Then the females leave them. After a few weeks, if you happened to be walking along the beach, you might see the sand begin to shake. You may see tiny black balls coming out of the sand. The tiny heads of baby turtles!
【小題1】Which sentence expresses the main idea?

Welcome to your future life!
You get up in the morning and look into the mirror. Your face is firm and young-looking. In 2035, medical technology is better than ever. Many people your age could live to be 150, so at 40, you’re not old at all. And your parents just had an anti-aging(抗衰老的) treatment. Now, all three of you look the same age !
You say to your shirt, “Turn red.” It changes from blue to red. In 2035, “smart clothes” contain particles(粒子) much smaller than the cells in your body. The particles can be programmed to change your clothes’ color or pattern.
You walk into the kitchen. You pick up the milk, but a voice says, “You shouldn’t drink that!” Your fridge has read the chip (芯片) that contains information about the milk , and it knows the milk is old . In 2035, every article of food in the grocery store has such a chip.
It’s time to go to work. In 2035, cars drive themselves. Just tell your “smart car” where to go. On the way, you can call a friend using your jacket sleeve(袖子). Such “smart technology” is all around you.
So will all these things come true? “For new technology to succeed,” says scientist Andrew Zolli , “it has to be so much better that it replaces what we have already.” The Internet is one example --what will be the next?
【小題1】We can learn from the text that in the future__________.

When people want to know about the weather, they usually go to there radios, TVs, newspapers, or to the Internet. However, you can also find many weather signs among wildlife, because of their highly developed senses. Drops in air pressure（壓力） produce an effect on small animals in many ways. Mice and deer are good weather indicators. People who spend a lot of time outdoors have observed that, before a storm, field mice come out of their holes and run around, Deer leave high ground and come down from the mountains.
Birds are especially good weather indicators because they also show the effect of a pressure drop in many ways. For example, some birds become irritable（急躁的）and quarrelsome and will fight over a piece of bread. Other birds chirp（嘰嘰喳喳）and sing just before a storm. It seems they know they won’t get another chance for an hour or two. Birds also seek safe places before a storm, You will sometimes see birds settling in trees or gathering together on a wire close to a building. Pre-storm low pressure makes the are so thin that birds have difficulty flying.
It is unusual to see many birds flying overhead in the summertime, rather than during the periods in the spring or autumn. Watch for other weather signs if you see this. If they fly in the wrong direction, they may be flying ahead of a storm.
By paying closer attention to some important signs in nature, we can become better prepared for any kind of weather.
【小題1】The word“indicators”in paragraph I probably means ________.

In old times,  man considered lightning to be one of the great mysteries(神秘事物)of nature.  In fact a single flash of lightning 1. 6 kilometers long has enough electricity to light one million lamps.    
The American scientist, Benjamin Franklin, was the first to suggest that lightning is in fact electricity formed between the earth and clouds high above. It happened in 1752. In the same year, he also built the first lightning rod(避雷針)to protect buildings from being struck by lightnings.    
Modern science has discovered that lightning is very strong and powerful. A lightning between a cloud and the earth may be as long as 13 kilometers, and travels at a speed of 30 million meters per second.  Scientists have the opinion that there are about 2, 000 million flashes of lightning per year. In the United States alone, it kills almost one person per day.     The safest place to be in during an electrical storm is a closed car. Outside, one should go close to low ground for cover and not stop under a tree. Also one should stay out of water and away from metal fences. Inside a house people should keep away from open doorways and windows and not touch wires or metal things.
【小題1】From this passage we know lightning is_______ .

For many of us, printed books are satisfying in ways beyond the words they contain． Billions of printed books have been published, read and saved in the 600 years since movable type was invented, so why mess with a good things?
Sony Electronics is doing just that, betting that readers will be won over by the convenience of readability of its new electronic book devices． Sony's reader, the PRS-505, can hold 160 books in its fixed memory, enough to line the shelves on a good-sized wall in the average American home． The $299 device is about the size of a paperback book, but a half-inch thick and weighs less than a pound．
The Sony book reader is revolutionary not only in its storage capacity． The font（字體） is highly readable and adjustable by size． Unlike laptop computers, you can put the Sony in your purse, read it in direct sunlight and even bookmark the pages． And you can connect it to your PC to download books．
Surprisingly, though the reader has liberated the book from paper, electronic books aren't always a bargain． For example, David Baldacci's "Stone Cold" download retails（零售） for $15．19 at the Sony site, while Amazon（卓越網(wǎng)） will deliver a hard copy to your mailbox for $16．19．
The Sony reader also lets you store and play or display music． So what's not to like about the Sony? Well, for many bibliophiles, a lot． Book lovers like to have, hold and keep their volumes, which don't need charging． You can write notes in the margins, and enjoy the ambience they provide on your book shelves．The need for electronic reading devices is likely to grow as more people worried about the billions of tons of paper used for printed material． Many believe the time will come when devices like the Sony reader are as common as printed newspapers and magazines today．

【小題1】According to the passage, the Sony book reader _________．