U.S. Bottled Water Sales Are Booming Again Despite Opposition
Despite organized anti-bottled-water campaigns across the country and a noisy debate about bottled water’s environmental impact, Americans are buying more bottled water than ever.
Why do so many people seem to think they should have any input on what other American’s choose to buy or do?
If they want to buy bottled water, let them.
If they want to eat fast food, let them.
If they want to smoke pot, let them.
— Barackalypse
People just get tired of paying for others’ bad behavior. If many people eat excessive fast food, you pay higher insurance premiums. If many people frequently buy bottled water, your trash bills go up and landfills fill up quickly.www.zxxk.com
It’s about personal responsibility, which really should be a cornerstone of libertarianism.
— Bdbr
So? This is the price you pay to live in a free society. You want to control the life of another just so you can save a few bucks? What would you say when someone do the same to you?
— Norman619
Defend selfish pricks all you like; I’m just glad there are still people who still believe personal responsibility is a good and decent thing. We make your life cheaper and less bothersome.
— Yoyo
What a waste of money! It’s fine when you’re on the road and you need a cold drink, but people who buy cases of bottled water for home are completely crazy.
— Agmlauncher
I wish we all can find a way to improve things and benefit from this. The environment needs a lot of help but businesses will always work on what people would need and demand. Is this part of the balance? Hope we can find better ways.
— Skipweis
【小题1】What can we know about bottled water in America?
| A．Americans are consuming more bottled water than tap. |
| B．US bottled water sales have increased for the first time. |
| C．Activists in several regions have been fighting against it. |
| D．Some people worry about its bad effect on the environment. |
| A．Bdbr. | B．Norman619. | C．Yoyo. | D．Agmlauncher. |
| A．partly supportive of | B．extremely against |
| C．strongly in favor of | D．not concerned about |
| A．The environment is emphasized too much. |
| B．It’s impossible for people to find a better way. |
| C．Business is not totally responsible for the problem. |
| D．At present we can’t benefit from bottled water at all. |
【小题1】D
【小题2】B
【小题3】A
【小题4】C
解析试题分析：本文讲述的是美国人对于瓶装水对环境的影响的讨论，列举了部分网民的观点。
【小题1】D 推理题。根据文章第一段Despite organized anti-bottled-water campaigns across the country and a noisy debate about bottled water’s environmental impact,可知在美国有很多争论都是关于瓶装水对于环境的影响。故D正确。
【小题2】B 推理题。根据Norman619.所说：So? This is the price you pay to live in a free society. You want to control the life of another just so you can save a few bucks?说明他认为我们不要试图控制别人。而Barackalypse也认为If they want to buy bottled water, let them.不要去管别人。故这两者的意见是一致的。故B正确。
【小题3】A 推理题。根据It’s fine when you’re on the road and you need a cold drink, but people who buy cases of bottled water for home are completely crazy. 可知他认为在路上的时候，喝点瓶装水是可以的。但是如果买整箱的瓶装水回家，那是疯了！说明他是部分同意瓶装水，也是有条件的同意。故A正确。
【小题4】C 推理题。根据文章最后一段The environment needs a lot of help but businesses will always work on what people would need and demand.可知生意人只是为了满足某些人的需要而生产了瓶装水。他们并不是真正的问题所在。真正的问题在于那些需要瓶装水的人，所以所有人并不要负全部的责任。故C正确。
考点：考察议论文
阅读快车系列答案科目：高中英语 来源： 题型：阅读理解
American researchers found females are the more talkative sex because of a special “language protein(蛋白质)” in the brain.
The study, conducted by neuroscientists （神经学家）and psychologist from the University of Maryland, concluded that women talked more because they had more of the Foxp2 protein. The research, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, found that higher levels were found among humans that were women but in rats that were males. Their findings came after it was previously claimed that ladies speak about 20,000 words a day – over 13,000 more than men. “This study is one of the first to report a sex difference in the expression of a language-associated protein in humans or animals,” said Prof Margaret McCarthy, who led the study. In their study, the researchers attempted to determine what might make male rats more vocal than their female friends.
They separated four-day-old rats from their mothers and then counted the number of times they cried out in the “ultrasonic range”, the frequencies higher than humans can hear, over five minutes. While both sexes called out hundreds of cries, the males called out twice as often, they found. But when the pups were returned to their mother’s cage, she fussed over her sons first. Tests conducted on the parts of the brain known to be associated with vocalcalls showed the male pups have up to twice as much Foxp2 protein as the females. The researchers then increased the production in the brains of female pups and reduced it in males. This led to the female rats crying out more often and their mothers showing more interest to them. In contrast, males became less “talkative”.
The researchers then tested samples from ten children, aged between three and five, which showed that females had up to 30 per cent more of the Foxp2 protein than males, in a brain area key to language in humans.
“Based on our observations, we assume higher levels of Foxp2 in girls and higher levels of Foxp2 in male rats is an indication that Foxp2 protein levels are associated with the more communicative sex,” said Prof McCarthy.
“Our results imply Foxp2 as a component of the neurobiological basis of sex differences in vocal communication in mammals. ”
【小题1】From the second paragraph, we can learn that ________.
| A．women always speak more words than men |
| B．men and male rats have low levels of language protein |
| C．women and male rats have similar levels of Foxp2 |
| D．McCarthy isn’t the first to find females more talkative |
| A．paid attention to | B．related to | C．put pressure on | D．counted on |
| A．test which part of the brain is key to language in rats and humans |
| B．prove the levels of Foxp2 protein in humans and rats are different |
| C．determine the reason why female rats are more talkative than male rats |
| D．discover the association between Foxp2protein and vocal communication |
| A．Tests on humans and rats |
| B．Why women are the talkative sex |
| C．Sex differences in Foxp2 protein |
| D．Foxp2 protein determines oral ability |
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科目：高中英语 来源： 题型：阅读理解
Cast your mind back to the past twenty years and hardly did anyone have their own email account. The Internet had just taken off in 1991 and people were only using office and PCbased email exchanges.
In the mid 1990s external email providers appeared. The most famous of these was Hotmail, the first free email provider and webbased email service. Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith launched Hotmail on July 4, 1996. And Microsoft took note of and bought Hotmail for $400 million on December 30, 1997, a nice birthday present for Bhatia who turned 29 that day. It was relaunched as MSN Hotmail and in 2007 was relaunched again as Windows Live Hotmail.
Fast forward the present day and most of us have at least a personal webbased email account. It seems impossible to live without them. One of the biggest advantages of email is the fact that communication has become so much easier, especially with those across different time zones. Email takes seconds to send a message whereas letters, as we used to communicate by, could take weeks. Of course there was the fax, that beeping invention from the 1980s, but it wasn’t as secure as email and you never knew if the person on the other end had picked up your fax or if it had got lost somewhere in the office.
In conclusion, one of the best inventions from the 1990s has to be email. But sometimes people are too closely connected to their email and have a compulsion to check it several times a day. At work, people have become lazy and instead of going to speak to the person sitting next to them, they send an email，causing an in box to pile up with more time spent reading email and responding rather than working. Clearly, an invention that saved time because of its quick and speedy connection can now also cause us to waste a lot of time.
【小题1】The earliest web-based email came into being probably _______.
| A．in 1991 | B．in 1996 | C．in 1997 | D．in 2007 |
| A．it is exactly as good as email |
| B．it is much better than email |
| C．it is less convenient than email |
| D．it is easier and faster than email |
| A．strong desire | B．common sense | C．special curiosity | D．general idea |
| A．We should check email boxes frequently. |
| B．Lazy people like sending an email. |
| C．Email brings us great convenience. |
| D．Good inventions also cause problems. |
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科目：高中英语 来源： 题型：阅读理解
This winter, the air quality over the north China plain was so bad that it was actually off the standard scale. The air pollution reached levels that the World Health Organization describes as dangerous. On Thursday, heavy smog blanketed most of northern and eastern China again.
It is reasonable to ask why the air pollution is so bad this winter. Weather conditions and topographic(地形学的) factors have been given as reasons, but, although contributing factors, these are not to blame. The worsening air pollution is linked to an energy mix that relies heavily on coal and to motor vehicle emissions(排放). But despite the astonishing growth of motor vehicles in our cities, it is the burning of coal that is the biggest cause of air pollution. More than half of the country's power plants are located in the eastern region and China's coal consumption has more than doubled in the past decade, reaching 3.8 billion tons last year, accounting for almost half the world's total coal consumption. And with coal occupying nearly 70 percent of the country's primary energy consumption, it has become critical to reduce the use of coal if we are to solve the nation's overall air pollution problem.
In the face of the poisonous air recently, one citizen said, "we have nothing but hot air to purify the skies". In fact, the government plans to have 350 billion yuan ($55.67 billion) investment in improving coal-fired facilities and limiting the use of yellow-label cars that do not meet the Euro I emissions standard and so on.
However, it would be far more effective to reduce emissions at the source, which means that the biggest challenge currently facing government departments is saying "no" to the country's air polluting offenders. According to the Joint Prevention and Control Plan on Air Pollution in Key Regions released recently by the State Council, the amount of coal the nation consumes is set to rise by 30 percent during the period of the 12th Five-Year Plan. This is not going to let anyone breathe easier.
This highlights a key problem when it comes to environmental issues in this country - economic development comes first. The fundamental cause of the worsening air pollution is the idea of economic growth at any cost, which has resulted in ever-worsening pollution. And the priority(优先权)given to economic growth presents another problem, namely the failure of existing environmental protection policies and regulations to control pollution. For instance, the current weak regulations covering emissions would suggest there has been a significant reduction in emissions when clearly this is not the case. Also those enterprises found breaking the regulations are still far lower than the cost of treating the pollution they produce. This means even if many large-scale enterprises with lagging production capacity(能力) fail to meet the requirements for environmental protection, the environmental protection department is incapable of shutting these enterprises down or forcing their relocation.
Dealing with air pollution requires taking action at the local level to reduce vehicle emissions and at the regional level to reduce industrial emissions. But it also requires giving more priority to environmental issues in policymaking. Our hope is that the environmental protection department will be truly capable of saying "no" to pollution, and it will raise standards and effectively enforce them, and that governments at all levels will prioritize quality of life not just economic growth.
【小题1】The writer mentions the heavy smog in parts of China in Paragraph1 in order to_____.
| A．remind people to stay in doors because of the bad air quality |
| B．show people’s concern about the priority to economic growth |
| C．introduce the issue about the serious air pollution |
| D．highlight the importance of government’s policies and regulations |
| A．Because enterprises are encouraged to develop economy at the cost of the environment. |
| B．Because much emphasis has been laid on economic growth regardless of the cost. |
| C．Because it’s impossible to relocate the enterprises for lack of money. |
| D．Because the production capacity of enterprises falls behind the required speed. |
| A．the sharp growth of coal consumption in recent years |
| B．the rapid increase of motor vehicles in cities |
| C．the building of power plants in northern China |
| D．the poor weather conditions caused by complex geographical factors |
| A．Giving priority to economic development in policymaking. |
| B．Making environment-friendly policies and carrying them out effectively. |
| C．Increasing investment in the construction of coal-fired facilities. |
| D．Limiting the use of cars not meeting the required emission standard |
| A．Pessimistic. | B．Convincing. | C．Doubtful. | D．Concerned. |
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科目：高中英语 来源： 题型：阅读理解
The name sounds funny but the idea is no joke: it’s a personal toilet called the pee-pool, Anders Wilhelmson, a Swedish architect, is the inventor of the pee-pool.
He became interested in the idea of sanitation(卫生设施) after taking part in a research project on the social and political development of cities, One of the most common problems he found in developing countries was the lack of toilets, He wanted to do something to help, So working with others, he started the project in 2005, and the next year started a company called Peepoolple.
The toilet is a single—use bag made of environmentally friendly plastics, The inside is treated with urea （尿素）, a chemical commonly used as fertilizer, The hotter the weather, the more quickly the waste turns into what is needed by plants The sanitation process can be as soon as a couple of hours or as long as two to four weeks ,You can just bury it in a pot and grow whatever you like.
The company expects to start selling the bags in August in Kenya and Bangladesh, But it is just beginning production and sales in Nairobi now , Full production could reach about half a million bags a day and people may be able to buy the pee-pool in countries Vietnam, Bangladesh, etc.
The United Nations says more than two and a half billion people around the world do not have good sanitation ,Many have no choice but to use the outdoors, which is not only bad for the environment ,but also harmful to people’s health, Each year, poor sanitation leads to three fifths of those people getting an infectious disease which on average causes one out of 1,000 patients to die.
Jack Smith ,the founder of the World Toilet Organization ,says “This is quite an unacceptable situation given the fact that we are living in the modem world , And strangely, many of them own televisions ,phones but have no toilet.”
【小题1】What was the original purpose of Anders Wilhelmson in starting the company?
| A．To protect the local environment |
| B．To earn a lot of money from the project |
| C．To do research on the social development |
| D．To help solve the problem of lack of toilets in developing countries |
| A．It can be used over again |
| B．Its sanitation process doesn’t last long |
| C．It works better in summer than in winter |
| D．It should be buried in a pot after being used |
| A．Nairobi | B．Vietnam | C．Sweden | D．Bangladesh |
| A．poor sanitation may cause many problems |
| B．many people don’t care for the environment |
| C．many people get ill from using the outdoors |
| D．quite a number of people died from poor sanitation |
| A．the outdoors being damaged |
| B．many places being shout of toilets |
| C．many people having TVs and phones |
| D．many people getting an infection disease |
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科目：高中英语 来源： 题型：阅读理解
Bicycle lights may not exactly be a problem that needs solving, but the following can be said about most of them ---- they’re easily stolen if left on an unattended bike. People riding at dusk can forget to turn them on, and those same people can forget to turn them off when they reach their destination. Well, the makers of the Blink/ Steady Bike Light have set out to address all of those shortcomings.
The waterproof(防水的) Blink/ Steady is so far only available as a tail light, although a head light is on the way. It’s fixed onto the bike’s seat post. A built- in photosensor(感光器) tells when it’s become dark enough for the light to be required, and allows it to come on once you begin the riding. According to the producers, it isn’t fooled by things such as headlights or streetlights. The light also contains an accelerometer, also known as a motion sensor, which can tell when the bike is in motion.
Between the two sensors, this means the light will come on only once it’s dark enough, and the bike is moving. Even when stopped at red lights, the small movements of the rider will reportedly be enough to keep the light activated---- it’ll go out after 30 seconds of complete inactivity. While this does mean that the two sensors are continuously powered up, they go into a very low---- power sleep pattern when the bike is sitting, unused.
Light is provided by two5- watt LEDs, seeable over a range of 180 degrees. And power comes from two AAA batteries, which provided up to 200 hours of continuous run time. The designers and engineers behind the Blink/ Steady are now raising money for its commercial production. About US $95 will get you one if they become available.
【小题1】The first paragraph is mainly to mean that______.
| A．bicycle lights are worth a research |
| B．bicycle lights are not a problem at all |
| C．bicycle lights are easy to deal with |
| D．bicycle lights are difficult to turn off |
| A．the weather | B．streetlights | C．headlights | D．natural light |
| A．To protect the bike against water. |
| B．To tell if the bike is moving. |
| C．To make the bike easy to ride. |
| D．To judge the speed of the bike. |
| A．It will be turned off immediately if the bike stops. |
| B．The traffic lights have no effect on the light. |
| C．It won’t use any power if the bike is unused. |
| D．It must meet two requirements if it comes on. |
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科目：高中英语 来源： 题型：阅读理解
Dan Bebber is a senior research fellow at the University of Exeter in Britain. He says research has shown that wild plants and animals are moving toward Earth's North and South poles as the planet warms.
Mr Bebber wanted to know if the same thing was happening with organisms that attack agricultural crops. He examined reports of first sightings of new insects and diseases around the world. The records came from CABI - the Centre for Agricultural Bioscience International. He says the group began collecting information from developing and industrialized countries years ago.
Dan Bebber and his research team studied 612 different organisms - from viruses and bacteria to insects like beetles and butterflies. They found that since 1960, crop pests and diseases have been moving toward the poles at an average rate of about 3 kilometers each year. Mr Bebber says this puts the most productive farmland in the world in danger.
"As new species of pests and diseases evolve and potentially the environment for them becomes more amenable at higher latitudes, the pressure on the breadbaskets of the world is going to increase."
Farmers face other threats. Invasive species passed through trade are also causing problems. Gene Kritsky is an Entomologist at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Ohio. He specialises in the study of insects. He says climate change may improve conditions for some invasive species.
“It means that species in other parts of the world that might do well in warmer temperatures can now do well in the breadbasket of America.”
Another Entomologist Christian Krupke of Purdue University says the effects of these changes will depend very much on the crop, the insect and the disease. But he says the research is a warning sign that people should care about climate change and do something about it.
【小题1】The purpose of Dan Bebber’s research was to find ______.
| A．if farmland could be moved to colder places thanks to global warming |
| B．if diseases and insects harmful to crops were going towards colder areas |
| C．if organisms were moving to the north and south poles |
| D．if the number of crop pests was increasing |
| A．it will be hard for farmers to kill them |
| B．the most productive farmland will produce more crops |
| C．the earth will not produce enough food to support the world |
| D．the conditions for some crops may be improved |
| A．Climate change helps crop pests to adapt to new environment. |
| B．Foreign species are brought in by trade. |
| C．Invasive species doing well in warmer places might do well in America. |
| D．The impacts of the climate and species changes on crops are not easy to determine. |
| A．agreeable | B．terrible | C．unfriendly | D．changeable |
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科目：高中英语 来源： 题型：阅读理解
As a result of pollution, Lake Erie, on the borders of the USA and Canada, is now without many living things.
Pollution in water is not simply a matter of “poisons” killing large numbers of fish overnight. Very often the effects of pollution are not noticed for many months or years because the first organisms (生物体) to be affected are either plants or plankton (浮游生物). These organisms are the food of fish, birds, and other creatures. When this food disappears, the fish and birds die too. In this way a whole food chain can be wiped out, and it is not until dead fish and water birds are seen at the river’s edge or on the sea shore that people realize what is happening.
Where do the substances which pollute water come from? There are two main sources, sewage(污水) and industrial waste. As more detergent (洗涤剂)is used in homes, more of it is finally put into our rivers, lakes and seas. Detergents harm water birds by breaking down the natural substances which keep their feathers waterproof. Sewage itself, if not properly treated, makes the water dirty and prevents all forms of life in rivers and the sea from receiving the oxygen they need. Industrial waste is even more harmful since there are many highly poisonous materials in it, such as copper and lead.
So if we want to stop this pollution, the answer is simple. Sewage and industrial waste must be made clean before flowing into the water reservoirs. It may already be too late to save some rivers and lakes, but others can still be saved if the correct action is taken at once.
【小题1】Pollution in water is noticed ________.
| A．when the first organisms are affected |
| B．when many fish and birds die |
| C．when poisons are poured into water |
| D．As soon as the balance of nature is destroyed |
| A．water | B．fish | C．Poison | D．oxygen |
| A．full of water | B．not allowing water to go through |
| C．covered with water | D．cleaned by water |
| A．Industrial waste and chemicals | B．Water in the river |
| C．Coal and wood | D．plastic |
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科目：高中英语 来源： 题型：阅读理解
To get a chocolate out of a box requires a lot of unpacking: the box has to be taken out of the paper bag in which it arrived, the cellophane (玻璃纸) wrapper has to be torn off, the lid opened and the paper removed, the chocolate itself then has to be unwrapped from its own piece of paper. But this overuse of wrapping is not limited to luxuries. It is now becoming increasingly difficult to buy anything that is not done up in beautiful wrapping.
The package itself is of no interest to the shopper, who usually throws it away immediately. Useless wrapping accounts for much of the refuse put out by the average London house-hold each week. So why is it done? Some of it, like the cellophane on meat, is necessary, but most of the rest is simply competitive selling. This is absurd. Packaging is using up valuable energy and resources and polluting the environment.
Recycling is already happening with milk bottles which are returned to the dairies (牛奶场）, washed out, and refilled. But both glass and paper are being threatened by the growing use of plastic. More dairies are experimenting with plastic bottles.
The trouble with plastic is that it does not rot. Some environmentalists argue that the only solution to the problem of ever increasing plastic containers is to throw away plastic altogether in the shops, a suggestion unacceptable to many producers who say there is no alternative (替代品) to their handy plastic packs.
It is evident that more research is needed into the recovery and re-use of various materials and into the cost of collecting and recycling containers rather than producing new ones. Unnecessary packaging, intended to be used just once, and to make things look better so more people will buy them, is clearly becoming increasingly absurd. But it is not so much a question of throwing away packaging as using it wisely. What is needed now is a more advanced approach to using scarce resources for what is, after all, a relatively unimportant function.
【小题1】The underlined part “this overuse of wrapping is not limited to luxuries” in Paragraph l means ______.
| A．more wrapping is needed for ordinary products |
| B．the wrapping used for luxury products is unnecessary |
| C．more wrapping is used for luxuries than for ordinary products |
| D．too much wrapping is used for both luxury and ordinary products |
| A．It is easy to use it again. |
| B．Packaged things will not go rotten. |
| C．They want to attract more shoppers. |
| D．Shoppers are all interested in beautiful packaging. |
| A．reusing their paper containers |
| B．giving up the use of glass bottles |
| C．increasing the use of plastic bottles |
| D．experimenting with the use of paper bottles |
| A．too much plastic is wasted |
| B．shops should stop using plastic containers |
| C．no alternative can be found to plastic packaging |
| D．plastic packaging should be made more convenient |
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