（七）
Directions: For each blank in the following passage there are four words or phrases marked A, B,C and D. Fill in each blank with the word or phrase that best fits the context.
Scientists identify vast underground ecosystem
The earth is far more alive than (1)_____ thought, according to \rich ecosystem beneath our feet that is almost twice the size of that found in all the worlds oceans Despite extreme heat, no light, minuscule nutrition and intense pressure, scientists estimate this subterranean biosphere is teeming with between 15bn and 23bn tonnes of micro-organisms, hundreds of times the combined weight of every human on the planet.
Researchers at the Deep Carbon Observatory say the (2)____ of underworld species bears comparison to the Amazon or the Galapagos Islands, but unlike those places the environment is still largely original because people have yet to (3)____ most of the subsurface
The team combines 1, 200 scientists from 52 countries in (4)_____ ranging from geology and microbiology to chemistry and physics. A year before the conclusion of their10-year study, they will（5）____ an amalgamation(e G )of findings to date before the American Geophysical Unions annual meeting opens this week.
Samples were taken from boreholes more than 5km deep and undersea drilling sites to construct (6)_____ of the ecosystem and estimate how much living carbon it might contain.
One organism found 2. 5km below the surface has been buried for millions of years and may not (7)____ at all on energy from the sun. Instead, the methanogen has found way to create methane in this low (8)_____ environment, which it may not use tore produce or divide, but to replace or repair broken parts. The strangest thing is that some organisms can exist for millennia. They are metabolically active but in stasis, with less energy than we thought possible of (9)____ life.
Rick Colwell, a microbial ecologist at Oregon State University, said the timescales of subterranean life were completely different. Some microorganisms have been alive for thousands of years, barely moving except for (10)____ in the tectonic plates, earthquakes or eruptions.
Underworld biospheres vary depending on geology and geography. Their combined size is estimated to be more than 2bn cubic kilometres, but this could be (11)____ further in the future The researchers said their discoveries were made possible by two technical advances drills that can penetrate far deeper below the Earth’s crust, and improvements in microscopes that allow life to be (12)____ at increasingly minute levels.
The scientists have been trying to find a lower limit beyond which life cannot exist, but the deeper they dig the more life they find. There is a temperature maximum- currently 122C-but the researchers believe this record will be broken if they keep exploring and developing more (13)____ instruments.
Mysteries remain, including whether life colonises up from the depths or down from the surface, how the microbes (14)____ chemical processes, and what this might reveal about how life and the Earth co-evolved
The scientists say some findings enter the realm of philosophy and exobiology -the study of extraterrestrial life. Robert, a mineralogist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, said: \ask ourselves: if life on Earth can be this different from what experience has led us to expect, then what strangeness might (15)____ as we probe for life on other worlds?”
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1. A. comparatively B. dramatically C. elegantly D. previously 2. A. variety B. diversity C. variability D. transformation 3. A. distinguish B. faint C. probe D. drain 4. A. disciplines B. subjects C. regions D. branches 5. A. deliberate B. expose C. present D. promote
6. A. patterns B. models C. imitations D. assumptions 7. A. rely B. focus C. concentrate D. touch 8. A. nutrition B. element C. fuel D. energy 9. A. earning B. support C. breeding D. generating 10. A. conditions B. stabilities C. shifts D. transmissions 11. A. extended B. expanded C. calculated D. tempted 12. A. scratched B. mortgaged C. monitored D. detected 13. A. sophisticated B. feasible C. precise D. rough 14. A. stick to B. strive for C. interact with D. see to 15. A. await B. alter C. erase D. knit
词汇详解
Minuscule /mIna, skju: 1/
ADJ If you describe something as minuscule, you mean that it is very small. 极小的 例:
The film was shot in 17 days, a minuscule amount of time 这部电影用了短短的17天就拍摄完成了.
teem /ti: m/ ( teeming, teemed, teems)
V-I If you say that a place is teeming with people or animals, you mean that it is crowded and the people and animals are moving around a lot. 挤满 例：
For most of the year, the area is teeming with tourists. 一年的大部分时间里这个地方都挤满了游客
bears comparison to 比得上;可与…相娆美
【答案】： DBCAC BADBC BDACA
（八）
Directions: For each blank in the following passage there are four words or phrases marked A, B,C and D. Fill in each blank with the word or phrase that best fits the context
Country diary: a chainsaw massacre in the alder woods
On an overcast, drizzly afternoon at Durham wildlife Trust,'s Low Barns nature (1)____, alder provided the brightest splash of colour in the (2)____.
A tree had been felled and sawn into (3)____. Chainsaw wounds on this species can look like a massacre, because soon after the timber is cut, it turns a lurid shade of red, almost like blood, in
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stark contrast to the battleship-grey bark.（4）____those wounds, which briefly (5)____ raw meat, fade to orange and finally to chestnut brown.
When this reserve was established half a century ago, around old gravel pits (采沙场), some moisture-loving alders were planted to help (6)____ a bare, windswept site. Alder wood is one of the finest sources of charcoal, and the plantation trees are old enough now to be coppiced, to produce barbecue fuel.
There is also an important natural alder wood here, created by a cataclysm almost two and a half centuries ago, which led to the designation of the reserve as a site of special scientific interest
The Great Flood of 1771 (7)_____ Weardale, washing away bridges all the way to the coast. When the water subsided, the course of the River Wear had half (8)____a mile south, and the old riverbed became what is now the reserve's Long Alder Wood, the finest example of its kind in the region. When it sometimes floods, this tangle of gnarled(苍劲嶙峋的) trees has a (9)____of the Florida Everglades(佛罗里达大沼泽) about it, with mossy, fallen trunks sinking back into the ooze (淤泥). Year round, there are wonderful (10)____ to watch birds from an embankment level with the tree canopy. This afternoon an acrobatic flock of 30 goldfinches(金翅雀) (11)____ and chattered through the twigs, feeding on tiny seeds that fall from the woody cones.
Sadly, since the mid-1990s, another (12)___ has befallen this locally (13)____woodland: alder dieback disease has killed around half the mature trees, Coppicing is leading to some regeneration, though in this precious (14)____ dead timber is allowed to lay where it falls, reserved for the needs of a (15)____ community of fungi, invertebrates and woodpeckers, rather than back-garden burger-flippers on summer evenings.
1. A. reserve B. preserve C. conserve D. deserve 2. A. scene B. view C. scope D. landscape 3. A. logs B. materials C. resources D. sources 4. A. Everlastingly B Eventually C. Continually D .Sustainably 5. A. assemble B. present C. overcast D. resemble 6. A. rejuvenate B. revegetate C. reform D. remain
7. A gone through B got through C swept through D. cut through 8. A. changed B. shifted C. reversed D. revised 9. A. clue B. plot C. evidence D. hint
10. A. opportunities B. possibilities C. alternatives D. probabilities 11. A. schemed B. crawled C. bounced D. scattered 12 A. misfortune B. catastrophe C. setback D. adversity 13. A. unique B. peculiar C. especial D. particular 14. A. frontier B. territory C. habitat D. boundary 15. A. various B. versatile C. multiple D. diverse 词汇详解 overcast lurid adj. 阴天的:阴暗的:愁闷的 adj.可怕的,耸人听闻的:火烧似的:苍白的:vt. 使沮丧; 遮蔽 血红的; For three days it was overcast. 连着三天都是阴天。 fade n.[电影电视]淡出;[电影][电视]淡入
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优质外刊《卫报》完形填空改编七八
