湖南省名校联盟2019-2020学年高二上学期英语12月月考试卷

    Back in 2012, Dylan Mayer was 19 years old. He was a few years into a new passion: scuba (水肺) diving. He says spending time under water is like visiting an alien planet full of strange creatures.

    Dylan grew up in Maple Valley Washington, just outside of the liberal blue bubble of Seattle. Dylan learned young how to hunt and do farm work. On October 31, 2012, he decided to marry his love of scuba diving with his desire to be self-sufficient and harvest his own food. That gray morning, the goal was to pull a giant pacific octopus from its den, wrestle it to the surface and take it home for dinner.

    He and a friend headed to the popular dive site at Cove 2 in West Seattle. With his bare hands, Dylan caught an 80-pound cephalopod (头足类动物). "The key is to stay calm. Once you start to panic, you'll drown," said Dylan, recalling his 45-minute hand-to-tentacle (触须) battle with the octopus.

    But when he hauled it out of the water, people nearby didn't look very happy. Dylan and his dive partner threw the octopus in the back of their truck and quickly left the scene.

    Even though what Dylan did was perfectly legal and even though octopus is on restaurant menus all over the Northwest, the taking of this particular octopus touched a nerve. Adult members of the diving community that Dylan was so excited to be a part of not only roundly rejected him, but also threatened to kill him and his family. However, one diver from the Cove 2 community rose above the criticism to guide this young diver.

    From Mozart to Metallica, tons of people enjoy listening to various types of music while they paint, write, or draw. Many believe that music helps boost creativity, but an international study conducted by English and Swedish researchers is challenging that belief. Their findings indicate music actually stymies creativity.

    To come to their conclusions, researchers had participants complete verbal insight problems designed to inspire creativity while sitting in a quiet room, and then again while music played in the background. They found that background music "significantly damaged" the participants' ability to complete tasks associated with verbal creativity. The research team also tested background noises such as those commonly heard in a library, but found that such noises had no impact on subjects' creativity. The tasks were simple word games. For example, participants were given three words, such as dress, dial, and flower. Then, they were asked to find a single word associated with all three that could be combined to form a common phrase or word. The single word, in this case, would be "sun" (sundress, sunflower, etc). Participants completed the tasks in either a quiet room, or while exposed to three different types of music; music with unfamiliar lyrics, instrumental music, or music with familiar lyrics.

    "We found strong evidence of damaged performance when playing background music in comparison to quiet background conditions," says co-author Dr. Neil McLatchie of Lancaster University.

    Dr. McLatchie and his colleagues theorize that music interferes with the verbal working memory processes of the brain, blocking creativity. Also, as far as the library background noises having seemingly no effect, the study's authors believe that was the case because library noises create a "steady state" environment that doesn't disrupt concentration. It's worth mentioning that even familiar music with well known lyrics damaged participants' creativity, regardless of whether or not it caused a positive reaction, or whether participants typically studied or created while listening to music.

    "To conclude, the findings here challenge the popular view that music strengthens creativity, and instead demonstrate that music, regardless of the presence of semantic (语义的) content (no lyrics, familiar lyrics or unfamiliar lyrics), consistently disrupts creative performance in insight problem solving," the study reads.

    Heart disease is one of the major killers in the world today. Many who suffer from it must have heart transplants. However, it's difficult to get a suitable heart donation, and even if a patient survives the wait, his or her body often rejects the heart.

    But there is now new hope for sufferers of heart disease. According to a study published in the journal Advanced Science, researchers from Israel's Tel Aviv University printed a 3D human heart on April 15.

    "This is the first time anyone anywhere has successfully engineered and printed an entire heart," professor Tal Dvir told CNN. Unlike the previous 3D-printed heart structure, the new heart is complete with cells, blood vessels, chambers and other structures a heart needs to function normally. But scientists still have more to figure out before the 3D-printed heart can be fitted into the body. For one thing, the experimental heart is only the size of a thumb. And, although it can contract like a muscle, it cannot pump out blood like a real one. At present, the heart prototype is like a tiny airplane that has all of the right parts, but can't fly.

    However, the development is still regarded as a major breakthrough in medicine.

    In the experiment, the researchers turned human fat tissue into human heart tissue with stem cell technology. The tissue was then turned into "bio-ink" for a 3D printer to ensure that tissue in the heart came from the patients themselves. So ideally, if it were to be placed in the body of someone in need of a transplant, there would be less risk of organ rejection. "Patients will no longer have to wait for transplants or take medications to prevent their rejection," researchers told USA Today. "Instead, the needed heart will be printed, fully personalized for every patient."

    But the scientists think that 3D printing can be used to create other human organs. They foresee a time when the 3D printing of organs will be an everyday medical practice. "Maybe, in 10 years, there will be organ printers in the finest hospitals around the world and these procedures will be conducted routinely," Dvir said.

How to keep screens from ruining your vision

    Laboratory studies have shown that prolonged exposure to high-intensity blue light damages retinal (视网膜的) cells in mice. But epidemiological (流行病学的) studies on real people tell a different story.

    So, Human eyes are different from rodent (啮齿动物) eyes. We have protective elements, such as macular pigments and the natural blue-blocking ability of the crystalline lens (晶状体). Just because blue light isn't harming your retina doesn't mean your electronic devices are harmless. Because of its wavelength, blue light does disrupt healthy sleep physiology. Mounting evidence suggests thatIt also robs you of restorative rapid-eye-movement sleep, dulls focus, and diminishes brain activity the next day.

    First, turn off your electronic devices before bed. Outside of the bedroom, when you do look at your screens, lower the brightness. Second, follow the "20-20-20" rule. The American Optometric Association defines this rule as taking a 20-second break every 20 minutes to look at something 20 feet in the distance. This will allow your eyes to blink and relax. Third, This way will reinforce the body's natural tears and keep the eye's surface hydrated.

A. why does it damage our human retinal cells?

B. These structures absorb blue light before it reaches the delicate retina.

C. why is there difference between blue light's effects on rodent eyes and human eyes?

D. screen time before bed increases the time it takes to fall asleep.

E. There are ways to make your screen viewing more comfortable and more conducive to sleep.

F. use lubricating eye drops before extended computer use.

G. we should decrease screen time before bed.

    Can you imagine being able to remember every single experience of your life and every word in your favorite book? That's1 Becky's life is like.

    Three years ago, Becky was reading a newspaper article which mentioned that it was2 for people to 3 the details of their life in the first three years. "What 4!" she thought, because she could5 remember her life all the way back to when she was just 12 days old. Her parents had carried her to the driver's seat of their car and6 her down for a photo.

    But it wasn't nonsense. She was just one of only 80 known people7 a mysterious condition called HSAM. Becky's unusual8 was shown on a program called 60 Minutes, where reporter Allison 9 her ability by asking her about her favorite book series, Harry Potter. Allison would pick up a 10 and open a page and read her a line. 11 Becky would name the book, chapter number, chapter name and could recite every word12 Allison told her to stop.

    Being able to remember every little 13 is great, but as every HSAM sufferer will tell you, it's also14to deal with it. We always 15 things to get over sad experiences in our lives, but it's something that people like Becky can't do. Even walking on the street and lightly16 somebody can bring back 17 memories from Becky's childhood. Also, like Becky, people with HSAM 18 do well in school, because they have problems picking up the important information from what they've learnt. Becky's great brain could help scientists find a19for terrible mental illnesses like Alzheimer. Her condition could hold the secret to treating or even20Alzheimer.

    For many of us, cold drinks (consider) to be one of the necessities for summer. Who can resist the (please) of drinking an ice-cold Coke after playing a basketball game on a hot day?

    However, a recent study (conduct) by the professors from the University of Ottawa, found hot drinks such as teas and coffees might actually be more (effect) to cool you down in dry conditions. According to Smithsonian Magazine, when you drink some hot drinks, you (start) to sweat more. It will remove excess heat by converting (转化) water from a liquid to a vapor. As long as you are able to sweat, you can cool down quickly.

    But that also means you're in a hot, humid room, or you are wearing long sleeves and trousers, hot drinks are (probable) not going to work. that case, Jay suggests the opposite course of action: "Hot drinks still add a small amount of heat to the body, so if (sweat) more is going to be a problem, go for a cold drink."

内容包括：

1）说明你的想法；

2）家长反对的理由；

3）征求老师的意见。注意：

1）词数80左右；

2）可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。

    Scientists have announced that they have cloned the first human embryo. This has caused much debate round the world. On the one hand, some scientists point out that if you clone an embryo, you can produce valuable human tissues—such as bone or lung tissue—that could be used to save human lives. On the other hand, many people, including some scientists, disagree and are afraid that, if mankind toys with nature in this way, we may be on our way to producing a real-life Frankenstein's monster.

    Cloning is producing an exact copy of a plant or an animal using its cells. The first mammal to be cloned successfully from an adult cell was Dolly the sheep. She was born in 1996 and died in early 2003, at a much younger age than normal. When she was born, many people were worried that cloning would lead to more diseases in the animal world. However, in general the scientists were praised for their wonderful scientific advance.

    Ian Wilmut, the Scottish scientist who created Dolly, is shocked that some scientists are now considering cloning human beings. Although he researches cloning, his intention has never been to create copies of humans. Instead, he thinks research efforts should concentrate on creating new tissues and organs that can be used to cure diseases like cancer. However, some people believe that cloning human embryos with the intention of destroying them shows no respect for human life.

    Even though human cloning is causing a lot of anxiety, it is good news for Faye Wilson, a 41-year-old saleswoman who cannot have a baby. "I am anxious to have a child of my own," she says. "I don't want to adopt someone else's child—if I had the chance, I would have a cloned baby right now."

    While cloning human embryos is not legal in many countries, some scientists are already pushing ahead with research in order to produce a cloned human baby. Severino Antinori, an Italian physician, has declared that he wants to be the first to clone a human being.