2013年职称英语等级考试(理工类A级)真题(9)

spreading through the state of Northern Territory at a rate of up t0 60 km a year. The toads can now be found across more than one million square kilometers. (2)A

Venezuelan poison virus was tried tin the 1990s but had to be abandoncd after it was found to also kill nativc frog species. The toads have severely affected ecosystems in Australia. Animals, and sometimes pets, that eat the toads die immediately from their poison, and the toads themselves eat anything they can fit inside their mouth.

(3) A co-author of the new study, Rick Shine,a professor at the University of

Sydney, says that lit- tle attention has bcen given to the problems that toads face. Rick and his colleagues studied nearly 500 toads from Queensland and the Northern Territory and found that those in the latter state were very different. They were active, sprinting down roads and breeding quickly. According to the results of the study, the fastest toads travel nearly one kilometer a night. (4) But speed and strength come at a price---arthritis of the legs and backbone due to con- stant

prcssurc placed on them. In laboratory tests, the rescarchers found that after about 15 minutes of hopping, arthritic toads would travel less distance with each hop（跳跃）. (5) These toads are so programmed to move, apparcntly, that even when in pain the toads travelled as fast and as far as the healthy ones, continuing their

constant march across the landscape. A. Toads with longer legs move faster and travel longer distances while the others are being left behind. B. Toads are not built to be road runners- they are built to sit around ponds and wet areas. C. But arthritis didn't slow down toads outside the laboratory, the researchers found. D. But this advantage also has a big drawback--- up to 10% of the biggest toads suffer from arthri- tis. E. The task now facing the country is how to remove the toads. F. Furthermore, they soon take over the natural habitats of Australia's native species. 1小题>、

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六、完形填空

第22题： Better Solar Energy Systems: More heat, More light Solar photovoltaic（光电的）thermal energy systems, or PVTs, generate both heat and electricity, but (1) now they haven't been very good at the heat-generating part compared to a stand-a- 10ne solar thermal collector. That's because they operate at low temperatures to cool crystalline silicon (晶体硅)solar cells, (2)lets the silicon generate more electricity but isn't a very efficient way to gather heat. That's a problem of

economics. Good solar hot-water systems can harvest much more energy than a solar-electric system at a substantially lower (3). And it's also a space problem: photovol- taic cells can (4) up all the space on the roof, leaving little room for thermal applications. In a pair of studies,Joshua Pearce, an associate professor of materials science and engineering, has devised a (5) in the form of a better PVT made with a different kind of silicon. His re- search collaborators are Kunal

Girotra from thin silicon in California and Michael Pathak and Stephen Harrison from