高中英语人教版必修五Unit 4 Making the news同步练习 (2)

阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中选出最佳选项。

    Students from Florida International University in Miami walked on water Thursday for a class assignment. To do it, they wore aquatic (水上的) shoes they designed and created.

    Alex Quinones was the first to make it to the other side of a 175-foot lake on campus in record time—just over a minute. Quinones, who wore big boat-like shoes, also won last year and will receive $500.

    Students had to wear the aquatic shoes and make it across the lake in order to earn an “A” on the assignment for a special course. “It's traditional in a school of architecture to do boats out of cardboard (硬纸板) for a boat race. I thought our students were a little bit more special than that,” Canaves said. “We decided to do the walk on water event to take it to the next level.”

    A total of 79 students competed in the race this year in 41 teams. Only 10 teams failed to cross the lake. Others who fell got back up and made it to the end. The race is open to all students and anyone in the neighborhood. The youngest person to ever took part was a 9-year-old girl who competed in place of her mother, while the oldest was a 67-year-old woman. A large crowd on campus joined Canaves as he cheered on the racers. He shouted encouraging words, but also laughed as some unsteadily made their way to the end.

    “A part of this is for them to have more understanding of designing and make it work better,” he said. It is also a lesson in life for the students.

    “Anything, including walking on water, is possible, if you do the research, test it and go through the design process seriously.

    Five meteorologists (气象学家) who were trapped for two weeks after polar bears surrounded their weather station are now able to leave after the creatures were chased away. Their supervisor told NBC News early Wednesday.

    Russian officials had feared the siege could last for another month, the time it would take to reach the islands in the Kara Sea, high in the Arctic Circle. But on Tuesday night a research ship took a detour (绕道) to assist those weathermen, station supervisor Vasily Shevchenko told NBC News. The ship run by Russia's state-run oil firm Rosneft frightened away the bears using its helicopter, before resupplying the weather station with more food and puppies (幼犬) . The puppies are not yet big enough to deter the bears, but the station is planning to draft in a replacement adult guard dog as soon as possible.

    Some of the bears had taken to sleeping directly outside the windows of remote outpost. There was no risk of the researchers starving because they had a year's worth of food, but they were forced to take dangerous trips to a nearby building, holding a gun for protection, according to Shevchenko.

    Polar bears are an endangered species. In Russia, it's a crime to shoot them unless in self-defense. The bears usually leave the islands in the summer, but this time they were trapped by the melting ice, an apparent sign of climate change, according to Shevchenko. “They've stayed on the island because there is nowhere for them to go,” he said.

    The animals suffer from global warming because it shrinks the floating ice that forms their main hunting ground. According to the environmental group the World Wide Fund for Nature, known as the WWF, this has got some polar bears to go near human habitats in search of food.

    Aging brings wrinkles, sagging bodies and frustrating forgetfulness. But getting older is not all bad for many people. Mounting evidence suggests aging may be a key to happiness. There is conflicting research on the subject, however, and experts say it may all boil down to this: Attitude is everything.

    Older adults tend to be more optimistic and have a more positive outlook on life than their younger and stressed opposites. The big question is why seniors are happier. A recent study suggests one reason: Older adults remember the past through happy memories. Aging can bring more cheer as people become more comfortable with themselves and their roles in society. The older adults said they were enjoying more time with their family, spending more time on hobbies and having greater financial security and did not have to work.

    But others are doubtful about the link between happiness and growing older.

    "The notion that those in old age are happiest is misleading," said Richard Easterlin, a professor of economics at the University of Southern California. "It is based on comparing people of different ages who are the same in terms of income, health, family life." Easterlin added, "When you take account of the fact that older people have lower income than younger, are less healthy, and more likely to be living alone, then you will find it hard to accept that they are happier.

    In fact, scientists have found that as people age, their health declines and social networks disappear as their friends die, which can make the elderly less happy.

    Even if one does give in to age's dark side, health and happiness don't always go hand-in-hand. It's all about attitude. Research by the University of Chicago's Yang suggests that attitude about life and happiness, is partly shaped by the era in which a person was born. It turns out that individuals who adapt the best to changes also have the highest expected levels of happiness.

 Despite the conflicting findings about aging and happiness, the good news is that there doesn't appear to be a limit to how much happiness one can achieve in one's life. “Most people desire happiness,” Easterlin said. “To my knowledge, no one has identified a limit to attainable happiness.”