Underground Coal Fires—— a Looming Catastrophe¹

　　Coal burning deep underground in China, India and Indonesia is threatening the environment and human life, scientists have warned.² these large-scale underground blazes cause the ground temperature to heat up and kill surrounding vegetation, produce greenhouse gases and can even ignite forest first, a panel³ of scientists told the annual meeting of the American Association For the Advancement of Science in Denver⁴. The resulting release of poisonous elements like arsenic and mercury can also pollute local water sources and soils, they warned.
　　“Coal fires are a global catastrophe,” said Associate Professor Glenn Stracher of East Georgia College in Swainsboro, USA, But surprisingly few people know about them.
　　Coal can heat up on its own⁵, and eventually catch fire and burn, if there is a continuous oxygen supply. The heat produced is not cause to disappear and under the right combinations of sunlight and oxygen, can trigger spontaneous⁶ catching fire and burning. This can occur underground, in coal stockpiles⁷, abandoned mines or even as coal is transported. Such fires in China consume⁸ up to⁹ 200 million tones of coal per year, delegates were told. In comparison, the U.S. economy consumes about one billion tones of coal annually, said Stracher, whose analysis of the likely impact of coal fires has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Coal Ecology. Once underway,¹⁰ coal fires can burn for decades, even centuries. In the process, they release large volumes of greenhouse gases poisonous fumes and black particles into the atmosphere.
　　The members of the panel discussed the impact these fires may be having on global and regional climate change, and agreed that the underground nature of the fires makes them difficult to protect. One of the members of the panel, Assistant Professor Paul Van Dijk of the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth observation in the Netherlands, has been working with the Chinese government to detect and monitor fires in the northern regions of the country.
　　Ultimately, the remote sensing and other techniques should allow scientists to estimate how much carbon dioxide these fires are emitting. One suggested method of containing¹¹ the fires was presented by Gary Colaizzi, of the engineering firm Goodson, which has developed a heat-resistant grout (a thin mortar¹² used to fill cracks and crevices), which is designed to be pumped into the coal fire to cut off¹³ the oxygen supply.

词汇：

loom  / lu:m / vi. 迫近

fume / fju:m / n.. 烟，气，汽
greenhouse / "ɡri:nhaʊs / n. 温室

soot / sʊt /  煤烟，油烟
arsenic / ˈɑ:snɪk / n. 砷

carbon dioxide  二氧化碳
underway / ˌʌndəˈweɪ / adj. 在进行中的

grout /ɡraʊt / n. 灰浆，水泥浆
crevice /ˈkrevɪs/ n. 裂缝

注释：

1.looming catastrophe：loom意为“to seem imminent；to impend”（看似即将发生；迫近）。looming catastrophe：即将来临的灾难。
2.Coal burning deep underground in China, India and Indonesia is threatening the environment and human life, scientists have warned：句子的前半句Coal burning deep…is threatening the environment and human life，是后半句scientists have warned的宾语。正常的语序是：Scientists have warned that coal burning deep underground in China，India and Indonesia is threatening the environment and human life.同段第二句、第三句都是这种结构。
3.a panel：意为“a group of people gathered to plan for or discuss an issue”（专门小组，聚在一起策划或讨论一个问题的一群人）

4.Denver：丹佛，美国科罗拉多州首府和最大的城市，位于该州中北部。
5.on its own：意为“independent of outside help”（独立于外来的帮助）
6.spontaneous：意为“happening or arising without apparent external cause”（自然产生的，非由显然的外力诱发或产生的）。
7.coal stockpiles：煤堆
8.consume：意为“to destroy totally”（毁灭）。下面一句中的consume，意为“use up”（消耗，花费）
9.up to：相当于
10.Once underway…：一旦燃烧起来……；underway：正在进行（工作）中的。
11.contain：意为“to hold or keep within limits”（抑制，控制）
12.thin mortar：稀砂浆，稀灰浆
13.cut off：切断，隔绝。

According to the third paragraph, what will happen when the underground heat does not disappear?

A:Coal heats up on its own and catches fire and burns. B:The underground oxygen will be used up. C:Poisonous fumes and greenhouse gases will be accumulated underground. D:There will be an increase of abandoned mines.

______ the sun rises, all the stars in the sky disappear.

A:The moment B:Before C:Till D:For

The human Y chromosome--the DNA chunk that makes a man a man--has lost so many genes over evolutionary time that some scientists have suspected it might disappear in 10 million years. But a new study says it’ll stick around.
Researchers found no sign of gene loss over the past 6 million years, suggesting the chromosome is "doing a pretty good job of maintaining itself," said researcher David Page of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass.
That agrees with prior mathematical calculations that suggested the rate of gene loss would slow as the chromosome evolved, Page and study co-authors note in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature. And, they say, it clashes with what Page called the "imminent demise" idea that says the Y chromosome is doomed to extinction.
The Y appeared 300 million years ago and has since eroded into a dinky chromosome, because it lacks the mechanism other chromosomes have to get rid of damaged DNA. So mutations have disabled hundreds of its original genes, causing them to be shed as useless. The Y now contains only 27 genes or families of virtually identical genes.
In 2003, Page reported that the modern-day Y has an unusual mechanism to fix about half of its genes and protect them from disappearing. But he said some scientists disagreed with his conclusion. The new paper focuses on a region of the Y chromosome where genes can’t be fixed that way.
Researchers compared the human and chimpanzee versions of this region. Humans and chimps have been evolving separately for about 6 million years, so scientists reasoned that the comparisons would reveal genes that have become disabled in one species or the other during that time.
They found five such genes on the chimp chromosome, but none on the human chromosome, an imbalance Page called surprising. "It looks like there has been little if any gene loss in our own species lineage in the last 6 million years," Page said. That contradicts the idea that the human Y chromosome has continued to lose genes so fast it’ll disappear in 10 million years, he said. "I think we can with confidence dismiss ... the ’imminent demise’ theory," Page said.
Jennifer A. Marshall Graves of the Australian National University in Canberra, a gene researcher who argues for eventual extinction of the Y chromosome, called Page’s work "beautiful" but said it didn’t shake her conviction that the Y is doomed.
The only real question is when, not if, the Y chromosome disappears, she said. "It could be a lot shorter than 10 million years, but it could be a lot longer," she said.
The Y chromosome has already disappeared in some other animals, and "there’s no reason to expect it can’t happen to humans," she said. If it happened in people, some other chromosome would probably take over the sex-determining role of the Y, she said.

A:the extinction of Y chromosome is inevitable B:Page’s research is more beautiful than hers C:the "imminent demise" theory is nonsense D:whether Y chromosome will disappear is uncertain

Can we see (1) the earth is a globe Yes, we can, when we watch a ship that sails out to sea. If we watch closely, we see that the ship begins (2) . The bottom of the ship disappears first, and then the ship seems to sink lower and lower, (3) we can only see the top of the ship, and then we see nothing at all. What is hiding the ship from us It is the earth. Stick a pin most of the way into an orange, and (4) turn the orange away from you. You will see the pin disappear, (5) a ship does on the earth.

A:being disappeared B:to be disappeared C:to have disappeared D:to disappear

(A number of) endangered (species) (increases) every year and natural (resources disappear).

A:A number of B:species C:representative D:resigned disappear

(A number of) endangered (species) (increases) every year and natural (resources disappear).

A:A number of B:species C:representative D:resigned disappear

(A number of) endangered (species) (increases) every year and natural (resources disappear).

A:A number of B:species C:representative D:resigned disappear