On the other hand, children add a richness to our lives that I believe inspires better work,
thus 49 for time we lose. As a writer, I don’t find inspiration sitting at my computer. 50 , I find it when I’m out living, and the 51 I take because of my children—going to the ballpark, birthday parties, even doctor visits—put me in 52 with people who constantly set off new ideas. Many ideas arise through 53 conversation, which can 54 me like thunder. Immediately, I’ll make a mental note, knowing that someday I’ll use that 55 in a story. 36．A. quiet B. stolen C. critical D. precious
37．A. courage B. challenge C. instruction D. priority
38．A. direction B. invention C. inspiration D. application
39．A. crawl B. run C. jog D. tiptoe
40．A. habit B. method C. technique D. routine
41．A. breaks B. days C. weeks D. needs
42．A. doubt B. believe C. deny D. wonder
43．A. operating B. working C. accomplishing D. running
44．A. challenging B. remaining C. relevant D. controversial
45．A. prevent B. inspire C. awake D. interpret
46．A. attention B. effort C. concentration D. time
47．A. hardly B. practically C. totally D. fairly
48．A. ahead B. back C. aside D. down
49．A. allowing B. turning C. calling D. compensating
50．A. Still B. Instead C. Therefore D. Consequently
51．A. courses B. chances C. risks D. paths
52．A. harmony B. agreement C. line D. contact
53．A. brief B. normal C. casual D. intelligent
54．A. explode B. hit C. destroy D. multiply
55．A. piece B. talk C. scene D. acquaintance
第三部分:阅读理解（共15小题;每小题2分,满分30分）
请认真阅读下列短文,从短文后各题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中,选出最佳选项,并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
A
SAN ANTONIO — For Tira Starr, an eighth grader at Anson Jones Middle School, the plastic nametag hanging around her neck that she has decorated with a smiley face and a purple bat sticker offers a way to reflect her personal interest. For administrators, it is something else entirely：a device that lets them use radio frequency technology—with scanners tucked behind walls and ceilings—to track her whereabouts.
Anson Jones is the first school in San Antonio’s Northside Independent School District to roll out the new nametags, which are part of a pilot program （试验项目） intended to ensure that the district receives all of the state dollars.
In Texas, school finance is a numbers game：schools receive money based on the number of students counted in their homeroom classes each morning. At Anson Jones, as at other schools, many students were in school but not in homeroom, so they were not counted and the district lost money, said Pascual Gonzalez, a spokesman for the district.
“We were leaving money on the table,” he said, adding that the district expects a $2 million return on an initial investment of $261,000 in the technology at two pilot schools.
But the radio frequency identification nametags have prompted concerns from civil liberties groups and electronic privacy watchdogs, which fear a Big Brother atmosphere in Texas public schools.
Matthew Simpson, a policy strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said the technology was easy to acquire, meaning people outside a school might be able to monitor a student if they obtained the student’s unique tracking number.
Mr. Simpson said the technology was originally designed for shipping goods and for cattle. “It was never intended for people,” he said.
But students and educators at Anson Jones say they are excited about the practical advantages — getting to eat lunch faster by scanning their bar codes in the lunch line, or being able to locate a child quickly in an emergency.
Northside is not the first district to use the tracking devices. Two Houston-area districts began the program several years ago. The Spring district, for example, started using the technology in 2004 as a way to track elementary students getting on and off buses. It expanded the program to high school students three years ago and has so far recovered $400,000, said Karen Garrison, a spokeswoman for the district.
“Our system still focuses on safety but has the added benefit of recovering average daily attendance funding,” Ms. Garrison said.
Wendy Reyes, the principal of Anson Jones, said only one parent had complained about the program at her school. On the first day of classes at Jay High School, home to the other pilot program school in Northside, several parents staged a protest across the street from the school, though most did not have students in the district.
Many students, teachers and parents at the middle school feel the technology’s benefits outweigh privacy concerns, Ms. Reyes said.
56. This passage is mainly about __________.
A. a pilot program in the US
B. an eighth grader at Anson Jones
C. nametags that track students
D. money invested in technology
57. From the passage we can learn that most students and parents __________ nametags.
A. don’t mind
B. complain about
C. like to decorate
D. refuse to use
58. The author might agree that nametags __________.
A. lead to some schools losing money
B. can help schools’ administration
C. should never be intended for people
D. destroy students’ privacy and ci vil rights
B
Why Are Pig Farmers Still Using Growth-Promoting Drugs？
It's one of the most controversial practices in agriculture：feeding small amounts of antibiotics to animals in order to make them grow faster. But what if the drugs don't even work very well？ There's some good evidence that they don't, at least in pigs. They used to deliver a boost in growth, but that effect has disappeared in recent years or declined greatly. The reason for this is interesting and even paradoxical. Researchers think the antibiotics used to work by suppressing low-grade infections. In recent years, however, pork producers found other ways to accomplish the same thing through improved hygiene （卫生）. As a result, the drugs have become largely superfluous — yet many farmers still use them.
To understand how this happened, you have to step back in time, says Steve Dritz, a
specialist in pig nutrition at Kansas State University. Sixty years ago, when antibiotics were new, "people started treating animals, and feeding [the antibiotics], and finding that they had increased growth rates and feed efficiencies," he says. Nursery-age pigs, for instance, grew 12 to 15 percent faster with antibiotics. The animals also needed less feed to reach full weight. Other studies showed similar results in chickens and cattle. In the 1980s, a new set of studies found similar effects. So the growth-promoting effects of antibiotics became standard practice among meat producers.
Fast forward to the 1990s. Dritz was starting his career as a scientist at Kansas State University, and pork production was changing dramatically.
Previously, pigs were born and raised in one barn or in several barns close together. This meant infections could easily pass from one generation to the next, the way that kids share germs between their friends on the playground and their parents at home. Under the new system, when piglets are weaned, they move to a whole different place. That new site is carefully scrubbed and free of disease.
Craig Rowles, who runs a large swine operation in Carroll, Iowa, shows me one such room. There's not a piglet in sight. "This room just got completely washed and disinfected, and now it's going to sit here and dry for a while," he says.
A whole group of pigs will come in here together, and later they will move out together to yet another site. "That group of pigs will stay together until they go to market," Rowles says.
