UNIT 4 课时检测4 Discovering Useful Structures（Word练习）-【新课程学案】新教材2023-2024学年高中英语必修第一册（人教版2019）

UNIT 4 课时检测（四） Discovering Useful Structures Ⅰ.阅读理解 Ants know when an earthquake is about to strike, researchers have discovered. Their behavior changes significantly prior to the quake and they resume normal function only a day after it. Gabriele Berberich of the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany presented these findings on Thursday at the European Geosciences Union annual meeting in Vienna according to Live Science. Berberich and her colleagues discovered that red wood ants preferred to build their colonies right along active faults in Germany. They counted 15,000 mounds (土堆) lining the faults. These faults are the places where the earth violently bursts in earthquakes. Using a special camera that tracked changes in activity, Berberich and her colleagues tracked the ants round the clock for three years. They found that the ants' behavior changed only when the quake was over magnitude (震级) 2. There were 10 earthquakes between magnitude 2.0 and 3.2 during this period, and many smaller ones. Humans can also sense quakes over magnitude 2 only. According to Berberich, normal ant activity consists of going about collecting food etc. during the day and resting in the night. But before an earthquake, the ants didn't go back to their mound in the night and moved around outside it. “This strange and abnormal behavior continued till a day after the earthquake.” Berberich told a news conference, according to Live Science. How do ants know an earthquake is coming? Berberich suggested that they could either be picking up changing gas emissions or noting tiny changes in the Earth's magnetic fields (磁场). “Red wood ants have special cells which can detect changes in carbon dioxide levels. They also have special cells for detecting electromagnetic fields，” she said. Berberich and her colleagues are planning to continue the research in areas where there are more and bigger earthquakes. 语篇解读：本文是一篇说明文。研究发现，蚂蚁能预知地震，原因可能在于蚂蚁体内有能够探测到二氧化碳变化和电磁场的细胞。 1．What's the meaning of the un