There are so many new books about dying that there are now special shelves set aside for them in bookshops, along with the health-diet and home-repair paperbacks. Some of them are so (61) with detailed information and step-by-step instructions for performing the function, that you’d think this was a new sort of (62) which all of us are now required to learn. The strongest impression the casual reader gets is that proper dying has become an extraordinary, (63) an exotic experience, something only the specially trained can do. (64) , you could be led to believe that we are the only (65) capable of being aware of death, and that when the rest of nature is experiencing the life cycle and dying, one generation after (66) , it is a different kind of process, done automatically and trivially, or more "natural", as we say. An elm in our backyard (67) the blight (枯萎病) this summer and dropped stone dead, leafless, almost overnight. One weekend (68) was a normal-looking elm, maybe a little bare in spots but (69) alarming, and the next weekend it was gone, passed over, departed, taken. Taken is right, for the tree surgeon came by yesterday with his (70) of young helpers and their cherry picker, and took it down branch by branch and carted it off in the back of a red truck, everyone (71) . The dying (72) a field mouse, at the jaws of an amiable household cat, is a spectacle I have beheld many times. It (73) to make me wince. However, early in life I gave up throwing sticks (74) the cat to make him drop the mouse, (75) the dropped mouse regularly went ahead and died anyway.
A. to
B. in
C. for
D. of
Even plants can run a fever, especially when they’re under attack by insects or disease. But unlike humans, plants can have their temperature taken from 3,000 feet away—straight up. A decade ago, adapting the infrared scanning technology developed for military purposes and other satellites, physicist Stephen Paley came up with a quick way to take the temperature of crops to determine which ones are under stress. The goal was to let farmers precisely target pesticide (杀虫剂]) spraying rather than rain poison on a whole field, which invariably includes plants that don’t have pest (害虫) problems. Even better, Paley’s Remote Scanning Services Company could detect crop problems before they became visible to the eye. Mounted on a plane flown at 3,000 feet at night, an infrared scanner measured the heat emitted by crops. The data were transformed into a color-coded map showing where plants were running "fevers". Farmers could then spotspray, using 40 to 70 percent less pesticide than they otherwise would. The bad news is that Paley’s company closed down in 1984, after only three years. Farmers resisted the new technology and long-term backers were hard to find. But with the renewed concern about pesticides on produce, and refinements in infrared scanning, Paley hopes to get back into operation. Agriculture experts have no doubt the technology works. "This technique can be used on 75 percent of agricultural land in the United States," says George Other of Texas A&M. Ray Jackson, who recently retired from the Department of Agriculture, thinks remote infrared crop scanning could be adopted by the end of the decade. But only if Paley finds the financial backing which he failed to obtain 10 years ago. Plants will emit an increased amount of heat when they are______.
A. sprayed with pesticides
B. facing an infrared scanner
C. in poor physical condition
D. exposed to excessive sun rays