Botany, the study of plants, occupies a peculiar position in the history of human knowledge. For many thousands of years it was the one field of awareness about which humans had anything more than the vaguest of insights. It is impossible to know today just what our Stone Age ancestors knew about plants, but from what we can observe of pre-industrial societies that still exist, a detailed learning of plants and their properties must be extremely ancient. This is logical. Plants are the basis of the food pyramid for all living things, even for other plants. They have always been enormously important to the welfare of peoples, not only for food, but also for clothing, weapons, tools, dyes, medicines, shelter, and a great many other purposes. Tribes living today in the jungles of the Amazon recognize literally hundreds of plants and know many properties of each. To them botany, as such, has no name and is probably not even recognized as a special branch of "knowledge" at all. Unfortunately, the more industrialized we become, the farther away we move from direct contact with plants, and the less distinct our knowledge of botany grows. Yet everyone comes unconsciously on an amazing amount of botanical knowledge, and few people will fail to recognize a rose, an apple, or an orchid. When our Neolithic ancestors, living in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago, discovered that certain grasses could be harvested and their seeds planted for richer yields the next season, the first great step in a new association of plants and humans was taken. Grains were discovered and from them flowed the marvel of agriculture: cultivated crops. From then on, humans would increasingly take their living from the controlled production of a few plants, rather than get a little here and a little there from many varieties that grew wild and the accumulated knowledge of tens of thousands of years of experience and intimacy with plants in the wild would begin to fade away. The relationship between botany and agriculture is similar to the relationship between zoology (the study of animals) and______.
A. deer hunting
B. bird watching
C. sheep raising
D. horseback riding
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Botany, the study of plants, occupies a peculiar position in the history of human knowledge. For many thousands of years it was the one field of awareness about which humans had anything more than the vaguest of insights. It is impossible to know today just what our Stone Age ancestors knew about plants, but from what we can observe of pre-industrial societies that still exist, a detailed learning of plants and their properties must be extremely ancient. This is logical. Plants are the basis of the food pyramid for all living things, even for other plants. They have always been enormously important to the welfare of peoples, not only for food, but also for clothing, weapons, tools, dyes, medicines, shelter, and a great many other purposes. Tribes living today in the jungles of the Amazon recognize literally hundreds of plants and know many properties of each. To them botany, as such, has no name and is probably not even recognized as a special branch of "knowledge" at all. Unfortunately, the more industrialized we become, the farther away we move from direct contact with plants, and the less distinct our knowledge of botany grows. Yet everyone comes unconsciously on an amazing amount of botanical knowledge, and few people will fail to recognize a rose, an apple, or an orchid. When our Neolithic ancestors, living in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago, discovered that certain grasses could be harvested and their seeds planted for richer yields the next season, the first great step in a new association of plants and humans was taken. Grains were discovered and from them flowed the marvel of agriculture: cultivated crops. From then on, humans would increasingly take their living from the controlled production of a few plants, rather than get a little here and a little there from many varieties that grew wild and the accumulated knowledge of tens of thousands of years of experience and intimacy with plants in the wild would begin to fade away. What does the comment" this is logical "in line 5 mean
A. There is no clear way to determine the extent of our ancestor’s knowledge of plants.
B. It is not surprising that early humans had a detailed knowledge of plants.
C. It is reasonable to assume that our ancestors behaved very much like people in pre-industrial societies.
D. Human knowledge of plants is well organized and very detailed.
The immediate response to the birth of dolly, the sheep, was a revulsion against the idea of using the same technique to clone human beings. But the news had just the opposite effect on an eccentric scientist named Richard Seed, who declared with an eerie bravado that he was going to produce "half-a-dozen bouncing-baby, happy, smiling clones" before the end of the decade. Most scientists dismissed his plan as kooky; several U.S. states and 19 European countries outlawed it. But a year later, Seed insists that he is undeterred. He claims to have a partner, an obstetrician-gynecologist, but he won’t name him or the three other scientists who he says make up his team. When pressed, he concedes that his colleagues are currently spending no more than 10 hours a week on the project. After all, they have day jobs. Not so Seed. The unemployed physicist, who has spent a lifetime dabbing in ill-fated ventures, is tying to build support and raise money; he claims to have commitments for $800 000. An impressive start, if true, but still far from the $2.5 million he says is necessary to clone the first human before 2000. While virtually no mainstream scientist believes Seed will succeed, there has been a subtle shift in attitudes since the bearded, big-boned maverick limed into view. Seed put into words what many scientists were thinking, and few were surprised to learn last month that a team in South Korea had begun work on human cloning and even claimed to have produced a four-cell human embryo. Seed is unconvinced. "The [Korean] results are highly suspect," he says. But he recognizes that the world is not waiting for him. "I’ll be devastated if someone else does it first," he says. "But I’ll get over it. I’d rather see somebody do it than nobody." That way, at least, Seed could pursue his next project-reprogramming DNA to achieve immortality—which he sees as the all-important successor to cloning. So here’s a conundrum: which would be stranger, a world full of Richard Seeds, or a world in which Seed never goes away The birth of Dolly aroused the idea of ______.
A. cloning more sheep
B. cloning human beings
C. killing the sheep
D. cloning cattle
Cyber crime is likely to bring about as much destruction as the credit crisis in the coming years if international regulation is not improved, some of the world’s top crime experts said. Damage caused by cyber crime is estimated at $100 billion annually, said Kilian Strauss, of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)."These criminals outsmart us ten, or a hundred to one," Strauss told Reuters, adding more Internet experts were needed to investigate and tackle cyber crime. Criminal organizations are exploiting a regulatory vacuum to commit Internet crimes such as computer spying, money-laundering and theft of personal information, and the scope for damage is vast, experts told a European Economic Crime conference in Frankfurt. "We need multilateral understanding, account and oversight to avoid, in the years to come, a cyber crisis equivalent to the current financial crisis," Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said. Internet crime is also a threat to national security, they said. Several countries, including the United States, have voiced concern over some hackers’ abilities to electronically spy on them and disrupt computer networks. Calls for greater regulation of the Internet come at a time of regulatory renaissance, with policymakers looking to support the powers of financial sector watchdogs in the wake of the global financial crisis. "Because of the transnational nature of identity-related crime, and especially of cyber-crime, if we do not tackle the crime everywhere we will not solve it anywhere," Costa said. The President of Interpol, Khoo Boon Hui, said increasingly highly technological gangs from Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa were coming up with ever more sophisticated ways of swindling money from vulnerable people. He also said there was a trend of company bosses being bribed by fraudsters claiming to have guilty evidence about their firms. Strauss, who works as Senior Program Officer at the Office of the Coordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental activities, said Internet crime watchdogs could learn a lot from criminals willing to switch sides. To win the war against cyber crime,______.
A. policymakers should support their governments financially
B. each country should solve its own problems effectively
C. United States should play a very important role
D. international cooperation is crucial
Botany, the study of plants, occupies a peculiar position in the history of human knowledge. For many thousands of years it was the one field of awareness about which humans had anything more than the vaguest of insights. It is impossible to know today just what our Stone Age ancestors knew about plants, but from what we can observe of pre-industrial societies that still exist, a detailed learning of plants and their properties must be extremely ancient. This is logical. Plants are the basis of the food pyramid for all living things, even for other plants. They have always been enormously important to the welfare of peoples, not only for food, but also for clothing, weapons, tools, dyes, medicines, shelter, and a great many other purposes. Tribes living today in the jungles of the Amazon recognize literally hundreds of plants and know many properties of each. To them botany, as such, has no name and is probably not even recognized as a special branch of "knowledge" at all. Unfortunately, the more industrialized we become, the farther away we move from direct contact with plants, and the less distinct our knowledge of botany grows. Yet everyone comes unconsciously on an amazing amount of botanical knowledge, and few people will fail to recognize a rose, an apple, or an orchid. When our Neolithic ancestors, living in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago, discovered that certain grasses could be harvested and their seeds planted for richer yields the next season, the first great step in a new association of plants and humans was taken. Grains were discovered and from them flowed the marvel of agriculture: cultivated crops. From then on, humans would increasingly take their living from the controlled production of a few plants, rather than get a little here and a little there from many varieties that grew wild and the accumulated knowledge of tens of thousands of years of experience and intimacy with plants in the wild would begin to fade away. In line 17, what is the author’s purpose in mentioning "a rose, an apple, or an orchid"
A. To make the passage more poetic.
B. To cite examples of plants that are attractive.
C. To give botanical examples that all readers will recognize.
D. To illustrate the diversity of botanical life.