本次
2016年11月12日托福阅读真题词汇题：
Shatter= broke mechanism
Eventually=finally
Scrutiny=examination
Solely=only
Concept=idea
Disperse=distribution
Recur=repeat
oneselt
skepticism
notable
2016年11月12日托福阅读真题第一篇
题材划分： 农业发展类
主要内容：主题是关于农业的出现，大概讲农业起源于什么时间，在埃及和美索不达米亚平原都有金字塔，因为埃及更早，而且都是为了宗教目的，所以科学家认为美索不达米亚是学埃及的。但是人造的hills and mounds由不同的人造有不同的目的，所以科学家又认为在美索不达米亚金字塔是学的还是自己发明的取决于农业是不是独立发展的。现在普遍认为1万年前，农业至少在六个独立的地方发展了，尽管没有证据。有人提出了一个概念，说农业的发展一定是在没有人类帮助的情况下，新作物被引进了，举例说grass就不是的，而maze是个成功的例子，最后的结论是农业是独立发展的
相似TPO练习推荐
TPO21- The Origins of Agriculture
相关背景知识：
The history of agriculture records the domestication of plants and animals and the development and dissemination of techniques for raising them productively. Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa. At least 11 separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin.
Wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 20,000 BC. From around 9500 BC, the eight Neolithic founder crops, emmer and einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax were cultivated in the Levant. Rice was domesticated in China between 11,500 and 6,200 BC, followed by mung, soy and azuki beans. Pigs were domesticated in Mesopotamia around 13,000 BC, followed by sheep between 11,000 and 9,000 BC. Cattle were domesticated from the wild aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey and Pakistan around 8,500 BC. Sugarcane and some root vegetables were domesticated in New Guinea around 7,000 BC. Sorghum was domesticated in the Sahel region of Africa by 5000 BC. In the Andes of South America, the potato was domesticated between 8,000 and 5,000 BC, along with beans, coca, llamas, alpacas, and guinea pigs. Cotton was domesticated in Peru by 3,600 BC. In Mesoamerica, wild teosinte was domesticated to maize by 4,000 BC. Camels were domesticated late, perhaps around 3000 BC.
In the Middle Ages, both in the Islamic world and in Europe, agriculture was transformed with improved techniques and the diffusion of crop plants, including the introduction of sugar, rice, cotton and fruit trees such as the orange to Europe by way of Al-Andalus. After 1492, the Columbian exchange brought New World crops such as maize, potatoes, sweet potatoes and manioc to Europe, and Old World crops such as wheat, barley, rice and turnips, and livestock including horses, cattle, sheep and goats to the Americas. Irrigation, crop rotation, and fertilizers were introduced soon after the Neolithic Revolution and developed much further in the past 200 years, starting with the British Agricultural Revolution.
Since 1900, agriculture in the developed nations, and to a lesser extent in the developing world, has seen large rises in productivity as human labour has been replaced by mechanization, and assisted by synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and selective breeding. The Haber-Bosch method allowed the synthesis of ammonium nitrate fertilizer on an industrial scale, greatly increasing crop yields. Modern agriculture has raised political issues including water pollution, biofuels, genetically modified organisms, tariffs and farm subsidies.
2016年11月12日托福阅读真题第二篇
题材划分： 考古类
主要内容： 解释mass extinction的假说。最开始提出行星撞击地球的理论，科学家不相信，因为他们觉得地球上的事和extraterrestrial无关，而且学校里也不教这方面的事情。但在K-T clay中含有大量的iridium,这一事实支撑了该理论。第一次提出支持行星碰撞理论的是在海底有iridium,科学家显示反对，认为是海洋生物产生的，后来被反驳，因为在陆地发现了同样含有大量iridium的岩石。有人提出了火山的猜想，认为iridium一开始在地心，由于火山爆发被带到地表，然后受到风的作用，吹到四处。该猜想备反驳，因为在夏威夷K地，一次爆发仅含有少量iridium,要达到K-T clay那么多的iridium需要成百上千次，所以不可能。
相似TPO练习推荐：
TPO15- Mass Extinctions
相关知识背景：
An extinction event (also known as a mass extinction or biotic crisis) is a widespread and rapid decrease in the biodiversity on Earth. Such an event is identified by a sharp change in the diversity and abundance of multicellular organisms. It occurs when the rate of extinction increases with respect to the rate of speciation. Because the majority of diversity and biomass on Earth is microbial, and thus difficult to measure, recorded extinction events affect the easily observed, biologically complex component of the biosphere rather than the total diversity and abundance of life.
Extinction occurs at an uneven rate. Based on the fossil record, the background rate of extinctions on Earth is about two to five taxonomic families of marine animals every million years. Marine fossils are mostly used to measure extinction rates because of their superior fossil record and stratigraphic range compared to land organisms.
The Great Oxygenation Event was probably the first major extinction event. Since the Cambrian explosion five further major mass extinctions have significantly exceeded the background extinction rate. The most recent and debatably best-known, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, which occurred approximately 66 million years ago (Ma), was a large-scale mass extinction of animal and plant species in a geologically short period of time. In addition to the five major mass extinctions, there are numerous minor ones as well, and the ongoing mass-extinction caused by human activity is sometimes called the sixth extinction. Mass extinctions seem to be a mainly Phanerozoic phenomenon, with extinction rates low before large complex organisms arose.
Estimates of the number of major mass extinctions in the last 540 million years range from as few as five to more than twenty. These differences stem from the threshold chosen for describing an extinction event as "major", and the data chosen to measure past diversity.
2016年11月12日托福阅读真题第三篇
题材划分：社科类
主要内容： 主要讲食物是如何保存的，以前的食物保存方法是的食物口感很差，营养丢失。为了让军队的人吃的好，法国政府搬出一个奖，奖励发明出新事物保存方法的人，该方法要便宜，食物好运输，好吃还要有营养。最开始是一个科学家做了一个真空实验，了解到声传播需要空气，于是推测食物保存也需要空气，但实验过后发现空气并不是sole reason。然后第二人在这个基础上用真空vessel之后又放在热水里，发现能很好保存了。但是大家并不知道原理是什么，只能猜测是something导致了变质。最后得到奖金的是一个厨师，他爸爸是个manager，在厨房工作的时候发现大家都是用糖来保存水果，于是就想到怎样保存食物，然后的方法与之前不同在加热后封好迅速冷却。
相似TPO练习推荐：
TPO30- The Invention of the Mechanical Clock
相关知识背景：
Food preservation involves preventing the growth of bacteria, fungi (such as yeasts), or other micro-organisms (although some methods work by introducing benign bacteria or fungi to the food), as well as slowing the oxidation of fats that cause rancidity. Food preservation may also include processes that inhibit visual deterioration, such as the enzymatic browning reaction in apples after they are cut during food preparation.
Many processes designed to preserve food will involve a number of food preservation methods. Preserving fruit by turning it into jam, for example, involves boiling (to reduce the fruit’s moisture content and to kill bacteria, etc.), sugaring (to prevent their re-growth) and sealing within an airtight jar (to prevent recontamination). Some traditional methods of preserving food have been shown to have a lower energy input and carbon footprint, when compared to modern methods.
Some methods of food preservation are known to create carcinogens. In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization classified processed meat, i.e. meat that has undergone salting, curing, fermenting, and smoking, as "carcinogenic to humans".
Maintaining or creating nutritional value, texture and flavor is an important aspect of food preservation, although, historically, some methods drastically altered the character of the food being preserved. In many cases these changes have come to be seen as desirable qualities – cheese, yogurt and pickled onions being common examples.