2013年职称英语理工类B级阅读理解练习13

考试站网校职称英语频道首发，为了帮助学员备考2013年职称外语考试，特别整理了2013年职称英语理工类阅读理解资料，供大家复习备考之用，希望大家顺利通过考试！　Plant Gas
　　Scientists have been studying natural sources of methane for decades but hadn’t regarded plants as a producer，notes Frank Keppler，a geochem[st at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg，Germany1.Now Keppler and his colleagues find that plants，from grasses to trees，may also be sources of the greenhouse gas.This is really surprising，because most scientists assumed that methane production requires an oxygen-free environment

　　 Previously，researchers had thought that it was impossible for plants to make significant amounts of the gas.They had assumed that，microbes2 need to be in environments without oxygen to produce methane.Methane is a greenhouse gas，like carbon dioxide.Gases such as methane and carbon dioxide trap heat in Earth’s atmosphere and contributeto global warming.
　　In its experiments，Keppler’s team used sealed chambers that contained the same concentration of oxygen that Earth’s atmosphere has.They measured the amounts of methane that were released by both living plants;and dried plant material，such as fallen leaves.
　　With the dried plants，the researchers took measurement at temperatures ranging from 30 degrees Celsius to 70 degrees C.At 30 degrees C，they found，a gram of dried plant material released up to 3 nanograms of methane per hour.(One nanogram is a billionth of a gram.) With every 10-degree rise in temperature，the amount of methane released each hour roughly doubled.
　　Living plants growing at their normal temperatures released as much as 370 nanograms of methane per gram of plant tissue per hour.Methane emissions tripled when living and dead plant was exposed to sunlight.
　　Beeause there was plenty of oxygen available，it’s unlikely that the types of bacteria that normally make methane were involved. Experiments on plants that weregrown in water rather than soil also resulted in methane emissions.That’s another strong sign that the gas came from the plants and not soil microbes.