■阅读与写作（8）非谓语动词■历史与地理■该话题主要包括历史和地理的基本知识，重大历史事件和重要人物等。
高考命题者的语篇材料中，常涉及到某个地方的史地概况，风土人情等。
-美文赏析■Since 1884, Greenwich Mean Time(GMT)has been the international standard for timekeeping, but it is now under threat from a new definition® of time itself based not on the rotation(旋车专)of the Earth, but on atomic clocks.■In January the International Telecommunication Union will meet in Geneva to vote on whether to adopt②the new measure, despite protests from Britain.No doubt 5the question has hurt Britain f s national pride—particularly when the British believe their old rival France is leading the push to change fromGMT to the new time standard・■GMT is based on the passage of the sun over the zero meridian(经线)line at the Greenwich Observatory in southeast London, and became the world standard for time at a conference in Washington in 1884.France was striving® for Paris Mean Time at the same conference.■In 1972 it was replaced in name by Universal Coordinated Time(UTC)but that in fact remained the same as GMT.■ UTC is based on about 400 atomic clocks around the world but then corrected with''leap seconds 〃to correspond to④the Earth's rotational speed，which fluctuates（波动）• As a result， atomic time is slowly di verging（偏离）fTom GMT.■ The tiny differences between Earth speed and atomic speed have become a problem for GPS，space exploration and mobile phone networks on which the modern world relies.■The meeting will look at the possibilities of abolishing the leap seconds and moving fully to atomic time.The proposal has been opposed by British science minister David Willetts.He said,“We should stick to real time as experienced by humans.Without leap seconds we will lose contact with the reality of Earths rotation. Eventually our midnight would happen at noon."■China pTefers the pTesent time standards ，saying that its astTonomeTS want to Tetain⑤Earthrotationbased time.■【解题导语】格林尼治标准时间作为全球通用的时间参考标准已使用了120多年。
