多年来科学家们都在研究生命的真正起源，虽然仍没有权威定论，但科学家们在进行各种实验后似乎逐渐发现了有关生命起源的一些线索。下面的新托福考试阅读练习资料就会向大家简单介绍这些发现。

　　How did life start on Earth? Science still has no definitive answer. But in the 1950s, a pair of chemists mixed a stew of poisonous gases, like you&aposd find at a volcano. They zapped it with electricity, mimicking lightning. And they found that they&aposd created a few amino acids. All life on Earth relies on these compounds to make proteins.

　　In 2007 researchers at Scripps Institute of Ocean**raphy found sealed samples from those half-century old experiments. They re-examined the contents with today&aposs better equipment, like liquid chromat**raphy and mass spectrometers, and found that the electrified volcano&aposs breath produced 23 different amino acids. The work appears online in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

　　The finding could mean that various building blocks of life were common in pools of water on the surface of the early Earth. What&aposs more, the amino acids are similar to those found on certain types of meteorites, which suggests that the basic constituents of life could be widespread in the universe.

　　But how those oases of amino acids started to come t**ether and form life? Well, the origin of life as we know it remains a mystery.

新托福的成熟，也使得托福的接收区域广泛，托福考生的整体水平在逐年的不断提升，中国的考生的影响力也不能小觑，美国的大学在录取工作中越来越看重托福成绩，尤其在2012年不少美国大学提高了对国际生的托福录取标准，托福录取分数线上调幅度大概在10分左右，比如凯斯西储大学（Top38）由2011年的80分上调至2012年的90分。俄亥俄州立大学由2011年的71分上调至2012年的79分，这一现象在高端名校中更为严重，综合排名Top20的埃默里大学甚至建议学生考取托福100分以上，中国大学生去纽约、伦敦、香港的大学留学，托福成绩都是被申请学校认可的，托福培训要多长时间?对于打算准备出国读本科的同学，最好高一、高二就开始准备托福考试，准备申请美国研究生的同学们就需要在大二、大三就要开始准备托福考试，很多同学都会选择参加托福培训，而托福培训的时长是由多种因素决定的。