问答题 .  Section A  MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS
    In this section there are several passages followed by ten multiple-choice questions. For each multiple-choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET TWO.
    Passage One
    (1) Mr. Foster was left in the Decanting Room. The D. H.C. and his students stepped into the nearest lift and were carried up to the fifth floor.
    (2) INFANT NURSERIES. NEO-PAVLOVIAN CONDITIONING ROOMS, announced the noticeboard.
    (3) The Director opened a door. They were in a large bare room, very bright and sunny; for the whole of the southern wail was a single window. Half a dozen nurses, trousered and jacketed in the regulation white viscose-linen uniform, their hair aseptically (无菌地；清洁地) hidden under white caps, were engaged in setting out bowls of roses in a long row across the floor. Big bowls, packed tight with blossom. Thousands of petals, ripe-blown and silkily smooth, like the cheeks of innumerable little cherubs, but of cherubs, in that bright light, not exclusively pink and Aryan, but also luminously Chinese, also Mexican, also apoplectic with too much blowing of celestial trumpets, also pale as death, pale with the posthumous (死后的；遗腹的) whiteness of marble.
    (4) The nurses stiffened to attention as the D. H. C. came in.
    (5) "Set out the books," he said curtly.
    (6) In silence the nurses obeyed his command. Between the rose bowls the books were duly set out—a row of nursery quartos opened invitingly each at some gaily colored image of beast or fish or bird.
    (7) "Now bring in the children."
    (8) They hurried out of the room and returned in a minute or two, each pushing a kind of tall dumb-waiter laden, on all its four wire-netted shelves, with eight-month-old babies, all exactly alike (a Bokanovsky Group, it was evident) and all (since their caste was Delta) dressed in khaki.
    (9) "Put them down on the floor."
    (10) The infants were unloaded.
    (11) "Now turn them so that they can see the flowers and books."
    (12) Turned, the babies at once fell silent, then began to crawl towards those clusters of sleek colors, those shapes so gay and brilliant on the white pages. As they approached, the sun came out of a momentary eclipse behind a cloud. The roses flamed up as though with a sudden passion from within; a new and profound significance seemed to suffuse the shining pages of the books. From the ranks of the crawling babies came little squeals of excitement, gurgles and twitterings of pleasure.
    (13) The Director rubbed his hands. "Excellent!" he said. "It might almost have been done on purpose."
    (14) The swiftest crawlers were already at their goal. Small hands reached out uncertainly, touched, grasped, unpetaling the transfigured roses, crumpling the illuminated pages of the books. The Director waited until all were happily busy.
    (15) Then, "Watch carefully," he said. And, lifting his hand, he gave the signal.
    (16) The Head Nurse, who was standing by a switchboard at the other end of the room, pressed down a little lever.
    (17) There was a violent explosion. Shriller and ever shriller, a siren shrieked. Alarm bells maddeningly sounded.
    (18) The children startled, screamed; their faces were distorted with terror.
    (19) "And now," the Director shouted (for the noise was deafening), "now we proceed to rub in the lesson with a mild electric shock."
    (20) He waved his hand again, and the Head Nurse pressed a second lever. The screaming of the babies suddenly changed its tone. There was something desperate, almost insane, about the sharp spasmodic (痉挛的; 间歇性的) yelps to which they now gave utterance. Their little bodies twitched and stiffened; their limbs moved jerkily as if to the tug of unseen wires.
    (21) "We can electrify that whole strip of floor," bawled the Director in explanation. "But that's enough," he signaled to the nurse.
    (22) The explosions ceased, the bells stopped ringing, the shriek of the siren died down from tone to tone into silence. The stiffly twitching bodies relaxed, and what had become the sob and yelp of infant maniacs broadened out once more into a normal howl of ordinary terror.
    (23) "Offer them the flowers and the books again."
    (24) The nurses obeyed; but at the approach of the roses, at the mere sight of those gaily-colored images of pussy and cock-a-doodle-doo and baa-baa black sheep, the infants shrank away in horror, the volume of their howling suddenly increased.
    (25) "Observe," said the Director triumphantly, "observe."
    (26) Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks—already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson would be wedded indissolubly. What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.
    (27) "They'll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an 'instinctive' hatred of books and flowers. Reflexes unalterably conditioned. They'll be safe from books and botany all their lives." The Director turned to his nurses. "Take them away again."
    (28) Still yelling, the khaki babies were loaded on to their dumb-waiters and wheeled out, leaving behind them the smell of sour milk and a most welcome silence.
   
    Passage Two
    (1) Not every self-driving car company is a hi-tech unicorn eager to disrupt the status quo. The latest firm to invite journalists to experience its autonomous technology is the epitome of traditional car manufacturing: Ford.
    (2) On its sprawling campus in Dearborn, Michigan, the century-old company is trying its hardest to look and act like a new startup. In March, Ford launched a subsidiary called Ford Smart Mobility (FSM) to develop in-car connectivity, ride-sharing and autonomous technologies. FSM is designed to compete like a startup, with the aim of translating Ford's decade of work in autonomous systems into real products. At its first public autonomous vehicle demos, young engineers and entrepreneurs were enthused about reinventing our traffic-clogged cities.
    (3) "We're rethinking our entire business model," said Mark Fields, Ford's CEO. "It's no longer about how many vehicles we can sell. It's about what services we can provide. We understand that the world has changed from a mindset of owning vehicles to one of owning and sharing them." That has led to some quirky (稀奇古怪的) investments, such as Ford's acquisition last week of a San Francisco-based crowdsharing shuttle bus startup called Chariot, and a partnership to provide the city with thousands of human-powered bikes for a ride-sharing scheme.
    (4) But while Ford's car sales are fairly healthy today, Fields foresees a world transformed by driverless cars, Uber and climate change. "You could argue that in major cities, vehicle density will drop because of automated vehicles and congestion charges. Some cities might even outlaw personal use of vehicles." One of Ford's strategies to cope with this is to accelerate its efforts towards a fully autonomous car. Fields now says Ford will have a completely self-driving car, without a steering wheel, an accelerator or pedals, in production by 2021. It will initially be used only for robotic taxi services in restricted urban areas but should be available for consumers to purchase by the middle of the decade.
    (5) Ford's newfound confidence in self-driving cars comes just as the technology's pioneers are struggling to mature beyond this same gee-whiz enthusiasm. Google's self-driving project, perennially (永久地) poised to be spun out into a separate company, recently lost key members, while Apple is rumored to have laid off dozens of engineers and scaled back its ambitious plans to build its own autonomous vehicle.
    (6) But other rivals still seem years ahead of Ford. Uber is beginning a driverless taxi pilot in Pittsburgh this week (albeit with a human safety driver), and startup Nutonomy is already offering robotic taxi rides in Singapore. To judge by Monday's demos, on the other hand, Ford's self-driving Fusions are still spooked (惊吓) by bushes growing too close to the road and paralyzed with indecision when confronted with pedestrians who may or may not be about to step off the pavement.
    (7) Its fleet of development cars, currently just 10 strong, looks thin compared with Google's dozens of cars operating across the U.S., or the thousands of autopilot-enabled Teslas gathering millions of miles of real-world data monthly. Ford aims to have 30 autonomous Fusions by the end of the year, and about 100 by the end of 2017.
    (8) But although Ford may appear to be lagging behind, it has been working quietly behind the scenes. Several self-driving startups, including Uber, Faraday Future and Autonomous Stuff, are already using Ford Fusions (or its near equivalent, the Lincoln MKZ) to develop their own technologies. "It's the absolute best vehicle right now for testing self-driving," says Bobby Hambrick, CEO of Autonomous Stuff, a company developing retro-fit automated driving kits. "There are no other carmakers that are so open to work through third parties like us."
    (9) Fields also points to the multinational's competencies in building and selling vehicles. "We've been working on autonomous vehicles for over 10 years," he said. "And for 100 years, we've built high-volume product with quality and affordability."
    (10) Fields finished his keynote address by predicting that autonomous vehicles will have as big an impact on society as Henry Ford's moving assembly line did a century ago. He will be hoping that Ford will still be around to celebrate the centenary of the autonomous car.
   
    Passage Three
    (1) Dr. Leonard Bailey turns 74 in August, but as chief of surgery for Loma Linda University's Children's Hospital, he still puts in 60-hour weeks, starting at 6:30 every morning. The pioneering heart surgeon performed the world's first successful infant-to-infant heart transplant and has done hundreds of transplants for the tiniest of babies. "There's no reason to stop. If you're constantly thinking new thoughts and dealing with new problems, it refreshes your brain cells and makes new connections."
    (2) A June report by the Pew Research Center found that the percentage of retirement-age Americans who remain in the workforce has dramatically increased, climbing from 12.8 percent in 2000 to 18.8 percent this year.
    (3) Several factors are driving this trend. Some of it is financial—the Great Recession of 2008 ripped a big chunk out of retirement savings, and fewer employees these days have fixed pensions, so many people have little choice but to keep working. But others are like Bailey—educated professionals who aren't ready to be cast aside.
    (4) There's also a shift in attitudes toward retirement, probably because we're in the midst of the most significant demographic (人口统计学的) change in history. Up until the 20th century, fewer than half of all Americans reached age 50, but by midcentury, more than 88 million Americans will be over 65, according to U.S. government projections, which has triggered worries that caring for these oldsters could drain societal resources and bankrupt the health care system. But many experts believe horror stories of greedy geezers (怪老头) guzzling (狂饮；暴食) scarce resources miss the fact that many of today's seniors are healthier, better educated and more productive than previous generations—and want to keep working.
    (5) While some employers worry about aging workers' diminished capacities, rising health care costs and their unfamiliarity with new tech tools, some companies are already finding innovative ways to accommodate an aging workforce. They've launched programs that range from mentoring programs that pair up experienced veterans with younger colleagues to phased-in retirement plans that allow people to work flexibly or on part-time schedules. These programs let companies capitalize on the legions of workers in their 60s who'd miss the camaraderie and the paycheck but not the hectic pace that comes with a full-time job.
    (6) There are good reasons for companies to do this. Older workers are more loyal and stay on the job longer than their younger counterparts. This reduces turnover and minimizes costs for hiring and training replacements. Older employees also have a depth of experience, contacts and skills, which often means they can come up to speed faster than the youngsters, and they can be more adept at navigating in the corporate world.
    (7) The staff at Michelin, the tire manufacturer in the U. S. is practically geriatric: Nearly 40 percent of their 16,000 employees are over 50, and most of them have been with the company for two decades or more. They range from flextime, compressed work schedules and job-sharing to telecommuting and phased retirement programs. And Michelin's not just holding on to its white-collar professionals; it puts just as much effort into retaining skilled tradespeople—the automation experts, electricians and technical support staffers who maintain production on the factory floor. "These are the hardest jobs to fill because so few have this kind of expertise," says Stafford, Michelin's executive vice president of human resources. "Manufacturing companies are all facing these kinds of shortages today."
    (8) MEI Technologies, an aerospace and technology company, actively recruits retirees, targeting former NASA engineers and retired military people to work on a project basis during rush periods. "Work flows have peaks and valleys, and this on-call workforce helps us meet customer needs," says Sandra Stanford, director of human resources at MEI Technologies.
    (9) Even in the notoriously youth-oriented tech world, some companies are crafting corporate benefits to keep and attract older workers. At NerdWallet, a financial information website headquartered in San Francisco, nearly a third of the writing and editing staff is 50 or older. "I want the best talent, I want a mix of it, and we're highly selective of who we hire," says Maggie Leung, the company's senior director of content.
    (10) Leung says she aggressively recruited Phil Reed in his mid-60s, who's been writing about cars for more than two decades, telecommutes from Long Beach, California. "There were times I felt conscious of my age," recalls Reed, who normally does weekly video conferences with his boss and colleagues. "But I was pleased to find that there were quite a few editors in their 40s and 50s, and it wasn't just a startup with kids running around. Originally, I had planned to retire in a couple of years. But I like being involved and being part of a team. ff things keep up like this, why would I retire?"
    1.  The nurses prepared flowers and books in order to ______.(Passage One)