单选题 She's cute, no question. Symmetrical features, flawless skin, looks to be 22 years old-entering any meat-market bar, a woman lucky enough to have this face would turn enough heads to stir a breeze. But when Victor Johnston points and clicks, the face on his computer screen changes into a state of superheated, crystallized beauty. "You can see it. It's just so extraordinary," says Johnston, a professor of biopsychology at New Mexico State University who sounds a little in love with his creation.
The transformation from pretty woman to knee-weakening babe is all the more amazing because the changes wrought by Johnston's software are, objectively speaking, quite subtle. He created the original face by digitally averaging 16 randomly selected female Caucasian faces. The changing pro-gram then exaggerated the ways in which female faces differ from male faces, creating, in human-beauty-science field, a "hyper-female". The eyes grew a bit larger, the nose narrowed slightly and the lips plumped. These are shifts of just a few millimeters, but experiments in this country and Scotland are suggesting that both males and females find "feminized" versions of averaged faces more beautiful.
Johnston hatched this little movie as part of his ongoing study into why human beings find some people attractive and others homely. He may not have any rock-solid answers yet, but he is far from alone in attempting to apply scientific inquiry to so ambiguous a subject. Around the world, re-searchers are marching into territory formerly staked out by poets and painters to uncover the underpinnings of human attractiveness.
The research results so far are surprising and humbling. Numerous studies indicate that human beauty may not be simply in the eye of the beholder or an arbitrary cultural artifact. It may be ancient and universal, wrought through ages of evolution that rewarded reproductive winners and killed off losers. If beauty is not truth, it may be health and fertility: Halle Berry's flawless skin may fascinate moviegoers because, at some deep level, it persuades us that she is parasite-free.
Human attractiveness research is a relatively young and certainly contentious field-the allure of hyper—females, for example, is still hotly debated—but those on its front lines agree on one point: We won't conquer "looks—ism" until we understand its source. As psychologist Nancy Etcoff puts it: "The idea that beauty is unimportant or a cultural construct is the real beauty myth. We have to understand beauty, or we will always be enslaved by it. /

单选题 The word "symmetrical" underlined in Paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to ______.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 根据文中第一段的内容“Symmetrical features，flawless skin，looks to be 22 years old”可知，匀称的体型，无暇的皮肤，看起来只有22岁。选项中的A项为“成比例的”符合文意。B项“漂亮的”，C项“华丽的”，D项“个性的，有特点的”，这三项均不符合题意。
单选题 The woman described in the very beginning of the text is ______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 通过第一段内容“She's cute...a woman lucky enough to have this face would turn enough heads to stir a breeze.”可知，这位女士是一位漂亮的女人。据此判断，应选择C。A项“事实上她20多岁”文中提到他看起来有22岁，但是并未给出她的真实年龄，与文意不符。B项“约翰斯顿的理想女友”，D项“是个职业妓女”，这两项在文中均未提到。所以，这三项均不符合题意。
单选题 The word "exaggerated" underlined in Paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to ______.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 根据文中第二段的内容“The changing program then exaggerated the ways”可知，正在改变的项目夸大了方式。选项中的A项为“夸大”符合文意。B项“放大，扩大”，C项“透支”，D项“扩大某人的权力，提高某人的地位”，这三项均不符合题意。
单选题 Victor Johnston synthesized a new face by combining the features of 16 ______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 通过第二段内容“…by digitally averaging 16 randomly selected female Caucasian faces，”可知，他随意挑选了16张白种人的面孔，合成一张新的脸型。据此判断，应选择C。A项“漂亮的欧洲女人”，B项“世界上不同的女人”，D项“普通的西方女人”，这三项均不符合题意。
单选题 The word "hatched" underlined in Paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to ______.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 根据文中第三段的内容“Johnston hatched this little movie”可知，Johnston秘密谋划了这部小电影。选项中的A项为“密谋，秘密计划”符合文意。B项“计划，安排”，C项“策划，图谋”，D项“设计，策划”，这三项均不符合题意。
单选题 Through a few tiny changes made by Johnston, the synthesized face became even more ______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 通过第二段内容“The changing program then exaggerated the ways in which female faces differ from male faces, creating, in human-beauty-science field, a 'hyper-female'.”可知，稍作修改后，女子的脸就变得更加女子气了。据此判断，应选择C。A项“男子气的”，B项“普通的”，D项“中性的”，这三项均和原文不符。
单选题 Victor Johnston has produced such an attractive face in order to ______.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】[解析] 通过第三段内容“Johnston hatched this little movies…into why human beings find some people attractive and other homely.”可知，Johnston想找出是什么让一些人更具吸引力，而另外一些人却是普通的。据此判断，应选择B。A项“给电脑换一个漂亮的屏幕”，C项“证明人有能力创造美”，D项“为什么白人的脸很特别”，均未在文中提到。所以，这三项均与文意不符。
单选题 The word "humbling" underlined in Paragraph 4 refers to ______.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 根据文中第四段的内容“The research results so far are surprising and humbling”可知，到目前为止，研究结果是令人吃惊的和令人羞辱的。选项中的A项为“丢脸的，可耻的”符合文意。B项“震惊的”，C项“敏感的，易受影响的”，D项“难以置信的”，这三项均不符合题意。
单选题 Paragraph 4 suggests that human beauty may be ______.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 通过第四段内容“It may be ancient and universal, wrought through ages of evolution that rewarded reproductive winners and killed off losers.”可知，从古至今，人类对美的看法没有根本改变。据此判断，应选D。A项“文化不同的”，B项“无病的偶像”，C项“依赖个人”，这三项均不符合文意。
单选题 It's a consensus among the researchers that humans are still unconscious of ______.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 通过第五段内容“Human attractiveness research is a relatively young and certainly contentious field...We won't conquer "looks-ism" until we understand its source.”可知，人类吸引力研究是一个相对年轻并容易引起争论的领域。在我们理解它的来源之前，我们不能攻克“外观主义”。也就是说，人类仍然不知道美丽是由什么构成的。据此判断，应选择D。A项“为什么看起来很迷人”，通过文章第三段内容可知，人们已经意识到为什么他们很吸引人，尽管答案还不是很明确。B项“何时吸引力是重要的”，C项“美的力量有多强大”，在文中未提到。所以，这三项均不符合文意。