Almost eight years ago, the American educator Abraham Flexner published an article entitled The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge. In it, he argued that the most powerful intellectual and technological breakthroughs usually emerged from research that initially appeared "useless" , without much relevance to real life. As a result, it was vital, Flexner said, that these "useless" efforts should be supported, even if they did not produce an immediate payback, because otherwise the next wave of innovation simply would not occur. " Curiosity, which may or may not produce something useful, is probably the outstanding characteristic of modern thinking," he declared. In 1929, Flexner persuaded a wealthy American family, the Bambergers, to use some of their donations to fund the Institute for Advanced Study(IAS)at Princeton to support exactly this kind of "undirected" research. And it paid off: brilliant Jewish scientists fleeing from Nazi Germany, such as Albert Einstein, gathered at the IAS to explore undirected ideas. And while some of these, such as Einstein's own work developing his early theory of relativity, did not initially seem valuable, many eventually produced powerful applications(though after many decades). "Without Einstein's theory, our GPS tracking devices would be inaccurate by about seven miles," writes Robbert Dijkgraaf, the current director of the IAS, in the foreword to a newly released reprint of Flexner's article. Concepts such as quantum mechanics(量子力学)or superconductivity also seemed fairly useless at first—but yielded huge dividends at a later date. The reason why the IAS is re-releasing Flexner's article now is that scientists such as Dijkgraaf fear this core principle is increasing under threat. The Trump administration has released a projected budget that threatens to reduce funding for the arts, science and educational groups. Many Republicans believe that research is better financed by business or philanthropists(慈善家)than by government. But one striking fact about the past century is how much American innovation originated in federal projects; Silicon Valley would never have boomed were it not for the fact that state funding enabled the development of the World Wide Web, for example.

单选题 What may be the best title for the passage?

【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】解析：细节题。文章首段提到“The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge”(无用知识的有用之处)这本书名，紧接着对此进行了阐释，the most powerful intellectual and technological breakthroughs usually emerged from research that initially appeared“useless”(最强大的科技突破经常来自于看似没什么用处的研究)。后面的段落主要是通过一些例子来论证首段的观点。因此D选项(创新想法的价值)正确。A选项“创造性思维的重要性”只是第二段谈到的一个观点，不能概括全文。B选项“基础研究的重要性”，文章中没有谈到，排除。C选项“硅谷的创新发明”只是最后一段提到的一个例子，排除。

单选题 According to Abraham Flexner, what is an important feature of modern thinking?

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】解析：细节题。根据文章第二段的末尾句“Curiosity，which may or may not produce something useful，is probably the outstanding characteristic of modern thinking”， “the outstanding characteristic of modern thinking” 是题干中“an important feature of modern thinking”的同意替换，都表示“现代思维的显著特征”。故A“好奇心”为正确答案。 B“运用”、C“贡献”、D“热情”，在文中均没有涉及。

单选题 The " undirected" research(Para. 3)refers to research________.

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】解析：细节题。undirected的意思是“没有目标的，没有导向的”。根据第四段中“And while some of these…did not initially seem valuable”可知，在最开始看起来没有什么价值的东西，往往能够成就一些事情，比如爱因斯坦的一些工作，在当时他并没有想好为什么要做这些事情，但后来却凭借这些事情成就了他的相对论。B选项“没有任何实际意图”符合题意。A选项“政府机构没有资助的研究”和D选项“非营利机构支持的研究”与题意无关，故排除。C选项容易误选，“不明确的实验方法”在文中没有提到。

单选题 Examples of initially "useless" research include all of the following EXPECT________.

【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】解析：细节题。由“useless”research定位到第四和第五段，四个选项在文中都有提到，但是根据第五段的“Without Einstein's theory，our-GPS—tracking devices would be inaccurate by about seven miles”这一句可知，GPS tracking devices只是“theory of relativity”的产物，是一个实物，并不是理论。A、B、C一样，都是由起初看起来无用的研究发展而来的理论。