单选题 When my son started going to "school" full time in February, I readied myself for immunological battle. Day-care kids get sicker than children who stay at home, and I knew mine" would, too. But other parents assured me that by kindergarten he"d be the healthiest kid in class. Last week parenting message boards lit up when a University of California, Berkeley, researcher presented unpublished data showing that children who attend playgroups or day care have a 30 percent lower risk of developing childhood leukemia than kids who don"t, possibly because they are exposed to more infections early in life.
The human immune system is an elegant mix of two parts—a built-in, or innate, system and an acquired one. The innate system has already read the manual on generic germs. The acquired system, by contrast, is a bookworm, reading on the go,, learning with every new microbial visitor and growing wiser as it ages. Together, the two systems assess the foods we eat, the particles we breathe, the bacteria we touch, then determine whether or not to attack.
Can a young immune system handle so much new information? Research published over the past decade is reassuring. Scientists at the University of Arizona found that 2-year-olds who attend day care in the first six months of life have almost twice as many colds as stay-at-home kids. But they have a third fewer colds between the ages of 6 and 11. By 13, there"s no difference in the groups, suggesting that the kids" immune systems catch up with each other. Several studies have found that children who go to day care early in life are also less likely to develop asthma.
The Arizona scientists discovered that high-risk children who start day care before 3 months old have lower levels of immunoglobutin E—a marker of allergic susceptibility connected to asthma-than non-day-care kids. Those levels remain low for the first three years of life. Anne Wright, the study"s lead author, says this doesn"t necessarily mean that kids benefit from being sick more often. She believes the findings support the "hygiene hypothesis," which suggests that simply being exposed to more microbes—which run rampant at day care—educates the immune system, making it less likely to launch unwarranted warfare.
All this is good to know. But I had to ask the experts: why am I getting: so sick? "Because you live with the source," says Liu. And I hug and kiss him a lot, too, so I"m probably getting a big dose of germs. It"s also possible that my immune system"s memory has faded a bit, making old harmless viruses look new and dangerous. Or I may be meeting bugs my immune system has never seen before. The most comforting words I heard were from Columbia University pediatrician Philip L. Graham Ⅲ, who told me that pediatricians get horribly sick during their first year of treating patients. After that, they"re immunological powerhouses.
单选题 The findings of the research at the University of California, Berkeley show that ______
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 第一段提到伯克利分校的一项研究成果,研究发现,参加集体游戏活动或日托的儿童,比那些待在家里的儿童患病的可能性更小。根据下文的解释,这是因为他们后天获得的免疫能力在起作用。
单选题 The two parts of our immune system have different functions in that ______
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】[解析] 第二段提到,人的免疫系统分作两部分,一部分是先天获得的,另一部分是后天获得的。作者用读书学习做了一个生动的比喻,来说明后天获得的那部分免疫能力的特征:在人出生以后,在成长的过程中,原有的免疫系统在与环境的互动过程中,学会了判断哪些东西对身体有害,哪些无害,并学会了对像病菌这样的有害物质发起攻击,保护人的身体健康。
A:根据第二段,先天获得的那部分免疫能力仅仅对病菌的特性有了些一般的了解,仅仅提供了一个基础,整个免疫能力的获得还必须在与环境的互动中完成,也就是说,免疫系统还要在人成长的过程中学会识别和抵御各种病菌。
单选题 From the third paragraph we learn that ______
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】[解析] 第三段回答了第一句这个问句提出的问题,而作者给出的答案是肯定的——这也是过去10年中的科学研究成果所证明的:它能够处理大量的各种各样的新信息(指第二段中提到的免疫系统的各种能力)。
A:第一段最后一句,第三段最后一句,还有其他段落都提到了早接受日托能使孩子未来的免疫能力更强。
C:第四段前两句只是提到在三岁前他们患哮喘的可能性比较大。而第三段最后一句说,早接受日托的这些孩子日后更不容易患哮喘病。
单选题 An "unwarranted warfare" (Para.4) for the immune system is one in which ______
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 这里unwarranted的意思是haying no justification or groundless(无根据的,无理由的)。这里warfare当然是指免疫系统对病菌的抵御战。第二段明确提到,免疫系统在与环境的相互作用中变得更强大,学会了抵御各种病菌的攻击。因此,这里所说的免疫系统不打“无根据的战争”,应该指免疫系统不会对所有细菌发起攻击,它会有选择地对有害细菌发起攻击,起到抵抗病菌侵入的作用。
单选题 From Doctor Philip L. Graham Ⅲ, the author has got the reassuring message that ______
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 第四段提到了“卫生假说”的内容,即在与充满细菌的环境的互动中,人的免疫系统变得更加聪明、更加强大起来,学会了有选择攻击有害细菌,保护人的安全。亚利桑那州立大学等机构的科学家们用实验的方法证明了这一假设的可靠性。
B:原文只是说,如果早接触病菌,我们的免疫系统可能会更好地学会抵御细菌,使身体变得更有抵抗力。但这并不等于说人应该大量地接触细菌。
C:最后一段提到,儿科医生第一年给孩子看病时经常自己被传染,但以后他们就有了很强的抵抗力。即使如此,这也不意味着今后他们永远不会被传染。