单选题 Low speed bicycle crashes can badly injure or even kill children if they fall onto the ends of the handlebars so a team of engineers is redesigning the humble handlebar in a bid to make it safer.
Kristy Arbogast, a bioengineer at the Children"s Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, began the project with her colleagues after a study of serious abdominal (腹部的) injuries in children in the past 30 years showing that more than a third were caused by bicycle accidents. "The task was to identify how the injuries occurred and come up with some countermeasures," she says.
By interviewing the children and their parents, Arbogast and her team were able to reconstruct many of the accidents and identified a common mechanism responsible for serious injures. They discovered that most occur when children hit an obstacle at a slow speed, causing them to topple over. To maintain their balance they turn the handlebars through 90 degrees—but their momentum (冲力) forces them into the end of the handlebars. The bike then falls over and the other end of the handlebars hits the ground, ramming it into their abdomen.
The solution the group came up with is a handgrip (握柄) fitted with a spring and damping (缓冲的) system. The spring absorbs up to 50 per cent of the forces transmitted through the handlebars in an impact. The group hopes to commercialize the device, which should add only a few dollars to the cost of a bike. "But our task has been one of education because up until now, bicycle manufacturer were unaware of the problem," says Arbogast.
The team has also approached the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to try to persuade manufacturers to adopt the new design. A decision is expected later this year.

单选题 According to the passage, some engineers are trying to improve the handlebars because ______.

单选题 In Paragraph 2, the author mentions a study of serious abdominal injuries ______.

【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】[解析] 细节推断题。第二段提到：Kristy Arbogast是在一项研究结果的基础之上开始做这个项目的，这项研究的结果表明在过去的30年里，超过1/3的儿童腹部受重伤起因于自行车事故。由此推知，这个研究结果是她开始做项目的推动因素之一，故选D。

单选题 Paragraph 3 mainly discusses ______.

单选题 The new handgrip works in which of the following ways?

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】[解析] 细节推断题。文章第四段第二句The spring absorbs up to 50 percent of the forces transmitted through the handlebars in all impact提到：在撞击过程中，握柄上的弹簧会吸收掉50%沿车把传递的冲撞力。可以判断出这项设计可以减少可能会对儿童造成伤害的冲力，所以正确答案为B。

单选题 The passage implies that ______.

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】[解析] 细节推断题。依第四段最后一句中的“But our task has been one of education because up until now,bicycle manufacturer were unaware of the problem”可知，生产商还没有意识到问题的严重性；依第五段第一句The team has also approached the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to try to persuade manufacturers to adopt the new design可知，他们团队要联合美国消费品安全委员会来劝说生产商。综合这两点可以推断出这项工作并不容易完成，故A为正确答案。