阅读理解Questions are based on the following passage

阅读理解Passage Four A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold identically the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as sacred texts

阅读理解Passage 2 Many people believe the glare from snow causes snowblindness

阅读理解Passage 2 According to a new survey, 40 percent of us believe it is OK to turn up late for a meeting, because mobile phones have made it so much easier to let people know that you are five minutes away

阅读理解Questions 16 to 19 are based on the following passage. Student Profiles at ABC University.

阅读理解Text 3 Given the choice, younger professionals are most interested in working at tech companies like Apple and government agencies like the State Department, but they are comparatively disinterested in working in the financial industry, according to a survey conducted by Universum, a researchftrrn

阅读理解Which of the following is the best title of the text?

阅读理解Passage H For office innovators, the unrealized dream of the paperless office is a classic example of high-tech hubris

阅读理解Questions 1 to 10 are based on the following passage

阅读理解TEXT A Nathaniel Hawthorne‟s writings are noteworthy for their perceptive exploration of the hidden motivations behind the puritan American heritage

阅读理解 Dry-cleaning machines that use liquid carbon dioxide as a solvent will go on sale in the US next year—thanks to chemists in North Carolina who have developed CO2-soluble detergents. Dry-cleaners will lose their characteristic smell, and the new process will cut the amount of toxic waste produced in cleaning clothes. Joseph DeSimone, a chemist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, says liquid CO2 is an ideal solvent because after cleaning, the CO2 can be evaporated off, collected, liquefied and reused. The problem in developing the process, says DeSimone, has been that CO2 by itself is not a good solvent. However, he points out that not much dissolves in water without the help of detergents, yet water is the most common solvent. What CO2 needed, he thought, was the right detergent. Detergent molecules such as those in washing-up liquid have two chemically distinct ends: one has a liking for water, the other sticks to dirt. Normal detergents do not dissolve in liquid CO2, so DeSimone created three CO2-soluble detergents. One end of the detergents has a fluorocarbon group, which makes them soluble in CO2. The other end is soluble in water, oil or silicone, depending on the type of dirt being removed. The person doing the dry-cleaning has to decide which of the detergents is best for the job. DeSimone's company, MiCell, will start selling liquid CO2 dry-cleaning machines next year. They operate at room temperature at a pressure 'about ten times the pressure of a bicycle tyre', according to a spokesman for MiCell. Most dry-cleaners currently use chlorinated hydrocarbons such as perchloroethylene. But the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is clamping down on the toxic waste emission this produces. After cleaning with the new machines, the liquid CO2 is evaporated and collected for reuse, leaving a residue of detergent and dirt. Brad Lienhart, president of MiCell, says that cutting waste and pollution is the company's strongest selling point. 'Dry-cleaner owners are saying 'get this burden off my back',' he says. He hopes to sell a hundred machines in the first year of business. About 15,000 conventional dry-cleaning machines are sold around the world every year. Buster Bell, who owns Bell Laundry and Dry Cleaning in South Carolina, says the MiCell technology looks competitive, and he likes the reduced environmental impact. 'You really don't know what is coming from the EPA,' he says.

阅读理解Why did Benjamin Franklin move to Philadelphia?

阅读理解Feminist sociolinguists, over the course of the last few decades, have conducted studies that they believe support the conclusion that women are routinely discriminated against in English-speaking society. They point to the words used to describe women, as well as the words used to describe society as a whole, as indications that the English language, and therefore the English-speaking culture, is slanted towards the advantage of males.The words used to describe women are used as instrument by feminist sociolinguists to denote an inherent sexism in the English language. Word pairs such as master and mistress and sir and madam, they claim, epitomize such sexism. All of the words in question once held positive connotations but, while the masculine forms have retained their respectable associations, the feminine forms have undergone pejoration and now imply sexual promiscuity (混杂) and other negative characteristics. Feminist researchers assume that such pejoration indicate that the status of women in English-speaking society is relatively low.These researchers also find fault with the use of masculine words to describe unisex entities. For example, they feel that there is nothing inherently mainly about mankind, the best man for the job, or the common man. Similarly, the use of such constructions as the “the average students is worried about his grades” indicate to these researchers an inherent sexism in English that is reflective of the cultures in which they are produced.Carolyn Jacobson, author of Non-sexist Language has proposed a solution to this conundrum (难题). She advocates the elimination of all sexed words in favor of gender-neutral terms. No longer should we refer to actors and actresses or waiters and waitresses, as such dichotomies (男女有别) allow for the possibility of negative connotations being associated with the feminine designation. Likewise, she believes that phrases such as mankind should give way to human kind and that the use of the masculine pronoun as the default should be abandoned in favor of neutral constructions. Thus, when sexism is eliminated from the English language, the culture will be more amenable to the deliverance of women as well.

阅读理解We’re in the middle of an epic battle for power in cyberspace. On one side are the traditional, organized, institutional powers such as governments and large multinational corporations. On the other are the distributed: grassroots movements, dissident groups, hackers, and criminals. Initially, the Internet empowered the latter. It gave them a place to coordinate and communicate efficiently, and made them seem invincible. But now, the more traditional institutional powers are winning, and winning big. How these two sides fare in the long term, and the fate of the rest of us who don’t fall into either group, is an open question — and one vitally important to the future of the Internet. In the Internet’s early days, there was a lot of talk about its “natural laws” — how it would transform traditional power blocks, empower the masses, and spread freedom throughout the world. The international nature of the Internet circumvented national laws. Anonymity was easy. Censorship was impossible. Police were clueless about cybercrime. And bigger changes seemed inevitable. Digital cash would undermine national sovereignty. Citizen journalism would topple traditional media, corporate PR, and political parties. The ease of digital copying would destroy the traditional movie and music industries. Web marketing would allow even the smallest companies to compete against corporate giants. It really would be a new world order. This was a Utopian vision, but some of it did come to pass. Internet marketing has transformed commerce. The entertainment industries have been transformed by things like MySpace and YouTube, and are now more open to outsiders. Mass media has changed dramatically, and some of the most influential people in the media have come from the blogging world. There are new ways to organize politically and run elections. Facebook and Twitter really did help disrupt governments. But that is just one side of the Internet’s disruptive character. The Internet has emboldened traditional power as well. On the corporate side, power is being consolidated, a result of two current trends in computing. First, the rise of cloud computing means that we no longer have control of our data. And second, we are increasingly accessing our data using devices that we have much less control over; iPhones, iPads, Android phones, Kindles, ChromeBooks. Unlike traditional operating systems, these devices are controlled much more tightly by the vendors, who limit what software can be run, what they can do, how they’re updated.

阅读理解Envy has become a drive wheel of our modern world. It is the passion that governs our economic life. Modern capitalism relies on its ability to create and increase scarcity and it therefore depends largely on the omnipresence of envy. In affluent societies the availability of material goods increases the demand for positional goods based on social scarcity. Most often it is “envy, emulation, or pride”creating this kind of scarcity, in which “satisfaction is derived from relative position alone, being in front, or from being behind.”As long as people desire what others desire scarcity will be the never-ending condition of our lives that keeps our economy running. Through envy nearly any object can turn into a desirable commodity promising unending happiness. Modern advertising is the best example to illustrate the importance of envy to keep our economy going. Advertising uses envy to make commodities desirable. Posters, announcements and TV-spots show us enviable people who have those things and goods we lack but nonetheless need to gain happiness. Advertisement sells products with the help of envious contagion. Most of the time envy itself remains hidden and is not directly mentioned in commercials. But even this may no longer be true. Envy seems to lose its traditional bad reputation. More and more commercials directly refer to envy to make their commodities more desirable. The most well known example of an open reference to envy is a perfume produced by the Italian company Gucci with the brand name “Envy”promising that you will not only be envied for some external object that belongs to you but for your very self embodied in a seductive fragrance. Those of you familiar with traditional definitions of envy and emulation may, however, question my thesis that our modern economy is driven by envy. Is it really envy that governs our economy or would not emulation be a more appropriate and less moralizing term? There is an easy answer to this question. In parallel with the emergence of our modern world and the rise of capitalism the traditional distinction between bad envy and good emulation has slowly lost its meaning. Where Immanuel Kant, for instance, refers to the passions nature uses to turn a sheepish, idle and inactive Arcadia into a prosperous culture he refers to an “enviously competitive vanity”that no longer allows a neat distinction between envy and emulation but mentions a form of human desire comprising both these traditionally distinguished emotions.

阅读理解Text 3 Ellen Pao spent the last few years spotlighting the technology industrys lack of diversity, in court and beyond

阅读理解TEXT C Making time for science Chronobiology might sound a little futuristiclike something from a science fiction novel, perhapsbut it‟s actually a field of study that concerns one of the oldest processes life on this planet has ever known: short-term rhythms of time and their effect on flora and fauna

阅读理解Text C There are a great many careers in which the increasing emphasis is on specialization

阅读理解D Many people thought babies were not able to learn things until they were five or six months old