单选题{{B}}Part B{{/B}} In the following article some paragraphs have
been removed. For Questions 66~70, choose the most suitable paragraphfrom the
list A~F tofit into each ofthe numbered gaps. There is one paragraph which does
notfit in any of the gaps.
A.There remained, however, the“easier”labor—the labor that required
the human eyes, ears, judgment and mind but no sweating. It nevertheless had its
miseries, for it tended to be dull, repetitious, and boring. And there is always
the sour sense of endlessly doing something. unpleasant under compulsion.
B.For one thing, much of human effort that is today put
into“miming the world”will be unnecessary. With computers, robots and
automation, a great deal of the daily grind will appear to be running itself.
This is nothing startling. It is a trend that has been rapidly on its way ever
since World WarⅡ. C.And now we stand at the brink of a
change that will be the greatest of all, for work in its old sense will
disappear altogether. To most people, work has always been an efforfful
exercising of mind or body—compelled by the bitter necessity of earning the
necessities of life—plus an occasional period of leisure in which to rest or
have fun. D.Clearly there will be a painful period of
transition, one that is starting already, and one that will be in full swing as
the 21st century begins. E.In the first place, the
computer age will introduce a total revolution in our notions of education, and
is beginning to do so now. The coming of the computer will make learning fun,
and a successfully stimulated mind will learn quickly. It will undoubtedly turn
out that the“average”child is much more intelligent and creative than we
generally suppose. There was a time, after all, when the ability to read and
write was confined to a very small group of“scholars”and almost all of them
would have scouted the notion that just about anyone could learn the intricacies
of literacy. Yet with mass education general literacy came to be a fact.
F.This means that the dull, the boring, the repetitious,
the mind-stultifying work will begin to disappear from the job market—is already
beginning to disappear. This, of course, will introduce two vital sets of
problem—is already introducing them. Periodically in history,
there come periods of great transition in which work changes its meaning. There
was a time, perhaps 10,000 years ago, when human beings stopped feeding
themselves by hunting game and gathering plants. and increasingly turned to
agriculture. In a way, that represented the invention of“work”.
Then, in the latter decades of the 18th century, as the Industrial
Revolution began in Great Britain, there was another transition in which the
symbols of work were no longer the hoe and the plow; they were replaced by the
mill and the assembly line. 66.______
With the Industrial Revolution, machinery—powered first by steam, then by
electricity and internal combustion engines—took over the hard physical tasks
and relieved the strain on human and animal muscles.
67.______ And yet, such jobs have been characteristic of
the human condition in the first three-quarters of the 20th century. They've
made too little demand on the human mind and spirit to keep them fresh and
alive, made too much demand for any machine to serve the purpose until now.
The electronic computer, invented in the 1940's and improved at
breakneck speed, was a machine that, for the first time, seemed capable of doing
work that had until then been the preserve of the human mind.With the coming of
the microchip in the 1970's. computers became compact enough, versatile enough
and(most important of a11)cheap enough to serve as the brains of affordable
machines that could take their place on the assembly line and in the office.
68.______ First, what will happen to the
human beings who have been working at these disappearing jobs?
Second, where will we get the human beings that will do the new jobs that
will appear—jobs that are demanding, interesting and mind-exercising, but that
requires a high-tech level of thought and education? 69.______
The first problem, that of technological unemployment, will be
temporary, for it will arise out of the fact that there is now a generation of
employees who have not been educated to fit the computer age. However, (in
advanced nations, at least)they will be the last generation to be so lacking, so
that with them this problem will disappear or, at least, diminish to the point
of non-crisis proportions. The second problem—that of
developing a large enough number of high-tech minds to run a high-tech
world—will be no problem at all, once we adjust our thinking.
70.______ Right now, creativity seems to be confined to a
very few, and it is easy to suppose that that is the way it must be However,
with the proper availability of computerized education, humanity will surprise
the elite few once again.
单选题According to the "gene-culture coevolution ” model, which of the following would be true at the end of the day?
单选题Painting your house is like adding something to a huge communal picture in which the rest of the painting is done either by nature or by other people. The picture is not static; it changes as we move about, with the time of day, with the seasons, with new planting, new buildings and with alterations to old ones. Any individual house is just a fragment of this picture, nevertheless it has the power to make or mark the overall scene. In the past people used their creative talents in painting their homes, with great imagination and in varied but always subtly blending colors. The last vestiges of this great tradition can still be seen in the towns of the extreme west of Ireland. It has never been recognized as an art form, partly because of the physical difficulty of hanging a street in a gallery and partly because it is always changing, as paint fades and is renewed. Also it is a communal art which cannot be identified with any person, except in those many cases where great artists of the past found inspiration in ordinary street scenes and recorded them in paint.
Following the principles of decoration that were so successful in the past, you should first take a long look at the house and its surroundings and consider possible limitations. The first concerns the amount of color and intensity in the daylight in Britain. Colors that look perfectly in keeping with the sunny, clear skies of the Mediterranean would look too harsh in the grayer light of the north. Since bright light is uncomfortable for the eyes, colors must be strong in order to be seen clearly. Viewed in a dimmer light they appear too bright. It is easy to see this if you look at a brick house while the sun is alternately shining and then going behind a cloud. The brick work colors look much more intense when the sun is hidden.
The second limitation is the colors of the surroundings: the colors which go best with Cotswold stone and a rolling green countryside will be different from those that look best by the sea or in a red--brick/ blue--slate industrial town. In every area there are always colors that at once look in keeping.
In many areas there are distinctive traditions in the use of color that may be a useful guide. The eastern countries of England and Scotland, particularly those with a local tradition of rendering of plastering, use colors applied solidly over the wall. Usually only the window frames and doors are picked out in another color, often white or pale grey. Typical wall colors are the pink associated with Suffolk and pate buffs. Much stronger colors such as deep earth red, orange, blue and green are also common. In the coastal villages of Essex, as well as inland in Hertfordshire, the house--fronts of overlapping boards are traditionally painted black originally tarred like ships with windows and doors outlined in white. In Kent these weather boarded houses are usually white. In stone areas of Yorkshire and farther north, color is rare. the houses are usually left in their natural color, though many are painted white as they probably all were once.
单选题How can the trade of wild animals be eliminated eventually?
单选题 Although we already know a great deal about
influenza, and although the World Health Organization is constantly collecting
detailed information from its chain of influenza reference laboratories
throughout the world, it is extremely difficult for epidemiologists, who study
infectious disease, to predict when and where the next flu epidemic will occur,
and how severe it will be. There are three kinds of influenza
virus, known as A, B and C. Influenza C virus is relatively stable and causes
mild infections that do not spread far through the population. The A and B types
are unstable, and are responsible for the epidemics that cause frequent concern.
Following any virus attack, the human body builds up antibodies which confer
immunity to that strain of virus, but a virus with the capacity to change its
character is able to by-pass this protection. Variability is less developed in
the influenza B virus, which affects only human beings. An influenza B virus may
cause a widespread epidemic but will have little effect if introduced into the
same community soon afterwards, since nearly everyone will have built up
antibodies and will be immune. The influenza A virus, which affects animals
also, is extremely unstable and is responsible for some of the worst outbreaks
of the disease, such as the unparalleled pandemic, or world epidemic, of
1918-19, when about half the world's population were infected and about twenty
million people died, some from pneumonia caused by the virus itself and some
from secondary complications caused by bacteria. Accurate
prediction is difficult because of the complication of the factors. A particular
virus may be related to one to which some of the population have partial
involved immunity. The extent to which it will spread will depend on factors
such as its own strength, or virulence the ease with which it can be transmitted
and the strength of the opposition it encounters. Scientists, however, have a
reliable general picture of the world situation, influenza A attacks us in waves
every two or three years, while influenza B, which travels more slowly, launches
its main assaults every three to six years. The outbreaks vary from isolated
cases to epidemic involving a tenth or more of the population. We may
confidently prophesy that sooner or later large numbers of people will be
feeling the unpleasant effects of some kind of influenza virus.
单选题An additional merit of a good case theme is that you may______.
单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}}
World leaders met recently at United
Nations headquarters in New York City to discuss the environmental issues raised
at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. The heads of state were supposed to decide what
further steps should be taken to halt the decline of Earth's life-support
systems. In fact, this meeting had much the flavour of the original Earth
Summit. To wit: empty promises, hollow rhetoric, bickering between rich and
poor, and irrelevant initiatives. Think U.S. Congress in slow motion.
Almost obscured by this torpor is the fact that there has been some
remarkable progress over the past five years—real changes in the attitude of
ordinary people in the Third World toward family size and a dawning realisation
that environmental degradation and their own well-being are intimately, and
inversely, linked. Almost none of this, however, has anything to do with what
the bureaucrats accomplished in Rio. Or it didn't accomplish.
One item on the agenda at Rio, for example, was a renewed effort to save
tropical forests. (A previous UN-sponsored initiative had fallen apart when it
became clear that it actually hastened deforestation.) After Rio, a UN working
group came up with more than 100 recommendations that have so far gone nowhere.
One proposed forestry pact would do little more than immunizing wood-exporting
nations against trade sanctions. An effort to draft an agreement
on what to do about the climate changes caused by CO2 and other
greenhouse gases has fared even worse. Blocked by the Bush Administration from
setting mandatory limits, the UN in 1992 called on nations to voluntarily reduce
emissions to 1990 levels. Several years later, it's as if Rio had never
happened. A new climate treaty is scheduled to be signed this December in Kyoto,
Japan, but governments still cannot agree on these limits. Meanwhile, the U.S.
produces 7% more CO2 than it did in 1990, and emissions in the
developing world have risen even more sharply. No one would confuse the "Rio
process" with progress. While governments have dithered at a
pace that could make drifting continents impatient, people have acted.
Birth-rates are dropping faster than expected, not because of Rio but because
poor people are deciding on their own to reduce family size. Another positive
development has been a growing environmental consciousness among the poor. From
slum dwellers in Karachi, Pakistan, to colonists in Rondonia, Brazil, urban poor
and rural peasants alike seem to realize that they pay the biggest price for
pollution and deforestation. There is cause for hope as well in the growing
recognition among business people that it is net in their long-term interest to
fight environmental reforms. John Browne, chief executive of British Petroleum,
boldly asserted in a major speech in May that the threat of climate change could
no longer be ignored.
单选题
{{B}} Questions 11 to 13 are based on an
interview with the EU's environment commissioner, Mr. Stavros Dimas. You now
have 15 seconds to read Questions 11 to 13.{{/B}}
单选题It can be inferred from the passage that early hotelkeepers in the United States were______ .
单选题Which of the following is true of the ethnic minority families in the U. S. according to the passage?
单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}}
Science has long had an uneasy
relationship with other aspects of culture. Think of Galileo's 17th-century
trial for his rebelling belief before the Catholic Church or poet William
Blake's harsh remarks against the mechanistic worldview of Isaac Newton. The
schism between science and the humanities has, if anything, deepened in this
century. Until recently, the scientific community was so
powerful that it could afford to ignore its critics -- but no longer. As funding
for science has declined, scientists have attacked "antiscience" in several
books, notably Higher Superstition, by Paul R. Gross, a biologist at the
University of Virginia, and Norman Levitt, a mathematician at Rutgers
University; auld The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan of Cornell
University. Defenders of science have also voiced their concerns
at meetings such as "The Flight from Science and Reason", held in New York City
in 1995, and "Science in the Age of (Mis) information", which assembled last
June near Buffalo. Antiscience clearly means different things to
different people. Gross and Levitt find fault primarily with sociologists,
philosophers and other academics who have questioned science's objectivity.
Sagan is more con cerned with those who believe in ghosts, creationism and other
phenomena that contradict the scientific worldview. A survey of
news stories in 1996 reveals that the antiscience tag has been attached to many
other groups as well, from authorities who advocated the elimination of the last
remaining stocks of smallpox virus to Republicans who advocated decreased
funding for basic research. Few would dispute that the term
applies to the Unabomber, whose manifesto, published in 1995, scorns science and
longs for return to a pre-technological utopia. But surely that does not mean
environmentalists concerned about uncontrolled industrial growth are
antiscience, as an essay in US News & World Report last May seemed to
suggest. The environmentalists, inevitably, respond to such
critics. The true enemies of science, argues Paul Ehrlich of Stanford
University, a pioneer of environmental studies, are those who question tile
evidence supporting global warming, the depletion of tile ozone layer and other
consequences of industrial growth. Indeed, some observers fear
that the antiscience epithet is in danger of becoming meaningless. "The term
'antiscience' can lump together too many, quite different things," notes Harvard
University philosopher Gerald Holton in his 1993 work Science and Anti Science.
"They have in common only one thing that they tend to annoy or threaten those
who regard themselves as more enlightened."
单选题WhatdoesGeorgeOrwelldo?A.Aliterarycritic.B.Awarcorrespondent.C.AvolunteerintheSpanishCivilWar.D.Anovelist.
单选题A good case theme can prevent______.
单选题
单选题Fingerprints, one of the great deciders of innocence or guilt in criminal charges, are now in the dock themselves. This is because of a growing number of claims from defendants that their 'prints' have been 'lifted' and planted at scenes of crimes. And these allegations are being taken seriously by lawyers, judges and policemen because it is possible to move a fingerprint from one spot and place it elsewhere. With one of the cornerstones of evidence now being placed in doubt a committee of criminal lawyers is carrying out an inquiry into fingerprinting. The investigation has been ordered by Justice, the prestigious legal organization, and a report is due early next year. Last night a spokesman for Justice said: "There are an increasing number of cases where people are claiming their prints have been transferred and put in incrimination objects. We are not aiming to establish if these allegations are true or not, but we are questioning current fingerprinting methods as part of a general investigation into scientific evidence. Some of Britain's top criminal lawyers are worried about this increasing number of claims." How can a fingerprint be transferred? A fingermark left on a greasy glass or some other smooth surface can be 'lifted' with a strip of adhesive. It can then be deposited on another, perhaps incriminating, object. Accusations about 'planted prints' were first put up at an Old Bailey IRA bomb trial nine years ago without success. Fingerprints at the scene of a crime used to be dusted down with fine powder, photographed for identification purposes, then the pictures and the objects carrying the prints were produced in court. However, since 1973 a new method of taking prints has been generally used in Britain. Police experts now use a strip of adhesive tape to 'lift' a print which is then produced in court as evidence. Before 1973 the object on which the prints were found a bottle, dagger or a gun used to be shown in court as well. This is no longer necessary. As a result criminals are claiming that their prints have been lifted and planted elsewhere. There have been two successful claims in the United States, though this line of defence has failed in Britain. According to the ex-chief of Scotland Yard's fingerprint department, Mr Harold Squires, who is now an independent defence witness: "More than 55% of the cases I now get are making these claims. But so far I have not seen any fingerprint evidence that proves the allegation to be true. Petty crooks are always accusing the police of lifting their prints and planting them at the scene of a crime." According to ex-chief Superintendent Squires, lifting a mark and transferring it to another object "requires great skill and trouble". He added: "It's almost impossible but it can be done. It can usually be easily detected by someone like me, but there is a chance that even I may not be able to tell." Mr. Squires sees the new line of defence as an attack on the police by desperate men. He would like the old method of photographing prints and producing them together with the object pictured to be generally used again.
单选题
Questions 17 to 20 are
based on a conversation between a couple about their holiday budget. You now
have 20 seconds to read Questions 17 to
20.
单选题What are the characteristics of Standard English?
单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}}
Cowbirds, like cuckoos, are brood
parasites—that is, they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and leave
those others to do the hard work of raising their changeling young. But there is
a difference. A cuckoo chick usually pushes the original nestlings out, so that
it can monopolise the food brought by its unwitting adoptive parents. Cowbird
chicks, by contrast, seem to tolerate their nestmates. That
seems odd. So odd, in fact, that Jeffrey Hoover and Scott Robinson of the
Illinois Natural History Survey decided to look into the matter. What they found
is that the host bird's real chicks are pawns in a protection racket of a sort
the Sicilian Mafia would be proud to have invented. The victims
of the racket are prothonotary warblers. These birds do not reject cowbird eggs
even though they look quite different from their own. That in itself is
intriguing, for cuckoos, again in contrast to cowbirds, lay eggs that mimic
those of their hosts. Dr. Hoover and Dr. Robinson demonstrated what was going on
by erecting 182 warbler nestboxes at the top of narrow, greasy poles.
The first phase of their study was observational. Over the course of six
years, they watched 472 nests in which warblers had laid their eggs. Almost half
of these were parasitised by cowbirds. But, parasitised or not, almost
all—protected as they were from ground-based predators— successfully produced
fledgling warblers. Then the experiment began. In the following
seasons Dr. Hoover and Dr. Robinson removed cowbird eggs from some of the
parasitised nests. At the same time, they reduced the diameter of the entrances
to some of the nest boxes, in order to deny admission to cowbirds (which are
larger than warblers). Warblers whose nests were thus protected
did well, raising an average of four chicks to maturity in the absence of a
cowbird parasite. Nests from which cowbird eggs had been removed, but which
lacked protection, did badly. In fact, more than half of them were attacked. The
eggs were pecked open and the nests themselves torn to pieces. Nests thus
attacked yielded, on average, but a single fledgling, whereas those with a
cowbird egg in them yielded three warbler fledglings. Paying protection money in
the form of food for the cowbird nestling thus looks a good deal from the
warbler's point of view, and explains why cowbirds do not need to disguise their
eggs to look like those of prothonotaries. The cowbirds'
dastardly Wicks do not stop at this protection racket, either, for a fifth of
those warbler nests that had never had cowbird eggs in them also got destroyed.
Dr. Hoover and Dr. Robinson ascribe this behaviour to a strategy they call
"farming". If warblers lose a clutch, they will often produce a second. If a
cowbird female fails to lay in a warbler nest in time for her egg to hatch with
those of the host, she can reset the clock in her favour by killing the first
clutch. Even the Mafia never thought of that
one.
单选题
{{I}}Questions 17~20 are based on the following talk.
You now have 20 seconds to read Questions
17~20.{{/I}}
单选题
{{B}}Questions 11 ~ 13 are based on the following
talk. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11 ~
13.{{/B}}
