单选题Questions 11 to 13 are based on the following talk on hygiene. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11 to 13.
单选题It can be inferred from the last paragraph that
单选题
{{B}} Questions 11 to 13 are based on the
following talk on organic fish. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11 to
13.{{/B}}
单选题Heat is transferred from the tropics to the poles
单选题Whatisthemaintopicofthislecture?A.Bicyclesandcars.B.Buildingcodes.C.Energyconservation.D.Newhousingconstruction.
单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}} Read the following texts answer the questions
accompany them by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on {{B}}ANSWER SHEET
1.{{/B}}{{B}}Text 1{{/B}}
Anything, if it concerns all nations in
the world, we need standards to regulatate it. Space flight and
air travel would shock time travelers from the mid-19th century. People
considered such thing impossible back again: But when it comes to that gem of
late 20th century technology, the Internet, the time travelers might well say:"
Been there. Done that." They have the masons to say
so. Both system grew out of the cutting-edge science of their
time. The telegraph's land lines, underwater cables, and clicking things
reflected the 19th century's research in electromagnet- ism. The Internet's
computers and high-speed connections reflect 20th century, and material
technology. But, while small devices make a global network
possible, it takes human cooperation to make it happen. To do so, nations
negotiated these standards through ITU—the International Telegraph Union—a
century and a half ago. Consider a couple of technical
parallels. Telegrams were sent from one station to the next, where they were
received and retransmitted until they reached their destination. Stations along
the way were owned by different entities, including national governments.
Internet date is sent from one serve computer to another that receives and
retransmits it until it reaches its destination. Again the computers have a
variety of owners. Telegraph messages were encoded in dots and dashes. Internet
date is encoded in ones and zeros. Then there's the social
impact. The Internet is changing the way we do business and communicate. It
makes possible virtual communities for individuals scattered around the planet
who share mutual interests. Yet important as this may turn out to be, it is
affecting a world that was already well connected by radio, television, and
other telecommunications. The Associated Press, Reuters, and other news services
would have spread the bombing of Yugoslavia quickly without the Internet. In
this respect, the global telegraph network was truly revolutionary. The
unprecedented availability of global news in real time gave birth to the
Associated Press and Reuters news services. It gave a global perspective to
newspapers that had focused on local affairs. A provincialism that geographical
isolation had forced on people for millennia was gone forever.
As the experience of the past century and a half has shown, the standards
set up by ITU are not only necessary, but also workable. Therefore, in today's
world, while the Internet is playing an ever more important role in our life, we
also need standards, and that is through the same ITU—now called the
International Telecommunication Union.
单选题Radio, TV and the press are criticized here for ______.
单选题Before a big exam, a sound night"s sleep will do you better than poring over textbooks. That, at least, is the folk wisdom. And science, in the form of behavioral psychology, supports that wisdom. But such behavioral studies cannot distinguish between two competing theories of why sleep is good for the memory. One says that sleep is when permanent memories form. The other says that they are actually formed during the day, but then "edited" at night, to flush away what is superfluous.
To tell the difference, it is necessary to look into the brain of a sleeping person, and that is hard. But after a decade of painstaking work, a team led by Pierre Maquet at Liege University in Belgium has managed to do it. The particular stage of sleep in which the Belgian group is interested is rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when brain and body are active, heart rate and blood pressure increase, the eyes move back and forth behind the eyelids as I watching a movie, and brainwave traces resemble those of wakefulness. It is during this period of sleep that people are most likely to relive events of the previous day in dreams.
Dr. Maquet used an electronic device called PET to study the brains of people as they practiced a task during the day, and as they slept during the following night. The task required them to press a button as fast as possible, in response to a light coming on in one of six positions. As they learnt how to do this, their response times got faster. What they did not know was that the appearance of the lights sometimes followed a pattern--what is referred to as "artificial grammar". Yet the reductions in response time showed that they learnt faster when the pattern was present than when there was not.
What is more, those with more to learn (i. e. the "grammar", as well as the mechanical task of pushing the button) have more active brains. The "editing" theory would not predict that, since the number of irrelevant stimuli would be the same in each case. And to eliminate any doubts that the experimental subjects were learning as opposed to unlearning, their response times when they woke up were even quicker than when they went to sleep.
The team, therefore, concluded that the nerve connections involved in memory are reinforced through reactivation during REM sleep, particularly if the brain detects an inherent structure in the material being learnt. So now, on the eve of that crucial test, maths students can sleep soundly in the knowledge that what they will remember the next day are the basic rules of algebra and not the incoherent talk from the radio next door.
单选题 You will hear 3 conversations or talks and you must answer the
questions by choosing A, B, C or D. You will hear the recording ONLY ONCE.
{{B}} Questions 11~13 are based on the
following talk. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions
11~13.{{/B}}
单选题WhathappenedtothechildinFrederick'sexperiment?A.Thechild'sbrainwasdamaged.B.Thechilddied.C.Thechildkeptsilent.D.Thechildheardnomothertongue.
单选题 Read the following texts answer the questions accompany them by
choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.{{B}}Part
A{{/B}}{{B}}Text 1{{/B}}
One theory of human evolution is that
our ancestors were semi-aquatic apes. They spent much time in water that they
lost their body hair, which makes swimming difficult. Daedalus points out that
in fact, water is a deadly environment for human beings—not by drowning; but by
chilling. Our alleged aquatic ancestors should have grown even thicker, longer
fur to minimize heat transfer. Indeed, in a maritime accident, it is worth
putting on all the clothes you can find; you will live that much longer in the
water. As for swimming—forget it. It stirs away all the body heat it
generates Sadly, many sea disasters happen so suddenly that
there is no time to look for spare clothes. So Daedalus is devising a nautical
uniform which reacts with water to form an ideal survival garment. His first
inspiration was the absorptive acrylate polymer used in bandages, and babies'
nappy. It can take up hundreds of times its weight of water, expanding into soft
jellylike stuff as it does so. In fibrous form, it can be woven into cloth.
Underclothes of this fabric would swell in water into a splendid wet-suit to
prevent heat losing. But Daedalus's suit will not merely insulate; it will
actively generate heat. He recalls the immersion batteries on aircraft
life-jackets, which use sea water to generate electricity, and power a signal
lamp. His new garment will be one large distributed battery, triggered by
immersion in water. Its electrochemistry is an interesting
challenge. At first Daedalus wanted it to generate hydrogen—perhaps enough of it
to fill a balloon and lift the wearer out of the water. But more sanely, he now
wants it to exploit the high energy for metal oxidation. A distributed zinc-air
battery, exploiting the oxygen dissolved in the water, seems best. A few hundred
grams of zinc could keep the wearer warm for hours in the coldest water.
Hydrogen generated in a side reaction might usefully inflate floating pockets in
the garment. Swollen by gas and absorbed water, the survival
suit will usefully discourage attempts to swim. Its wearer may generate a little
added heat by shivering, though this also will stir away all the body heat. Only
young babies can combat cold by passive thermogenesis. Advocates of our aquatic
origins are welcome to the uninteresting argument that their ability is a very
small remnant of our ancestral watery
metabolism.
单选题
Questions 14 to 16 are
based on a conversation between a customer and a clerk of the post office. You
now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14 to
16.
单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}}
Text 2 Defenders of
special protective labor legislation for women often maintain that eliminating
such laws would destroy the fruits of a century-long struggle for the protection
of women workers. Even a brief examination of the historic practice of courts
and employers would show that the fruit of such laws has been bitter; they are,
in practice, more of a curse than a blessing. Sex-defined
protective laws have often been based on stereotypical assumptions concerning
women's needs and abilities, and employers have frequently used them as legal
excuses for discriminating against women. After the Second World War, for
example, businesses and government sought to persuade women to vacate jobs in
factories, thus making room in the labor force for returning veterans. The
revival or passage of state laws limiting the daily or weekly work hours of
women conveniently accomplished this. Employers had only to declare that
overtime hours were a necessary condition of employment or promotion in their
factory, and women could be quite legally fired, refused jobs, or kept at low
wage levels, all in the name of“protecting”their health. By validating such laws
when they are challenged by lawsuits, the courts have colluded over the years in
establishing different, 1ess advantageous employment terms for women than for
men, thus reducing women's competitiveness on the job market. At the same time,
even the most well-intentioned lawmakers, courts, and employers have often been
blind to the real needs of women. The lawmakers and the courts continue to
permit employers to offer employee health insurance plans that cover all known
human medical disabilities except those relating to pregnancy and childbirth.
Finally, labor laws protecting only special groups are
often ineffective at protecting the workers who are actually in the workplace.
Some chemicals, for example, pose reproductive risks for women of childbearing
years;manufacturers using the chemicals comply with laws protecting women
against these hazards by refusing to hire them. Thus the sex-defined legislation
protects the hypothetical female worker, but has no effect whatever on the
safety of any actual employee. The health risks to male employees in such
industries cannot be negligible. since chemicals toxic enough to cause birth
defects in fetuses or sterility in women are presumably harmful to the human
metabolism. Protective laws aimed at changing production materials or techniques
in order to reduce such hazards would benefit all employees without
discriminating against any. In sum, protective labor laws
for women are discriminatory and do not meet their intended purpose. Legislators
should recognize that women are in the work force to stay, and that their
needs—good health care. a decent wage,and a safe workplace—are the needs of all
workers. Laws that ignore these facts violate women's rights for equal
protection in employment.
单选题Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Leibniz was a German philosopher who belonged to the Rationalist school of philosophers, to which also belonged Descartes and Spinoza. But Leibniz was not only a philosopher, he was also a considerable authority on law, a diplomat, a historian and an outstanding mathematician — as is proved by his discovery in 1676, independently of Newton, of the Differential Calculus.
Leibniz was the son of a Professor of Philosophy of Leipzig University, who died when his son was only 6, but who left behind a fine collection of books which the young Leibniz read eagerly. Leibniz studied law at the University, and then, while in the service of the Elector of Mainz, he visited Paris and London and became acquainted with the learned men of his time. When he was 30 he became official librarian of the Brunswich family at Hanover, where he remained till he died.
His philosophy is set out in a short paper, The Mondadology, which he wrote two years before his death. Otherwise, except for one or two famous essays, his philosophical and scientific ideas have had to be assembled from his various papers and letters which, fortunately, have survived. They show Leibniz''s brilliant intellect, especially in his attempt to relate mathematics and logic so that problems of philosophy could be exactly calculated and no longer be under dispute. He held that everything from a table to man''s soul, and even to God himself, is made up of "monads" atoms, each of which is a simple, indivisible, imperishable unit, different from every other monad and constantly changing.
George Berkeley
Berkeley was born of an aristocratic Irish family and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he remained as fellow and tutor. All his best work was written very early, and by the age of 27 he had made a reputation as a writer on philosophy. In 1712 Berkeley went to London and associated with the literary men of the day, among whom he was warmly welcomed.
Berkeley travelled widely in Italy and France, and then spent a few years in the English colonies of North America and the West Indians, where he had hoped to found a missionary college. When his hope failed, he returned to Ireland, and in 1734 was appointed Bishop of Cloyne. He spent 18 years administrating his diocese, living a happy family life with his wife and children, and writing books on both philosophical and practical subject. In 1752 he retired to Oxford, where he died the next year at the age of 68.
Berkeley''s claim to fame rests on his philosophy. His views are in contrast, deliberately, to those of John Locke. As an idealist he believes that mind comes before matter, while a Materialist holds everything depends upon matter.
Beyond his strictly philosophical works, Berkeley was interested in natural science and mathematics. He wrote an Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, in which he attempted to explain how we are able to judge the distance of objects from us. Though science has made great advances since Berkeley''s day, his essay is still of value.
David Hume
Hume is a celebrated Scottish philosopher and historian. In 1739, after a period of study in Paris, when he was only 28, he published one of the most influential books of English philosophy of modern times — the Treatise of Human Nature. It excited little interest, however, when it first, appeared, and Hume turned to writing admirable essays on a variety of topics. In 1752 he returned to Edinburgh as librarian of Advocates'' Library, and began to compose A History of England, the final volume of which was published in 1761. From 1761 to 1765, he was secretary to the British Embassy in Paris; where he was sought after by the cultured society. For the rest of his life he lived in his native Edinburgh, the central figure of a distinguished group of writers.
Hume''s chief fame as a philosopher rests on the strict and logical way in which he applied the principle of John Locke, that all thought is built up from simple and separate elements, which Hume calls impressions. He believed that even a human being is a bundle of different perceptions, and has no permanent identity. His criticism of man''s belief that everything has a cause seemed to deny what we assume, not merely from ordinary experience, but from a scientific knowledge; and since he wrote, philosophers have been trying to find answers to his penetrating doubts. Indeed he has had more influence upon recent discussion in England about the principles of knowledge than any other philosopher of the past.
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In 1981 Kenji Urada, a 37-year-old Japanese factory worker, climbed over a safety fence at a Kawasaki plant to carry out some maintenance work on a robot. In his haste, he failed to switch the robot off properly. Unable to sense him, the robot's powerful hydraulic arm kept on working and accidentally pushed the engineer into a grinding machine. His death made Urada the first recorded victim to die at the hands of a robot. This astounding industrial accident would not have happened in a world in which robot behavior was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up by Isaac Asimov, a science fiction writer. The laws appeared in I, Robot, a book of short stories published in 1950 that inspired a Hollywood film. But decades later the laws, designed to prevent robots from harming people either through action or inaction, remain in the realm of fiction. With robots now poised to emerge from their industrial cages and to move into homes and workplaces, roboticists are concerned about the safety implications beyond the factory floor. To address these concerns, leading robot experts have come together to try to find ways to prevent robots from harming people. "Security, safety and sex are the big concerns," says Henrik Christensen, chairman of the European Robotics Network at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and one of the organisers of the new roboethics group. Should robots that are strong enough or heavy enough to crush people be allowed into homes? Should robotic sex dolls resembling children be legally allowed? These questions may seem esoteric but in the next few years they will become increasingly relevant, says Dr. Christensen. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe's World Robotics Survey, in 2002 the number of domestic and service robots more than tripled, nearly outstripping their industrial counterparts. Japanese industrial firms are racing to build humanoid robots to act as domestic helpers for the elderly, and South Korea has set a goal that 100K of households should have domestic robots by 2020. In light of all this, it is crucial that we start to think about safety and ethical guidelines now, says Dr. Christensen. So what exactly is being done to protect us from these mechanical menaces? "Not enough," says Blay Whitby, an artificial-intelligence expert at the University of Sussex in England. This is hardly surprising given that the field of "safety-critical computing" is barely a decade old, he says. But things are changing, and researchers are increasingly taking an interest in trying to make robots safer. One approach, which sounds simple enough, is to try to program them to avoid contact with people altogether. But this is much harder than it sounds. Getting a robot to navigate across a cluttered room is difficult enough without having to take into account what its various limbs or appendages might bump into along the way. Regulating the behavior of robots is going to become more difficult in the future, since they will increasingly have self-learning mechanisms built into them, says Gianmarco Veruggio, a roboticist at the Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation in Genoa, Italy. As a result, their behavior will become impossible to predict fully, he says, since they will not be behaving in predefined ways but will learn new behavior as they go.
单选题Questions 8--12 Complete the following sentences with NO MORE THAN four words for each blank.
单选题
{{I}}Questions 11 to 13 are based on a talk on
manga. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11 to
13.{{/I}}
单选题For most of us, work is the central, dominating fact of life. We spend more than half our conscious hours at work, preparing for work, travelling to and from work. What we do there largely determines our standard of living and to a considerable extent the status we are accorded by our fellow citizens as well. It is sometimes said that because leisure has become more important the indignities and injustices of work can be pushed into a corner; that because most work is pretty intolerable, the people who do it should compensate for its boredoms, frustrations and humiliations by concentrating their hopes on the other parts of their lives. I reject that as a counsel of despair. For the forseeable future the material and psychological rewards which work can provide, and the conditions in which work is done, will continue to play a vital part in determining the satisfaction that life can offer. Yet only a small minority can control the pace at which they work or the conditions in which their work is done; only for a small minority does work offer scope for creativity, imagination, or initiative. Inequality al work and in work is still one of the cruelest and most glaring forms of inequality in our society. We cannot hope to solve the more obvious problems of industrial life, many of which arise directly or indirectly from the frustrations created by inequality at work, unless we tackle it head-on. Still less can we hope to create a decent and humane society. The most glaring inequality is that between managers and the rest. For most managers, work is an opportunity and a challenge. Their jobs engage their interest and allow them to develop their abilities. They are constantly learning; they are able to exercise responsibility; they have a considerable degree of control over their own and others' working lives. Most important of all, they have the opportunity to initiate. By contrast, for most manual workers, and for a growing number of white-collar workers, work is a boring, monotonous, even painful experience. They spend all their working lives in conditions which would be regarded as intolerable for themselves -- by those who take the decisions which let such conditions continue. The majority have little control over their work; it provides them with no opportunity for personal development. Often production is so designed that workers are simply part of the technology. In offices, many jobs are so routine that workers justifiably feel themselves to be mere cogs in the bureaucratic machine. As a direct consequence of their work experience, many workers feel alienated from their work and their firm, whether it is in public or in private ownership. Rising educational standards feed rising expectations, yet the amount of control which the worker has over his own work situation does not rise accordingly. In many cases his control has been reduced. Symptoms of protest increase -- rising sickness and absenteeism, high turnover of employees, restrictions on output, and strikes, both unofficial and official. There is not much escape out and upwards. As management becomes more professional -- in itself a good thing -- the opportunity for promotion from the shop floor becomes less. The only escape is to another equally frustrating manual job; tile only compensation is found not in the job but outside it, if there is a rising standard of living.
单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}}
It was late in the afternoon, and I was
putting the final touch on a piece of writing that I was feeling pretty good
about. I wanted to save it, but my cursor had frozen. I tried to shut the
computer down, and it seized up altogether. Unsure of what else to do, I yanked
(用力猛拉) the battery out. Unfortunately, Windows had been in the
midst of a delicate and crucial undertaking. The next morning, when I turned my
computer back on, it informed me that a file had been corrupted and Windows
would not load. Then, it offered to repair itself by using the Windows Setup
CD. I opened the special drawer where I keep CDs, but no Windows
CD in there. I was forced to call the computer company's Global Support Centre.
My call was answered by a woman in some unnamed, far-off land. I find it
annoying to make small talk with someone when I don't know what continent
they're standing on. Suppose I were to comment on the beautiful weather we've
been having when there was a monsoon at the other end of the phone? So I got
right to the point. "My computer is telling me a file is
corrupted and it wants to fix itself, but I don't have the Windows Setup
CD." "So you're having a problem with your Windows Setup CD."
She has apparently been dozing and, having come to just as the sentence ended,
was attempting to cover for her inattention. It quickly became
clear that the woman was not a computer technician. Her job was to serve as a
gatekeeper, a human shield for the technicians. Her sole duty, as far as I could
tell, was to raise global stress levels. To make me disappear,
the woman gave me the phone number for Windows' creator, Microsoft. This is like
giving someone the phone number for, I don't know, North America. Besides, the
CD worked; I just didn't have it. No matter how many times I repeated my story,
we came back to the same place. She was calm and resolutely polite.
When my voice hit a certain decibel (分贝), I was passed along, like a hot,
irritable potato, to a technician. "You don't have the Windows
Setup CD, ma'am, because you don't need it," he explained cheerfully.
"Windows came preinstalled on your computer!" "But I do
need it. " "Yes, but you don't have it." We went on like this
for a while. Finally, he offered to walk me through the use of a different CD,
one that would erase my entire system. "Of course, you' d lose all your e-mail,
your documents, your photos." It was like offering to drop a safe on my head to
cure my headache. "You might be able to recover them, but it would be
expensive." He sounded delighted. "And it's not covered by the warranty
(产品保证书)!" The safe began to seem like a good idea, provided it was
full. I hung up the phone and drove my computer to a small,
friendly repair place I'd heard about. A smart, helpful man dug out a Windows CD
and told me it wouldn’t be a problem. An hour later, he called to let me know it
was ready. I thanked him, and we chatted about the weather, which was the same
outside my window as it was outside his.