阅读理解Industrialization came to the United State after 1790 as North American entrepreneurs increased productivity by reorganizing work and building factories. These innovations in manufacturing boosted output and living standards to an unprecedented extent; the average per capita wealth increased by nearly 1 percent per year — 30 percent over the course of a generation. Goods that had once been luxury items became part of everyday life.The impressive gain in output stemmed primarily from the way in which workers made goods, since the 1790’s, North American entrepreneurs — even without technological improvements — had broadened the scope of the outwork system that made manufacturing more efficient by distributing materials to a succession of workers who each performed a single step of the production process. For example, during the 1820’s and 1830’s the shoe industry greatly expanded the scale and extend of the outwork system. Tens of thousands of rural women, paid according to the amount they produced, fabricated the “uppers” of shoes, which were bound to the soles by wage-earning journeymen shoemakers in dozens of Massachusetts town, whereas previously journeymen would have made the ensure shoe. This system of production made the employer a powerful “shoe boss” and eroded workers’ control over the pace and conditions of labor. However, it also dramatically increased the output of shoes while cutting their price.For tasks that were not suited to the outwork system, entrepreneurs created an even more important new organization, the modern factory, which used power-driven machines and assembly-line techniques to turn out large quantities of well-made goods. As early as 1782 the prolific Delaware inventor Oliver Evans had built a highly automated, laborsaving flour mill driven by water power. His machinery lifted the grain to the top of the mill, cleaned it as it fell into containers known as hoppers, ground the grain into flour, and then conveyed the flour back to the top of the mill to allow it to cool as it descended into barrels. Subsequently, manufacturers made use of new improved stationary stream engines to power their mills. This new technology enabled them to build factories in the nation’s largest cities, taking advantage of urban concentrations of inexpensive labor, good transportation networks, and eager customers.

阅读理解The past ages of man have all been carefully labeled by anthropologists. Descriptions like ‘Paleolithic Man’, ‘Neolithic Man’, etc., neatly sum up whole periods. When the time comes for anthropologists to turn their attention to the twentieth century, they will surely choose the label ‘Legless Man’. Histories of the time will go something like this: ‘in the twentieth century, people forgot how to use their legs. Men and women moved about in cars, buses and trains from a very early age. There were lifts and escalators in all large buildings to prevent people from walking. This situation was forced upon earth dwellers of that time because of miles each day. But the surprising thing is that they didn’t use their legs even when they went on holiday. They built cable railways, ski-lifts and roads to the top of every huge mountain. All the beauty spots on earth were marred by the presence of large car parks.’The future history books might also record that we were deprived of the use of our eyes. In our hurry to get from one place to another, we failed to see anything on the way. Air travel gives you a bird’s-eye view of the world — or even less if the wing of the aircraft happens to get in your way. When you travel by car or train a blurred image of the countryside constantly smears the windows. Car drivers, in particular, are forever obsessed with the urge to go on and on: they never want to stop. Is it the lure of the great motorways, or what? And as for sea travel, it hardly deserves mention. H is perfectly summed up in the words of the old song: ‘I joined the navy to see the world, and what did I see? Isaw the sea.’ The typical twentieth-century traveler is the man who always says ‘I’ve been there.’ You mention the remotest, most evocative place-names in the world like El Dorado, Kabul, Irkutsk and someone is bound to say ‘I’ve been there’— meaning, ‘I drove through it at 100 miles an hour on the way to somewhere else.’When you travel at high speeds, the present means nothing: you live mainly in the future because you spend most of your time looking forward to arriving at some other place. But actual arrival, when it is achieved, is meaningless. You want to move on again. By traveling like this, you suspend all experience; the present ceases to be a reality: you might just as well be dead. The traveler on foot, on the other hand, lives constantly in the present. For him traveling and arriving are one and the same thing: he arrives somewhere with every step he makes. He experiences the present moment with his eyes, his ears and the whole of his body. At the end of his journey he feels a delicious physical weariness. He knows that sound. Satisfying sleep will be his: the just reward of all true travelers

阅读理解 Archaeology can tell us plenty about how humans looked and the way they lived tens of thousands of years ago. But what about the deeper questions? Could early humans speak, were they capable of self-conscious reflection, did they believe in anything? Such questions might seem to be beyond the scope of science. Not so. Answering them is the focus of a burgeoning field that brings together archaeology and neuroscience. It aims to chart the development of human cognitive powers. This is not easy to do. A skull gives no indication of whether its owner was capable of speech, for example. The task then is to find proxies (普代物) for key traits and behaviors that have stayed intact over millennia. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this endeavor is teasing out the role of culture as a force in the evolution of our mental skills. For decades, development of the brain has been seen as exclusively biological. But increasingly, that is being challenged. Take what the Cambridge archaeologist Colin Renfrew calls 'the sapient (智人的) paradox (矛盾)' Evidence suggests that the human genome, and hence the brain, has changed little in the past 60,000 years. Yet it wasn't until about 10,000 years ago that profound changes took place in human behavior: people settled in villages and built shrines. Renfrew's paradox is why, if the hardware was in place, did it take so long for humans to start changing the world? His answer is that the software—the culture—took a long time to develop. In particular, the intervening time saw humans vest (赋予) meaning in objects and symbols. Those meanings were developed by social interaction over successive generations, passed on through teaching, and stored in the neuronal connections of children. Culture also changes biology by modifying natural selection, sometimes in surprising ways. How is it, for example, that a human gene for making essential vitamin C became blocked by junk DNA? One answer is that our ancestors started eating fruit, so the pressure to make vitamin C 'relaxed' and the gene became unnecessary. By this reasoning, early humans then became addicted to fruit, and any gene that helped them to find it was selected for. Evidence suggests that the brain is so plastic that, like genes, it can be changed by relaxing selection pressure. Our understanding of human cognitive development is still fragmented and confused, however. We have lots of proposed causes and effects, and hypotheses to explain them. Yet the potential pay-off makes answers worth searching for. If we know where the human mind came from and what changed it, perhaps we can gauge where it is going. Finding those answers will take all the ingenuity the modem human mind can muster.

阅读理解In the mid-1990s, three senior female professors at M. I. T. came to suspect that their careers had been hampered by similar patterns of marginalization.【B1】______After performing the investigation and studying the data, the committee concluded that the marginalization experienced by female scientists at M. I. T. “ was often accompanied by differences in salary, space, awards, resources and response to outside offers between men and women faculty, with women receiving less despite professional accomplishments equal to those of their colleagues. “ The dean concurred with the committee’s findings. And yet, as was noted in the committee’s report, his fellow administrators “resisted the notion that there was any problem that arose from gender bias in the treatment of the women faculty. Some argued that it was the masculine culture of M. I. T. that was to blame, and little could be done to change that. “【B2】______ The committee’s most evocative finding was that the discrimination facing female scientists in the final quarter of the 20th century was qualitatively different from the more obvious forms of sexism addressed by civil rights laws and affirmative action, but no less real. Not everyone agrees that what was uncovered at M. I. T. actually qualifies as discrimination.【B3】______Even if female professors have been shortchanged or shunted aside, their marginalization might be a result of the same sorts of departmental infighting, personality conflicts and “ mistaken impressions” that cause male faculty members to feel slighted as well. “ Perceptions of discrimination are evidence of nothing but subjective feelings,” Kleinfeld scoffs. 【B4】______In February 2012, the American Institute of Physics published a survey of 15,000 male and female physicists across 130 countries.【B5】______” In fact,” the researchers concluded, “ women physicists could be the majority in some hypothetical future yet still find their careers experience problems that stem from often unconscious bias. “ A. In almost all cultures, female scientists received less financing, lab space, office support and grants for equipment and travel, even after the researchers controlled for differences other than sex. B. Judith Kleinfeld, a professor emeritus in the psychology department at the University of Alaska, argues that the M. I. T. study isn’t persuasive because the number of faculty members involved is too small and university officials refuse to release the data. C. But broader studies show that the perception of discrimination is often accompanied by a very real difference in the allotment of resources. D. Yet women pursuing tenure track must leap hurdles that are higher than those facing their male competitors, often without realizing any such disparity exists. E. In other words, women didn’t become scientists because science — and scientists — were male. F. They took the matter to the dean, who appointed a committee of six senior women and three senior men to investigate their concerns.

阅读理解Directions:In this part of the test，there will be 5 passages for you to read. Each passage is followed by 4 questions or unfinished statements, and each question or unfinished statement is followed by four choices marked A, B, C and D. You are to decide on the best choice by blackening the corresponding letter on the ANSWER SHEET.Passage TwoWinston Churchill was one of the central statesmen of the 20th century and, almost 50 years afterhis death, remains a subject of enduring fascination. Part of the current interest in this venerable figurecan be attributed to two superb biographies written in the 1980s by historian William Manchester： TheLast Lion: Visions of Glory and The Last Lion: Alone. These two books examined the first two-thirds ofChurchill’s life.Unfortunately, after completing the second volume, Manchester’s health declined and the rest ofthe project stalled. So great was public interest in the long-delayed final volume that it was the subjectof a front page story in The New York Times.Eventually, in 2003, Manchester asked his friend Paul Reid to complete the trilogy. Now, nearly adecade later, Reid has published The Last Lion, the final piece of this monumental undertaking. Reidstarts when Churchill was appointed prime minister in May 1940 and follows him through his death in1965. While most of this volume is appropriately devoted to World War II, it also includes the vastexpansion of the British welfare state following the war, the start of the Cold War and the enormousdangers it carried, and the loss of the British Empire.Reid has written a thorough and complete analysis of these years, and it is a worthy finale to thefirst two volumes. Exhaustively researched and carefully written, it draws on a full range of primaryand secondary materials. This book will be essential reading for those who enjoyed the first two volumesand those with a deep interest in understanding this seminal figure and his place in history.Reid does a wonderful job of capturing Churchill in all his complexity. He gives Churchill greatpraise for his personal courage and inspirational leadership during the dark days when Britain stoodalone, but he is equally clear about Churchill’s poor strategic judgments, such as the efforts to defendGreece and Crete, the Allied assault on Anzio, and the decision to send the battleship Prince of Walesand battle cruiser Repulse to the South China Sea without adequate air cover where they were promptlysunk by the Japanese.He highlights Churchill’s naivete in dealing with Soviet Premier Stalin in the early years of the war,but praises his prescience in anticipating Stalin’s land grab in Eastern Europe at the end of the conflict.Reid also gives welcome attention to aspects of the war — such as ChurchilFs fear that the United Statesmight decide to put its primary emphasis on defeating Japan regardless of the 4 Germany first ”understanding he shared with Roosevelt that have received little attention in other books.

阅读理解Directions:In this part of the test，there will be 5 passages for you to read. Each passage is followed by 4 questions or unfinished statements, and each question or unfinished statement is followed by four choices marked A, B, C and D. You are to decide on the best choice by blackening the corresponding letter on the ANSWER SHEET.Passage ThreeAsteroids and comets that repeatedly smashed into the early Earth covered the planet’s surface withmolten rock during its earliest days, but still may have left oases of water that could have supported theevolution of life, scientists say. The new study reveals that during the planet’s infancy, the surface ofthe Earth was a hellish environment, but perhaps not as hellish as often thought, scientists added.Earth formed about 4. 5 billion years ago. The first 500 million years of its life are known as theHadean Eon. Although this time amounts to more than 10 percent of Earth’s history, little is knownabout it, since few rocks are known that are older than 3. 8 billion years old.For much of the Hadean, Earth and its sister worlds in the inner solar system were pummeled withan extraordinary number of cosmic impacts. “It was thought that because of these asteroids and cometsflying around colliding with Earth, conditions on early Earth may have been hellish，” said lead studyauthor Simone Marchi, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.This imagined hellishness gave the eon its name — Hadean comes from Hades, the lord of theunderworld in Greek mythology.However, in the past dozen years or so, a radically different picture of the Hadean began toemerge. Analysis of minerals trapped within microscopic zircon crystals dating from this eon “suggestedthat there was liquid water on the surface of the Earth back then, clashing with the previous picture thatthe Hadean was hellish，” Marchi said. This could explain why the evidence of the earliest life on Earthappears during the Hadean — maybe the planet was less inhospitable during that eon than previouslythought.The exact timing and magnitude of the impacts that smashed Earth during the Hadean are unknown.To get an idea of the effects of this bombardment, Machi and his colleagues looked at the moon, whoseheavily cratered surface helped model the battering that its close neighbor Earth must have experiencedback then.“We also looked at highly siderophile elements (elements that bind tightly to iron), such as gold,delivered to Earth as a result of these early collisions, and the amounts of these elements tells us the totalmass accreted by Earth as the results of these collisions，” Marchi said. Prior research suggests theseimpacts probably contributed less than 0.5 percent of the Earth’s present-day mass.The researchers discovered that “ the surface of the Earth during the Hadean was heavily affected byvery large collisions, by impactors larger than 100 kilometers or so — really, really big impactors,”Marchi said. “ When Earth has a collision with an object that big, that melts a large volume of theEarth’s crust and mantle, covering a large fraction of the surface,” Marchi added. These findingssuggest that Earth’s surface was buried over and over again by large volumes of molten rock — enoughto cover the surface of the Earth several times. This helps explain why so few rocks survive from theHadean, the researchers said.

阅读理解Human relations have commanded peoples attention from early times. The ways of people dealing with their relations have been recorded in innumerable myths, folktales, novels, poems, plays, and popular or philosophical essays. Although the full significance of a human relationship may not be directly evident, the complexity of feelings and actions that can be understood at a glance is surprisingly great. For this reason psychology holds a unique position among the sciences. Intuitive knowledge may be remarkably penetrating and can significantly help us understand human behavior, whereas in the physical sciences such commonsense knowledge is relatively primitive. If we erased all knowledge of scientific physics from our modern world, not only would we not have cars and television sets, we might even find that the ordinary person was unable to cope with the fundamental mechanical problems of pulleys and levers. On the other hand if we removed all knowledge of scientific psychology from our world, problems in interpersonal relations might easily be coped with and solved much as before. We would still know how to avoid doing something asked of us and how to get someone to agree with us; we would still know when someone was angry and when someone was pleased. One could even offer sensible explanations for the whys of much of the self’s behavior and feelings. In other words, the ordinary person has a great and profound understanding of the self and of other people which, though unformulated or only vaguely conceived, enables one to interact with others in more or less adaptive ways. Kohler, in referring to the lack of great discoveries in psychology as compared with physics, accounts for this by saying that people were acquainted with practically all territories of mental life a long time before the founding of scientific psychology.Paradoxically, with all this natural, intuitive commonsense capacity to grasp human relations, the science of human relations has been one of the last to develop. Different explanations of this paradox have been suggested. One is that science would destroy the vain and pleasing illusions people have about themselves; but we might ask why people have always loved to read pessimistic, debunking writings, from Ecclesiastes to Freud. It has also been proposed that just because we know so much about people intuitively, there has been less incentive for studying them scientifically; why should one develop a theory, carry out systematic observations, or make predictions about the obvious? In any case, the field of human relations, with its vast literary documentation but meager scientific treatment, is in great contrast to the field of physics in which there are relatively few nonscientific books.

阅读理解Passage Three For 150 years scientists have tried to determine the solar constant, the amount of solar energy that reaches the Earth

阅读理解Passage two: Questions are based on the following passage

阅读理解Abraham Lincoln turns 200 this year, and he’s beginning to show his age. When his birthday arrives,on February 12, Congress will hold a special joint session in the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall, awreath will be laid at the great memorial in Washington, and a webcast will link school classroomsfor a “teach- in” honoring his memory.Admirable as they are, though, the events will strike many of us Lincoln fans as inadequate, evenhalfhearted and—another sign that our appreciation for the 16th president and his toweringachievements is slipping away. And you don’t have to be a Lincoln enthusiast to believe that this issomething we can’t afford to lose.Compare this year’s celebration with the Lincoln centennial in 1909. That year, Lincoln’s likenessmade its debut on the penny, thanks to approval from the U.S. Secretary of the TreasuryCommunities and civic associations in every comer of the county erupted in parades, concerts, balls,lectures and military displays. We still feel the effects today: The momentum unloosed in 1909 led tothe Lincoln Memorial, opened in 1922, and the Lincoln Highway, the first paved transcontinentalthoroughfare.The celebrants in 1909 had a few inspirations we lack today. Lincoln’s presidency was still a livingmemory for countless Americans. In 2009 we are farther in time from the end of the Second WorldWar than they were from the Civil War; families still felt the loss of loved ones from that awfulnational trauma.But Americans in 1909 had something more: an unembarrassed appreciation for heroes and an acutesense of the way that even long-dead historical figures press in on the present and make us who weare.One story will illustrate what I’m talking about.In 2003 a group of local citizens arranged to place a statue of Lincoln in Richmond, Virginia, formercapital of the Confederacy. The idea touched off a firestorm of controversy. The Sons of ConfederateVeterans held a public conference of carefully selected scholars to “reassess” the legacy of Lincoln.The verdict—no surprise—was negative: Lincoln was labeled everything from a racist totalitarian toa teller of dirty jokes.I covered the conference as a reporter, but what really unnerved me was a counter-conference ofscholars to refute the earlier one. These scholars drew a picture of Lincoln that only our touchy-feelyage could conjure up. The man who oversaw the most savage war in our history was described—byhis admirers, remember—as “nonjudgmental,” “unmoralistic,” “comfortable with ambiguity.”I felt the way a friend of mine felt as we later watched the unveiling of the Richmond statue in asubdued ceremony: “But he’s so small!”The statue in Richmond was indeed small; like nearly every Lincoln statue put up in the past halfcentury, it was life-size and was placed at ground level, a conscious rejection of theheroic—approachable and human, yes, but not something to look up to.The Richmond episode taught me that Americans have lost the language to explain Lincoln’sgreatness even to ourselves. Earlier generations said they wanted their children to be like Lincoln:principled, kind, compassionate, resolute. Today we want Lincoln to be like us.This helps to explain the long string of recent books in which writers have presented a Lincoln madeafter their own image. We’ve had Lincoln as humorist and Lincoln as manic-depressive, Lincoln thebusiness sage, the conservative Lincoln and the liberal Lincoln, the emancipator and the racist, thestoic philosopher, the Christian, the atheist—Lincoln over easy and Lincoln scrambled.What’s often missing, though, is the timeless Lincoln, the Lincoln whom all generations, our own noless than that of 1909, can lay claim to. Lucky for us, those memorializers from a century ago—and,through them, Lincoln himself—have left us the hint of where to find him. The Lincoln Memorial isthe most visited of our presidential monuments. Here is where we find the Lincoln who endures: inthe words he left us, defining the country we’ve inherited. Here is the Lincoln who can be endlesslyrenewed and who, 200 years after his birth, retains the power to renew us.

阅读理解We can begin our discussion of “population as a global issue” with what most person mean whenthey discuss “the population problem”: too many people on earth and a too rapid increase in thenumber added each year. The facts are not in dispute. It was quite right to employ a similar matterthat linked demographic (人口统计学) growth to “a long, thin power fuse that burns steadily fromtime to time until it finally reaches the limit, and explodes”.To understand the current situation, which is characterized by rapid increases in population, it isnecessary to understand the history of population trends. Rapid growth is a comparatively recentphenomenon. Looking back at the 8,000 years of demographic history. We find that population havebeen really stable or growing very slightly for most of human history. For most of our ancestors, lifewas hard, often nasty, and very short. For most of human history, it was seldom the case that one inten persons would live past forty, where infancy and childhood were especially risky periods. Often,societies were in clear danger of extinction because death rates could exceed their birth rates. Thus,the population problem throughout most of history was how to prevent extinction of the human race.This pattern is important to know. Not only does it put the current problems of demographic growthinto a historical perspective, but it suggests that the cause of rapid increase in population in recentyears is not a sudden enthusiasm for more children, but an improvement in the conditions thattraditionally have caused high rate of death.Demographic history can be divided into two major periods: a time of long, slow growth whichextended from about 8000 B.C. till approximately 1650 A.D. And a period of rapid growth since1650. In the first period of some 9,600 years, the population increased form some 8 million to 500million in 1650. Between 1650 and the present, the population has increased from 500 million tomore than 4 billion. And it is estimated that by the year 2020 there will be 8 billion peoplethroughout the world. One way to appreciate this dramatic difference in such abstract numbers is toreduce the time frame to something that is more manageable. Between 8000 B.C. and 1650, anaverage of only 50,000 persons was being added annually to the world’s population each year. Atpresent, this number is added every six hours. The increase is about 80,000,000 persons annually.

阅读理解Directions:In this part of the test，there will be 5 passages for you to read. Each passage is followed by 4 questions or unfinished statements, and each question or unfinished statement is followed by four choices marked A, B, C and D. You are to decide on the best choice by blackening the corresponding letter on the ANSWER SHEET.Passage FiveOf all the people on my holiday shopping list, there was one little boy for whom buying a gift hadbecome increasingly difficult. He’s a wonderful child, adorable and loving, and he’s not fussy orirritable or spoiled. Though he lives across the country from me, I receive regular updates and photos,and he likes all the things that the boys his age want to play with. Shopping for him should be easy, butI find it hard to summon up any enthusiasm, because in all the years I’ve given him presents, he neveronce sent me a thank-you note.“Sending thank-you notes is becoming a lost art，” mourns Mary Mitchell, a syndicated columnistknown as “Ms. Demeanorv and author of six etiquette books. In her view, each generation, comparedwith the one before, is losing a sense of consideration for other people. “Without respect,n she says,“you have conflict. ”Ms. Demeanor would be proud of me ： I have figured out a way to ensure that my children alwayssend thank-you notes. And such a gesture is important, says Ms. Demeanor, because “a gratefulattitude is a tremendous life skill, an efficient and inexpensive way to set ourselves apart in the workforce and in our adult lives. Teach your children that the habit of manners comes from inside — it’s anattitude based on respecting other people. ”A few years ago, as my children descended like piranhas on their presents under the Christmastree, the only attitude I could see was greed. Where was the appreciation of time and effort?A thank-you note should contain three things： an acknowledgement of the gift (Love the tie withthe picture of a horse on it. ) ； a recognition of the time and effort spent to select it (You must haveshopped all over the state to find such a unique item! ) ; a prediction of how you will use your gift or theway it has enhanced your life (I’ll be sure to wear it to the next Mr. Ed convention!).So, five years ago, in one of my rare flashes of parental insight, I decided that the mostappropriate time to teach this basic courtesy is while the tinsel is hot. To the horror of my children, Iannounced that henceforth every gift received will be an occasion for a thank-you note writtenimmediately, on the spot. I have explained to my kids how I have reacted to not hearing from the littleboy — how it made me feel unappreciated and unmotivated to repeat the process next year.I have reluctantly given my kids the green light to send e-thank-you notes ； though hand-letteredones (at least to me) still seem friendlier. But pretty much any thank-you makes the gift giver feelspecial —just as, we hope, the recipient feels. It’s a gesture that perfectly captures the spirit of theholidays.

阅读理解 Just before dawn we received a call that an unresponsive infant was being brought by emergency medical services to our hospital. As the medical team—the pediatric resident, intern, respiratory therapist, nurse, and me—prepared for the incoming patient, an eerie silence enveloped the trauma room, an event that frequently precedes a pediatric resuscitation. The child arrived in our emergency department pulseless and cold, with compressions being performed on him in the arms of the paramedic. Further history obtained by the paramedics indicated that the mother had left the infant alone in the home with two young children to watch the child, and upon her return the infant was found in bed not breathing and cold. As a medical team we simultaneously performed multiple procedures (intubation, insertion of intraosseous lines, administration of epinephrine, cardiac compressions), all to no avail. Twenty minutes after he arrived, I declared this 2-month-old child dead with a high suspicion of abuse or neglect. Everyone vacated the room almost immediately, except for the nurse, who never left the child's bedside. I asked her why she needed to stay, and she looked at me and smiled. 'Why of course, to be with my patient a little bit longer.' I knew the difficult part was yet to come: telling the family the bad news. The mother was still at home being interviewed by police. The father had arrived from his place of employment to the emergency department minutes after death was pronounced and not knowing the condition of his son. The father and I sat with the chaplain to explain what we had done for the baby. I could tell from the stunned look on his face that he knew before I finished my story that his child was dead. Despite this I said in a muffled voice, 'I am so sorry your child passed away.' We walked slowly back to the resuscitation room, The infant, who only moments ago lay covered with blood and secretions oozing from every orifice, had been transformed. The nurse had never left her patient, tending to him, cleaning him, wrapping him in soft blankets, and now presenting the body to the grieving father. He seemed relieved to see his baby, not alive, surely, but at peace, and thus the man could begin the mourning process, I again left the room to tend to the busy emergency department; seeing patients somehow seemed to blunt my emotional response to what had just happened. As I listened to a resident present the next case, I saw the nurse carry the blanketed body of the child to the morgue. As I reflect on this episode, I realize that our medical resuscitation of this child was futile, as has been shown in children who present to the emergency department in full cardiac arrest. But it was the compassionate work of the nurse that ultimately made the difference in how we performed our job. Next time, I may stay a little bit longer to be with my patient.

阅读理解 Eating is related to emotional as well as physiologic needs. Sucking, which is the infant's means of gaining both food and emotional security, conditions the association of eating with well-being or with deprivation. If the child is breast-fed and has supportive body contact as well as good milk intake, if the child is allowed to suck for as long as he or she desires, and if both the child and mother enjoy the nursing experience and share their enjoyment, the child is more likely to thrive both physically and emotionally. On the other hand, if the mother is nervous and resents the child or cuts him or her off from the milk supply before either the child's hunger or sucking need is satisfied, or handles the child hostilely during the feeding, or props the baby with a bottle rather than holding the child, the child may develop physically but will begin to show signs of emotional disturbance at an early age. If, in addition, the infant is further abused by parental indifference or intolerance, he or she will carry scars of such emotional deprivation throughout life. Eating habits are also conditioned by family and other psychosocial environments. If an individual's family eats large quantities of food, then he or she is inclined to eat large amounts. If an individual's family eats mainly vegetables, then he or she will be inclined to like vegetables. If mealtime is a happy and significant event, then the person will tend to think of eating in those terms. And if a family eats quickly, without caring what is being eaten and while fighting at the dinner table, then the person will most likely adopt the same eating pattern and be adversely affected by it. This conditioning to food can remain unchanged through a lifetime unless the individual is awakened to the fact of conditioning and to the possible need for altering his or her eating patterns in order to improve nutritional intake. Conditioning spills over into and is often reinforced by religious beliefs and other customs so that, for example, a Jew, whose religion forbids the eating of pork, might have guilt feelings if he or she ate pork. An older Roman Catholic might be conditioned to feel guilty if he or she eats meat on Friday, traditionally a fish day.

阅读理解Recent research has claimed that an excess of positive ions in the air can have an ill effect on people’s physical or psychological health. What are positive ions? Well, the air is full of ions, electrically charged particles, and generally there is a rough balance between the positive and the negative charged. But sometimes this balance becomes disturbed and a larger proportion of positive ions are found. This happens naturally before thunderstorm, earthquakes when winds such as the Mistral, Hamsin or Sharav are blowing in certain countries. Or it can be caused by a build-up of static electricity indoors from carpets or clothing made of man-made fibers, or from TV sets duplicators or computer display screens.When a large number of positive ions are present in the air many people experience unpleasant effects such as headaches, fatigue, irritability, and some particularly sensitive people suffer nausea or even mental disturbance. Animals are also affected, particularly before earthquakes, snakes have been observed to come out of hibernation, rats to flee from their burrows, dogs howl and cats jump about unaccountably. This has led the US Geographical Survey to fund a network of volunteers to watch animals in an effort to foresee such disasters before they hit vulnerable areas such as California.Conversely, when large numbers of negative ions are present, then people have a feeling of well-being. Natural conditions that produce these large amounts are near the sea, close to waterfalls or fountains, or in any place where water is sprayed, or forms a spray. This probably accounts for the beneficial effect of a holiday by the sea, or in the mountains with tumbling streams or waterfalls.To increase the supply of negative ions indoors, some scientists recommend the use of ionisers: small portable machines, which generate negative ions. They claim that ionisers not only clean and refresh the air but also improve the health of people sensitive to excess positive ions. Of course, there are the detractors, other scientists, who dismiss such claims and are skeptical about negative/positive ion research. Therefore people can only make up their own minds by observing the effects on themselves, or on others, of a negative rich or poor environment. After all it is debatable whether depending on seismic readings to anticipate earthquakes is more effective than watching the cat.

阅读理解 A little information is a dangerous thing. A lot of information, if it's inaccurate or confusing even more so. This is a problem for anyone trying to spend or invest in an environmentally sustainable way. Investors are barraged with indexes purporting to describe companies eco-credentials, some of dubious quality Green labels on consumer products are ubiquitous, but their claims are hard to verify. The confusion is evident from the New Scientists' analysis of whether public perception of companies' green credentials reflect reality. It shows that many companies considered 'green' have done little to earn that reputation, while others do not get sufficient credit for their efforts to reduce their environmental impact. Obtaining better information is crucial, because decisions by consumers and big investors will help propel us towards a green economy. At present, it is too easy to make unverified claims. Take disclosure of greenhouse gas emission, for example. There are voluntary schemes such as a Carbon Disclosure Project, but little scrutiny of the figures companies submit, which means investors may be misled. Measurements can be difficult to interpret, too, like those for water use. In this case, context is crucial: a little from rain-soaked Ireland is not the same as a little drawn from the Arizona desert. Similar problems bedevil 'green' labels attached to individual products. Here, the computer equipment rating system developed by the Green Electronics Council show the way forward. Its criteria come from the IEEE, the world's leading, professional association for technology. Other schemes, such as the 'sustainability index' planned by US retail giant Walmart, are broader. Devising rigorous standard for a large number of different types of product will be tough, placing a huge burden on the academic-led consortium that is doing the underlying scientific work. Our investigation also reveals that many companies choose not to disclose data. Some will want to keep it that way. This is why we need legal requirements for full disclosure of environmental information, with the clear message that the polluter will eventually be required to pay. The market forces will drive companies to lean up their acts. Let's hope we can rise to this challenge. Before we can have a green economy we need a green information economy—and it's the quality of information, as well as the quality, that will count.

阅读理解Taken together, income, occupation, and education are good measures of peoples social standing. Using a layered model of stratification, most sociologists describe the class system in the United States as divided into several classes: upper, upper middle, middle, lower middle, and lower class. Each class is defined by characteristics such as income, occupational prestige, and educational attainment. The different groups are arrayed along a continuum with those with the most money, education, and prestige at the top and those with the least at the bottom.In the United States, the upper class owns the major share of corporate and personal wealth; it includes those who have held wealth for generations as well as those who have recently become rich. Only a very small proportion of people actually constitute the upper class, but they control vast amounts of wealth and power in the United States. They exercise enormous control throughout society. Most of their wealth is inherited.Despite social myths to the contrary, the best predictor of future wealth is the family into which you are born. Each year, the business magazine Forbes publishes a list of the Forbes 400—the four hundred wealthiest families and individuals in the country. Of all the wealth represented on the Forbes 400 list, more than half is inherited, those on the list who could be called self-made were not typically of modest origins; most inherited significant assets (Forbes, 1997; Sklar and Collins, 1997). Those in the upper class with newly acquired wealth are known as the nouveau riche. Although they may have vast amounts of money, they are often not accepted into old rich circles.The upper middle class includes those with high incomes and high social prestige. They tend to be well-educated professionals or business executives. Their earnings can be quite high indeed—successful business executives can earn millions of dollars a year. It is difficult to estimate exactly how many people fall into this group because of the difficulty of drawing lines between the upper, upper middle, and middle class. Indeed, the upper middle class is often thought of as middle class because their lifestyle sets the standard to which many aspire, but this lifestyle is simply beyond the means of a majority of people.The middle class is hard to define; in part, being middle class is more than just economic position. By far the majority of Americans identify themselves as middle class even though they vary widely in lifestyle and in resources at their disposal. But the idea that the United States is an open-class system leads many to think that the majority have a middle-class lifestyle because, in general, people tend not to want to recognize class distinctions in the United States. Thus, the middle class becomes the ubiquitous norm even though many who call themselves middle class have a tenuous hold on this class position.In the hierarchy of social class, the lower middle class includes workers in the skilled trades and low-income bureaucratic workers, many of whom may actually define themselves as middle class. Examples are blue-collar workers (those in skilled trades who do manual labor) and many service workers such as secretaries, hairdressers, waitresses, police, and firefighters. Medium to low income, education, and occupational prestige define the lower middle class relative to the class groups above it. The term lower in this class designation refers to the relative position of the group in the stratification system, but it has a pejorative sound to many people, especially to people who are members of this class.The lower class is composed primarily of the displaced and poor. People in this class have little formal education and are often unemployed or working in minimum-wage jobs. Forty percent of the poor work; 10 percent work year-round and full time—a proportion that has generally increased over time. Recently, the concept of the underclass has been added to the lower class. The underclass includes those who have been left behind by contemporary economic developments. Rejected from the economic system, those in the underclass may become dependent on public assistance or illegal activities.

阅读理解Tea drinking was common in China for nearly one thousand years before anyone in Europe had everheard about tea. People in Britain were much slower in finding out what tea was like, mainly becausetea was very expensive. It could not be bought in shops and even those people who could afford tohave it sent from Holland did so only because it was a fashionable curiosity. Some of them were notsure how to use it. They thought it was a vegetable and tried cooking the leaves. Then they servedthem mixed with butter and salt. They soon discovered their mistake but many people used to spreadthe used tea leaves on bread and give them to their children as sandwiches.Tea remained scarce and very expensive in England until the ships of the East India Company beganto bring it direct from China early in the seventeenth century. During the next few years so much teacame into the country that the price fell and many people could afford to buy it.At the same time people on the Continent were becoming more and more fond of tea. Until then teahad been drunk without milk in it, but one day a famous French lady named Madame de Sevignedecided to see what tea tasted like when milk was added. She found it so pleasant that she wouldnever again drink it without milk. Because she was such a great lady her friends thought they mustcopy everything she did, so they also drank their tea with milk in it. Slowly this habit spread until itreached England and today only very few Britons drink tea without milk.At first, tea was usually drunk after dinner in the evening. No one ever thought of drinking tea in theafternoon until a duchess (公爵夫人) found that a cup of tea and a piece of cake at three or fouro’clock stopped her getting “a sinking feeling” as she called it. She invited her friends to have thisnew meal with her and so, tea-time was born.

阅读理解Passage ThreeHospitals, hoping to curb medical error, have invested heavily to put computers, smart phones andother devices into the hands of medical staff for instant access to patient data, drug information andcase studies.But like many cures, this solution has come with an unintended side effect: doctors and nurses can befocused on the screen and not the patient, even during moments of critical care. A poll showed thathalf of medical technicians had admitted texting during a procedure.This phenomenon has set off an intensifying discussion at hospitals and medical schools about aproblem perhaps best described as “distracted doctoring.” In response, some hospitals have begunlimiting the use of electronic devices in critical settings, while schools have started remindingmedical students to focus on patients instead of devices.“You justify carrying devices around the hospital to do medical records, but you can surf the Internetor do Facebook, and sometimes Facebook is more tempting,” said Dr. Peter Papadakos at theUniversity of Rochester Medical Center.“My gut feeling is lives are in danger,” said Dr. Papadakos. “We’re not educating people about theproblem, and it’s getting worse.”A survey of 439 medical technicians found that 55 percent of technicians who monitor bypassmachines acknowledged that they had talked on cellphones during heart surgery. Half said they hadtexted while in surgery. The study concluded, “Such distractions have the potential to be disastrous.”Medical professionals have always faced interruptions from cellphones, and multitasking is simply afact of life for many medical jobs. What has changed, say doctors, especially younger ones, is thatthey face increasing pressure to interact with their devices.The pressure stems from a mantra of modern medicine that patient care must be “data driven,” andinformed by the latest, instantly accessible information. By many accounts, the technology hashelped reduce medical error by providing instant access to patient data or prescription details.Dr. Peter Carmel, president of the American Medical Association, said technology “offers greatpotential in health care,” but he added that doctors’ first priority should be with the patient.

阅读理解While still catching-up to men in some spheres of modern life, women appear to be way ahead in atleast one undesirable category. “Women are particularly susceptible to developing depression andanxiety disorders in response to stress compared to men,” according to Dr. Yehuda, chief psychiatristat New York’s Veteran’s Administration Hospital.Studies of both animals and humans have shown that sex hormones somehow affects the stressresponse, causing females under stress to produce more of the trigger chemicals than do males underthe same conditions. In several of the studies, when stressed-out female rats had their ovaries (thefemale reproductive organs) removed, their chemical responses became equal to those of the males.Adding to a woman’s increased dose of stress chemicals, are her increased “opportunities” for stress.“It’s not necessarily that women don’t cope as well. It’s just that they have so much more to copewith,” says Dr. Yehuda. “Their capacity for tolerating stress may even be greater than men’s,” sheobserves, “it’s just that they’re dealing with so many more things that they become worn out from itmore visibly and sooner.”Dr. Yehuda notes another difference between the sexes. “I think that the kinds of things that womenare exposed to tend to be in more of a chronic or repeated nature. Men go to war and are exposed tocombat stress. Men are exposed to more acts of random physical violence. The kinds of interpersonalviolence that women are exposed to tend to be in domestic situations, by, unfortunately, parents orother family numbers, and they tend not to be one-shot deals. The wear-and-tear that comes fromthese longer relationships can be quite devastating.”Adeline Alvarez married at 18 and gave birth to a son, but was determined to finish college. “Istruggled a lot to get the college degree. I was living in so much frustration that that was my escape,to go to school, and get ahead and do better.” Later, her marriage ended and she became a singlemother. “It’s the hardest thing to take care of a teenager, have a job, pay the rent, pay the carpayment, and pay the debt. I lived from paycheck to paycheck.”Not everyone experiences the kinds of severe chronic stresses Alvarez describes. But most womentoday are coping with a lot of obligations, with few breaks, and feeling the strain. Alvarez’sexperience demonstrates the importance of finding ways to diffuse stress before it threatens yourhealth and your ability to function.