单选题阅读下面这篇短文,短文后列出7个句子,请根据短文的内容对每个句子做出判断。如果该句提供的是正确信息,请选择A;如果该句提供的是错误信息,请选择B;如果该句的信息文章中没有提及,请选择C。
Experiments have been carried out on
volunteers to see what happens when all sensations are stopped. This can be done
in several ways. One method is to put a man inside a completely isolated room.
This room is heavily sound-proofed and absolutely dark. There is no light or
sound and the person is instructed just to lie motionless in a bed. People have
stayed in rooms such as this for as long as four days. The results of sensory
deprivation (SD) vary with the individual. Soon after entering
the confinement cell most subjects went to sleep and slept almost without
interruption for ten to twenty-four hours. These are gross estimates for there
was nothing by which the subjects could determine the time which had elapsed. We
know for certain that one subject slept for nineteen hours but insisted that he
had had a nap of less than one hour. According to the monitoring microphone,
which was capable of picking up the deep breathing of sleep, it seems more
likely that most subjects slept all of the first twenty-four hours.
We felt that so much sleeping in the first day wasted the effects of
confinement, so we started placing subjects in SD early in the morning. We
reasoned that after a night' s sleep our confined subject would be unable to
dissipate(驱散) the effects of SD by sleeping. Such was not the case. As far as we
could determine they went to sleep just as quickly and slept just as long as the
previous subjects. We then started entering the subjects at midmorning, midday,
and midafternoon. As it turned out, it made no difference when during the day
and, presumably, during the night we started the confinement; the initial sleep
period was always about the same. We had not expected this
extended period of initial sleep. In fact, it had seemed reasonable to expect
something of the opposite. SD was a very novel situation for our subjects, and
as such, we reasoned, it should have occupied them for some time. I had a
similar expectation for astronauts during space flight and was greatly surprised
to learn that the Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin had been able to sleep during
his space flight around the earth. Other effects were also
noted. With no real sensations to work on, the brain makes up all sorts of false
information. Many people experience vivid dreams and hallucinations (幻觉). When
they are finally taken out of the room into the real changing world of light and
sound, they are in a very strange state of mind, ready to believe anything and
not really able to make decisions.
单选题The shoot system of perennials can help the plants absorb less of the sun's ray.
单选题Parents who lack the finance to send their children to a private school have to tolerate the state system. A. put up with B. stand with C. stand up to D. put themselves to
单选题Dumped waste might
contaminate
water supplies.
单选题Motoring Technology 1.2 million road deaths worldwide occur each year, plus a further 50 million injuries. To reduce car crash rate, much research now is focused on safety and new fuels—though some electric vehicle and biofuel research aims at going faster. Travelling at speed has always been dangerous. One advanced area of research in motoring safety is the use of digital in-car assistants. They can ensure you don't miss important road signs or fall asleep. Most crashes result from human and not mechanical faults. Some safety developments aim to improve your vision. Radar can spot obstacles in fog, while other technology "sees through" big vehicles blocking your view. And improvements to seat belts, pedal (脚踏) controls and tyres are making driving smoother and safer. The colour of a car has been found to be linked with safety, as have, less surprisingly, size and shape. But whatever is in the fuel tank, you don't want a thief in the driving seat and there have been many innovations (创新). Satellite tracking and remote communications can also come into play if you crash, automatically calling for help. Accidents cause many traffic jams, but there are more subtle interplays between vehicles that can cause jams even on a clear but busy road. Such jams can be analyzed using statistical tools. Robotic drivers could be programmed to make traffic flow smoothly and will perhaps one day be everyone's personal chauffeur (司机), but their latest efforts suggest that won't be soon.
单选题The river widens considerably as it begins to turn west.A. twistsB. stretchesC. broadensD. bends
单选题Please let me know if any problems arise. A. become B. occur C. raise D. arouse
单选题Transportation
For many years in the desert, camels used to be the only form of transportation (运输). Before the age of modern trains, camel trains were used to carry all the goods for trading between Central Africa and Europe. Traders sometimes put together camel trains with 10,000 to 15,000 animals. Each animal often carried as much as 400 pounds and could travel twenty miles a day. This form of transportation used to be so important that camels were called "ships of the desert".
Now modern trains travel across the desert in a very short time. One engine can pull as much weight as 135,000 camels. In addition, trains use special cars (车厢) for their load. Refrigerator cars carry food; boxcars (棚车) carry heavy goods; stock cars carry animals; and tank cars carry oil.
Air travel is also a modern means of transportation, but it has changed since the early 20th century. The earliest planes were biplanes (双翼飞机), with two sets of wings. The top speed of this plane was 60 miles per hour. The pilots used to sit or lie on the wings in the open air. The plane engines sometimes stopped in the middle of a trip. It used to be impossible to fly in bad weather. In snow or in rain, the wings frequently became icy. Then the plane might go down.
Mechanical improvements during the First World War changed airplanes. Monoplanes (单翼飞机) took the place of biplanes. Pilots flew inside of covered cabins. Still, even these planes were small and expensive. Only rich people used to be able to travel in airplanes.
Now modern jets make air travel possible for all people. No place in the world is more than 24 hours away by jet. Further improvements have lowered the cost of flying, and they have made air travel much safer than it used to be. A modern 707 can carry 170 people and can fly at 600 miles per hour. People never used to eat, sleep, or watch movies on airplanes. Now these things are a normal part of air travel.
单选题
The Function of Adverts
Most people would protably agree that many individual consumer adverts
function on the level of the daydream. By picturing quite unusually happy and
glamorous people whose success in either career or sexual terms, or both, is
obvious, adverts construct an imaginary world in which the reader is able to
make come true those desires which remain unsatisfied in his or her everyday
life. An advert for a science fiction magazine is unusually
explicit about this. In addition to the primary use value of the magazine, the
reader is promised access to a wonderful universe through the product-access to
other mysterious and tantalizing worlds and epochs, the realms of the
imagination. When studying advertising, it is therefore unreasonable to expect
readers to decipher adverts as factual statements about reality. Most adverts
are just too meager in informative content and too rich in emotional suggestive
detail to be read literally. If people read them literally, they would soon be
forced to realize their error when the glamorous promises held out by the
adverts didn't materialize. The average consumer is not
surprised that his purchase of the commodity does not redeem the promise of the
advertisement, for this is what he is used to in life: the individual's pursuit
of happiness and success is usually in vain. But the fantasy is his to keep; in
his dream world he enjoys a "future endlessly deferred". The
Estivalia advert company is quite explicit about the fact that advertising shows
us not reality, but a fantasy; it does so by openly admitting the daydream but
in a way which insists on the existence of a bridge linking daydream to
reality-Estivalia, which is "for daydream believers", those who refuse to give
up trying to make the hazy ideal of natural beauty and harmony come
true. If adverts function on the daydream level, it clearly
becomes inadequate to merely condemn advertising for channeling readers'
attention and desires towards unrealistic, paradisiacal (天堂似的) nowhere land.
Advertising certainly does that, but in order for people to find it relevant,
the Utopia (乌托邦) visualized in adverts must be linked to our surrounding reality
by a causal connection.
单选题She was (grateful) to him for being so good to her.
单选题{{B}}第二篇{{/B}}
Night of the Living Ants
When an ant dies,other ants move the dead insect out of the nest.This
behavior is interesting to scientists,who wonder how ants know for sure-and so
soon-that another ant is dead. Dong-Hwan Choe,a scientist at
the University of California,found that Argentine ants have a chemical on the
outside of their bodies that signals to other ants,“I’m dead-take me away.”
But there's a twist to Choe's discovery.Choe says that the
living ants-not just the dead ones -have this death chemical.In other
words,while an ant crawls around,perhaps in a picnic or home,it's telling other
ants that it's dead. What keeps ants from hauling away the
living dead?Choe found that Argentine ants have two additional chemicals on
their bodies,and these tell nearby ants something like,“Wait-I'm not dead yet.”
So Choe's research turned up two sets of chemical signals in ants:one says,“I'm
dead,”the other set says,“I'm not dead yet.” Other scientists
have tried to figure out how ants know when another ant is dead.If an ant is
knocked unconscious,other ants leave it alone until it wakes up.That means ants
know that unmoving ants can still be alive. Choe suspects that
when an Argentine ant dies.the chemical that says“Wait-I'm not dead yet” quickly
goes away.Once that chemical is gone,only the one that says“I'm dead”is
left.“It's because the dead ant no longer smells like a living ant that it gets
carried to the graveyard(墓地),not because its body releases new,unique chemicals
after death,”said Choe.When other ants detect the“dead”chemical without the“not
dead yet”chemical,they haul away the body.This was Choe's hypothesis(假设).
To test his hypothesis,Choe and his team put different
chemicals on Argentine ant pupae(蛹). When the scientists used the“I'm
dead”chemical,other ants quickly hauled the treated pupae away. When the
scientists used the“Wait-I'm not dead yet”chemical,other ants left the treated
pupae alone. Choe believes this behavior shows that the“not dead yet”chemical
overrides(优胜于)the“dead”chemical when picked up by adult ants.And that when an
ant dies,the“not dead yet”chemical fades away. Other nearby ants then detect the
remaining“dead”chemical and remove the body from the nest.
单选题Karen Rusa was a 30-year-old woman and the mother of four children. For the past several months Karen had been experiencing repetitive thoughts that centered around her children's safety. She frequently found herself imagining that a serious accident had occurred; she was unable to put these thoughts out of her mind. On one such occasion she imagined that her son, Alan, had broken his leg playing football at school. There was no reason to believe that an accident had occurred, but she kept thinking about the possibility until she finally called the school to see if Alan was all right. Even after receiving their assurance that he had not been hurt, she described herself as being some- what surprised when he later arrived home unharmed. Karen also noted that her daily routine was seriously hampered by an extensive series of counting work that she performed throughout each day. Specific numbers come to have a special meaning to her; she found that her preoccupation with these numbers was interfering with her ability to perform everyday activities. One example was grocery shopping. Karen believed that if she selected the first item, some dreadful thing would happen to her first child, if she selected the second item, some unknown disaster wonld fall on her seconol child, and so on for the four children. Karen's preoccupation with numbers extended to other activities, most notable the pattern in which she smoked cigarettes and drank coffee. If she had one cigarette, she believed that she had to smoke at least four in a row or one of her children would be harmed in some way. If she drank one cup of coffee, she felt compelled to drink four. Karen acknowledged the unreasonableness of these rules, but, nevertheless, maintained that she felt more comfortable, when she observed them earnestly. When she was occasionally in too great a hurry to observe these rules, she experienced considerable anxiety in the form of a subjective feeling of dread and fear. She de- scribed herself as tense, uneasy and unable to relax during these periods.
单选题Importance of the Public Image
Public image refers to how a company is viewed by its customers, suppliers, and stockholders (股东), by the financial community, by the communities in which it operates, and by the federal and
1
governments. Public image is controllable to a
2
extent, just as the product, price, place, and promotional efforts are.
A firm"s public image
3
a vital role in the attractiveness of the firm and its products to employees, customers,
4
to such outsiders as stockholders, suppliers, creditors (债权人), government officials, as well as
5
special groups. With some things, it is impossible to satisfy all the diverse publics: for example, high quality products and service standards should bring almost complete approval,
6
low quality products and service would receive wide
7
.
A firm"s public image,
8
it is good, should be treasured and protected. It is a
9
asset that usually is built up over a long and satisfying relationship of a firm with its publics. If a firm has
10
a quality image, this is not easily countered or imitated by competitors.
11
an image may enable a firm to charge higher prices, to woo (追求) the best distributors and dealers, to attract the best employees, to
12
the most favorable creditor relationships and lowest borrowing costs. It should also allow the firm"s stock to command a higher price-earnings ratio than other firms in the same industry
13
such a good reputation and public image.
A number of factors affect the public image of a corporation,
14
physical facilities, contacts of outsiders with company employees, product quality and dependability, prices
15
, customer service, the kind of advertising and the media and programs used, and the use of public relations and publicity.
单选题For some animals,
locomotion
is accomplished by changes in body shape.
单选题His kidney was
given
to his daughter so as to save her.
单选题Science and Truth
"FINAGLE" (欺骗) is not a word that most people associate with science. One reason is that the image of the scientist is of one who always
1
data in an impartial (不偏不倚的) search for truth. In any debate—
2
intelligence, schooling, energy—the phrase "science says" usually disarms opposition.
But scientists have long acknowledged the existence of a "finagle factor"—a tendency by many scientists to give a helpful change to the data to
3
desired results. The latest of the finagle factor in action comes from Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard biologist, who has
4
the important 19th century work of Dr. Samuel George Morton. Morton was famous in his time for analysing the brain
5
of the skulls as a measure of intelligence. He concluded that whites had the largest brains, that the brains of Indians and blacks were smaller, and
6
, that whites constitute a superior race.
Gould went back to Morton"s original data and concluded that the
7
were an example of the finagle at work. He found that Morton"s "discovery" was made by leaving out embarrassing data,
8
incorrect procedures, and changing his criteria—again, always in favour of his argument. Morton has been thoroughly discredited by now and scientists do not believe that brain size reflects
9
.
But Gould went on to say Morton"s story is only an example of a common problem in
10
work. Some of the leading figures in science are
11
to have used the finagle factor. Gould says that Isaac Newton fudged out (捏造) to support at least three central statements that he could not prove. And so
12
Laudius Ptolemy, the Greek astronomer, whose master work, Almagest , summed up the case for a solar system that had the earth as its centre. Recent
13
indicate that Ptolemy either faked some key data or resorted heavily to the finagle factor.
All this is important because the finagle factor is still at work. For example, in the artificial sweetener controversy, for example, it is
14
that all the studies sponsored by the sugar industry find that the artificial sweetener is unsafe,
15
all the studies sponsored by the diet food industry find nothing wrong with it.
单选题He has trouble understanding that other people judge him by his social skills and conduct. A. style B. behavior C. mode D. attitude
单选题
The Development of
Personality Personality is to large extent
inherent. A-type parents usually bring A-type offspring. But the environment
must also have a profound effect, since if competition is important to the
parents, it is likely to become a major factor in the lives of their
children. One place where children soak up (浸泡) A
characteristics is school, which is, by its very nature, a highly competitive
institution. Too many schools adopt the "win at all costs" moral standard and
measure their success by sporting achievements. The current passion for making
children compete against their classmates or against the clock produces a
two-layer system, in which competitive A-types seem in some way better than
their B-type fellows. Being too keen to win can have dangerous consequences:
Remember that Philippines, the first marathon runner, dropped dead seconds after
saying, "Rejoice, We conquer!" By far the worst form of
competition in schools is the disproportionate emphasis on examinations. It is a
rare school that allows pupils to concentrate on those things they do well. The
merits of competition by examination are somewhat questionable, but competition
in the certain knowledge of failure is positively harmful.
Obviously, it is neither practical nor desirable that all A youngsters change
into B's. The world needs types, and schools have an important duty to try to
fit a child's personality to hide possible future employment. It is top
management. If the preoccupation of schools with academic work
was lessened, more time might be spent teaching children surer values. Perhaps
selection for the caring professions, especially medicine, could be made less by
good grades in chemistry and more by such considerations as sensitivity and
sympathy. It is surely a mistake to choose our doctors exclusively form A-type
stock. B's are important and should be encouraged.
单选题{{B}}第二篇{{/B}}
{{B}}Japanese Car
Keeps Watch for Drunk Drivers{{/B}} A concept car developed by
Japanese Company Nissan has a breathalyzer-like detection system and other
instruments that could help keep drunk or over-tired drivers off the
road. The car's sensors check odors inside the car and monitor a
driver's sweat for traces of alcohol. An in-car computer system can issue an
alert or even leek up the ignition system if the driver seems over-the-limit.
The air odor sensors are fixed firmly and deeply in the driver and passenger
seats, while a detector in the gear-shift knob measures perspiration from the
driver's palm. Other carmakers have developed similar detection
systems. For example, Sweden's Volvo has developed a breathalyzer attached to a
car's seat belt that drivers must blow into before the engine will
start. Nissan's new concept vehicle also includes a
dashboard-mounted camera that tracks a drivers alertness by monitoring theft
eyes. It will sound an alarm and issue a spoken warning in Japanese or English
if it judges that the driver needs to pull over and rest. The
car technology is still in development, but general manager Kazuhiro Doi says
the combination of different detection systems should improve the overall
effectiveness of the technology. "For example, if the gear-shift sensor was
bypassed by a passenger using it instead of the driver, the facial recognition
system would still be used," Doi says. Nissan has no specific timetable for
marketing the system, but aims to use technology to cut the number of fatalities
involving its vehicles to half 1995 levels by 2015. The car's
seat belt can also tighten if drowsiness is detected, while an external camera
checks that the car is keeping to its lane properly. However, Doi admits that
some of the technology, such as the alcohol odor sensor, should be improved. "If
you drink one beer, it's going to register, so we need to study what's the
appropriate level for the system to activate," he says. In the
UK, some research groups are using similar advanced techniques to understand
driver behavior and the effectiveness of different road
designs.
单选题The moon and most artificial satellites travel around the Earth in elliptical
paths
.
