单选题{{B}}Passage 3{{/B}} To paraphrase 18th-century statesman Edmund Burke, "all that is needed for the triumph of a misguided cause is that good people do nothing." One such cause now seeks to end biomedical research because of the theory that animals have rights ruling out their use in research. Scientists need to respond forcefully to animal rights advocates, whose arguments are confusing the public and thereby threatening advances in health knowledge and care. Leaders of the animal rights, movement target biomedical research because it depends on public funding, and few people understand the process of health care research. Hearing allegations of cruelty to animals in research settings, many are perplexed that anyone would deliberately harm an animal. For example, a grandmotherly woman staffing an animal rights booth at a recent street fair was distributing a brochure that encouraged readers not to use anything that comes from or is tested in animals — no meat, no fur, no medicines. Asked if she opposed immunizations, she wanted to know if vaccines come from animal research. When assured that they do, she replied, "Then I would have to say yes." Asked what will happen when epidemics return, she said, "Don't worry, scientists will find some way of using computers." Such well-meaning people just don't understand. Scientists must communicate their message to the public in a compassionate, understandable way — in human terms, not in the language of molecular biology. We need to make clear the connection between animal research and a grandmother's hip replacement, a father's bypass operation, a baby's vaccinations, and even a pet's shots. To those who are unaware that animal research was needed to produce these treatments, as well as mew treatments and vaccines, animal research seems wasteful at best and cruel at worst. Much can be done. Scientists could "adopt" middle school classes and present their own research. They should be quick to respond to letters to the editor, lest animal rights misinformation go unchallenged and ac- quire a deceptive appearance of truth. Research institutions could be opened to tours, to show that laboratory animals receive humane care. Finally, because the ultimate stakeholders are patients, the health research com- munity should actively recruit to its cause not only well-known personalities such as Stephen Cooper, who has made courageous statements about the value of animal research, but all who receive medical treatment. If good people do nothing, there is a real possibility that an uninformed citizenry Will extinguish the precious embers of medical progress.

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单选题{{B}}Passage 3{{/B}} Not too many decades ago it seemed "obvious" both to the general public and to sociologists that modern society has changed people's natural relations, loosened their responsibilities to kin and neighbors, and substituted in their place superficial relationships with passing acquaintances. However, in recent years a growing body of research has revealed that the "obvious" is not true. It seems that if you are a city resident, you typically know a smaller proportion of your neighbors than you do if you are a resident of a smaller community. But, for the most part, this fact has few significant consequences. It does not necessarily follow that if you know few of your neighbors you will know no one else. Even in very large cities, people maintain close social ties within small, private social worlds. Indeed, the number and quality of meaningful relationships do not differ between more and less urban people. Smalltown residents are more involved with kin that are big-city residents. Yet city dwellers compensate by developing friendships with people who share similar interests and activities. Urbanism may produce a different style of life, but the quality of life does not differ between town and city. Nor are residents of large communities any likelier to display psychological symptoms of stress or alienation, a feeling of not belonging, than are residents of smaller communities. However, city dwellers do worry more about crime, and this leads them to a distrust of strangers. These findings do not imply that urbanism makes little or no difference. If neighbors are strangers to one another, they are less likely to sweep the sidewalk of an elderly couple living next door or keep an eye out for size and its social heterogeneity. For instance, sociologists have found much evidence that the size of more likely than their small-town counterparts to have a cosmopolitan outlook, to display less responsibility to traditional kinship roles, to vote for leftist political candidates, and to be tolerant of nontraditional religious groups, unpopular political groups, and so-called undesirables. Everything considered, heterogeneity and unusual behavior seem to be outcomes of large population size.

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单选题 Boeing Co's Sonic Cruiser, a proposed faster airliner, would be mostly blended material, program director Walt Gillette said recently. In its quest for the{{U}} (21) {{/U}}to fly 15 to 20 per cent faster than{{U}} (22) {{/U}}airliners, the US company says about 60 per cent of the new plane's{{U}} (23) {{/U}}, including the wing, would be a carbon-fiber-reinforced composite material that is lighter than aluminum for the same{{U}} (24) {{/U}}. "Composites would{{U}} (25) {{/U}}almost all of the airplane that you could see from the outside," Gillette said. Composites are well regarded among aeronautical engineers and have been in{{U}} (26) {{/U}}use since the 1970s. Each generation of planes has more composites, and Gillette{{U}} (27) {{/U}}that about 10 per cent of Boeing's{{U}} (28) {{/U}}civil aircraft, the early-1990s 777, is built{{U}} (29) {{/U}}the material.{{U}} (30) {{/U}}still only a proposal, the Sonic Cruiser has{{U}} (31) {{/U}}the interest of many airlines, which expressed unusual enthusiasm for the aircraft{{U}} (32) {{/U}}the September 11 attacks forced most of them to scale back operations. When Boeing{{U}} (33) {{/U}}the Sonic Cruiser last year it said the plane might enter service{{U}} (34) {{/U}}2006 and 2008. Gillette said the{{U}} (35) {{/U}}date now is 2008, by which time the market and technology are expected to have developed{{U}} (36) {{/U}}Wind-tunnel tests{{U}} (37) {{/U}}the company's computer calculations of optimal cruising speed for the plane at 95 to 98 per. cent of the speed of sound. Going faster than sound would use too much fuel and{{U}} (38) {{/U}}great{{U}} (39) {{/U}}on the aircraft's engines. Gillette said the Sonic Cruiser{{U}} (40) {{/U}}be offered as a family of aircraft with 200 to 250 seats and a range of 6,500 to 9,000 nautical miles (12,000 to 16,700 kilometers).

单选题Few creations of big technology capture the imagination like giant dams. Perhaps it is humankind"s long suffering at the mercy of flood and drought that makes the idea of forcing the waters to do our bidding so fascinating. But to be fascinated is also, sometimes, to be blind. Several giant dam projects threaten to do more harm than good. The lesson from dams is that big is not always beautiful. It doesn"t help that building a big, powerful dam has become a symbol of achievement for nations and people striving to assert themselves. Egypt"s leadership in the Arab world was cemented by the Aswan High Dam. Turkey"s bid for First World status includes the giant Ataturk Dam. But big dams tend not to work as intended. The Aswan Dam, for example, stopped the Nile flooding but deprived Egypt of the fertile silt that floods left — all in return for a giant reservoir of disease which is now so full of silt that it barely generates electricity. And yet, the myth of controlling the waters persists. This week, in the heart of civilized Europe, Slovaks and Hungarians stopped just short of sending in the troops in their contention over a dam on the Danube. The huge complex will probably have all the usual problems of big dams. But Slovakia is bidding for independence from the Czechs, and now needs a dam to prove itself. Meanwhile, in India, the World Bank has given the go-ahead to the even more wrong-headed Narmada Dam. And the bank has done this even though its advisors say the dam will cause hardship for the powerless and environmental destruction. The benefits are for the powerful, but they are far from guaranteed. Proper, scientific study of the impacts of dams and of the costs and benefits of controlling water can help to resolve these conflicts. Hydroelectric power and flood control and irrigation are possible without building monster dams. But when you are dealing with myths, it is hard to be either proper, or scientific. It is time that the world learned the lessons of Aswan. You don"t need a dam to be saved.

单选题 Questions 14—16 are based on the following passage. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14—16.

单选题It is a curious paradox that we think of the physical sciences as "hard", the social sciences as "soft", and the biological sciences as somewhere in between. This is interpreted to mean that our knowledge of physical systems is more certain than our knowledge of biological systems, and these in mm are more certain than our knowledge of social systems. In terms of our capacity to sample the relevant universes, however, and the probability that our images of these universes are at least approximately correct, one suspects that a reverse order is more reasonable. We are able to sample earth's social systems with some degree of confidence that we have a reasonable sample of the total universe being investigated. Our knowledge of social systems, therefore, while it is in many ways extremely inaccurate, is not likely to be seriously overturned by new discoveries. Even the folk knowledge in social systems on which ordinary life is based in earning, spending, organizing, marrying, taking part in political activities, fighting and so on, is not very dissimilar from the more sophisticated images of the social system derived from the social sciences, even though it is built upon the very imperfect samples of personal experience. In contrast, our image of the astronomical universe, even of earth's geological history, can easily be subject to revolutionary changes as new data come in and new theories are worked out. If we define the "security" of our image of various parts of the total system as the probability of their suffering significant changes, we would reverse the order of hardness and see the social sciences as the most secure, the physical sciences as the least secure, and again the biological sciences as somewhere in between. Our image of the astronomical universe is the least secure of all simply because we observe such a fantastically small sample of it and its record-keeping is trivial as compared with the rich records of the social systems, or even the limited records of biological systems. Records of the astronomical universe, despite the fact that we see distant things as they were long ago, are limited in the extreme. Even in regard to such a close neighbor as the moon, which we have actually visited, theories about its origin and history are extremely different, contradictory, and hard to choose among. Our knowledge of physical evolution is incomplete and highly insecure.

单选题 {{I}} Questions 14-16 are based on following speech. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14-16.{{/I}}

单选题According to the passage, the disappear of the West's advantage may be due to______.

单选题{{B}}Passage 3{{/B}} The promise of finding long-term technological solutions to the problem of world food shortages seems difficult to fulfill Many innovations that were once heavily supported and publicized have since {{U}}fallen by the wayside{{/U}}. The proposals themselves were technically feasible, but they proved to be economically unenviable and to yield food products culturally unacceptable to their consumers. One characteristic common to unsuccessful food innovations has been that, even with extensive government support, they often have not been technologically adapted or culturally acceptable to the people for whom they had been developed. A successful new technology, therefore, must fit the entire sociocultural system in which it is to find a place Security of crop yield, practicality of storage, and costs are much more significant than what had previously been realized by the advocates of new technologies. The adoption of new food technologies depends on more than these technical and cultural considerations; economic factors and governmental policies also strongly influence the ultimate success of any innovation. Economists in the Anglo-American tradition have taken the lead in investigating the economics of technological innovation. Although they exaggerate in claiming that profitability is the key factor guiding technical change -- they completely disregard the substantial effects of culture—they are correct in stressing the importance of profits. Most technological innovations in agriculture can be fully used only by large landowners and are only adopted if these profit-oriented business people believe that the innovation will increase their incomes, Thus innovations that carry high rewards for big agribusiness groups will be adopted even if they harm segments of the population and reduce the availability of food in a country. Further, should s new technology promise to alter substantially the profits and losses associated with any production system, those with economic power will strive to maintain and improve their own positions. Therefore, although technical advances in food production and processing will perhaps be needed to ensure food availability, meeting food needs will depend much more on equalizing economic power among the various segments of the populations within the developing countries themselves.

单选题{{B}}Passage 4{{/B}} For many years, Antarctica was thought to be only an archipelago whose islands were tied together above sea level by ice. It was thought to be made up of two small subcontinents--East Antarctica, the larger, and West Antarctica, containing the Antarctic Peninsula. The two continents were supposed to be separated by a large trough, below sea level, that connected the Ross and Weddell Seas. Geophysical studies have now revealed a fairly complete picture of the Antarctic landform below its ice cover. We know now that West Antarctica is connected to the main part of the continent by a chain of mountains well above sea level, though largely buried by ice and snow. The bedrock of much of East Antarctica appears to be above sea level. Whether mineral wealth lies hidden by the vast ice sheets is unknown. No more than 2 percent of the continent is actual rock outcrop and much of this small and probably unrepresentative sample has yet to be visited by geologists. Certainly no deposits rich enough to be economically useful have been found. Geologists now know that the ice-buried rocks of the Antarctic are similar to rocks of the other continents of the world. Minor amounts of potentially valuable minerals have been reported. The presence of petroleum has been speculated upon by several geologists, but none has yet been found. Low-grade deposits of coal are widespread, especially in the Transantarctic Mountains, but there has been no attempt at exploitation. Even if rich mineral deposits were to be found in Antarctica, the cost of removal from this remote and inhospitable land would be exorbitant. Interpretation of continental structure is an important objective of any extensive geologic investigation. Yet except for the earth' s ocean basins, no area the size of Antarctica is so geologically unknown. With 98 percent of the continent covered by ice, it is extremely difficult to decipher the continent' s general structure. Geologists determine geologic structure by studying rock outcrops, and many of these are small and widely separated. No outcrops are known in the vast interior of East Antarctica. Working out the continental structure of Antarctica is analogous to learning that of the entire United States from studies of a few scattered counties in California and mountain ranges scattered at irregular intervals across the country.