阅读理解Passage 3 Energy independence

阅读理解Questions 34-35 CHINA‟S biggest carmaker does not seem to be doing so badly, a first glance at SAIC‟s third quarter results on October 30th would suggest, Net profits rose by nearly 5% compared with a year earlier, to 6

阅读理解Passage 1 The Internet can make the news more democratic, giving the public a chance to ask questions and seek out facts behind stories and candidates, according to the head of the largest US on-line service

阅读理解Passage 4 Personal computers and the Internet give people new choices about how to spend their time

阅读理解Passage Two Questions 36 to 40 are based on the following passage

阅读理解Questions 31-33 Kidnappings for ransom, drug-smuggling, fake invoicing and extortion are just a few of the ways in which terrorists raise cash for their nefarious deeds

阅读理解Directions: There are 3 passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A., B., C. and D.. You should decide on the best choice and write the answer on the Answer Sheet.Passage OneFor gathering data about individuals or groups at different developmental levels, researchers can use two related research designs: longitudinal and cross-sectional.A longitudinal study is one that measures a behavior or a characteristic of an individual over a period of time, perhaps decades. An example of such a study is the Berkeley Growth Study begun in 1928 by Nancy Bayley. The study focused on a group of 74 white, middle-class newborns. As they grew older, extensive measures of their intellectual, personality, and motor development were recorded. The subjects were studied for more than thirty years.The longitudinal research design is a powerful technique for seeking understandings of the effects of early experiences on later development. Also, differences in or stability of behaviors or characteristics at different ages can be determined. Longitudinal studies, however, are expensive to conduct, time-consuming, and heavilycontingenton the patience and persistence of the researchers. The findings of a longitudinal study may be jeopardized by relocation of subjects to another part of the country and by boredom or irritation at repeated testing. Another disadvantage is that society changes from one time to another and the subjects participating in the study reflect to some degree such changes. The methods of study or the questions guiding the researchers may also change from one time to another. If properly conducted, however, longitudinal studies can produce useful, direct information about development.A cross-sectional study is one in which subjects of differing ages are selected and compared on a specific behavior or characteristic. They are alike with respect to socioeconomic status, sex, or educational level. For example, a researcher may be interested in looking at changes in intelligence over a thirty-year period. Three groups of subjects, ages ten, twenty, and thirty, may be selected and tested. Conclusions are drawn from the test data.The cross-sectional research design has the clear advantage of being less expensive to conduct and certainly less time-consuming. The major disadvantage is that different individuals who make up the study sample have not been observed over time. No information about past influences on development or about age-related changes is secured. Like longitudinal studies, the cross-sectional methods cannot erase the generational influence that exists when subjects studied are born at different time. Psychologists are now beginning to use an approach that combines longitudinal and cross-sectional research methods.

阅读理解Directions: There are 3 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice and write your answers on the Answer Sheet.Passage TwoThe Effect of Electricity on CancerCan electricity cause cancer? In a society that literally runs on electric power, the very idea seems preposterous. But for more than a decade, a growing band of scientists and journalists has pointed to studies that seem to link exposure to electromagnetic fields with increased risk of leukemia and other malignancies. The implications are unsettling, to say the least, since everyone comes into contact with such fields, which are generated by everything electrical, from power lines and antennas to personal computers and micro-wave ovens. Because evidence on the subject is inconclusive and often contradictory, it has been hard to decide whether concern about the health effects of electricity is legitimate—or the worst kind of paranoia.Now the alarmists have gained some qualified support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In the executive summary of a new scientific review, released in draft form late last week, the EPA has put forward what amounts to the most serious government warning to date. The agency tentatively concludes that scientific evidence “suggests a causal link” between extremely low-frequency electromagnetic fields—those having very long wave-lengths—and leukemia, lymphoma and brain cancer, While the report falls short of classifying ELF fields as probable carcinogens, it does identify the common 60-hertz magnetic field as “a possible, but not proven, cause of cancer in humans.”The report is no reason to panic—or even to lost sleep. If there is a cancer risk, it is a small one. The evidence is still so controversial that the draft stirred a great deal of debate within the Bush Administration, and the EPA released it over strong objections from the Pentagon and the White House. But now no one can deny that the issue must be taken seriously and that much more research is needed.At the heart of the debate is a simple and well-understood physical phenomenon: When an electric current passes through a wire, it generates an electromagnetic field that exerts forces on surrounding objects. For many years, scientists dismissed any suggestion that such forces might be harmful, primarily because they are so extraordinarily weak. The ELF magnetic field generated by a video terminal measures only a few mill gauss, or about one- hundredth the strength of the earth’s own magnetic field, the electric fields surrounding a power line can be as high as 10 kilovolts per meter, but the corresponding field induced in human cells will be only about 1 mill volt per meter. This is far less than the electric fields that the cells themselves generate.How could such minuscule forces pose a health danger? The consensus used to be that they could not, and for decades scientists concentrated on more powerful kinds of radiation, like X-rays, that pack sufficient wallop to knock electrons out of the molecules that make up the human body. Such “ionizing” radiations have been clearly linked to increased cancer risks and there are regulations to control emissions.But epidemiological studies, which find statistical associations between sets of data, do not prove cause and effect. Though there is a body of laboratory work showing that exposure to ELF fields can have biological effects on animal tissues, a mechanism by which those effects could lead to cancerous growths has never been found.The Pentagon is for from persuaded. In a blistering 33-page critique of the EPA report, Air Force scientists charge its authors with having “biased the entire document” toward proving a link. “Our reviewers are convinced that there is no suggestion that (electromagnetic fields) present in the environment induce or promote cancer,” the Air Force concludes. “It is astonishing that the EPA would lend its imprimatur on this report.” Then Pentagon’s concern is understandable. There is hardly a unit of the modern military that does not depend on the heavy use of some kind of electronic equipment, from huge ground-based radar towers to the defense systems built into every warship and plane.

阅读理解Most people consider dieting to mean eating less in order to lost weight

阅读理解Passage B What we know of prenatal development makes all this attempt made by a mother to mold the character of her unborn child by studying poetry, art, or mathematics during pregnancy seem utterly impossible

阅读理解Passage 1 The standardized educational or psychological tests, which are widely used to aid in selecting, assigning or promoting students, employees and military personnel, have been the target of recent attacks in books, magazines, the daily press, and even in Congress

阅读理解Questions 36-40 are based on the following passage: A white kid sells a bag of cocaine at his suburban high school

阅读理解Passage 4 As one works with color in a practical or experimental way, one is impressed by two apparently unrelated facts

阅读理解Paris is like pornography

阅读理解Passage TwoOn average, American kids ages 3 to 12 spent 29 hours a week in school, eight hours more than they did in 1901. They also did more household work and participated in more of such organized activities as soccer and ballet （芭蕾舞）. Involvement in sports, in particular, rose almost 50% from 1981 to 1997: boys now spend an average of four hours a week playing sports; girls log half that time. All in all, however, childrens leisure time dropped from 40% of the day in 1981 to 25%.Children are affected by the same time crunch （危机）that affects their parents,vsays Sandra Hofferth, who headed the recent study of childrens timetable. A chief reason, she says, is that more mothers are working outside the home. （Nevertheless, children in both double-income and “male breadwinner households spent comparable amounts of time interacting with their parents, 19 hours and 22 hours respectively. In contrast, children spent only 9 hours with their single mothers）.All work and no play could make for some very messed-up kids. Play is the most pow^ful way a child explores the world and learns about himself, says T. Berry BrazeIton, professor at Harvard Medical School. Unstructured play encourages independent thinking and allows the young to negotiate their, relationships with their peers, but kids ages 3 to 12 spent only 12 hours a week engaged in it.The children sampled spent a quarter of their rapidly decreasing “free time” watching television. But that, believe it or not, was one of the findings parents might regard as good news. If they,re spending less time in front of the TV set, however, kids arent replacing it with reading. Despite efforts to get kids more interested in books, the children spent just over an hour a week reading. Lcfs face it, whos got the time?

阅读理解Passage A In large part as a consequence of the feminist movement, historians have focused a great deal of attention in recent years on determining more accurately the status of women in various periods

阅读理解Passage twoApparently everyone knows that global warming only makes climate more extreme. A hot, dry summer has triggered another flood of such claims. And, while many interests are at work, one of the players that benefits the most from this story are the media: the notion of “extreme” climate simply makes for more compelling news.Consider Paul Krugman writing breathlessly in the New York Times about the “rising incidence of extreme events,” He claims that global warming caused the current drought in America’s Midwest, and that supposedly record-high corn prices could cause a global food crisis.But the United Nations climate panel’s latest assessment tells us precisely the opposite. For “North America there is medium confidence that there has an overall slight tendency toward less dryness”. Moreover, there is no way that Krugman could have identified this drought as being caused by global warming without a time machine; Climate models estimate that such detection will be possible by 2048, at the earliest.And, fortunately, this year’s drought appears unlikely to cause a food crisis, as global rice and wheat supplies retain plentiful. Moreover, Krugman overlooks inflation: Prices have increased six-fold since 1969. So, while com futures did set a record of about $8 per bushel in late July, the inflation-adjusted price of corn was higher throughout most of the 1970s, reaching 516 in 1974.Finally, Krugman conveniently forgets that concerns about global warming are the main reason that corn prices have skyrocketed since 2005. Nowadays 40 percent of corn grown in the United States is used to produce ethanol, which does absolutely nothing for the climate, but certainly distorts the price of corn—at the expense of many of the world’s poorest people.Bill Mickbben similarly worries in The Guardian about the Midwest drought and corn prices. He confidently tells us that raging wildfires from New Mexico and Colorado to Siberia are “exactly” what the early stages of global warming look like.In fact, the latest overview of global wildfire suggests that fire intensity has declined over the past 70 years and is now close to its preindustrial level.When well-meaning campaigners want us to pay attention to global warming, they often end up pitching beyond the facts. And, while this may seem justified by a noble goal, such “policy by people” tactics rarely work, and often backfire.Remember how, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, AI Gore claimed that we were in store for ever more destructive hurricanes? Since then, hurricane incidence has dropped off the charts. Exaggerated claims merely fuel public distrust and disengagement.That is unfortunate, because global warming is a real problem, and we do need to, address it.

阅读理解Passage 2 Modern archaeological finds can still contribute much to the study of ancient literature

阅读理解Passage 1 The report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was just as gloomy as anticipated

阅读理解Passage Three Questions 41 to 45 are based on the following passage