英语阅读(二)2017年10月真题试题及答案解析（00596）

Paragraph Ten

Lack of interest can also lead to absent mindedness. A man who can recite sports statistics from 30 years ago may not remember to drop a litter in the mailbox. Women are slightly better than men in this respect, possibly because they pay more attention to their environment.

The influence of interest on m_____.

It's early August and the countryside appears peaceful. Planting has long been finished and the fields are alive with strong, healthy crops. Soybeans and wheat are flourishing under the hot summer sun, and the com is now well over six feet tall. (46. Herds of dairy and beef cattle are grazing peacefully in rolling pastures which surround big. red barns and neat. white farmhouses. Everything as far as the eye can see radiates a sense of prosperity.)

The tranquility of the above scene is misleading. Farmers in the Midwest put in some of the longest workdays of any profession in the United States. In addition to caring for their crops and livestock, they have to keep up with new farming techniques, such as those for combining soil erosion and increasing livestock production.It is essential that farmers adopt these advances in technology if they want to continue to meet the growing demands of a hungry world.

(47.Agriculture is the number one industry in the United States and agricultural products are the country's leading export.Com and soybean exports alone account for approximately 75 percent of the amount sold in world markets.)

This productivity,however,has its price.Intensive cultivation exposes the earth to the damaging forces of nature.Every year wind and water remove tons of rich soil from the nation's croplands,with the result that soil erosion has become a national problem concerning everyone from the farmer to the consumer.

Each field is covered by a limited amount of topsoil,the upper layer of earth which is richest in the nutrient and minerals necessary for growing crops.In the 1830s,nearly two feet of rich,black top soil covered the Midwest.Today the average depth is only eight inches,and every decade another inch is blown or washed away. (48.A United States Agricultural Department survey states that if erosion continues at its present rate,corn and soybean yields in the Midwest may drop as much as 30 percent over the next 50 years.)

So far, farmers have been able to compensate for the loss of fertile topsoil by applying more chemical fertilizers to their fields;however,while this practice has increased crop yields, it has been devastating for ecology. (49.Agriculture has become one of the biggest polluters of the nation's precious water supply. River, lakes,and underground reserves of water are being filled in and poisoned by soil and chemicals carried by drainage from eroding fields. )Furthermore, fertilizers only replenish the soil; they do not prevent its loss.

Clearly something else has to be done in order to avoid an eventual ecological disaster.Conservationists insist that the solution to the problem lies in new and better farming techniques. (50.Concerned farmers are building terraces on hilly fields,rotating their crops,and using new plowing methods to cut soil losses significantly.Substantial progress has been made.but soil erosion is far from being under control.)

The problems and innovations of the agricultural industry in the Midwest are not restricted to growing crops.Livestock raising,which is a big business in the central region of the United States, is also undergoing many changes.

Paragraph Eight

A control box fitted to the car contains a mini-cellphone, a micro-processor and memory, and a GPS satellite positioning receiver. If the car is stolen, a coded cellphone signal will tell the control center to block the vehicle's engine management system and prevent the engine from being restarted.

A t___ device to protect the car.

Paragraph Seven

Most scientists start an investigation by finding out what other scientists have learned about a particular problem. After known facts have been gathered, the scientist comes to the part of the investigation that requires considerable imagination. Possible solutions to the problem are formulated. These possible solutions are called hypotheses. Any hypothesis is a leap into the unknown.

The process of doing scientific r___.

Paragraph Nine

Parents in low. income countries fail to invest in their daughters because they do not expect them to make an economic contribution to the family: girls grow up only to marry into somebody else's family and bear children. Girls are thus seen as less valuable than boys and are kept at home to do housework while their brothers are sent to school.

Girls are n____ in poor countries.

Paragraph Six

A report concluded that normal children aged between 9 and 17 exhibit a higher level of anxiety today than children who were treated for mental illness 60 years ago. The report cited two main reasons: increasing physical isolation brought on by high divorce rates and less involvement in community—and a growing perception that the world is a more dangerous place.

The c____ of a higher level of anxiety today.

Paragraph Five

As we go about our everyday lives, we mentally attempt to place people in terms of their status. For example, we must judge whether the person in the library is a reader or a librarian, whether the telephone caller is a friend or a salesman, whether the unfamiliar person on our property is a thief or a meter reader, and so on.

A tendency to i____ a person.

Paragraph Four

Exercise's supporting role in weight reduction is vital. A study at the Boston University Medical Center of overweight police officers and other public employees confirmed that those who dieted without exercise regained almost all their old weight, while those who worked exercise into their daily routine. maintained their new weight.

Exercise to k____ fit

Paragraph Two

Inside your nose, there are hundreds of tiny hairs. These hairs filter the air you breathe. Sometimes dust and pollen find their way through these hairs and bother your nasal passages. The nerves in the lining of your nose tell your brain that something is invading your body. At this moment you usually sneeze.

An automatic r____ of our body.

Paragraph Three

The meanings of time differ in different parts of the world. Thus,misunderstandings arise between people from cultures that treat time differently. Time is valued highly in American life. If people do not show up on time when they have an appointment, they may be regarded as impolite or not responsible.

Being p_____, a virtue in American culture.

Paragraph One

Brush your fingers gently across the leaves of the plant, and the leaves instantly fold up like tiny green fingers. The stems droop as if ready to fall off the plant. About ten minutes later, the leaves reopen, and the stems rise again! The unusual behavior of this plant has earned itself other common names, such as the. "humble plant" and the "touch-me-not".

A s____ house plant.

To renew America, we must be bold.

We must do what no generation has had to do before. We must invest more in our own people, in their jobs, in their future, and at the same time cut our massive debt. And we must do so in a world in which we must compete for every opportunity. 

It will not be easy; it will require sacrifice. But it can be done, and done fairly, not choosing sacrifice for its own sake, but for our own sake. We must provide for our nation the way a family provides for its children. Our Founders saw themselves in the light of posterity. We can do no less. Anyone who has ever watched a child's eyes wander into sleep knows what posterity is. Posterity is the world to come- the world for whom we hold our ideals, from whom we have borrowed our planet, and to whom we bear sacred responsibility. 

To renew America, we must revitalize our democracy. 

This beautiful capital, like every capital since the dawn of civilization, is often a place of intrigue and calculation. Powerful people maneuver for position and worry endlessly about who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down, forgetting those people whose toil and sweat sends us here and pays our way. 

Americans deserve better, and in this city today, there are people who want to do better. And so I say to all of us here, let us resolve to reform our politics, so that power and privilege no longer shout down the voice of the people. Let us put aside personal advantage so that we can feel the pain and see the promise of America. 

26. exceptionally large (Para.2)

27. an act of giving up something valuable to you in order to help others (Para.3)

28. the people who will live in the future (Para.3)

29. considered to be holy and deserving respect (Para.3)

30. give new life or energy to something (Para.4)

31. secret planning of something detrimental to someone (Para.5)

32. limitlessly (Para.5)

33. exhausting physical labour (Para.5)

34. make a firm decision to do something (Para. 6)

35. a special right granted only to a particular person or a group (Para.6)

The new type of exterior of a building can be _____.

According to Richard Bechett, traditionally, architecture is a _____.

We can infer from paragraph 3 that _____.

Presently, one of the main tasks of the BiotA lab is to _____.

Coffee became popular among middle-class workers because _____.

?Passage Five

For most architects, moss (苔藓) and lichen (地衣) growing up the side of a structure is a bad sign. Building materials are designed specifically to resist growth, and much research has been done to develop paint treatments and biocides that make sure the concrete and wood and bricks that sheathe a building aren't colonized by living things. But a new group is trying to change all that. Instead of developing surfaces resistant to moss and lichen, the BiotA lab wants to build [facades] that are“bioreceptive”. 

BiotA lab, based in University College London's Bartlett School of Architecture, was founded last year. The lab's architects and engineers are working on making materials that can foster the growth of organisms like lichens and mosses. The idea is that ultimately they'll be able to build buildings onto which a variety of these plants can grow. Right now, they re particularly focused on designing a type of bioreceptive concrete. 

Marcos Cruz, one of the directors of the BiotA lab, says that he has long been interested in what he sees as a conflicted way of thinking about buildings and beauty:“We admire mosses growing on old buildings, we identify them with our romantic past, but we don't like them on contemporary buildings," he says. Cruz says that he wants the BiotA project to push back against the idea that cleanliness is the ideal that buildings should strive for. “Architects were wearing a straightjacket, that only in the last 20 years architects started shredding off." 

Richard Beckett, another director of the BiotA lab, says that he's interested in the project flipping the usual way that buildings are designed, at least in a small way. "Traditionally architecture is a top-down process, you decide what the building will look like, and then you build it. Here we' re designing for a specific species or group of species, the material and geometry we' re using is so specific that it only allows certain species to grow." It's controlled chaos. 

Both Cruz and Beckett talked about a particular way of thinking about their buildings. “Every architect you speak to talks about the skin of the building," says Beckett. But they want to propose a different way of seeing things. Instead of skin, the lab wants people to think of the exterior of a building as bark. “'Not just a protective thing, a host; it allows other things to grow on it, it integrates as well," says Beckett. 

But these living systems can be expensive and hard to maintain. Sometimes all the plants die, and have to be replaced. Cruz tells a story of a plant nursery in East London that had a green wall.“When 1 saw it for the first time, I thought it was wonderful!" he says. But six months later when he passed the nursery again, he noticed that the plants were all dead and falling off the wall. “A year later, much to my surprise, they were putting up steel panels with photographs of a forest on them," he says, laughing.   

Questions 21-25 are based on Passage Five.

In paragraph I, the word“facades”means _____.

Coffee-houses were called"penny university"because _____.

Three centuries ago,coffee-houses were _____.

Compared with taverns,coffee-houses were usually _____.

?Passage Four

Where do you go when you want to know the latest business news, follow commodity prices, keep up with political gossip, find out what others think of a new book, or stay abreast of the latest scientific and technological developments? Today, the answer is obvious: you log on to the Internet. Three centuries ago, the answer was just as easy: you went to a coffee-house. There, for the price of a cup of coffee, you could read the latest pamphlets, catch up on news and gossip, attend scientific lectures, strike business deals, or chat with like-minded people about literature or politics. 

The coffee-houses that sprang up across Europe, starting around 1650, functioned as information exchanges for writers, politicians, businessmen and scientists. Like today's websites, weblogs and discussion boards, coffee-houses were lively and often unreliable sources of information that typically specialized in a particular topic or political viewpoint. They were outlets for a stream of newsletters, pamphlets, and advertising free-sheets. Depending on the interests of their customers, some coffee-houses displayed commodity prices, share prices and shipping lists, whereas others provided foreign newsletters filled with coffee-house gossip from abroad.

Rumors, news and gossip were also carried between coffee-houses by their patrons, and sometimes runners would fit from one coffee-house to another within a particular city to report major events such as the outbreak of a war or the death of a head of state. Coffee-houses were centers of scientific education, literary and philosophical speculation, commercial innovation and, sometimes, political fermentation. Collectively, Europe's interconnected web of coffee-houses formed the internet of the Enlightenment era.

The contrast between coffee and alcoholic drinks was reflected in the decor of the coffee-houses that began to appear in European cities, London in particular. They were adorned with bookshelves, mirrors, git-framed pictures and good furniture, in contrast to the noisiness, gloom and squalor of taverns. According to custom, social differences were left at the coffee-house door, and anyone who started a quarrel! had to atone for it by buying an order of coffee for all present. In short, coffee-houses were calm, sober and well-ordered establishments that promoted polite conversation and discussion. 

With a new rationalism abroad in the spheres of both philosophy and commerce, coffee was the ideal drink. Its popularity owed much to the growing middle class of information workers—clerks, merchants and businessmen—who did mental work in offices rather than performing physical labor in the open,and found that coffee sharpened their mental faculties.Such men were not rich enough to entertain lavishly at home,but could afford to spend a few pence a day on coffee. Coffee-houses provided a forum for education, debate and self-improvement. They were nicknamed "penny universities" in a contemporary English verse which observed: "So great a Universitie, I think there ne'er was any; In which you may a Scholar be,for spending of a Penny." 

Questions 16-20 are based on Passage Four.

Today,if you want to get the latest business news and keep up with political gossip, you _____.

College is a time when young adults can ____.

The word "intimidating" in paragraph 7 probably means ____.

Passage Three

?Barry Glassner is president of Lewis & Clark College in Oregon, where he also teaches sociology. Morton Schapiro is president of Northwestern University in Illinois, where he also teaches economics. Here's what they told The Washington Post. 

When the presidents of colleges and universities talk privately at this time of year, a popular topic is how to handle the“helicopter parents". We muse over what to say during new-student orientation sessions to dissuade parents from hovering over their children for the next four years-- interfering with the maturation their children need, while driving us a bit crazy in the process. 

The usual plan of attack is to lecture parents on the importance of letting go. “Help your children unpack," parents are told.“Kiss them goodbye, and ask them to text you a couple of times per week." 

Having found that approach both unrealistic and ineffective, the two of us have come to take quite a different tack. We encourage the parents of freshmen to stay closely connected with their children. We know that some parents make inappropriate demands on professors, student-services staff and college officials while failing to disconnect from their children sufficiently to allow them to grow i up. But we also understand that total disengagement is not the solution. 

One way to counteract excessive parental involvement is constructive engagement, a way for parents to stay meaningfully involved with their children during this new phase in their growth. We speak plainly about the areas where. many parents today have a difficult time shifting gears. We counsel that most of the interventions they made on their children's behalf when they were younger should now be responsibilities of the child. And we make known that, when parents call us and say their son or daughter would kill them if he or she knew . they were calling the president, our first thought is that the child may have a good point.

College is a time when parents can grant their children the precious opportunity to take responsibility as they develop into independent young men and women, fully prepared to be productive and engaged citizens. To the parents of children who don't like their roommates, teachers, academic advisers or grades, we urge empathy and calm. The social and survival skills young people develop in these situations will serve them well later in life. 

So parents can help by gently pushing their children to embrace complexity and diversity and to stretch the limits of their comfort zones. Some of the most important learning we provide is uncomfortable learning—where students take classes in subjects they find intimidating, and live, study and play with classmates . from backgrounds very different from their own.  

Questions 11-15 are based on Passage Three.

The author uses the term "helicopter parents" to describe those parents ____.

When parents fail to disconnect from their children, they tend to ____.

A good way to counterbalance parents' interference with their children's maturation is to ____.

We can infer from paragraph 4 that ____.

To solve the problem of youth unemployment, we need to ____.

In the emerging economies, a high youth unemployment exists when ____.

?Passage Two

"Young people ought not to be idle. It is very bad for them." said Margaret Thatcher in 1984. She was right: there are few worse things that society can do to its young than to leave them in limbo. Those who start their careers on the dole are more likely to have lower wages and more spells of joblessness later in life, because they lose out on the chance to acquire skills and self-confidence in their formative years.

Yet more young people are idle than ever. OECD (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) figures suggest that 26m 15- to 24-year-olds in developed countries are not in employment, education or training; the number of young people without a job has risen by 30% since 2007. The International Labour Organization reports that 75m young people globally are looking for a job. The World Bank surveys suggest that 262m young people in emerging markets are economically inactive. Depending on how you measure. hem, the number of young people without a job is nearly as large as the population of America (311m). 

Two factors play a big part. First, the long slowdown in the West has: reduced demand for labour, and it is easier to put off hiring young people than it is to fire older workers. Second, in emerging economies population growth is fastest in countries with dysfunctional labour markets, such as India and Egypt. 

The result is an "arc of unemployment", from southern Europe through North Africa and the Middle East to South Asia, where the rich world's recession meets the poor world's youth quake. The anger of the young jobless has already. burst onto the streets in the Middle East. Violent crime, generally in decline in the rich world, is rising in Spain, Italy and Portugal-countries with startlingly high youth unemployment. 

The most obvious way to tackle this problem is to reignite growth. That is easier said than done in a world plagued by debt, and is anyway only a partial answer. The countries where the problem is worst (such as Spain and Egypt)suffered from high youth unemployment even when their economies were growing. Throughout the recession companies have continued to complain that hey cannot find young people with the right sill. This underlines the importance of two other solutions: reforming labour markets and improving education. These are familiar prescriptions, but ones that need to be delivered with both a new vigor and a new twist.  

Questions 6-10 are based on Passage Two.

The statistics in paragraph 2 show that ____.

We can learn from paragraph 13 that ____.

From paragraph 7 we know that ____.

In paragraph 12, the word "rendezvous" is closest in meaning to ____.

Life on a space station could be very ____.

Passage One

Q.There's a lot of talk about putting up manned orbital stations. What does this mean, concretely?