剑桥雅思阅读8原文翻译及答案解析(test1)

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剑桥雅思阅读8原文翻译及答案解析(test1)

篇1:剑桥雅思阅读8原文翻译及答案解析(test1)

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

A Chronicle of Timekeeping

Our conception of time depends on the way we measure it

A According to archaeological evidence, at least 5,000 years ago, and long before the advent of the Roman Empire, the Babylonians began to measure time, introducing calendars to co-ordinate communal activities, to plan the shipment of goods and, in particular, to regulate planting and harvesting. They based their calendars on three natural cycles: the solar day, marked by the successive periods of light and darkness as the earth rotates on its axis; the lunar month, following the phases of the moon as it orbits the earth; and the solar year, defined by the changing seasons that accompany our planet's revolution around the sun.

B Before the invention of artificial light, the moon had greater social impact. And, for those living near the equator in particular, its waxing and waning was more conspicuous than the passing of the seasons. Hence, the calendars that were developed at the lower latitudes were influenced more by the lunar cycle than by the solar year. In more northern climes, however, where seasonal agriculture was practised, the solar year became more crucial. As the Roman Empire expanded northward, it organised its activity chart for the most part around the solar year.

C Centuries before the Roman Empire, the Egyptians had formulated a municipal calendar having 12 months of 30 days, with five days added to approximate the solar year. Each period of ten days was marked by the appearance of special groups of stars called decans. At the rise of the star Sirius just before sunrise, which occurred around the all-important annual flooding of the Nile, 12 decans could be seen spanning the heavens. The cosmic significance the Egyptians placed in the 12 decans led them to develop a system in which each interval of darkness (and later, each interval of daylight) was divided into a dozen equal parts. These periods became known as temporal hours because their duration varied according to the changing length of days and nights with the passing of the seasons. Summer hours were long, winter ones short; only at the spring and autumn equinoxes were the hours of daylight and darkness equal. Temporal hours, which were first adopted by the Greeks and then the Romans, who disseminated them through Europe, remained in use for more than 2,500 years.

D In order to track temporal hours during the day, inventors created sundials, which indicate time by the length or direction of the sun's shadow. The sundial's counterpart, the water clock, was designed to measure temporal hours at night. One of the first water clocks was a basin with a small hole near the bottom through which the water dripped out. The falling water level denoted the passing hour as it dipped below hour lines inscribed on the inner surface. Although these devices performed satisfactorily around the Mediterranean, they could not always be depended on in the cloudy and often freezing weather of northern Europe.

E The advent of the mechanical clock meant that although it could be adjusted to maintain temporal hours, it was naturally suited to keeping equal ones. With these, however, arose the question of when to begin counting, and so, in the early 14th century, a number of systems evolved. The schemes that divided the day into 24 equal parts varied according to the start of the count: Italian hours began at sunset, Babylonian hours at sunrise, astronomical hours at midday and 'great clock' hours, used for some large public clocks in Germany, at midnight. Eventually these were superseded by 'small clock', or French, hours, which split the day into two 12-hour periods commencing at midnight.

F The earliest recorded weight-driven mechanical clock was built in 1283 in Bedfordshire in England. The revolutionary aspect of this new timekeeper was neither the descending weight that provided its motive force nor the gear wheels (which had been around for at least 1,300 years) that transferred the power; it was the part called the escapement. In the early 1400s came the invention of the coiled spring or fusee which maintained constant force to the gear wheels of the timekeeper despite the changing tension of its mainspring. By the 16th century, a pendulum clock had been devised, but the pendulum swung in a large arc and thus was not very efficient.

G To address this, a variation on the original escapement was invented in 1670, in England. It was called the anchor escapement, which was a lever-based device shaped like a ship's anchor. The motion of a pendulum rocks this device so that it catches and then releases each tooth of the escape wheel, in turn allowing it to turn a precise amount. Unlike the original form used in early pendulum clocks, the anchor escapement permitted the pendulum to travel in a very small arc. Moreover, this invention allowed the use of a long pendulum which could beat once a second and thus led to the development of a new floor-standing case design, which became known as the grandfather clock.

H Today, highly accurate timekeeping instruments set the beat for most electronic devices. Nearly all computers contain a quartz-crystal clock to regulate their operation. Moreover, not only do time signals beamed down from Global Positioning System satellites calibrate the functions of precision navigation equipment, they do so as well for mobile phones, instant stock-trading systems and nationwide power-distribution grids. So integral have these time-based technologies become to day-to-day existence that our dependency on them is recognised only when they fail to work.

Questions 1-4

Reading Passage 1 has eight paragraphs, A-H.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

1 a description of an early timekeeping invention affected by cold temperatures

2 an explanation of the importance of geography in the development of the calendar

in farming communities

3 a description of the origins of the pendulum clock

4 details of the simultaneous efforts of different societies to calculate time using

uniform hours

Questions 5-8

Look at the following events (Questions 5-8) and the list of nationalities below.

Match each event with the correct nationality, A-F.

Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet.

5 They devised a civil calendar in which the months were equal in length.

6 They divided the day into two equal halves.

7 They developed a new cabinet shape for a type of timekeeper.

8 They created a calendar to organise public events and work schedules.

List of Nationalities

A Babylonians

B Egyptians

C Greeks

D English

E Germans

F French

Questions 9-13

Label the diagram below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.

图片10

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading

Passage 2 on the following pages.

Questions 14-19

Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A and C-G from the list below.

Write the correct number, i-x, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i Disobeying FAA regulations

ii Aviation disaster prompts action

iii Two coincidental developments

iv Setting altitude zones

v An oversimplified view

vi Controlling pilots’ licences

vii Defining airspace categories

viii Setting rules to weather conditions

ix Taking off safely

x First steps towards ATC

14 Paragraph A

Example Answer

Paragraph B x

15 Paragraph C

16 Paragraph D

17 Paragraph E

18 Paragraph F

19 Paragraph G

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL

IN THE USA

A An accident that occurred in the skies over the Grand Canyon in 1956 resulted in the establishment of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to regulate and oversee the operation of aircraft in the skies over the United States, which were becoming quite congested. The resulting structure of air traffic control has greatly increased the safety of flight in the United States, and similar air traffic control procedures are also in place over much of the rest of the world.

B Rudimentary air traffic control (ATC) existed well before the Grand Canyon disaster. As early as the 1920s, the earliest air traffic controllers manually guided aircraft in the vicinity of the airports, using lights and flags, while beacons and flashing lights were placed along cross-country routes to establish the earliest airways. However, this purely visual system was useless in bad weather, and, by the 1930s, radio communication was coming into use for ATC. The first region to have something approximating today's ATC was New York City, with other major metropolitan areas following soon after.

C In the 1940s, ATC centres could and did take advantage of the newly developed radar and improved radio communication brought about by the Second World War, but the system remained rudimentary. It was only after the creation of the FAA that full-scale regulation of America's airspace took place, and this was fortuitous, for the advent of the jet engine suddenly resulted in a large number of very fast planes, reducing pilots' margin of error and practically demanding some set of rules to keep everyone well separated and operating safely in the air.

D Many people think that ATC consists of a row of controllers sitting in front of their radar screens at the nation's airports, telling arriving and departing traffic what to do. This is a very incomplete part of the picture. The FAA realised that the airspace over the United States would at any time have many different kinds of planes, flying for many different purposes, in a variety of weather conditions, and the same kind of structure was needed to accommodate all of them.

E To meet this challenge, the following elements were put into effect. First, ATC extends over virtually the entire United States. In general, from 365m above the ground and higher, the entire country is blanketed by controlled airspace. In certain areas, mainly near airports, controlled airspace extends down to 215m above the ground, and, in the immediate vicinity of an airport, all the way down to the surface. Controlled airspace is that airspace in which FAA regulations apply. Elsewhere, in uncontrolled airspace, pilots are bound by fewer regulations. In this way, the recreational pilot who simply wishes to go flying for a while without all the restrictions imposed by the FAA has only to stay in uncontrolled airspace, below 365m, while the pilot who does want the protection afforded by ATC can easily enter the controlled airspace.

F The FAA then recognised two types of operating environments. In good meteorological conditions, flying would be permitted under Visual Flight Rules (VFR), which suggests a strong reliance on visual cues to maintain an acceptable level of safety. Poor visibility necessitated a set of Instrumental Flight Rules (IFR), under which the pilot relied on altitude and navigational information provided by the plane's instrument panel to fly safely. On a clear day, a pilot in controlled airspace can choose a VFR or IFR flight plan, and the FAA regulations were devised in a way which accommodates both VFR and IFR operations in the same airspace. However, a pilot can only choose to fly IFR if they possess an instrument rating which is above and beyond the basic pilot's license that must also be held.

G Controlled airspace is divided into several different types, designated by letters of the alphabet. Uncontrolled airspace is designated Class F, while controlled airspace below 5,490m above sea level and not in the vicinity of an airport is Class E. All airspace above 5,490m is designated Class A. The reason for the division of Class E and Class A airspace stems from the type of planes operating in them. Generally, Class E airspace is where one finds general aviation aircraft (few of which can climb above 5,490m anyway), and commercial turboprop aircraft. Above 5,490m is the realm of the heavy jets, since jet engines operate more efficiently at higher altitudes. The difference between Class E and A airspace is that in Class A, all operations are IFR, and pilots must be instrument-rated, that is, skilled and licensed in aircraft instrumentation. This is because ATC control of the entire space is essential. Three other types of airspace, Classes D, C and B, govern the vicinity of airports. These correspond roughly to small municipal, medium-sized metropolitan and major metropolitan airports respectively, and encompass an increasingly rigorous set of regulations. For example, all a VFR pilot has to do to enter Class C airspace is establish two-way radio contact with ATC. No explicit permission from ATC to enter is needed, although the pilot must continue to obey all regulations governing VFR flight. To enter Class B airspace, such as on approach to a major metropolitan airport, an explicit ATC clearance is required. The private pilot who cruises without permission into this airspace risks losing their license.

Questions 20-26

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 20-26 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

20 The FAA was created as a result of the introduction of the jet engine.

21 Air Traffic Control started after the Grand Canyon crash in 1956.

22 Beacons and flashing lights are still used by ATC today.

23 Some improvements were made in radio communication during World War II.

24 Class F airspace is airspace which is below 365m and not near airports.

25 All aircraft in Class E airspace must use IFR.

26 A pilot entering Class C airspace is flying over an average-sized city.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

TELEPATHY

Can human beings communicate by thought alone? For more than a century the issue of telepathy has divided the scientific community, and even today it still sparks bitter controversy among top academics

Since the 1970s, parapsychologists at leading universities and research institutes around the world have risked the derision of sceptical colleagues by putting the various claims for telepathy to the test in dozens of rigorous scientific studies. The results and their implications are dividing even the researchers who uncovered them.

Some researchers say the results constitute compelling evidence that telepathy is genuine. Other parapsychologists believe the field is on the brink of collapse, having tried to produce definitive scientific proof and failed. Sceptics and advocates alike do concur on one issue, however: that the most impressive evidence so far has come from the so-called 'ganzfeld' experiments, a German term that means 'whole field'. Reports of telepathic experiences had by people during meditation led parapsychologists to suspect that telepathy might involve 'signals' passing between people that were so faint that they were usually swamped by normal brain activity. In this case, such signals might be more easily detected by those experiencing meditation — like tranquillity in a relaxing 'whole field' of light, sound and warmth.

The ganzfeld experiment tries to recreate these conditions with participants sitting in soft reclining chairs in a sealed room, listening to relaxing sounds while their eyes are covered with special filters letting in only soft pink light. In early ganzfeld experiments, the telepathy test involved identification of a picture chosen from a random selection of four taken from a large image bank. The idea was that a person acting as a 'sender' would attempt to beam the image over to the 'receiver' relaxing in the sealed room. Once the session was over, this person was asked to identify which of the four images had been used. Random guessing would give a hit-rate of 25 per cent; if telepathy is real, however, the hit-rate would be higher. In 1982, the results from the first ganzfeld studies were analysed by one of its pioneers, the American parapsychologist Charles Honorton. They pointed to typical hit-rates of better than 30 per cent — a small effect, but one which statistical tests suggested could not be put down to chance.

The implication was that the ganzfeld method had revealed real evidence for telepathy. But there was a crucial flaw in this argument — one routinely overlooked in more conventional areas of science. Just because chance had been ruled out as an explanation did not prove telepathy must exist; there were many other ways of getting positive results. These ranged from 'sensory leakage' — where clues about the pictures accidentally reach the receiver — to outright fraud. In response, the researchers issued a review of all the ganzfeld studies done up to 1985 to show that 80 per cent had found statistically significant evidence. However, they also agreed that there were still too many problems in the experiments which could lead to positive results, and they drew up a list demanding new standards for future research.

After this, many researchers switched to autoganzfeld tests — an automated variant of the technique which used computers to perform many of the key tasks such as the random selection of images. By minimising human involvement, the idea was to minimise the risk of flawed results. In 1987, results from hundreds of autoganzfeld tests were studied by Honorton in a 'meta-analysis', a statistical technique for finding the overall results from a set of studies. Though less compelling than before, the outcome was still impressive.

Yet some parapsychologists remain disturbed by the lack of consistency between individual ganzfeld studies. Defenders of telepathy point out that demanding impressive evidence from every study ignores one basic statistical fact: it takes large samples to detect small effects. If, as current results suggest, telepathy produces hit-rates only marginally above the 25 per cent expected by chance, it's unlikely to be detected by a typical ganzfeld study involving around 40 people: the group is just not big enough. Only when many studies are combined in a meta-analysis will the faint signal of telepathy really become apparent. And that is what researchers do seem to be finding.

What they are certainly not finding, however, is any change in attitude of mainstream scientists: most still totally reject the very idea of telepathy. The problem stems at least in part from the lack of any plausible mechanism for telepathy.

Various theories have been put forward, many focusing on esoteric ideas from theoretical physics. They include 'quantum entanglement', in which events affecting one group of atoms instantly affect another group, no matter how far apart they may be. While physicists have demonstrated entanglement with specially prepared atoms, no-one knows if it also exists between atoms making up human minds. Answering such questions would transform parapsychology. This has prompted some researchers to argue that the future lies not in collecting more evidence for telepathy, but in probing possible mechanisms. Some work has begun already, with researchers trying to identify people who are particularly successful in autoganzfeld trials. Early results show that creative and artistic people do much better than average: in one study at the University of Edinburgh, musicians achieved a hit-rate of 56 per cent. Perhaps more tests like these will eventually give the researchers the evidence they are seeking and strengthen the case for the existence of telepathy.

Questions 27-30

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-G, below.

Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

27 Researchers with differing attitudes towards telepathy agree on

28 Reports of experiences during meditation indicated

29 Attitudes to parapsychology would alter drastically with

30 Recent autoganzfeld trials suggest that success rates will improve with

A the discovery of a mechanism for telepathy

B the need to create a suitable environment for telepathy.

C their claims of a high success rate.

D a solution to the problem posed by random guessing.

E the significance of the ganzfeld experiments.

F a more careful selection of subjects.

G a need to keep altering conditions.

Questions 31-40

Complete the table below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 31-40 on your answer sheet.

Telepathy Experiments

Name/Date

Description Result Flaw

Ganzfeld

Studies

1982 Involved a person

acting as a

31..............

who picked out one

32............from

a random selection

of four, and a

33..............,

who then tried to

identify it. Hit-rates were

higher than with

random guessing. Positive results

could be produced

by factors such as

34..............or

35.............. .

Autoganzfeld

studies

1987 36.............

were used for key

tasks to limit the

amount of

37..............

in carrying out the

test. The results were

then subjected to

a 38............. The 39..........

between different

test results was

put down to the

fact that sample

groups were not

40...................(as

with most ganzfeld

Studies).

篇2:剑桥雅思阅读8原文翻译及答案解析(test1)

PASSAGE 1参考译文:

时间记录的历史

我们对时间的概念取决于我们测量时间的方式

有考古证据表明,至少50前,早在罗马帝国尚未出现之时,巴比伦人就开始测量时间,他们引进日历来统筹公共活动,计划货物装运,特别是管控作物种植和收割。日历的编排基于三个自然周期:以由地球绕地轴自转形成的连续的光明与黑喑为标记的太阳日;以由月球环绕地球公转形成的月相来衡量的太阴月;以及根据地球绕太阳公转形成的四季来定义的回归年。

在人造光发明以前,月亮对社会产生的影响尤为显著。尤其对于赤道附近的居民而言,月圆月缺比季节更替更加明显。因此,低纬度地区日历的形成更多受到月运周期的影响,而不是回归年。然而,在践行季节性农业的更偏北的气候带,回归年则更为重要。随着罗马帝国向北扩张,它的活动图表通常都是根据回归年而编排的。

早在罗马帝国建立几个世纪以前,埃及人就已制定了市政日历,规定一年有12个月,每月有30天,此外还有5天用来补充一个近似回归年。每10天以特定星群的出现为标志,这些星群被称作“德坎”(黄道十度分度)。天狼星刚好在日出之前升起,此时可以看见12个德坎横跨天空,而这一现象会在每年极其重要的尼罗河泛洪前后出现。埃及人赋予12个德坎的宇宙意义使他们形成一种新的系统,他们将每一个黑夜区间(之后又将每一个白昼区间)分成12等份。这些时段被称为日光时,因为它的持续时间随着季节更替引起的昼夜长度的变化而变化。夏季日光时长,冬季日光时短;只有在春分和秋分时白昼与黑夜的时长才是一致的。日光时最早被希腊人采用,然后由罗马人采用并传到欧洲,一直使用了2500多年。

为了在白天记录日光时,发明家们创造了日晷,用太阳阴影的长度和方向来指示时间。水钟与日晷作用相当,用于在夜晚测量日光时。最早的水钟之一是一个水盆,盆底附近有一个小孔,水通过小孔滴出来。随着水降至盆子内表面刻着的小时刻度线以下,水位降低的刻度就表示流逝的时间长度。尽管这些装置在地中海地区十分好用,但在多云并常有严寒天气的欧洲北部却不能一直使用。

机械钟的出现意味着尽管人们可以调试它以记录日光时,但机械钟本身更适合于记录长度相同的时间段。由此引发了一个问题,即计时该从何时开始。于是14世纪初,许多新型计时系统逐渐形成。人们计划将一天分为24个等份,而这些计划因为计时起点的术同而不向:意大利时间从日落开始算起,巴比伦时间从日出开始,天文学时间从中午开始,而德国一些大型公共时钟使用的“大钟”时间从午夜开始算起。最终,这些计时方法被“小钟”时间,即法国时间所取代,它将一天分成两个12小时时段,从午夜开始算起。

最早有记载的以重量驱动的机械钟1283年建于英国贝德福德郡。这种新型计时器所具有的革命意义既不在于依靠向下的重力提供起动力,也不在于依靠齿轮(至少有1300年的使用历史)传递动力,而在于它使用了一个叫做擒纵机构棘轮装置的部件。15世纪初人们又创造出了螺旋弹簧,也被称为均力圆锥轮。尽管主发条承受着不断变化的张力,但该装置仍能为钟表齿轮提供恒力。到了16世纪,人们发明了摆钟。但由于钟摆摆动弧度很大,因此并不十分有效。

为了解决这个问题,原有擒纵机构棘轮装置的改进装置1670年在英格兰发明出来。该装置被称为锚型擒纵机构,以杠杆为基础,形状像一艘船的锚。钟摆的动作对该设备产生振动,以使它抓紧而后释放擒纵机构棘轮装置的每一个齿,从而使得齿轮精确地旋转。与早期摆钟中所使用的原始装置不同,锚型擒纵机构使钟摆的摆动弧度变得很小。此外,这一发明使得摆钟可以使用长摆,一秒钟摆动一下,从而引发了新型落地柜式造型的开发,也就是落地摆钟。

如今,高度精确的计时工具为大多数电子设备设置时间。几乎所有的计算机都带有石英钟以控制其运行。此外,从全球定位系统卫星发射的时间信号不仅校准精密导航设备的功能,还被用于移动电话、即时股票交易系统和全国电力分配网。这些以时间为基础的技术已完全成为日常生活的一部分,只有当它们无法正常工作时,我们才会意识到人类多么依赖这些技术。

TEST 1 PASSAGE 2 参考译文:

美国航空交通管制

A. 1956年美国大峡谷上空发生的一起事故促成了联邦航空局(FAA)的成立。该局负责管理和监督美国越来越拥挤的天空。由此形成的空中交通管制结构大大增加了飞机在美国的飞行安全,世界其他很多地方也采取了类似的空中交通管制程序。

B.早在大峡谷灾难发生之前就存在雏形的航空交通管制(ATC)。早在20世纪代初,最早的空中交通管制员在机场附近用灯和标志旗手动引导飞机。当时,灯标和闪光灯沿着越野路线放置以建立最早的航线。然而,这种纯粹的视觉系统在恶劣天气情况下是无用的。到20世纪30年代,航空交通管制开始使用无线电通讯。首个采用类似于今天的航空交通管制的地方是纽约市,其他主要的大都市紧随其后。

C.20世纪40年代,航空交通管制中心利用了第二次世界大战催生出的新研制的雷达和改进后的无线电通讯技术,但管制系统仍然很不成熟。直到联邦航空局分创建以后,美国才开始进行全面的领空管制。而这一事件却是偶然的,因为喷气式发动机的产生突然导致大批快速飞机的出现。这些飞机减少了飞行员的误差幅度,并且需要实际的整套规则以使飞机之间保持良好的分离状态,在空中安全行驶。

D.很多人认为,航空交通管制就是一排管理人员坐在国家机场的雷达屏幕前指挥着抵港及离港的交通。这只是整个场景中的一部分。美国联邦航空局认识到每时每刻都会有许多不同种类的飞机,为了这样那样的目的,在各种各样的天气情况下飞行在美国的空中。因此,急需一个能够容纳所有情况的同一体系。

E.为了迎接这一挑战,美国联邦航天局实施了以下重要措施。首先,让航空交通管制几乎遍及整个美国。一般来说,离地面365米以及更高的地方,整个国家都被管制空域覆盖。在某些地区,主要是靠近机场的地带,管制空域扩大到自地面215米以上的范围,而在紧邻机场的区域,管制空域包括地面以上所有区域。管制空域是美国联邦航空局规定适用的空域。在其他非受控空域,飞行员受到的限制较少。如此一来,那些出于娱乐目的只想短时间飞行而不受美国联邦航空局规定限制的飞行员就只能停留在365米以下的非受控领空,而希望得到航空局保护的飞行员可以很容易地进人管制空域。

F.然后,美国联邦航空局确认了两种类型的飞行环境。在气象条件良好的情况下,飞行员可按照目视飞行规则(VPR)飞行。该规则主要依靠视觉线索来维持可接受的安全水平。低能见度使建立一套仪表飞行规则(IFR)成为必需。根据该规则,飞行员依靠飞机仪表盘提供的飞行高度和导航信息确保飞行安全。天气晴朗时,管制空域内的飞行员可以选择在目视飞行规则或仪表飞行规则下飞行,而美国联邦航空局 的规定在同一空域同时适用于两套规则的实施。但如果飞行员的仪表等级超出或低于了其必须持有的基本飞行员执照规定的等级,飞行员只能选择遵循仪表飞行规则。

G.管制空域分为几个不同的类型,以英文字母命名。非受控空域被定为F级,而海拔5490米以下非紧邻机 场的受控空域被定为E级。5490米以上的所有空域被定为A级。E级和A级是根据其间飞行的不同飞机类型而划分的。一般来说,通用航空飞机(这类飞机的飞行高度大多不超过5490米)和商业涡轮螺旋桨飞机在E级空域飞行。5490米以上是大型喷气机的领空,因为喷气式发动机的效率随着高度的增加而增高。E级和A级之间的区别在于A级空域中所有的操作都遵循仪表飞行规则,飞行员必须具有仪表级别,换言之,必须熟练掌握飞机仪表的使用并获得许可。因为航空交通管制对整个空域的控制是至关重要的。其他三个等级:D级、C级和B级用于管理机场附近的区域。这三个级别大致分别适用于小型城市、中等城市和大型城市的机场,包含了一套越来越严格的规章制度。例如,目视飞行规则飞行员如要进入C级空域,必须与航空交通管制建立双向无线电联系。航空交通管制无需提供明确的进人许可,但飞行员必须始终遵守在目视飞行规则下飞行的所有规定。如要进人B级空域,比如飞临主要城市机场,则必须有明确的航空交通管制许可。未经许可进入领空的私人飞行员可能会被吊销飞行执照。

TEST 1 PASSAGE 3 参考译文:

心灵感应

人类可以仅凭思想沟通吗?一个多世纪以来,心灵感应问题一直使科学界意见不一,直至今天依然在学界精英中引发着激烈的争论。

上世纪70年代以来,世界各地顶尖高校和科研院所的超心理学家冒着遭受那些持怀疑态度的同事们嘲笑的危险,将关于心灵感应的各种断言假说放人几十个严谨的科学研究中进行试验。试验的结果及其启 示甚至将发现该结果的研究者们也分成了几派。

一些研究者认为试验结果构成令人信服的证据,表明心灵感应是真实存在的。其他超心理学家则认为该学科曾试图提出明确的科学论证,但却失败了,因此正处于瓦解的边缘。不过,怀疑者和倡导者却在一 个问题上达成共识:即迄今为止令人印象最为深刻的证据出自所谓的“ganzfeld”(超感官知觉全域测试)实验中,这一德文术语的意思是“整个领域”。人类在冥想状态下的心灵感应体验报告使超心理学家怀疑心灵感应可能包含人与人之间传递的“信号”。这种信号十分微弱,以至于往往被正常的大脑活动所淹没。如此说来,这种信号可能更容易被那些沉浸于冥想般宁静中的人检测到。他们所处的“整个领域”有着令人放松的灯光,怡人的声音和温暖的环境。

超感官知觉全域测试试图重新营造这些条件,让参与者坐在一个封闭房间里的柔软躺椅上,听着令人放松的声音,用特殊滤光器将参与者的眼睛蒙住,使他们只能看见柔和的粉红色光线。在早期的超感官知觉全域测试实验中,心灵感应测试包括识别从大型图片库中随机选择的四张图片中的其中一张。试验的想 法是有一个人作为“发送者”,尝试把图像发送给在封闭房间中休息的“接收者”。传递过程结束时,接收者 需要回答四张图片中的哪一张是刚刚使用过的。随机猜测的命中率是25%,但如果心灵感应是真实存在的,命中率应该更高。1982年,此项研究的先驱者之一,美国超心理学家Charles Honorton对第一批超感官知觉全域测试研究结果进行了分析。研究结果显示了高于30%的典型命中率。虽然效果不甚明显,但统计测试显示不能将它归因于偶然。

其言下之意是超感官知觉全域测试方法揭示了心灵感应的真实证据。但这种说法有一个关键的漏洞—— 一个在较传统的科学领域经常被忽视的问题。仅仅由于这种解释排除了偶然因素并不能证明心灵感应一定存在;通过很多其他的方法也能获得积极结果。这些可能性既包括“感官泄漏”,即与图片有关的线索意外地传给了接收者,也包括彻底的欺诈。作为回应,研究者们发表了一份综述,总结了 1985年以前进行的所有超感官知觉全域测试研究,以表明80%的研究都发现了有统计意义的证据。但他们也同意目前实验中尚有太多的问题可能导致积极的结果,他们还草拟了一份清单,要求为今后的研究设立新的标准。

此后,许多研咳嗽弊蛄俗远泄僦跞虿馐裕馐且恢旨际醯淖远涮澹簿褪鞘褂电脑完成许多关键任务,如随机选择图像。通过最大限度地减少人为参与,这一想法是要将有缺陷的结果最小化。1987年,Honorton使用“荟萃分析”,即从一系列研究中寻找整体结果的统计技术,对上百次的自动超感官知觉全域测试结果进行了研究。结果虽然没有以往引人注目,却仍然令人印象深刻。

然而,一些超心理学家仍然为单个超感官知觉全域测试研究之间缺乏一致性感到烦恼。心灵感应捍卫者指出,要求每一项研究都提供令人印象深刻的证据忽略了一个基本的统计事实:检测这些微小影响需要大量的样本支持。如果像目前研究结果表明的那样,心灵感应的命中率仅仅略高于概率预测的25%,涉及40人左右的典型超感官知觉全域测试也不太可能检测得到:试验群体根本不够大。只有当大量研究结合在一个荟萃分析之中,心灵感应的微弱信号才会真正明显起来。而这似乎正是研究者们所发现的。

然而,他们肯定当然不会发现主流科学家们的态度有任何变化:大部分人仍然完全排斥心灵感应的观点。至少一部分问题在于心灵感应缺乏合理的机制。

各种理论都被提了出来,很多以理论物理学的深奥思想为重点。其中包括“量子纠缠”:无论两组原子间距离多么遥远,影响一组原子的事件都会立即影响另一组原子。虽然物理学家们用专门准备的原子演示了“纠缠”,但这一现象是否同样存在于构成人类头脑的原子中却无人知晓。对于这些问题的回答将改变超心理学。这使得一些研究人员认为该学科的未来不在于收集更多心灵感应的证据,而在与探索其可能的机制。一些工作已经开始进行,研究人员试图识别在自动超感官知觉全域测试中特别成功的被试者。早期的结果表明有创造力和艺术性的人们的表现要远远高于平均水平:在爱丁堡大学的一次研究中,音乐家的测试命中率高达56%。或许更多诸如此类的测试最终将为研究人员提供他们正在寻求的证据,巩固加强心灵感应存在的依据。

篇3:剑桥雅思阅读8原文翻译及答案解析(test1)

Passage1

Question 1

答案: D

关键词: early timekeeping invention, cold temperatures

定位原文: D段最后1句“Although these devices performed…”

解题思路: 全文只有该句中提及寒冷气温。该句含义为“尽管这些装置在地中海地区十分好用,但在多云并常有严寒天气的欧洲北部却不能一直使用。”与题干中描述的内容相符。

Question 2

答案: B

关键词: geography, development of the calendar, farming communities

定位原文: B段内容

解题思路: 该段一共五句话,从第二句开始每一句话都介绍了一个地理位置的变化对calendar的影响。分别是:And, for those living near the equator in particular,...Hence, the calendars that were developed at the lower latitudes,...In more northern climes, however,...

As the Roman Empire expanded northward, ...

Question 3

答案: F

关键词: pendulum clock, origins

定位原文: F段最后1句“By the 16th century…”

解题思路:含义为“到了 16世纪,人们发明了摆钟。但由于钟摆摆动弧度很大,因此并不十分有效”。此句中devised意为“发明”,与题干中的origins对应。

Question 4

答案: E

关键词: simultaneous efforts, different societies, uniform hours

对应原文: E段第3句“The schemes…”

解题思路: 含义为“人们计划将一天分为24个等份,而这些计划因为计时起点的不同而不同:意大利时间从日落开始算起,巴比伦时间从日出开始,天文学时间从中午开始,而德国一些大型公共时钟使用的‘大钟’时间从午夜开始算起”。24 equal parts与题目中的 uniform hours 相对应, 本段中提到的各具体国家对应题目中的 different societies。

Question 5

答案: B

关键词: civil calendar, months, equal

定位原文: C段第1句“... the Egyptians had formulated a municipal calendar having 12 months…”

解题思路: 该句提到埃及人制定了市政日历,规定一年有12个月,每月有30天。答案 B 题目中的 months were equal in length 对应文章中的 12 months of 30 days,题目中的 civil calendar 对应文 章中的 municipal calendar,这项发明 是 Egyptians 完成的。

Question 6

答案: F

关键词: day, two equal halves

定位原文: E段最后1句 “...or French hours, which split the day into two 12-hour periods … ”

解题思路:题目中的 divide the day into two equal halves 对应文章中的 split the day into two 12-hour periods, 具体指的是 French hours。

Question 7

答案: D

关键词: new cabinet shape

定位原文: G段最后一句 “... and thus led to the development of a new floor-standing case …”

解题思路: 此句中的floor-standing case design就对应着cabinet shape,且该段第一行就出现了 England这个代表国家的词汇。所以答案为D。

Question 8

答案: A

关键词: organise, public events

定位原文: A段第1句“.. the Babylonians began to measure…”

解题思路: 题目中的 organize public events 对应文章中的 co-ordinate communal activities,题目中的work schedules 对应文章中的 the shipment of goods 及 planting and harvesting, 这些都是 Babylonians 的所作所为。

Question 9

答案: (ship’s) anchor / (an/the) anchor

关键词: escapement, resembling

定位原文: G段第2句 “It was called the anchor…”

解题思路: 通过定位词很容易找到文中定位句,此句中的like对应resembling,所以答案为(ship’s) anchor / (an/the) anchor。

Question 10

答案: (escape) wheel

关键词: release each tooth, wheel

定位原文: G段第3句“The motion of a pendulum rocks this…”

解题思路: 由图可知,本题要求找到该圆盘状物体的名称,故应有意识地寻找与该形状有关的词汇 ;另外此物体上有齿轮,这也可以作 为答题线索。根据 ...release each tooth of the escape wheel 可知,本题答案为 (escape) wheel。

Question 11

答案: tooth

关键词: release

定位原文: G段第3句“The motion of a pendulum rocks this…”

解题思路: 由图可知,本题要求找到圆盘物体的支出 部分的名称。通过解答第 10 题,可以很容 易地判定本题答案为 tooth。

Question 12

答案: (long)pendulum

关键词: beats, each

定位原文: G段最后1句“Moreover, this invention allowed…”

解题思路: 由图可知,本题要求找到长形物体的名称, 且应发出 beat 的动作。同时,本题答案应为一个单数可数名词,可通过冠词帮助找到答案。通过 G 段最后一句中的 a long pendulum which could beat once a second 可以确定本题答案为 (long) pendulum。

Question 13

答案: second

关键词: beats, each

定位原文: G段最后1句“Moreover, this invention allowed…”

解题思路: 此题可与第12题同时解出,此句中的once对应题干中的each, 所以答案为second。

Test 1 Passage 2

Question 14

答案: ii

关键词: aviation disaster,prompts

定位原文: A段第1句“An accident that occurred in …”

解题思路: 本段第1句讲述飞机失事是美国联邦 航空总署成立原因,第 2 句简述其建立的结 果影响。文章中的 an accident 与选项 ii 中的 disaster对应;文章中的result in与选项ii中 的 prompt 对应 ;文章中的 the establishment of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) 被抽象概括成选项 ii 中的 action。

Question 15

答案: iii

关键词: coincidental developments

定位原文: C段前两句“In the 1940s, ATG centres could and did…”

解题思路: C段首句说明了 ATC取得的第一个development, 即利用了第二次世界大 战催生出的新研制的雷达和改进后的无线电通讯技术而建立的不成熟的管制系统。第二句则提到喷气式发动机的产生突然导致大批快速飞机的出现,因此促使美国开始进行全面的空中管制,两个逗号之间的部分指出了这一development的偶然性 (fortuitous), 与 iii 中的 coincidental 含义一致。因此答案为iii。

Question 16

答案: v

关键词: oversimplified

定位原文: D段第1、2句“Many people think that...This is a very incomplete part of the picture.”

解题思路: D段首句阐述了一个大众观点(many people think...),接着第二句指出这个观点过于片面。题干中的 oversimplified相当于原句中的 incomplete。

Question 17

答案: iv

关键词: altitude zones

定位原文: E段第2句“First, ATC extends over virtually …”

解题思路: E段第二句中提出让航空交通管制几乎遍及整个美国,接着分别讲述了不同高度的空域管制情况(from 365m above the ground and higher, 215m above the ground, below 365m...)因此答案为iv。

Question 18

答案: viii

关键词: weather conditions

定位原文: F段第1句“The FAA then recognized…”

解题思路: F段首句提出FAA确认了两种飞行环境。接着对这两种环境进行了解释说明,即在气象条件良好的情况下,飞行员可按照目视飞行规则(VFR)飞行;在低能见度的情况下,飞行员则须按照仪表飞行规则(IFR)飞行。因此答案是viii。

Question 19

答案: vii

关键词: airspace categories

定位原文: G段第1句“Controlled airspace is divided into…”

解题思路: G段首句点出此段主要阐述管制空域的分类(controlled airspace…different types)。因此答案为vii。文章中的 types 与选项 vii 中的 categories 对应。

Question 20

答案: FALSE

关键词: FAA, created as result of

定位原文: A段第1句“An accident that occurred in the skies…”

解题思路: 文章中第 1 句明确说 FAA 成立的原因是空难, 题目中却说是由于喷气式引擎出现, 题目表述与文章矛盾。

Question 21

答案: FALSE

关键词: Air Traffic Control, the Grand Canyon crash

定位原文: B段第1句“Rudimentary air traffic control (ATC) existed…”

解题思路: 文章中明确说是ATC existed well before the Grand Canyon disaster, 与题目中 started after 直接相反。

Question 22

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: beacons and flashing lights

定位原文: B段第2句“...while beacons and flashing lights …”

解题思路: 此题的定位词在文中原词出现,按照顺序原则可以迅速定位。文中定位处仅指出beacons和flashing lights在当时的使用情况,对于题干中所指的如今的使用状况只字未提。故此题答案为NOT GIVEN。

Question 23

答案: TRUE

关键词: improvements, radio communication, World War II

定位原文: C段第1句 “...improved radio communication brought about by the Second World War...”

解题思路:此题定位很简单,定位句含义为“第二次世界大战催生出的……改进后的无线电通讯技术”,与题干含义无异。故此题答案为TRUE。

Question 24

答案: TRUE

关键词: Class F, 365m

定位原文: G段第2句“Uncontrolled airspace …” E段第3、4句和最后1句

解题思路:通过定位词Class F可快速定位至G段处,但是只能确定Class F为uncontrolled airspace,通过该短语及365m可继续定位于E段。E段定位句说明从365米往上的区间为controlled airspace,且在大部分near airports的区域,215米以上的区间都是controlled airspace,因此可以逆推出uncontrolled airspace的情况。故此题答案为TRUE。

Question 25

答案: FALSE

关键词: Class E airspace, IFR

定位原文:G段第7句“The difference between Class E and…”

解题思路:此题通过定位词能够迅速定位。定位句的含义为“E级和A级之间的区别在于A级领空中所有的操作都遵循仪表飞行规则”。显然题干信息与定位句内容矛盾。此题还可以按照绝对化词汇all和must来快速判定答案。故此题答案为FALSE。

Question 26

答案: TRUE

关键词: pilot, Class C

定位原文:G段第9句“Three other types of airspace,…”

解题思路:此题通过定位词能够迅速定位。定位句中的medium-sized与题干中average-sized属于同义转述。故此题答案为TRUE。

Test 1 Passage 3

Question 27

答案: E

关键词: researchers with differing attitudes, agree on

定位原文:第2段第3句“Sceptics and advocates…”

解题思路:通过题目中定位词找到文章中的具体表 达:第二段第3句。题目中的differing attitudes 对应文章中的 skeptics and advocates,题目中的 agree on 对应文章中的do concur on。由本句名词性从句的主干 evidence...come from... experiments 即可得出答案。所有选项中提到 experiment 的只有一个。

Question 28:

答案: B

关键词: experiences, meditation

定位原文:第2段第5句话“In this case, such signals might …”

解题思路:题目中要求找到实验的 启示,答案出现在下一句中,其中 in a relaxing‘whole field’of light, sound and warmth 是题目中 的 suitable environment 的具体表现。

Question 29:

答案: A

关键词: attitudes, parapsychology, alter

定位原文:第8段第4、5句“Answering such questions would…”

解题思路:第四句中的transform对应题干中的alter,第五句中才提及研究者们的attitude,即该研究的未来在于探究可能的机制(mechanisms)。故正确答案为A。

Question 30:

答案: F

关键词: autoganzfeld trials, success

定位原文:第8段倒数第2、3句“Some work has begun already …”

解题思路:此题通过定位词可以迅速定位到第八段倒数第三句,倒数第二句指出有创造力和艺术性的人们表现得更好。因此可知样本的选择对命中率会有很大影响。故正确答案为F。

Question 31:

答案: sender

关键词: Ganzfeld studies, 1982, person, acting as, four

定位原文:第3段第3句“The idea was that a person…”

解题思路:由空格前冠词和空格后的定语从句引导词 who 可知本题需填入一个指代人的单数可数名词。通过题目中数字 1982 迅速定位至文章第三段。再通过数字 four 定位至该段第 5 行。本题答案为 sender。

Question 32:

答案: picture/image

关键词: one, random selection, four

定位原文: 第3段第2句“In early ganzfeld experiments…”

解题思路: 此题轻微乱序,但定位词很明显且定位句是上一题定位句的前一句。空格所填词应为从random selections of four中picked out的宾语。所以此题填picture/image。题干中的picked out与原文中的chosen from属于同义转述。

Question 33:

答案: receiver

关键词: ichthyosaurs, can be determined by, appearance

定位原文:第3段第4句“Once the session was over, this …”

解题思路:此题定位较易。空格所填词应为 identify这一动作的发出者,定位句中与之相对应的是指代词this person,于是倒着往回看上一句,即第31题对应句,可以找出this person的具体指代对象。所以此题填receiver。

Question 34:

答案: sensory leakage

关键词: flaw, positive results

定位原文:第4段第4句“...there were many other ways of getting positive results. These ranged from ‘sensory leakage…”

解题思路:此题根据定位词及顺序原则可定位至第四段第四行最后,其中many other ways对应题干中的factors,具体内容在接下来的一句中。所以此题填sensory leakage。

Question 35:

答案: outright fraud

关键词: or

定位原文:第4段第4句““...there were many other ways of getting positive results. These ranged from ‘sensory leakage…”

解题思路:此空与34题为并列关系。很明显答案为 outright fraud。

Question 36:

答案: computers

关键词: 1987, key tasks

定位原文:第5段第1句“…technique which used computers to …”

解题思路: 空格所填词应为被用来完成key tasks的对象,文中的perform对应题干中的were used for。所以此题填computers。

Question 37:

答案: human involvement

关键词: limit

定位原文:第5段第2句“By minimising human involvement...”

解题思路:此题按照顺序原则定位,原文中的 minimising对应题干中的limit,空格所填词应为被限制的对象。所以此题填human involvement。

Question 38:

答案: meta-analysis

关键词: results, subjected to a

定位原文: 第5段倒数第2句“In 1987, results from hundreds…”

解题思路: 空格所填词应为 subject to的对象。所以此题填meta?-analysis。

Question 39:

答案: lack of consistency

关键词: flaw, different test results

定位原文: 第6段第1句“Yet some parapsychologists…”

解题思路: 此题定位较难,文中的individual ganzfeld studies与题干中的different test对应。空格所填词应为不同实验结果之间的关系。所以此题填lack of consistency。

Question 40:

答案: big/large enough

关键词: fact, sample group, not

定位原文:第6段倒数第3句“...the group is just not big enough.”

解题思路:此题定位较易。空格所填词应为 sample groups的特征,而且此题可以通过否定词not帮助判断答案。所以此题填big/large enough。

剑桥雅思阅读8原文翻译及答案解析(test1)

篇4:剑桥雅思阅读9(test1)原文答案解析

剑桥雅思阅读9原文(test1)

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

William Henry Perkin

The man who invented synthetic dyes

William Henry Perkin was born on March 12, 1838, in London, England. As a boy, Perkin’s curiosity prompted early interests in the arts, sciences, photography, and engineering. But it was a chance stumbling upon a run-down, yet functional, laboratory in his late grandfather’s home that solidified the young man’s enthusiasm for chemistry.

As a student at the City of London School, Perkin became immersed in the study of chemistry. His talent and devotion to the subject were perceived by his teacher, Thomas Hall, who encouraged him to attend a series of lectures given by the eminent scientist Michael Faraday at the Royal Institution. Those speeches fired the young chemist’s enthusiasm further, and he later went on to attend the Royal College of Chemistry, which he succeeded in entering in 1853, at the age of 15.

At the time of Perkin’s enrolment, the Royal College of Chemistry was headed by the noted German chemist August Wilhelm Hofmann. Perkin’s scientific gifts soon caught Hofmann’s attention and, within two years, he became Hofmann’s youngest assistant. Not long after that, Perkin made the scientific breakthrough that would bring him both fame and fortune.

At the time, quinine was the only viable medical treatment for malaria. The drug is derived from the bark of the cinchona tree, native to South America, and by 1856 demand for the drug was surpassing the available supply. Thus, when Hofmann made some passing comments about the desirability of a synthetic substitute for quinine, it was unsurprising that his star pupil was moved to take up the challenge.

During his vacation in 1856, Perkin spent his time in the laboratory on the top floor of his family’s house. He was attempting to manufacture quinine from aniline, an inexpensive and readily available coal tar waste product. Despite his best efforts, however, he did not end up with quinine. Instead, he produced a mysterious dark sludge. Luckily, Perkin’s scientific training and nature prompted him to investigate the substance further. Incorporating potassium dichromate and alcohol into the aniline at various stages of the experimental process, he finally produced a deep purple solution. And, proving the truth of the famous scientist Louis Pasteur’s words ‘chance favours only the prepared mind’, Perkin saw the potential of his unexpected find.

Historically, textile dyes were made from such natural sources as plants and animal excretions. Some of these, such as the glandular mucus of snails, were difficult to obtain and outrageously expensive. Indeed, the purple colour extracted from a snail was once so costly in society at the time only the rich could afford it. Further, natural dyes tended to be muddy in hue and fade quickly. It was against this backdrop that Perkin’s discovery was made.

Perkin quickly grasped that his purple solution could be used to colour fabric, thus making it the world’s first synthetic dye. Realising the importance of this breakthrough, he lost no time in patenting it. But perhaps the most fascinating of all Perkin’s reactions to his find was his nearly instant recognition that the new dye had commercial possibilities.

Perkin originally named his dye Tyrian Purple, but it later became commonly known as mauve (from the French for the plant used to make the colour violet). He asked advice of Scottish dye works owner Robert Pullar, who assured him that manufacturing the dye would be well worth it if the colour remained fast (i.e. would not fade) and the cost was relatively low. So, over the fierce objections of his mentor Hofmann, he left college to give birth to the modern chemical industry.

With the help of his father and brother, Perkin set up a factory not far from London. Utilising the cheap and plentiful coal tar that was an almost unlimited byproduct of London’s gas street lighting, the dye works began producing the world’s first synthetically dyed material in 1857. The company received a commercial boost from the Empress Eugenie of France, when she decided the new colour flattered her. Very soon, mauve was the necessary shade for all the fashionable ladies in that country. Not to be outdone, England’s Queen Victoria also appeared in public wearing a mauve gown, thus making it all the rage in England as well. The dye was bold and fast, and the public clamoured for more. Perkin went back to the drawing board.

Although Perkin’s fame was achieved and fortune assured by his first discovery, the chemist continued his research. Among other dyes he developed and introduced were aniline red (1859) and aniline black (1863) and, in the late 1860s, Perkin’s green. It is important to note that Perkin’s synthetic dye discoveries had outcomes far beyond the merely decorative. The dyes also became vital to medical research in many ways. For instance, they were used to stain previously invisible microbes and bacteria, allowing researchers to identify such bacilli as tuberculosis, cholera, and anthrax. Artificial dyes continue to play a crucial role today. And, in what would have been particularly pleasing to Perkin, their current use is in the search for a vaccine against malaria.

Questions 1-7

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1 Michael Faraday was the first person to recognise Perkin’s ability as a student of chemistry.

2 Michael Faraday suggested Perkin should enrol in the Royal College of Chemistry.

3 Perkin employed August Wilhelm Hofmann as his assistant.

4 Perkin was still young when he made the discovery that made him rich and famous.

5 The trees from which quinine is derived grow only in South America.

6 Perkin hoped to manufacture a drug from a coal tar waste product.

7 Perkin was inspired by the discoveries of the famous scientist Louis Pasteur.

Questions 8-13

Answer the questions below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.

8 Before Perkin’s discovery, with what group in society was the colour purple associated?

9 What potential did Perkin immediately understand that his new dye had?

10 What was the name finally used to refer to the first colour Perkin invented?

11 What was the name of the person Perkin consulted before setting up his own dye works?

12 In what country did Perkin’s newly invented colour first become fashionable?

13 According to the passage, which disease is now being targeted by researchers using synthetic dyes?

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 on the following pages.

Questions 14-17

Reading Passage 2 has five paragraphs, A-E.

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-E from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i-vii, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i Seeking the transmission of radio signals from planets

ii Appropriate responses to signals from other civilisations

iii Vast distances to Earth’s closest neighbours

iv Assumptions underlying the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence

v Reasons for the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence

vi Knowledge of extra-terrestrial life forms

vii Likelihood of life on other planets

Example Answer

Paragraph A v

14 Paragraph B

15 Paragraph C

16 Paragraph D

17 Paragraph E

IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?

The Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence

The question of whether we are alone in the Universe has haunted humanity for centuries, but we may now stand poised on the brink of the answer to that question, as we search for radio signals from other intelligent civilisations. This search, often known by the acronym SETI (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence), is a difficult one. Although groups around the world have been searching intermittently for three decades, it is only now that we have reached the level of technology where we can make a determined attempt to search all nearby stars for any sign of life.

A

The primary reason for the search is basic curiosity hethe same curiosity about the natural world that drives all pure science. We want to know whether we are alone in the Universe. We want to know whether life evolves naturally if given the right conditions, or whether there is something very special about the Earth to have fostered the variety of life forms that, we see around us on the planet. The simple detection of a radio signal will be sufficient to answer this most basic of all questions. In this sense, SETI is another cog in the machinery of pure science which is continually pushing out the horizon of our knowledge. However, there are other reasons for being interested in whether life exists elsewhere. For example, we have had civilisation on Earth for perhaps only a few thousand years, and the threats of nuclear war and pollution over the last few decades have told us that our survival may be tenuous. Will we last another two thousand years or will we wipe ourselves out? Since the lifetime of a planet like ours is several billion years, we can expect that, if other civilisations do survive in our galaxy, their ages will range from zero to several billion years. Thus any other civilisation that we hear from is likely to be far older, on average, than ourselves. The mere existence of such a civilisation will tell us that long-term survival is possible, and gives us some cause for optimism. It is even possible that the older civilisation may pass on the benefits of their experience in dealing with threats to survival such as nuclear war and global pollution, and other threats that we haven’t yet discovered.

B

In discussing whether we are alone, most SETI scientists adopt two ground rules. First, UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) are generally ignored since most scientists don’t consider the evidence for them to be strong enough to bear serious consideration (although it is also important to keep an open mind in case any really convincing evidence emerges in the future). Second, we make a very conservative assumption that we are looking for a life form that is pretty well like us, since if it differs radically from us we may well not recognise it as a life form, quite apart from whether we are able to communicate with it. In other words, the life form we are looking for may well have two green heads and seven fingers, but it will nevertheless resemble us in that it should communicate with its fellows, be interested in the Universe, live on a planet orbiting a star like our Sun, and perhaps most restrictively, have a chemistry, like us, based on carbon and water.

C

Even when we make these assumptions, our understanding of other life forms is still severely limited. We do not even know, for example, how many stars have planets, and we certainly do not know how likely it is that life will arise naturally, given the right conditions. However, when we look at the 100 billion stars in our galaxy (the Milky Way), and 100 billion galaxies in the observable Universe, it seems inconceivable that at least one of these planets does not have a life form on it; in fact, the best educated guess we can make, using the little that we do know about the conditions for carbon-based life, leads us to estimate that perhaps one in 100,000 stars might have a life-bearing planet orbiting it. That means that our nearest neighbours are perhaps 100 light years away, which is almost next door in astronomical terms.

D

An alien civilistation could choose many different ways of sending information across the galaxy, but many of these either require too much energy, or else are severely attenuated while traversing the vast distances across the galaxy. It turns out that, for a given amount of transmitted power, radio waves in the frequency range 1000 to 3000 MHz travel the greatest distance, and so all searches to date have concentrated on looking for radio waves in this frequency range. So far there have been a number of searches by various groups around the world, including Australian searches using the radio telescope at Parkes, New South Wales. Until now there have not been any detections from the few hundred stars which have been searched. The scale of the searches has been increased dramatically since 1992, when the US Congress voted NASA $10 million per year for ten years to conduct, a thorough search for extra-terrestrial life. Much of the money in this project is being spent on developing the special hardware needed to search many frequencies at once. The project has two parts. One part is a targeted search using the world’s largest radio telescopes, the American-operated telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico and the French telescope in Nancy in France. This part of the project is searching the nearest 1000 likely stars with high sensitivity for signals in the frequency rang 1000 to 3000 MHz. The other part of the project is an undirected search which is monitoring all of space with a lower sensitivity, using the smaller antennas of NASA’s Deep Space Network.

E

There is considerable debate over how we should react if we detect a signal from an alien civilisation. Everybody agrees that we should not reply immediately. Quite apart from the impracticality of sending a reply over such large distances at short notice, it raises a host of ethical questions that would have to be addressed by the global community before any reply could be sent. Would the human race face the culture shock if faced with a superior and much older civilisation? Luckily, there is no urgency about this. The stars being searched are hundreds of light years away, so it takes hundreds of years for their signal to reach us, and a further few hundred years for our reply to reach them. It’s not important, then, if there’s a delay of a few years, or decades, while the human race debates the question of whether to reply, and perhaps carefully drafts a reply.

Questions 18-20

Answer the questions below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 18-20 on your answer sheet.

18 What is the life expectancy of Earth?

19 What kind of signals from other intelligent civilisations are SETI scientists searching for?

20 How many stars are the world’s most powerful radio telescopes searching?

Questions 21-26

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

21 Alien civilisations may be able to help the human race to overcome serious problems.

22 SETI scientists are trying to find a life form that resembles humans in many ways.

23 The Americans and Australians have co-operated on joint research projects.

24 So far SETI scientists have picked up radio signals from several stars.

25 The NASA project attracted criticism from some members of Congress.

26 If a signal from outer space is received, it will be important to respond promptly.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

The history of the tortoise

If you go back far enough, everything lived in the sea. At various points in evolutionary history, enterprising individuals within many different animal groups moved out onto the land, sometimes even to the most parched deserts, taking their own private seawater with them in blood and cellular fluids. In addition to the reptiles, birds, mammals and insects which we see all around us, other groups that have succeeded out of water include scorpions, snails, crustaceans such as woodlice and land crabs, millipedes and centipedes, spiders and various worms. And we mustn’t forget the plants, without whose prior invasion of the land none of the other migrations could have happened.

Moving from water to land involved a major redesign of every aspect of life, including breathing and reproduction. Nevertheless, a good number of thorough going land animals later turned around, abandoned their hard-earned terrestrial re-tooling, and returned to the water again. Seals have only gone part way back. They show us what the intermediates might have been like, on the way to extreme cases such as whales and dugongs. Whales (including the small whales we call dolphins) and dugongs, with their close cousins the manatees, ceased to be land creatures altogether and reverted to the full marine habits of their remote ancestors. They don’t even come ashore to breed. They do, however, still breathe air, having never developed anything equivalent to the gills of their earlier marine incarnation. Turtles went back to the sea a very long time ago and, like all vertebrate returnees to the water, they breathe air. However, they are, in one respect, less fully given back to the water than whales or dugongs, for turtles still lay their eggs on beaches.

There is evidence that all modern turtles are descended from a terrestrial ancestor which lived before most of the dinosaurs. There are two key fossils called Proganochelys quenstedti and Plaeochersis talampayensis dating from early dinosaur times, which appear to be close to the ancestry of all modern turtles and tortoises. You might wonder how we can tell whether fossil animals lived on land or in water, especially if only fragments are found. Sometimes it’s obvious. Ichthyosaurs were reptilian contemporaries of the dinosaurs, with fins and streamlined bodies. The fossils look like dolphins and they surely lived like dolphins, in the water. With turtles it is a little less obvious. One way to tell is by measuring the bones of their forelimbs.

Walter Joyce and Jacques Gauthier, at Yale University, obtained three measurements in these particular bones of 71 species of living turtles and tortoises. They used a kind of triangular graph paper to plot the three measurements against one another. All the land tortoise species formed a tight cluster of points in the upper part of the triangle; all the water turtles cluster in the lower part of the triangular graph. There was no overlap, except when they added some species that spend time both in water and on land. Sure enough, these amphibious species show up on the triangular graph approximately half way between the ‘wet cluster’ of sea turtles and the ‘dry cluster’ of land tortoises. The next step was to determine where the fossils fell. The bones of P. quenstedti and P. talampayensis leave us in no doubt. Their points on the graph are right in the thick of the dry cluster. Both these fossils were dry-land tortoises. They come from the era before our turtles returned to the water.

You might think, therefore, that modern land tortoises have probably stayed on land ever since those early terrestrial times, as most mammals did after a few of them went back to the sea. But apparently not. If you draw out the family three of all modern turtles and tortoises, nearly all the branches are aquatic. Today’s land tortoises constitute a single branch, deeply nested among branches consisting of aquatic turtles. This suggests that modern land tortoises have not stayed on land continuously since the time of P. quenstedti and P. talampayensis. Rather, their ancestors were among those who went back to the water, and they then reemerged back onto the land in (relatively) more recent times.

Tortoises therefore represent a remarkable double return. In common with all mammals, reptiles and birds, their remote ancestors were marine fish and before that various more or less worm-like creatures stretching back, still in the sea, to the primeval bacteria. Later ancestors lived on land and stayed there for a very large number of generations. Later ancestors still evolved back into the water and became sea turtles. And finally they returned yet again to the land as tortoises, some of which now live in the driest of deserts.

Questions 27-30

Answer the questions below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

27 What had to transfer from sea to land before any animals could migrate?

28 Which TWO processes are mentioned as those in which animals had to make big changes as they moved onto lands?

29 Which physical feature, possessed by their ancestors, do whales lack?

30 which animals might ichthyosaurs have resembled?

Questions 31-33

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 31-33 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

31 Turtles were among the first group of animals to migrate back to the sea.

32 It is always difficult to determine where an animal lived when its fossilised remains are incomplete.

33 The habitat of ichthyosaurs can be determined by the appearance of their fossilised remains.

Questions 34-39

Complete the flow-chart below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 34-39 on your answer sheet.

Method of determining where the ancestors of turtles and tortoises come from

Step 1

71 species of living turtles and tortoises were examined and a total of 34 ……………………. were taken from the bones of their forelimbs.

Step 2

The data was recorded on a 35 ……………….. (necessary for comparing the information).

Outcome: Land tortoises were represented by a dense 36 …………………………… of points towards the top.

Sea turtles were grouped together in the bottom part.

Step 3

The same data was collected from some living 37 ………………. species and added to the other results.

Outcome: The points for these species turned out to be positioned about 38 ……………… up the triangle between the land tortoises and the sea turtles.

Step 4

Bones of P. quenstedti and P. talampayensis were examined in a similar way and the results added.

Outcome: The position of the points indicated that both these ancient creatures were 39…………..

Question 40

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in box 40 on your answer sheet.

According to the writer, the most significant thing about tortoises is that

A they are able to adapt to life in extremely dry environments.

B their original life form was a kind of primeval bacteria.

C they have so much in common with sea turtles.

D they have made the transition from sea to land more than once.

剑桥雅思阅读9原文参考译文(test1)

PASSAGE 1参考译文:

William Henry Perkin 合成染料的发明者

Wiliam Henry Perkin于1838年3月12日出生于英国伦敦。还是个小男孩儿的时候,Perkin的好奇心就早早激发了他对艺术、科学、摄影与工程的兴趣。但是一次偶然的机会,他发现已故祖父家有一个破旧但功能齐全的实验室,正是这个发现使得这位年轻人确定了他对化学的热情。

当Perkin就读于伦敦城市学院时,他开始沉浸于对化学的研究。他的老师Thomas Hall发现了他在化学方面的天赋与热忱,鼓励其参加皇家学院著名科学家Michael Faraday的一系列讲座。Faraday的讲座进一步激发了这位年轻化学家的热情,于是后来,在1853年,15岁的Perkin成功进入皇家化学学院学习。

在Perkin入学时,皇家化学学院的院长正是著名的德国化学家August Wilhelm Hofmann。Perkin的科学天赋很快引起了Hofmann的注意,不到两年他就成了Hofmann最年轻的助理。不久之后,Perkin就取得了一项能为他带来名誉和财富的科学突破。

当时,奎宁是唯一可以治疗疟疾的药物。这种药物是从原产自南美洲的金鸡纳树的树皮中提炼出来的,而在1856年奎宁经常供不应求。因此,当Hofmann随口提到想用合成药物来替代奎宁时,自然而然,他的得意门生Perkin马上承担起了这项重任。

1856年,Perkin整个假期都待在他家顶楼的实验室里。他试图利用苯胺这种廉价又易得的煤焦油废料来制造奎宁。虽然他尽了最大努力,他最终并没有制造出奎宁;但却制造出了一种神秘的黑色沉淀物。幸运的是,长期的科学训练与自身的天性使他对该沉淀物进行了深入的研究。在实验过程中的不同阶段,他把重铬酸钾和酒精加入苯胺中,最终他得到了一种深紫色的溶液。正如著名科学家Louis Pasteur所说,“机会总是垂青有准备的人”,Perkin意识到了他的意外发明拥有巨大的潜力。

历来,纺织染料都是由诸如植物与动物排泄物等的天然原料制成的,其中一些原料,比如蜗牛黏液, 很难获得,而且价格极其昂贵。事实上,从蜗牛身上提取出来的紫色染料曾经一度非常贵,在当时的社会条件下,只有富人才能买得起。此外,天然染料的颜色偏浑浊而且很快就会褪色。Perkin的发明正是在这种大背景下诞生的。

Perkin很快想到这种紫色溶液可以用到织物的染色中,由此使其成为世界上第一种合成染料。意识到这项突破的重要性后,Perkin立即为其申请专利。但是在Perkin对自己发明的各种反应中,最有趣的也许是他几乎本能地想到这种新染料具有商业潜力。

起初Perkin把他发明的染料命名为泰尔紫(Tyrian Purple),但是后来人们通常称其为木槿紫(mauve,法语中制造蓝紫色染料的植物的名字)。Perkin向苏格兰染料坊的老板Robert Pullar寻求建议,Pullar向他保证,如果这种颜色不会褪色,那么加工这种染料将大有“钱途”,而且成本相对低廉。因此,尽管他的导师Hofmann极力反对,Perkin还是离开了皇家学院,去为现代化学工业的诞生而奋斗了。

在父亲与兄弟的帮助下,Perkin在离伦敦不远的地方建立了一家工厂。1857年,他的染料坊开始生产世界上第一种合成染料,所用原料是廉价而充足的煤焦油,这种煤焦油是伦敦煤气路灯所产生的几乎无穷无尽的副产品。当法国皇后Eugenie看好这种新颜色后,Perkin的染料坊迎来了它的商业繁荣期。不久,木槿紫 就成了法国所有时尚女郎的必备品。英国女王Victoria也不甘示弱,身着木槿紫礼服出现在公共场合,这使得木槿紫在英国也风靡一时。这种染料颜色醒目、不易褪色,人们的需求越来越多,因此Perkin开始绘制新的蓝图。

虽然第一项发现使Perkin收获了名誉和财富,但是这位化学家仍然继续他的研究工作。他合成并给人们带来了众多其他颜色的染料,包括1859年合成的苯胺红、1863年合成的苯胺黑,以及19世纪60年代末期的帕金绿。值得注意的是,Perkin的合成染料的发明不仅为装饰领域作出了贡献,而且在医学研究的诸多方面也起到了至关重要的作用。比如合成染料预先被用于给肉眼看不见的微生物与细菌上色,这就使研究者能够辨别诸如肺结核、霍乱和炭疽之类的病菌。如今,人工合成染料还在继续发挥着至关重要的作用。而且,最应该让Perkin感到欣慰的是,合成染料目前正在被用于研究治疗疟疾的疫苗。

TEST 1 PASSAGE 2 参考译文:

外星有生命存在吗?

——搜寻外星文明计划

人类是否是宇宙中唯一存在的生命这个问题已经困扰我们几百年了,然而随着搜索来自其他智慧文明的无线电信号,现在我们或许离这个问题的答案已经不远了。这项也被称为SETI (search for extra?terrestrial intelligence, 搜寻外星文明)的计划进行起来非常困难。虽然世界各地的团体已经断断续续地搜寻了三十多年,然而直到现在,我们所达到的技术水平才允许我们下定决心去尝试搜寻附近所有附近星球上的任何生命迹象。

A 人类之所以搜索无线电信号,主要是出于一种基本的好奇心,正是这种对大自然的好奇心推动了所有纯科学的发展。我们想知道人类是否是宇宙中唯一存在的生命。我们想知道在适宜的条件下,生命是否会自然形成。我们还想知道地球上是否存在某种特殊的物质,孕育了那些我们司空见惯的各种形式的生命体。只需监测一下无线电信号,这些最根本的问题就能够得到充分解答。从这种意义上来说,SETI 是纯科学系统发展的又一个重要推动力,而纯科学正不断拓宽着人类的知识范围。然而,人类之所以对其他地方是否存在生命这件事感兴趣,还有其他原因。比如,我们地球上的文明历史只有寥寥数千年,而过去几十年的核战争与污染的威胁告诉人类,我们的生命也许很脆弱。我们还能再延续两千年吗?还是将自我灭绝呢?既然像地球这样的星球拥有数十亿年的寿命,我们可以猜想,如果银河系中确实还有其他文明存在,那么它们的历史可能从零到数十亿年不等。因此,如果我们收到其他文明的信号,那它们的平均历史很有可能比人类历史长得多。只要这种文明存在,就说明生命是有可能长期存活的,同时也会带给我们一个保持乐观的理由。这些更古老的文明甚至有可能将其在应对生存威胁过程中积累下来的有益经验传授给我们,例如如何应对核战争与全球污染带来的威胁,以及如何应对其他我们尚未发现的潜在威胁。

B 在探讨我们是否是宇宙中唯一存在的生命时,大多数SETI的科学家遵循两个基本原则。第一,UFOs (不明飞行物) 通常不在考虑范围内,因为大多数科学家认为UFO的存在缺乏确凿的证据,不做慎重考虑(尽管保持开放的思想也很重要,同时以防将来会出现令人信服的(关于UFO的)证据)。第二,我们保守地假定我们正在搜寻的生命形式和人类非常相似,如果完全不同,那么我们可能不会把它看作是一种生命形式,更不用说能否与它进行交流了。换句话说,我们正在搜寻的生命形式也许会有两个绿色的脑袋和七根手指,但是它们和人类一样,能与同伴进行交流、对宇宙充满兴趣、生活在一个围绕恒星公转的星球上,就像地球绕着太阳转一样。也许更严格地说,它们和我们一样,由基本的化学物质碳和水构成。

C 即使做出了这些假设,我们对其他生命形式的了解还是非常有限。比如,我们甚至不知道多少颗恒星有行星围绕,当然,我们也不知道在适宜的条件下,生命自然形成的可能性有多大。然而,当我们观测银河系中的1000亿颗恒星和可见宇宙中的1000亿个星系的时候,很难相信这些恒星中没有一个有生命存在。事实上,凭借我们仅有的一点对碳基生命的了解,我们所能做出的最有根据的推测是,或许每十万个恒星中的一个会有孕育着生命的行星围绕着它运转。这意味着我们最近的邻居离我们也许只有100 光年,从天文学角度来讲,这几乎就相当于和隔壁邻居的距离了。

D 外星文明可以选择多种不同的方式在银河系中发送信息,但是许多方式要么需要消耗过多的能量,要么在银河系中长距离传播时严重衰减。事实证明,在发射功率一定的情况下,频率在1000到3000兆赫 之间的无线电波传播的距离最远,所以到目前为止,我们主要在搜寻这个频率范围的无线电波。迄今为止,世界各地已经有许多不同的团体进行了多次搜寻,包括澳大利亚在新南威尔士的帕克斯用无线电天文望远镜进行的搜寻。直到现在,在已经搜寻过的几百个恒星中还没有任何发现。1992年,美国国会计划在以后的十年里每年为美国国家航空航天局投资1000万美元,用于对外星生命进行彻底搜寻。从那时起,搜寻的规模便开始大幅增加。项目中的很多资金用于开发可以同时搜索多个频率的特殊硬件 上。该项目分为两个部分,一部分是利用世界上最大的无线电天文望远镜进行有针对性的搜寻,分别通过位于波多黎各阿雷西沃港的、由美国操作的望远镜和位于法国南锡的、由法国操作的望远镜来完成。 这部分项目在距离最近的有可能接收到信号的1000颗活跃恒星中,对1000到3000兆赫的频率进行搜索。该项目的另一部分是利用美国国家航空航天局深空网的小天线进行不定向搜寻,监控所有不太活跃的宇宙空间。

E 如果我们真的发现了来自外星文明的信号,我们应该如何回应呢?这是一个备受争议的问题。所有人都认为我们不应该立即作出回应。且不说要马上向如此遥远的地方发出回应是多么不切实际,这还会引发一系列的民族问题,这些问题在回应被发出去之前必须由国际社会联合解决。如果面对一种更优越、更古老的文明,人类会不会面临着文化冲击呢?幸运的是,我们不需要立即作出回应,因为被搜寻的恒星离我们有数百光年之远,它们的信号到达我们这里需要数百年的时间,而我们作出的回应到达这些恒星又需要花上数百年。就这一点而言,当人类在争论是否要作出回应时,或者在精心起草回应内容的时候,再耽误个几年甚至几十年也没关系。

TEST 1 PASSAGE 3 参考译文:

乌龟的进化史

如果追溯到远古时代,那时一切生物都生活在水里。在进化史的不同时期,各个动物种群中都有一些胆大的开始向陆地迁徙,有的甚至跑到了非常干旱的沙漠里,这些生物的血液与细胞液里还储存着曾经所生活海域里的海水。除了我们周围随处可见的爬行动物、鸟类、哺乳动物和昆虫以外,其他成功登陆的生物还包括蝎子、蜗牛和潮虫、陆蟹、千足虫、蜈蚣等甲壳类动物,还有蜘蛛及各种虫子。当然还有植物,如杲没有它们率先登陆,其他任何生物都不可能在陆地上生存。

从水里转移到陆地上使这些生物在方方面面都发生了巨大变化,包括呼吸和繁殖方式。然而,一大批动物彻底在陆地上安家后,却忽然回心转意,放弃了来之不易的陆上新生活,又重新回到了水中。海豹只恢复了部分水中生活的特征,向我们展示了演变过程中半成品的模样,而成品则是如鲸鱼和儒艮这样纯粹的海洋生物。鲸鱼(包括我们称作海豚的小鲸鱼)和儒艮,与它们的同类动物海牛一样不再是陆地动物,而是完全恢复了与老祖先一样的海洋生活习惯,它们甚至都不上岸繁殖。它们虽然仍呼吸空气,却没有进化出类似于鳃这样的早期海洋生物的器官。海龟在很早以前就回到了水中,和其他返回水中的脊椎动物一 样,它们也需要呼吸空气,但是却没有像鲸鱼和儒艮那样完全返回水中,这体现在一个方面——海龟仍然在海滩上产卵。

有证据表明,所有现代海龟的祖先都曾经生活在陆地上,比大多数恐龙在陆地上出现的时间还要早。 有两种可以追溯到恐龙时代早期的重要化石,分别是Proganochelys quenstedti (原颚龟化石)和 Potoeocfeersis tatompayewsis(古老的陆地龟化石),它们与所有现代海龟和乌龟的祖先最为接近。你可能会问,我们是如何通过动物化石来判断它们是生活在水中还是陆地上的,尤其当我们只找到一些化石碎片的时候。有时候这个问题的答案很明显。鱼龙是与恐龙同时代的爬行动物,它有鱼鳍和流线型的身体。鱼龙化石看起来像海豚,它们确实和海豚一样曾经在水中生活。海龟在这一点上则没有这么明显。判断动物水生还是陆生的方法之一就是对它们前肢的骨骼进行检测。

耶鲁大学的Watter Joyce和Jacques Gauthier从三个方面对71种活的海龟和乌龟的特有骨骼进行了检测。他们用一种三角坐标纸分别标记了这三个方面的检测结果。所有陆栖乌龟的数据在三角坐标的上半部分形成了一簇密集的点,而所有水栖海龟的数据集中于下半部分。两部分数据没有重叠,除非在其中增加一些水陆两栖乌龟的检测结果。当然,这些数据出现在接近三角坐标中间的位置,位于水栖海龟与陆栖乌龟的坐标点之间。下一步就是确定具体的位置。毫无疑问,P. quenstedti与P. totompayewsis的坐标点正好位于陆栖乌龟的坐标点最密集的地方。这两种化石都是陆栖乌龟化石,而且都生存在海龟返回水里之前的时代。

也许你会认为,现代的陆栖乌龟可能自从早期有陆地生物以来就一直生活在陆地上,就像除了少数哺乳动物返回水中以外,大多数哺乳动物还在陆地上生活一样。但事实显然不是这样的。如果你画出所有现代海龟与乌龟的家谱图,会发现几乎所有的龟类分支都属于水栖动物。而现代的陆栖乌龟单独形成一个分支,穿插在水栖海龟的分支中。这说明自P. quenstedti与P. talampayensis的时代以来,现代的陆栖乌龟并没有一直在陆地上生活。更确切地说,它们的祖先曾经返回水中,只是在(相对)较近的年代又回到了陆地上。

因此很明显,乌龟曾往返于水中和陆地上生存。与所有的哺乳动物、爬行动物和鸟类一样,乌龟的老祖先是海洋中的鱼类。再向前追溯,它们也是海洋中类似蠕虫生物的原始细菌。后来,乌龟的祖先来到陆地 上并持续生活了相当长的年代,但后来又回到了水中,成为了水栖海龟。直到最后,它们再一次回到陆地上,成为陆龟,其中有一些甚至生活在干旱的沙漠中。

剑桥雅思阅读9原文解析(test1)

Passage1

Question 1

答案: FALSE

关键词: Michael Faraday the first person

定位原文: 第2段第2句“His talent and devotion…” 他的老师Thomas Hall发现了他在化学方面的天赋与热忱,鼓励其参加皇家学院著名科学家Michael Faraday的一系列讲座。

解题思路: 从这句话很容易看出,Thomas Hall是文中提到的第一个发现Perkin化学天赋的人,尽管文中没有用到the first person这样的确切说法,但是看完第二段就不难发现,这点的确是对的。因此,题中的说法与文中的事实相反。

Question 2

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: Michael Faraday, Royal College of Chemistry,suggested

定位原文: 第2段第3句“Those speeches fired…” Faraday的讲座进一步激发了这位年轻化学家的热情,在1853年,15岁的Perkin成功进入皇家化学学院学习。

解题思路: 这句话仅仅告诉我们,Perkin是在听了Faraday的讲座后,对化学的激情更加澎湃,进而考上了皇家化学学院,而并没有提到Faraday与Perkin进行直接接触或沟通,所以题目是对文章中出现的人和事的过分解读。

Question 3

答案: FALSE

关键词: employed, assistant,August Wilhelm Hofmann

定位原文: 第3段第1、2句“At the time of Perkin’s enrolment, the…” 在Perkin入学时,皇家化学学院的院长正是著名的德国化学家August Wilhelm Hofmann。Perkin的科学天赋很快引起了Hofmann的注意,不到两年他就成了Hofmann最年轻的助理。

解题思路:从这两句话中可以清晰地看出Perkin和Hofmann之间的关系,前者是后者最年轻的助理, 题目的说法和文中的陈述是直接抵触的。

Question 4

答案: TRUE

关键词: rich and famous,still young

对应原文: 第3段最后一句“Not long after that, Perkin made…” 在这之后不久,Perkin就取得一项能为他带来名誉和财富的科学突破。

解题思路: 这里的“不久之后”,指的是Perkin成为Hofmann最年轻的助手之后,而成为助手是Perkin入学两年后的事情,第二段最后专门提到Perkin入学时只有15岁,所以可以推测出Perkin作出这项发现时也就十八九岁。经过这样的推断可知,题目的说法完全可以成立。

Question 5

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: only,quinine, South America

定位原文: 第4段第1句“At the time,quinine…” 当时,奎宁是唯一可以治疗症疾的药物。这种药物是从原产自南美洲的金鸡纳树的树皮中提炼出来的……

解题思路: 如果误把第一句中的only和第二句话结合,就很容易得出和题目一样的错误结论。 其实出题人的意图是说,当时只有奎宁可以治疗疟疾;而奎宁是从金鸡纳树的树皮里提炼出来的,金鸡纳树原产自南美洲。注意,这里出题人并没有说金鸡纳树只有南美洲才有。文中的说法不足以让考生得出如题目“出产奎宁的树木只能生长在南美洲”那样的结论。

Question 6

答案: TRUE

关键词: a coal tar waste product,hoped to manufacture

定位原文: 第5段第2句 “He was attempting to … ”他试图利用苯胺这种廉价又易得的煤焦油废料来制造奎宁。

解题思路:这句话很清晰地表明,Perkin的确希望用煤焦油废料产品苯胺来制造一种药物——奎宁。 此题难度很低,连动词manufacture都没有进行任何替换。

Question 7

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: Louis Pasteur,was inspired by

定位原文: 第5段最后一句“And, proving the truth of…” 正如著名科学家 Louis Pasteur所说,“机会总是垂青有准备的人”,Perkin意识到了他的意外发明拥有巨大的潜力。

解题思路: 出题人在这里引用Louis Pasteur的名言来证明Perkin的成功绝非偶然,是他不断发现、不断试验的结果,但并没有提到Perkin是受Louis Pasteur的发明激发才有了自己的发明。本题和第2题在出题方式上有异曲同工之妙,都是让Perkin和名人扯上了关系,而实际上这种关系文中并没有提到。

Question 8

答案: the rich

关键词: the colour purple

定位原文: 第6段第3句“Indeed, the purple colour…”

解题思路: The rich正好可以对应题目中what group in society,并且没有超过只能填两个字的字数限制,故答案应为the rich。

Question 9

答案: commercial possibilities

关键词: new dye

定位原文: 第7段最后一句 “But perhaps the most fascinating…”

解题思路: 寻找题干中的关键字new dye, 绕过沿途synthetic dye的陷阱,很快就能找到定位句,锁定答案是new dye 的宾语commercial possibilities。

Question 10

答案: mauve

关键词: name, finally, first colour

定位原文: 第8段第1句“Perkin originally named his dye…”

解题思路: 在此题中,考生需要注意题干中的关键副词finally, 此题指的是 Perkin的颜色最终被叫做什么,而不是起初被叫做什么。题干中的be referred to as是雅思阅读中经常出现的用法,等同于be known as / be named as / be defined as, 意为 “被称为…”答案是mauve。

Question 11

答案: Robert Pullar

关键词: the name of the person, consulted, before setting up

定位原文: 第8段的第2句“He asked advice of Scottish dye works owner Robert Pullar,...”

解题思路: 本段提到Perkin在建立工厂之前,曾经征询苏格兰染料坊的老板Robert Pullar的意见,在得到Robert Pullar的建议之后,才开始建立自己的工厂。这里不要将Robert Pullar和Hofmann混淆,因为本段后半部分也提到了Perkin的恩师Hofmann。Hofmann是强烈反对Perkin这么做的。故本题答案是Robert Pullar。

Question 12

答案: France

关键词: what country, first

定位原文: 第9段第2、3句“Utilising the cheap and plentiful coal…”

解题思路: 此句话明确指出在Perkin的工厂首度造出了第一支人工合成材料后, 法国皇后Eugenie十分喜爱这种新颜色,于是Perkin的染料坊进入了它的商业繁荣期。故答案是France。

Question 13

答案: malaria

关键词: disease, now, synthetic dyes

定位原文: 第10段最后一句“And, in what would have been…”

解题思路: 寻找关键词 synthetic dye时,可能会被microbes, bacteria, tuberculosis, cholera, anthrax所迷惑。但是要注意的是都没有出现时间状语now。再继续向下寻找,就会发现 today, current等字眼,这说明这里才是真正的考点所在。仔细读这个句子不难发现,malaria(疟疾)才是正确答案。

Test 1 Passage 2

Question 14

答案: iv

关键词: assumptions, underlying

定位原文: B段第1句“In discussing whether we are alone, most…”

解题思路: 这句明确表明SETI科学家在搜寻外星人时遵循两个基本原则。Ground相当于题目中的 underlying, rules相当于题目中的 assumptions,接下来的文字叙述两个原则分别是什么。考生从首句可以很明确地判断出正确答案是iv。个别考生可能会看到second后面句子中的assumption— 词,进而看到a life form,就认为答案是vi,这种选择显然是以偏概全的,是不正确的。段意必须能够涵盖一整段内容,而不是某个部分或者某句话的内容。

因此本题答案是iv。

Question 15

答案: vii

关键词: likelihood of, lives, other planets

定位原文: C段第3句的后半句“… ; in fact, the best educated guess…”

解题思路: 这一段是无法仅仅从首句就判断答案的,需要读举例的内容,甚至读完整段,出题人不断用guess, estimate, perhaps, might这样的词来印证题干中的 likelihood一词。

Question 16

答案: i

关键词: radio signals, from

定位原文: D段第1、2句“An alien… It turns out…”

解题思路: 本段是文中首次正式提出搜寻外星生命的方法,radio waves一词不断被重复。Looking for相当于题目中的 seeking,radio waves 相当于 radio signals,所有剩余headings中只有i和ii谈到了 radio signals,从逻辑上推测不可能是ii,因为只有先搜寻外星信号,才可能谈到作回应的事情。故此题答案是i。

Question 17

答案: ii

关键词: appropriate responses

定位原文: E段第1句“There is considerate debate over…”

解题思路: 本段首句明确提出如果收到了外星文明信号, 人类应该如何回应的问题。React相当于题目中的responses。而how暗指appropriate。故答案是ii。

Question 18

答案: several billion years

关键词: life expectancy, Earth

定位原文: A段第9句“Since the lifetime of…”

解题思路: Earth这个词出现在A段的第九行。顺着这个词再向下找到lifetime, 显然这个词对应题目中的life expectancy(寿命)一词,读完本句发现答案应该是several billion years 。

Question 19

答案: radio waves

关键词: What kind of signals from other intelligent civilisations

定位原文: D段第1句“An alien civilisation could choose…”

解题思路: 本题定位与上一题相隔较远。但是如果已经先完成了 List of Headings题目,就不难发现只有D段是在具体讲外星文明会选择哪种输送信息的方式。题目中问的是SETI科学家在搜寻从外星文明发来的哪一种信号,也就表明答案是个具体的信号形式,考生也就不难猜测答案是radio waves。注意,此处问的是信号的形式,而不是电波频率,因此填1000或者3000 MHz是不正确的。

Question 20

答案: 1000

关键词: How many, most powerful radio telescopes

定位原文:D段倒数第4句“The project has two parts. One part is…”

解题思路:通过阅读题目,发现要寻找的是恒星的数量。只要定位数字 就能迅速找到本题的位置。于是,考生找到1000这个数字,并且能迅速排除下方的1000到3000MHz。从1000这个数字向上看,考生可以看到 world’s largest radio telescopes与题目中的 most powerful radio telescopes 是同义表达。

Question 21

答案: YES

关键词: Alien civilisations / the human race

定位原文: A段最后一句“It is even possible that…” 这些更古老的文明甚至有可能将其在应对生存威胁过程中积累下来的有益经验传授给我们,例如如何应对核战争与全球污染带来的威胁,以及如何应对其他我们尚未发现的潜在威胁。

解题思路: 根据题干关键字alien civilisation以及List of Headings题目留下的线索,最终会发现A段的最后一句话能够对应本题。 be able to help能够对应文中的it is even possible, serious problems对应文中的threats。本题基本上属于同义词替换型的YES题目。

Question 22

答案: YES

关键词: SETI,resembles

定位原文: B段第3句“Second, we make a very conservative assumption…” 第二,我们保守地假定我们正在搜寻的生命形式和人类非常相似。

解题思路: 本句的定位可以根据顺序原则推测,We在这里指的就是SETI的科学家们,resemble humans指的是is pretty well like us。只要能顺利定位,就能够通过同义词转换解答。

Question 23

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: The Americans and Australians,Co-operated

定位原文: D段第3句“...,including Australian searches using…”

解题思路: 文章的D段虽然先提到了澳大利亚的搜寻工作,接着又提到了美国航空航天局负责的美国太空望远镜的搜索工作,但是并没有明确指出在这方面澳大利亚人和美国人有没有cooperate,合作这个概念完全是出题人的杜撰,遇到这种情况,应该选择NOT GIVEN。

Question 24

答案: NO

关键词: SETI scientists,have picked up

定位原文: D段第4句“Until now there have …” 直到现在,在已经搜寻过的几百个恒星中还没有任何发现。

解题思路:此题定位处位于上一题定位词Australian的后方,比较好找。文中明确指出迄今为止,科学家们还一无所获,而不是题目中所说的已经发现了信号。文中的have not been和题目中的have picked up相矛盾, 连时态都没有改变,是一道简单的同义词冲突型的NO。

Question 25

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: NASA, Congress, criticism

定位原文:D段第5句“The scale of the search…” 1992年,美国国会计划在以后的十年里每年为美国国家航空航天局投资1,000万美元,用于对外星生命进行彻底的搜寻。从那时起,搜寻的规模便开始大幅增加。

解题思路:文中仅仅说国会通过议案给NASA拨款来对外星人进行彻底的搜寻,并未涉及这个项目有没有遭到某些议员批评一说。因此本题属于完全未提及型NOT GIVEN。

Question 26

答案: NO

关键词: respond promptly

定位原文:E段第1、2句“There is considerable debate over…” 如果我们真的发现了来自外星文明的信号,我们应该如何回应呢?这是一个备受争议的问题。所有人都认为我们不应该立即作出回应。

解题思路:文中这句话明确指出了对待外星人信号的态度,那就是不能立即回应,这与题目中提出的马上作出回应完全相反。Immediately相当于promptly。

Test 1 Passage 3

Question 27

答案: plants

关键词: before any animals could migrate

定位原文:第1段最后一句话“And we musn’t…”

解题思路: 这句话指出,如果没有植物率先登陆,其他任何生物向陆地的迁徙都不可能完成。这吻合题目中的before any animals could migrate。故答案应该是plants。

Question 28:

答案: breathing and reproduction (in either order)

关键词: TWO processes, make big changes, moved onto land

定位原文:第2段第1句话“Moving from…”

解题思路: 题目问的是:动物要想迁徙到陆地上,必须在哪两个方面作出巨大的改变?此题定位可以根据顺序原则锁定在第二段,而第二段第一句话就提到Moving from water to land involved a major redesign of every aspect of life, including breathing and reproduction.这句话中的redesign对应题目中的changes。 故答案应该是breathing和reproduction。(并列答案,顺序无关紧要)

Question 29:

答案: gills

关键词: physical feature, whales, lack

定位原文:第2段第5句“Whales (including the small whales we call dolphins) and…”

解题思路:先根据题目关键字定位到whale, 然后通读whale所在的句子,在这段叙述中,作者最后指出虽然鲸鱼仍呼吸空气,却没有进化出类似于鳃这样的早期海洋生物的器官。所以考生可以得出结论,鲸鱼缺乏的其实就是gills。故答案应该是gills。

Question 30:

答案: dolphins

关键词: ichthyosaurs, Resemble

定位原文:第3段倒数第4、3句“Ichthyosaurs were reptilian…”

解题思路: 定位句中的contemporaries是理解重点,指的是“同时代的人,同时代的事物”,这里说明鱼龙年代久远,和恐龙是同时代的动物,但是并不说明鱼龙和恐龙相像(其实也不大可能嘛)。而后半句的look like,就完全呼应题目中 的resemble, 这才是真正答案所在。

故答案应该是dolphins。

Question 31:

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: Turtles,the first group

定位原文:第2段倒数第2句“Turtles went back to the sea…” 海龟在很早以前就回到了水中,和其他返回水中的脊椎动物一样,它们也需要呼吸空气。

解题思路:文中在第二段的后半部分第一次提到了乌龟,这就是本题的定位点。寻找turtle一词后,文中这句话说很久以前,乌龟就重新返回海洋,但是并没有说明是不是第一批回海洋这个概念。实际上,整篇文章中都没有讨论到关于the first的问题,所以此题属于完全未提及型NOT GIVEN题。

Question 32:

答案: FALSE

关键词: fossilised remains, incomplete, always difficult

定位原文: 第3段第3句“You might…” 你可能会问,我们是如何通过动物化石来判断它们是生活在水中还是陆地上的,尤其当我们只找到一些化石碎片的时候。

解题思路: 在第三段中寻找fossilised一词,很快找到对应词fossil。接着读到fragments,可以对应题目中的incomplete, on land or in water对应题目中的where an animal lived。但题目中的叙述过于绝对,It is always difficult与文中Sometimes it’s obvious明显相抵触。

Question 33:

答案: TRUE

关键词: ichthyosaurs, can be determined by, appearance

定位原文:第3段倒数第4、3句“Ichthyosaurs were reptilian…” 鱼龙是与恐龙同时代的爬行动物,它有鱼鳍和流线型的身体。鱼龙化石看起来像海豚,它们确实和海豚一样曾经在水中生活。

解题思路:通过ichthyosaurs一词很好确定。文中提到鱼龙的化石看上去像海豚,因此鱼龙肯定生活在海里。这等于举个例子向我们说明只要从鱼龙化石的外表就能够判定它的栖息地,与题目的意思完全吻合。

Question 34:

答案: three measurements

关键词: 71, a total of

定位原文:第4段第1句“...obtained three measurements in these particular…”

解题思路:利用数字71,很快就可以将此题定位。但是要注意在该句中并没有提到题目中的forelimbs。该词出现于上一段的最后一句,在此句中则以these particular bones来指代,要多加注意。如果能够顺利突破这个小障碍,很快就能发现正确答案。正确答案为three measurements。

Question 35:

答案: (triangular) graph

关键词: data, a

定位原文:第4段第2句“They used a kind of triangular graph…”

解题思路:顺着上一题的对应点找下来,可以顺利找到a kind of,这个词组可以等同于题目中的不定冠词a。因此可以初步判定a kind of后面的triangular graph paper可能就是要填写的答案。题目要求NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS,而triangular graph paper有三个词, 只好牺牲最无关紧要的paper。

Question 36:

答案: cluster

关键词: Land tortoises, a dense, points

定位原文:第4段第3句“All the land tortoise species…”

解题思路:题目中需要填的词位于短语a dense of points 中,只要定位到陆龟这个词,再顺着向下读到a tight cluster of points即可。这个词组的结构和题目中的词组一模一样,只是将dense和tight做了替换。正确答案为cluster。

Question 37:

答案: amphibious

关键词: Sea turtles, living, added to

定位原文:第4段第4句“There was no overlap, except when they…”

解题思路: 此题的定位可以根据上一题最后一句话中的sea turtles定位到第四段water turtle后面这句话。从题目可以得知从某种物种搜集的数据被添加到了结果中去。Add一词是解题的关键。读完这句话,很容易发现被添加的物种是既可以在陆上生活,也可以在水中生存的两栖物种。

Question 38:

答案: half way

关键词: up the triangle between

定位原文: 第4段第5句“Sure enough, these amphibious…”

解题思路: 此题十分简单,找到两栖物种之后寻找between,between前面的half way, 就是本题所要的答案。

Question 39:

答案: dry-land tortoises

关键词: P. quenstedti, P. talampayensis, The position of the points, both

定位原文: 第4段倒数第2句“Both these fossils were dry-land tortoises.”

解题思路: 用两个专有名词可以顺利找到第四段结尾处。然后利用题目中的The position of the points锁定在Their points on the graph are right in the thick of the dry cluster.答案就是之后的那句。正确答案为dry-land tortoises 。

Question 40:

答案: D

关键词: the most significant thing, tortoises

定位原文:参见解题思路解析

解题思路: 题目:作者认为关于乌龟最重要的一件事情是:A.它们能够适应极其干燥的环境。B.它们生命的最初形态是某种原始细菌。C.它们与海龟十分相似。D.它们不止一次从海洋迁徙到陆地。最后一段首句就表明Tortoises therefore represent a remarkable double return, 含义为“因此很明显,乌龟曾往返于水中和陆地上生存。”选项A中所说的干燥环境,选项B中所说的原始细菌,以及选项C中提到的海龟,在最后一段中悉数登场,但是没有一个是题目论述的核心。题目的真正意图就是想告诉考生乌龟finally retuned yet again to the land as tortoises。故答案应该选D。

剑桥雅思阅读9(test1)原文答案解析

篇5:剑桥雅思阅读8(test1)答案分析

剑桥雅思阅读8原文(test1)

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

A Chronicle of Timekeeping

Our conception of time depends on the way we measure it

A According to archaeological evidence, at least 5,000 years ago, and long before the advent of the Roman Empire, the Babylonians began to measure time, introducing calendars to co-ordinate communal activities, to plan the shipment of goods and, in particular, to regulate planting and harvesting. They based their calendars on three natural cycles: the solar day, marked by the successive periods of light and darkness as the earth rotates on its axis; the lunar month, following the phases of the moon as it orbits the earth; and the solar year, defined by the changing seasons that accompany our planet's revolution around the sun.

B Before the invention of artificial light, the moon had greater social impact. And, for those living near the equator in particular, its waxing and waning was more conspicuous than the passing of the seasons. Hence, the calendars that were developed at the lower latitudes were influenced more by the lunar cycle than by the solar year. In more northern climes, however, where seasonal agriculture was practised, the solar year became more crucial. As the Roman Empire expanded northward, it organised its activity chart for the most part around the solar year.

C Centuries before the Roman Empire, the Egyptians had formulated a municipal calendar having 12 months of 30 days, with five days added to approximate the solar year. Each period of ten days was marked by the appearance of special groups of stars called decans. At the rise of the star Sirius just before sunrise, which occurred around the all-important annual flooding of the Nile, 12 decans could be seen spanning the heavens. The cosmic significance the Egyptians placed in the 12 decans led them to develop a system in which each interval of darkness (and later, each interval of daylight) was divided into a dozen equal parts. These periods became known as temporal hours because their duration varied according to the changing length of days and nights with the passing of the seasons. Summer hours were long, winter ones short; only at the spring and autumn equinoxes were the hours of daylight and darkness equal. Temporal hours, which were first adopted by the Greeks and then the Romans, who disseminated them through Europe, remained in use for more than 2,500 years.

D In order to track temporal hours during the day, inventors created sundials, which indicate time by the length or direction of the sun's shadow. The sundial's counterpart, the water clock, was designed to measure temporal hours at night. One of the first water clocks was a basin with a small hole near the bottom through which the water dripped out. The falling water level denoted the passing hour as it dipped below hour lines inscribed on the inner surface. Although these devices performed satisfactorily around the Mediterranean, they could not always be depended on in the cloudy and often freezing weather of northern Europe.

E The advent of the mechanical clock meant that although it could be adjusted to maintain temporal hours, it was naturally suited to keeping equal ones. With these, however, arose the question of when to begin counting, and so, in the early 14th century, a number of systems evolved. The schemes that divided the day into 24 equal parts varied according to the start of the count: Italian hours began at sunset, Babylonian hours at sunrise, astronomical hours at midday and 'great clock' hours, used for some large public clocks in Germany, at midnight. Eventually these were superseded by 'small clock', or French, hours, which split the day into two 12-hour periods commencing at midnight.

F The earliest recorded weight-driven mechanical clock was built in 1283 in Bedfordshire in England. The revolutionary aspect of this new timekeeper was neither the descending weight that provided its motive force nor the gear wheels (which had been around for at least 1,300 years) that transferred the power; it was the part called the escapement. In the early 1400s came the invention of the coiled spring or fusee which maintained constant force to the gear wheels of the timekeeper despite the changing tension of its mainspring. By the 16th century, a pendulum clock had been devised, but the pendulum swung in a large arc and thus was not very efficient.

G To address this, a variation on the original escapement was invented in 1670, in England. It was called the anchor escapement, which was a lever-based device shaped like a ship's anchor. The motion of a pendulum rocks this device so that it catches and then releases each tooth of the escape wheel, in turn allowing it to turn a precise amount. Unlike the original form used in early pendulum clocks, the anchor escapement permitted the pendulum to travel in a very small arc. Moreover, this invention allowed the use of a long pendulum which could beat once a second and thus led to the development of a new floor-standing case design, which became known as the grandfather clock.

H Today, highly accurate timekeeping instruments set the beat for most electronic devices. Nearly all computers contain a quartz-crystal clock to regulate their operation. Moreover, not only do time signals beamed down from Global Positioning System satellites calibrate the functions of precision navigation equipment, they do so as well for mobile phones, instant stock-trading systems and nationwide power-distribution grids. So integral have these time-based technologies become to day-to-day existence that our dependency on them is recognised only when they fail to work.

Questions 1-4

Reading Passage 1 has eight paragraphs, A-H.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

1 a description of an early timekeeping invention affected by cold temperatures

2 an explanation of the importance of geography in the development of the calendar

in farming communities

3 a description of the origins of the pendulum clock

4 details of the simultaneous efforts of different societies to calculate time using

uniform hours

Questions 5-8

Look at the following events (Questions 5-8) and the list of nationalities below.

Match each event with the correct nationality, A-F.

Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet.

5 They devised a civil calendar in which the months were equal in length.

6 They divided the day into two equal halves.

7 They developed a new cabinet shape for a type of timekeeper.

8 They created a calendar to organise public events and work schedules.

List of Nationalities

A Babylonians

B Egyptians

C Greeks

D English

E Germans

F French

Questions 9-13

Label the diagram below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.

图片10

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading

Passage 2 on the following pages.

Questions 14-19

Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A and C-G from the list below.

Write the correct number, i-x, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i Disobeying FAA regulations

ii Aviation disaster prompts action

iii Two coincidental developments

iv Setting altitude zones

v An oversimplified view

vi Controlling pilots’ licences

vii Defining airspace categories

viii Setting rules to weather conditions

ix Taking off safely

x First steps towards ATC

14 Paragraph A

Example Answer

Paragraph B x

15 Paragraph C

16 Paragraph D

17 Paragraph E

18 Paragraph F

19 Paragraph G

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL

IN THE USA

A An accident that occurred in the skies over the Grand Canyon in 1956 resulted in the establishment of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to regulate and oversee the operation of aircraft in the skies over the United States, which were becoming quite congested. The resulting structure of air traffic control has greatly increased the safety of flight in the United States, and similar air traffic control procedures are also in place over much of the rest of the world.

B Rudimentary air traffic control (ATC) existed well before the Grand Canyon disaster. As early as the 1920s, the earliest air traffic controllers manually guided aircraft in the vicinity of the airports, using lights and flags, while beacons and flashing lights were placed along cross-country routes to establish the earliest airways. However, this purely visual system was useless in bad weather, and, by the 1930s, radio communication was coming into use for ATC. The first region to have something approximating today's ATC was New York City, with other major metropolitan areas following soon after.

C In the 1940s, ATC centres could and did take advantage of the newly developed radar and improved radio communication brought about by the Second World War, but the system remained rudimentary. It was only after the creation of the FAA that full-scale regulation of America's airspace took place, and this was fortuitous, for the advent of the jet engine suddenly resulted in a large number of very fast planes, reducing pilots' margin of error and practically demanding some set of rules to keep everyone well separated and operating safely in the air.

D Many people think that ATC consists of a row of controllers sitting in front of their radar screens at the nation's airports, telling arriving and departing traffic what to do. This is a very incomplete part of the picture. The FAA realised that the airspace over the United States would at any time have many different kinds of planes, flying for many different purposes, in a variety of weather conditions, and the same kind of structure was needed to accommodate all of them.

E To meet this challenge, the following elements were put into effect. First, ATC extends over virtually the entire United States. In general, from 365m above the ground and higher, the entire country is blanketed by controlled airspace. In certain areas, mainly near airports, controlled airspace extends down to 215m above the ground, and, in the immediate vicinity of an airport, all the way down to the surface. Controlled airspace is that airspace in which FAA regulations apply. Elsewhere, in uncontrolled airspace, pilots are bound by fewer regulations. In this way, the recreational pilot who simply wishes to go flying for a while without all the restrictions imposed by the FAA has only to stay in uncontrolled airspace, below 365m, while the pilot who does want the protection afforded by ATC can easily enter the controlled airspace.

F The FAA then recognised two types of operating environments. In good meteorological conditions, flying would be permitted under Visual Flight Rules (VFR), which suggests a strong reliance on visual cues to maintain an acceptable level of safety. Poor visibility necessitated a set of Instrumental Flight Rules (IFR), under which the pilot relied on altitude and navigational information provided by the plane's instrument panel to fly safely. On a clear day, a pilot in controlled airspace can choose a VFR or IFR flight plan, and the FAA regulations were devised in a way which accommodates both VFR and IFR operations in the same airspace. However, a pilot can only choose to fly IFR if they possess an instrument rating which is above and beyond the basic pilot's license that must also be held.

G Controlled airspace is divided into several different types, designated by letters of the alphabet. Uncontrolled airspace is designated Class F, while controlled airspace below 5,490m above sea level and not in the vicinity of an airport is Class E. All airspace above 5,490m is designated Class A. The reason for the division of Class E and Class A airspace stems from the type of planes operating in them. Generally, Class E airspace is where one finds general aviation aircraft (few of which can climb above 5,490m anyway), and commercial turboprop aircraft. Above 5,490m is the realm of the heavy jets, since jet engines operate more efficiently at higher altitudes. The difference between Class E and A airspace is that in Class A, all operations are IFR, and pilots must be instrument-rated, that is, skilled and licensed in aircraft instrumentation. This is because ATC control of the entire space is essential. Three other types of airspace, Classes D, C and B, govern the vicinity of airports. These correspond roughly to small municipal, medium-sized metropolitan and major metropolitan airports respectively, and encompass an increasingly rigorous set of regulations. For example, all a VFR pilot has to do to enter Class C airspace is establish two-way radio contact with ATC. No explicit permission from ATC to enter is needed, although the pilot must continue to obey all regulations governing VFR flight. To enter Class B airspace, such as on approach to a major metropolitan airport, an explicit ATC clearance is required. The private pilot who cruises without permission into this airspace risks losing their license.

Questions 20-26

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 20-26 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

20 The FAA was created as a result of the introduction of the jet engine.

21 Air Traffic Control started after the Grand Canyon crash in 1956.

22 Beacons and flashing lights are still used by ATC today.

23 Some improvements were made in radio communication during World War II.

24 Class F airspace is airspace which is below 365m and not near airports.

25 All aircraft in Class E airspace must use IFR.

26 A pilot entering Class C airspace is flying over an average-sized city.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

TELEPATHY

Can human beings communicate by thought alone? For more than a century the issue of telepathy has divided the scientific community, and even today it still sparks bitter controversy among top academics

Since the 1970s, parapsychologists at leading universities and research institutes around the world have risked the derision of sceptical colleagues by putting the various claims for telepathy to the test in dozens of rigorous scientific studies. The results and their implications are dividing even the researchers who uncovered them.

Some researchers say the results constitute compelling evidence that telepathy is genuine. Other parapsychologists believe the field is on the brink of collapse, having tried to produce definitive scientific proof and failed. Sceptics and advocates alike do concur on one issue, however: that the most impressive evidence so far has come from the so-called 'ganzfeld' experiments, a German term that means 'whole field'. Reports of telepathic experiences had by people during meditation led parapsychologists to suspect that telepathy might involve 'signals' passing between people that were so faint that they were usually swamped by normal brain activity. In this case, such signals might be more easily detected by those experiencing meditation — like tranquillity in a relaxing 'whole field' of light, sound and warmth.

The ganzfeld experiment tries to recreate these conditions with participants sitting in soft reclining chairs in a sealed room, listening to relaxing sounds while their eyes are covered with special filters letting in only soft pink light. In early ganzfeld experiments, the telepathy test involved identification of a picture chosen from a random selection of four taken from a large image bank. The idea was that a person acting as a 'sender' would attempt to beam the image over to the 'receiver' relaxing in the sealed room. Once the session was over, this person was asked to identify which of the four images had been used. Random guessing would give a hit-rate of 25 per cent; if telepathy is real, however, the hit-rate would be higher. In 1982, the results from the first ganzfeld studies were analysed by one of its pioneers, the American parapsychologist Charles Honorton. They pointed to typical hit-rates of better than 30 per cent — a small effect, but one which statistical tests suggested could not be put down to chance.

The implication was that the ganzfeld method had revealed real evidence for telepathy. But there was a crucial flaw in this argument — one routinely overlooked in more conventional areas of science. Just because chance had been ruled out as an explanation did not prove telepathy must exist; there were many other ways of getting positive results. These ranged from 'sensory leakage' — where clues about the pictures accidentally reach the receiver — to outright fraud. In response, the researchers issued a review of all the ganzfeld studies done up to 1985 to show that 80 per cent had found statistically significant evidence. However, they also agreed that there were still too many problems in the experiments which could lead to positive results, and they drew up a list demanding new standards for future research.

After this, many researchers switched to autoganzfeld tests — an automated variant of the technique which used computers to perform many of the key tasks such as the random selection of images. By minimising human involvement, the idea was to minimise the risk of flawed results. In 1987, results from hundreds of autoganzfeld tests were studied by Honorton in a 'meta-analysis', a statistical technique for finding the overall results from a set of studies. Though less compelling than before, the outcome was still impressive.

Yet some parapsychologists remain disturbed by the lack of consistency between individual ganzfeld studies. Defenders of telepathy point out that demanding impressive evidence from every study ignores one basic statistical fact: it takes large samples to detect small effects. If, as current results suggest, telepathy produces hit-rates only marginally above the 25 per cent expected by chance, it's unlikely to be detected by a typical ganzfeld study involving around 40 people: the group is just not big enough. Only when many studies are combined in a meta-analysis will the faint signal of telepathy really become apparent. And that is what researchers do seem to be finding.

What they are certainly not finding, however, is any change in attitude of mainstream scientists: most still totally reject the very idea of telepathy. The problem stems at least in part from the lack of any plausible mechanism for telepathy.

Various theories have been put forward, many focusing on esoteric ideas from theoretical physics. They include 'quantum entanglement', in which events affecting one group of atoms instantly affect another group, no matter how far apart they may be. While physicists have demonstrated entanglement with specially prepared atoms, no-one knows if it also exists between atoms making up human minds. Answering such questions would transform parapsychology. This has prompted some researchers to argue that the future lies not in collecting more evidence for telepathy, but in probing possible mechanisms. Some work has begun already, with researchers trying to identify people who are particularly successful in autoganzfeld trials. Early results show that creative and artistic people do much better than average: in one study at the University of Edinburgh, musicians achieved a hit-rate of 56 per cent. Perhaps more tests like these will eventually give the researchers the evidence they are seeking and strengthen the case for the existence of telepathy.

Questions 27-30

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-G, below.

Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

27 Researchers with differing attitudes towards telepathy agree on

28 Reports of experiences during meditation indicated

29 Attitudes to parapsychology would alter drastically with

30 Recent autoganzfeld trials suggest that success rates will improve with

A the discovery of a mechanism for telepathy

B the need to create a suitable environment for telepathy.

C their claims of a high success rate.

D a solution to the problem posed by random guessing.

E the significance of the ganzfeld experiments.

F a more careful selection of subjects.

G a need to keep altering conditions.

Questions 31-40

Complete the table below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 31-40 on your answer sheet.

Telepathy Experiments

Name/Date

Description Result Flaw

Ganzfeld

Studies

1982 Involved a person

acting as a

31..............

who picked out one

32............from

a random selection

of four, and a

33..............,

who then tried to

identify it. Hit-rates were

higher than with

random guessing. Positive results

could be produced

by factors such as

34..............or

35.............. .

Autoganzfeld

studies

1987 36.............

were used for key

tasks to limit the

amount of

37..............

in carrying out the

test. The results were

then subjected to

a 38............. The 39..........

between different

test results was

put down to the

fact that sample

groups were not

40...................(as

with most ganzfeld

Studies).

剑桥雅思阅读8原文参考译文(test1)

PASSAGE 1参考译文:

时间记录的历史

我们对时间的概念取决于我们测量时间的方式

有考古证据表明,至少50前,早在罗马帝国尚未出现之时,巴比伦人就开始测量时间,他们引进日历来统筹公共活动,计划货物装运,特别是管控作物种植和收割。日历的编排基于三个自然周期:以由地球绕地轴自转形成的连续的光明与黑喑为标记的太阳日;以由月球环绕地球公转形成的月相来衡量的太阴月;以及根据地球绕太阳公转形成的四季来定义的回归年。

在人造光发明以前,月亮对社会产生的影响尤为显著。尤其对于赤道附近的居民而言,月圆月缺比季节更替更加明显。因此,低纬度地区日历的形成更多受到月运周期的影响,而不是回归年。然而,在践行季节性农业的更偏北的气候带,回归年则更为重要。随着罗马帝国向北扩张,它的活动图表通常都是根据回归年而编排的。

早在罗马帝国建立几个世纪以前,埃及人就已制定了市政日历,规定一年有12个月,每月有30天,此外还有5天用来补充一个近似回归年。每10天以特定星群的出现为标志,这些星群被称作“德坎”(黄道十度分度)。天狼星刚好在日出之前升起,此时可以看见12个德坎横跨天空,而这一现象会在每年极其重要的尼罗河泛洪前后出现。埃及人赋予12个德坎的宇宙意义使他们形成一种新的系统,他们将每一个黑夜区间(之后又将每一个白昼区间)分成12等份。这些时段被称为日光时,因为它的持续时间随着季节更替引起的昼夜长度的变化而变化。夏季日光时长,冬季日光时短;只有在春分和秋分时白昼与黑夜的时长才是一致的。日光时最早被希腊人采用,然后由罗马人采用并传到欧洲,一直使用了2500多年。

为了在白天记录日光时,发明家们创造了日晷,用太阳阴影的长度和方向来指示时间。水钟与日晷作用相当,用于在夜晚测量日光时。最早的水钟之一是一个水盆,盆底附近有一个小孔,水通过小孔滴出来。随着水降至盆子内表面刻着的小时刻度线以下,水位降低的刻度就表示流逝的时间长度。尽管这些装置在地中海地区十分好用,但在多云并常有严寒天气的欧洲北部却不能一直使用。

机械钟的出现意味着尽管人们可以调试它以记录日光时,但机械钟本身更适合于记录长度相同的时间段。由此引发了一个问题,即计时该从何时开始。于是14世纪初,许多新型计时系统逐渐形成。人们计划将一天分为24个等份,而这些计划因为计时起点的术同而不向:意大利时间从日落开始算起,巴比伦时间从日出开始,天文学时间从中午开始,而德国一些大型公共时钟使用的“大钟”时间从午夜开始算起。最终,这些计时方法被“小钟”时间,即法国时间所取代,它将一天分成两个12小时时段,从午夜开始算起。

最早有记载的以重量驱动的机械钟1283年建于英国贝德福德郡。这种新型计时器所具有的革命意义既不在于依靠向下的重力提供起动力,也不在于依靠齿轮(至少有1300年的使用历史)传递动力,而在于它使用了一个叫做擒纵机构棘轮装置的部件。15世纪初人们又创造出了螺旋弹簧,也被称为均力圆锥轮。尽管主发条承受着不断变化的张力,但该装置仍能为钟表齿轮提供恒力。到了16世纪,人们发明了摆钟。但由于钟摆摆动弧度很大,因此并不十分有效。

为了解决这个问题,原有擒纵机构棘轮装置的改进装置1670年在英格兰发明出来。该装置被称为锚型擒纵机构,以杠杆为基础,形状像一艘船的锚。钟摆的动作对该设备产生振动,以使它抓紧而后释放擒纵机构棘轮装置的每一个齿,从而使得齿轮精确地旋转。与早期摆钟中所使用的原始装置不同,锚型擒纵机构使钟摆的摆动弧度变得很小。此外,这一发明使得摆钟可以使用长摆,一秒钟摆动一下,从而引发了新型落地柜式造型的开发,也就是落地摆钟。

如今,高度精确的计时工具为大多数电子设备设置时间。几乎所有的计算机都带有石英钟以控制其运行。此外,从全球定位系统卫星发射的时间信号不仅校准精密导航设备的功能,还被用于移动电话、即时股票交易系统和全国电力分配网。这些以时间为基础的技术已完全成为日常生活的一部分,只有当它们无法正常工作时,我们才会意识到人类多么依赖这些技术。

TEST 1 PASSAGE 2 参考译文:

美国航空交通管制

A. 1956年美国大峡谷上空发生的一起事故促成了联邦航空局(FAA)的成立。该局负责管理和监督美国越来越拥挤的天空。由此形成的空中交通管制结构大大增加了飞机在美国的飞行安全,世界其他很多地方也采取了类似的空中交通管制程序。

B.早在大峡谷灾难发生之前就存在雏形的航空交通管制(ATC)。早在20世纪代初,最早的空中交通管制员在机场附近用灯和标志旗手动引导飞机。当时,灯标和闪光灯沿着越野路线放置以建立最早的航线。然而,这种纯粹的视觉系统在恶劣天气情况下是无用的。到20世纪30年代,航空交通管制开始使用无线电通讯。首个采用类似于今天的航空交通管制的地方是纽约市,其他主要的大都市紧随其后。

C.20世纪40年代,航空交通管制中心利用了第二次世界大战催生出的新研制的雷达和改进后的无线电通讯技术,但管制系统仍然很不成熟。直到联邦航空局分创建以后,美国才开始进行全面的领空管制。而这一事件却是偶然的,因为喷气式发动机的产生突然导致大批快速飞机的出现。这些飞机减少了飞行员的误差幅度,并且需要实际的整套规则以使飞机之间保持良好的分离状态,在空中安全行驶。

D.很多人认为,航空交通管制就是一排管理人员坐在国家机场的雷达屏幕前指挥着抵港及离港的交通。这只是整个场景中的一部分。美国联邦航空局认识到每时每刻都会有许多不同种类的飞机,为了这样那样的目的,在各种各样的天气情况下飞行在美国的空中。因此,急需一个能够容纳所有情况的同一体系。

E.为了迎接这一挑战,美国联邦航天局实施了以下重要措施。首先,让航空交通管制几乎遍及整个美国。一般来说,离地面365米以及更高的地方,整个国家都被管制空域覆盖。在某些地区,主要是靠近机场的地带,管制空域扩大到自地面215米以上的范围,而在紧邻机场的区域,管制空域包括地面以上所有区域。管制空域是美国联邦航空局规定适用的空域。在其他非受控空域,飞行员受到的限制较少。如此一来,那些出于娱乐目的只想短时间飞行而不受美国联邦航空局规定限制的飞行员就只能停留在365米以下的非受控领空,而希望得到航空局保护的飞行员可以很容易地进人管制空域。

F.然后,美国联邦航空局确认了两种类型的飞行环境。在气象条件良好的情况下,飞行员可按照目视飞行规则(VPR)飞行。该规则主要依靠视觉线索来维持可接受的安全水平。低能见度使建立一套仪表飞行规则(IFR)成为必需。根据该规则,飞行员依靠飞机仪表盘提供的飞行高度和导航信息确保飞行安全。天气晴朗时,管制空域内的飞行员可以选择在目视飞行规则或仪表飞行规则下飞行,而美国联邦航空局 的规定在同一空域同时适用于两套规则的实施。但如果飞行员的仪表等级超出或低于了其必须持有的基本飞行员执照规定的等级,飞行员只能选择遵循仪表飞行规则。

G.管制空域分为几个不同的类型,以英文字母命名。非受控空域被定为F级,而海拔5490米以下非紧邻机 场的受控空域被定为E级。5490米以上的所有空域被定为A级。E级和A级是根据其间飞行的不同飞机类型而划分的。一般来说,通用航空飞机(这类飞机的飞行高度大多不超过5490米)和商业涡轮螺旋桨飞机在E级空域飞行。5490米以上是大型喷气机的领空,因为喷气式发动机的效率随着高度的增加而增高。E级和A级之间的区别在于A级空域中所有的操作都遵循仪表飞行规则,飞行员必须具有仪表级别,换言之,必须熟练掌握飞机仪表的使用并获得许可。因为航空交通管制对整个空域的控制是至关重要的。其他三个等级:D级、C级和B级用于管理机场附近的区域。这三个级别大致分别适用于小型城市、中等城市和大型城市的机场,包含了一套越来越严格的规章制度。例如,目视飞行规则飞行员如要进入C级空域,必须与航空交通管制建立双向无线电联系。航空交通管制无需提供明确的进人许可,但飞行员必须始终遵守在目视飞行规则下飞行的所有规定。如要进人B级空域,比如飞临主要城市机场,则必须有明确的航空交通管制许可。未经许可进入领空的私人飞行员可能会被吊销飞行执照。

TEST 1 PASSAGE 3 参考译文:

心灵感应

人类可以仅凭思想沟通吗?一个多世纪以来,心灵感应问题一直使科学界意见不一,直至今天依然在学界精英中引发着激烈的争论。

上世纪70年代以来,世界各地顶尖高校和科研院所的超心理学家冒着遭受那些持怀疑态度的同事们嘲笑的危险,将关于心灵感应的各种断言假说放人几十个严谨的科学研究中进行试验。试验的结果及其启 示甚至将发现该结果的研究者们也分成了几派。

一些研究者认为试验结果构成令人信服的证据,表明心灵感应是真实存在的。其他超心理学家则认为该学科曾试图提出明确的科学论证,但却失败了,因此正处于瓦解的边缘。不过,怀疑者和倡导者却在一 个问题上达成共识:即迄今为止令人印象最为深刻的证据出自所谓的“ganzfeld”(超感官知觉全域测试)实验中,这一德文术语的意思是“整个领域”。人类在冥想状态下的心灵感应体验报告使超心理学家怀疑心灵感应可能包含人与人之间传递的“信号”。这种信号十分微弱,以至于往往被正常的大脑活动所淹没。如此说来,这种信号可能更容易被那些沉浸于冥想般宁静中的人检测到。他们所处的“整个领域”有着令人放松的灯光,怡人的声音和温暖的环境。

超感官知觉全域测试试图重新营造这些条件,让参与者坐在一个封闭房间里的柔软躺椅上,听着令人放松的声音,用特殊滤光器将参与者的眼睛蒙住,使他们只能看见柔和的粉红色光线。在早期的超感官知觉全域测试实验中,心灵感应测试包括识别从大型图片库中随机选择的四张图片中的其中一张。试验的想 法是有一个人作为“发送者”,尝试把图像发送给在封闭房间中休息的“接收者”。传递过程结束时,接收者 需要回答四张图片中的哪一张是刚刚使用过的。随机猜测的命中率是25%,但如果心灵感应是真实存在的,命中率应该更高。1982年,此项研究的先驱者之一,美国超心理学家Charles Honorton对第一批超感官知觉全域测试研究结果进行了分析。研究结果显示了高于30%的典型命中率。虽然效果不甚明显,但统计测试显示不能将它归因于偶然。

其言下之意是超感官知觉全域测试方法揭示了心灵感应的真实证据。但这种说法有一个关键的漏洞—— 一个在较传统的科学领域经常被忽视的问题。仅仅由于这种解释排除了偶然因素并不能证明心灵感应一定存在;通过很多其他的方法也能获得积极结果。这些可能性既包括“感官泄漏”,即与图片有关的线索意外地传给了接收者,也包括彻底的欺诈。作为回应,研究者们发表了一份综述,总结了 1985年以前进行的所有超感官知觉全域测试研究,以表明80%的研究都发现了有统计意义的证据。但他们也同意目前实验中尚有太多的问题可能导致积极的结果,他们还草拟了一份清单,要求为今后的研究设立新的标准。

此后,许多研咳嗽弊蛄俗远泄僦跞虿馐裕馐且恢旨际醯淖远涮澹簿褪鞘褂电脑完成许多关键任务,如随机选择图像。通过最大限度地减少人为参与,这一想法是要将有缺陷的结果最小化。1987年,Honorton使用“荟萃分析”,即从一系列研究中寻找整体结果的统计技术,对上百次的自动超感官知觉全域测试结果进行了研究。结果虽然没有以往引人注目,却仍然令人印象深刻。

然而,一些超心理学家仍然为单个超感官知觉全域测试研究之间缺乏一致性感到烦恼。心灵感应捍卫者指出,要求每一项研究都提供令人印象深刻的证据忽略了一个基本的统计事实:检测这些微小影响需要大量的样本支持。如果像目前研究结果表明的那样,心灵感应的命中率仅仅略高于概率预测的25%,涉及40人左右的典型超感官知觉全域测试也不太可能检测得到:试验群体根本不够大。只有当大量研究结合在一个荟萃分析之中,心灵感应的微弱信号才会真正明显起来。而这似乎正是研究者们所发现的。

然而,他们肯定当然不会发现主流科学家们的态度有任何变化:大部分人仍然完全排斥心灵感应的观点。至少一部分问题在于心灵感应缺乏合理的机制。

各种理论都被提了出来,很多以理论物理学的深奥思想为重点。其中包括“量子纠缠”:无论两组原子间距离多么遥远,影响一组原子的事件都会立即影响另一组原子。虽然物理学家们用专门准备的原子演示了“纠缠”,但这一现象是否同样存在于构成人类头脑的原子中却无人知晓。对于这些问题的回答将改变超心理学。这使得一些研究人员认为该学科的未来不在于收集更多心灵感应的证据,而在与探索其可能的机制。一些工作已经开始进行,研究人员试图识别在自动超感官知觉全域测试中特别成功的被试者。早期的结果表明有创造力和艺术性的人们的表现要远远高于平均水平:在爱丁堡大学的一次研究中,音乐家的测试命中率高达56%。或许更多诸如此类的测试最终将为研究人员提供他们正在寻求的证据,巩固加强心灵感应存在的依据。

剑桥雅思阅读8原文解析(test1)

Passage1

Question 1

答案: D

关键词: early timekeeping invention, cold temperatures

定位原文: D段最后1句“Although these devices performed…”

解题思路: 全文只有该句中提及寒冷气温。该句含义为“尽管这些装置在地中海地区十分好用,但在多云并常有严寒天气的欧洲北部却不能一直使用。”与题干中描述的内容相符。

Question 2

答案: B

关键词: geography, development of the calendar, farming communities

定位原文: B段内容

解题思路: 该段一共五句话,从第二句开始每一句话都介绍了一个地理位置的变化对calendar的影响。分别是:And, for those living near the equator in particular,...Hence, the calendars that were developed at the lower latitudes,...In more northern climes, however,...

As the Roman Empire expanded northward, ...

Question 3

答案: F

关键词: pendulum clock, origins

定位原文: F段最后1句“By the 16th century…”

解题思路:含义为“到了 16世纪,人们发明了摆钟。但由于钟摆摆动弧度很大,因此并不十分有效”。此句中devised意为“发明”,与题干中的origins对应。

Question 4

答案: E

关键词: simultaneous efforts, different societies, uniform hours

对应原文: E段第3句“The schemes…”

解题思路: 含义为“人们计划将一天分为24个等份,而这些计划因为计时起点的不同而不同:意大利时间从日落开始算起,巴比伦时间从日出开始,天文学时间从中午开始,而德国一些大型公共时钟使用的‘大钟’时间从午夜开始算起”。24 equal parts与题目中的 uniform hours 相对应, 本段中提到的各具体国家对应题目中的 different societies。

Question 5

答案: B

关键词: civil calendar, months, equal

定位原文: C段第1句“... the Egyptians had formulated a municipal calendar having 12 months…”

解题思路: 该句提到埃及人制定了市政日历,规定一年有12个月,每月有30天。答案 B 题目中的 months were equal in length 对应文章中的 12 months of 30 days,题目中的 civil calendar 对应文 章中的 municipal calendar,这项发明 是 Egyptians 完成的。

Question 6

答案: F

关键词: day, two equal halves

定位原文: E段最后1句 “...or French hours, which split the day into two 12-hour periods … ”

解题思路:题目中的 divide the day into two equal halves 对应文章中的 split the day into two 12-hour periods, 具体指的是 French hours。

Question 7

答案: D

关键词: new cabinet shape

定位原文: G段最后一句 “... and thus led to the development of a new floor-standing case …”

解题思路: 此句中的floor-standing case design就对应着cabinet shape,且该段第一行就出现了 England这个代表国家的词汇。所以答案为D。

Question 8

答案: A

关键词: organise, public events

定位原文: A段第1句“.. the Babylonians began to measure…”

解题思路: 题目中的 organize public events 对应文章中的 co-ordinate communal activities,题目中的work schedules 对应文章中的 the shipment of goods 及 planting and harvesting, 这些都是 Babylonians 的所作所为。

Question 9

答案: (ship’s) anchor / (an/the) anchor

关键词: escapement, resembling

定位原文: G段第2句 “It was called the anchor…”

解题思路: 通过定位词很容易找到文中定位句,此句中的like对应resembling,所以答案为(ship’s) anchor / (an/the) anchor。

Question 10

答案: (escape) wheel

关键词: release each tooth, wheel

定位原文: G段第3句“The motion of a pendulum rocks this…”

解题思路: 由图可知,本题要求找到该圆盘状物体的名称,故应有意识地寻找与该形状有关的词汇 ;另外此物体上有齿轮,这也可以作 为答题线索。根据 ...release each tooth of the escape wheel 可知,本题答案为 (escape) wheel。

Question 11

答案: tooth

关键词: release

定位原文: G段第3句“The motion of a pendulum rocks this…”

解题思路: 由图可知,本题要求找到圆盘物体的支出 部分的名称。通过解答第 10 题,可以很容 易地判定本题答案为 tooth。

Question 12

答案: (long)pendulum

关键词: beats, each

定位原文: G段最后1句“Moreover, this invention allowed…”

解题思路: 由图可知,本题要求找到长形物体的名称, 且应发出 beat 的动作。同时,本题答案应为一个单数可数名词,可通过冠词帮助找到答案。通过 G 段最后一句中的 a long pendulum which could beat once a second 可以确定本题答案为 (long) pendulum。

Question 13

答案: second

关键词: beats, each

定位原文: G段最后1句“Moreover, this invention allowed…”

解题思路: 此题可与第12题同时解出,此句中的once对应题干中的each, 所以答案为second。

Test 1 Passage 2

Question 14

答案: ii

关键词: aviation disaster,prompts

定位原文: A段第1句“An accident that occurred in …”

解题思路: 本段第1句讲述飞机失事是美国联邦 航空总署成立原因,第 2 句简述其建立的结 果影响。文章中的 an accident 与选项 ii 中的 disaster对应;文章中的result in与选项ii中 的 prompt 对应 ;文章中的 the establishment of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) 被抽象概括成选项 ii 中的 action。

Question 15

答案: iii

关键词: coincidental developments

定位原文: C段前两句“In the 1940s, ATG centres could and did…”

解题思路: C段首句说明了 ATC取得的第一个development, 即利用了第二次世界大 战催生出的新研制的雷达和改进后的无线电通讯技术而建立的不成熟的管制系统。第二句则提到喷气式发动机的产生突然导致大批快速飞机的出现,因此促使美国开始进行全面的空中管制,两个逗号之间的部分指出了这一development的偶然性 (fortuitous), 与 iii 中的 coincidental 含义一致。因此答案为iii。

Question 16

答案: v

关键词: oversimplified

定位原文: D段第1、2句“Many people think that...This is a very incomplete part of the picture.”

解题思路: D段首句阐述了一个大众观点(many people think...),接着第二句指出这个观点过于片面。题干中的 oversimplified相当于原句中的 incomplete。

Question 17

答案: iv

关键词: altitude zones

定位原文: E段第2句“First, ATC extends over virtually …”

解题思路: E段第二句中提出让航空交通管制几乎遍及整个美国,接着分别讲述了不同高度的空域管制情况(from 365m above the ground and higher, 215m above the ground, below 365m...)因此答案为iv。

Question 18

答案: viii

关键词: weather conditions

定位原文: F段第1句“The FAA then recognized…”

解题思路: F段首句提出FAA确认了两种飞行环境。接着对这两种环境进行了解释说明,即在气象条件良好的情况下,飞行员可按照目视飞行规则(VFR)飞行;在低能见度的情况下,飞行员则须按照仪表飞行规则(IFR)飞行。因此答案是viii。

Question 19

答案: vii

关键词: airspace categories

定位原文: G段第1句“Controlled airspace is divided into…”

解题思路: G段首句点出此段主要阐述管制空域的分类(controlled airspace…different types)。因此答案为vii。文章中的 types 与选项 vii 中的 categories 对应。

Question 20

答案: FALSE

关键词: FAA, created as result of

定位原文: A段第1句“An accident that occurred in the skies…”

解题思路: 文章中第 1 句明确说 FAA 成立的原因是空难, 题目中却说是由于喷气式引擎出现, 题目表述与文章矛盾。

Question 21

答案: FALSE

关键词: Air Traffic Control, the Grand Canyon crash

定位原文: B段第1句“Rudimentary air traffic control (ATC) existed…”

解题思路: 文章中明确说是ATC existed well before the Grand Canyon disaster, 与题目中 started after 直接相反。

Question 22

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: beacons and flashing lights

定位原文: B段第2句“...while beacons and flashing lights …”

解题思路: 此题的定位词在文中原词出现,按照顺序原则可以迅速定位。文中定位处仅指出beacons和flashing lights在当时的使用情况,对于题干中所指的如今的使用状况只字未提。故此题答案为NOT GIVEN。

Question 23

答案: TRUE

关键词: improvements, radio communication, World War II

定位原文: C段第1句 “...improved radio communication brought about by the Second World War...”

解题思路:此题定位很简单,定位句含义为“第二次世界大战催生出的……改进后的无线电通讯技术”,与题干含义无异。故此题答案为TRUE。

Question 24

答案: TRUE

关键词: Class F, 365m

定位原文: G段第2句“Uncontrolled airspace …” E段第3、4句和最后1句

解题思路:通过定位词Class F可快速定位至G段处,但是只能确定Class F为uncontrolled airspace,通过该短语及365m可继续定位于E段。E段定位句说明从365米往上的区间为controlled airspace,且在大部分near airports的区域,215米以上的区间都是controlled airspace,因此可以逆推出uncontrolled airspace的情况。故此题答案为TRUE。

Question 25

答案: FALSE

关键词: Class E airspace, IFR

定位原文:G段第7句“The difference between Class E and…”

解题思路:此题通过定位词能够迅速定位。定位句的含义为“E级和A级之间的区别在于A级领空中所有的操作都遵循仪表飞行规则”。显然题干信息与定位句内容矛盾。此题还可以按照绝对化词汇all和must来快速判定答案。故此题答案为FALSE。

Question 26

答案: TRUE

关键词: pilot, Class C

定位原文:G段第9句“Three other types of airspace,…”

解题思路:此题通过定位词能够迅速定位。定位句中的medium-sized与题干中average-sized属于同义转述。故此题答案为TRUE。

Test 1 Passage 3

Question 27

答案: E

关键词: researchers with differing attitudes, agree on

定位原文:第2段第3句“Sceptics and advocates…”

解题思路:通过题目中定位词找到文章中的具体表 达:第二段第3句。题目中的differing attitudes 对应文章中的 skeptics and advocates,题目中的 agree on 对应文章中的do concur on。由本句名词性从句的主干 evidence...come from... experiments 即可得出答案。所有选项中提到 experiment 的只有一个。

Question 28:

答案: B

关键词: experiences, meditation

定位原文:第2段第5句话“In this case, such signals might …”

解题思路:题目中要求找到实验的 启示,答案出现在下一句中,其中 in a relaxing‘whole field’of light, sound and warmth 是题目中 的 suitable environment 的具体表现。

Question 29:

答案: A

关键词: attitudes, parapsychology, alter

定位原文:第8段第4、5句“Answering such questions would…”

解题思路:第四句中的transform对应题干中的alter,第五句中才提及研究者们的attitude,即该研究的未来在于探究可能的机制(mechanisms)。故正确答案为A。

Question 30:

答案: F

关键词: autoganzfeld trials, success

定位原文:第8段倒数第2、3句“Some work has begun already …”

解题思路:此题通过定位词可以迅速定位到第八段倒数第三句,倒数第二句指出有创造力和艺术性的人们表现得更好。因此可知样本的选择对命中率会有很大影响。故正确答案为F。

Question 31:

答案: sender

关键词: Ganzfeld studies, 1982, person, acting as, four

定位原文:第3段第3句“The idea was that a person…”

解题思路:由空格前冠词和空格后的定语从句引导词 who 可知本题需填入一个指代人的单数可数名词。通过题目中数字 1982 迅速定位至文章第三段。再通过数字 four 定位至该段第 5 行。本题答案为 sender。

Question 32:

答案: picture/image

关键词: one, random selection, four

定位原文: 第3段第2句“In early ganzfeld experiments…”

解题思路: 此题轻微乱序,但定位词很明显且定位句是上一题定位句的前一句。空格所填词应为从random selections of four中picked out的宾语。所以此题填picture/image。题干中的picked out与原文中的chosen from属于同义转述。

Question 33:

答案: receiver

关键词: ichthyosaurs, can be determined by, appearance

定位原文:第3段第4句“Once the session was over, this …”

解题思路:此题定位较易。空格所填词应为 identify这一动作的发出者,定位句中与之相对应的是指代词this person,于是倒着往回看上一句,即第31题对应句,可以找出this person的具体指代对象。所以此题填receiver。

Question 34:

答案: sensory leakage

关键词: flaw, positive results

定位原文:第4段第4句“...there were many other ways of getting positive results. These ranged from ‘sensory leakage…”

解题思路:此题根据定位词及顺序原则可定位至第四段第四行最后,其中many other ways对应题干中的factors,具体内容在接下来的一句中。所以此题填sensory leakage。

Question 35:

答案: outright fraud

关键词: or

定位原文:第4段第4句““...there were many other ways of getting positive results. These ranged from ‘sensory leakage…”

解题思路:此空与34题为并列关系。很明显答案为 outright fraud。

Question 36:

答案: computers

关键词: 1987, key tasks

定位原文:第5段第1句“…technique which used computers to …”

解题思路: 空格所填词应为被用来完成key tasks的对象,文中的perform对应题干中的were used for。所以此题填computers。

Question 37:

答案: human involvement

关键词: limit

定位原文:第5段第2句“By minimising human involvement...”

解题思路:此题按照顺序原则定位,原文中的 minimising对应题干中的limit,空格所填词应为被限制的对象。所以此题填human involvement。

Question 38:

答案: meta-analysis

关键词: results, subjected to a

定位原文: 第5段倒数第2句“In 1987, results from hundreds…”

解题思路: 空格所填词应为 subject to的对象。所以此题填meta?-analysis。

Question 39:

答案: lack of consistency

关键词: flaw, different test results

定位原文: 第6段第1句“Yet some parapsychologists…”

解题思路: 此题定位较难,文中的individual ganzfeld studies与题干中的different test对应。空格所填词应为不同实验结果之间的关系。所以此题填lack of consistency。

Question 40:

答案: big/large enough

关键词: fact, sample group, not

定位原文:第6段倒数第3句“...the group is just not big enough.”

解题思路:此题定位较易。空格所填词应为 sample groups的特征,而且此题可以通过否定词not帮助判断答案。所以此题填big/large enough。

剑桥雅思阅读8(test1)答案分析

篇6:剑桥雅思阅读5原文翻译及答案(test1)

剑桥雅思系列真题是剑桥大学考试委员会外语考试部出版各类考试真题的唯一官方出版社出版的权威教材,书中包含最新的雅思全真试题资料,是各类雅思考生备考过程中必不可少的参考书。非常适合学生自学的习题解答和听力录音文本。

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

Johnson’s Dictionary

For the century before Johnson’s Dictionary was published in 1775, there had been concern about the state of the English language. There was no standard way of speaking or writing and no agreement as to the best way of bringing some order to the chaos of English spelling. Dr Johnson provided the solution.

There had, of course, been dictionaries in the past, the first of these being a little book of some 120 pages, compiled by a certain Robert Cawdray, published in 1604 under the title A Table Alphabeticall ‘of hard usuall English wordes’. Like the various dictionaries that came after it during the seventeenth century, Cawdray’s tended to concentrate on ‘scholarly’ words; one function of the dictionary was to enable its student to convey an impression of fine learning.

Beyond the practical need to make order out of chaos, the rise of dictionaries is associated with the rise of the English middle class, who were anxious to define and circumscribe the various worlds to conquer — lexical as well as social and commercial. it is highly appropriate that Dr Samuel Johnson, the very model of an eighteenth-century literary man, as famous in his own time as in ours, should have published his Dictionary at the very beginning of the heyday of the middle class.

Johnson was a poet and critic who raised common sense to the heights of genius. His approach to the problems that had worried writers throughout the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was intensely practical. Up until his time, the task of producing a dictionary on such a large scale had seemed impossible without the establishment of an academy to make decisions about right and wrong usage. Johnson decided he did not need an academy to settle arguments about language; he would write a dictionary himself and he would do it single-handed. Johnson signed the contract for the Dictionary with the bookseller Robert Dosley at a breakfast held at the Golden Anchor Inn near Holbom Bar on 18 June 1764.He was to be paid £1.575 in instalments, and from this he took money to rent Gough Square, in which he set up his ‘dictionary workshop’.

James Boswell, his biographer, described the garret where Johnson worked as ‘fitted up like a counting house’ with a long desk running down the middle at which the copying clerks would work standing up. Johnson himself was stationed on a rickety chair at an ‘old crazy deal table’ surrounded by a chaos of borrowed books. He was also helped by six assistants, two of whom died whilst the Dictionary was still in preparation.

The work was immense; filling about eighty large notebooks (and without a library to hand), Johnson wrote the definitions of over 40,000 words, and illustrated their many meanings with some 114,000 quotations drawn from English writing on every subject, from the Elizabethans to his own time. He did not expect to achieve complete originality. Working to a deadline, he had to draw on the best of all previous dictionaries, and to make his work one of heroic synthesis. In fact, it was very much more. Unlike his predecessors, Johnson treated English very practically, as a living language, with many different shades of meaning. He adopted his definitions on the principle of English common law — according to precedent. After its publication, his Dictionary was not seriously rivalled for over a century.

After many vicissitudes the Dictionary was finally published on 15 April 1775. It was instantly recognised as a landmark throughout Europe. ‘This very noble work,’ wrote the leading Italian lexicographer, ‘will be a perpetual monument of Fame to the Author, an Honour to his own Country in particular, and a general Benefit to the republic of Letters throughout Europe“ The fact that Johnson had taken on the Academies of Europe and matched them (everyone knew that forty French academics had taken forty years to produce the first French national dictionary) was cause for much English celebration.

Johnson had worked for nine years, ‘with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow’. For all its faults and eccentricities his two-volume work is a masterpiece and a landmark, in his own words, ‘setting the orthography, displaying the analogy, regulating the structures, and ascertaining the significations of English words’. It is the cornerstone of Standard English an achievement which, in James Boswell’s words ‘conferred stability on the language of his country.’

The Dictionary, together with his other writing, made Johnson famous and so well esteemed that his friends were able to prevail upon King George Ⅲ to offer him a pension. From then on, he was to become the Johnson of folklore.

Questions 1-3

Choose THREE letters A-H.

Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.

NB Your answers may be given in any order.

Which THREE of the following statements are true of Johnson’s Dictionary?

A It avoided all scholarly words.

B It was the only English dictionary in general use for 200 years.

C It was famous because of the large number of people involved.

D It focused mainly on language from contemporary texts.

E There was a time limit for its completion.

F It ignored work done by previous dictionary writers.

G It took into account subtleties of meaning.

H Its definitions were famous for their originality.

Questions 4-7

Complete the summary.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 4-7 on your answer sheet.

In 1764 Dr Johnson accepted the contract to produce a dictionary. Having rented a garret, he took on a number of 4…………, who stood at a long central desk. Johnson did not have a 5………… available to him, but eventually produced definitions of in excess of 40,000 words written down in 80 large notebooks. On publications, the Dictionary was immediately hailed in many European countries as a landmark. According to his biographer, James Boswell, Johnson’s principal achievement was to bring 6……… to the English language. As a reward for his hard work, he was granted a 7………by the king.

Questions 8-13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

8 The growing importance of the middle classes led to an increased demand for dictionaries.

9 Johnson has become more well known since his death.

10 Johnson had been planning to write a dictionary for several years.

11 Johnson set up an academy to help with the writing of his Dictionary.

12 Johnson only received payment for his Dictionary on its completion.

13 Not all of the assistants survived to see the publication of the Dictionary.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Nature or Nurture?

A A few years ago, in one of the most fascinating and disturbing experiments in behavioural psychology, Stanley Milgram of Yale University tested 40 subjects from all walks of life for their willingness to obey instructions given by a ‘leader’ in a situation in which the subjects might feel a personal distaste for the actions they were called upon to perform. Specifically Milgram told each volunteer ‘teacher-subject’ that the experiment was in the noble cause of education, and was designed to test whether or not punishing pupils for their mistakes would have a positive effect on the pupils’ ability to learn.

B Milgram’s experimental set-up involved placing the teacher-subject before a panel of thirty switches with labels ranging from ‘15 volts of electricity (slight shock)’ to ‘450 volts (danger — severe shock)’ in steps of 15 volts each. The teacher-subject was told that whenever the pupil gave the wrong answer to a question, a shock was to be administered, beginning at the lowest level and increasing in severity with each successive wrong answer. The supposed ‘pupil’ was in reality an actor hired by Milgram to simulate receiving the shocks by emitting a spectrum of groans, screams and writings together with an assortment of statements and expletives denouncing both the experiment and the experimenter. Milgram told the teacher-subject to ignore the reactions of the pupil, and to administer whatever level of shock was called for, as per the rule governing the experimental situation of the moment.

C As the experiment unfolded, the pupil would deliberately give the wrong answers to questions posed by the teacher, thereby bringing on various electrical punishments, even up to the danger level of 300 volts and beyond. Many of the teacher-subjects balked at administering the higher levels of punishment, and turned to Milgram with questioning looks and/or complaints about continuing the experiment. In these situations, Milgram calmly explained that the teacher-subject was to ignore the pupil’s cries for mercy and carry on with the experiment. If the subject was still reluctant to proceed, Milgram said that it was important for the sake of the experiment that the procedure be followed through to the end. His final argument was ‘you have no other choice. You must go on’. What Milgram was trying to discover was the number of teacher-subjects who would be willing to administer the highest levels of shock, even in the face of strong personal and moral revulsion against the rules and conditions of the experiment.

D Prior to carrying out the experiment, Milgram explained his idea to a group of 39 psychiatrists and asked them to predict the average percentage of people in an ordinary population who would be willing to administer the highest shock level of 450 volts. The overwhelming consensus was that virtually all the teacher-subjects would refuse to obey the experimenter. The psychiatrists felt that ‘most subjects would not go beyond 150 volts’ and they further anticipated that only four per cent would go up to 300 volts. Furthermore, they thought that only a lunatic fringe of about one in 1,000 would give the highest shock of 450 volts.

E What were the actual results? Well, over 60 per cent of the teacher-subjects continued to obey Milgram up to the 450-volt limit in repetitions of the experiment in other countries, the percentage of obedient teacher-subjects was even higher, reaching 85 per cent in one country. How can we possibly account for this vast discrepancy between what calm, rational, knowledgeable people predict in the comfort of their study and what pressured, flustered, but cooperative ‘teachers’ actually do in the laboratory of real life?

F One’s first inclination might be to argue that there must be some sort of built-in animal aggression instinct that was activated by the experiment, and that Milgram’s teache-subjects were just following a genetic need to discharge this pent-up primal urge onto the pupil by administering the electrical shock. A modern hard-core sociobiologist might even go so far as to claim that this aggressive instinct evolved as an advantageous trait, having been of survival value to our ancestors in their struggle against the hardships of life on the plains and in the caves, ultimately finding its way into our genetic make-up as a remnant of our ancient animal ways.

G An alternative to this notion of genetic programming is to see the teacher-subjects’ actions as a result of the social environment under which the experiment was carried out. As Milgram himself pointed out, ‘Most subjects in the experiment see their behaviour in a larger context that is benevolent and useful to society — the pursuit of scientific truth. The psychological laboratory has a strong claim to legitimacy and evokes trust and confidence in those who perform there. An action such as shocking a victim, which in isolation appears evil, acquires a completely different meaning when placed in this setting.’

H Thus, in this explanation the subject merges his unique personality and personal and moral code with that of larger institutional structures, surrendering individual properties like loyalty, self-sacrifice and discipline to the service of malevolent systems of authority.

I Here we have two radically different explanations for why so many teacher-subjects were willing to forgo their sense of personal responsibility for the sake of an institutional authority figure. The problem for biologists, psychologists and anthropologists is to sort out which of these two polar explanations is more plausible. This, in essence, is the problem of modern sociobiology — to discover the degree to which hard-wired genetic programming dictates, or at least strongly biases, the interaction of animals and humans with their environment, that is, their behaviour. Put another way, sociobiology is concerned with elucidating the biological basis of all behaviour.

Questions 14-19

Reading Passage 2 has nine paragraphs, A-I.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-I in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

14 a biological explanation of the teacher-subjects’ behaviour

15 the explanation Milgram gave the teacher-subjects for the experiment

16 the identity of the pupils

17 the expected statistical outcome

18 the general aim of sociobiological study

19 the way Milgram persuaded the teacher-subjects to continue

Questions 20-22

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write your answers in boxes 20-22 on your answer sheet.

20 The teacher-subjects were told that were testing whether

A a 450-volt shock was dangerous.

B punishment helps learning.

C the pupils were honest.

D they were suited to teaching.

21 The teacher-subjects were instructed to

A stop when a pupil asked them to.

B denounce pupils who made mistakes.

C reduce the shock level after a correct answer.

D give punishment according to a rule.

22 Before the experiment took place the psychiatrists

A believed that a shock of 150 volts was too dangerous.

B failed to agree on how the teacher-subjects would respond to instructions.

C underestimated the teacher-subjects’ willingness to comply with experimental procedure.

D thought that many of the teacher-subjects would administer a shock of 450 volts.

Questions 23-26

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

23 Several of the subjects were psychology students at Yale University.

24 Some people may believe that the teacher-subjects’ behaviour could be explained as a positive survival mechanism.

25 In a sociological explanation, personal values are more powerful than authority.

26 Milgram’s experiment solves an important question in sociobiology.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

The Truth about the Environment

For many environmentalists, the world seems to be getting worse. They have developed a hit-list of our main fears: that natural resources are running out; that the population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat; that species are becoming extinct in vast numbers, and that the planet’s air and water are becoming ever more polluted.

But a quick look at the facts shows a different picture. First, energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not less so, since the book ‘The Limits to Growth’ was published in 1972 by a group of scientists. Second, more food is now produced per head of the world’s population than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving. Third, although species are indeed becoming extinct, only about 0.7% of them are expected to disappear in the next 50 years, not 25-50%, as has so often been predicted. And finally, most forms of environmental pollution either appear to have been exaggerated, or are transient — associated with the early phases of industrialisation and therefore best cured not by restricting economic growth, but by accelerating it. One form of pollution — the release of greenhouse gases that causes global warming — does appear to be a phenomenon that is going to extend well into our future, but its total impact is unlikely to pose a devastating problem. A bigger problem may well turn out to be an inappropriate response to it.

Yet opinion polls suggest that many people nurture the belief that environmental standards are declining and four factors seem to cause this disjunction between perception and reality.

One is the lopsidedness built into scientific research. Scientific funding goes mainly to areas with many problems. That may be wise policy, but it will also create an impression that many more potential problems exist than is the case.

Secondly, environmental groups need to be noticed by the mass media. They also need to keep the money rolling in. Understandably, perhaps, they sometimes overstate their arguments. In , for example, the World Wide Fund for Nature issued a press release entitled: ‘Two thirds of the world’s forests lost forever.’ The truth turns out to be nearer 20%.

Though these groups are run overwhelmingly by selfless folk, they nevertheless share many of the characteristics of other lobby groups. That would matter less if people applied the same degree of scepticism to environmental lobbying as they do to lobby groups in other fields. A trade organisation arguing for, say, weaker pollution controls is instantly seen as self-interested. Yet a green organisation opposing such a weakening is seen as altruistic, even if an impartial view of the controls in question might suggest they are doing more harm than good.

A third source of confusion is the attitude of the media. People are clearly more curious about bad news than good. Newspapers and broadcasters are there to provide what the public wants. That, however, can lead to significant distortions of perception. An example was America’s encounter with El Nino in 1997 and . This climatic phenomenon was accused of wrecking tourism, causing allergies, melting the ski-slopes and causing 22 deaths. However, according to an article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the damage it did was estimated at US$4 billion but the benefits amounted to some US$19 billion. These came from higher winter temperatures (which saved an estimated 850 lives, reduced heating costs and diminished spring floods caused by meltwaters).

The fourth factor is poor individual perception. People worry that the endless rise in the amount of stuff everyone throws away will cause the world to run out of places to dispose of waste. Yet, even if America’s trash output continues to rise as it has done in the past, and even if the American population doubles by 2100, all the rubbish America produces through the entire 21st century will still take up only one-12,000th of the area of the entire United States.

So what of global warming? As we know, carbon dioxide emissions are causing the planet to warm. The best estimates are that the temperatures will rise by 2-3℃ in this century, causing considerable problems, at a total cost of US$5,000 billion.

Despite the intuition that something drastic needs to be done about such a costly problem, economic analyses clearly show it will be far more expensive to cut carbon dioxide emissions radically than to pay the costs of adaptation to the increased temperatures. A model by one of the main authors of the United Nations Climate Change Panel shows how an expected temperature increase of 2.1 degrees in 2100 would only be diminished to an increase of 1.9 degrees. Or to put it another way, the temperature increase that the planet would have experienced in 2094 would be postponed to 2100.

So this does not prevent global warming, but merely buys the world six years. Yet the cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, for the United States alone, will be higher than the cost of solving the world’s single, most pressing health problem: providing universal access to clean drinking water and sanitation. Such measures would avoid 2 million deaths every year, and prevent half a billion people from becoming seriously ill.

It is crucial that we look at the facts if we want to make the best possible decisions for the future. It may be costly to be overly optimistic — but more costly still to be too pessimistic.

Questions 27-32

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the writer’s claims

NO if the statement contradicts the writer’s clams

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

27 Environmentalists take a pessimistic view of the world for a number of reasons

28 Data on the Earth’s natural resources has only been collected since 1972.

29 The number of starving people in the world has increased in recent years.

30 Extinct species are being replaced by new species.

31 Some pollution problems have been correctly linked to industrialisation.

32 It would be best to attempt to slow down economic growth.

Questions 33-37

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write your answers in boxes 33-37 on your answer sheet.

33 What aspect of scientific research does the writer express concern about in paragraph 4?

A the need to produce results

B the lack of financial support

C the selection of areas to research

D the desire to solve every research problem

34 The writer quotes from the Worldwide Fund for Nature to illustrate how

A influential the mass media can be.

B effective environmental groups can be.

C the mass media can help groups raise funds.

D environmental groups can exaggerate their claims.

34 What is the writer’s main point about lobby groups in paragraph 6?

A Some are more active than others.

B Some are better organised than others.

C Some receive more criticism than others.

D Some support more important issues than others.

35 The writer suggests that newspapers print items that are intended to

A educate readers.

B meet their readers’ expectations.

C encourage feedback from readers.

D mislead readers.

36 What does the writer say about America’s waste problem?

A It will increase in line with population growth.

B It is not as important as we have been led to believe.

C It has been reduced through public awareness of the issues.

D It is only significant in certain areas of the country.

Questions 38-40

Complete the summary with the list of words A-I below.

Write the correct letter A-I in boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet.

GLOBAL WARMING

The writer admits that global warming is a 38…………….challenge, but says that it will not have a catastrophic impact on our future, if we deal with it in the 39…………… way. If we try to reduce the levels of greenhouse gases, he believes that it would only have a minimal impact on rising temperatures. He feels it would be better to spend money on the more 40………… health problem of providing the world’s population with clean drinking water.

A unrealistic B agreed C expensive D right

E long-term F usual G surprising H personal

I urgent

篇7:剑桥雅思阅读5原文翻译及答案(test1)

TEST 1 PASSAGE 1参考译文:

Johnson’s Dictionary

约翰逊博士的字典

For the century before Johnson’s Dictionary was published in 1775, there had been concern about the state of the English language. There was no standard way of speaking or writing and no agreement as to the best way of bringing some order to the chaos of English spelling. Dr Johnson provided the solution.

约翰逊博士的《字典》于1775年出版,在此之前的一个世纪,人们一直对英语的发展状况担忧。口语和书面语没有统一的标准,对于如何整顿英语拼写混乱的局面也没有统一的看法。正是约翰逊博士为这一问题提供了解决方案。

There had, of course, been dictionaries in the past, the first of these being a little book of some 120 pages, compiled by a certain Robert Cawdray, published in 1604 under the title A Table Alphabeticall ‘of hard usuall English wordes’. Like the various dictionaries that came after it during the seventeenth century, Cawdray’s tended to concentrate on ‘scholarly’ words; one function of the dictionary was to enable its student to convey an impression of fine learning.

当然,在此之前也有过一些字典《其中最早的是一本约120页的小册子,由一个叫Robert Cawdray的人编辑,于16出版,名为《按字母排序的罕见英语词汇表》。正如后来17世纪出版的许多字典一样,Cawdray倾向于着重收录学术词汇。这本字典的功能之一就是使字典的使用者能体现出良好的学术修养。

Beyond the practical need to make order out of chaos, the rise of dictionaries is associated with the rise of the English middle class, who were anxious to define and circumscribe the various worlds to conquer — lexical as well as social and commercial. it is highly appropriate that Dr Samuel Johnson, the very model of an eighteenth-century literary man, as famous in his own time as in ours, should have published his Dictionary at the very beginning of the heyday of the middle class.

除了规范英语混乱状态的实际需要外,英语字典的兴盛也与英国中产阶级的兴起有关。这些中产阶级渴望对各种要征服的环境进行定义和约束,包括词汇环境、社会环境和商业环境。塞缪尔?约翰逊博士作为18世纪文学家的典型代表,在当时和现在都享有盛誉,他在中产阶级正如日中天之时出版他的《字典》真是再合“时”不过了。

Johnson was a poet and critic who raised common sense to the heights of genius. His approach to the problems that had worried writers throughout the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was intensely practical. Up until his time, the task of producing a dictionary on such a large scale had seemed impossible without the establishment of an academy to make decisions about right and wrong usage. Johnson decided he did not need an academy to settle arguments about language; he would write a dictionary himself and he would do it single-handed. Johnson signed the contract for the Dictionary with the bookseller Robert Dosley at a breakfast held at the Golden Anchor Inn near Holbom Bar on 18 June 1764.He was to be paid £1.575 in instalments, and from this he took money to rent Gough Square, in which he set up his ‘dictionary workshop’.

约翰逊是诗人、批评家,他将常识提髙到了天赋的髙度。对于那些从17世纪晚期到18世纪早期一直困扰着作家的问题,约翰逊的解决方法是非常实用的。在约翰逊之前,如果没有专门的学术机构判别正确与错误的用法,要出版这样一部大型字典几乎是不可能的。约翰逊则认为不需要学术机构来解决语言上的争端,他要自己编一本字典,而且要自己亲手去编。1764年6月18日,约翰逊与书商Robert Dosley在Holbom酒店附近的Golden Anchor旅店吃早餐时,签订了关于这本《字典》的合同。约翰逊因此获得了总价值1575英镑的分期付款,他从这些钱中拿出一些租下了17Gough广场,在这里建起了自己的“字典作坊”。

James Boswell, his biographer, described the garret where Johnson worked as ‘fitted up like a counting house’ with a long desk running down the middle at which the copying clerks would work standing up. Johnson himself was stationed on a rickety chair at an ‘old crazy deal table’ surrounded by a chaos of borrowed books. He was also helped by six assistants, two of whom died whilst the Dictionary was still in preparation.

James Boswell曾为约翰逊作传,他描述说约翰逊工作的阁楼就像“一个账房”,中间有一张长长的的桌子,负责抄写的工作人员站着工作。约翰逊坐在一把快要散架的椅子上,面前是一张老式的摇摇晃晃的文案桌,周围乱七八糟堆放着一堆借来的书。同时旁边有六个助手帮助,其中两个在《字典》编纂的筹备阶段就去世了。

The work was immense; filling about eighty large notebooks (and without a library to hand), Johnson wrote the definitions of over 40,000 words, and illustrated their many meanings with some 114,000 quotations drawn from English writing on every subject, from the Elizabethans to his own time. He did not expect to achieve complete originality. Working to a deadline, he had to draw on the best of all previous dictionaries, and to make his work one of heroic synthesis. In fact, it was very much more. Unlike his predecessors, Johnson treated English very practically, as a living language, with many different shades of meaning. He adopted his definitions on the principle of English common law — according to precedent. After its publication, his Dictionary was not seriously rivalled for over a century.

工作量是巨大的。当时,约翰逊在身边还没有图书馆可参阅的条件下,将80大本笔记进行了分类整理,撰写了4万多条词的定义,并将这些词的多个义项用约11.4万条从各个学科的英语书面材料中摘出的引例加以佐证上些引例来源极广,从伊丽莎白时代到当时作家的作品都被涵盖在内。约翰逊并没有想进行完全的自我创作。由于有最后期限,他不得不吸收先前所有字典的精华之处,这就使他的工作成了一项规模宏大的整合工作。事实上,约翰逊所做的工作绝不仅限于此。和以前的字典编基者不同的是,约翰逊对待英语的态度十分务实。他将英语看成是活的语言,意思上有许多细微的差别。他对词的定义采取英语普通法则:遵照先例。因此,约翰逊的《字典》出版后,在长达一个多世纪的时间里,都没有出现一本真正能与其相媲美的字典。

After many vicissitudes the Dictionary was finally published on 15 April 1775. It was instantly recognised as a landmark throughout Europe. ‘This very noble work,’ wrote the leading Italian lexicographer, ‘will be a perpetual monument of Fame to the Author, an Honour to his own Country in particular, and a general Benefit to the republic of Letters throughout Europe” The fact that Johnson had taken on the Academies of Europe and matched them (everyone knew that forty French academics had taken forty years to produce the first French national dictionary) was cause for much English celebration.

几经周折后,约翰逊的这本《字典》终于在1775年4月15日出版了。一经出版,这本字典就在整个欧洲获得了一致认可,被誉为里程碑式的著作?一位意大利著名的辞书编築者写道:“这项崇高的作品将成为其著者永恒的荣誉丰碑,也是其祖国的一项特别荣耀,这部作品惠及了整个欧洲大陆文学界。”众所周知,40个法国学者花了40年的时间才出版了第一部法语字典。而约翰逊一个人就承担了一项欧洲学术界所做的工作并毫不逊色地把它完成,这一切都让英国人引以为傲。

Johnson had worked for nine years, ‘with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow’. For all its faults and eccentricities his two-volume work is a masterpiece and a landmark, in his own words, ‘setting the orthography, displaying the analogy, regulating the structures, and ascertaining the significations of English words’. It is the cornerstone of Standard English an achievement which, in James Boswell’s words ‘conferred stability on the language of his country.’

约翰逊几乎没有得到学者的帮助或伟人的赞助,也没有退休后的舒适条件,更不是在凉爽的书房中完成工作。他是在种.种不便与干扰中、在疾病折磨和忧伤中一直工作了九年。尽管存在瑕疵和怪异之处,他的这部两卷本的著作仍然称得上是一部杰作,一座里程碑。用他自己的话说,这本字典“规范了拼写,进行了词汇比较,规范了结构,明确了英文字词的含义”。这部字典为后来的标准英语奠定了基础,这一成就,用James Boswell的话说,就是“为英语的稳定做出了贡献”。

The Dictionary, together with his other writing, made Johnson famous and so well esteemed that his friends were able to prevail upon King George Ⅲ to offer him a pension. From then on, he was to become the Johnson of folklore.

约翰逊因为这部《字典》和其他一些作品而闻名于世并备受尊重,这使得他的朋友能够说服国王乔治三世赏赐给他养老金。从那时起,他就成了家喻户晓的约翰逊。

TEST 1 PASSAGE 2 参考译文:

Nature or Nurture?

是先天本性还是后天控制?

A A few years ago, in one of the most fascinating and disturbing experiments in behavioural psychology, Stanley Milgram of Yale University tested 40 subjects from all walks of life for their willingness to obey instructions given by a ‘leader’ in a situation in which the subjects might feel a personal distaste for the actions they were called upon to perform. Specifically Milgram told each volunteer ‘teacher-subject’ that the experiment was in the noble cause of education, and was designed to test whether or not punishing pupils for their mistakes would have a positive effect on the pupils’ ability to learn.

A 几年前,耶鲁大学的Stanley Milgram进行了一项行为心理学试验,这项试验十分有趣但又令试验对象深感不安。40名试验对象分别来自社会各界。试验要测试在对某领导命令做的事情可能产生反感的情况下,这些试验对象是否愿意执行命令。Milgram向每位在试验中扮演教师角色的志愿者明确地解释,试验是为了崇高的教育事业而进行的,是要测试体罚犯错误的学生是否会对学生的学习能力产生积极的影响。

B Milgram’s experimental set-up involved placing the teacher-subject before a panel of thirty switches with labels ranging from ‘15 volts of electricity (slight shock)’ to ‘450 volts (danger — severe shock)’ in steps of 15 volts each. The teacher-subject was told that whenever the pupil gave the wrong answer to a question, a shock was to be administered, beginning at the lowest level and increasing in severity with each successive wrong answer. The supposed ‘pupil’ was in reality an actor hired by Milgram to simulate receiving the shocks by emitting a spectrum of groans, screams and writings together with an assortment of statements and expletives denouncing both the experiment and the experimenter. Milgram told the teacher-subject to ignore the reactions of the pupil, and to administer whatever level of shock was called for, as per the rule governing the experimental situation of the moment.

B Milgram的试验方案是让这些扮演教师角色的试验对象到一个有30个切换开关的控电板前,开关上面分别贴着电压标签,从15伏(轻度电击)开始,每个开关依次增大15伏,一直增大到450伏(危险的严重电击)。然后告诉这些试验对象,学生每回答错一个问题,就施加一次电击, 从最低电压开始,随着错误题数的增加,电击强度也依次增加。试验中的学生实际上是Mifgram雇佣的演员,他发出各种呻吟、叫喊声并痛苦地扭动身体甚至用污言移语谩骂试验者和试验本身,来模拟出学生遭受电击后的反应Milgram让这些扮演教师角色的试验对象不要理会学生的反应,按照控制试验条件的规则,不管电压多髙都要直接施加。

C As the experiment unfolded, the pupil would deliberately give the wrong answers to questions posed by the teacher, thereby bringing on various electrical punishments, even up to the danger level of 300 volts and beyond. Many of the teacher-subjects balked at administering the higher levels of punishment, and turned to Milgram with questioning looks and/or complaints about continuing the experiment. In these situations, Milgram calmly explained that the teacher-subject was to ignore the pupil’s cries for mercy and carry on with the experiment. If the subject was still reluctant to proceed, Milgram said that it was important for the sake of the experiment that the procedure be followed through to the end. His final argument was ‘you have no other choice. You must go on’. What Milgram was trying to discover was the number of teacher-subjects who would be willing to administer the highest levels of shock, even in the face of strong personal and moral revulsion against the rules and conditions of the experiment.

C 随着试验的展开,这个学生要故意答错老师提出的问题,从而受到各种级别电击的惩罚,甚至是高达300伏的危险电压或更高电压的电击惩罚。许多扮演教师的试验对象在实施高电压惩罚时犹豫不决,面带疑惑地看着Milgram或者对继续试验颇有微词。一旦遇到这种情况,Milgram就会冷静地向扮演教师的试验对象解释说,不要理会学生请求怜悯的呼喊,继续试验。如果试验对象仍不肯继续试验,Milgram就告诉他们,为了完成试验将试验步骤进行到底是很重要的。如果这样仍不奏效的话, Milgram就会说:“你别无选择,必须继续试验。”Milgram想要找出的是,面对人性和道德对试验规则和条件强烈的反感,有多少扮演教师的试验对象会愿意施加最高电压的电击惩罚。

D Prior to carrying out the experiment, Milgram explained his idea to a group of 39 psychiatrists and asked them to predict the average percentage of people in an ordinary population who would be willing to administer the highest shock level of 450 volts. The overwhelming consensus was that virtually all the teacher-subjects would refuse to obey the experimenter. The psychiatrists felt that ‘most subjects would not go beyond 150 volts’ and they further anticipated that only four per cent would go up to 300 volts. Furthermore, they thought that only a lunatic fringe of about one in 1,000 would give the highest shock of 450 volts.

D 在进行试验之前, Milgram向39名精神科医生解释了他的想法,让他们预测一下普通人群中平均会有多大比例的人愿意施加最高达450伏的电击。这些医生几乎一致认为差不多所有扮演教师的试验对象都会拒绝遵从试验人的命令。这些精神科医生感到大多数扮演教师的试验对象不会施加超过150伏电压的电击,并进一步预测说,只有4%的人会施力P300伏以上电压的电击。而且,他们认为只有约千分之一的像疯子一样的人才会施加450伏的电压。

E What were the actual results? Well, over 60 per cent of the teacher-subjects continued to obey Milgram up to the 450-volt limit in repetitions of the experiment in other countries, the percentage of obedient teacher-subjects was even higher, reaching 85 per cent in one country. How can we possibly account for this vast discrepancy between what calm, rational, knowledgeable people predict in the comfort of their study and what pressured, flustered, but cooperative ‘teachers’ actually do in the laboratory of real life?

E 实际结果如何呢? 60%以上的扮演教师的试验对象一直遵从Milgram的命令,直到施加最高电压450伏的电击。在其他国家进行的重复试验中,愿意遵从命令的试验对象的比例更髙, 在某个国家:甚至髙达85%。那些冷静、理性、有学识的人们依靠他们的研究所得出的轻松的结论,与这些面临压力、紧张不安却遵守命令的扮演教师的试验对象在模拟真实生活的实验室中的所作所为竟然存在这么大的差异,我们怎样才能解释这种差异呢?

F One’s first inclination might be to argue that there must be some sort of built-in animal aggression instinct that was activated by the experiment, and that Milgram’s teache-subjects were just following a genetic need to discharge this pent-up primal urge onto the pupil by administering the electrical shock. A modern hard-core sociobiologist might even go so far as to claim that this aggressive instinct evolved as an advantageous trait, having been of survival value to our ancestors in their struggle against the hardships of life on the plains and in the caves, ultimately finding its way into our genetic make-up as a remnant of our ancient animal ways.

F人们第一反应可能会说,一定是试验激发了人内在的某种侵略性动物本能。Milgram试验中那些扮演教师的试验对象正是本能地靠施加电击来向学生发泄他们这种受到压抑的原始冲动。典型的现代社会生物学家甚至会称这种侵略性的本能是作为一种优势特征进化而来的,当我们的祖先在岩洞中和平原上与艰苦的生活作斗争时,这种本能对他们的生存起到了重要的作用。因此,这种本能最终作为远古时人类动物行为的遗留产物融人到我们的基因当中。

G An alternative to this notion of genetic programming is to see the teacher-subjects’ actions as a result of the social environment under which the experiment was carried out. As Milgram himself pointed out, ‘Most subjects in the experiment see their behaviour in a larger context that is benevolent and useful to society — the pursuit of scientific truth. The psychological laboratory has a strong claim to legitimacy and evokes trust and confidence in those who perform there. An action such as shocking a victim, which in isolation appears evil, acquires a completely different meaning when placed in this setting.’

G 与这种基因说不同的观点是将那些扮演教师的试验对象的行为看作是进行试验的社会环境所造成的。正如Milgram自己所说:“大多数试验对象从大的背景出发,认为自己的行为是仁慈的,对社会有益的,是在追求科学真理。心理实验室又大力强调此举的合法性,因此使试验参与人员对其产生了信任和信心。像对受害人施加电击这件事,单独看来似乎是恶行,但在这种情况下却有了完全不同的意义。”

H Thus, in this explanation the subject merges his unique personality and personal and moral code with that of larger institutional structures, surrendering individual properties like loyalty, self-sacrifice and discipline to the service of malevolent systems of authority.

H因此,按这种解释,扮演教师的试验对象是将自己的个性、个人准则和道德准则与更广泛的体制结构结合了起来,使个人的一些特性,如忠诚、自我牺牲和遵守规定,为恶毒的权威体制服务。

I Here we have two radically different explanations for why so many teacher-subjects were willing to forgo their sense of personal responsibility for the sake of an institutional authority figure. The problem for biologists, psychologists and anthropologists is to sort out which of these two polar explanations is more plausible. This, in essence, is the problem of modern sociobiology — to discover the degree to which hard-wired genetic programming dictates, or at least strongly biases, the interaction of animals and humans with their environment, that is, their behaviour. Put another way, sociobiology is concerned with elucidating the biological basis of all behaviour.

I对于众多扮演教师的试验对象为了一个机构权威人物而愿意放弃他们个人责任感的这种行为,我们有两种完全不同的解释。生物学家、心理学家和人类学家所要解决的问题就是找出这两种截然对立的解释哪种更合理。从本质讲,这是一个当代社会生物学的问题一探索人自身相关基因组成能在多大程度上掌控,或至少说是强烈影响动物和人与环境的交互活动,即他们的行为。换句话说,社会生物学关注的是如何去阐释所有行为的生物学基础。

TEST 1 PASSAGE 3 参考译文:

The Truth about the Environment

环境问题真相

For many environmentalists, the world seems to be getting worse. They have developed a hit-list of our main fears: that natural resources are running out; that the population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat; that species are becoming extinct in vast numbers, and that the planet’s air and water are becoming ever more polluted.

在许多环境论者看来,我们的世界似乎变得越来越糟。他们列出了一系列我们担忧的问题:自然资源正在枯竭,人口不断增长,粮食越来越少,物种大批灭绝,地球的空气污染和水污染越来越严重。

But a quick look at the facts shows a different picture. First, energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not less so, since the book ‘The Limits to Growth’ was published in 1972 by a group of scientists. Second, more food is now produced per head of the world’s population than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving. Third, although species are indeed becoming extinct, only about 0.7% of them are expected to disappear in the next 50 years, not 25-50%, as has so often been predicted. And finally, most forms of environmental pollution either appear to have been exaggerated, or are transient — associated with the early phases of industrialisation and therefore best cured not by restricting economic growth, but by accelerating it. One form of pollution — the release of greenhouse gases that causes global warming — does appear to be a phenomenon that is going to extend well into our future, but its total impact is unlikely to pose a devastating problem. A bigger problem may well turn out to be an inappropriate response to it.

但我们只要简单分析一下事实就会发现另外一种情况。首先,自1972年一组科学家出版了《增长的极限》这本书以来,能源和其他自然资源是变得越来越丰富了,而不是越来越少。其次,人均粮食产量比以往任何时候都要高,挨饿的人越来越少。第三,尽管物种的确在灭绝,但未来50年只会有0.7%的物种灭绝,而不是像人们通常所预计的25~50%。最后,大多数环境污染问题或者被夸大其词或者只是暂时的,只是与工业化的早期阶段相联系的,因此解决这些污染问题的最佳方法不是限制经济的发展, 而是加速经济的发展。有一种污染,即由于排放温室气体所引起的全球变暖问题,似乎会在未来长期存在,但其总效应却不大可能会带来特别严重的问题。更大的问题反而可能出在应对措施不得力上。

Yet opinion polls suggest that many people nurture the belief that environmental standards are declining and four factors seem to cause this disjunction between perception and reality.

但是民意调査显示,许多人所持的观念认为环境质量标准在下降,造成这种事实与人们观念间的差异的原因大致有四个:

One is the lopsidedness built into scientific research. Scientific funding goes mainly to areas with many problems. That may be wise policy, but it will also create an impression that many more potential problems exist than is the case.

一是科学研究上的偏颇。科学基金主要投人到存在问题的领域。这似乎是一项明智的决策,但是这同样也给人们造成了一种印象,似乎存在许多潜在的问题,而事实并非如此。

Secondly, environmental groups need to be noticed by the mass media. They also need to keep the money rolling in. Understandably, perhaps, they sometimes overstate their arguments. In 1997, for example, the World Wide Fund for Nature issued a press release entitled: ‘Two thirds of the world’s forests lost forever.’ The truth turns out to be nearer 20%.

第二,环保组织需要得到媒体的注意,也需要支持资金源源不断地流入。因此对于这些团体有时会有夸大其词的情况就不难理解了。比如说,世界自然基金就发布一篇名为《世界森林2/3已不复存在》的新闻稿。而事实上世界森林只减少了20%左右。

Though these groups are run overwhelmingly by selfless folk, they nevertheless share many of the characteristics of other lobby groups. That would matter less if people applied the same degree of scepticism to environmental lobbying as they do to lobby groups in other fields. A trade organisation arguing for, say, weaker pollution controls is instantly seen as self-interested. Yet a green organisation opposing such a weakening is seen as altruistic, even if an impartial view of the controls in question might suggest they are doing more harm than good.

尽管这些组织绝大多数都是由无私的人们管理运营的,但他们和其他游说团体有许多共同之处。除非人们对待环境问题的游说活动也像对待其他问题的游说活动一样,持同等的怀疑态度, 这种共同之处才不会发挥那么大的作用。比如说,一个贸易组织如果要求降低污染控制标准,这个组织马上就会被认为是在谋私利。而即使对这一污染控制标准的客观审视可能会证明环保组织反对这种污染控制的低标准是弊大于利,这个环保组织仍会被认为是无私的。

A third source of confusion is the attitude of the media. People are clearly more curious about bad news than good. Newspapers and broadcasters are there to provide what the public wants. That, however, can lead to significant distortions of perception. An example was America’s encounter with El Nino in 1997 and 1998. This climatic phenomenon was accused of wrecking tourism, causing allergies, melting the ski-slopes and causing 22 deaths. However, according to an article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the damage it did was estimated at US$4 billion but the benefits amounted to some US$19 billion. These came from higher winter temperatures (which saved an estimated 850 lives, reduced heating costs and diminished spring floods caused by meltwaters).

另一个使人们印象错位的因素就是媒体的态度。显然,人们对坏消息比对好消息更好奇。新闻和广播就是要提供大众所需要的东西。而这一点可能会导致人们认识上的巨大偏差J9和美国受到了厄尔尼诺现象的影响就是一个例子。人们责难这一气候现象使旅游业陷于瘫痪,引起人们的过敏症状, 使一个滑雪坡融化造成22人死亡。尽管如此,美国气象协会公告上的一篇文章却认为, 尽管厄尔尼诺造成的损失估计有40亿美元,但它带来的收益却髙达约190亿美元。这主要得益于冬季气温的升髙,这种升温拯救了大约850人的生命,降低了取暖费用,缓解了由于冰峰河流春季融化造成的春洪。

The fourth factor is poor individual perception. People worry that the endless rise in the amount of stuff everyone throws away will cause the world to run out of places to dispose of waste. Yet, even if America’s trash output continues to rise as it has done in the past, and even if the American population doubles by 2100, all the rubbish America produces through the entire 21st century will still take up only one-12,000th of the area of the entire United States.

第四个因素是个人见识的狭隘。人们担心人均垃圾产生量的日益增多将使世界无处存放垃圾。但是,即使美国的垃圾产生量像以前那样继续增加,即使到21美国的人口加倍,全美国在整个21世纪产生的垃圾仍然仅会占到美国领土总面积的1/12,000。

So what of global warming? As we know, carbon dioxide emissions are causing the planet to warm. The best estimates are that the temperatures will rise by 2-3℃ in this century, causing considerable problems, at a total cost of US$5,000 billion.

那么全球变暖这一问题怎么样呢?众所周知,二氧化碳的排放导致地球变暖。据估计本世纪气温最髙会上升2~3℃,这将带来严重的问题,造成5万亿美元的损失。

Despite the intuition that something drastic needs to be done about such a costly problem, economic analyses clearly show it will be far more expensive to cut carbon dioxide emissions radically than to pay the costs of adaptation to the increased temperatures. A model by one of the main authors of the United Nations Climate Change Panel shows how an expected temperature increase of 2.1 degrees in 2100 would only be diminished to an increase of 1.9 degrees. Or to put it another way, the temperature increase that the planet would have experienced in 2094 would be postponed to 2100.

尽管人们直觉上认为应当采取一些激进的措施,解决这一可能需要付出髙昂代价的问题,但是经济方面的分析表明,采取激进措施削减二氧化碳的排放量,将比采取措施适应温度的上升付出更大的代价。联合国气候变化专家小组的一位主要成员所设计的一项模型表明, 如何将2100年时2.1度的气温上升减少到只上升1.9度。换句话说,2094年地球会出现的升温推迟到2100年出现。

So this does not prevent global warming, but merely buys the world six years. Yet the cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, for the United States alone, will be higher than the cost of solving the world’s single, most pressing health problem: providing universal access to clean drinking water and sanitation. Such measures would avoid 2 million deaths every year, and prevent half a billion people from becoming seriously ill.

所以这并不会防止全球变暖,而只是给了世界6年的宽限期。但仅对美国而言,与解决人人都能获得清洁的饮用水和卫生设施这一世界上最紧迫的健康问题相比,减少二氧化碳排放量要付出更髙的代价。而解决了这一健康问题,毎年将可以避免200万人死亡,防止5亿人患上严重疾病。

It is crucial that we look at the facts if we want to make the best possible decisions for the future. It may be costly to be overly optimistic — but more costly still to be too pessimistic.

要做出有关未来的最佳决定就应当审视一下事实,这一点很关键。过度乐观可能要付出代价,但过度悲观则要付出更大的代价。

篇8:剑桥雅思阅读5原文翻译及答案(test1)

Test 1 Passage1

Question 1-Question 3

答案:D E G

关键词:Johnson’s Dictionary

定位原文:全文综合信息处理

解题思路: A选项的all,B选项的only都太绝对了;C选项对应的原文在第4段第4句“Johnson decided…”原文都说了他不需要那么多人来确认语言问题的讨论结果,和选项意思矛盾;D选项说约翰逊字典主要集中于当代文本中的语言,原文第6段第1句“Johnson wrote…”说的是drawn from the Elizabethans to his own time;意思一致;E选项和文中第6段第3句“Working to a deadline…”意思一致;G选项和第6段第5句意思一致;F选项和H选项的定位句分别在第6段“...he had to draw on the best of all previous dictionaries.”和第6段“He did not expect to achieve complete originality.”都与原文矛盾。

Question 4

答案:copying clerks或clerks

关键词:1764/a number of/who stood at

定位原文: 第5段第1句“…with a long desk running down the middle”

解题思路: a number of要求其后填名词复数形式,而此空后面的非限制性定语从句who又限定要填一个关于人的名词。

Question 5

答案:library

关键词:did not have a/40,000

定位原文: 第6段第1句“The work was immense:filling about eighty large…”

解题思路: 找到定位句后,很容易得到答案library。

Question 6

答案:stability

关键词:James Boswell

定位原文: 第8段最后1句“… in James Boswell’s words...”

解题思路: 原文的conferred on 和 空处的bring to 属于同义表达。

Question 7

答案:pension

关键词:King

定位原文: 第9段1句“… King George III to offer him a pension”

解题思路: offer him a pension 和题目的 was granted a pension 属于同义表达。

Question 8

答案:TRUE

关键词: middle classes

定位原文: 第3段第1句“Beyond…”

解题思路: 题干中的growing跟increase对应这一句中的两个rise,与原文意思一致。

Question 9

答案:FALSE

关键词:Johnson/death

定位原文: 第3段第2句“...as famous in his own time as in ours...”

解题思路: 这句话表明他当时跟现代都享有盛誉,题干与原文矛盾。题干的 well known 为文章里这句话中的famous的同义替换。

Question 10

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词:several years

定位原文: 第4段内容

解题思路: 按照判断是非题的顺序原则,这题在文章中的定位应该在第9题在文章中所定位的语句后面,同时又应该出现在第11题定位语句的前面,故应该从第3段末开始找一直到第4段中间,我们找不到任何跟题干相关的信息,故此题为not given。

Question 11

答案:FALSE

关键词: academy

定位原文:第4段第4句“Johnson decided he did not need…”

解题思路: 这句话正说明约翰逊并未建立研究院来协助他完成字典的编纂。

Question 12

答案: FALSE

关键词:payment

定位原文: 第4段最后1句“He was to be paid …”

解题思路: He was to be paid……installment对应,明确提到了得到分期付款,跟题干矛盾。

Question 13

答案: TRUE

关键词:assistants/publication

定位原文: 第5段最后1句“He was also helped by six assistants…”

解题思路: 题干中的 not survive 跟文章中这句话的die对应,根据文意,题目表述是正确的。

Test 1 Passage 2

Question 14

答案:F

关键词:biological explanation/teacher-subject

定位原文: F段第1句“…and that Milgram’s teacher-subjects were just following…”

解题思路: 文章F段第一句中genetic,built-in,instinct这些词与题干中的biological explanation对应。

Question 15

答案:A

关键词:explanation/for the experiment

定位原文: A段最后1句“Specifically…”

解题思路: 定位句中的短语in the cause of 即为题干explanation的同义替换。

Question 16

答案: B

关键词:identity/pupil

定位原文: B段第3句“The supposed “pupil” was…”

解题思路: 找到对应句后很容易得出答案B。

Question 17

答案: D

关键词:expected/statistical

定位原文: D段倒数第2句“The phychiatrists felt that “most subjects…”

解题思路: 定位到D段后,发现这些数字都是描述的实验预期的结果。

Question 18

答案: I

关键词:general aim/sociobiological study

定位原文: I段第3句“This, in essence, is…”

解题思路: 找到定位句后,比较容易得出答案。

Question 19

答案: C

关键词:persuaded/continue

定位原文: C段第2、3、4句“Many of the teacher-subjects balked…”

解题思路: 注意go on即为 continue的同义替换。

Question 20

答案: B

关键词:teacher-subjects were told...

定位原文: A段最后1句“Specifically, Milgram told each volunteer…”

解题思路: 定位句说得很清楚:Milgram向每位在试验中扮演教师角色的志愿者明确地解释,试验是为了崇高的教育事业而进行的,是要测试体罚犯错误的学生是否会对学生的学习能力产生积极的影响。这就对应选项B。

Question 21

答案: D

关键词:instructed to...

定位原文: B段最后1句“Milgram told the teacher-subject…”

解题思路: 其中的instructed跟文章中的told对应,按照控制试验条件的规则,不管电压多髙都要直接施加。

Question 22

答案: C

关键词: phychiatrists

定位原文: D段第2句“The overwhelming consensus…”E段第1、2句“What were the actual results? Well, over 60 per…”

解题思路: 由这两句话的反差可以看出,精神科医生的确低估了试验对象对规则的遵从程度,其中的be willing to 跟题干中的willingness属于同义表达。

Question 23

答案:NOT GIVEN

关键词:Yale University

定位原文: A段第1句“...Stanley Milgram of Yale University tested 40 subjects from…”

解题思路: all walks of life是社会各界的意思,我们并不能肯定试验者就是来自耶鲁大学的心理学学生。本题属于典型的完全未提及型NOT GIVEN。

Question 24

答案:TRUE

关键词:explain/survival mechanism

定位原文: F段第2句“A modem hard-core sociobiologist might…”

解题思路: 定位句中的advantageous trait 与题干中的positive survival mechanism 属于同义表达。

Question 25

答案:FALSE

关键词:sociobiological explanation

定位原文: H段内容和I段第1句“Here we have two radically different…”

解题思路: 定位句的两句话都在体现出个人价值观在被权威所统治。

Question 26

答案:FALSE

关键词:sociobiology

定位原文: I段整个段落内容

解题思路: 我们在文章最后一段可以得知Milgram的实验并未解决社会生物学上的这个重大问题,只不过是证明了这个问题的存在。

Test 1 Passage 3

Question 27

答案:YES

关键词:environmentalists

定位原文: 第1段第1、2句 “For many…”

解题思路: hit-list重要事件的列表,按计划迸行杀害的名单。在这里应该理解为一系列。

Question 28

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词:1972, only

定位原文: 第2段第2句“...“the Limits to Growth”was published in 1972…”

解题思路: 1972年这个信息只在上面这句话中出现,而按照顺序解题原则,这道题目的答案只能在第二段中寻找,实际上该段并未提到任何关于资料搜集开始时间的信息。所以这是一道典型的NOT GIVEN。

Question 29

答案: NO

关键词: starving people

定位原文: 第2段第3句“Fewer people are starving…”

解题思路: 这句话意思非常明确了,和题目表述矛盾。

Question 30

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: species

定位原文: 第2段第5句话“Third, although species are indeed…”

解题思路: 这一句虽然提到了物种,但是并没有提到题目中论述的那个话题。而且,题目其实也是在变相地将新旧物种比较,属于并不存在的比较关系,因此应选择NOT GIVEN。

Question 31

答案: YES

关键词: industrialisation

定位原文: 第2段第6句“And finally, most forms…”

解题思路: 这句话说明工业化早期的确引起了一些污染问题,,故此题选YES。

Question 32

答案: NO

关键词: economic growth/best

定位原文: 第2段第6句“...and therefore best cured not by restricting…”

解题思路: 文中已经明确提到控制污染的最好方式不是减慢经济发展速度,而是加速经济发展。

Question 33

答案: C

关键词:paragraph 4

定位原文: 第4段第2句“Scientific funding goes mainly…”

解题思路: 题目问的是作者提出了对哪个科研领域的关注,定位句明确说明这同样也给人们造成了一种印象,似乎存在许多潜在的问题,而事实并非如此,言下之意就是要确认好对研究领域的选择,C选项符合。

Question 34

答案: D

关键词:Worldwide Fund for Nature

定位原文: 第5段第3句“Understandably, perhaps, they sometimes…”

解题思路: 定位句明确说明也许有时候他们夸张了事实,选项D符合。

Question 35

答案: C

关键词:paragraph 6

定位原文:第6段第2句“That would matter less if…”

解题思路:题目问的是作者对游说团体的看法,C选项和原文表述一致。

Question 36

答案: B

关键词:newspaper print

定位原文: 第7段第3句“Newspaper and broadcasters…”

解题思路: 定位句说报纸和广播应该提供给公众所需要的,选项B满足读者需求,和原文表述一致。

Question 37

答案: B

关键词:America

定位原文: 第8段第3句“Yet, even if…”

解题思路: 题目问的是作者对美国垃圾问题的观点是什么,定位句说即便垃圾持续增长,人口增长,整个21世纪美国产生的垃圾只占整个美国面积的12万分之一,言下之意,就是B选项:垃圾问题没有我们想象的严重。

Question 38

答案: E. long-term

关键词: global warming/a

定位原文: 文章中最后4段内容

解题思路:这里应该填一个表示正面惑情色彩的形容词,而且这个词要可以和challenge搭配。那么选择范围就缩小到了agreed/right/long-term/surprising/urgent五个词上,,然后再根据后半句but来判断,,作者对全球变暖问题的态度是乐观的,显然应该是一个与catastrophic相反的词,因此范围最终缩小到了long-term。

Question 39

答案: D. right

关键词:way

定位原文: 文章最后4段内容

解题思路: 要和way来搭配,修饰way。按照题目中句子的含义来说,就是说以一个比较好的,合理的处理方法,就不会有灾难性的影响,只有right是最符合的。

Question 40

答案: I. urgent

关键词: health problem

定位原文: 倒数第2段第2句“…most pressing…”

解题思路: 这句话中的most pressing指最急迫的,最迫切的,正好和词库中的urgent相对应,属于同义表达。

剑桥雅思阅读5原文翻译及答案(test1)

篇9:剑桥雅思阅读8原文翻译及答案(test3)

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

Striking Back at Lightning

With Lasers

Seldom is the weather more dramatic than when thunderstorms strike. Their electrical fury inflicts death or serious injury on around 500 people each year in the United States alone. As the clouds roll in, a leisurely round of golf can become a terrifying dice with death — out in the open, a lone golfer may be a lightning bolt’s most inviting target. And there is damage to property too. Lightning damage costs American power companies more than $100 million a year.

But researchers in the United States and Japan are planning to hit back. Already in laboratory trials they have tested strategies for neutralising the power of thunderstorms, and this winter they will brave real storms, equipped with an armoury of lasers that they will be pointing towards the heavens to discharge thunderclouds before lightning can strike.

The idea of forcing storm clouds to discharge their lightning on command is not new. In the early 1960s, researchers tried firing rockets trailing wires into thunderclouds to set up an easy discharge path for the huge electric charges that these clouds generate. The technique survives to this day at a test site in Florida run by the University of Florida, with support from the Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI), based in California. EPRI, which is funded by power companies, is looking at ways to protect the United States’ power grid from lightning strikes. ‘We can cause the lightning to strike where we want it to using rockets,’ says Ralph Bernstein, manager of lightning projects at EPRI. The rocket site is providing precise measurements of lightning voltages and allowing engineers to check how electrical equipment bears up.

Bad behaviour

But while rockets are fine for research, they cannot provide the protection from lightning strikes that everyone is looking for. The rockets cost around $1,200 each, can only be fired at a limited frequency and their failure rate is about 40 per cent. And even when they do trigger lightning, things still do not always go according to plan. ‘Lightning is not perfectly well behaved,’ says Bernstein. ‘Occasionally, it will take a branch and go someplace it wasn’t supposed to go.’

And anyway, who would want to fire streams of rockets in a populated area? ‘What goes up must come down,’ points out Jean-Claude Diels of the University of New Mexico. Diels is leading a project, which is backed by EPRI, to try to use lasers to discharge lightning safely — and safety is a basic requirement since no one wants to put themselves or their expensive equipment at risk. With around $500,000 invested so far, a promising system is just emerging from the laboratory.

The idea began some 20 years ago, when high-powered lasers were revealing their ability to extract electrons out of atoms and create ions. If a laser could generate a line of ionisation in the air all the way up to a storm cloud, this conducting path could be used to guide lightning to Earth, before the electric field becomes strong enough to break down the air in an uncontrollable surge. To stop the laser itself being struck, it would not be pointed straight at the clouds. Instead it would be directed at a mirror, and from there into the sky. The mirror would be protected by placing lightning conductors close by. Ideally, the cloud-zapper (gun) would be cheap enough to be installed around all key power installations, and portable enough to be taken to international sporting events to beam up at brewing storm clouds.

A stumbling block

However, there is still a big stumbling block. The laser is no nifty portable: it’s a monster that takes up a whole room. Diels is trying to cut down the size and says that a laser around the size of a small table is in the offing. He plans to test this more manageable system on live thunderclouds next summer.

Bernstein says that Diels’s system is attracting lots of interest from the power companies. But they have not yet come up with the $5 million that EPRI says will be needed to develop a commercial system, by making the lasers yet smaller and cheaper. ‘I cannot say I have money yet, but I’m working on it,’ says Bernstein. He reckons that the forthcoming field tests will be the turning point — and he’s hoping for good news. Bernstein predicts ‘an avalanche of interest and support‘ if all goes well. He expects to see cloud-zappers eventually costing $50,000 to $100,000 each.

Other scientists could also benefit. With a lightning ‘switch’ at their fingertips, materials scientists could find out what happens when mighty currents meet matter. Diels also hopes to see the birth of ‘interactive meteorology’ — not just forecasting the weather but controlling it. ‘If we could discharge clouds, we might affect the weather,’ he says.

And perhaps, says Diels, we’ll be able to confront some other meteorological menaces. ‘We think we could prevent hail by inducing lightning,’ he says. Thunder, the shock wave that comes from a lightning flash, is thought to be the trigger for the torrential rain that is typical of storms. A laser thunder factory could shake the moisture out of clouds, perhaps preventing the formation of the giant hailstones that threaten crops. With luck, as the storm clouds gather this winter, laser-toting researchers could, for the first time, strike back.

Questions 1-3

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.

1 The main topic discussed in the text is

A the damage caused to US golf courses and golf players by lightning strikes.

B the effect of lightning on power supplies in the US and in Japan.

C a variety of methods used in trying to control lightning strikes.

D a laser technique used in trying to control lightning strikes.

2 According to the text, every year lightning

A does considerable damage to buildings during thunderstorms.

B kills or injures mainly golfers in the United States.

C kills or injures around 500 people throughout the world.

D damages more than 100 American power companies.

3 Researchers at the University of Florida and at the University of New Mexico

A receive funds from the same source.

B are using the same techniques.

C are employed by commercial companies.

D are in opposition to each other.

Questions 4-6

Complete the sentences below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 4-6 on your answer sheet.

4 EPRI receives financial support from ..................... .

5 The advantage of the technique being developed by Diels is that it can be used.....................

6 The main difficulty associated with using the laser equipment is related to its.....................

Questions 7-10

Complete the summary using the list of words, A-I, below.

Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet.

In this method, a laser is used to create a line of ionization by removing electrons from 7 ..................... . This laser is then directed at 8 ..................... in order to control electrical charges, a method which is less dangerous than using 9..................... . As a protection for the lasers, the beams are aimed firstly at 10 ..................... .

A cloud-zappers B atoms C storm clouds

D mirrors E technique F ions

G rockets H conductors I thunder

Questions 11-13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet write

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

No if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

11 Power companies have given Diels enough money to develop his laser.

12 Obtaining money to improve the lasers will depend on tests in real storms.

13 Weather forecasters are intensely interested in Diels’s system.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

The Nature of Genius

There has always been an interest in geniuses and prodigies. The word ‘genius’, from the Latin gens (= family) and the term ‘genius’, meaning ‘begetter’, comes from the early Roman cult of a divinity as the head of the family. In its earliest form, genius was concerned with the ability of the head of the family, the paterfamilias, to perpetuate himself. Gradually, genius came to represent a person’s characteristics and thence an individual’s highest attributes derived from his ‘genius’ or guiding spirit. Today, people still look to stars or genes, astrology or genetics, in the hope of finding the source of exceptional abilities or personal characteristics.

The concept of genius and of gifts has become part of our folk culture, and attitudes are ambivalent towards them. We envy the gifted and mistrust them. In the mythology of giftedness, it is popularly believed that if people are talented in one area, they must be defective in another, that intellectuals are impractical, that prodigies burn too brightly too soon and burn out, that gifted people are eccentric, that they are physical weaklings, that there’s a thin line between genius and madness, that genius runs in families, that the gifted are so clever they don’t need special help, that giftedness is the same as having a high IQ, that some races are more intelligent or musical or mathematical than others, that genius goes unrecognised and unrewarded, that adversity makes men wise or that people with gifts have a responsibility to use them. Language has been enriched with such terms as ‘highbrow’, ‘egghead’, ‘blue-stocking’, ‘wiseacre’, ‘know-all’, ‘boffin’ and, for many, ‘intellectual’ is a term of denigration.

The nineteenth century saw considerable interest in the nature of genius, and produced not a few studies of famous prodigies. Perhaps for us today, two of the most significant aspects of most of these studies of genius are the frequency with which early encouragement and teaching by parents and tutors had beneficial effects on the intellectual, artistic or musical development of the children but caused great difficulties of adjustment later in their lives, and the frequency with which abilities went unrecognised by teachers and schools. However, the difficulty with the evidence produced by these studies, fascinating as they are in collecting together anecdotes and apparent similarities and exceptions, is that they are not what we would today call norm-referenced. In other words, when, for instance, information is collated about early illnesses, methods of upbringing, schooling, etc., we must also take into account information from other historical sources about how common or exceptional these were at the time. For instance, infant mortality was high and life expectancy much shorter than today, home tutoring was common in the families of the nobility and wealthy, bullying and corporal punishment were common at the best independent schools and, for the most part, the cases studied were members of the privileged classes. It was only with the growth of paediatrics and psychology in the twentieth century that studies could be carried out on a more objective, if still not always very scientific, basis.

Geniuses, however they are defined, are but the peaks which stand out through the mist of history and are visible to the particular observer from his or her particular vantage point. Change the observers and the vantage points, clear away some of the mist, and a different lot of peaks appear. Genius is a term we apply to those whom we recognise for their outstanding achievements and who stand near the end of the continuum of human abilities which reaches back through the mundane and mediocre to the incapable. There is still much truth in Dr Samuel Johnson’s observation, ‘The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction’. We may disagree with the ‘general’, for we doubt if all musicians of genius could have become scientists of genius or vice versa, but there is no doubting the accidental determination which nurtured or triggered their gifts into those channels into which they have poured their powers so successfully. Along the continuum of abilities are hundreds of thousands of gifted men and women, boys and girls.

What we appreciate, enjoy or marvel at in the works of genius or the achievements of prodigies are the manifestations of skills or abilities which are similar to, but so much superior to, our own. But that their minds are not different from our own is demonstrated by the fact that the hard-won discoveries of scientists like Kepler or Einstein become the commonplace knowledge of schoolchildren and the once outrageous shapes and colours of an artist like Paul Klee so soon appear on the fabrics we wear. This does not minimise the supremacy of their achievements, which outstrip our own as the sub-four-minute milers outstrip our jogging.

To think of geniuses and the gifted as having uniquely different brains is only reasonable if we accept that each human brain is uniquely different. The purpose of instruction is to make us even more different from one another, and in the process of being educated we can learn from the achievements of those more gifted than ourselves. But before we try to emulate geniuses or encourage our children to do so we should note that some of the things we learn from them may prove unpalatable. We may envy their achievements and fame, but we should also recognise the price they may have paid in terms of perseverance, single-mindedness, dedication, restrictions on their personal lives, the demands upon their energies and time, and how often they had to display great courage to preserve their integrity or to make their way to the top.

Genius and giftedness are relative descriptive terms of no real substance. We may, at best, give them some precision by defining them and placing them in a context but, whatever we do, we should never delude ourselves into believing that gifted children or geniuses are different from the rest of humanity, save in the degree to which they have developed the performance of their abilities.

Questions 14-18

Choose FIVE letters, A-K.

Write the correct letters in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

NB Your answers may be given in any order.

Below are listed some popular beliefs about genius and giftedness.

Which FIVE of these beliefs are reported by the writer of the text?

A Truly gifted people are talented in all areas.

B The talents of geniuses are soon exhausted.

C Gifted people should use their gifts.

D A genius appears once in every generation.

E Genius can be easily destroyed by discouragement.

F Genius is inherited.

G Gifted people are very hard to live with.

H People never appreciate true genius.

I Geniuses are natural leaders.

J Gifted people develop their greatness through difficulties.

K Genius will always reveal itself.

Questions 19-26

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 19-26 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

19 Nineteenth-century studies of the nature of genius failed to take into account the uniqueness of the person’s upbringing.

20 Nineteenth-century studies of genius lacked both objectivity and a proper scientific approach.

21 A true genius has general powers capable of excellence in any area.

22 The skills of ordinary individuals are in essence the same as the skills of prodigies.

23 The ease with which truly great ideas are accepted and taken for granted fails to lessen their significance.

24 Giftedness and genius deserve proper scientific research into their true nature so that all talent may be retained for the human race.

25 Geniuses often pay a high price to achieve greatness.

26 To be a genius is worth the high personal cost.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 on the following pages.

Questions 27-32

Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-G from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i-x, in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i The biological clock

ii Why dying is beneficial

iii The ageing process of men and women

iv Prolonging your life

v Limitations of life span

vi Modes of development of different species

vii A stable life span despite improvements

viii Energy consumption

ix Fundamental differences in ageing of objects and organisms

x Repair of genetic material

Example Answer

Paragraph A v

27 Paragraph B

28 Paragraph C

29 Paragraph D

30 Paragraph E

31 Paragraph F

32 Paragraph G

HOW DOES THE BIOLOGICAL CLOCK TICK?

A Our life span is restricted. Everyone accepts this as ‘biologically’ obvious. ‘Nothing lives for ever!’ However, in this statement we think of artificially produced, technical objects, products which are subjected to natural wear and tear during use. This leads to the result that at some time or other the object stops working and is unusable (‘death’ in the biological sense). But are the wear and tear and loss of function of technical objects and the death of living organisms really similar or comparable?

B Our ‘dead’ products are ‘static’, closed systems. It is always the basic material which constitutes the object and which, in the natural course of things, is worn down and becomes ‘older’. Ageing in this case must occur according to the laws of physical chemistry and of thermodynamics. Although the same law holds for a living organism, the result of this law is not inexorable in the same way. At least as long as a biological system has the ability to renew itself it could actually become older without ageing; an organism is an open, dynamic system through which new material continuously flows. Destruction of old material and formation of new material are thus in permanent dynamic equilibrium. The material of which the organism is formed changes continuously. Thus our bodies continuously exchange old substance for new, just like a spring which more or less maintains its form and movement, but in which the water molecules are always different.

C Thus ageing and death should not be seen as inevitable, particularly as the organism possesses many mechanisms for repair. It is not, in principle, necessary for a biological system to age and die. Nevertheless, a restricted life span, ageing, and then death are basic characteristics of life. The reason for this is easy to recognise: in nature, the existent organisms either adapt or are regularly replaced by new types. Because of changes in the genetic material (mutations) these have new characteristics and in the course of their individual lives they are tested for optimal or better adaptation to the environmental conditions. Immortality would disturb this system — it needs room for new and better life. This is the basic problem of evolution.

D Every organism has a life span which is highly characteristic. There are striking differences in life span between different species, but within one species the parameter is relatively constant. For example, the average duration of human life has hardly changed in thousands of years. Although more and more people attain an advanced age as a result of developments in medical care and better nutrition, the characteristic upper limit for most remains 80 years. A further argument against the simple wear and tear theory is the observation that the time within which organisms age lies between a few days (even a few hours for unicellular organisms) and several thousand years, as with mammoth trees.

E If a life span is a genetically determined biological characteristic, it is logically necessary to propose the existence of an internal clock, which in some way measures and controls the ageing process and which finally determines death as the last step in a fixed programme. Like the life span, the metabolic rate has for different organisms a fixed mathematical relationship to the body mass. In comparison to the life span this relationship is ‘inverted’: the larger the organism the lower its metabolic rate. Again this relationship is valid not only for birds, but also, similarly on average within the systematic unit, for all other organisms (plants, animals, unicellular organisms).

F Animals which behave ‘frugally’ with energy become particularly old, for example, crocodiles and tortoises. Parrots and birds of prey are often held chained up. Thus they are not able to ‘experience life’ and so they attain a high life span in captivity. Animals which save energy by hibernation or lethargy (e.g. bats or hedgehogs) live much longer than those which are always active. The metabolic rate of mice can be reduced by a very low consumption of food (hunger diet). They then may live twice as long as their well fed comrades. Women become distinctly (about 10 per cent) older than men. If you examine the metabolic rates of the two sexes you establish that the higher male metabolic rate roughly accounts for the lower male life span. That means that they live life ‘energetically’ — more intensively, but not for as long.

G It follows from the above that sparing use of energy reserves should tend to extend life. Extreme high performance sports may lead to optimal cardiovascular performance, but they quite certainly do not prolong life. Relaxation lowers metabolic rate, as does adequate sleep and in general an equable and balanced personality. Each of us can develop his or her own ‘energy saving programme’ with a little self-observation, critical self-control and, above all, logical consistency. Experience will show that to live in this way not only increases the life span but is also very healthy. This final aspect should not be forgotten.

Questions 33-36

Complete the notes below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 33-36 on your answer sheet.

? Objects age in accordance with principles of 33 .....................and of 34 .....................

? Through mutations, organisms can 35 ..................... better to the environment

? 36 .....................would pose a serious problem for the theory of evolution

Questions 37-40

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

37 The wear and tear theory applies to both artificial objects and biological systems.

38 In principle, it is possible for a biological system to become older without ageing.

39 Within seven years, about 90 per cent of a human body is replaced as new.

40 Conserving energy may help to extend a human’s life.

篇10:剑桥雅思阅读8原文翻译及答案(test3)

TEST 3 PASSAGE 1 参考译文:

用激光回击闪电

很少有比雷暴天气更令人感到恐怖的天气了。仅在美国,猛烈的雷暴电流每年都会造成大约500人死亡或重伤。云层翻滚而来的时候,在户外打一场轻松的高尔夫成了一件异常可怕的事情,无异于是在拿自己的性命开玩笑——孤身一人在户外的高尔夫球手可能是闪电最喜欢攻击的目标。此外,闪电也会带来财产损失。每年闪电会对美国电力公司造成超过一亿美元的损失。

不过,美国和日本的研咳嗽闭诓呋鼗魃恋绲姆桨浮K且芽纪ü笛椴馐灾泻屠妆┑绾傻母髦址椒ā=衲甓欤墙泵胬妆菏褂门浔傅募す馄魃湎蚩罩械挠暝疲蛊湓谏恋绯鱿种胺诺纭

迫使雨云根据指令释放闪电并非一个新想法。早在20世纪60年代早期,研究者们就尝试过把带着拖曳线的火箭射入雨云,以期为这些云层发出的庞大的电荷群搭建起便捷的放电路径。由于受到建在加利福尼亚的电力研究所(EPRI)的支持,这一技术在佛罗里达的州立大学试验基地幸存到了今天。EPRI由电力公司资助,现正致力于研究保护美国输电网不受闪电袭击的方法。“我们可以通过火箭让闪电击向我们想让它去的地方,”EPRI的闪电项目经理Ralph Bernstein如此说道。该火箭基地现在能对闪电电压进行精确测量,并可以让工程师们检测电气设备的负载。

不良行为

虽然火箭在研究中功不可没,但它们无法提供闪电来袭时所有人都希求的保护。每支火箭造价大约 1,200美元,发射频率有限,而失败率却高达40%。即使它们确实能够引发闪电,事情也无法总是按计划顺利进行。“闪电可不那么听话”,Bernstein说,“它们偶尔会走岔路,射到它们本不该去的地方。”

但不管怎样,有谁会想在人口密集的地区发射成群的火箭呢? “射上去的肯定会掉下来,”新墨西哥大学的Jean-Claude Diels指出。Diels现在正在负责一个项目,该项目由ERPI所支持,试图通过发射激光使闪电安全放电——安全是一项基本要求,因为没人愿意把他们自己的性命或他们的昂贵设备置于危险之中。有了迄今为止的50万美元的投入,一套有巨大潜力的系统装置正在该实验室慢慢成形。

这一系统装置的想法始于大约前,当时正在开发大功率激光器从原子中提取电荷并生成离子的能力。如果激光器能够生成一条直达暴雨云的离子线,就可以在闪电电场增强为一股无法控制的涌流并击破空气之前,用这条传导通道把电荷引导到地面上来。为了防止激光器本身受到电击,不能把它直接对准云层,而是要把它对准一面镜子,让激光通过镜子折射向天空。要在靠近镜子的四周布置闪电传导器从而 对其进行保护。理想的做法是,云层遥控器(枪)要比较廉价,以便能够把它们安装在所有重点电力设备周围;另外还要方便携带,以便在国际运动赛事场地中用于使逐渐聚积的雨云失去威力。

绊脚石

可是,仍存在巨大的绊脚石。激光器并不方便携带:它是个能占据整个房间的庞然大物。Diels一直想要缩小它的体积,并表示很快就会有小型桌子大小的激光器了。他计划在明年夏天用真正的雨云来实际测试这个更容易操作的激光系统。

Bernstein表示,Diels的激光系统正在引起各电力公司的广泛兴趣。但他们还没有准备好EPRI提出的500万美元——开发一个让激光器更小巧、价格也更便宜的商用系统的所需资金。Bernstein说:“我还不能 说我已经拿到钱了,但是我正在为之努力。”他认为,即将进行的实地测试会成为一个转折点,而且他也在期待着好消息。Bernstein预言,如果一切顺利,这将吸引“排山倒海般的兴趣和支持”。他希望看到云层遥控器的最终价格能定在每台5万到10万美元之间。

其他科学家也能从中受益。如果手上有了控制闪电的“开关”,材料科学家就可以了解强大的电流遇到物质时会发生什么现象。Diels也希望看到“互动气象学”问世——不仅仅是预测天气,而且能控制天气。“如果我们能使云层放电,我们也许就能左右天气,”他说。

而且也许,Diels说,我们将能够对抗一些其他的气象威胁。“我们认为我们也许能通过引导闪电来阻止冰雹,”他说。雷,来自于闪电的冲击波,被认为是大暴雨——典型的雷暴天气——的触发器。一个激光雷工厂可以把水汽从云层中震出,这样也许可以阻止威胁庄稼的大冰雹的形成。如果运气好的话,在今年冬天雨云聚积的时候,持有激光器的研究者们就能第一次对其进行回击了。

TEST 3 PASSAGE 2 参考译文:

天才的本质

一直以来,天才和神童都倍受人们关注。genius一词源于拉丁语“gens”(=家族);拉丁语词条“genius”意 为“父”,来自于罗马早期,当时人们对一种祌明狂热崇拜,并尊其为家族的首领。在genius的最初形态中, 它与家族首领——也就是一家之长——永生的能力有关。后来,genius逐渐被用来表示人的特点;再后来,genius便用以指代一个人从他的“父亲”或精神领袖身上所传承的最佳特质。今天,人们仍然醉心于对星相和基因的研究,希望能够通过占星术或遗传学找到出色能力和个人特征的来源。

天才和天赋的概念已经成了民间文化的一部分,但人们对其所持的态度却是矛盾的。我们羡慕天才却不信任他们。在天才的神话里,人们普遍认为:如果人们在某方面很有天赋,那么他们一定会在其他方面有所不足;知识分子往往不切实际;神童过于才华横溢而早早地“泯然众人矣”;天才往往秉性古怪;天才的体质都很孱弱;天才和疯子只有一线之隔;天赋是家族遗传的;天才很聪明,所以不需要任何特别的帮助;天才和高智商是一回事;有些种族比其他人更聪明、更有音乐天赋或更有数学头脑;天才总被埋没, 得不到应有的回报;逆境出英才;天才有责任运用他们的天赋。英语中有很多这样的表达,如:highbrow (自以为文化修养很高的人),egghead(书呆子),blue-stocking(女学者),wiseacre(自以为聪明的人),know-all(自以为无所不知的人),boffin(科学家);另外,对于很多人来说intellectual是一个贬义词。

19世纪,人们对于天才的本质表现出相当大的兴趣,而且做了不少针对著名神童的研究。或许现在对于我们来说,大部分对天才的研究中包含以下两个最重要的方面:其一,早期教育中父母和教师对孩子进行的频繁的鼓励和教导对孩子在智力、艺术或音乐方面的发展是有益的,但这也给孩子以后对生活的适应方面带来了巨大的困难;其二,老师和学校常常认识不到孩子所具备的才能。尽管在研究中搜集的轶闻趣事、显著相似点以及例外状况都颇为吸引人,但是,想要利用这些研究得出的证据也有一定困难,因为它们不符合我们今天所谓的常模参照。换句话说,比如当我们在搜集有关早期疾病、养育方式、学校教育等信息时,我们也要考虑到在其他的历史资料中所记载的、关于这种情况在当时有多么普 遍或不寻常的信息。例如,当时的婴儿死亡率很高,人的寿命也比今天短得多,家教对于贵族和富裕家庭司空见惯,恃强凌弱和体罚在最好的私立学校里也屡见不鲜,而且大多数的研究对象来自特权阶级。直到20世纪,随着儿科学和心理学的发展,相关研究才得以在更加客观的基础上进行——尽管依然并不总是很科学。

无论如何进行定义,天才只不过是从历史的迷雾之中凸显出来的一座座山峰,只有特定的观察者通过他们特殊的角度才能看到。而改变观察者和视角,拨开些许迷雾,许多不同的山峰出现在眼前。我们用“天才”这个词来指代那些因其出色成就而被我们所认可的人,那些人几乎处在了人类能力连续体的顶端,往下依次是平凡者、平庸者和无能者。Samuel Johnson博士的观察还是颇有道理的:“真正的天才在各方面都拥有着巨大的潜能,很偶然地被决定了向一个特定的方向发展。”但我们可能会对“各方面”这一点有所保留,因为我们怀疑是否所有天才音乐家都可以成为天才科学家,反之亦然。但是有一点毋庸置疑:正是偶然的决定培养或触发了他们的才能,使之有了用武之地,让他们可以成功地把自己的能量注入其中。在芸芸众生之中,有能之士成千上万,有男有女,有成人也有孩童。

天才的作品或神童的成就令人欣赏、喜爱和惊叹之处在于其体现了他们的技能和本领,这些技能和本领虽然与我们的相似,但远远高于我们的水平。然而事实可以证明他们的智力和我们的并非迥然不同,比如,像Kepler和Einstein这样的科学家历尽艰辛所取得的科学发现现已成为学童的常识性知识;像Paul Klee 这样的画家所创造的曾经非比寻常的形状和颜色很快就出现在了我们穿着的面料上。当然,这并没有降低天才成就的价值。他们的成就与普通人的相比就好像在四分钟内跑完一英里的运动员之于普通慢跑者一样,前者远远超越了后者。

只有在承认了每个人的大脑都是独特的这一前提下,认为天才和有天赋者的大脑独一无二、异于常人这一想法才能算是合理的。教育的目的就在于使我们更加与众不同,而在受教育的过程中,我们可以从比我们更有天赋的人的成就中学有所得。但是,在效仿天才或鼓励我们的孩子这样做之前,我们应该注意到,从他们身上学到的某些东西结果可能并不令人愉快。我们可能会羡慕他们的成就和名誉,但是也应该看到他们为此所付出的代价,看到他们的锲而不舍,专心致志,献身精神,自我约束,他们对自己时间和精力的严格要求,以及多少次他们不得不表现出极大的勇气来保持自身的正直或艰难地走成功。

天才和天赋只是具有相对意义的描述性术语,并没有实质内容。我们顶多可以通过对其进行定义并将其置于某一语境中来赋予它们一些准确的意思。但是,无论怎样做,我们都不能蒙蔽自己,认为神童或天才与其他人不一样,只是他们对自己能力表现开发的程度与我们不同而已。

TEST 3 PASSAGE 3 参考译文:

生物钟如何工作?

A我们的寿命是有限的。每个人都已经接受了这一点,因为从“生物学”角度来讲这是显而易见的。“没有什么会永生! ” 然而,在这句话中,我们想到了那些人造的技术产品,这些产品在使用过程中会产生自然磨损。这就意味着它们终究会有一天停止工作、不能用了(生物学意义上的“死亡”)。但这些技术产品的磨损及功能丧失与生物体的死亡这两者之间真的具有相似性或可比性吗?

B我们所谓“死掉”的产品是指一些“静态的”、封闭的系统。构成物体的基本材料总是会在自然过程中逐渐磨损,变得“老化”。根据物理化学和热力学的规律,在这种情况下老化是必然的。虽然相同的规律也适用于生物体,但这一规律并不会以同样的方式产生不可抗拒的结果。至少只要一个生物系统有能力自我更新,它就确实能够不断成长但不会老化;生物体是一个开放、动态的系统,新物质会通过这个系统不断流动。因此旧物质的消逝和新物质的形成总是处于永久的动态平衡中。形成生物体的物质不断改变,于是我们体内的旧物质也持续不断地被新物质替换,就像喷泉,它能大体上保持自身的形态和运动状态,但是其中的水分子总是不同的。

C因此,老化和死亡不该被看作是不可避免的,尤其当生物体拥有许多修复机制时。从理论上讲,一个生物体的老化和死亡不是必然的。尽管如此,有限的寿命,衰老,然后死亡构成了生命的基本特征。原因则显而易见:本质上,现存的生物体要么适应环境,要么有规律地被新的物种代替。因为基因物质的变化(突变),生物体拥有了新的特征,并且个体生命的过程也在考验它们对周围的环境条件是否有最佳的或更好的适应性。永生可能会打乱这个系统,因为它需要为新的、更好的生命提供空间。这就是进化。

D每个生物体都有极具特色的寿命。不同的物种其寿命也有着显著差别,但在同一物种中,这个参数相对恒定。例如,几千年来人类的平均寿命几乎没变。虽然由于医疗服务的发展和营养的改善,越来越多的人达到高龄,但对大多数人来说人类普遍的寿命上限仍是80岁。此外,对抗简单磨损理论的另一个论点认为,生物体老去的时间短则几天(对单细胞生物来说甚至是几小时),长则几千年,比如巨杉。

E如果寿命是一个由基因决定的生物特征,那么按照逻辑我们就有必要提出这样一个观点:生物体内存在一个内部时钟,这个时钟以某种方式测量和控制着衰老的进程,并且最终决定这一固定程序的最后一步:死亡。就像寿命,对于不同的生物体,其代谢速率跟体重有一个固定的数据关系。同寿命相比,这个关系是“反向的”:生物体体重越大,其代谢速率越低。另外,这个关系不仅适用于鸟类,由于系统单元内的情况大体类似,因此也适用于其他所有生物体(植物、动物、单细胞生物)。

F那些在能量消耗方面比较“节约”的动物寿命尤其长,例如鳄鱼和乌龟。鹦鹉和猛禽经常被锁链栓着,因此往往不能“体验生活”,于是在圈养状态下获得了较长的寿命。有些能通过冬眠或嗜睡来保存能量的动物(例如蝙蝠或刺猬)通常比那些总是很活跃的动物活得更长久。老鼠的代谢速率可以通过减少食物消耗量(饥饿饮食法)来降低,他们的寿命可能比那些平日吃饱喝足的同类寿命长一倍。另外,女性的寿命很明显比男性的寿命长(大约10%)。如果研究两性的代谢速率,你会发现男性代谢速率较高,这就意味着男性的寿命较短,也就是说他们在生活中比较耗费能量——比女性活动更为剧烈,但生命持续的时间没有女性长。

G从上面的讨论可以看出,节约使用我们的能量储备应该可以延长寿命。极端的剧烈运动可能会让心血管功能达到最佳状态,但肯定不会延长寿命。放松下来可以降低代谢率,而充足的睡眠及大体平和的性格也会起到相同的作用。只要进行一些自我观察、严格的自我控制,尤其重要的是保持逻辑连贯性,我们每个人都能发展自己的“节能程序”。经验表明这样的生活方式不仅能够延年益寿,而且非常健康。最后这点绝对不要忘记。

篇11:剑桥雅思阅读8原文翻译及答案(test3)

Passage 1

Question 1

答案: D

关键词: main topic

定位原文: 文章标题

解题思路: 通过标题知道整篇文章的主旨是“通过激光来回击闪电”,因此答案是 D 选项,意思为 “一种用于控制闪电袭击的激光技术”,属于对标题的同义替换。

Question 2

答案: A

关键词: every year lightening

定位原文: 第1段内容

解题思路: 本题考查关于每年闪电情况的细节,可 定位于第一段。B 选项可以通过 golfer 一词来定 位,也在第一段,原文意思是“孤单的高尔夫球 手或许将是闪电之箭最为有吸引力的目标”,选 项 B“在美国主要杀死或者伤害高尔夫球手”改 变了原意 ;C 和 D 选项可以分别通过 500,100 这两个数字来定位到第一段,但是 C 选项中将原 文 in the United States 偷换成了 throughout the world,因此不对;D中将原文的$100 million 偷换成 100 companies,也不对。通过对第一段 的概括,可以知道闪电带来的影响是非常大的, 因此答案是 A。

Question 3

答案: A

关键词: University of Florida, University of New Mexico

定位原文: 第三段和第五段内容

解题思路: 题目问的是 University of Florida 和 University of New Mexico 的研究员的关系。通 过 University of Florida 和 University of New Mexico 分别定位至第三段和第五段。对两处论 述进行对比,不难得出两者共同之处是“从同一来源获得经费”,都是 EPRI。答案是 A。

Question 4

答案: power companies

关键词: EPRI, financial support

对应原文: 第3段第4句“EPRI, which is funded…”

解题思路: 用EPRI定位到文章第三段,EPRI第一次出现之后即指出其是由电力公司资助的,原文中的funded 等同于题干中的 receives financial support from, 因此答案应该填power companies。注意不要写成单数。

Question 5

答案: safely

关键词: Diels, advantage

定位原文: 第5段第3句“...to try to use lasers to…”

解题思路: 用人名Diels在文中定位到第五段,从题目看出这里应填入一个副词,所以可以在人名周围寻找 use或者use的替换词,并且在其周围找带有-ly形式的词,这样正确答案safely很快就能浮出水面了。

Question 6

答案: size

关键词: difficulty, laser equipment

定位原文: 第7段第1、2句“…The laser is no nifty…”

解题思路: 这道题目的定位稍微有一些困难,需要将 difficulty一词与文章中的stumbling block联系起来,进而找到第七段中的laser一词。文中提到,该激光设备并不方便携带,它是个体积占据了一整间房间的庞然大物。看到这里,通过理解,考生们可以想到激光设备最大的问题就是体积太大,不好携带,所以正确答案是size。

Question 7

答案: B

关键词: removing electrons

定位原文: 第6段第1句“...to extract electrons out…”

解题思路: 本题关键是要理解题目中的remove...from...与文中的extract...out of...属于同义替换,这里要表达的是从原子(atoms)中提取电荷(electrons)。

Question 8

答案: C

关键词: then, control electrical charges

定位原文: 第6段第2句“If a laser could generate a line of ionization in the air all the way up to a storm cloud...”

解题思路: 注意文中generate是“产生”的意思;directed at对应文中的 all the way up to,其后的 a storm cloud即对应空格处要填的内容。因此正确答案是C。

Question 9

答案: G

关键词: less dangerous than

定位原文: 第4段和第5段内容

解题思路:解答本题需要对文章有一个提炼,第 9 题问的是激光是相对于哪种方式更加有安全 的技术。根据第四段和第五段可以知道,第四段说火箭发射的缺点,第五段说出于安全性的考虑开始使用激光,因此答案应该是火箭(rockets)。

Question 10

答案: D

关键词: protection, aimed firstly

定位原文: 第6段第3、4句“To stop the laser…”

解题思路: protection对应文中的 stop...being struck; at是解题关键词,即使不知道文中的directed和题目中的aimed是同义词,也可以从词组的形式上看出来两者是同位的,其后的名词即为答案。由此可知答案是D。

Question 11

答案: NO

关键词: Diels, enough money

定位原文: 第8段第3句“‘I cannot say I have…”

解题思路: “I cannot say I have money yet, but I am working on it”( “我还不能说我已经拿到钱了,但是我正在为之努力。”)看到这句话,再联系上句:Bernstein says that Diels’ system is attracting lots of interest from the power companies. But they have not yet come up with the $5 million that EPRI says will be needed to develop a commercial system...(Bernstein表示,Diels的激光系统正在引起各电力公司的广泛兴趣。但他们还没有准备EPRI提出的500万美元——开发一个……的商用系统的所需资金。)这两句话足以证明Diels系统还没有得到足够的资金支持。

Question 12

答案: YES

关键词: depend on tests in real storms

定位原文: 第8段第4句“He reckons…”

解题思路: 根据第八段Bernstein的话可知,他认为即将来临的实地测验将是转折点,他希望有好消息。如果一切进展顺利,Bernstein 预测关注和支持将潮涌而来。题目表述符合文意。

Question 13

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: Diels, weather forecasters

定位原文: 第9段最后两句“Diels also hopes…”

解题思路: 文章第九段虽然提到了天气预报,即Diels希望将来看到“交互式气象学”, 不仅是预报天气,还可以控制天气 ;但是却并没有提到过 weather forecasters 的态度,他们也许感兴趣,也许不感兴趣,无从判断。

Test 3 Passage 2

Question 14-Question 18

答案: B C F H J

关键词: popular beliefs

定位原文: 第2段整体内容

解题思路: A 对应“if people are talented…”意思是“如果一个人在某一方面具有天赋,他们必然在另一方面有缺陷”因此天才并非是在各个领域都具备天赋的,A错误;B对应“prodigies burn…” 意思是“神童只是昙花一现”B选项正确;C对应“people with gifts..” 言下之意也就是有天赋的人需要使用他们的天赋,C正确;F对应“genius runs in families” 也就是说天赋是遗传的,F对;H对应“we envy the gifted..”说明人们并不会真正欣赏天才,H正确;J对应“adversity makes…” 说明天才在困境中发展其天赋, J正确;其他选项没有提及。

Question 19

答案: TRUE

关键词: nineteen-century, studies

定位原文:第3段内容

解题思路: 本题需要通读第3段,可以得知,原文只提到了研究会考虑 the method of upbringing,但是没有考虑到 uniqueness of the person’s upbringing,题目表述符合文意。

Question 20

答案: TRUE

关键词: nineteen-century, objectivity

定位原文: 第3段最后1句“It was only with…”

解题思路: 通过本句首先可以推测出19世纪关于天才的研究缺乏客观性,然后通过if still not always very scientific得知,连20世纪有关天才的研究都并不总是很科学,那么就更别提19世纪的研究了,因此可以推测出本题正确答案是TRUE。

Question 21

答案: FALSE

关键词: general powers, area

定位原文:第4段第5句“We may disagree…”

解题思路:定位句的意思是“但我们可能会对“各方面”这一点有所保留,因为我们怀疑是否所有的天才音乐家都可以成为天才科学家,反之亦然。”这句话表明了作者对于所谓全能型天才的质疑,正好与题干的表述相反,故答案应该是 FALSE。

Question 22

答案: TRUE

关键词: skills, ordinary individuals, prodigies

定位原文:第5段第1句“What we appreciate,…”

解题思路:天才的技能和普通人的技能在本质上是相似的,尽管在表现上不一样。题目表述符合文意。

Question 23

答案: TRUE

关键词: truly great ideas

定位原文:第5段最后两句“But that their minds…”

解题思路: 作者先是举出数个例子来说明天才伟大的思想或者作品已经成为日常生活中司空见惯的东西,这就对应了题目的前半句the ease...,接着又提出This does not minimise the supremacy of their achievements,正好对应题干后半句。因此此题选TRUE。

Question 24

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: giftedness, genius, scientific research

定位原文:第6段第1句“To think of geniuses and the gifted…”

解题思路:第6段开头提到了“geniuses and the gifted…”但是题目表述的观点没有被提及。

Question 25

答案: TRUE

关键词: pay a high price

定位原文:第6段最后一句话“...but we should also recognize…”

解题思路: 这句话以及接下来的内容明确说明了天才在成为天才的道路上所付出的高昂代价,是本题中最容易判断的一道题目。

Question 26

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: high personal cost

定位原文:第6段最后1句的后半句“...but we should also…”

解题思路:…但是也应该看到他们为此所付出的代价,看到他们的锲而不舍,专心致志,献身精神,自我约束,他们对自己时间和精力的严格要求,以及多少次他们不得不表现出极大的勇气来保持自身的正直或艰难地走向成功。这些都是天才为了成为天才而付出的个人代价,但是通过其前后句,没有任何一个评述讲到这种个人付出值还是不值。典型的文中无此信息型题目。

Test 3 Passage 3

Question 27

答案: ix

关键词: fundamental differences, objects, organisms

定位原文:B段前4句“Our ‘dead’ products… the same way”

解题思路:要想弄清楚这一段的意思,至少要阅读前半段,才能明白作者是在对object变旧的过程和生物体衰老的过程做对比。通过is not inexorable in the same way 猜测出是对应答案中的fundamental differences。正确答案为ix。

Question 28

答案: ii

关键词: dying, beneficial

定位原文:C段第3、4句“Nevertheless, a restricted…”

解题思路:首先在C段找到表达转折意义的副词 nevertheless,一般段落大意都藏在转折词后面;接着发现the reason for this,这就可以对应选项ii中的why;接着读下去发现提到了死亡是必要的,immortality会扰乱整个生态系统,这样就可以进行选择了。正确答案是ii。

Question 29

答案: vii

关键词: stable, despite improvements

定位原文:D段第2句和第4句“... but within one species…”“Although more…”

解题思路:本段指出,每个生物体都有极具特色的寿命;不同物种之间的寿命有很大差别,但同一物种中,这个参数相对恒定,这就是选项vii中所提到的a stable life span; 接下来的although则可以对应Heading中的despite, improvement对应句中的 developments in medical care and better nutrition。这样就和Heading的意思完全吻合了。正确答案是vii。

Question 30

答案: i

关键词: biological clock

定位原文:E段第1句“If a life span is a genetically…”

解题思路:本段首句中提到:如果寿命是一个由基因决定的生物特征,那么我们就有必要提出这样一个观点,那就是生物体内存在一个内部时钟。这是文章第一次提到生物钟这样一个概念。正确答案是i。

Question 31:

答案: viii

关键词: energy consumption

定位原文: F段第1句“Animals which behave 'frugally' with…”

解题思路:本段列举了众多例子,都是为了说明一个问题——能力消耗的多少与寿命长短成反比:新陈代谢越快,寿命越,新陈代谢越慢,寿命越长。选项 iii“能力消耗”抽象概括了本段的主题。

Question 32:

答案: iv

关键词: prolonging

定位原文: G段首句“It follows from…”

解题思路: Heading中的prolong一词等同于本段首句中的extend。句意为:“从上面的讨论可以看出,节约使用我们的能量储备应该可以延长寿命。”正确答案是iv。

Question 33 & Question 34

答案: physical chemistry (and) thermodynamics

关键词: objects age in accordance with principle

定位原文: B段第3、4句“Ageing in this case…”

解题思路: 并列的两处空格中需填名词。首先到文中寻找 objects一词,可以在B段顺利找到,然后请注意寻找并列关系连接词and,很快可以发现正确答案。答案为physical chemistry (and) thermodynamics。

Question 35:

答案: adapt

关键词: mutations, organisms

定位原文: C段第5句“Because of…”

解题思路: 首先通过mutations一词将此题在文章中定位,虽然寻找过程不容易,但是一定要相信自己能找到。定位之后寻找空格后的关键字better to,根据空格前的情态动词can推测空格处只能填一个动词,而且是原型,还要能和to搭配。这么一来,这句话里只有一个对应词比较合适:adaptation, 将其变形为动词即可。

Question 36:

答案: immortality

关键词: evolution theory

定位原文: C段最后1句“Immortality would disturb …”

解题思路: 空格处要填入的是会对进化论带来严重问题的内容,可通过evolution进行定位。注意disturb一词意思 是“干扰、扰乱”,对应题目中的pose a serious problem for,因此答案为 immortality。

Question 37:

答案: NO

关键词: the wear and tear theory

定位原文: B段前4句“Our ‘dead’ products…”

解题思路:对于生物体而言,死亡并非不可阻挡的,因此自然磨损理论对于生物体来讲,当然就不太适用了。 inexorable在解题中起着关键作用。

Question 38:

答案: YES

关键词: older, ageing

定位原文: B段第5句“At least as long as…”

解题思路: 至少只要一个生物系统有能力自我更新,它就确实能够不断成长但不会老化……

这句话与题目中的叙述完全吻合,故答案应该是YES

Question 39:

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: seven years, 90 per cent

定位原文: B段和F段

解题思路: 文章在 B 段和 F 段均提到生物体的更新代谢,但是并没有提到具体的数值。

Question 40:

答案: YES

关键词: energy

定位原文: G段第1句“It follows from…”

解题思路: 题目表述是G段首句的同义替换, 其中题目中的 conserving energy 对应原文中的 sparing use of energy。

剑桥雅思阅读8原文翻译及答案(test3)

篇12:剑桥雅思阅读8原文翻译及答案(test4)

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 on the following pages.

Questions 1-5

Reading Passage 1 has six sections, A-F.

Choose the correct heading for sections B-F from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i-ix, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

I The influence of Monbusho

ii Helping less successful students

iii The success of compulsory education

iv Research findings concerning achievements in maths

v The typical format of a maths lesson

vi Comparative expenditure on maths education

vii The key to Japanese successes in maths education

ix The role of homework correction

Example Answer

Section A iv

1 Section B

2 Section C

3 Section D

4 Section E

5 Section F

LAND OF THE RISING SUM

A Japan has a significantly better record in terms of average mathematical attainment than England and Wales. Large sample international comparisons of pupils’ attainments since the 1960s have established that not only did Japanese pupils at age 13 have better scores of average attainment, but there was also a larger proportion of ‘low’ attainers in England, where, incidentally, the variation in attainment scores was much greater. The percentage of Gross National Product spent on education is reasonably similar in the two countries, so how is this higher and more consistent attainment in maths achieved?

B Lower secondary schools in Japan cover three school years, from the seventh grade (age 13) to the ninth grade (age 15). Virtually all pupils at this stage attend state schools: only 3 per cent are in the private sector. Schools are usually modern in design, set well back from the road and spacious inside. Classrooms are large and pupils sit at single desks in rows. Lessons last for a standardised 50 minutes and are always followed by a 10-minute break, which gives the pupils a chance to let off steam. Teachers begin with a formal address and mutual bowing, and then concentrate on whole-class teaching.

Classes are large — usually about 40 — and are unstreamed. Pupils stay in the same class for all lessons throughout the school and develop considerable class identity and loyalty. Pupils attend the school in their own neighbourhood, which in theory removes ranking by school. In practice in Tokyo, because of the relative concentration of schools, there is some competition to get into the ‘better’ school in a particular area.

C Traditional ways of teaching form the basis of the lesson and the remarkably quiet classes take their own notes of the points made and the examples demonstrated. Everyone has their own copy of the textbook supplied by the central education authority, Monbusho, as part of the concept of free compulsory education up to the age of 15. These textbooks are, on the whole, small, presumably inexpensive to produce, but well set out and logically developed. (One teacher was particularly keen to introduce colour and pictures into maths textbooks: he felt this would make them more accessible to pupils brought up in a cartoon culture.) Besides approving textbooks, Monbusho also decides the highly centralised national curriculum and how it is to be delivered.

D Lessons all follow the same pattern. At the beginning, the pupils put solutions to the homework on the board, then the teachers comment, correct or elaborate as necessary. Pupils mark their own homework: this is an important principle in Japanese schooling as it enables pupils to see where and why they made a mistake, so that these can be avoided in future. No one minds mistakes or ignorance as long as you are prepared to learn from them.

After the homework has been discussed, the teacher explains the topic of the lesson, slowly and with a lot of repetition and elaboration. Examples are demonstrated on the board; questions from the textbook are worked through first with the class, and then the class is set questions from the textbook to do individually. Only rarely are supplementary worksheets distributed in a maths class. The impression is that the logical nature of the textbooks and their comprehensive coverage of different types of examples, combined with the relative homogeneity of the class, renders work sheets unnecessary. At this point, the teacher would circulate and make sure that all the pupils were coping well.

E It is remarkable that large, mixed-ability classes could be kept together for maths throughout all their compulsory schooling from 6 to 15. Teachers say that they give individual help at the end of a lesson or after school, setting extra work if necessary. In observed lessons, any strugglers would be assisted by the teacher or quietly seek help from their neighbour. Carefully fostered class identity makes pupils keen to help each other — anyway, it is in their interests since the class progresses together.

This scarcely seems adequate help to enable slow learners to keep up. However, the Japanese attitude towards education runs along the lines of ‘if you work hard enough, you can do almost anything’. Parents are kept closely informed of their children’s progress and will play a part in helping their children to keep up with class, sending them to ‘Juku’ (private evening tuition) if extra help is needed and encouraging them to work harder. It seems to work, at least for 95 per cent of the school population.

F So what are the major contributing factors in the success of maths teaching? Clearly, attitudes are important. Education is valued greatly in Japanese culture; maths is recognised as an important compulsory subject throughout schooling; and the emphasis is on hard work coupled with a focus on accuracy.

Other relevant points relate to the supportive attitude of a class towards slower pupils, the lack of competition within a class, and the positive emphasis on learning for oneself and improving one’s own standard. And the view of repetitively boring lessons and learning the facts by heart, which is sometimes quoted in relation to Japanese classes, may be unfair and unjustified. No poor maths lessons were observed. They were mainly good and one or two were inspirational.

Questions 6-9

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

6 There is a wider range of achievement amongst English pupils studying maths than amongst their Japanese counterparts.

7 The percentage of Gross National Product spent on education generally reflects the level of attainment in mathematics.

8 Private schools in Japan are more modern and spacious than state-run lower secondary schools.

9 Teachers mark homework in Japanese schools.

Questions 10-13

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.

10 Maths textbooks in Japanese schools are

A cheap for pupils to buy

B well organized and adapted to the needs of the pupils.

C written to be used in conjunction with TV programmes.

D not very popular with many Japanese teachers.

11 When a new maths topic is introduced,

A students answer questions on the board.

B students rely entirely on the textbook.

C it is carefully and patiently explained to the students.

D it is usual for students to use extra worksheets.

12 How do schools deal with students who experience difficulties?

A They are given appropriate supplementary tuition.

B They are encouraged to copy from other pupils.

C They are forced to explain their slow progress.

D They are placed in a mixed-ability class.

13 Why do Japanese students tend to achieve relatively high rates of success in maths?

A It is a compulsory subject in Japan.

B They are used to working without help from others.

C Much effort is made and correct answers are emphasized.

D there is a strong emphasis on repetitive learning.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Biological control of pests

The continuous and reckless use of synthetic chemicals for the control of pests which pose a threat to agricultural crops and human health is proving to be counter-productive. Apart from engendering widespread ecological disorders, pesticides have contributed to the emergence of a new breed of chemical-resistant, highly lethal superbugs.

According to a recent study by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), more than 300 species of agricultural pests have developed resistance to a wide range of potent chemicals. Not to be left behind are the disease-spreading pests, about 100 species of which have become immune to a variety of insecticides now in use.

One glaring disadvantage of pesticides’ application is that, while destroying harmful pests, they also wipe out many useful non-targeted organisms, which keep the growth of the pest population in check. This results in what agroecologists call the ‘treadmill syndrome’. Because of their tremendous breeding potential and genetic diversity, many pests are known to withstand synthetic chemicals and bear offspring with a built-in resistance to pesticides.

The havoc that the ‘treadmill syndrome’ can bring about is well illustrated by what happened to cotton farmers in Central America. In the early 1940s, basking in the glory of chemical-based intensive agriculture, the farmers avidly took to pesticides as a sure measure to boost crop yield. The insecticide was applied eight times a year in the mid-1940s, rising to 28 in a season in the mid-1950s, following the sudden proliferation of three new varieties of chemical-resistant pests.

By the mid-1960s, the situation took an alarming turn with the outbreak of four more new pests, necessitating pesticide spraying to such an extent that 50% of the financial outlay on cotton production was accounted for by pesticides. In the early 1970s, the spraying frequently reached 70 times a season as the farmers were pushed to the wall by the invasion of genetically stronger insect species.

Most of the pesticides in the market today remain inadequately tested for properties that cause cancer and mutations as well as for other adverse effects on health, says a study by United States environmental agencies. The United States National Resource Defense Council has found that DDT was the most popular of a long list of dangerous chemicals in use.

In the face of the escalating perils from indiscriminate applications of pesticides, a more effective and ecologically sound strategy of biological control, involving the selective use of natural enemies of the pest population, is fast gaining popularity — though, as yet, it is a new field with limited potential. The advantage of biological control in contrast to other methods is that it provides a relatively low-cost, perpetual control system with a minimum of detrimental side-effects. When handled by experts, bio-control is safe, non-polluting and self-dispersing.

The Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control (CIBC) in Bangalore, with its global network of research laboratories and field stations, is one of the most active, non-commercial research agencies engaged in pest control by setting natural predators against parasites. CIBC also serves as a clearing-house for the export and import of biological agents for pest control world-wide.

CIBC successfully used a seed-feeding weevil, native to Mexico, to control the obnoxious parthenium weed, known to exert devious influence on agriculture and human health in both India and Australia. Similarly the Hyderabad-based Regional Research Laboratory (RRL), supported by CIBC, is now trying out an Argentinian weevil for the eradication of water hyacinth, another dangerous weed, which has become a nuisance in many parts of the world. According to Mrs Kaiser Jamil of RRL, ‘The Argentinian weevil does not attack any other plant and a pair of adult bugs could destroy the weed in 4-5 days.’ CIBC is also perfecting the technique for breeding parasites that prey on ‘disapene scale’ insects — notorious defoliants of fruit trees in the US and India.

How effectively biological control can be pressed into service is proved by the following examples. In the late 1960s, when Sri Lanka’s flourishing coconut groves were plagued by leaf-mining hispides, a larval parasite imported from Singapore brought the pest under control. A natural predator indigenous to India, Neodumetia sangawani, was found useful in controlling the Rhodes grass-scale insect that was devouring forage grass in many parts of the US. By using Neochetina bruci, a beetle native to Brazil, scientists at Kerala Agricultural University freed a 12-kilometre-long canal from the clutches of the weed Salvinia molesta, popularly called ‘African Payal’ in Kerala. About 30,000 hectares of rice fields in Kerala are infested by this weed.

Questions 14-17

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

Write the correct letter in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

14 The use of pesticides has contributed to

A a change in the way ecologies are classified by agroecologists.

B an imbalance in many ecologies around the world .

C the prevention of ecological disasters in some parts of the the world .

D an increase in the range of ecologies which can be usefully farmed.

15 The Food and Agriculture Organisation has counted more than 300 agricultural pests which

A are no longer responding to most pesticides in use.

B can be easily controlled through the use of pesticides.

C continue to spread disease in a wide range of crops.

D may be used as part of bio-control’s replacement of pesticides.

16 Cotton farmers in Central America began to use pesticides

A because of an intensive government advertising campaign.

B in response to the appearance of new varieties of pest.

C as a result of changes in the seasons and the climate.

D to ensure more cotton was harvested from each crop.

17 By the mid-1960s, cotton farmers in Central America found that pesticides

A were wiping out 50% of the pests plaguing the crops.

B were destroying 50% of the crop they were meant to protect.

C were causing a 50% increase in the number of new pests reported.

D were costing 50% of the total amount they spent on their crops.

Questions 18-21

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 18-21 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

No if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it impossible to say what the write thinks about this

18 Disease-spreading pests respond more quickly to pesticides than agricultural pests do.

19 A number of pests are now born with an innate immunity to some pesticides.

20 Biological control entails using synthetic chemicals to try and change the genetic make-up of the pests’ offspring.

21 Bio-control is free from danger under certain circumstances.

Questions 22-26

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-I, below.

Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet.

22 Disapene scale insects feed on

23 Neodumetia sangawani ate

24 Leaf-mining hispides blighted

25 An Argentinian weevil may be successful in wiping out

26 Salvinia molesta plagues

A forage grass.

B rice fields.

C coconut trees.

D fruit trees.

E water hyacinth.

F parthenium weed.

G Brazilian beetles.

H grass-scale insects.

I larval parasites.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Collecting Ant Specimens

Collecting ants can be as simple as picking up stray ones and placing them in a glass jar, or as complicated as completing an exhaustive survey of all species present in an area and estimating their relative abundances. The exact method used will depend on the final purpose of the collections. For taxonomy, or classification, long series, from a single nest, which contain all castes (workers, including majors and minors, and, if present, queens and males) are desirable, to allow the determination of variation within species. For ecological studies, the most important factor is collecting identifiable samples of as many of the different species present as possible. Unfortunately, these methods are not always compatible. The taxonomist sometimes overlooks whole species in favour of those groups currently under study, while the ecologist often collects only a limited number of specimens of each species, thus reducing their value for taxonomic investigations.

To collect as wide a range of species as possible, several methods must be used. These include hand collecting, using baits to attract the ants, ground litter sampling, and the use of pitfall traps. Hand collecting consists of searching for ants everywhere they are likely to occur. This includes on the ground, under rocks, logs or other objects on the ground, in rotten wood on the ground or on trees, in vegetation, on tree trunks and under bark. When possible, collections should be made from nests or foraging columns and at least 20 to 25 individuals collected. This will ensure that all individuals are of the same species, and so increase their value for detailed studies. Since some species are largely nocturnal, collecting should not be confined to daytime. Specimens are collected using an aspirator (often called a pooter), forceps, a fine, moistened paint brush, or fingers, if the ants are known not to sting. Individual insects are placed in plastic or glass tubes (1.5-3.0 ml capacity for small ants, 5-8 ml for larger ants) containing 75% to 95% ethanol. Plastic tubes with secure tops are better than glass because they are lighter, and do not break as easily if mishandled.

Baits can be used to attract and concentrate foragers. This often increases the number of individuals collected and attracts species that are otherwise elusive. Sugars and meats or oils will attract different species and a range should be utilised. These baits can be placed either on the ground or on the trunks of trees or large shrubs. When placed on the ground, baits should be situated on small paper cards or other flat, light-coloured surfaces, or in test-tubes or vials. This makes it easier to spot ants and to capture them before they can escape into the surrounding leaf litter.

Many ants are small and forage primarily in the layer of leaves and other debris on the ground. Collecting these species by hand can be difficult. One of the most successful ways to collect them is to gather the leaf litter in which they are foraging and extract the ants from it. This is most commonly done by placing leaf litter on a screen over a large funnel, often under some heat. As the leaf litter dries from above, ants (and other animals) move downward and eventually fall out the bottom and are collected in alcohol placed below the funnel. This method works especially well in rain forests and marshy areas. A method of improving the catch when using a funnel is to sift the leaf litter through a coarse screen before placing it above the funnel. This will concentrate the litter and remove larger leaves and twigs. It will also allow more litter to be sampled when using a limited number of funnels.

The pitfall trap is another commonly used tool for collecting ants. A pitfall trap can be any small container placed in the ground with the top level with the surrounding surface and filled with a preservative. Ants are collected when they fall into the trap while foraging. The diameter of the traps can vary from about 18 mm to 10 cm and the number used can vary- from a few to several hundred. The size of the traps used is influenced largely by personal preference (although larger sizes are generally better), while the number will be determined by the study being undertaken. The preservative used is usually ethylene glycol or propylene glycol, as alcohol will evaporate quickly and the traps will dry out. One advantage of pitfall traps is that they can be used to collect over a period of time with minimal maintenance and intervention. One disadvantage is that some species are not collected as they either avoid the traps or do not commonly encounter them while foraging.

Questions 27-30

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

27 Taxonomic research involves comparing members of one group of ants.

28 New species of ants are frequently identified by taxonomists.

29 Range is the key criterion for ecological collections.

30 A single collection of ants can generally be used for both taxonomic and ecological purposes.

Questions 31-36

Classify the following statements as referring to

A hand collecting

B using bait

C sampling ground litter

D using a pitfall trap

Write the correct letter, A,B,C or D, in boxes 31-36 on your answer sheet.

31 It is preferable to take specimens from groups of ants.

32 It is particularly effective for wet habitats.

33 It is a good method for species which are hard to find.

34 Little time and effort is required.

35 Separate containers are used for individual specimens.

36 Non-alcoholic preservative should be used.

Questions 37-40

Label the diagram below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.

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