1、华中科技大学考博英语-4 及答案解析(总分：99.99，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Translation(总题数：6，分数：100.00)By far the most common snake in Britain is the adder. In Scotland, in fact, there are no other snakes at all. The adder is also the only British snake with a poisonous bite. It can be found almost anywhere, but prefers sunny hillsi
2、des and rough open country, including high ground. In Ireland there are no snakes at all. Most people regard snake bites as fatal misfortune, but not all bites are serious, and very few are fatal. 1 Sometimes attempts at emergency treatment turn out to be more dangerous than the bite itself, with am
3、ateurs heroically, but mistakenly, trying do-it-yourself surgery and other unnecessary measures. All snakes have small teeth, so it follows that all snakes can bite, but only the bite of the adder presents any danger. 2 British snakes are shy animals and are far more frightened of you than you could
4、 possibly be of them. The adder will attack only if it feels threatened, as can happen if you take it by surprise and step on it accidentally or if you try to catch it or pick it up which it dislikes intensely. If it hears you coming it will normally get out of the way as quickly as it can, but adde
5、rs cannot move very rapidly and may attack before moving if you are very close. The effect of a bite varies considerably. It depends upon several things, one of which is the body-weight of the person bitten. The bigger the person, the less harmful the bite is likely to be, which is why children suff
6、er far more seriously from snake bites than adults. A healthy person will also have better resistance against the poison. 3 Very few people actually die from snake bites in Britain, and though these bites can make some people very ill, there are probably just as many cases of bites having little or
7、no effect, as there are of serious illness.（分数：15.00）_Sociology is concerned with people and with the rules of behavior that structure the ways in which people interact. As one of the social sciences, sociology has much in common with psychology and anthropology. The subject matter of social science
8、 inquiry is patterned social regularities. 4 A search for these regularities shows that most human behavior, from big and momentous acts to small and insignificant ones, is patterned. All of the social sciences are interested in patterned regularities in human social behavior. The distinction among
9、the social sciences is chiefly in the kinds of regularities of interest. Psychology occupies itself principally with patterns of learning, motivations and mental disorders. Because mental behavior also has a biological base, psychology is related to the natural science as well as the social. Anthrop
10、ology has traditionally limited its inquiry to small, preliterate societies and has turned to focus on culture and cultured systems. The focus on such societies provides anthropologists with field laboratories in which they study many of the concerns of the other social sciences. 5 To the extent tha
11、t anthropologists turn their attention to modern societies, there is little difference in the subject matter of anthropology and sociology; in many colleges and universities, they are in the same department. The chief differences continue to be in methodology and level of analysis. Whatever their pa
12、rticular area of concern, all social sciences rely on the scientific method of inquiry. 6 This means they rely on critical and systematic examination of the evidence before reaching any conclusions and that they approached each research question from a position of moral neutrality. This scientific a
13、pproach is what distinguishes the social sciences from journalism and other fields that comment on the condition.（分数：15.00）_Every year, according to the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), millions of men and women suffer from depressive illness. 7 Worse, thousands of depressives, inclu
14、ding an alarming number of teenagers, take their own livesoften, it is believed, before their condition is identified. A NIMH survey has found that only about one third of depressed people seek treatment. Yet when treated, 80 to 90 percent can be helped with new drugs and therapy, and may never have
15、 another episodeif those around them spot their troubles early and treatment begins promptly. Clinical depression should not be confused with the blues. 8 Everyone has brief “down“ periods, and sometimes depression strikes tor perfectly understandable reasons: the death of a loved one, the loss of a
16、 job or the breakup of a marriage. But most people gradually adjust to their losses. Clinical depression differs from the blues in duration and severity. For some it may be associated with disturbances in the brain“s neurochemistry (神经化学系统). Says Dr. Frederick K. Goodwin, director of the Center on N
17、euroscience, Behavior and Society at George Washington University Medical Center, “In depression-prone people, what starts as a normal response takes on a biochemical life of its own. The regulatory, systems keep running, and you get a kind of burnout.“ 9 Untreated, the condition frequently recurs,
18、and with each recurrence the chances of yet another episode increase. Half of those who have an untreated first episode will have a second, and after three episode, there is a 90 percent chance of a fourth. So early treatment is critical. Depression is a crippling illness. But with a little help fro
19、m observant friends or family, and with proper medical treatment, most people recover and return to healthy, productive lives.（分数：15.00）_Did life emerge spontaneously on earth, or did it come from outer space? 10 The scientific community is sharply split on the question, and the evidence from Mars (
20、火星) not only heats up the debate but also adds a third possibility: life-forms may have arisen on Mars first and then hitched a ride on a meteorite (陨石) to Earthor vice versa. As Stanford University chemist Richard Zare puts it, “Who is to say that we are not all Martians?“ Sounds implausible? Consi
21、der the alternatives. Sir Fred Hoyle, the distinguished British astronomer, favors an even more radical theory. The idea is that billions of years ago, the solar system was peppered by biological “seeds“, which took root wherever conditions were right. That would explain how life may have arisen at
22、roughly the same time on Earth and on Mars. 11 But it also raises awkward questions about where those seeds came from and what, or who, sent them flying through space. There is something to this theory. 12 Even scientists who reject it acknowledge that some of life“s building blocks probably had ext
23、raterrestrial (外星的) origins. Indeed, they now believe that everything from organic chemicals to amino acids (氨基酸), the constituents of proteins, was carried in by the comets, asteroids (小行星) and meteorites.（分数：15.00）_Americans are the first of the big spenders. 13 Among twenty major countries, the U
24、. S. ranks third from last in individual willingness to save, putting aside a bare 4% of disposable income. A key reason is world-beating U. S. consumer debt, which has ballooned in 20 years from $100 billion to $900 billion. Things were not always thus. Thriftiness, not to say tightfistedness, used
25、 to be a Yankee (美国人的) virtue. As recently as 1984, Americans were saving 8% of their after-tax income. The image of Americans as spoiled children is fairly new, though now firmly established. 14 Instead of putting something aside for a rainy day, Americans now start saving only when recession hits,
26、 while in other parts of the world like Asia, higher savings are associated with prosperity and growth. Savings also help maintain that happy state of affairs. Capital accumulation funds capital investment, so it comes as no surprise that as in savings, the U. S. lags in investment: 18.5% of GDP in
27、1994 against 24.8% for Germany, 28.9% for Japan and even more for Asia“s Young Tigers. Given the right encouragement, can Americans become born-savers again? If not, Joseph Gorman, CEO of TRW Inc., the $8 billion American auto-components manufacturer, warns, “ 15 Macro-economists would argue that we
28、 are condemned to run a big trade deficit because our country consumes far more than it saves, and other countries save far more than they consume. So goods are going to flow largely to the consumers, but the capital profits and the jobs will flow to the producers, who are the savers.“ In other word
29、s, Americans will be the grasshoppers (蚱蜢) in a world of ants.（分数：15.00）_16 We are all now aware that some new scientific or technological advances, though useful, may have unpleasant side effects. More and more, the tendency is to expert caution before committing the world to something that may not
30、 be reversible. The trouble is, it“s not always easy to tell what the side effects will be. In 1846, a man called Sobrero produced the first nitroglycerine (硝化甘油). When heated, a drop of it exploded. The Italian chemist realized in horror its possible application to warfare and stopped his research
31、at once. It didn“t help, of course. 17 Others followed his research and other high explosives were indeed being used in warfare by the close of the 19th century. Did that make high explosives entirely bad? In 1867, Alfred Nobel learned how to mix nitroglycerine with other substances to produce a saf
32、er-to-handle mixture he called “dynamite“. With dynamite, earth could be moved at a rate far beyond that of pick and shovel. We can“t abandon industrialization, because our food supply depends on it. If everyone decided to grow food without chemical fertilizers or insecticides or machinery, it would
33、 mean that only one quarter of the world population could be fed. Can we abandon some of our industrial technology and hold onto the rest? That would be very difficult, since it all hangs together. We can save, conserve, cut out waste, but what we have we must keep. 18 The only solution, as always i
34、n the history of mankind, is to solve problems by still further advances in technology.（分数：24.99）_华中科技大学考博英语-4 答案解析(总分：99.99，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Translation(总题数：6，分数：100.00)By far the most common snake in Britain is the adder. In Scotland, in fact, there are no other snakes at all. The adder is also the on
35、ly British snake with a poisonous bite. It can be found almost anywhere, but prefers sunny hillsides and rough open country, including high ground. In Ireland there are no snakes at all. Most people regard snake bites as fatal misfortune, but not all bites are serious, and very few are fatal. 1 Some
36、times attempts at emergency treatment turn out to be more dangerous than the bite itself, with amateurs heroically, but mistakenly, trying do-it-yourself surgery and other unnecessary measures. All snakes have small teeth, so it follows that all snakes can bite, but only the bite of the adder presen
37、ts any danger. 2 British snakes are shy animals and are far more frightened of you than you could possibly be of them. The adder will attack only if it feels threatened, as can happen if you take it by surprise and step on it accidentally or if you try to catch it or pick it up which it dislikes int
38、ensely. If it hears you coming it will normally get out of the way as quickly as it can, but adders cannot move very rapidly and may attack before moving if you are very close. The effect of a bite varies considerably. It depends upon several things, one of which is the body-weight of the person bit
39、ten. The bigger the person, the less harmful the bite is likely to be, which is why children suffer far more seriously from snake bites than adults. A healthy person will also have better resistance against the poison. 3 Very few people actually die from snake bites in Britain, and though these bite
40、s can make some people very ill, there are probably just as many cases of bites having little or no effect, as there are of serious illness.（分数：15.00）_正确答案：()解析：有时，当非专业人员贸然进行了错误的自救治疗和其他不必要的急救措施时，会比蛇噬伤口本身的危险更严重。_正确答案：()解析：英国的蛇是很害羞的动物，它们对你的恐惧远远甚于你对它们的恐惧。_正确答案：()解析：实际上，在英国极少有人死于蛇噬。虽然蛇噬可能会使一些人大病一场，但是对人没
41、有影响或影响甚微的病例几乎和致人重病的病例数量相当。Sociology is concerned with people and with the rules of behavior that structure the ways in which people interact. As one of the social sciences, sociology has much in common with psychology and anthropology. The subject matter of social science inquiry is patterned social
42、 regularities. 4 A search for these regularities shows that most human behavior, from big and momentous acts to small and insignificant ones, is patterned. All of the social sciences are interested in patterned regularities in human social behavior. The distinction among the social sciences is chief
43、ly in the kinds of regularities of interest. Psychology occupies itself principally with patterns of learning, motivations and mental disorders. Because mental behavior also has a biological base, psychology is related to the natural science as well as the social. Anthropology has traditionally limited its inquiry to small, preliterate societies and has turned to focus on culture and cultured systems. The focus on such societies provides anthropologists with field laboratories in which they study many of the co
