1、考研英语(一)-76 及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Reading Comprehensio(总题数：0，分数：0.00)When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong. 1 Instead, the research f
2、inds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit. The studies are analyzed in a new edition of a neurology book, Progress in Brain Research. Some brains do deteriorate with age. Alzheimer“s disease, for example, s
3、trikes 13 percent of Americans 65 and older. 2 But for most aging adults, the authors say, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number. Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful.
4、 “It may be that distractibility is not, in fact, a bad thing,“ said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. “It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind.“ For example, in studies where subjects are asked to read passages
5、that are interrupted with unexpected words or phrases, adults who are 60 and older work much more slowly than college students. 3 Although the students plow through the texts at a consistent speed regardless of what the out-of-place words mean older people slow down even more when the words are rela
6、ted to the topic at hand. That indicates that they are not just stumbling over the extra information, but are taking it in and processing it. 4 When both groups were later asked questions for which the out-of-place words might be answers, the older adults responded much better than the students. “Fo
7、r the young people, it“s as if the distraction never happened,“ said an author of the review, Lynn Hasher, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute. “But for older adults, because they“ve retained all this extra data they“re now s
8、uddenly the better problem solvers. They can transfer the information they“ve soaked up from one situation to another.“ 5 Such tendencies can yield big advantages in the real world where it is not always clear what information is important, or will become important. A seemingly irrelevant point or s
9、uggestion in a memo can take on new meaning if the original plan changes. Or extra details that stole your attention, like others, yawning and fidgeting, may help you assess the speaker“s real impact.（分数：20.00）_It was the biggest scientific grudge match since the space race. The Genome Wars had ever
10、ything: two groups with appealing leaders ready to fight in a scientific dead heat, pushing the limits of technology and rhetoric as they battled to become the first to read every last one of the 3 billion DNA “letters“ in the human body. 6 The scientific importance of the work is unquestionable, th
11、e completed DNA sequence is expected to give scientists unprecedented insights into the workings of the human body, revolutionizing medicine and biology. But the race itself, between the government“s Human Genome Project and Rockville, Md., biotechnology company Celera Genomics, was at least partly
12、symbolic, the public / private conflict played out in a genetic lab. Now the race is over. After years of public attacks and several failed attempts at reconciliation, the two sides are taking a step toward a period of calm. HGP head Francis Collins (and Ari Patrinos of the Department of Energy, an
13、important ally on the government side) and Craig Venter, the founder of Celera, agreed to hold a joint press conference in Washington this Monday to declare that the race was over (sort of), that both sides had won (kind of) and that the hostilities were resolved (for the time being). No one is exac
14、tly sure how things will be different now. 7 Neither side will be turning off its sequencing machines any time soonthe “finish lines“ each has crossed are largely arbitrary points, “first drafts“ rather than the definitive version. 8 And while the joint announcement brings the former Genome Warriors
15、 closer together than they“ve been in years, insiders say that future agreements are more likely to take the form of coordination, rather than outright collaboration. The conflict blew up this February when Britain“s Wellcome Trust, an HGP participant, released a confidential letter to Celera outlin
16、ing the HGP“s complaints. Venter called the move “a lowlife thing to do.“ But by spring, there were the first signs of a thaw. “The attacks and nastiness are bad for science and our investors,“ Venter told Newsweek in March, “and fighting back is probably not helpful.“ 9 At a cancer meeting earlier
17、this month, Venter and Collins praised each other“s approaches, and expressed hope that all of the scientists involved in sequencing the human genome would be able to share the credit. By late last week, that hope was becoming a reality as details for Monday“s joint announcement were hammered out. S
18、cientists in both camps welcomed an end to the hostilities. “If this ends the horse race, science wins.“ 10 With their difference behind them, or at least set aside, the scientists should now be able to get down to the interesting stuff: figuring how to make use of all that data.（分数：20.00）_“I“ve nev
19、er met a human worth cloning,“ says cloning expert Mark Westhusin from the cramped confines of his lab at Texas A&M University. “It“s a stupid endeavor.“ 11 That“s an interesting choice of adjective, coming from a man who has spent millions of dollars trying to clone a 13-year-old dog named Missy. S
20、o far, he and his team have not succeeded, though they have cloned two calves and expect to clone a cat soon. They just might succeed in cloning Missy later this yearor perhaps not for another five years. It seems the reproductive system of man“s best frienddog is one of the mysteries of modern scie
21、nce. Westhusin“s experience with cloning animals leaves him vexed by all this talk of human cloning. 12 In three years of work on the Missyplicity project, using hundreds upon hundreds of canine eggs, the A&M team has produced only a dozen or so embryos carrying Missy“s DNA. 13 The wastage of eggs a
22、nd the many spontaneously aborted fetuses may be acceptable when you“re dealing with cats or bulls, he argues, but not with humans. “Cloning is incredibly inefficient, and also dangerous,“ he says. Even so, dog cloning is a commercial opportunity, with a nice research payoff. Ever since Dolly the sh
23、eep was cloned in 1997, Westhusin“s phone at A&M College of Veterinary Medicine has been ringing busily. Cost is no obstacle for customers like Missy“s mysterious owner, who wishes to remain unknown to protect his privacy. He“s plopped down $3.7 million so far to fund the research because he wants a
24、 twin to carry on Missy“s fine qualities after she dies. But he knows her clone may not have her temperament. 14 In a statement of purpose, Missy“s owners and the A&M team say they are “both looking forward to studying the ways that her clone differs from Missy.“ The fate of the dog samples will dep
25、end on Westhusin“s work. 15 He knows that even if he gets a dog viably pregnant, the offspring, should they survive, will face the problems shown at birth by other cloned animals: abnormalities like immature lungs and heart and weight problems. “Why would you ever want to clone humans,“ Westhusin as
26、ks, “when we“re not even close to getting it worked out in animals yet?“（分数：20.00）_Before a big exam, a sound night“s sleep will do you more good than poring over textbooks. That, at least, is the folk wisdom. And science, in the form of behavioral psychology, supports that wisdom. But such behavior
27、al studies cannot distinguish between two competing theories of why sleep is good for the memory. One says that sleep is when permanent memories form. 16 The other says that they are actually formed during the day, but then “edited“ at night to flush away what is superfluous. To tell the difference,
28、 it is necessary to look into the brain of a sleeping person, and that is hard. But after a decade of painstaking work, a team led by Pierre Maquet at Liege University in Belgium has managed to do it. 17 The particular stage of sleep in which the Belgian group is interested in is rapid eye movement
29、sleep, when the eyes move back and forth behind the eyelids as if watching a movie, and brainwave traces resemble those of wakefulness. It is during this period of sleep that people are most likely to relive events of the previous day in dreams. Dr. Maquet used an electronic device called PET to stu
30、dy the brains of people as they practiced a task during the day, and as they slept during the following night. The task required them to press a button as fast as possible, in response to a light coming on in one of six positions. As they learnt how to do this, their response times got faster. 18 Wh
31、at they did not know was that the appearance of the lights sometimes followed a patternwhat is referred to as “artificial grammar“. Yet the reductions in response time showed that they learnt faster when the pattern was present than when there was not. What is more, those with more to learn (i.e., t
32、he “grammar“, as well as the mechanical task of pushing the button) have more active brains. The “editing“ theory would not predict that, since the number of irrelevant stimuli would be the same in each case. 19 And to eliminate any doubts that the experimental subjects were learning as opposed to u
33、nlearning, their response times when they woke up were even quicker than when they went to sleep. The team, therefore, concluded that the nerve connections involved in memory are reinforced through reactivation during REM sleep, particularly if the brain detects an inherent structure in the material
34、 being learnt. 20 So now, on the eve of that crucial test, maths students can sleep soundly in the knowledge that what they will remember the next day are the basic rules of algebra and not the incoherent talk from the radio next door.（分数：20.00）_Lie detectors are widely used in the United States to
35、find out whether a person is telling the truth or not. 21 Polygraphers, the people who operate them, claim that they can establish guilt by detecting physiological changes that accompany emotional stress. The technique adopted is to ask leading questions such as: “Did you take the money?“ or “Where
36、did you hide the money?“ mixed in with neutral questions, and measure the subject“s electrical resistance in the palm or changes in his breathing and heart rate. Such apparatus has obtained widespread recognition. Whether lie detectors will ever be adopted on a similar scale in Britain is still a ma
37、tter of opinion. 22 At first sight, it appears obvious that any simple, reliable method of convicting guilty people is valuable, but recent research sponsored by the U.S. Office of Public Health not only raises doubts about how lie detectors should be used but also makes it questionable whether they
38、 should be employed at all. 23 The point is that, apart from many of the polygraphers being unqualified the tests themselves are by no means free from error, primarily because they discount human imagination and ingenuity. Think of all those perfectly innocent people, with nothing to be afraid of, w
39、ho blush and stammer when a customs officer asks them if they have anything to declare. Fear, and a consequently heightened electrical response, may not be enough to establish guilt. It depends on whether the subject is afraid of being found out or afraid of being wrongfully convicted. 24 On the oth
40、er hand, the person who is really guilty and whose past experience has prepared him for such tests can distort the results by anticipating the crucial questions or deliberately giving exaggerated responses to neutral ones! The success rate of up to 90% claimed for lie detectors is misleadingly attra
41、ctive. If we refer such a figure to a company with 500 employees, twenty of whom are thieves, the lie detector could catch 18 of them but in doing so would place 32 innocent employees under suspicion. The problem for the management would therefore become one of deciding how much industrial unrest th
42、ey are prepared to cause in order to eliminate theft. 25 What concerns research workers even more, of course, is the fact that a certain number of innocent people are bound to be convicted of crimes they have not committed.（分数：20.00）_考研英语(一)-76 答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Reading Comprehensio(总题数：0，分数：0.00)When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number
