1、考研英语(二)-11 及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Reading Comprehensio(总题数：4，分数：100.00)In a provocative new book The Beauty Bias , Deborah Rhode, a Stanford law professor who proposes a legal regime in which discrimination on the basis of looks is as serious as discrimination based on gender or race, lays out
2、 the case for an American in which appearance discrimination is no longer allowed. Rhode is at her most persuasive when arguing that in America, discrimination against unattractive women and short men is as pernicious and widespread as bias based on race, sex, age, ethnicity, religion, and disabilit
3、y. Rhode cites research to prove her point: 11 percent of surveyed couples say they would abort a fetus predisposed toward obesity. College students tell surveyors they“d rather have a spouse who is an embezzler, drug user, or a shoplifter than one who is obese. The less attractive you are in Americ
4、a, the more likely you are to receive a longer prison sentence, a lower damage award, a lower salary, and poorer performance reviews. You are less likely to be married and more likely to be poor. And all of this is compounded by a virtually unregulated beauty and diet industry and soaring rates of e
5、lective cosmetic surgery. Rhode reminds us how Hillary Clinton and Sonia Sotomayor were savaged by the media for their looks, and says it“s no surprise that Sarah Palin paid her makeup artist more than any member of her staff in her run for the vice presidency. Critics such as Andrew Sullivan claim
6、that if we legally ban appearance discrimination, the next step will be legal protection of “the short, the skinny, the bald, the knobbly kneed, the flat-chested and the stupid.“ But Rhode points out that there are already laws against appearance discrimination on the books in Michigan and six other
7、 locales. This hasn“t resulted in an explosion of frivolous suits, she notes. In each jurisdiction the new laws have generated between zero and nine cases annually. Of course the problem with making appearance discrimination illegal is that Americans just really, really like hot girls. And so long a
8、s being a hot girl is deemed a bona fide occupational qualification, there will be cocktail waitresses fired for gaining three pounds. It“s not just American men who like things this way. In the most troubling chapter in her book, Rhode explores the feminist movement“s complicated relationship to et
9、ernal youth. The truth is that women feel good about competing in beauty pageants. They love six-inch heels. They feel beautiful after cosmetic surgery. You can“t succeed in public life if you look old in America. This doesn“t mean we shouldn“t work toward eradicating discrimination based on appeara
10、nce. But it may mean recognizing that the law won“t stop us from discriminating against the overweight, the aging, and the imperfect, so long as it“s the quality we all hate most in ourselves.（分数：25.00）(1).Rhode tries to argue that appearance discrimination _.（分数：5.00）A.should be dealt with in a sep
11、arate lawB.should not affect a person“s choice of a spouseC.is very harmful and rampant in social lifeD.should be prohibited in work places(2).The examples of Hilary and Sonia show that _.（分数：5.00）A.how they look affects their public lifeB.the public vote for them for how they lookC.they have become
12、 victims to the beauty industryD.politicians cannot afford to offend the media(3).We can infer from Paragraph 4 that laws against appearance discrimination _.（分数：5.00）A.are actually nothing new in Rhode“s proposalB.are not effective enough in Michigan and other placesC.will come into effect national
13、ly in a very short timeD.are expected by Sullivan to incur many trivial lawsuits(4).We can conclude from the last two paragraphs that _.（分数：5.00）A.making appearance discrimination laws in America is almost impossibleB.changing our mindset is as important as making appearance discrimination lawsC.app
14、earance discrimination laws cannot stop us from hating ourselvesD.Rhode cannot reconcile feminists“ ideals with women“s desire for eternal youth(5).The text is most likely to be _.（分数：5.00）A.a book reviewB.an editorialC.a scientific reportD.a success storyIn the US, poll after poll has shown a major
15、ity in favour of animal experimentation, even without statements about its value. Why is opinion in Britain so different? I think that there are two reasons. The first is the success of antivivisection campaigners in lampooning animal research as outdated, intentionally cruel, “bad“ science, which a
16、chieves nothing. All drugs and procedures developed with the help of animal tests are said to be dangerous. The occasional failure of animal testing to identify a dangerous drug is deployed as an argument for abandoning safety tests involving animals altogetherwith no mention of the terrible human s
17、uffering that this would cause. They say that “alternative“ methods already exist for all animal experiments, but the fact is that the law specifically forbids animal use if there is any alternative. The second reason is that scientists and doctors have failed to oppose such misrepresentation. In th
18、e early 1990s, animal rights campaigning in the US was met with much more forthright defence, not only by the major scientific societies, funding agencies and medical organisations, but also by the US government. To be positive, there are many encouraging features of the New Scientist poll. Interest
19、ingly, the public seems to employ the same kind of utilitarian philosophy that underpins the law in Britainweighing potential benefits against the species involved (thus, monkeys are more “valuable“ than mice) and the likelihood of suffering. Clearly, people in Britain do not recognise the essential
20、 link between animal research and testing and the medical treatments that they receive. Only 18 per cent of those who had taken (or had a close family member who had taken) a drug prescribed for a serious illness realized that the drug had been tested on animals, as all drugs are. Obviously, a large
21、 majority of those surveyed believe that they can happily benefit from medical treatment without taking advantage of animal research. No wonder so many people oppose it when asked the straight yes/no question. The views of the public must be respected. But this poll tells us that, while they are ope
22、n to persuasion, their reaction is based on misunderstanding. The responsibility for providing honest evidence for the public ties not just with those who use animals in their research, but with other scientists who depend on that work. It lies with the doctors who benefit from animal research, with
23、 the pharmaceuticals and biotech industries, and the medical charities and funding agencies whose work would be crippled without it. But most of all, responsibility rests with government, which should cultivate serious and transparent debate between those of different opinion, and provide the public
24、especially young peoplewith the honest evidence they need and deserve.（分数：25.00）(1).In the first sentence of Paragraph 3, “such misrepresentation“ refers to _.（分数：5.00）A.the idea that other methods can be substituted for animal researchB.the claim that animal experiment is intentionally cruelC.the b
25、elief that all drugs developed with animal tests are dangerousD.the fact that scientists and medical organizations support animal experimentation(2).In the author“s opinion, more people in Britain oppose animal experiments because _.（分数：5.00）A.they are kinder than those in the United StatesB.they do
26、n“t know the benefits resulting from animal testsC.most of the medicines don“t need animal experiments to work wellD.some scientists use rare species for their medical experimentation(3).To correct the situation, the author suggests that _.（分数：5.00）A.only some animals should be used for researchB.sc
27、ientists and doctors should respect the views of the publicC.the benefits of animal tests should be made widely knownD.the debate on animal tests should be put to a serious public poll(4).The author“s attitude towards animal research is _.（分数：5.00）A.negativeB.questioningC.neutralD.positive(5).The pa
28、ssage is mainly concerned with _.（分数：5.00）A.supporting a positionB.refuting some argumentsC.describing a caseD.presenting a new perspectiveAimee Hunter, a research psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, has long studied individual responses to antidepressants. Being skeptical of
29、the true effectiveness of the drugs, she says she was originally interested in researching the impact of placebos. But over the years, her own data began convincing her otherwise. “I“ve come to see now, by doing the research myself and spending hours looking at numbers, that the medication is absolu
30、tely doing something,“ Hunter says. In an earlier study that Hunter published in 2009, she and her team used the same QEEG technique on 58 patients, who were given a placebo daily for one week before being randomized to take either placebo or an active drug. Researchers found distinct patterns of br
31、ain activity in the patients; not everyone responded to the placebo the same way. “We found that changes in brain function occurring during the first week of placebo predicted who will do well on medication,“ she says. The region where changes were recorded-in the prefrontal lobe-is thought to be in
32、volved in generating expectations. A common explanation for the placebo effect is that the mere anticipation of improvement begets real benefit. But in the case of Hunter“s patients, the changes in brain activity predicted actual response to the antidepressant, not to placebo. Intriguingly, in patie
33、nts who showed the specific brain response associated with antidepressant-related recovery, the most significant improvement was seen in what psychologists call interpersonal sensitivity-how people respond to either positive or negative social events. When suffering from depression, patients tend to
34、 become inured to positive social cues and oversensitized to negative ones. They may interpret a passerby“s frown as being directed at them, for instance, and some research has found that depressed people are more likely to misidentify smiling faces as conveying neutral or negative emotions. The pat
35、ients who improved with medication in Hunter“s study “were less sensitive to rejection and more comfortable with others,“ she says. Reducing emotional sensitivity-not treating depression 0 per se is what medications like Prozac, which affect the levels of serotonin in the brain, do best, according t
36、o Healy. If that entire class of drugs had been studied and marketed as pills to reduce emotional reactivity rather than depression, he says, “the placebo response would be very small compared to the drug.“ Still, treating a patient“s oversensitivity does not necessarily help depression. For some pe
37、ople whose illness is marked by social dread and misperceived rejections, reducing that anxiety could be critical. But for someone whose depression is primarily experienced as deep sadness and inability to feel pleasure, blunting emotional sensitivity may do little good. These differences further ex
38、plain why the drugs may produce such varied individual responses. Evidence suggests that about 80% of people with depression can be helped by drugs, talk therapy or a combination of the two, so although it is critical to figure out which treatments work for which patients, the larger question remain
39、s: Why aren“t most patients getting good care, and why do we continue to insist that so many of those taking antidepressants don“t really need them?（分数：25.00）(1).At the beginning of her research, Hunter _.（分数：5.00）A.could not distinguish antidepressants from placebosB.found medication was of no use
40、to depressed patientsC.did not believe antidepressants could really help patientsD.did not use the right medical instrument to do her experiment(2).It is generally believed that placebos can work on some patients because _.（分数：5.00）A.the patients believe in the effects of these placebosB.the placebo
41、s have generated real effects on the patientsC.the patients are never told anything about the placebosD.the placebos are milder medications than antidepressants(3).The most important finding Hunter has made is that _.（分数：5.00）A.antidepressants never work on any patients with depressionB.antidepressa
42、nts lower the patients“ interpersonal sensitivityC.depressed people tend to look at the negative side of a situationD.depressed people never get along well with other people(4).Reducing emotional sensitivity _.（分数：5.00）A.is what a placebo can do for patientsB.cannot help depressed patients at allC.w
43、orks better with some patients than with othersD.is the only thing an antidepressant can do(5).It is implied in the last paragraph _.（分数：5.00）A.talk therapy is the most effective treatment for depressed peopleB.it is easy to figure out which patient should receive which treatmentC.a combination of t
44、alk therapy and drugs works best on depressed patientsD.antidepressants should not be treated simply as another kind of placebosA dependent audit comes from your employer, who wants proof that the people you“re carrying on the company health plan really are your dependents. If you can“t prove they a
45、re, the company will drop them. The goal is to ferret out children who are over age 18 and not in school, ex-spouses, sometimes even nieces or nephewspeople, in short, who do not meet an employer“s definition of dependent. If your company does not already conduct these audits, chances are it eventua
46、lly will. And while it may strike you as an annoyance, do not ignore this task. Otherwise, eligible dependents could lose their health coverage. From an employer“s perspective, audits make good business sense. Health care costs have been rising by 5 to 10 percent a year for over a decade, and employ
47、ers want to contain those costs. An audit of a 10,000-person employer will typically uncover 200 to 500 ineligible dependents, said John Fazio, a senior consultant with the employee benefits firm Towers Watson. Removing these people, who cost a company an average of $2,100 a head, translates into an
48、nual savings of $420,000 to $1.05 million a year for the employer. Dependent audits have been around for more than a decade. But they have become popular in the last few years, as employers desperately sought ways to trim their health care budgets. This year 69 percent of large companies plan to con
49、duct a dependent audit, up from the 55 percent that planned to do so in 2008, according to a March survey by Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health, a nonprofit organization of large employers. From the employees“ perspective, such audits are at best an annoyance, forcing them to gather paper work proving, say, that a child who had been covered for years remains eligible. At worst, an audit can be a wrenching and costly experience when a worker“s dependent is found to be ineligible and has to
