1、专业英语八级（阅读）-试卷134及答案解析 (总分：44.00，做题时间：90分钟)一、READING COMPREHENSIO(总题数：11，分数：44.00)1.PART II READING COMPREHENSION_2.SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONSIn this section there are several passages followed by fourteen multiple-choice questions. For each multiple-choice question, there are four suggested
2、 answers marked A , B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer._Letty the old lady lived in a Single Room Occupancy hotel approved by the New York City welfare department and occupied by old losers, junkies, cockroaches and rats. Whenever she left her rooma tiny cubicle with a cot,
3、 a chair, a seven-year-old calendar and a window so filthy it blended with the unspeakable wallsshe would pack all her valuables in two large shopping bags and carry them with her. If she didnt, everything would disappear when she left the hotel. Her things were also a burden. Everything she managed
4、 to possess was portable and had multiple uses. A shawl is more versatile than a sweater, and hats are no good at all, although she used to have lots of nice hats, she told me. The first day I saw Letty I had left my apartment in search of a bag lady. I had seen these women round the city frequently
5、, had spoken to a few. Sitting around the parks had taught me more about these city vagabonds. As a group, few were eligible for social security. They had always been flotsam and jetsam, floating from place to place and from job to jobwaitress, short order cook, sales clerk, stock boy, maid, mechani
6、c, porterall those jobs held by faceless people. The bag ladies were a special breed. They looked and acted and dressed strangely in some of the most determinedly conformist areas of the city. They frequented Fourteen Street downtown, and the fancy shopping districts. They seemed to like crowds but
7、remained alone. They held long conversations with themselves, with telephone poles, with unexpected cracks in the sidewalk. They hung around lunch counters and cafeterias, and could remain impervious to the rudeness of a determined waitress and sit for hours clutching a coffee cup full of cold memor
8、ies. Letty was my representative bag lady. I picked her up on the corner of Fourteenth and Third Avenue. She had the most suspicious face I had encountered; her entire body, in fact, was pulled forward in one large question mark. She was carrying a double plain brown shopping bag and a larger white
9、bag ordering you to vote for some obscure man for some obscure office and we began talking about whether or not she was an unpaid advertisement. I asked her if she would have lunch with me, and let me treat, as a matter of fact. After some hesitation and a few sharp glances over the top of her glass
10、es, Letty the Bag Lady let me come into her life. We had lunch that day, the next, and later the next week. Being a bag lady was a full-time job. Take the problem of the hotels. You cant stay to long in any one of those welfare hotels, Letty told me, because the junkies figure out your routine, and
11、when you get your checks, and youll be robbed, even killed. So you have to move a lot. And every time you move, you have to make three trips to the welfare office to get them to approve the new place, even if its just another cockroach-filled, rat-infested hole in the wall. During the last five year
12、s, Letty tried to move every two or three months. Most of our conversations took place standing in line. New York State had just changed the regulations governing Medicaid cards and Letty had to get a new card. That took two hours in line, one hour sitting in a large dank-smelling room, and two minu
13、tes with a social worker who never once looked up. Another time, her case worker at the welfare office sent Letty to try and get food stamps, and after standing in line for three hours she found out she didnt qualify because she didnt have cooking facilities in her room. This is my social life,she s
14、aid. I run around the city and stand in line. You stand in line to see one of them fancy movies and calling it art; I stand in line for medicine, for food, for glasses, for the cards to get pills, for the pills; I stand in line to see people who never see who I am; at the hotel, sometimes I even hav
15、e to stand in line to go to the John. When I die therell probably be a line to get through the gate, and when I get up to the front of the line, somebody will push it closed and say, Sorry. Come back after lunch. These agencies, I figure they have to make it as hard for you to get help as they can,
16、so only really strong people or really stubborn people like me can survive. Letty would talk and talk; sometimes, she didnt seem to know I was even there. She never remembered my name, and would give a little start of surprise whenever I said hers, as if it had been a long time since anyone had said
17、 Letty. I dont think she thought of herself as a person, anymore; I think she had accepted the view that she was a welfare case, a Mediaid card, a nuisance in the bus depot in the winter time, a victim to any petty criminal, existing on about the same level as cockroaches.（分数：8.00）(1).Which of the f
18、ollowing is closest in meaning to flotsam and jetsam in the second paragraph?（分数：2.00）A.Old losers.B.Junkies.C.Vagabonds.D.Bag ladies.(2).According to the second and third paragraphs, which of the following is NOT true about the bag ladies?（分数：2.00）A.They tend to congregate in crowded city centers.B
19、.They sometimes work as unpaid advertisement for certain candidates.C.They tend to dress and act in an eccentric way.D.They are often treated with contempt and indifference.(3).From the passage we can get the impression that Letty is all of the following EXCEPT_.（分数：2.00）A.suspiciousB.rudeC.talkativ
20、eD.cynical(4).What is the authors attitude towards Letty?（分数：2.00）A.Doubtful.B.Detached.C.Sympathetic.D.Appreciative.About two-thirds of the worlds population is expected to live in cities by the year 2020 and, according to the United Nations, approximately 3.7 billion people will inhabit urban area
21、s some ten years later. As cities grow, so do the number of buildings that characterize them: office towers, factories, shopping malls and high-rise apartment buildings. These structures depend on artificial ventilation systems to keep clean and cool air flowing to the people inside. We know these s
22、ystems by the term air-conditioning. Although many of us may feel air-conditioners bring relief from hot, humid or polluted outside air, they pose many potential health hazards. Much research has looked at how the circulation of air inside a closed environmentsuch as an office buildingcan spread dis
23、ease or expose occupants to harmful chemicals. One of the more widely publicised dangers is that of Legionnaires disease, which was first recognised in the 1970s. This was found to have affected people in buildings with air-conditioning systems in which warm air pumped out of the systems cooling tow
24、ers was somehow sucked back into the air intake, in most cases due to poor design. This warm air was, needless to say, the perfect environment for the rapid growth of disease-carrying bacteria originating from outside the building, where it existed in harmless quantities. The warm, bacteria-laden ai
25、r was combined with cooled, conditioned air and was then circulated around various parts of the building. Studies showed that even people outside such buildings were at risk if they walked past air exhaust ducts. Cases of Legionnaires disease are becoming fewer with newer system designs and modifica
26、tions to older systems, but many older buildings, particularly in developing countries, require constant monitoring. The ways in which air-conditioners work to clean the air can inadvertently cause health problems, too. One such way is with the use of an electrostatic precipitator, which removes dus
27、t and smoke particles from the air. What precipitators also do, however, is to emit large quantities of positive air ions into the ventilation system. A growing number of studies show that overexposure to positive air ions can result in headaches, fatigue and feelings of irritation. Large air-condit
28、ioning systems add water to the air they circulate by means of humidifiers. In older systems, the water used for this process is kept in special reservoirs, the bottoms of which provide breeding grounds for bacteria and fungi which can find their way into the ventilation system. The risk to human he
29、alth from this situation has been highlighted by the fact that the immune systems of approximately half of workers in air-conditioned office buildings have developed antibodies to fight off the organisms found at the bottom of system reservoirs. Chemical disinfectants, called biocides, that are adde
30、d to reservoirs to make them germ-free, are dangerous in their own right in sufficient quantities, as they often contain compounds such as pentachlorophenol, which is strongly linked to abdominal cancers. Finally, it should be pointed out that the artificial climatic environment created by air-condi
31、tioners can also adversely affect us. In a natural environment, whether indoor or outdoor, there are small variations in temperature and humidity. Indeed, the human body has long been accustomed to these normal changes. In an air-conditioned living or work environment, however, body temperatures rem
32、ain well under 37, our normal temperature. This leads to a weakened immune system and thus greater susceptibility to diseases such as colds and flu.（分数：8.00）(1).The word inadvertently in the fourth paragraph probably means_.（分数：2.00）A.intentionallyB.indeliberatelyC.definitelyD.imminently(2).Which of
33、 the following substance can NOT be found directly from an old ventilation system?（分数：2.00）A.Chemical disinfectants.B.Bacteria.C.Fungi.D.Pentachlorophenol.(3).Air-conditioning may have ill effect on human body in all of the following ways EXCEPT that_.（分数：2.00）A.much exposure may make people feel an
34、noyedB.harmful chemicals in the ventilation system may cause cancersC.much exposure to low temperature may cause immune diseasesD.people may suffer from headache in an air-conditioned office(4).The main purpose of the passage is to_.（分数：2.00）A.introduce the dangers of air-conditioningB.explain the d
35、efects of old air-conditioningC.illustrate how air-conditioning affects peoples healthD.advocate abandoning old air-conditioningThe other day, I walked into an airport mens room, which was empty except for one man, who appeared to be having a loud, animated conversation with a urinal. Ten years ago,
36、 I would have turned right around and walked briskly back out of there. One rule my parents stressed when I was a child was: Never stay in a restroom with a man who talks to the plumbing. But, of course, as a modern human, I knew that this man was talking on his cell phone, using one of those earpie
37、ce thingies, with the little microphone on the wire, the kind that people feel they must shout at, to make sure their vital messages are getting through. Its not clear to me why so many people in airports use the earpiece thingies. Why do they need to keep their hands free? Do they expect some emerg
38、ency to suddenly arise that will require them to have both hands free while talking? Or maybe theyre afraid that if they hold the phone next to their head, the radiation will give them brain cancer. If so, an option they might consider is wrapping their heads in aluminum foil. Granted, this would ma
39、ke them look stupid. But not nearly as stupid as they look shouting into their earpiece wires. So anyway, there I was, in this restroom, standing maybe six feet from this guy, both of us facing the wall, him shouting at his urinal about some business thing involving specifications, and at some point
40、 he said I swear this is a direct quoteI am handling it. This caused me to emit an involuntary snorting sound (not loud; certainly nowhere near as loud as this guy was talking; just a little snortlet), which caused the guy to stop talking andviolating the No. 1 Guy Rule of Restroom Etiquette? turn h
41、is head and look directly at me, so I could see (using peripheral vision) that he was irritated by my rude interruption of his conversation. Then he went back to shouting at the urinal. The point is that every key element of this scenariothe cell phone, the airplane, the zipper is made possible by t
42、echnology. We know that technology is a wonderful thing. But at what point does technology go too far? Is it fair to say that cell phones, if used thoughtfully and politely, are OK, but that if a person attaches an earpiece thingy and walks around shouting in public, bystanders should be allowed to
43、snatch the wire and sprint off down the airport concourse, with the shouters earphone, and possibly even the shouters detached ear, bouncing gaily behind on the floor? I think we all agree that the answer is: Yes. When technology goes too far, ordinary citizens must take action. But the question is:
44、 How do we define too far? I will tell you. We define too far as when scientists start putting weapons on cockroaches. This is actually happening, according to an article in the Sept. 6 issue of Science magazine, brought to my attention by alert reader Richard Sweetman. This article states that rese
45、archers at the University of California at Berkeley have been mounting tiny cannons on the backs of cockroaches. That is correct: These researchers have been outfitting live cockroaches with backpacks containing plastic tubes filled with explosives. Of course, the researchers have a scientific reaso
46、n for doing this: They are on LSD. No, really, it has something to do with figuring out how cockroaches have such good balance (You almost never see a cockroach fall off a bicycle.). The researchers have used their findings to construct a working robot roach that is, according to Science, the size o
47、f a breadbox. Swell! If theres anything this world needs more than armed cockroaches, its giant, mechanized cockroaches! Newspaper story from the year 2010:A homeowner in Santa Rosa, California, was found shot to death in his kitchen Friday. Police said the man apparently was felled by 500 rounds of
48、 small-bore cannon fire, mostly in his ankles, indicating that this was the work of the gang of armed research cockroaches that escaped from a Berkeley lab. Police said the motive in the slaying was apparently a Ring Ding. In a related development, an escaped robot cockroach broke into an Oakland Wal-Mart and made off with an estimated 17,000 AA batteries. Ask yourself; Is that the kind of story you want to read in your newspaper? No, seriously, this is bad. We need somebo
