1、大学英语四级改革适用（长篇阅读）模拟试卷 2及答案与解析 Section B 0 Want to Know Your Disease Risk? Check Your Exposome A)When it comes to health, which is more important, nature or nurture? You may well think your genes are a more important predictor of health and ill health. Not so fast. In fact, it transpires(得知 )that our
2、everyday environment outweighs our genetics, when it comes to measuring our risk of disease. The genome is out welcome the exposome B)“The exposome represents everything a person is exposed to in the environment, thats not in the genes,“ says Stephen Rappaport, environmental health scientist at the
3、University of California, Berkeley. That includes stress, diet, lifestyle choices, recreational and medicinal drug use and infections, to name a few. “The big difference is that the exposome changes throughout life as our bodies, diets and lifestyles change,“ he says. While our understanding of the
4、human genome has been growing at an exponential(迅速发展的 )rate over the last decade, it is not as helpful as we hoped in predicting diseases. “Genes only contribute 10 per cent to the overall disease burden,“ says Rappaport. “Knowing genetic risk factors can prove absolutely futile(无用的 ),“ says Jeremy
5、Nicholson at Imperial College London. He points to work by Nina Paynter at the Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston, who investigated the effects of 101 genetic markers implicated in heart disease. After following over 19,000 women for 12 years, she found these markers were not able to predict anyt
6、hing about the incidence of heart disease in this group. C)On the other hand, the impact of environmental influences is still largely a mystery. “Theres an imbalance between our ability to investigate the genome and the environment,“ says Chris Wild, director of the International Agency for Research
7、 on Cancer, who came up with the idea of the exposome. In reality, most diseases are probably caused by a combination of the two, which is where the exposome comes in. “The idea is to have a comprehensive analysis of a persons full exposure history,“ says Wild. He hopes a better understanding of exp
8、osures will shed a brighter light on disease risk factors. D)There are likely to be critical periods of exposure in development. For example, the time from birth to 3 years of age is thought to be particularly important. “We know that this is the time when brain connections are made, and that if you
9、 are obese by this age, youll have problems as an adult,“ says Nicholson. In theory, a blood or urine sample taken from an individual could provide a snapshot of what that person has been exposed to. But how do you work out what fingerprints chemicals might leave in the body? The task is not as form
10、idable(艰难的 )as it sounds. For a start, researchers could make use of swathes of biobank information that has already been collected. “There has been a huge international funding effort in adult cohorts(一群 )like the UK Biobank already,“ says Wild. “If we improved analysis, we could apply it to these
11、groups.“ E)Several teams are also working towards developing wearable devices to measure personal exposure to chemicals in the environment. “We can put chemicals in categories,“ says Rappaport. “We could start by prioritising toxic chemicals, and look for markers of these toxins in the blood, while
12、hormones and metals can be measured directly.“ Rappaport is looking at albumin, a common protein in the blood that transports toxins to the liver where they are processed and broken down. He wants to know how it reacts with a range of chemicals, and is measuring the products. “You can get a fingerpr
13、int a display of all the products an individual has been exposed to.“ F)By combining this information with an enhanced understanding of how exposure affects health, the exposome could help better predict a persons true disease risk. And we shouldnt have to wait long Rappaport reckons we can reap the
14、 benefits within a generation. To this end, the US National Institutes of Health has set up an exposure biology programme. “Were looking for interactions between genes and exposure to work out an individuals risk of disease,“ says David Balshaw, who manages the programme. “It would allow you to tail
15、or(使合适 )the therapeutic response to that persons risk.“ An understanding of this interaction, reflected in a persons metabolic(新陈代谢 )profiles, might also help predict how they will respond to a drug. Nicholson has been looking for clues in metabolite profiles of urine samples. G)Last year, his resea
16、rch group used these profiles to predict how individuals would metabolise paracetamol(扑热息痛 ). “It turned out that gut microbes were very important,“ says Nicholson. “Weve shown that the pre-dose urinary metabolite profile could predict the metabolism of painkilling drugs, and therefore predict drug
17、toxicity.“ The findings suggest that metabolic profiles of exposure could help doctors tailor therapies and enable them to prescribe personalized medicines. Justin Stebbing at Imperial College London has already shown that metabolic profiles of women with breast cancer can predict who will respond t
18、o certain therapies. It is early days, but the initial findings look promising. “Were reaching the point where were capable of assessing the exposome,“ says Balshaw. With the implications for understanding disease causes and risks, and a real prospect of developing personalised medicine, the exposom
19、e is showing more promise than the genome already, he adds. Bugging your biosphere H)How does air pollution or stress leave a trace in the blood? The US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, is trying to find out. One group funded by the NIH and led by Nongjian Tao at Arizona State Un
20、iversitys Biodesign Institute in Tempre is developing wearable wireless sensors to monitor an individuals exposure to environmental pollutants. Taos team started by creating software for Windows phones, but they are working on apps that could be used on any smart phone. In theory, anyone could pop o
21、n(戴 )a sensor and download an app to receive real-time information on exposure to environmental pollutants. At the same time, smart phones monitoring your location can combine the level of pollution with an exact time and place. Tao presented his sensor at the Circuits and Systems for Medical and En
22、vironmental Applications Workshop in Yucatan Mexico last week. I)“Were now moving prototypes into human studies, and progressing those prototypes into products,“ says David Balshaw of the NIH. Earlier this year, Taos group tried out the sensor on individuals taking a stroll around Los Angeles, Calif
23、ornia. They were able to measure how exposure to pollutants changed as each person wandered near busy roads and petrol stations. 1 It is Chris Wild who put forward the conception of exposome. 2 Rappaport has confidence in the realization of exposomes helping better predict peoples true disease risk.
24、 3 According to Jeremy Nicholson, knowing genetic risk factors of health turns out to be completely useless. 4 Theoretically speaking, we can get to know what he has been exposed to from ones blood samples. 5 In the authors eyes, when measuring the risk of disease, you should consider the influence
25、of exposome first. 6 According to the passage, the albumin in our blood plays the role of conveying the toxins in our body to the liver. 7 According to the findings of Nicholsons research group, doctors can give a prescription of personalized medicines with the help of metabolic profiles of exposure
26、. 8 Nicholson says that ones period from birth to the age of three is a period that forms his brain connection. 9 The wearable wireless sensors being developed by Taos research group are used to detect the exposure to environmental pollutants of individuals. 10 According to the passage, the metaboli
27、c profiles of individuals can reflect the interaction between genes and exposure. 10 Past and Present of the Movie Industry A)The beginnings of the movie industry can be traced back to the 1800s, developing much later than other art forms, such as music and painting. The first motion picture exhibit
28、ion, which opened in the early 1900s, was called the “nickelodeon theater“. Admission was only 5 cents, and this attracted a large audience to watch movies as a source of entertainment. These early theaters laid the foundation for the movie industrys expansion and growing popularity. B)In the early
29、stages of the movie industry, the majority of the United States movie houses were situated in small towns and city neighborhoods. As in any industry, there were major players that were not only responsible for exhibiting films, but were also leaders in producing and distributing them. Some of the ke
30、y companies included Paramount, Warner Bros., R. K. 0., Loews(MGM), and Fox(which later became Twentieth Century Fox). It is surprising to note that although these companies were considered the treme de la creme(精英 )of the movie industry, they only dominated approximately 20% of the countrys movie t
31、heaters. This meant that numerous other smaller theaters had substantial market share in the movie industry as well. A few of the smaller independently owned theaters decided to consolidate during the 1930s to gain more power in dealing with film distributors, but the idea of consolidating was not f
32、ully realized until the invention of the television. C)Although only 14,000 homes owned a television during the 1940s, it still had a negative impact on movie houses across the country. As more households bought television sets, ticket sales decreased substantially. In an effort to drum up revenue d
33、uring the 1950s, the Cinerama(which included a curved screen wrapped around the entire theater to “engulf the audience)and 3-D movies were introduced. Over time, however, the increasing popularity of the television ultimately dominated. By the 1960s, movie theaters had lost 60% of their average week
34、ly attendance and more than half of the 20,000 theaters that began operations in the 1940s were forced to close down. These losses became detrimental to the movie industry due to the inability to recover funds invested in the theater house and other sunk costs. D)By the 1970s, the movie industry was
35、 profiting again. Instead of the television acting as a substitute form of entertainment, it was used as a national advertising medium that promoted weekly movies and show times. Within the next few years, multi-screen operations in suburban shopping malls were built, indicating that these publicizi
36、ng techniques were a great success. E)In the following decades, many theater companies established themselves in the growing industry. One of the prominent companies on the East Coast is Loews Cineplex Entertainment Corporation. This corporation is the result from a merger between Sony Corporations
37、Loews Theaters Exhibition Group and Cineplex Odeon Corporation. F)Loews Theaters was the first commercial motion picture exhibitor in North America. Its operations began in 1904, when Marcus Loew established a “nickelodeon“ in a rented room above a penny arcade(走廊 )store in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1924
38、, he merged Metro, a silent movie production company, with The Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer Pictures to form, Metro Goldwyn Mayer(MGM). After the merger, Loews showed films produced by MGM until 1959, when an anti-trust ruling forced studios to give up control of theaters, constri
39、cting their focus to production of films. Following this merger, Loews changed owners twice before Sony Corporation acquired it in 1989. G)The other counterpart in this merger is Cineplex Odeon, based in Toronto, Canada. The firm, founded in 1979, was an integrated entertainment company that became
40、involved in exhibition and distribution of motion pictures. Besides distribution of motion pictures, it also owned other operations, including a major film processing laboratory and a post-production sound facility. Garth Drabinsky started Cineplex with an 18-screen theater in the basement of a Toro
41、nto shopping center. It performed well, but also incurred debt, which led to The Bronfman Group investing in the company. Cineplex then bought Canadian Odeon theaters in 1985, changing its name to Cineplex Odeon. Within the next few years, Cineplex Odeon encountered financial difficulties. By 1996,
42、it sustained net losses totaling $317 million dollars of long-term debt, as reported by the Securities and Exchange Commission filings. In fact, Alien Karp(CEO of Cineplex Odeon)stated that the firm “was certainly a candidate for bankruptcy“. The distressed company was in dire need of financial assi
43、stance and managed to stay afloat through a merger with the financially stable Sonys Loews Theater Exhibition Group. H)The proposed merger was horizontal in nature and was expected to bring forth many benefits to Sony and Cineplex Odeon. Realizing that Cineplex Odeon had undervalued assets that were
44、 reflected in their low stock prices, Sony Corporation agreed to alleviate Cineplex Odeon from the heavy debt, which was leftover from former management. I)According to Lawrence Ruisi, who was appointed the CEO of Loews Cineplex Entertainment, the combination of the companies would produce an establ
45、ishment with an easily manageable debt load, giving it “capacity for growth“. Furthermore, Loews Cineplex would be financially stronger than each of the separate companies. Sony was also expected to gain long-term advantages from the merger. At that time, it had only 1,000 screens in 135 theaters in
46、 the U.S., while Cineplex had 1,600 screens in the U.S. and Canada. Therefore, if the merger took place, Sony would increase its market share in key cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Seattle and Houston. Together, the companies would create strong competition for Carmike Cine
47、mas Inc., which was known as the “WalMart of the theater industry“, operating 500 theaters in small U.S. towns, and also acting as the primary competition for Loews Cineplex. 11 During the 1940s, movie ticket sales decreased due to the popularity of television 12 An anti-trust ruling made studios co
48、uld no longer control theaters. 13 In the early stages of the movie industry, the key movie companies only had a small portion of market share. 14 Cineplexs name was changed to Cineplex Odeon after it bought Canadian Odeon theaters in 1985. 15 Sony Corporation agreed to help Cineplex Odeon because i
49、t had already known that Cineplex Odeon had undervalued assets. 16 The admission of the nickelodeon theater was so low that many people could afford it. 17 Cineplex Odeon managed to overcome its financial difficulty through a merger with a financially stable company. 18 The invention of the television made the consolidation of some smaller independently owned theaters happen. 19 The merger between Sonys Loews Theater Exhibition Group and Cineplex Odeon will enable Sony to increase its market share in key cities. 20 The introducti
