1、考博英语模拟试卷 292及答案与解析 一、 Reading Comprehension 0 A new study suggests that contrary to most surveys, people are actually more stressed at home than at work. Researchers measured peoples Cortisol, which is a stress marker, while they were at work and while they were at home and found it higher at what i
2、s supposed to be a place of refuge. “Further contradicting conventional wisdom, we found that women as well as men have lower levels of stress at work than at home, “ writes one of the researchers, Sarah Damaske. In fact women even say they feel better at work, she notes. “ It is men, not women, who
3、 report being happier at home than at work. “ Another surprise is that findings hold true for both those with children and without, but more so for nonparents. This is why people who work outside the home have better health. What the study doesnt measure is whether people are still doing work when t
4、heyre at home, whether it is household work or work brought home from the office. For many men, the end of the workday is a time to kick back. For women who stay home, they never get to leave the office. And for women who work outside the home, they often are playing catchup-with-household tasks. Wi
5、th the blurring of roles, and the fact that the home front lags well behind the workplace a making adjustments for working women, its not surprising that women are more stressed at home. But its not just a gender thing. At work, people pretty much know what theyre supposed to be doing: working, mark
6、ing money, doing the tasks they have to do in order to draw an income. The bargain is very pure: Employee puts in hours of physical or mental labor and employee draws out life-sustaining moola. On the home front, however, people have no such clarity. Rare is the household in which the division of la
7、bor is so clinically and methodically laid out. There are a lot of tasks to be done, there are inadequate rewards for most of them. Your home colleaguesyour familyhave no clear rewards for their labor; they need to be talked into it, or if theyre teenagers, threatened with complete removal of all el
8、ectronic devices. Plus, theyre your family. You cannot fire your family. You never really get to go home from home. So its not surprising that people are more stressed at home. Not only are the tasks apparently infinite, the co-workers are much harder to motivate. 1 According to Paragraph 1, most pr
9、evious surveys found that home_. （ A） offered greater relaxation than the workplace （ B） was an ideal place for stress measurement （ C） generated more stress than the workplace （ D） was an unrealistic place for relaxation 2 According to Damaske, who are likely to be the happiest at home? （ A） Childl
10、ess wives. （ B） Working mothers. （ C） Childless husbands. （ D） Working fathers. 3 The blurring of working womens roles refers to the fact that_. （ A） it is difficult for them to leave their office （ B） their home is also a place for kicking back （ C） there is often much housework left behind （ D） th
11、ey are both bread winners and housewives 4 The word “moola“(Line4, Para. 4)most probably means_. （ A） skills （ B） energy （ C） earnings （ D） nutrition 5 The home front differs from the workplace in that_. （ A） division of labor at home is seldom clear-cut （ B） home is hardly a cozier working environm
12、ent （ C） household tasks are generally more motivating （ D） family labor is often adequately rewarded 5 The two claws of the mature American lobster are decidedly different from each other. The crusher claw is short and stout; the cutter claw is long and slender. Such bilateral asymmetry, in which t
13、he fight side of the body is, in all other respects, a mirror image of the left side, is not unlike handedness in humans. But where the majority of humans are right-handed, in lobsters the crasher claw appears with equal probability on either the right side or left side of the body. Bilateral asymme
14、try of the claws comes about gradually. In the juvenile fourth and fifth stages of development, the paired claws are symmetrical and cutter like. Asymmetry begins to appear in the juvenile sixth stage of development, and the paired claws further diverge toward well-defined cutter and crusher claws d
15、uring succeeding stages. An intriguing aspect of this development was discovered by Victor Emmer. He found that if one of the paired claws is removed during the fourth or fifth stage, the intact claw invariably becomes a crusher, while the regenerated claw becomes a cutter. Removal of a claw during
16、a later juvenile stage or during adulthood, when asymmetry is present, does not alter the asymmetry; the intact and regenerate claws retain their original structures. These observations indicate that the conditions that trigger differentiation must operate in a random manner when the paired claws ar
17、e intact, but in a nonrandom manner when one of the claws is lost. One possible explanation is that differential use of the claws determines their asymmetry. Perhaps the claw that is used more becomes the crusher. This would explain why, when one of the claws is missing during the fourth or fifth st
18、age, the intact claw always becomes a crusher. With two intact claws, initial use of one claw might prompt the animal to use it more than the other throughout the juvenile fourth and fifth stages, causing it to become a crusher. To test this hypothesis, researchers raised lobsters in the juvenile fo
19、urth and fifth stages of development in a laboratory environment in which the lobsters could manipulate oyster chips.(Not coincidentally, at this stage of development lobsters typically change from a habitat where they drift passively, to the ocean floor where they have the opportunity to be more ac
20、tive by borrowing in the substrate.)Under these conditions, the lobsters developed asymmetric claws, half with crusher claws on the left, and half with crusher claws on the right. In contrast, when juvenile lobsters were reared in a smooth tank without the oyster chips, the majority developed two cu
21、tter claws. This unusual configuration of symmetrical cutter claws did not change when the lobsters were subsequently placed in a ma-nipulable environment or when they lost and regenerated one or both claws. 6 The passage is primarily concerned with_. （ A） drawing an analogy between asymmetry in lob
22、sters and handedness in humans （ B） developing a method for predicating whether crusher claws in lobster will appear on the left or right side （ C） explaining differences between lobsters crusher claws and cutter claws （ D） discussing a possible explanation for the way bilateral asymmetry is determi
23、ned in lobsters 7 Which of the following experimental results, if observed, would most clearly contradict the findings of Victor Emmer? （ A） A left cutter like claw is removed in the fifth stage and a crusher claw develops on the right side. （ B） A left cutter like claw is removed in the fourth stag
24、e and a crusher claw develops on the left side. （ C） A left cutter like claw is removed in the six stage and a crusher claw develops on the right side. （ D） A left cutter like claw is removed in the fourth stage and a crusher claw develops on the right side. 8 It can be inferred from the passage tha
25、t one difference between lobsters in the earlier stages of development and those in the juvenile fourth and fifth stages is that lobsters in the early stages are_. （ A） likely to be less active （ B） likely to be less symmetrical （ C） more likely to replace a crusher claw with a cutter claw （ D） more
26、 likely to regenerate a lost claw 9 Which of the following conditions does the passage suggest is a possible cause for the failure of a lobster to develop a crusher claw? （ A） The loss of a claw during the third or earlier stage of development. （ B） The lose of claw during the fourth or fifth stage
27、of development. （ C） The loss of a claw during the sixth stage of development. （ D） Development in an environment devoid of material that can be manipulated. 10 The author regards the idea that differentiation is triggered randomly when paired claws remain intact as_. （ A） irrefutable considering th
28、e authoritative nature of Emmas observations （ B） likely in view of present evidence （ C） contradictory to conventional thinking on lobster-claw differentiation （ D） purely speculative because it is based on scattered research and experimentation 10 The earth is witnessing an urban revolution, as pe
29、ople worldwide crowd into towns and cities. In 1800 only five percent of the worlds population were urban dwellers; now the proportion has risen to more than forty-five percent, and by the year 2010 more people will live in towns and cities than in the countryside. Humanity will, for the first time,
30、 have become a predominantly urban species. Though the world is getting more crowded by the day, absolute numbers of population are less important than where people concentrate and whether these areas can cope with them. Even densities, however, tell us nothing about the quality of the infrastructur
31、eroads, housing and job creation, for exampleor the availability of crucial services. The main question, then, is not how many people there are in a given area, but how well their needs can be met. Density figures have to be set beside measurements of wealth and employment, the quality of housing an
32、d the availability of education, medical care, clean water, sanitation and other vital services. The urban revolution is taking place mainly in the Third World, where it is hardest to accommodate. Between 1950 and 1985 the number of city dwellers grew more than twice as fast in the Third World as in
33、 industrialized countries. During this period, the urban population of the developed world increased from 477 million to 838 million, less than double; but it quadrupled in developing countries, from 286 million to 1. 14 billion. Africas urban population is racing along at five percent a year on ave
34、rage, doubling city numbers every fourteen years. By the turn of the century, three in every four Latin Americans will live in urban areas, as will two in every five Asians and one in every three Africans. Developing countries will have to increase their urban facilities by two thirds by then, if th
35、ey are to maintain even their present inadequate levels of services and housing. In 1940 only one out of every hundred of the worlds people lived in a really big city, one with a population of over a million. By 1980 this proportion had already risen to one in ten. Two of the worlds biggest cities,
36、Mexico and Sao Paulo, are already bursting at the seamsand their populations are doubling in less than twenty years. About a third of the people of the Third Worlds cities now live in desperately overcrowded slums and squatter settlements. Many are unemployed, uneducated, undernourished and chronica
37、lly sick. Tens of millions of new people arrive every year, flocking in from the countryside in what is the greatest mass migration in history. Pushed out of the countryside by rural poverty and drawn to the cities in the hope of a better life, they find no houses waiting for them, no water supplies
38、, no sewerage, no schools. They throw up makeshift hovels, built of whatever they can find: sticks, fronds, cardboard, tar-paper, straw, petrol tins and, if they are lucky, corrugated iron They have to take the land none else wants; land that is too wet, too dry, too steep or too polluted for normal
39、 habitation. Yet all over the world the inhabitants of these apparently hopeless slums show extraordinary enterprise in improving their lives. While many settlements remain stuck in apathy, many others are gradually improved through the vigour and co-operation of their people, who turn flimsy shacks
40、 into solid buildings, build school, lay out streets and put in electricity and water supplies. Governments can help by giving the squatters the right to the land that they have usually occupied illegally, giving them the incentive to improve their homes and neighborhoods. The most important way to
41、ameliorate the effects of the Third Worlds exploding cities, however, is to slow down the migration. This involves correcting the bias most governments show towards cities and towns and against the countryside. With few sources of hard currency, though, many governments in developing countries conti
42、nue to concentrate their limited development efforts in cities and towns, rather than rural areas, where many of the most destitute live. As a result, food production falls as the countryside slides ever deeper into depression. Since the process of urbanization concentrates people, the demand for ba
43、sic necessities, like food, energy, drinking water and shelter, is also increased, which can exact a heavy toll on the surrounding countryside. High-quality agricultural land is shrinking in many regions, taken out of production because of over-use and mismanagement. Creeping urbanization could aggr
44、avate this situation, further constricting economic development. The most effective way of tackling poverty, and of stemming urbanization, is to reverse national priorities in many countries, concentrating more resources in rural areas where most poor people still live. This would boost food product
45、ion and help to build national economies more securely. Ultimately, though, the choice of priorities comes down to a question of power. The people of the countryside are powerless beside those of the towns; the destitute of the countryside may starve in their scattered millions, whereas the poor con
46、centrated in urban slums pose a constant threat of disorder. In all but a few developing countries the bias towards the cities will therefore continue, as will the migrations that are swelling their numbers beyond control. 11 The purpose of the passage is_. （ A） to warn about the dangers of revoluti
47、ons in towns （ B） to warn about the possibility of a population explosion （ C） to suggest governments should change their priorities （ D） to suggest governments invest in more housing in cities 12 The urban population of the world_. （ A） has risen to around forty percent in the last 200 years （ B） w
48、ill have risen to more than fifty percent by the year 2010 （ C） has risen by forty-five percent since 1800 （ D） will live in cities for the first time 13 The most important factor is_. （ A） the quality of the infrastructure and services （ B） where people are concentrated （ C） wealth and employment （
49、 D） density figures and measurements 14 A third of the people in Third World cities_. （ A） live in Mexico and Sao Paulo （ B） are undernourished and ill （ C） live in inadequate housing （ D） arrived last year 15 Many Third World city dwellers_. （ A） start their own business enterprises （ B） create their own infrastructure and services （ C） sleep in the streets （ D） form peoples co-operatives 16 Governments give_. （ A） incentives to improve the slums （ B） land to squatters （ C） preference to urban areas
