1、考博英语-234 及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Translation(总题数：5，分数：100.00)1.In the first year or so of Web business, most of the action has revolved around efforts to tap the consumer market. More recently, as the Web proved to be more than a fashion, companies have started to buy and sell products and serv
2、ices with one another. Such business-to-business sales make sense because businesspeople typically know what product they“re looking for. Nonetheless, many companies still hesitate to use the Web because of doubts about its reliability. “Businesses need to feel they can trust the pathway between the
3、m and the supplier,“ says senior analyst Blane Erwin of Forrester Research. Some companies are limiting the risk by con-ducting online transactions only with established business partners who are given access to the company“s private internet. Another major shift in the model for Internet commerce c
4、oncerns the technology available for marketing. Until recently, Internet marketing activities have focused on strategies to “pull“ customers into sites. In the past year, however, software companies have developed tools that allow companies to “push“ information directly out to consumers, transmitti
5、ng marketing messages directly to targeted customers. Most notably, the Pointcast Network uses a screen saver to deliver a continually updated stream of news and advertisements to subscribers“ computer monitors. Sub scribers can customize the information they want to receive and proceed directly to
6、a company“s Web site. Companies such as Virtual Vineyards are already starting to use similar technologies to push messages to customers about special sales, product offerings, or other events. But push technology has earned the contempt of many Web users. Online culture thinks highly of the notion
7、that the information flowing onto the screen comes there by specific request. Once commercial promotion begins to fill the screen uninvited, the distinction between the Web and television fades. That“s a prospect that horrifies Net purists. But it is hardly inevitable that companies on the Web will
8、need to resort to push strategies to make money. The examples of Virtual Vineyards, A, and other pioneers show that a Web site selling the right kind of products with the right mix of interactivity, hospitality, and security will attract online customers. And the cost of computing power continues to
9、 free fall, which is a good sign for any enterprise setting up shop in silicon. People looking back 5 or 10 years from now may well wonder why so few companies took the online plunge. （分数：20.00）_2.An invisible border divides those arguing for computers in the classroom on the behalf of students“ car
10、eer prospects and those arguing for computers in the classroom for broader reasons of radical educational reform. Very few writers on the subject have explored this distinction-in-deed, contradiction, which goes to the heart of what is wrong with the campaign to put computers in the classroom. An ed
11、ucation that aims at getting a student a certain kind of job is a technical education, justified for reasons radically different from why education is universally required by law. It is not simply to raise everyone“s job prospects that all children are legally required to attend school into their te
12、ens. Rather, we have a certain conception of the American citizen, a character who is incomplete if he cannot competently assess how his livelihood and happiness are affected by things outside of himself. But this was not always the case, before it was legally required for all children to attend sch
13、ool until a certain age, it was widely accepted that some were just not equipped by nature to pursue this kind of education. With optimism characteristic of all industrialized countries, we came to accept that everyone is fit to be educated. Computer-education advocates forsake this optimistic notio
14、n for a pessimism that betrays their otherwise cheery outlook. Banking on the confusion between educational and vocational reasons for bringing computers into schools, computer-education advocates often emphasize the job prospects of graduates over their educational achievement. There are some good
15、arguments for a technical education given the right kind of student. Many European schools introduce the concept of professional training early on in order to make sure children are properly equipped for the professions they want to join. It is, however, pre-sumptuous to insist that there will only
16、be so many jobs for so many scientists, so many business-men, so many accountants. Besides, this is unlikely to produce the needed number of every kind of professional in a country as large as ours and where the economy is spread over so many states and involves so many international corporations. B
17、ut, for a small group of students, professional training might be the way to go since well-developed skills, all other factors being equal, can be the difference between having a job and not of course, the basics of using any computer these days are very simple. It does not take a lifelong acquainta
18、nce to pick up various software programs. If one wanted to become a computer engineer, that is, of course, an entirely different story. Basic computer skills takeat the very longesta couple of months to learn. In any case, basic computer skills are only complementary to the host of real skills that
19、are necessary to becoming any kind of professional. It should be observed, of course, that no school, vocational or not, is helped by a confusion over its purpose. （分数：20.00）_3.When a Scottish research team startled the world by revealing 3 months ago that it had cloned an adult sheep, President Cli
20、nton moved swiftly. Declaring that he was opposed to using this unusual animal husbandry technique to clone humans, he ordered that federal funds not be used for such an experimentalthough no one had proposed to do soand asked an independent panel of experts haired by Princeton President Harold Shap
21、iro to report back to the White House in 90 days with recommendations for a national policy on human cloning. That group-the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC)has been working feverishly to put its wisdom on paper, and at a meeting on 17 May, members agreed on a near-final draft of their
22、recommendations. NBAC will ask that Clinton“s 90-day ban on federal funds for human cloning be extended indefinitely, and possibly that it be made law. But NBAC members are planning to word the recommendation narrowly to avoid new restrictions on research that involves the cloning of human DNA or ce
23、lls-routine in molecular biology. The panel has not yet reached agreement on a crucial question, however, whether to recommend legislation that would make it a crime for private funding to be used for human cloning. In a draft preface to the recommendations, discussed at the 17 May meeting, Shapiro
24、suggested that the panel had found a broad consensus that it would be “morally unacceptable to attempt to create a human child by adult nuclear cloning.“ Shapiro explained during the meeting that the moral doubt stems mainly from fears about the risk to the health of the child. The panel then inform
25、ally accepted several general conclusions, although some details have not been settled. NBAC plans to call for a continued ban on federal government funding for any attempt to clone body cell nuclei to create a child. Because current federal law already forbids the use of federal funds to create emb
26、ryos (the earliest stage of human offspring before birth) for research or to knowingly endanger an embryo“s life, NBAC will remain silent on embryo research. NBAC members also indicated that they will appeal to privately funded researchers and clinics not to try to clone humans by body cell nuclear
27、transfer. But they were divided on whether to go further by calling for a federal law that would impose a complete ban on human cloning. Shapiro and most members favored an appeal for such legislation, but in a phone interview, he said this issue was still “up in the air“. （分数：20.00）_4.Science, in p
28、ractice, depends far less on the experiments it prepares than on the preparedness of the minds of the men who watch the experiments. Sir Isaac Newton supposedly discovered gravity through the fall of an apple. Apples had been falling in many places for centuries and thousands of people had seen them
29、 fall. But Newton for years had been curious about the cause of the orbital motion of the moon and planets. What kept them in place? Why didn“t they fall out of the sky? The fact that the apple fell down toward the earth and not up into the tree answered the question he had been asking himself about
30、 those larger fruits of the heavens, the moon and the planets. How many men would have considered the possibility of an apple falling up into the tree? Newton did because he was not trying to predict anything. He was just wondering his mind was ready for the unpredictable. Unpredictability is part o
31、f the essential nature of research. If you don“t have unpredictable things, you don“t have research. Scientists tend to forget this when writing their cut and dried reports for the technical journals, but history is filled with examples of it. In talking to some scientists, particularly younger ones
32、, you might gather the impression that they find the “scientific method“ a substitute for imaginative thought. I“ve attended research conferences where a scientist has been asked what he thinks about the advisability of continuing a certain experiment. The scientist has frowned, looked at the graphs
33、, and said “The data are still inconclusive.“ “We know that,“ the men from the budget office have said, “but what do you think? Is it worthwhile going on? What do you think we might expect?“ The scientist has been shocked at having even been asked to speculate. What this amounts to, of course, is th
34、at the scientist has become the victim of his own writings. He has put forward unquestioned claims so consistently that he not only believes them himself, but has convinced industrial and business management that they are true. If experiments are planned and carried out according to plan as faithful
35、ly as the reports in the science journals indicate, then it is perfectly logical for management to expect research to produce results measurable in dollars and cents. It is entirely reasonable for auditors to believe that scientists who know exactly where they are going and how they will get there s
36、hould not be distracted by the necessity of keeping one eye on the cash register while the other eye is on the microscope. Nor, if regularity and conformity to a standard pattern are as desirable to the scientist as the writing of his papers would appear to reflect, is management to be blamed for di
37、scriminating against the “odd balls“ among researchers in favor of more conventional thinkers who “work well with the team“. （分数：20.00）_5.Few creations of big technology capture the imagination like giant dams. Perhaps it is humankind“s long suffering at the mercy of flood and drought that makes the
38、 ideal of forcing the waters to do our bidding so fascination. But to be fascinated is also, sometimes, to be blind. Several giant dam projects threaten to do more harm than good. The lesson from dams is that big is not always beautiful. It doesn“t help that building a big, powerful dam has become a
39、 symbol of achievement for nations and people striving to assert themselves. Egypt“s leadership in the Arab world was cemented by the Aswan High Dam. Turkey“s bid for First World status includes the giant Ataturk Dam. But big dams tend not to work as intended. The Aswan Dam, for example stopped the
40、Nile flooding but deprived Egypt of the fertile silt that floods left. All in return for a giant reservoir of disease which is now so full of silt that it barely generates electricity. And yet, the myth of controlling the waters persists. This week, in the heart of civilized Europe, Slovaks and Hung
41、arians stopped just short of sending in the troops in their contention over a dam on the Danube. The huge complex will probably have all the usual problems of big dams. But Slovakia is bidding for independence from the Czechs, and now needs a dam to prove itself. Meanwhile, in India, the World Bank
42、has given the go ahead to the even more wrong headed Narmada Dam. And the bank has done this even though its advisors say the dam will cause hardship for the powerless and environmental destruction. The benefits are for the powerful, but they are far from guaranteed. Proper, scientific study of the
43、impacts of dams and of the cost and benefits of controlling water can help to resolve these conflicts. Hydroelectric power and flood control and irrigation are possible without building monster dams. But when you are dealing with myths, it is hard to be either proper, or scientific. It is time that
44、the world learned the lessons of Aswan. You don“t need a dam to be saved. （分数：20.00）_考博英语-234 答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Translation(总题数：5，分数：100.00)1.In the first year or so of Web business, most of the action has revolved around efforts to tap the consumer market. More recently, as the Web proved
45、 to be more than a fashion, companies have started to buy and sell products and services with one another. Such business-to-business sales make sense because businesspeople typically know what product they“re looking for. Nonetheless, many companies still hesitate to use the Web because of doubts ab
46、out its reliability. “Businesses need to feel they can trust the pathway between them and the supplier,“ says senior analyst Blane Erwin of Forrester Research. Some companies are limiting the risk by con-ducting online transactions only with established business partners who are given access to the
47、company“s private internet. Another major shift in the model for Internet commerce concerns the technology available for marketing. Until recently, Internet marketing activities have focused on strategies to “pull“ customers into sites. In the past year, however, software companies have developed to
48、ols that allow companies to “push“ information directly out to consumers, transmitting marketing messages directly to targeted customers. Most notably, the Pointcast Network uses a screen saver to deliver a continually updated stream of news and advertisements to subscribers“ computer monitors. Sub scribers can customize the information they want to receive and proceed directly to a company“s Web site. Companies such as Virtual Vineyards
