1、考研英语(一)-75 及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Reading Comprehensio(总题数：0，分数：0.00)More Americans are giving up their landlines for cell phones, but new research indicates that there may be health risks associated with long term wireless use. What“s a mobile addict to do? Americans logged more than 1 trilli
2、on cell-phone minutes in the first half of 2007 alone, so it came as little surprise that this is the year cellular-phone spending is predicted to surpass that of landlines, according to Labor Department data released this week. 1 But even as more people give up their traditional home phones altoget
3、her and ever younger kids get their own cell phones, there are still questions in the scientific community about whether this new American staple is safe for heavy or long-term use. 2 Experts say the concern over cell-phone use stems from a form of radiation that“s produced when the devices communic
4、ate with their base station. Wireless phones transmit via radio frequency (RF), a low-frequency form of radiation that is also used in microwave ovens and AM/FM radios. While high-frequency radiation (the kind used in X-rays) is known to cause cancer at high doses. The risks of this milder form rema
5、in unclear. A cell phone“s main source of RF is its antenna, from which it sends a signal to the nearest base-station antenna. The further a cell phone is from the base station, the more RF it needs to establish and maintain a connection. So, the theory is that any risks posed by RF would be greater
6、 for people who live and work in areas with fewer base stations. 3 In fact, Israeli researchers reported earlier this month in the A merican Journal of Epidemiology that long-term cell-phone users living in rural areas faced a “consistently elevated risk“ of developing tumors compared with users who
7、 live in suburban or urban areas. Other research, including an ongoing multinational initiative known as INTERPHONE, has yielded mixed results so far. While a number of studies have found no correlation between cell-phone use and various types of brain tumors, most of those studies focused on people
8、 who had been using cell phones for three to five years. Long-term cell-phone use may be another story. 4 A handful of small studies have indicated that using a cell phone for an hour each day over a 10-year period can increase the risk of developing a rare brain tumor and that those tumors are more
9、 likely to be on the side of your head that you use to talk on the phone. But quantifying the health risks of cell phones is a trickier proposition than understanding how they work. The gadgets have been widely available for only about a decade; tumors can take twice as long to develop. And hands-fr
10、ee devices minimize a person“s RF exposure by enabling them to keep the phone“s antenna away from their head have only been commonplace for a few years. The data on kids who use cell phones is even scarcer because not enough time has passed to examine the effects on children who use them extensively
11、 as they grow. 5 However, many researchers believe younger cell-phone users may face a higher risk of developing tumors because their nervous systems are not fully developed and their skulls are not as thick as those of adults.（分数：20.00）_In the two decades between 1929 and 1949, sculpture in the Uni
12、ted States sustained what was probably the greatest expansion in sheer technique to occur in many centuries. There was, first of all, the incorporation of welding into sculptural practice, with the result that it was possible to form a new kind of metal object. 6 For sculptors working with metal ear
13、lier restricted to the dense solidity of the bronze cast, it was possible to add a type of work assembled from paper-thin metal sheets or sinuously curved rods. Sculpture could take the form of a linear, two-dimensional frame and still remain physically self-supporting. Along with the innovation of
14、welding came a correlative departure: freestanding sculpture that was shockingly flat. Yet another technical expansion of the options for sculpture appeared in the guise of motion. 7 The individual parts of a sculpture were no longer understood as necessarily fixed in relation to one another, but co
15、uld be made to change position within a work constructed as a moving object; motorizing the sculpture was only one of many possibilities taken up in the 1930“s. Other strategies for getting the work to move involved structuring it in such a way that external forces, like air movements or the touch o
16、f a viewer could initiate motion. 8 Movement brought with it a new attitude towards the issue of sculptural unity: a work might be made of widely diverse and even discordant elements: their formal unity would be achieved through the arc of a particular motion completing itself through time. Like the
17、 use of welding and movement, the third of these major technical expansions to develop in the 1930“s and 1940“s addressed the issues of sculptural materials and sculptural unity. 9 But its medium for doing so was the found object and item not intended for use in a piece of artwork, such as a newspap
18、er or metal pipe. To create a sculpture by assembling parts that had been fabricated originally for a quite different context did not necessarily involve a new technology. 10 But it did mean a change in sculptural practice, for it raised the possibility that making sculpture might involve more a con
19、ceptual shift than a physical transformation of the material from which it is composed.（分数：20.00）_One stereotype of wisdom is a wizened Zen-master smiling benevolently at the antics of his pupils, while referring to them as little grasshoppers or some such affectation, safe in the knowledge that one
20、 day they, too, will have been set on the path that leads to wizened masterhood. But is it true that age brings wisdom? A study two years ago in North America, by Igor Grossmann of the University of Waterloo, in Canada, suggested that it is. 11 In as much as it is possible to quantify wisdom, Dr. Gr
21、ossmann found that elderly Americans had more of it than youngsters. He has, however, now extended his investigation to Asiathe land of the wizened Zen-master-and, in particular, to Japan. There, he found, in contrast to the West, that the grasshoppers are their masters“ equals almost from the begin
22、ning. Dr. Grossmann“s study, just published in Psychological Science, recruited 186 Japanese from various walks of life and compared them with 225 Americans. Participants were asked to read a series of pretend newspaper articles. 12 Half described conflict between groups, such as a debate between re
23、sidents of an impoverished Pacific island over whether to allow foreign oil companies to operate there following the discovery of petroleum. (Those in favor viewed it as an opportunity to get rich; those against feared the disruption of ancient ways and potential ecological damage.) 13 The other hal
24、f took the form of advice columns that dealt with conflicts between individuals: siblings, friends and spouses. After reading each article, participants were asked “What do you think will happen after that?“ and “Why do you think it will happen this way?“ Their responses were recorded and transcribe
25、d. 14 Dr. Grossmann and his colleagues removed age-related information from the transcripts, and also any clues to participants“ nationalities, and then passed the edited versions to a group of assessors. These assessors were trained to rate transcribed responses consistently, and had been tested to
26、 show that their ratings were statistically comparable with one another. 15 The upshot was that, as Dr. Grossmann had found before, Americans do get wiser with age. Their intergroup wisdom score averaged 45 at the age of 25 and 55 at 75. Their interpersonal score similarly climbed from 46 to 50. Jap
27、anese scores, by contrast, hardly varied with age. Both 25-year-olds and 75-year-olds had an average intergroup wisdom of 51. For interpersonal wisdom, it was 53 and 32.（分数：20.00）_Few things destroy the reputation of a high-class hotel faster than bed bugs. 16 These vampiric arthropods, which almost
28、 disappeared from human dwellings with the introduction of synthetic insecticides after the Second World War, are making a comeback. They can drink seven times their own weight in blood in a night, leaving itchy welts on the victim“s skin and blood spots on his sheets as they do so. That is enough t
29、o send anyone scurrying to hotel-rating internet sitesand even possibly to lawyers. New York is worst-hit at the moment: neither five-star hotels nor top-notch apartments have been spared. But other places, too, are starting to panic. 17 Hotel staff from LOS Angeles to London are scrutinizing the se
30、ams of mattresses and the backs of skirting boards, where the bugs often hide during the day, with more than usual zeal. But frequently this is to no avail. Bed bugs are hard to spot. Even trained pest-control inspectors can miss them. What is needed is a way to flush them into the open. And James L
31、ogan, Emma Weeks and their colleagues at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Rothamsted Research think they have one: a bed-bug trap baited with something the bugs find irresistiblethe smell of their own droppings. 18 The reason the bugs are attracted to this smell is that they us
32、e it to navigate back to their hidey-holes after a night of feeding. To develop the bait for the new trap, Dr. Weeks therefore analyzed the chemicals given off by bed-bug faeces and attempted to work out which of the components were acting as signposts. 19 She did this by puffing air collected from
33、a jar containing bed-bug faeces into a machine called a gas chromatograph, which separated the components from one another and then through a mass spectrometer, to identify each component from its molecular weight. Having found what the smell consisted of, she wafted the chemicals in question, one b
34、y one, at bed bugs that had their antennae wired up to micro-electrodes, to see which of them provoked a response. 20 The result, the details of which the team is keeping secret for the moment for commercial reasons, is used to bait a trap and designed by Dr. Logan that is about the size of a standa
35、rd mouse trap and has a sticky floor similar to fly paper. And it works. To paraphrase the slogan of Roach Motel, a brand of traps aimed at a different sort of insect pest, bed bugs check in, but they don“t check out.（分数：20.00）_One answer to the question, “What ate dinosaurs?“ is, obviously, “Other
36、dinosaurs.“ Theropod predators like Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus loom large in the imagination of every lover of prehistoric monsters, and their animatronic fights with the likes of Diplodocus and Stegosaurus are the stuff of cliche. 21 Science tries to look beyond the obvious, and at this year“s me
37、eting of the Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology, held in Las Vegas, some of the speakers asked whether the top predators of the Mesozoic era really were all dinosaurs. Their conclusion was “no“. Another group of reptiles, until recently neglected, were also important carnivores. And it is a group t
38、hat is still around today: the crocodiles. That the past role of crocodiles (or, strictly, crocodilians, since they came in many sizes and shapes. not all of which resemble the modem animals) has been underestimated was suggested a few years ago by Paul Sereno. 22 Dr. Sereno, a paleontologist at the
39、 University of Chicago, uncovered a crocodile-dominated ecosystem from about 100m years ago in what is now North Africa. Besides, water-dwelling giants are similar to (though much bigger than) today“s animals, he found a range of forms including vegetarians and species that ran on elongated legsmore
40、 like dogs than crocodiles. That discovery has prompted other fossil hunters to look elsewhere. 23 As a result, even the well-studied rocks of North America are revealing that dinosaurs did not have it all their own way in the ecosystems of the Mesozoic. The Cretaceous equivalent of zebra and antelo
41、pesthe victim species in every wildlife documentary about the dramas of the African savannahwere herbivorous dinosaurs called ornithopods. Frequently, these were taken by theropods, but not always. 24 When Ms. Drumheller and Mr. Boyd examined the bones 0f juvenile upper-Cretaceous ornithopods dug up
42、 in Utah they saw marks on one skeleton that looked suspiciously like those modem crocodiles inflict when biting and tearing at their prey. On examining these marks more closely, they found a crocodilian tooth stuck in one of them. It was not a large tooth. Its size suggests the animal which made it
43、 was no more than a meter and a half (about 5 feet) long. Such a predator would have been unable to take on an adult ornithopod. Nevertheless, this tooth is the first unarguable proof that crocodilians did indeed snack on dinosaurs. 25 Moreover, it helps to confirm suspicions that the other crocodile-bite-like marks that Ms. Drumheller and Mr. Boyd have discovered really are what they look like. By combining that with an analysis of the whole site, the two researchers argue that what they have; discovered is a dinosaur nesting ground that was being raided by crocodilians.（分数：20.00）_
