峥嵘岁月57. According to Ally the climate threats to the earth brought by global warming _________.
A. can be eased
B. can be ended
C. will become worse
D. will last for decades
58. Ally's research shows that dramatic climate changes may be caused by ___________.
A. abrupt changes in atmospheric patterns
B. subtle changes in atmospheric patterns
C. humans' burning of fossil fuel
D. increasing levels of carbon dioxide
59. The word "upbeat" (in Paragraph 3) probably means __________.
A. pessimistic
B. optimistic
C. worried
D. insensible
60. What does Ally suggest people do in order to reduce global warming?
A. To find other energy sources besides fossil fuels.
B. To start a political, scientific and economic debate.
C. To take action to burn no fossil fuels.
D. To call on people worldwide to protect our earth.
61. Alley predicts that global warming could turn Europe and parts of eastern North America into ______.
A. a region like Siberia
B. a warmer and warmer place
C. a tropical region
D. a place like North Pole
62. Ally thinks the biggest problem in the world is
A. lack of harmony
B. violence
C. global warming
D. climate shift
Passage Three
We're talking about money here, and the things you buy with it--and about what attitude we should take to spending.
Across most of history and in most cultures, there has been a general agreement that we should work hard, save for the future and spend no more than we can afford. It's nice to have a comfortable life right now, but it is best to think of the future. Yet economists have long known that things don't work out that way. They point to an idea called the "paradox of thrift." Imagine you are the owner of a big business making consumer goods. You want your own staff to work hard and save their money. That way, you don't have to pay them as much. But you want everybody else to spend all the money they can. That way you make bigger profits.
It's a problem on a global scale. Many people in the UK and the United States are worried about levels of personal debt. Yet if people suddenly stopped buying things and started paying back what they owe to credit card companies, all the economies of the Western world would collapse. The banks would be happy, but everybody else would be in trouble.
Traditionally, economists have believed that spending money is about making rational choices. People buy things to make their life better in some way. But in recent years, they have noticed that people often do not actually behave in that way. We all know people who take pleasure in buying useless things. And there are many people around who won't buy things that they need.
In a recent series of experiments, scientists at Stanford University in the US confirmed something that many people have long suspected. People spend money because the act of buying gives them pleasure. And they refuse to spend when it causes them pain. The scientists discovered that different areas of the brain that anticipate pleasure and pain become more active when we are making a decision to buy things. People who spend a lot have their pleasure centers stimulated. People who like to save find buying things painful.
If you think you really want that product because it's beautiful or useful, you are wrong, say the scientists. The desire to buy something is a product of the reaction between chemicals released by different parts of the brain
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when the eyes see a product.
63. Across most of history and in most cultures, people are advised to _____________.
A. enjoy their present life as much as possible
B. spend every penny they have earned
C. save every penny for the future
D. save some money for later use
64. According to the context, "paradox" (in Paragraph 2) probably means “__________”.
A. contradiction
B. hypothesis
C. declaration
D. assertion
65. It is implied that many people in the UK and the United States
A. have to work hard to make ends meet
B. spend more than they can afford
C. have trouble in paying back their debts
D. don't pay back their debts on time
66. According to the resent studies made by economists, people__________.
A. take pleasure in buying useless things
B. won't buy things that they need.
C. spend their money irrationally
D. make rational choices while spending their money
67. It has been proved by the scientists at Stanford University that some people like to save money because_____.
A. they like keeping their money in the bank
B. they will feel safe if they save enough money for the future
C. they don't want to spend their money on useless things
D. spending money gives them pain
68. The passage mainly tells us_________.
A. how to spend our money
B. it is better to save some money for the future
C. it is the chemicals released from the brain that decide our spending
D. how to form a habit of rational spending
Passage Four
Trees are good. Good enough to hug. Planting trees will make the world cooler than it would otherwise be. This is the subject of a newly published study by Govindasamy Bala, of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in California, and his colleagues. Dr Bala has found, rather counter-intuitively, that removing all of the world's trees might actually cool the planet down.
The reason for this is that trees affect the world's temperature by means other than the carbon they take in. For instance forests remain quite a dark shade even after a snowstorm. They are certainly darker than grasslands, and thus they can absorb more of the sun's heat than vegetation which might otherwise cover the same stretch of land. That warms things up.
Dr Bala and his colleagues took such effects into account using a computer model called the Integrated Climate and Carbon Model. Unlike most climate-change models, which calculate how the Earth should absorb and radiate heat in response to a list of greenhouse-gas concentrations, this one has many subsections that represent how the carbon cycle works, and how it influences the climate.
Overall, Dr Bala's model suggests that complete deforestation would cause an additional 1.3?C temperature rise compared with business as usual, because of the higher carbon-dioxide levels that would result. However, the additional reflectivity of the planet would cause 1.6?C of cooling. A treeless world would thus be 0.3?C cooler than otherwise.
No one, of course, would consider chopping down the world's forests to keep the planet cool. But having made their point, Dr Bala and his colleagues then went on to look at forest growth and loss at different latitudes. Planting trees in convenient places such as Europe and North America may actually be counterproductive. In Russia and Canada, cutting trees down led mostly to local cooling. The carbon dioxide this released into the atmosphere, though, warmed the world all over. Around the equator, by contrast, warming acted locally (as well as globally), so a tropical country would experience warming created by cutting down trees.
The results follow increasing criticism from climate scientists of the benefits of forestry schemes to offset carbon emissions. Planting trees to neutralise carbon emissions has become a big business: ￡60m worth of trees have been bought this year, up from ￡20m in 2005. By 2010 the market is expected to reach ￡300m.
69. According to the passage, trees make the world warmer because of their _________.
A. deep color
B. round shape
C. enormous size
D. high reflectivity
70. Dr Bala's Integrated Climate and Carbon Model____________.
A. supports the findings of other climate models
B. is based on the results of other climate models
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C. uses a system different from other climate models
D. challenges the basic theory of other climate models
71. Based on Dr Bala's model, a treeless world would__________.
A. cause serious environmental problems
B. prove helpful in fighting global warming
C. make it difficult to deal with climate change
D. raise carbon dioxide levels and global temperature
72. According to Dr Bala, the best places to plant trees would be__________.
A. North America
B. Europe
C. High-latitude countries.
D. tropical countries
73. As is shown in the passage, criticism from other climate scientists__________.
A. should be taken rather seriously
B. is unreasonable and far-fetched
C. involves mostly economic interests
D. is voiced on behalf of the government
74. The best title for the passage is____________.
A. Should Green Trees Be Left Alone?
B. Why Green Trees Might Not Be Green?
C. How to Help Green Trees Survive?
D. How to Go Green with Green Trees?
Passage Five
The patient needed a spinal tap, and a senior attending physician asked a medical resident whether a preparatory blood test had been checked. The medical student was stunned to hear him answer in the affirmative, because she was quite certain it had not been checked.
Well, almost certain.
Doctors in training sometimes confront situations in which they worry that their supervising physicians are making mistakes or bending the truth. Yet even though such acts can jeopardize patients, the inclination and ability of young doctors to speak up is hampered by the hierarchies in teaching hospitals.
On the top were the senior physicians who made rounds on the wards once or twice daily. Next were the overworked residents, who essentially lived in the hospital while training. Last were the medical students who were most assuredly at the bottom of the heap.
The student whose resident seemingly lied to the attending physician about the blood test did not speak up. The resident was a good doctor, she said, and so she had given him the benefit of the doubt. And, she added, both the resident and the attending physician would be grading her.
