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《1994-2008 考研英语历年真题阅读理解短文

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》研究生考试公共课复习必备之英语系列

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研究生考试公共课复习必备之英语系列

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1994-2008 考研英语历年

考研英语历年考研英语历年

考研英语历年真题

真题真题

真题阅读理解短文

阅读理解短文阅读理解短文

阅读理解短文

2008 Passage 1

While still catching-up to men in some spheres of modern life, women appear to be way ahead in at least one undesirable category. “Women

are particularly susceptible to developing depression and anxiety disorders in response to stress compared to men,” according to Dr. Yehuda, chief

psychiatrist at New York’s Veteran’s Administration Hospital.

Studies of both animals and humans have shown that sex hormones somehow affects the stress response, causing females under stress to

produce more of the trigger chemicals than do males under the same conditions. In several of the studies, when stressed-out female rats had their

ovaries (the female reproductive organs) removed, their chemical responses became equal to those of the males.

Adding to a woman’s increased dose of stress chemicals, are her increased “opportunities” for stress. “It’s not necessarily that women don’t

cope as well. It’s just that they have so much more to cope with,” says Dr. Yehuda. “Their capacity for tolerating stress may even be greater than

men’s,” she observes, “It’s just that they’re dealing with so many more things that they become worn out from it more visibly and sooner.”

Dr. Yehuda notes another difference between the sexes. “I think that the kinds of things that women are exposed to tend to be in more of a

chronic or repeated nature. Men go to war and are exposed to combat stress. Men are exposed to more acts of random physical violence. The kinds of

interpersonal violence that women are exposed to tend to be in domestic situations, by, unfortunately, parents or other family numbers, and they tend

not to be one-shot deals. The wear-and-tear that comes from these longer relationships can be quite devastating.”

Adeline Alvarez married at 18 and gave birth to a son, but wad determined to finish college. “I struggled a lot to get the college degree. I was

living in so much frustration that that was my escape, to go to school, and get ahead and do better.” Later her marriage ended and she became a

single mother. “It’s the hardest thing to take care of a teenager, have a job, pay the rent, pay the car payment, and pay the debt. I lived from paycheck

to paycheck.”

Not everyone experiences the kinds of severe chronic stresses Alvarez describes. But most women today are coping with a lot of obligations,

with few breaks, and feeling the strain. Alvarez’s experience demonstrates the importance of finding ways to diffuse stress before it threatens your

health and your ability to function.

2008 Passage 2

It used to be so straightforward. A team of researchers working together in the laboratory would submit the results of their research to a journal.

A journal editor would then remove the authors’ names and affiliations from the paper and send it to their peers for review. Depending on the

comments received, the editor would accept the paper for publication or decline it. Copyright rested with the journal publisher, and researchers

seeking knowledge of the results would have to subscribe to the journal.

No longer. The Internet–and pressure from funding agencies, who are questioning why commercial publishers are making money from

government-funded research by restricting access to it- is making access to scientific results a reality. The Organization for Economic Co-operation

and Development (OECD) has just issued a report describing the far-reaching consequences of this. The report, by John Houghton of Victoria

University in Australia and Graham Vickery of the OECD, makes heavy reading for publishers who have, so far, made handsome profits. But it goes

further than that. It signals a change in what has, until now, been a key element of scientific endeavor.

The value of knowledge and the return on the public investment in research depends, in part, upon wide distribution and ready access. It is big

business. In America, the core scientific publishing market is estimated at between $7 billion and $11 billion. The International Association of

Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers says that there are more than 2,000 publishers worldwide specializing in these subjects. They publish

more than 1.2 million articles each year in some 16,000 journals.

This is now changing. According to the OECD report, some 75% of scholarly journals are now online. Entirely new business models are

emerging; three main institutional subscribers pay for access to a collection of online journal titles through site-licensing agreements. There is

open-access publishing, typically supported by asking the author (or his employer) to pay for the paper to be published. Finally, there are open-access

archives, where organizations such as universities or international laboratories support institutional repositories. Other models exist that are hybrids

of these three, such as delayed open-access, where journals allow only subscribers to read a paper for the first six months, before making it freely

available to everyone who wishes to see it. All this could change the traditional form of the peer-review process, at least for the publication of papers.

2008 Passage 3

In the early 1960s Wilt Chamberlain was one of only three players in the National Basketball Association (NBA) listed at over seven feet. If he

had played last season, however, he would have been one of 42. The bodies playing major professional sports have changed dramatically over the

years, and managers have been more than willing to adjust team uniforms to fit the growing numbers of bigger, longer frames.

The trend in sports, though, may be obscuring an unrecognized reality: Americans have generally stopped growing. Though typically about two

inches taller now than 140 years ago, today’s people- especially those born to families who have lived in the U.S. for many generations- apparently

reached their limit in the early 1960s. And they aren’t likely to get any taller. “In the general population today, at this genetic, environmental level,

we’ve pretty much gone as far as we can go,” says anthropologist William Cameron Chumlea of Wright State University. In the case of NBA players,

their increase in height appears to result from the increasingly common practice of recruiting players from all over the world.

Growth, which rarely continues beyond the age of 20, demands calories and nutrients – notably, protein – to feed expanding tissues. At the start

of the 20

century, under-nutrition and childhood infections got in the way. But as diet and health improved, children and adolescents have, on

average, increased in height by about an inch and a half every 20 years, a pattern known as the secular trend in height. Yet according to the Centers

for Disease Control and Prevention, average height- 5′9〞 for men, 5′4〞for women- hasn’t really changed since 1960.

Genetically speaking, there are advantages to avoiding substantial height. During childbirth, larger babies have more difficulty passing through

the birth canal. Moreover, even though humans have been upright for millions of years, our feet and back continue to struggle with bipedal posture

and cannot easily withstand repeated strain imposed by oversize limbs. “There are some real constraints that are set by the genetic architecture of the

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《1994-2008 考研英语历年真题阅读理解短文

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》研究生考试公共课复习必备之英语系列

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individual organism,” says anthropologist William Leonard of Northwestern University.

Genetic maximums can change, but don’t expect this to happen soon. Claire C. Gordon, senior anthropologist at the Army Research Center in

Natick, Mass., ensures that 90 percent of the uniforms and workstations fit recruits without alteration. She says that, unlike those for basketball, the

length of military uniforms has not changed for some time. And if you need to predict human height in the near future to design a piece of equipment,

Gordon says that by and large, “you could use today’s data and feel fairly confident.”

2008 Passage 4

In 1784, five years before he became president of the United States, George Washington, 52, was nearly toothless. So he hired a dentist to

transplant nine teeth into his jaw- having extracted them from the months of his slaves.

That’s far different image from the cherry-tree-chopping George most people remember from their history books. But recently, many historians

have begun to focus on the roles slavery played in the lives of the founding generation. They have been spurred in part by DNA evidence made

available in 1998, which almost certainly proved Thomas Jefferson had fathered at least one child with his slave Sally Hemings. And only over the

past 30 years have scholars examined history from the bottom up. Works of several historians reveal the moral compromises made by the nation’s

early leaders and the fragile nature of the country’s infancy. More significantly, they argue that many of the Founding Fathers knew slavery was

wrong and yet most did little to fight it.

More than anything, the historians say, the founders were hampered by the culture of their time. While Washington and Jefferson privately

expressed distaste for slavery, they also understood that it was part of the political and economic bedrock of the country they helped to create.

For one thing, the South could not afford to part with its slaves. Owning slaves was “like having a large bank account,” says Wiencek, author

of An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America. The southern states would not have signed the Constitution

without protections for the “peculiar institution,” including a clause that counted a slave as three fifths of a man for purposes of congressional

representation.

And the statesmen’s political lives depended on slavery. The three-fifths formula handed Jefferson his narrow victory in the presidential

election of 1800 by inflating the votes of the southern states in the Electoral College. Once in office, Jefferson extended slavery with the Louisiana

Purchase in 1803; the new land was carved into 13 states, including three slave states.

Still, Jefferson freed Hemings’s children- though not Hemings herself or his approximately 150 other slaves. Washington, who had begun to

believe that all men were created equal after observing the bravery of the black soldiers during the Revolutionary War, overcame the strong

opposition of his relatives to grant his slaves their freedom in his will. Only a decade earlier, such an act would have required legislative approval in

Virginia.

2007 Passage 1

If you were to examine the birth certificates of every soccer player in 2006's World Cup tournament you would most likely find a noteworthy

quirk elite soccer later months. If you then examined the European national youth teams that feed the World Cup and professional ranks， you would

find this strange phenomenon to be even more pronounced.

What might account for this strange phenomenon？ Here are a few guesses： a） certain astrological signs confer superior soccer skills. b）

winter-born bathes tend to have higher oxygen capacity which increases soccer stamina. c） soccer mad parents are more likely to conceive children

in springtime at the annual peak of soccer mania. d） none of the above.

Anders Ericsson， a 58-year-old psychology professor at Florida State University， says he believes strongly in “none of the above.” Ericsson grew

up in Sweden， and studied nuclear engineering until he realized he realized he would have more opportunity to conduct his own research if he

switched to psychology. His first experiment nearly years ago， involved memory： training a person to hear and then repeat a random series of

numbers. “With the first subject. after about 20 hours of training his digit span had risen from 7 to 20，” Ericsson recalls. “He kept improving， and

after about 200 hours of training he had risen to over 80 numbers.”

This success coupled with later research showing that memory itself as not genetically determined， led Ericsson to conclude that the act of

memorizing is more of a cognitive exercise than an intuitive one. In other words， whatever inborn differences two people may exhibit in their

abilities to memorize those differences are swamped by how well each person “encodes” the information. And the best way to learn how to encode

information meaningfully， Ericsson determined， was a process known as deliberate practice. Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating

a task. Rather， it involves setting specific goals， obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome.

Ericsson and his colleagues have thus taken to studying expert performers in a wide range of pursuits， including soccer. They gather all the data

they can， not just predominance statistics and biographical details but also the results of their own lavatory experiments with high achievers. Their

work makes a rather startling assertion： the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or， put another way， expert performers whether in

memory or surgery， ballet or computer programming are nearly always made， not born.

2007 Passage 2

For the past several years， the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade has featured a column called “Ask Marilyn.” People are invited to query

Marilyn vos Savant， who at age 10 had tested at a mental level of someone about 23 years old； that gave her an IQ of 228-the highest score ever

recorded. IQ tests ask you to complete verbal and visual analogies， to envision paper after it has been folded and cut， and to deduce numerical

sequences， among other similar tasks. So it is a bit confusing when vos Savant fields such queries from the average Joe （whose IQ is 100） as，

What's the difference between love and fondness？ Or what is the nature of luck and coincidence？ It's not obvious how the capacity to visualize

objects and to figure out numerical patterns suits one to answer questions that have eluded some of the best poets and philosophers.

Clearly， intelligence encompasses more than a score on a test. Just what does it means to be smart？ How much of intelligence can be specified，

and how much can we learn about it from neurology， genetics， computer science and other fields？

The defining term of intelligence in humans still seems to be the IQ score， even though IQ tests are not given as often as they used to be. The test

comes primarily in two forms： the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale and the Wechsler Intelligence Scales （both come in adult and children's

version）。 Generally costing several hundred dollars， they are usually given only by psychologists， although variations of them populate

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考研英语历年真题阅读理解短文》

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》研究生考试公共课复习必备之英语系列

研究生考试公共课复习必备之英语系列研究生考试公共课复习必备之英语系列

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bookstores and the World Wide Web. Superhigh scores like vos Savant’s are no longer possible， because scoring is now based on a statistical

population distribution among age pecks， rather tan simply dividing the mental are by the chronological age and multiplying by 100. Other

standardized tests， such as the Scholastic Assessment Test （SAT） and the Graduate Record Exam （GRE）， capture the main aspects of IQ

tests.

Such standardized tests may not assess all the important elements necessary to succeed in school and in life， argues Robert J. Sternberg. In his

article “How Intelligent Is Intelligence Testing？”。 Sternberg notes that traditional tests best assess analytical and verbal skills but fail to measure

creativity and practical knowledge， components also critical to problem solving and life success. Moreover， IQ tests do not necessarily predict so

well once populations or situations change. Research has found that IQ predicted leadership sills when the tests were given under low-stress

conditions， but under high-stress conditions. IQ was negatively correlated with leadership-that is it predicted the opposite. Anyone who bas toiled

through SAT will testify that test-taking skill also matters， whether it‘s knowing when to guess or what questions of skip.

2007 Passage 3

During the past generation， the American middle-class family that once could count on hard work and fair play to keep itself financially secure has

been transformed by economic risk and new realities. Now a pink slip， a bad diagnosis. or a disappearing spouse can reduce a family from solidly

middle class to newly poor in a few months.

In just one generation， millions of mothers have gone to work， transforming basic family economics. Scholars， policymakers， and critics of

all stripes have debated the social implications of these changes， but few have looked at the side effect family risk has risen as well. Today's

families have budgeted to the limits of their new two-paycheck status. As a result they have lost the parachute they once had in times of financial

setback- a back-up earner （usually Mom） who could go into the workforce if the primary earner got laid off or fell sick. This “added-worker effect”

could support the safety net offered by unemployment insurance or disability insurance to help families weather bad times. But today， a disruption

to family fortunes can not longer be made up with extra income from an otherwise-stay-at-home partner.

During the same period， families have been asked to absorb much more risk in their retirement income. Steelworkers， airline employees， and

now those in the auto industry are joining millions of families who must worry about interest rates， stock market fluctuation， and the harsh reality

that they may outlive their retirement money. For much of the past year. President Bush campaigned to move Social Security to a savings-account

model， with retirees trading much or all of their guaranteed payments for payments depending on investment returns. For younger families， the

picture is not any better. Both the absolute cost of healthcare and the share of it borne by families have risen-and newly fashionable health-savings

plans are spreading from legislative halls to Wal-Mart workers， with much higher deductibles and a large new does of investment risk for

families‘ future healthcare. Even demographics are working against the middle class family， as the odds of having a weak elderly parent- and all the

attendant need for physical and financial assistance have jumped eightfold in just one generation.

From the middle-class family perspective， much of this， understandably， looks far less like an opportunity to exercise more financial

responsibility， and a good deal more like a frightening acceleration of the wholesale shift of financial risk onto their already overburdened shoulders.

The financial fallout has begun， and the political fallout may not be far behind.

2007 Passage 4

It never rains but it pours. Just as bosses and boards have finally sorted out their worst accounting and compliance troubles， and improved their

feeble corporation governance， a new problem threatens to earn them- especially in America-the sort of nasty headlines that inevitably lead to heads

rolling in the executive suite： data insecurity. Left， until now， to odd， low-level IT staff to put right， and seen as a concern only of data-rich

industries such as banking， telecoms and air travel， information protection is now high on the boss's agenda in businesses of every variety.

Several massive leakages of customer and employee data this year- from organizations as diverse as Time Warner， the American defense

contractor Science Applications International Corp and even the University of California. Berkeley-have left managers hurriedly peering into their

intricate 11 systems and business processes in search of potential vulnerabilities.

“Data is becoming an asset which needs no be guarded as much as any other asset.” says I am Mendelson of Stanford University's business school

“The ability guard customer data is the key to market value， which the board is responsible for on behalf of shareholders” Indeed， just as there is

the concept of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles （GAAP）。 perhaps it is time for GASP. Generally Accepted Security Practices，

suggested Eli Noam of New York's Columbia Business School. “Setting the proper investment level for security， redundancy， and recovery is a

management issue， not a technical one.” he says.

The mystery is that this should come as a surprise to any boss. Surely it should be obvious to the dimmest exccutive that trust， that most valuable

of economic assets， is easily destroyed and hugely expensive to restore-and that few things are more likely to destroy trust than a company letting

sensitive personal data get into the wrong hands.

The current state of affairs may have been encouraged-though not justified-by the lack of legal penalty （in America， but not Europe） for data

leakage. Until California recently passed a law. American firms did not have to tell anyone， even the victim， when data went astray， I hat may

change fast lots of proposed data-security legislation now doing the rounds in Washington. D.C. Meanwhile. the theft of information about some 40

million credit-card accounts in America， disclosed on June 17th. overshadowed a hugely important decision a day earlier by America's Federal

Trade Commission （FTC） that puts corporate America on notice that regulators will act if firms fail to provide adequate data security.

2006 Passage 1

In spite of“endless talk of difference，”American society is an amazing machine for homogenizing people. There is“the democratizing uniformity

of dress and discourse， and the casualness and absence of consumption”launched by the 19th——century department stores that offered“vast arrays

of goods in an elegant atmosphere. Instead of intimate shops catering to a knowledgeable elite.”these were stores“anyone could enter， regardless of

class or background. This turned shopping into a public and democratic act.”The mass media， advertising and sports are other forces for

homogenization.

Immigrants are quickly fitting into this common culture， which may not be altogether elevating but is hardly poisonous. Writing for the

National Immigration Forum， Gregory Rodriguez reports that today‘s immigration is neither at unprecedented level nor resistant to assimilation. In

1998 immigrants were 9.8 percent of population； in 1900， 13.6 percent .In the 10 years prior to 1990， 3.1 immigrants arrived for every 1，000

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《1994-2008 考研英语历年真题阅读理解短文

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考研英语历年真题阅读理解短文》

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》研究生考试公共课复习必备之英语系列

研究生考试公共课复习必备之英语系列研究生考试公共课复习必备之英语系列

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residents； in the 10years prior to 1890， 9.2 for every 1，000. Now， consider three indices of assimilation–language， home ownership and

intermarriage.

The 1990 Census revealed that“a majority of immigrants from each of the fifteen most common countries of origin spoke English‘well’or‘very

well’after ten years of residence.”The children of immigrants tend to be bilingual and proficient in English.“By the third generation， the original

language is lost in the majority of immigrant families.”Hence the description of America as a“graveyard”for languages. By 1996 foreign–born

immigrants who had arrived before 1970 had a home ownership rate of 75.6 percent， higher than the 69.8 percent rate among native-born

Americans.

Foreign-born Asians and Hispanics“have higher rates of intermarriage than do U.S–born whites and blacks.”By the third generation， one third

of Hispanic women are married to non-Hispanics， and 41 percent of Asian–American women are married to non-Asians.

Rodriguez note that children in remote villages around the world are fans of superstars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Garth Brooks，

yet“some Americans fear that immigrant living within the United States remain somehow immune to the nation‘s assimilative power.”

Are there divisive issues and pockets of seething anger in America？ Indeed. It is big enough to have a bit of everything. But particularly when

viewed against America‘s turbulent past， today’s social induces suggest a dark and deteriorating social environment.

2006 Passage 2

Stratford-on-Avon， as we all know， has only one industry-William Shakespeare-but there are two distinctly separate and increasingly hostile

branches. There is the Royal Shakespeare Company （RSC）， which presents superb productions of the plays at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre

on the Avon. And there are the townsfolk who largely live off the tourists who come， not to see the plays， but to look at Anne Hathaway‘s

Cottage， Shakespeare’s birthplace and the other sights.

The worthy residents of Stratford doubt that the theatre adds a penny to their revenue. They frankly dislike the RSC‘s actors， them with their

long hair and beards and sandals and noisiness. It’s all deliciously ironic when you consider that Shakespeare， who earns their living， was himself

an actor （with a beard） and did his share of noise - making.

The tourist streams are not entirely separate. The sightseers who come by bus- and often take in Warwick Castle and Blenheim Palace on the

side– don‘t usually see the plays， and some of them are even surprised to find a theatre in Stratford. However， the playgoers do manage a little

sight - seeing along with their playgoing. It is the playgoers， the RSC contends， who bring in much of the town’s revenue because they spend the

night （some of them four or five nights） pouring cash into the hotels and restaurants. The sightseers can take in everything and get out of town by

nightfall.

The townsfolk don‘t see it this way and local council does not contribute directly to the subsidy of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Stratford

cries poor traditionally. Nevertheless every hotel in town seems to be adding a new wing or cocktail lounge. Hilton is building its own hotel there，

which you may be sure will be decorated with Hamlet Hamburger Bars， the Lear Lounge， the Banquo Banqueting Room， and so forth， and will

be very expensive.

Anyway， the townsfolk can‘t understand why the Royal Shakespeare Company needs a subsidy. （The theatre has broken attendance records

for three years in a row. Last year its 1，431 seats were 94 per cent occupied all year long and this year they’ll do better.） The reason， of course，

is that costs have rocketed and ticket prices have stayed low.

It would be a shame to raise prices too much because it would drive away the young people who are Stratford‘s most attractive clientele. They

come entirely for the plays， not the sights. They all seem to look alike （though they come from all over）–lean， pointed， dedicated faces，

wearing jeans and sandals， eating their buns and bedding down for the night on the flagstones outside the theatre to buy the 20 seats and 80

standing-room tickets held for the sleepers and sold to them when the box office opens at 10：30 a.m.

2006 Passage 3

When prehistoric man arrived in new parts of the world， something strong happened to the large animals； they suddenly became extinct. Smaller

species survived， the large， slow-growing animals were easy game， and were quickly hunted to extinction.

Now something similar could be happening in the oceans that the seas are being over-fished has been known for years what researchers such as

Ransom Myers and Boris Worm have shown is just how fast things are changing. They have looked at half a century of data from fisheries around

the world. Their methods de not attempt to estimate the actual biomass （the amount of living biological matter） of fish species in particular parts of

the ocean， but rather changes in that biomass over time. According to their latest paper published in Nature， the biomass of large predators

（animals that kill and eat other animals） inanes fishery is reduced on average by 80% within 15 years of the start of exploitation. In some

long-fished areas， it has halved again since then Dr. Worm acknowledges that these figures are conservative， one reason for this is that fishing

technology has improved Today‘s vessels can find their prey using satellites and sonar， which were not available 50 years ago that means a higher

proportion of what is in the sea is being caught， so the real difference between present and past is likely to be worse than the one recorded by

changes in catch sizes. In the early days， too， longlines would have been more saturated with fish. Some individuals would therefore not have been

caught， since to baited hooks would have been available to trap them， leading to an underestimate of fish stocks in the past. Furthermore， in the

early days of longline fishing， a lot of fish were lost to sharks after they had been hooked. That is no longer a problem， because there are fewer

sharks around noise.

Dr. Myers and Dr. worm argue that their work gives a correct baseline， which future management efforts must take into account. They believe

the date support an idea current among marine biologists， that of the“shifting baseline”。 The notion is that people have failed to detect the massive

changes which have happened in the ocean because they have been looking back only a relatively short time into the past. That matters because

theory suggests that the maximum sustainable yield that can be cropped form a fishery comes when the biomass of a target species is about 50% of

its original levels. Most fisheries are well below that， which is a bad way to de business.

2006 Passage 4

Many things make people think artists are weird and the weirdest may be this： artists‘ only job is to explore emotions， and yet they choose to

focus on the ones that feel bad.

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This wasn‘t always so. The earliest forms of art， like painting and music， are those best suited for expressing joy. But somewhere in the 19th

century， more artists began seeing happiness as insipid， phony or， worst of all， boring as we went from Wordsworth’s daffodils to Baudelaire‘s

flowers of evil.

You could argue that art became more skeptical of happiness because modern times have seen such misery. But it‘s not as if earlier times didn’t

know perpetual war， disaster and the massacre of innocents. The reason， in fact， may be just the opposite： there is too much damn happiness

in the world today.

After all， what is the one modern form of expression almost completely dedicated to depicting happiness？ Advertising. The rise of

anti-happy art almost exactly tracks the emergence of mass media， and with it， a commercial culture in which happiness is not just an ideal but an

ideology.

People in earlier eras were surrounded by reminders of misery. They worked until exhausted， lived with few protections and died young. In the

West， before mass communication and literacy， the most powerful mass medium was the church， which reminded worshippers that their souls

were in peril and that they would someday be meat for worms. Given all this， they did not exactly need their art to be a bummer too.

Today the messages your average Westerner is bombarded with are not religious but commercial， and forever happy .Fast-food eaters， news

anchors， text messengers， all smiling， smiling. Our magazines feature beaming celebrities and happy families in perfect homes. And since these

messages have an agenda——to lure us to open our wallets to make the very idea of happiness seem unreliable. “Celebrate！” commanded the ads for

the arthritis drug Celebrex， before we found out it could increase the risk of heart attacks.

What we forget——what our economy depends on is forgetting——is that happiness is more than pleasure without pain. The things that bring

the greatest joy carry the greatest potential for loss and disappointment. Today， surrounded by promises of easy happiness， we need someone to

tell us as religion once did， Memento mori： remember that you will die， that everything ends， and that happiness comes not in denying this but

in living with it. It‘s a message even more bitter than a clove cigarette， yet， somehow， a breath of fresh air.

2005 Passage 1

Everybody loves a fat pay rise. Yet pleasure at your own can vanish if you learn that a colleague has been given a bigger one. Indeed, if he has a

reputation for slacking, you might even be outraged. Such behaviour is regarded as “all too human”, with the underlying assumption that other

animals would not be capable of this finely developed sense of grievance. But a study by Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal of Emory University in

Atlanta, Georgia, which has just been published in Nature, suggests that it all too monkey, as well.

The researchers studied the behaviour of female brown capuchin monkeys. They look cute. They are good-natured, co-operative creatures, and they

share their food tardily. Above all, like their female human counterparts, they tend to pay much closer attention to the value of “goods and services”

than males.

Such characteristics make them perfect candidates for Dr. Brosnan's and Dr. de waal's; study. The researchers spent two years teaching their

monkeys to exchange tokens for food. Normally, the monkeys were happy enough to exchange pieces of rock for slices of cucumber. However,

when two monkeys were placed in separate but adjoining chambers, so that each could observe what the other was getting in return for its rock, their

behaviour became markedly different.

In the world of capuchins grapes are luxury goods (and much preferable to cucumbers) So when one monkey was handed a grape in exchange

for her token, the second was reluctant to hand hers over for a mere piece of cucumber. And if one received a grape without having to provide her

token in exchange at all, the other either tossed her own token at the researcher or out of the chamber, or refused to accept the slice of

cucumber .Indeed, the mere presence of a grape in the other chamber (without an actual monkey to eat it) was enough to reduce resentment in a

female capuchin.

The researches suggest that capuchin monkeys, like humans, are guided by social emotions, in the wild, they are a co-operative, groupliving

species, Such co-operation is likely to be stable only when each animal feels it is not being cheated. Feelings of righteous indignation, it seems, are

not the preserve of people alone, Refusing a lesser reward completely makes these feelings abundantly clear to other members of the group. However,

whether such a sense of fairness evolved independently in capuchins and humans, or whether it stems form the common ancestor that the species had

35 million years ago, is, as yet, an unanswered question.

2005 Passage 2

Do you remember all those years when scientists argued that smoking would kill us but the doubters insisted that we didn't know for sure?

That the evidence was inconclusive, the science uncertain? That the antismoking lobby was out to destroy our way of life and the government should

stay out of the way? Lots of Americans bought that nonsense, and over three decades, some 10 million smokers went to early graves.

There are upsetting parallels today, as scientists in one wave after another try to awaken us to the growing threat of global warming. The latest was

a panel from the National Academy of Sciences, enlisted by the White House, to tell us that the Earth's atmosphere is definitely warming and that the

problem is largely man-made. The clear message is that we should get moving to protect ourselves. The president of the National Academy, Bruce

Alberts, added this key point in the preface to the panel's report “Science never has all the answers .But science does provide us with the best

available guide to the future, and it is critical that out nation and the world base important policies on the best judgments that science can provide

concerning the future consequences of present actions.”

Just as on smoking, voices now come from many quarters insisting that the science about global warming is incomplete, that it's Ok to keep

pouring fumes into the air until we know for sure. This is a dangerous game: by the 100 percent of the evidence is in, it may be too late. With the

risks obvious and growing, a prudent people would take out an insurance policy now.

Fortunately, the White House is starting to pay attention. But it's obvious that a majority of the president's advisers still don't take global warming

seriously. Instead of a plan of action, they continue to press for more research-a classic case of “paralysis by analysis”.

To serve as responsible stewards of the planet, we must press forward on deeper atmospheric and oceanic research But research alone is

inadequate. If the Administration won't take the legislative initiative, Congress should help to begin fashioning conservation measures .A bill by

Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, which would offer financial incentives for private industry is a promising start Many see that the

country is getting ready to build lots of new power plants to meet our energy needs. If we are ever going to protect the atmosphere, it is crucial that

those new plants be environmentally sound.

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