中科院考博英语2007年真题阅读A

Section A   (60 minutes, 30 points)

Passage One
Most people would be impressed by the high quality of medicine available to most Americans. There is a lot of specialization, a great deal of attention to the individual, a vast amount of advanced technical equipment, and intense effort not to make mistakes because of the financial risk which doctors and hospitals must face the courts if they handle things badly.
But the Americans are in a mess. The problem is the way in which health care is organized and financed. Contrary to public belief, it is not just a free competition system. To the private system has been joined a large public system, because private care was simply not looking after the less fortunate and the elderly.
But even with this huge public part of the system, which this year will eat up 84.5 billion dollars-more than 10 percent of the U.S. budget-large numbers of Americans are left out. These include about half the I1 million unemployed and those who fail to meet the strict limits on income fixed by a government trying to make savings where it can.
    The basic problem, however, is that there is no central control over the health system. There is no limit to what doctors and hospitals charge for their services. Over than what the public is able to pay. The number of doctors has shot up and prices have climbed. When faced with toothache, a sick child, or a heart attack, all the unfortunate person concerned can do is pay up.
    Two-thirds of the populations are covered by medical insurance. Doctors charge as much as they want knowing that the insurance company will pay the bill.
    The medical profession has as a result become America's new big businessmen. The average income of doctors has now reached $100,000 a year. With such vast incomes the talk in the doctor's surgery is as likely to be about the doctor's latest financial deal, as about whether the minor operation he is recommending at several thousand dollars is entirely necessary.
      The rising cost of medicine in the U.S.A. is among the most worrying problem facing the country. In 1981 the country's health cost climbed 15.9 percent-about twice as fast as prices in general.

36. In the U.S. patients can effect, in medical ______.
A. occasional mistakes by careless doctors
B. a great deal of personal attention
C. low charge by doctors and hospitals
D. stacking nurses and bad services
37. Doctors and hospitals try hard to avoid making mistakes because ______.
A. they fear to be sued by the patients
B. they care much about Their reputation
C. they compete for getting more patents
D. they wish to join the private medical system
38. What do most Americans think about health in the U.S.?
A. It must be in total chaos
B. It must be a free competition system
C. It should cover the unemployed
D. It should involve private care.
39. From Paragraph 3 we know that ______from the public health system.
A. millions of jobless people get support.
B. those with steady income do not seek help.
C. some people are made ineligible to benefit.
D. those with private health care are excluded.
40. According to the author, what is the key factor in the rise of health cost in the US?
A. The refusal of insurance companies to pay the bills
B. The increase of the number of doctors and hospitals
C. the lack of government control over the medical prices
D. The merger of private health care with the public system.
41. It is implied that American doctors often______.
A. trade their professionalism for financial benefits
B. fails to recognize the paying power of the patients
C. discuss about how to make money during the surgery
D. gives the patients expensive but needless treatments.

Passage two

    Almost every day the media discovers an African community fighting some form of environmental threat from land fills. Garbage dumps, petrochemical plants, refineries, bus depots, and the list go on. For years, residents watched helplessly as their communities became dumping grounds.
But citizens didn't remain silent for long. Local activists have been organizing under the mantle of environmental justice since as far back as 1968. More than three decades ago, the concept of environmental justice had not registered on the radar screens of many environmental or civil rights groups. But environmental justice fits squarely under the civil rights umbrella. It should not be forgotten that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went to Memphis on an environmental and economic justice mission in 1968, seeking support for striking garbage workers who were underpaid and whose basic duties exposed them to environmentally hazardous conditions.
    In 1979 landmark environmental discrimination lawsuit filed in Houston. Followed by similar litigation efforts in the 1980s, rallied activists to stand up to corporations and demand government intervention.
    In 1991, a new breed of environmental activists gathered in Washington, D.C., to bring national attention to pollution problems threatening low-income and minority communities Leaders introduced the concept of environmental justice, protesting that Black, poor and working-class communities often received less environmental protection than White or more affluent communities. The first National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit effectively broadened what "the environment" was understood to mean. It expanded the definition to include where we live, work, play, worship and go to school, as well as the physical and natural world.  In the process, the environmental justice movement changed the way environmentalism is practiced in the United States and, ultimately, worldwide.
Because many issues identified at the inaugural summit remain unaddressed, the second National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit was convened in Washington, D.C., this past October. The second summit was planned for 500 delegates; but more than 1,400 people attended the four-day gathering.
"We are pleased that the Summit II was able to attract a record number of grassroots activists, academicians, students, researchers, government officials We proved to the world that our planners, policy analysts and movement is alive and well, and growing," says Beverly Wright, chair of the summit. The meeting produced two dozen policy papers that show environmental and health disparities between people of color and Whites.
42. In Paragraph 1, the word “residents’’ refers to ______in particular
A. ethnic groups in the U.S
B. the American general public
C. a Africa American
D. the U.S. working-class
43. More than three decades ago, environments justice was ______.
A. controversial，among local activities
B. First proposed by Martin Luther King Jr.
C. fascinating to the civil rights groups
D. barely realized by many environmentalists
44. In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. went to Memphis to help the garbage workers ______.
A. get relieved of some of their basic duties
B. know what environmental justice was
C. fight for better working conditions
D. recognize their dangerous surroundings
45.. Paragraph 3 implies that, in 1979 ______.
A. the environmental justice issues were first brought to court in Houston
B. environmental activists cooperated in defying the US government
C. the government intervention helped promote environmental justice
D. environmental problems attracted the attention of the government
46. the new breed of environmental activists differed from the previous activists in that______.
A. they noticed environmental disparities between the rich and the poor
B. they cried for government intervention in saving the environment
C. they knew what ‘the environment really meant to the White people

D. they practiced environmentalism outside as well as within the US
47. With respect to getting environmental justice, Summit II aimed for ______.
A. showing the achieved success
B. attracting national attention
C. identifying relevant issues
D. finding solutions to the problems

Passage Three
Anyone who doubts that children are born with a healthy amount of ambition need spent only“tow minutes with“baby eagerly learning to walk or a headstrong toddler stating to walk. No matter how many times the little ones stumble in their initial efforts, most keep on trying, determined to master their amazing new skill. It is only several years later, around the start of middle or junior high school, many psychologists and teachers agree, that a good number of kids seem to lose their natural drive to succeed and end up joining the ranks of underachievers. For the parents of such kids, whose own ambition is often in separately tied to their children's success, it can be a bewildering, painful experience. So it is no wonder some parents find themselves hoping that ambition can be taught like any other subject at school.
It's not quite that simple. "Kids can be given the opportunities, but they can't before，”says Jacquelyn Eccles, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan who tried a study examining what motivated first-and seventh-graders in three school districts. Even so growing number of educators and psychosis’s do believe it is possible to unearth ambition in students who don't seem to have much. They say that by instilling confidence, encouraging some risk taking, being accepting of failure and expanding the areas in which children may be successful, both parents and teachers can reignite that innate desire to achieve.
Dubbed Brainology, the unorthodox approach uses basic neuroscience to teach kids how the brain works and how it can continue to develop throughout life. The message is that everything is within the kids' control, that their intelligence is malleable
Some experts say our education system, with its strong emphasis on testing and rigid separation of students into disappearance of drive in some kids. Educators say it's important to expose kids to a world beyond homework and tests, through volunteer work, sports, hobbies and other extracurricular activities. “The crux of the issue is that many students that many students experience education as irrelevant to their life goals and ambitions ‘says Michael Nakkula, a Harvard education professor who runs a Boston-area mentoring program called  Project  IF  (Inventing  the  Future),  which  works  to  get  low-income underachievers in touch with their aspirations. The key to getting kids to aim higher at school is to tell them the notion that Glasswork is irrelevant is not true, to show them how doing well at school can actually help them fulfill their dreams beyond it. Like any ambitious toddler, they need to understand that they have to learn to walk before they can run.
48. The passage is mainly about ______.
A. when in one's life ambition is most needed
B. what to do to reform the education system
C. why parents of underachievers are ambitious
D. how to help school children develop their ambition
49. According to the passage, most educators believe that many kids ______.
A. show a lack of academic ambition at birth
B. amaze their parents by acting like adults
C. become less ambitious as they grow up
D. get increasingly afraid of failing in school
50. Paragraph 1 mentions some parents who would see their kids' failure as______.
A. natural
B. trivial
C. intolerable
D. understandable
51. The word "malleable" in Paragraph 3 most probably means ______.
A. justifiable
B. flexible
C. uncountable
D. desirable
52. Some experts suggest that many kids lose ambition in school because they are______.
A. cut off from the outside world
B. exposed to school work only
C. kept away from class competition
D. labeled as inferior to others
53. The last paragraph implies______.
A. the effectiveness of Project IF
B. the significance of class work
C. the importance of walking to running
D. the attainment of different life goals

Passage Four
    Jan Hendrik Schon's success seemed too good to be true, and it was. In only four years as a physicist at Bell Laborites, Schon, 32, had co-authored 90 scientific papers--one every 16 days--dealing new discoveries in superconductivity, lasers, nanotechnology and quantum physics. This output astonished his colleagues, and made them suspicious. When one co-worker noticed that the same table of data appeared in two separate papers--which also happened to appear in the two most prestigious scientific journals in the world, Science and Nature-the jig was up. In October 2002 a Bell Labs investigation found that: Schon had falsified and fabricated data. His career as a scientist was finished .Scientific scandals, witch are as old as science itself, tend to follow similar patterns of presumption and due reward.
In recent years, of course, the pressure on scientists to publish in the top journals has increased, making the journals much more crucial to career success. The questions are whether Nature and Science have become to too powerful as arbiters of what science reach to the public, and whether the journals are up to their task as gatekeepers.
Each scientific specialty has its own set of journals. Physicists have Physical Review Letters; neuroscientists have Neuron, and so forth. Science and Nature, though, are the only two major journals that cover the gamut of scientific disciplines, from meteorology and zoology to quantum physics and chemistry. As a result, journalists look to them each week for the cream of the crop of new science papers. And scientists look to the journals in part to reach journalists. Why do they care? Competition for grants has gotten so fierce that scientists have sought popular renown to gain an edge over their rivals. Publication in specialized journals will win the acclaims from academics and satisfy the publish-or-perish imperative, but Science and Nature come with the added bonus of potentially getting your paper written up in The New York Times and other publications.
Scientists tend to pay more attention to the big two than to other journals. When more scientists know about a particular paper, they're more apt to cite it in their own papers. Being oft-cited will increase a scientist's "Impact Factor," a measure of how often papers are cited by peers. Funding agencies use the "Impact Factor" as a rough measure of the influence of scientists they're considering supporting.

54. The achievements of Jan Hendrik Schon turned out to be______.
A. surprising
B. inconceivable
C. praiseworthy
D. fraudulent
55. To find why scientific scandals like Schon's occur, people have begun to raise doubt about the two top journals for_____.
A. their academic prestige
B. their importance to career success
C. their popularity with scientific circles
D. their reviewing system.
56. They according to the passage, what makes Science and Nature powerful?
A. They cover the best researches on a variety of subjects
B. They publish controversial papers that others won't.
C. They prefer papers on highly specialized research.
D. They have a special system of peer-review.
57. The expression "the cream of the crop" in Paragraph 3 likely means _____.
A. the most of all
B. best of all
C. the recently released
D. the widely spread
58. Scientists know that by reaching the journalists for Science and Nature they would get a better chance to _____.
A. have more of their papers published in the journals in the future
B. have their names appear in many other renown publications
C. have their research results understood by the general public
D. have their superiors give them monetary award for the publication
59. Compared with other journals, Nature and Science would give the authors an   extra benefit that their papers _____.
A. will be more likely to become influential and be cited
B. will be more likely to be free from challenge by peers.
C. will be reviewed with greaser care to ensure me authority
D. will reappear in their original in papers like New York Times.

Passage Five
This leaves us with the challenge of finding some politically practicable way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But it is an awkward truth that when most U.S senators were asked informally in 2000 if they would support the Kyoto Protocol should President George W. Bush send it to the Scant for ratification, the overwhelming majority, Democrats as well as Republicans, said they could not. The reason for the liberals' surprising reply is clear. Many studies, not all by conservatives, suggest that full compliance with the terms of the Kyoto Protocol would likely lead to a deep American recession. For those willing to run this risk, sober reflection on the consequences of the economic collapse of 1929 and the subsequent worldwide depression with all its political and ultimately military consequences is certainly in order.
That said, what can be done, in particular by our own country Independent of the issues raised by the Kyoto Protocol, and given the weight of evidence that the problem of global warming is serious fraught with dire consequences, failure to do anything at all and instead to promote "business as usual" downright criminal.
Yet the Bush administration has given no more than lip service to the problem, though that could he changing. It is one thing weigh alternatives and implements compromises that reflect the complexity of the problem; it is quite another thing to do nothing, especially if doing nothing is just a way of securing support from certain industries that worsen the problem.
There are, after all, things that can he done. Reopening a serious international dialogue, and not just saying a few good words, would be a useful if inadequate start. Not every problem must be solving before -the weight of evidence becomes so compelling that certain initial steps become almost mandatory. We already know how to make more fuel-efficient yet no national policy has surfaced to accomplish this. The scientific and engineering communities are the ones best suited to identify the scientific research that is still needed and the technical projects that show the greatest promise. These issues should be decided by them and not the politicians. Once solutions look promising, as a few already do, industry will be all too ready to romp in, for at that stage there is money to be made. And only a fool would underestimate human ingenuity when given a proper incentive, or the strength of American industry once the boiler is lit under it.
                                                                                       60. What can be inferred about the Kyoto Protocol from Paragraph 1?
A. It was about environment protection.
B. It was supported by most Democrats.
C. It was considered awkward by conservations
D. It was officially rejected by most US senators.
61. Many studies suggest that full agreement with the Kyoto Protocol would run the risk of _____.
A. falling victim to military warfare
B. offending other countries
C. re-experiencing the past miseries
D. provoking nationwide anger
62. We can learn from Paragraph 2 that _____.
A. measures should be taken to deal with global warming.
B. the best way to deal with global warming is `let it be'.
C. seriousness of global warming has been exaggerated.
D. promoting "business as usual" must be further stressed.
63. The Bush administration _____.
A. has assisted in aggravating global warming
B. has taken no measures against global warming
C. has executed compromises about global warming
D. has got big industries' support to stop global warming
64. The author suggests all of the following measures EXCEPT_____.
A. reopening a serious international dialogue
B. overcoming all difficulties before starting
C. conducting scientific researches concerned
D. doing the most promising technical projects
65. In the last paragraph, the expression "once the boiler is lit under it" most probably means "when American industry is_____.
A. undermined
B. upgraded
C. incensed
D. stimulated.

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