E
Science has a lot of uses. It can uncover laws of nature, cure diseases, make bombs, and help bridges to stand up. Indeed science is so good at what it does that there’s always a temptation(诱惑) to drag it into problems where it may not be helpful. David Brooks, author of The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character,and Achievement, appears to be the latest in a long line of writers who have failed to resist the temptation.
Brooks gained fame for several books. His latest book The Social Animal, however, is more ambitious and serious than his earlier books. It is an attempt to deal with a set of weighty topics. The book focuses on big questions: What has science revealed about human nature? What are the sources of character? And why are some people happy and successful while others aren’t?
To answer these questions, Brooks surveys a wide range of disciplines（学科）. Considering this, you might expect the book to be a dry recitation of facts. But Brooks has structured his book in an unorthodox(非常规的), and perhaps unfortunate, way. Instead of introducing scientific theories, he tells a story, within which he tries to make his points, perhaps in order to keep the reader’s attention.So as Harold and Erica, the hero and heroine in his story, live through childhood, we hear about the science of child development and as they begin to date we hear about the theory of sexual attraction. Brooks carries this through to the death of one of his characters.
On the whole,Brooks’ story is acceptable if uninspired. As one would expect, his writing is mostly clear and, to be fair, some chapters stand out above the rest. I enjoyed, for instance, the chapter in which Harold discovers how to think on his own. While Harold and Erica are certainly not strong or memorable characters, the more serious problems with The Social Animal lie elsewhere. These problems partly involve Brooks’ attempt to translate his tale into science.The author mentions the functions of science at the beginning of the passage to__________.
| A．illustrate where science can be applied |
| B．demonstrate the value of Brooks’ new book |
| C．remind the reader of the importance of science |
| D．explain why many writers use science in their works |
According to the author, which of the following could be a strength of the book?
| A．Its strong basis. |
| B．Its convincing points. |
| C．Its clear writing. |
| D．Its memorable characters. |
What is the author’s general attitude towards the book?
| A．Contradictory. |
| B．Supportive. |
| C．Cautious. |
| D．Critical. |
What is the author likely to write about after the last paragraph?
| A．Problems with the book. |
| B．Brooks’s life experience. |
| C．Death of the characters. |
| D．Brooks’s translation skills. |
“The first and best of victories is for a man to conquer himself; to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most shameful,” says Plato. Self-control is at the root of all the advantages. Let a man give in to his impulses(冲动) and feelings, and from that moment he gives up his moral(道德) freedom.
A single angry word has lost many friends. When Socrates found in himself any temper or anger, he would check it by speaking low in order to control himself. If you are conscious of being angry, keep your mouth shut so that you can hold back rising anger. Many a person has dropped dead in great anger. Fits of anger bring fits of disease. “Whoever the gods would destroy they first make them mad.” “Keep cool,” says Webster, “anger is not argument.” “Be calm in arguing,” says George Herbert, “for fierceness(狂怒) makes error a fault.”
To be angry with a weak man is to prove that you are not strong yourself. “Anger,” says Pythagoras, “brings with folly and ends with regret.” You must measure the strength of a man by the power of the feelings he conquers, not by the power of those which conquer him.
Self-control is man’s last and greatest victory.
If a man lacks self-control he seems to lack everything. Without it he can have no patience, no power to govern himself; he can have no self-confidence, for he will always be controlled by his strongest feeling. If he lacks self-control, the very backbone and nerve of character are lacking also.What’s the main idea of the passage?
| A．The importance of self- control. |
| B．How to conquer oneself? |
| C．The relation between a man’s moral freedom and his feelings. |
| D．A man should keep cool. |
What’s the meaning of “whoever the gods would destroy they first make them mad”?
| A．If you are mad, the gods will kill you. |
| B．If you lose your temper first, gods will kill you first. |
| C．If you can’t control yourself, you will be crazy. |
| D．If the gods want to kill you, they will make you mad first. |
Which of the following is NOT true, according to passage?
| A．The first and best of victories is for a man to conquer himself. |
| B．You will make a small mistake serious if you don’t keep cool. |
| C．You must measure a man’s strength by the power of the feelings which conquer him. |
| D．Anger brings with folly and ends with regret. |
Which of the following can’t help you avoid anger, according to the passage?
| A．Be calm in arguing. |
| B．Check your temper or anger by speaking low. |
| C．Keep your mouth shut. |
| D．Try to make the other angry first。 |
In real life, the daily struggles between parents and children are around these narrow problems of an extra hour, extra TV show, and so on” said Avi Sadeh, psychology professor at Tel Aviv University. “Too little sleep and more accidents,” he said.
Sadeh and his colleagues found an extra hour of sleep can make a big difference. The children who slept longer, although they woke up more frequently during the night, scored higher on tests, Sadeh reported in the March/April issue of journal Child Development.
“When the children slept longer, their sleep quality was somewhat weak, but in spite of this their performance for study improved because the extra sleep was more significant than the reduction in sleep quality. ” Sadeh said. “Some studies suggested that lack of sleep as a child affects development into adulthood and it’s more likely to develop their attention disorder when they grow older. ”
In earlier studies, Sadeh’s team found that fourth graders slept an average of 8. 2 hours and sixth graders slept an average of 7. 7 hours.
“Previous research has shown children in elementary school need at least nine hours of sleep a night on a regular basis, said Carl Hunt, director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research in Bethesda, and high-school-age children need somewhat less, he said, adding the results of insufficient sleep could be serious.
“A tired child is an accident waiting to happen,” Hunt said. “And as kids get older, toys get bigger and the risks higher. ”Hunt also said too little sleep could result in learning and memory problems and long-term effects on school performance.
“This is an important extension of what we already know, ” Hunt said of Sadeh’s research, adding sleep is as important as nutrition(营养) and exercise to good health.
“To put it into reality,” Hunt said, “parents should make sure they know when their children actually are going to sleep and their rooms are conducive to sleeping instead of playing. ”What is Child Development?
A A new story B A popular book
C. A periodical magazine D A TV programmeHow many persons are exactly mentioned in the text?
A One B TwoC Three D FourThe underlined phrase “conducive to” (in the last sentence) means ________.
A helping to happen B influenced by
C full of D acceptable ofWhich of the following statements is NOT true according to the passage?
| A．There are some daily struggles between parents and children because of having nothing in common with extra rest time. |
| B．The children who sleep longer are weak in their study. |
| C．Lack of sleep as a child has great effect on their development into adulthood. |
| D．In general, children in elementary school need at least nine hours of sleep a night. |
Wild animals seem to have escaped the Indian Ocean tsunami(海啸), adding weight to ideas they possess a “sixth sense” for disasters, experts said on Thursday.
Sri Lanka wildlife officials have said the giant waves that killed over 24,000 people along the Indian Ocean island’s coast seemingly missed wild beasts, with no dead animals found.
“No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit. I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening,” H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka’s Wildlife Department, said on Wednesday.
The waves washed floodwaters up to 3 km (2 miles) inland at Yala National Park in the southeast, Sri Lanka’s biggest wildlife reserve and home to hundreds of wild elephants. “There has been a lot of evidence about dogs barking or birds migrating before volcanic eruptions or earthquakes. But it has not been proven,” said Matthew van Lierop, an animal behaviour specialist at Johannesburg Zoo.
“There have been no specific studies because you can’t really test it in a lab or field setting,” he said.
Other authorities agreed with this conclusion.
“Wildlife seem to be able to pick up certain phenomenon, especially birds. There are many reports of birds detecting coming disasters,” said Clive Walker, who has written several books on African wildlife.
Animals certainly rely on the known senses such as smell or hearing to avoid danger such as predators(食肉动物).
The idea of an animal “sixth sense” is a lasting one that the evidence on Sri Lanka’s damaged coast is likely to add to. This passage is mainly about________.
| A．the damage that was caused in the Indian Ocean tsunami |
| B．why animals can save them from natural disasters |
| C．how to protect the wildlife when disaster happens |
| D．the different opinions about animals’ natural power |
Which of the following is true according to the text?
| A．It has been proved that animals have a “sixth sense”. |
| B．Research has been made on the special movements of animals before disasters. |
| C．It’s generally considered that animals can sense the coming of disasters. |
| D．Animals have depended on the known senses to escape the Indian Ocean tsunami. |
What does the term “sixth sense” in the text means?
| A．It is the natural ability of animals that can save them from danger. |
| B．It is the animal’s imagination in the brain. |
| C．It is some hidden power to say in advance that something will happen. |
| D．It is a kind of sense that is the same as smell or hearing. |
Which section does the text most probably appear in a newspaper?
| A．News Report. | B．Discovery. | C．Science Fiction. | D．Culture. |
A “lost tribe” that reached America from Australia may have been the first Native Americans, according to a new theory.
If proved by DNA evidence, the theory will break long established beliefs about the southerly migration of people who entered America across the Bering Strait, found it empty and occupied it.
On this theory rests the belief of Native Americans to have been the first true Americans. They would be classified to the ranks of escapee, beaten to the New World by Aboriginals (土著人) in boats.
To a European, this may seem like an academic argument, but to Americans it is a philosophical question about identity, Silvia Gonzales, of Liverpool University said .
Her claims are based on skeletons found in the California Peninsula of Mexico that have skulls quite unlike the broad Mongolian features of Native Americans. These narrow-skulled people have more in common with southern Asians, Aboriginal Australians and people of the South Pacific Region.
The bones, stored at the National Museum of Anthropology (人类学) in Mexico City, have been carbon-dated and one is 12,700 years old, which places it several thousand years before the arrival of people from the North. “We think there were several migration waves into the Americas at different times by different human groups,” Dr. Gonzales said. “The timing, route and point of origin of the first colonization of the Americas remains a most contentious topic in human evolution.”
But comparisons based on skull shape are not considered conclusive by anthropologists, so a team of Mexican and British scientists, backed by the Natural Environment Research Council, has also attempted to take out DNA from the bones. Dr. Gonzales declined yesterday to say exactly what the results were, as they need to be checked, but indicated that they were consistent(一致) with an Australian origin. It is generally considered that the first Native Americans came from ________.
| A．North Asia | B．Australia |
| C．South Pacific | D．South Asia |
The skeletons found in the California Peninsula of Mexico have ________.
| A．the broad skull shape |
| B．the narrow skull shape |
| C．different features of Aboriginal Australians |
| D．the same features of Native Americans |
The underlined “contentious” is similar in meaning to “________”.
| A．likely to cause great interest | B．difficult to solve |
| C．well-known to all | D．likely to cause argument |
Which of the following statements is true according to the text?
| A．Research on skulls can draw an exact conclusion. |
| B．DNA tests have proved the fact that the first Native Americans came from Australian. |
| C．Scientists are still not sure about the origin of the Native Americans. |
| D．People began to enter America across the Bering Strait about 12,700 years ago. |
Mules
Although the top men in smuggling（走私）business must work together, most of a syndicate’s（集团）small fry, especially the mules, know only their immediate contacts. If caught there is little they can give away. A mule probably will not even know the name of the person who gives him his instructions, nor how to get in touch with him. Usually he even does not know the person to whom he has to make delivery. He will be told just to sit tight in a certain hotel or bar until someone contacts him. In this way if he is blown, coming through airport customs he cannot unwittingly lead agents to the next link in the chain. All the persons at the receiving end do is to hang around the airport among the waiting crowd, and see that the mule comes through safely. If he does not, he is dimply written off（报废；注销）as a loss. To make identification of mules easier, several syndicates have devised their own “club ties” so that a mule wearing one can immediately be picked out.
Mules often receive careful training before embarking on their first journey. One Beirut organization, for example, uses a room with three airline seats in it. There the trainee mules sit for hours on end wearing weighted smuggling vests beneath their clothes, so that they become accustomed to standing up after a long flight in a natural way, and without revealing what they are carrying. An outfit in Brussels maintained a comfortable apartment where the mules could relax and get a firm grip on themselves on the night before their first journey; they were helped to dress before setting out for the airport in the morning. More often than not a courier will not know precisely where he is going or what flight number is until he is actually handed his tickets at the airport. This prevents the careless boast in some bar or to a girl friend the night before.
Mules occasionally run off with the goods to keep the profit themselves. As insurance against this, a syndicate often sends a high-up on the same plane to keep a wary eye on couriers, particularly new ones. Even then things can go badly wrong. One international currency smuggler who was having trouble getting money out of Britain was offered help by a group of men who said they were in a position to “fix thing” – for a fee of course. Foolishly, the smuggler agreed to accept their help. When he got to London’s Heathrow Airport, he handed over to one of the men a black suitcase containing nearly $90,000 in cash, destined for Frankfurt. Just to keep an eye on things, the smuggler went along on the same plane. When they landed at Frankfurt he was handed back his suitcase. He beat a straight path to the men’s toilet, opened the case, and found only old clothes. The courier had switched suitcase en route, but the smuggler could hardly run to the police and complain that “the man who was smuggling money out of England for me has stolen it.”What is a “mule”?
A A person who sends smuggling goods for a syndicate is called mule.
B A person in charge of smuggling goods is called mule.
C A person who makes delivery for a syndicate is called mule.
D A person who receives instructions from a smuggler is called mule.The sentence “if he is blown” in line (6) is closest in meaning to
A if he is arrested. B if he is recognized, but not necessarily arrested.
C if he is recognized and arrested. D if he runs away.Why does the author give an example in the last paragraph?
A To show how a smuggler is caught.
B To show a smuggler is afraid of the police.
C To show to keep a wary eye on couriers is useless.
D To show mules may keep the profit for themselves.how does a mule work?
A Jointly. B Independently.
C consciously. D Separately.