英语四级阅读训练1

英语四级阅读训练1
2011年12⽉英语四六级仔细阅读训练⼀：
⼼理研究和医疗保健五篇阅读及解析
Passage One
Surgeons will soon be able to enter the eye to carry out operations—at least in a virtual sense. Techniques derived from virtual reality—the computer system that immerses in an artificial computer-generated world⼀will, allow surgeons to feel as if he could see the inside of the eye during an operation，creating the illusion that they are actually there.
Researchers at the Biorobotics(⽣物机器⼈技术）Laboratory of McGill University in Montreal are building a robot，known as Micro Surgery Robot-1 (MSR-1 for short), that will perform delicate operations under the control of a human surgeon.丁he robot is specifically designed for performing eye surgery but could have other applications, such as the removal of brain tumors(肿瘤）.丁he system could also be used to allow surgeons and their students to practise simulated surgery that feels like the real thing—without the real consequences for the patients.
During the operations，the surgeon manipulates a set of control known as the master. These are connected through a high-performance computer to the robot. Both the master and the robot have two limbs. When the surgeon moves the master's limbs，the robot's limbs move in exactly the same way，except that the movements can be scaled down as much as a thousand times. This will eliminate hand trembling and poor accuracy and thus reduce the damage to the eye that can occur with present microsurgery techniques. Each of the robot's limbs has a minimum movement of one micrometer—more than one hundred times the precision of the human hand.
The computer also creates a three-dimensional robot's eye view of the inside of the eye that the surgeon can see by wearing a virtual reality helmet(虚拟现实头盗）that has a small lens in front of each eye.
To provide the surgeon with such a realistic experience，MSR-1 must be able to move rapidly，but this requires extremely fast computing. To handle the
computational demands of instant interaction, the McGill team is constructing its own parallel-processing computer. It is also studying areas such as muscle mechanism, artificial intelligence and optics, and has already built another micro- robot ,MR-1, capable of manipulating a single living cell.
Although commercial applications of the new system are not expected for severa l years, its basic mechanical components will be ready for testing in a few months. “The day when micro robots will be able to perform surgery without human intervention is many years away,” says Hunter?“in the meantime, a system such as MRS-1 is a necessary precursor(雜形）.”
1. The so-called ……virtual reality” (Line 2，Para. 1) mentioned in the passage is actually ,
A. a surgical tool used for operations
B. a computer system used to produce life-like illusions
C. a new kind of applications in a visual technology
D. a way to carry out operation in a visual sense
2. According to the passage, MSR-1 is designed for______________ .
A. making inside-eye observations
B. carrying out operations on human eyes
C. cutting off brain tumors
D. both B and C
3. What is the chief advantage of the virtual reality techniques when used in microsurgery?
A. The medical students and surgeons can use it to practise simulated surgical operations as if operating on a real patient.
B. Medical students and surgeons can do any operations without considering their consequences.
C. It helps to do operations on human eyes extremely accurately.
D. It allows surgeons and their students to set their imagination free.
4. The phrase “ scale down ” ( Line 5, Para. 3 ) most probably means?
A. reduce the proportion of the size properly
B. reduce according to the fixed pattern
C. make it diminish infinitely
D. cut down the time properly
5. The last paragraph of the passage clearly indicates
that______________ ?
A. MSR-1 may be brought into practical application in a few years
B. as a necessary pioneer in medical science，MSR-1 has still a long way to go
C. the basic mechanical components of MSR-1 are being tested for their fina l assemblage
D. the commercial applications of MSR-1 will be expected in a few years
Passage Two
The diseases afflicting(折磨）Western societies have undergone dramatic
、
changes. In the course of a century，so many mass killers have vanished that two-thirds of all deaths are now associated with the diseases of old age. Those who die young are more often than the victims of accidents，violence and suicide.
These changes in public health are generally equated with progress and are attributed to more or better medical care. In fact，there is no evidence of any direct relation between changing disease patterns and the so-called progress of medicine.
The impotence(⽆⼒，⽆效）of medical services to change life expectancy and the insignificance of much contemporary clinical care in the curing of disease are all obvious, well-documented and well-repressed.
Neither the proportion of doctors in a population, nor the clinical tools at their disposal, nor the number of hospital beds, are causal factors in the striking changes in overall patterns of disease. The new techniques available to recognize
and treat such conditions as pernicious anaemia and hypertension, o r to correct congenital malformations by surgical interventions, increase our understanding of disease，but do not reduce its incidence. The fact that there are more doctors where certain diseases have become rare has little to do with their ability to contro l or eliminate them, It simply means that doctors deploy themselves as they like, mere so than other professionals, and that they tend to gather where the climate is healthy, where the water is clean, and where people work and can pay for their services.
1.
The diseases that prevail in contemporary western societies____________________________________ .
A. result from modern life styles
B. kill many people at
once
C. are concentrated among the elderly
D. cause more deaths of the young than accidents
2. The author claims that____________ .
A. there is no direct relation between changing disease patterns and the
progress of medicine to the progress live longer doctors in a
the improvement of public health is certainly due of
modern medical services are effective in making people
there is much evidence to show the power of medicine
3. 丁he author thinks that the number of community ?
A. control the spread of disease
B. improve the overall quality of life
C. doesn't have much effect on the happenings of disease
D. reduce the happenings of disease to the lowest rate
4. Many doctors choose to live where .
A. they are most needed
B. research facilities are available
C. they can be near colleagues
D. conditions discourage disease
5. What is the author's attitude to developments in medicine?
A. Matter-of-fact
B. Positive
C. Indifferent
D. Extremely doubtful
Passage Three
Questions 1 to S are based on the following passage.
The riddle of why older people can vividly recall experiences as children and young adults but forget what they had for lunch has no easy solution，says Carol Fuchs，a memory specialist with the Laboratory of Neuroscience. "One way to look at it is that those early memories have been there t he longest and have been reinforced over the years. Recent stimuli(刺激），on the other hand，must compete for space with a lifetime of accumulated data in the brain and have only a short time to be encoded”.
Other factor，such as medications(药物）and stress，can adversely affect this delicate mechanism.
The Department of Health and Human Services reports that the average adult over 65 takes 7. 5 medications，many of which may cause confihsion and memory loss. Stress resulting from fear of having to enter a nursing home or being forced into early retirement can also cause temporary memory failure.
One way to improve memory performance is to be selective, says Alan S. Brown. For instance, he says，it's not essential for most people to remember every person they meet.
"An enormous amount of information bombards us each day，and most of it
is not worth remembering. ” Brown says, "Make a conscious decision about each new bit of data. If you decide it is important, turn on your attention radar; if not, let it pass right by".
A National Institute on Aging study seems to indicate that older people may instinctively operate this way, retaining what they
consider important and discarding the rest.
The study involved asking 79 men and women aged 23 to 93 to recall some of their daily activities during a 2. 5-day stay at a research center. The group was tested again 7 to 10 days later by telephone, and 33 of the participants were tested a third time about 18 months later.
No significant difference was noted in their ability to remember information that would be needed for further action. However, older participants did much worse in recalling incidental items. The study concluded that selective remembering may be a way of compensating(补偿）for a decline in the ability to recall isolated facts from among clusters of similar data in memory.
1. Carol Fuchs's research focuses on____________ .
A. why people remember early happenings more clearly
B. why people remember recent incidents more clearly
C. memory among the old
D. why the old can not recall early experience more clearly
2. According to the Carol Fuchs' explanation old memories have been rooted in brain .
A. while new stimuli has no chance to enter at all
B. while new stimuli has to take a long time to find its “room”
C. while new stimuli is mere fresh
D. while new stimuli has to fight for its “rocm”
3. Medications generally seem to____________ ,
A. make memory loss worse
B. improve memory loss
C. cause stress
D. be harmful to the body but good to memory
4. Older people are advised to____________ .
A. be as alert as a radar
B. improve their selective memory
C. remember things selectively
D. avoid medicine
5. It seems that the old have difficulty_____________ .
A. recalling individual details
B. remembering important facts
C. recalling familiar things
D. selecting similar data
Passage Four
Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following passage.
Scientists recently revealed an instinct in women intact and unaffected by the age of technology. Glancing through glossy art books Lee Salk noticed that four out of five Mary is depicted holding the infant Jesus against her left breast. The Madonna sparked off a series of experiments and observation to determine on which side women hold their babies and why.
First，he determined that modern mothers still tend to hold their baby on the left. Of 255 right-handed mothers, 83% held the
baby on the left. And out of 32
left-handed women, 78% held the baby on the left. As a control, women were watched emerging from supermarkets carrying babysize packages; the bundles were held with no side preference.
Then, dental patients were given a large rubber ball to hold during treatment. The majority clutched the ball to their left side, even when it interfered with the dentist's activities. This suggested that in times of stress objects are held against the left side.
At that point an apparently contradictory phenomenon was observed. A large number of mothers who brought their premature babies to a follow-up clinic were seen to hold their babies against their right side.
So，115 mothers who had been separated from their babies for 24 hours after birth were observed for holding response.丁he experimenters presented the baby directly to the midline of the mother、body, and noted how she held the baby. 53% placed the baby on the left and 47% on the right. And it was also noted that the mothers of the group who had held their baby on the left had already had a baby from which they had not been separated after birth.
The author suggests that “the time immediately after birth is a critical period when the stimulus of holding the baby releases a certain maternal response". That is to say, she senses the baby is better off on her left.
Left-handed holding enables the baby to hear the heartbeat⼀a sound associated with the security of the womb. In order to discover whether hearing the heart has a beneficial effect on the baby, the sound of a human heartbeat was played to 102 babies in a New York nursery for 4 days. A control group of babies was not exposed to heartbeats. The babies in the beat group gained markedly more weight and cried far less than the babies in the control group.
1. Looking at art books inspired Lee Salk to investigate______________ .
A. pictures of Mary and Jesus
B. the way people hold objects in times of stress C the way mothers hold
their babies
D. the effect of the human heartbeat on premature babies
2. Why did he watch women coming out of supermarkets?
A. To control them.
B. To see how they carried their babies.
C. To see if women carried parcels and babies differently.
D. To see if women were right-handed, or left-handed.
3. Why were dental patients given a rubber ball to hold?
A. To help them overcome their stress.
B. To help the dentist's activity.
C. Because of experiment.
D. To see which side they held it.
4. What was the "apparently contradictory phenomenon”？
A. Mothers of premature babies held their babies on the correct side.
B. Mothers of premature babies took their babies to a follow-up clinic.
C. Mothers of premature babies were seen to hold their babies differently from other mothers.
D. The behavior of mothers of premature babies disproved Lee's theory.
5. Salk's experiments proved that____________ .
A. mothers have an instinct to hold their babies on the left immediately after birth
B. mothers hold their babies on the left at times of stress
C. mothers of premature babies do not have the instinct to hold their babies on the right
D. mothers find it more comfortable to carry their babies on the left because the heart is on that side
Passage Five
It is interesting to review briefly the evolution of the mind as an instrument. The commonest way that has been used to find out the relative intellectual level of
creatures at different stages of evolutionary complexity has been to study the way they behave when given different kinds of puzzles. For example, an ant possesses a complex routine of behavior，but can it think? The answer is that if
an ant is forced to go through a maze(迷宫）of passage，many of which are dead ends，on its way to its nest, it starts by making a lot of mistakes and taking a great many, wrong turnings. In the end, however, after it has had to worry about its way through often enough, it does learn to get to its nest without going into any of the blind alleys. As one moves up the evolutionary scale, the test of brain power exemplified by solving the problem of getting through a maze becomes too simple. Among mammals，for example, the maze is an inadequate test. The learning problem does not tax enough attributes of the mind. In this sort of learning, as a matter of fact，rats can beat university undergraduates and have，in fact, repeatedly done so.
The next, more subtle test of mental ability is to see at what level an animal can think about something when it is not there. The usual test is to train the animal to go through one of several doors when a light is turned on at that particular door. When the preliminary lesson has been learned—that is, that food can be obtained by going through the door with the light，the more subtle trial is imposed. The light is shone as before at one or other of the different doors and is then extinguished. After an interval the animal is released. When posed with this test rats and dogs can remember which was the lighted door only if they are allowed to keep their heads steadily pointing at where the light was. On the other hand, a racoon, possessing a more highly evolved brain，can pace up and down until it is released and then go straight to the correct door. But it can only remember for about twenty-five seconds which is the right door for any particular test.
1. The usual way to test the intelligence of creatures is
to______________ .
A. give them problems to solve
B. guide them through a maze of passages
C. find their own nests quickly
D. determine their evolutionary stages
2. From the maze test we know____________ .
A. ants have strong sense of direction
B. ants can't think at all
C. ants can eventually learn from experience
D. ants have a complex routine of behavior
3. A maze test is too simple for mammals since_____________ .
they are at higher stages of
C. they can follow the example of ants
D. their brain-power can beat university undergraduates
4. When the preliminary lesson has been learned，the trial becomes more subtle because .
A. the animal has to go through several doors
B. the animal must remember the door that has been lighted
C. the light shines at intervals
D. the animal is released at intervals
5.In the test，raccoons seem cleverer than rats and dogs in that_________________________________ .
A. rats and dogs must sit before the lighted door
B. rats and dogs can't find the lighted door
C. raccoons can always find the correct door
D. raccoons have a longer memory。