大学英语六级分类模拟题457_真题-无答案

大学英语六级分类模拟题457
(总分446,考试时间90分钟)
Reading Comprehension
Section A
Plastic Surgery
A better credit card is the solution to ever larger hack attacks
A. A thin magnetic stripe (magstripe) is all that stands between your credit-card information and the bad guys. And they"ve been working hard to break in. That"s why 2014 is shaping up as a major showdown: Banks, law enforcement and **panies are all trying to stop a network of hackers who are succeeding in stealing account numbers, names, email addresses and other crucial data used in identity theft. More than 100 million accounts at Target, Neiman Marcus and Michaels stores were affected in some way during the most recent attacks, starting last November.
B. Swipe (刷卡) is the operative word: Cards are increasingly vulnerable to attacks when you make purchases in a store. In several recent incidents, hackers have been able to obtain massive information of credit-, debit-(借记) or prepaid-card numbers using malware, i.e. malicious software, inserted secretly into the retailers" point-of-sale system—the checkout registers. Hackers then sold the data to a second group of criminals operating in **ers of the web. Not long after, the stolen data was showing up on fake cards and being used for online purchases.
C. The solution could cost as little as $2 extra for every piece of plastic issued. The fix is a security technology used heavily outside the U.S. While American credit cards use the 40-year-old magstripe technology to process transactions, much of the rest of the world uses smarter cards with a technology called EMV (short for Europay, MasterCard, Visa) that employs a chip embedded in the card plus a customer PIN (personal identification number) to authenticate (验证) every transaction on the spot. If a purchaser fails to punch in the correct PIN at the checkout, the transaction gets rejected. (Online purchases can be made by setting up a separate transaction code.)
D. Why haven"t big banks adopted the more secure technology? When it comes to mailing out new credit cards, it"s all about relative costs, says David Robertson, who runs the Nilson Report, an industry newsletter: "The cost of the card, putting the sticker on it, coding the account number and expiration date, embossing (凸印) it, the small envelope—all put together, you"re in the dollar range." A chip-and-PIN card currently costs closer to $3, says Robertson, because of the price of chips. (Once large issuers convert together, the chip costs should drop.)
E. Multiply $3 by the more than 5 billion magstripe credit and prepaid cards in circulation in the
U.S. Then consider that there"s an estimated $12.4 billion in card fraud on a global basis, says Robertson. With 44% of that in the U.S., American credit-card fraud amounts to about $5.5 billion annually. Card issuers have so far calculated that absorbing the liability for even big hacks like the Target one is still cheaper than replacing all that plastic.
F. That leaves American retailers pretty much alone the world over in relying on magstripe technology to charge purchases—and leaves consumers vulnerable. Each magstripe has three tracks of information, explains payments security expert Jeremy Gumbley, the chief technology officer of CreditCall, an electronic-**pany. The first and third are used by the bank or card issuer. Your vital account information lives on the second track, which hackers try to capture. "Malware is scanning through the memory in real time and looking for data," he says. "It creates a text file that gets stolen."
G. Chip-and-PIN cards, by contrast, make fake cards or skimming impossible because the information that gets scanned is encrypted (加密). The historical reason the U.S. has stuck with magstripe, ironically enough, is once superior technology. Our cheap, ultra-reliable wired networks made credit-card authentication over the phone frictionless. In France, **panies created EMV in part because the telephone monopoly was so maddeningly inefficient and expensive. The EMV solution allowed transactions to be verified locally and securely.
H. Some big banks, like Wells Fargo, are now offering to convert your magstripe card to a chip-and-PIN model. (It"s actually a hybrid (混合体) that will still have a magstripe, since most U.S. merchants don"t have EMV terminals.) Should you take them up on it? If you travel internationally, the answer is yes.
I. Keep in mind, too, that credit cards typically have better liability protection than debit cards. If someone uses your credit card fraudulently (欺诈性地), it"s the issuer or merchant, not you, that takes the hit. Debit cards have different liability limits depending on the bank and the events surrounding any fraud. "If it"s available, the logical thing is to get a chip-and-PIN card from your bank," says Eric Adamowsky, a co-founder of . "I would use credit cards over debit cards because of liability issues." Cash still works pretty well too.
J. Retailers and banks stand to benefit from the lower fraud levels of chip-and-PIN cards but have been reluctant for years to invest in the new infrastructure (基础设施) needed for the technology, especially if consumers don"t have access to it. It"s a chicken-and-egg problem: no one wants to spend the money on upgraded point-of-sale systems that can read the chip cards if shoppers aren"t carrying them—yet there"s little point in consumers" carrying the fancy plastic if stores aren"t equipped to use them. (An earlier effort by Target to move to chip and PIN never gained progress.) According to Gumbley, there"s a "you-first mentality. The logjam (僵局) has to be broken."
K. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recently expressed his willingness to do so, noting that banks and merchants have spent the past decade suing each other over interchange fees—the percentage of the transaction price they keep—rather than deal with the growing hacking problem. Chase offers a chip-enabled card under its own brand and several others for travel-**panies such as British Airways and Ritz-Carlton.
L. The Target and Neiman hacks have also changed the cost calculation: Although retailers have been reluctant to spend the $6.75 billion that Capgemini consultants estimate it will take to convert all their registers to be chip-and-**patible, the potential liability they now face is dramatically greater. Target has been hit with class actions from hacked consumers. "It"s the ultimate nightmare," a retail executive from a well-known chain admitted to TIME.
M. The card-**panies MasterCard and Visa are pushing hard for change. The two firms have warned all parties in the transaction chain—merchant, network, bank—that if they don"t become **pliant by October 2015, the party that is **pliant will bear the fraud risk.
N. In the meantime, app-equipped smartphones and digital wallets—all of which can use EMV technology—are beginning to make inroads (侵袭) on cards and cash. PayPal, for instance, is testing an app that lets you use your mobile phone to pay on the fly at local merchants—without surrendering any card information to them. And further down the road is biometric authentication, which could be encrypted with, say, a fingerprint.
O. Credit and debit cards, though, are going to be with us for the foreseeable future, and so are hackers, if we stick with magstripe technology. "It seems crazy to me," says Gumbley, who is English, "that a cutting-edge-technology country is depending on a 40-year-old technology." That"s why it may be up to consumers to move the needle on chip and PIN, Says Robertson: "When you get the consumer into a position of worry and inconvenience, that"s where the rubber hits the road."
1. It is best to use an EMV card for international travel.
2. Personal information on credit and debit cards is increasingly vulnerable to hacking.
3. The French **panies adopted EMV technology partly because of inefficient telephone service.
4. While many countries use the smarter EMV cards, the U.S. still clings to its old magstripe technology.
5. Attempts are being made to prevent hackers from carrying out identity theft.
6. Credit cards are much safer to use than debit cards.
7. Big banks have been reluctant to switch to more secure technology because of the higher costs involved.
8. The potential liability for retailers using magstripe is far more costly than upgrading their registers.
9. The use of magstripe cards by American retailers leaves consumers exposed to the risks of losing account information.
10. Consumers will be a driving force behind the conversion from magstripe to EMV technology. Section B
Passage One
Knowing that you are paid less than your peers has two effects on happiness. The well-known one is negative: a thinner pay packet harms self-esteem. The lesser-known one is called the "tunnel" effect: high incomes for peers are seen as improving your own chances of similar riches, especially if growth, inequality and mobility are high.
A paper co-authored by Felix FitzRoy of the University of St. Andrews and recently presented at the Royal Economic Society in Cambridge separates the two effects using data from household surveys in Germany. Previous work showed that the income of others can have a small, or even positive, overall effect on people"s satisfaction in individual firms in Denmark or in very dynamic economies in transition, such as eastern Europe. But Mr. FitzRoy"s team theorized that older
workers, who largely know their lifetime incomes already, will enjoy a much smaller tunnel effect. The data confirm this hypothesis. The negative effect on reported levels of happiness of being paid less than your peers is not visible for people aged under 45. In western Germany, seeing peers" incomes rising actually makes young people happier (even more than a rise in their own incomes, remarkably). It is only those people over 45, when careers have "reached a stable position", whose happiness is harmed by the success of others.
The prospect of 20-plus years of bitterness might make retirement seem more appealing. But the real gains in happiness from retirement go not to the outshone (被超越)，but to the out-of-work. Unemployment is known to damage happiness because not working falls short of social expectations. This loss of identity cannot be compensated for by unemployment benefits or increased leisure time. A paper presented at the same conference by a team represented by Clemens Hetschko of the Free University of Berlin uses the same German household data to show that the spirits of the long-term unemployed rise when they stop looking for work, go into retirement and no longer clash with social norms.
Those with jobs are no happier after they retire, however, perhaps because their lives already line up with social expectations. Indeed, retiring early from work can have nasty side-effects. Another paper, co-authored by Andreas Kuhn of the University of Zurich, investigates the effect of a change in Austrian employment-insurance rules that allowed blue-collar workers earlier retirement in some regions than others. Men retiring a year early lower their chances of surviving to age 67 by 13%. Almost a third of this higher mortality rate, which seemed to be concentrated among those who were forced into retirement by job loss, was caused by smoking and alcohol consumption. If you"re in a job, even an underpaid one, hang on in there.
1. What did the study conducted by Mr. FitzRoy"s team reveal?
A. The findings of previous work may be problematic.
B. The two effects of peers" incomes on happiness cannot be separated.
C. Older workers are not affected by the income of others.
D. Older workers have already known their lifetime incomes.
2. What happens to young people when they are being paid less than their peers?
A. Their self-esteem is severely harmed.
B. Their spirits will be lowered.
C. They enjoy a bigger tunnel effect than people over 45.
D. They prefer a rise in their own incomes.
3. Which of the following is irrelevant to the tunnel effect on happiness?
A. High inequality and mobility.
B. One"s career stage.
C. Social expectations.
D. One"s age.
4. What do we learn about those who have been unemployed for a long time?
A. They stop looking for work due to the loss of identity.
B. Unemployment benefits can lift up their spirits.
C. They may die earlier than those with jobs.
D. Retirement can make them happier.
5. What does the author intend to tell us with the study conducted by Andreas Kuhn"s team?
A. The Austrian employment-insurance rules should not have been changed.
B. Earlier retirement from work should not be encouraged.
C. Too much smoking and drinking is dangerous to one"s health.
D. Blue-collar workers should put off their retirement.
Spiders are known for many things. Sociability is not one of them. Most spiders are more likely to try to eat their neighbours than befriend them. Given that there are at least 43,678 species of spiders, though, it is not too surprising that a few have **e their natural bad-temper and teamed up to form societies. So far, about two dozen such social spiders have been identified. And among them, something really strange has just been found. For one type of spider society turns out to involve two different but closely related species. It is as thoughanthropologists(人类学家) had discovered villages populated both by human beings and chimpanzees.
This was discovered by a team led by Lena Grinsted of Aarhus University in Denmark. They were studying a social species of spider called Chikunia nigra, living near Beratan Lake in Bali. Later, as they looked in more detail at their samples, they realised its genes showed that it was actually two species.
It is not clear why the spiders being social. They do not hunt together. One explanation may be that the colony is acting like a huge kindergarten.
Ms. Grinsted discovered this possibility by experiment. First, she identified 19 females who were looking after those who were recently born, and another 20 who had eggs. In each case she introduced a **er, in the form of a spider from the same colony. Both mothers and mothers-to-be were surprisingly tolerant of what would, in most spider species, be a serious threat. Only 40% of the time did they attempt to chase the intruder away, or bite it.
Ms. Grinsted then took another 40 spiders and replaced some of their little spiders. The result, she found, was that a female was as likely to look after and protect another"s young spider as she was her own.
Which is interesting, but not all that extraordinary in social groups which **posed of closely related individuals. Except that Ms. Grinsted now knows that this cannot always be the case for her spiders, since two different species are involved. The species in question are pretty similar, which would seem to exclude **mon cause of co-action: different spiders doing different work in the group.
Because Ms. Grinsted did not know at the time of her experiment that two species were involved, she cannot be sure how many of the newly-born spiders she interfered were cross-specific. The two species seem more or less equal in number, so chances are it was about half of them. If colony members are acting as foster mothers in the wild, something most odd is going on.Altruism(利他) is not a concept often associated with spiders.Xenophilic(种族间的) altruism is truly strange.
6. According to Paragraph One, which of the following do scientists seem to agree upon?
A. Spiders are well-known for their sociability and team work spirit.
B. At least 43,678 species of spiders are identified to be good-tempered and sociable.
C. Human beings were once found living with chimpanzees or gorillas.
D. Though spiders are not social beings, there are a few living together.
7. While doing spider research, Lena Grinsted"s group found that ______.
A. Chikunia nigra live in Bali, Indonesia
B. Chikunia nigra involved two different yet closely related species
C. spiders were bad-tempered and could eat up two dozen insects every day
D. spiders are strange species and probably eat up their neighbours alive
8. What can be learned from the first stage of Ms. Grinsted"s experiment?
A. Female spiders did not care too much about **ers in their colony.
B. Female spiders didn"t look after eggs and babies at all.
C. Mothers and mothers-to-be spent 40% of their time chasing their eggs away.
D. The strangers preferred to regard other"s young spiders as their own.
9. Which of the following explanations to social spiders is true?
A. Different spiders within a colony act together and make individual contributions.
B. Spiders" social groups **posed of closely related individuals.
C. Various spiders live in a public colony acting as a giant kindergarten.
D. Great similarities make spiders of different species live and hunt together.
10. What is the best title for this passage?
A. Sociability of Spiders
B. A Strange Example of Co-operative Behaviour in Spiders
C. Female Spiders and Their Colony
D. Across-species Spiders
People have been passionate about roses since the beginning of time. In fact, it is said that the floors of Cleopatral"s palace were carpeted with delicate rose petals, and that the wise and knowing Confucius had a 600-book library specifically on how to care for roses.
The rose is a legend on its own. The story goes that during the Roman Empire, there was an incredibly beautiful maiden named Rhodanthe. Her beauty drew many zealous suitors who pursued her relentlessly. Exhausted by their pursuit, Rhodanthe was forced to take refuge from her suitors in the temple of her friend Diana. Unfortunately, Diana became jealous. And when the suitors broke down her temple gates to get near their beloved Rhodanthe, she became angry turning Rhodanthe into a rose and her suitors into thorns.
In Greek legend, the rose was created by Chloris, the Greek goddess of flowers. It was just a lifeless seed of a nymph that Chloris found one day in a clearing in the woods. She asked the help of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who gave her beauty. Dionysus, the god of wine, added nectar to give her a sweet scent, and the three Graces gave her charm, brightness and joy. Then Zephyr, the West Wind, blew away the clouds so that Apollo, the sun god, could shine and made this flower bloom. And so the Rose was born and was immediately crowned the Queen of Flowers. The first true primary red rose seen in Europe was "Slater"s Crimson China" introduced in 1792 from China, where it had been growing wild in the mountains. Immediately, rose breeders began using it to hybridize red roses for cultivation. Ever since, the quest for the perfect red rose has been the Holy Grail of rosarians: a fragrant, disease-resistant, long-lasting, long-stemmed, reblooming, perfectly formed rose with a clear non-fading vivid red color. Absolute perfection still hasn"t been attained, and of course never will!
There is a special rose language invented as a secret means of communication between lovers who were not allowed to express their love for one another openly. In the mid 18th century the wife of the British ambassador in Constantinople described this in her letters, which were published after her death. These letters inspired many books on the language of flowers, each describing the secret message hidden in each flower. A red rose bud stands for budding desire; an open white rose asks "Will you love me?" An open red rose means "I"m full of love and desire", while an open yellow rose asks "Don"t you love me any more?"
11. A good example of being passionate about roses is ______.
A. the legend of the rose
B. Confucius"s books on roses
C. the story about Rhodanthe
D. the Greek goddess of flowers
12. Why do roses have thorns in Roman legend?
A. Suitors were turned into thorns.
B. Diana wanted to appreciate roses with thorns.
C. Rhodanthe"s beauty aroused others" jealousy.
D. Suitors pursuit exhausted Rhodanthe.
13. Who didn"t help the creation of the rose in Greek legend?
A. Aphrodite.
B. Dionysus.
C. Cleopatral.
D. Apollo.
14. Is it possible to attain the absolute perfection of roses?
A. Possible.
B. Will surely be possible.
C. Impossible.
D. Used to be impossible.
15. What"s the purpose of utilizing rose language?
A. Demonstrating romantic feeling.
B. Communicating without being known.
C. Inspiring publication of books.
D. Creating flower languages.
Passage Two
Banking is about money; and no other familiar services or commodities arouse such excesses of passion and dislike. Nor is there any other about which more nonsense is talked. The type of thing **es to mind is not what normally called economics, which is inexact rather than nonsensical, and only in the same way as all scientists are at the point where they try to predict people"s behavior and its consequences. Indeed most social sciences and, for example, medicine could probably be described in the same way.
However, it is common to hear assertions of the kind "if you were marooned (孤立无援) on a desert island a few seed potatoes would be more useful to you than a million pounds" as though this proved something important about money except the undeniable fact that it would not be much used to anyone in a situation where very few of us are at all likely to find ourselves. Money in fact is a token, or symbolic object, exchangeable on demand by its holders for goods and services. Its use for this purpose is universal except within a small number of primitive **munities.
Money and the price mechanism, i.e., the changes in prices expressed in money terms of different goods and services, are the means by which all modem societies regulate demand and supply for these things. Especially important are the relative changes in price of different goods and **pared with each other. To take random examples: the price of house building has over the past five years risen a good deal faster than that of domestic appliances like refrigerators, but slower than that of
motor insurance or French Impressionist paintings. This fact **plex implications for students of the brick industry, trade unionism, town planning, **panies, fine art auctions, and politics. Unpacking these implications is what economics is about, but their implications for bankers are quite different.
In general, in modem industrialized societies, prices of services or goods produced in a context requiring a high service-content (e.g., a meal in a restaurant) are likely to rise in price more rapidly than goods capable of mass-production on a large scale. It is also a characteristic of highly developed economies that the number of workers employed in service industries tends to rise and that of workers employed in manufacturing to fall. The discomfort this truth causes the big general trade unions as they contrast their own situation with that of the rapidly growing white-collar unions has been an important source of tension in western political life for many years and is likely to remain so for many more.
1. According to the author, banking ______.
A. is another form of commodities
B. arouses people"s passionate concern
C. is the same thing as economy
D. has the same description as medicine
2. As a token in modem societies, money ______.
A. is endowed with symbolic and religious meanings
B. is excluded in any non-industrial societies
C. plays a more important role than goods and services
D. fulfills its universal function as an exchanging medium
3. Under the support of money and price mechanism, people can ______.
A. regulate the supply of goods and the demand of services
B. compare the difference between goods and services
C. manage the balance between demand and supply
D. make economic plans in highly developed societies
4. In modem industrialized societies, prices of mass production generally ______.
A. rise slower than those of high service-content services
B. turn out to be the lowest in the whole society
C. **petitiveness with prices of services
D. exclude individual satisfaction **fort
5. What happens when trade unions make a comparison with white-collar unions?
A. They remain their usual attitude to **parison.
B. They are not satisfied with the result of comparison.
C. The contrast will definitely lead to strikes among workers.
D. The contrast makes up the main issue in western politics.
A useful definition of an air pollutant is a compound added directly or indirectly by humans to the atmosphere in such quantities as to affect humans, animals, vegetation, or material adversely. Air pollution requires a very flexible definition that permits continuous change. When the first air pollution laws were established in England in the fourteenth century, air pollutants were limited to compounds that could be seen or smelled—a far cry from the extensive list of harmful substances known today. As technology has developed and knowledge of the health aspects of various chemicals has increased, the list of air pollutants has lengthened. In the future, even water vapour
might be considered an air pollutant under certain conditions.
Many of the more important air pollutants, such as sulphur oxides, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides, are found in nature. As the earth developed, the concentrations of these pollutants were altered by various chemical reactions; they **ponents in biogeochemical cycles. These reactions serve as an air purification scheme by allowing **pounds to move from the air to the water or soil. On a global basis, nature"s output of **pounds dwarfs that resulting from human activities. However, human production usually occurs in a localized area, such as a city.
In this localized region, human output may be dominant and may temporarily overload the natural purification scheme of the cycles. The result is an increased concentration of noxious chemicals in the air. The concentrations at which the adverse effects appear will be greater than the concentrations that the pollutants would have in the absence of human activities. The actual concentration need not be large for a substance to be a pollutant; in fact the numerical value tells us little until we know how much of an increase this represents over the concentration that would occur naturally in the area. For example, sulphur dioxide has detectable health effects at 0.08 parts per million (ppm), which is about 400 times its natural level. Carbon monoxide, however, has a natural level of 0.1ppm and is not usually a pollutant until its level reaches about 15ppm.
6. It can be inferred from the first paragraph that ______.
A. water vapour is an air pollutant in localized areas
B. the definition of an air pollutant will continue to change
C. a substance becomes an air pollutant only in cities
D. most air pollutants today can be seen or smelled
7. What effect did the development of earth have on the air pollutants such as carbon monoxide?
A. Their harm to human activities became more serious.
B. Their ability to purify air was improved a lot.
C. Their concentrations were changed by chemical reactions.
D. Their quantities in the air were mainly from human activities.
8. According to the passage, what can we know about human-generated air pollution in cities?
A. It is the most serious pollution in the environment.
B. It may overburden the natural system that purifies pollutants.
C. It will react harmfully with naturally occurring pollutants.
D. It will damage areas outside the localized regions.
9. The author puts forward the examples of sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide at last to show that ______.
A. sulphur dioxide is more dangerous than carbon monoxide
B. sulphur dioxide is less dangerous than carbon monoxide
C. the numerical value of noxious chemicals in the air is not the key in defining pollution
D. it needs a great increase in concentration for noxious chemicals in the air to be pollutants
10. The passage mainly discusses ______.
A. how gas chemicals become air pollutants
B. how much damage air pollutants can cause
C. the definition of an air pollutant
D. the quantity of compounds added to the atmosphere
The American recovery seems to be picking up pace. The growth seems to be everywhere except the place it matters most—labour markets. Employment in America turned in a surprisingly poor。