考研英语阅读材料汇编之科技类(3)_毙考题

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2018考研英语：阅读真题难点精析(2004年Text3)_毙考题

2018考研英语：阅读真题难点精析（2004年Text3）31. By Ellen Spero isn t biting her nails just yet , the author means _______.[A] Spero can hardly maintain her business[B] Spero is too much engaged in her work[C] Spero has grown out of her bad habit[D] Spero is not in a desperate situation定位句：When it comes to the slowing economy, Ellen Spero isn t biting her nails just yet. But the 47-year-old manicurist isn t cutting, filling or polishing as many nails as she d like to, either. 当遇到经济疲软期时，Ellen Spero并没有咬她的指甲。

但是这个47岁的美甲师所做的指甲确实不如想象的那么多了。

两句话之间是转折相反关系，下文说她的生意大不如前了，所以前面的意思应该是生意还可以说的过去。

所以答案选择[D] Spero is not in a desperate situation 她并没有处在绝望的境地。

32. How do the public feel about the current economic situation?[A] Optimistic [B] Confused [C] Carefree [D] Panicked定位句：Consumers seem only mildly concerned, not panicked, and many say they remain optimistic about the economy s long-term prospects, even as they do some modest belt-tightening.消费者只是有一点担忧，并没有恐惧，甚至很多人还说他们对经济的长期前景保持乐观态度，即使他们开始采取了一些节约措施。

2023考研英语一text3

2023考研英语一text3文章主要涉及科技与社会相互关系的话题，文章指出了科技发展给社会带来的便利和挑战，并探讨了科技与人类生活、工作、环境等方面的关系。

为了写出一篇高质量的文章，使用以下结构和内容展开：一、科技发展对社会的便利1.1 科技发展对人们生活的便利1.2 科技的发展对工作生产的提高1.3 科技的发展对环境保护的影响二、科技发展对社会的挑战2.1 科技的快速发展对人的生活带来的困扰2.2 科技的发展对工作岗位的变迁2.3 科技的发展对环境破坏的影响三、科技与人类生活的关系3.1 科技改变了人们的生活方式3.2 科技增加了人们的时间自由度3.3 科技带来了新的生活挑战四、科技与环境的关系4.1 科技的发展对环境的影响4.2 科技的进步能够改善环境4.3 科技的应用对环境保护的作用根据以上结构，详细展开文章内容如下：科技发展对社会的便利1.1 科技发展对人们生活的便利科技的发展给人们的生活带来了许多便利，比如互联网的普及带来了信息传播的快速和便利，人们可以通过互联网获取各种信息和知识，使得人们的生活更加丰富多彩。

1.2 科技的发展对工作生产的提高科技的发展使得工作生产变得更加高效和便利，自动化设备的应用使得生产效率大大提高，加快了工业生产的速度。

1.3 科技的发展对环境保护的影响科技的发展对环境保护也起到了积极的作用，节能减排、绿色环保技术的应用能够有效保护环境，降低对环境的污染。

科技发展对社会的挑战2.1 科技的快速发展对人的生活带来的困扰科技的快速发展也给人们的生活带来了一些困扰，比如信息爆炸给人们的生活带来了信息焦虑，人们需要花大量的时间和精力去筛选和处理信息。

2.2 科技的发展对工作岗位的变迁科技的发展也导致了一些传统工作岗位的消失，但同时也创造了许多新的工作岗位，人们需要不断学习和适应新的技术来适应新的工作需求。

2.3 科技的发展对环境破坏的影响科技的发展也对环境带来了一些破坏，比如过度的工业生产导致了环境的污染，高能耗和高排放也对环境造成了影响。

考研英语阅读材料汇编之科技类(2)-毙考题

考研英语阅读材料汇编之科技类(2)阅读是考研英语的重要题型之一，也是保障英语成绩的关键题目。

因此，考研学子们要充分重视英语阅读，除了平时多多阅读英语杂志、报纸外，还需要针对阅读进行专项训练。

小编整理了关于考研英语阅读题源的系列文章考研英语阅读材料汇编之科技类(2)，请参考!Who s the Smart Sibling?Ten weeks ago, Bo Cleveland and his wife embarked on a highly unscientific experiment-they gave birth to their first child. For now, Cleveland is too exhausted to even consider having another baby, but eventually, he will. In fact, hes already planned an egalitarian strategy for raising the rest of his family. Little Arthur won t get any extra attention just because he s the firstborn, and, says his father, he probably won t be much smarter than his future .siblings; either. It s the sort of thing many parents would say, but it s a bit surprising coming from Cleveland,who studies birth order and IQ at Pennsylvania State University. As he knows too well, a study published recently in the journal Science suggests that firstborns do turn out sharper than their brothers and sisters, no matter how parents try to compensate. Is Cleveland wrong? Is Arthur destined to be the smart sibling just because he had the good luck to be born first?For decades, scientists have been squabbling over birth order like siblings fighting over a toy. Some of them say being a first-, middle- or lastborn has significant effects on intelligence. Others say that s nonsense, The spat goes back at least as far as Alfred Adler, a Freud-era psychologist who argued that firstborns had an edge. Other psychologists found his theory easy to believemiddle and youngest kids already had a bad rap, thanks to everything from primogeniture laws to the Prodigal Son. When they set out to confirm the birth-order effects Adler had predicted, they found some evidence. Dozens of studies over the next several decades showed small differences in IQ; scholastic-aptitude tests and other measures of achievement So did anecdata suggesting that firstborns were more likely to win Nobel Prizes or become (ahem) prominent psychologists.But even though the scientists were turning up birth-order patterns easily, they couldn tpin down a cause. Perhaps, one theory went, the mother s body was somehow attacking the lateroffspring in uterus. Maternal antibody levels do increase with each successive pregnancy. Butthere s no evidence that this leads to differences in intelligence, and the new study in Silence,based on records from nearly a quarter of a million young Norwegian men, strikes down theantibody hypothesis. It looks at kids who are the eldest by accident-those whose older siblingsdie in infancy--as well as those who are true firstborns. Both groups rack up the same highscores on IQ tests. Whatever is lowering the latterborns scores, it isn t prenatal biology, sincebeing raised as the firstborn, not actually being the firstborn, is what counts.The obvious culprits on the nurture side are parents. But it s hard to think that favoritism toward firstborns exists in modem society. Most of us no longer view secondborn as second best, and few parents will admit to treating their kids differently. In surveys, they generally say they give their children equal attention. Kids concur, reporting that they feel they re treated fairly.Maybe, then, the problem with latterborns isn t nature or nurture-maybe there simply isn t a problem. Not all the research shows a difference in intelligence. A pivotal 2000 study by Joe Rodgers ,now a professor emeritus at the University of Oklahoma, found no link between birth order and smarts. And an earlier study of American families found that the youngest kids, not theoldest, did best in school. From that work, say psychologist Judith Rich Harris, a prominent critic of birth-order patterns, it s clear that the impression that the firstborn is more often the academic achiever is false.Meanwhile, many of the studies showing a birth-order pattern in IQ have a big, fat,methodological flaw. The Norwegian Science study is an example, says Cleveland: It scomparing Bill, the first child in one family; to Bob, the second child in another family. Thatwould be fine if all families were identical, but of course they aren t. The study controls forvariables such as parental education and family size. But Rodgers, the Oklahoma professor,notes that there are hundreds of other factors in play; and because it s so hard to discountall of them, he s not sure whether the patterns in the Science article are real.No one is more sensitive to that criticism than the Norwegian scientists. In fact, theyalready have an answer ready in the form of a second paper. Soon to be published in thejournal Intelligence, it s, similar to the Science study except for one big thing: instead ofcomparing Bill to Bob, it compares Bill to younger brothers Barry and Barney. The samebirth- order pattern shows up: the firstborns, on average, score about two points higher thantheir secondborn brothers, and hapless thirdborns do even worse. The purpose of thetwo papers was exactly the same, says Petter Kristensen of Norway s National Instituteof Occupational Health, who led both new studies. But this second one is much more comprehensive, and in a sense it s better than the Science paper. The data are there--within families, birth order really does seem linked to brain power. Even the critics have to soften their positions a little. The Intelligence study must be taken very seriously says Rodgers.No one, not even Kristensen, thinks the debate is over For one thing, there s still that argument about what s causing birth-order effects. It s possible, says UC Berkeley researcher Frank Sulloway, that trying .to treat kids in an evenhanded way in fact results in inequity. Well-meaning parents may end up shortchanging middleborns because there s one thing they can t equalize: at no point in the middle child s life does he get to be the only kid inthe house. Alternatively, says Sulloway; there s the theory he has his money on, the family- niche hypothesis Older kids, whether out of desire or necessity axe often called on to be assistant parents, he notes. Getting that early- taste of responsibility may prime them for achievement later on. If they think Oh, I m supposed to be more intelligent so I d betterdo my homework, it doesn t matter if they actually are more-intelligent, says Sulloway, Itbecomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the firstborns homework involves reading Science and Intelligence, there ll be no stopping them now.词汇注解重点单词embark / im ba:k/【文中释义】v.着手，从事【大纲全义】v. (使)上船(或飞机，汽车等)：着手，从事extra / ekstr /【文中释义】adj.额外的【大纲全义】adj额外的，附加的n.附加物，额外的东西adv.特别地compensate / kɔmpənseit/【文中释义】v.补偿，弥补【大纲全义】v.(for)补偿，赔偿，抵消nonsense / nɔnsəns/【文中释义】n.荒谬的言行，胡话【大纲全义】n.胡说，废话;冒失(或轻浮)的行为rap / r p/【文中释义】n.不公正的判决，苛评【大纲全义】n.叩击，轻拍，斤责，急敲(声);不公正的判决，苛评，v. 敲，拍，打，斤责，使着迷predict / pri dikt/【文中释义】v.预言【大纲全义】v.预言，预测，预告prominent / prɔminənt/【文中释义】adj杰出的【大纲全义】adj.突起的，凸出的;突出的，杰出的offspring /ɔfspriŋ; (us) ɔ:f-/【文中释义】n..子孙,后代【大纲全义】n. 子孙,后代,结果，产物;(动物的)崽successive /sək sesiv/【文中释义】adj.连续的【大纲全义】adj.接连的，连续的pregnancy / Pregnənsi/【文中释义】n.怀孕【大纲全义】n.妊振;怀孕(期);(事件等的)酝酿;(内容)充实，富有意义nurture / nə: tʃə/【文中释义】n.养育，教育【大纲全义】n.营养品;养育，培养，滋养v. 给予营养物，养育，培养，滋养超纲单词egalitarian n. 平等主义sibling n. 兄弟妞妹squabble v. 为争吵spat n. 争吵primogeniture n. 长子身份aptitude n. 才能，资质anecdata n. 二逸事证据prenatal adj. 产前的，出生前的重点段落译文两周前，伯克利夫兰和他的妻子进行了一项非常不科学的实验他们生下了他们的第一个孩子。

高考英语阅读理解复习-科技类20篇(含解析)

科技类词汇对应阅读passage1A snake﹣robot designer，a technologist，an extradimensional physicist and a journalist walk into a room.The journalist turns to the crowd and asks：Should we build houses on the ocean？Like a think﹣tank panel，members of the team dream up far﹣out answers to the crucial problem，such as self﹣driving housing units that could park on top of one another in the coastal city center.The setting is X，the enterprise which considers more than100ideas each year，in areas ranging from clean energy to artificial intelligence.Although only a tiny percentage become"projects"with far﹣reaching creativity，these projects exist，ultimately，to change the world，like Waymo，the biggest self﹣driving﹣car company.In the past60years，something strange has happened.As the academic study of creativity has thrived （蓬勃发展），the label innovation may have covered every tiny change of a soda can or a toothpaste flavor，but the rate of productivity growth has been mostly declining since the1970s.John Fernald，an economist，points out that the notable exception to the post﹣1970decline in productivity occurred when businesses throughout the economy finally figured out the breakthrough technology﹣information technology.John Fernald says，"It's possible that productivity took off，because we picked all the low﹣hanging fruit from the IT wave."Actually，the world economy continues to harvest the benefits of IT.But where will the next technology shock come from？Breakthrough technology results from two distinct activities﹣invention and innovation.Invention is typically the work of scientists and researchers in labs，while innovation is an invention put to commercial use.Seldom do the two activities occur successfully under the same roof.They tend to thrive in opposite conditions；while competition and consumer choice encourage innovation，invention has historically progressed in labs that are protected from the pressure to generate profit.Allowing well﹣funded and diverse teams to try to solve big problems is what gave us the computer and the Internet.Today，we fail to give attention to planting the seeds of this kind of ambitious research，while complaining about the harvest."Companies are really good at combining existing breakthroughs in ways that consumers like.But the breakthroughs come from patient and curious scientists，not the rush to market，"says Jon Gertner，the author of The Idea Factory."Technology is a tall tree，"John Fernald said."But planting the seeds of invention and harvesting the fruit of innovation are entirely distinct skills，often mastered by different organizations and separated by manyyears."As for me，both of them are essential for technology，although they are relatively independent.I don't think X is a planter or a harvester，actually.It is like building taller ladders.Nobody knows for sure what，if anything，the employees at such enterprises are going to find up on those ladders.But they're reaching.At least someone is.（1）What is the main purpose of the first two paragraphs？A．To present the process of group discussion.B．To illustrate X's worry about big problems.C．To reveal the importance of the crazy ideas.D．To stress the varied backgrounds of the team.（2）What can we learn from the passage？A．Breakthroughs must stand the test of the market.B．Innovation on necessities can promote productivity.C．Invention develops slowly under the pressure of profit.D．The harvest of innovation lies in some ambitious research.（3）Regarding John Fernald's view on technology，the author is.A．supportiveB．cautiousC．uncertainD．critical（4）What can be inferred about X from the passage？A．It will focus on innovation.B．It will have its outcome soon.C．It may give in to its fruitless reality.D．It may bring an encouraging outlook.【分析】这是一篇说明文。

2013考研英语阅读真题：考研英语(二)第3篇_毙考题

2013考研英语阅读真题：考研英语（二）第3篇Scientists have found that although we are prone to snap overreactions, if we take a moment and think about how we are likely to react, we can reduce or even eliminate the negative effects of our quick, hard-wired responses.Snap decisions can be important defense mechanisms; if we are judging whether someone is dangerous, our brains and bodies are hard-wired to react very quickly, within milliseconds. But we need more time to assess other factors. To accurately tell whether someone is sociable, studies show, we need at least a minute, preferably five. It takes a while to judge complex aspects of personality, like neuroticism or open-mindedness.But snap decisions in reaction to rapid stimuli aren’t exclusive to the interper sonal realm. Psychologists at the University of Toronto found that viewing a fast-food logo for just a few milliseconds primes us to read 20 percent faster, even though reading has little to do with eating. We unconsciously associate fast food with speed and impatience and carry those impulses into whatever else we’re doing. Subjects exposed to fast-food flashes also tend to think a musical piece lasts too long.Yet we can reverse such influences. If we know we will overreact to consumer products orhousing options when we see a happy face (one reason good sales representatives and real estate agents are always smiling), we can take a moment before buying. If we know female job screeners are more likely to reject attractive female applicants, we can help screeners understand their biases-or hire outside screeners.John Gottman, the marriage expert, explains that we quickly “thin slice” information reliably only after we ground such snap reactions in “thick sliced” long-term study. When Dr. Gottman really wants to assess whether a couple will stay together, he invites them to his island retreat for a much longer evaluation; two days, not two seconds.Our ability to mute our hard-wired reactions by pausing is what differentiates us from animals: dogs can think about the future only intermittently or for a few minutes. But historically we have spent about 12 percent of our days contemplating the longer term. Although technology might change the way we react, it hasn’t changed our nature. We still ha ve the imaginative capacity to rise above temptation and reverse the high-speed trend.科学家已经发现：虽然我们易于快速地做出过度反应，但是如果我们花点时间考虑一下我们可能做出的反应，就可以减少，甚至是消除我们快速、本能的反应所带来的消极影响。

考研英语阅读理解基本素材经济学人科技类

英语阅读理解基本素材经济学人科技类Passage 1Wireless broadbandComputer chips for “open-spectrum” devices are a closed book TELECOMMUNICATIONS used to be a closed game, from the copper and fibre that carried the messages, to the phones themselves. Now, openness reigns in the world of wires. Networks must interconnect with those of competitors, and users can plug in their own devices as they will. One result of this openness has been a lot of innovation.Openness is coming to the wireless world, too. Cheap and powerful devices that use unlicensed and lightly regulated parts of the radio spectrum are proliferating. But there is a problem. Though the spectrum is open, the microprocessor chips that drive the devices which use it are not. The interface information—the technical data needed to write software that would allow those chips to be used in novel ways—is normally kept secret by manufacturers. The result could be a lot less innovation in the open wireless world than in the open wired one.Take, for example, the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN), in Illinois. This group is trying to create a so-called meshed Wi-Fi network. Wi-Fi is a wireless technology that allows broadband internet communication over a range of about 50 metres. That range could, however, be extended if the devices in an area were configured to act as “platforms” that both receive and transmit signals. Messages would then hop from one platform to another until they got to their destination. That would allow such things as neighbourhood mobilephone companies and a plethora of radio and TV stations, and all for almost no cost. But to make such goodies work, CUWiN needs to tweak the underlying capabilities of Wi-Fi chips in special ways.When its engineers requested the interface information from the firms that furnish the chips, however, they were often rebuffed. A few companies with low-end, older technology supplied it. But Broadcom and Atheros, the two producers of the sophisticated chips that CUWiN needs if its system is to sing properly, refused. Nor is CUWiN alone in its enforced ignorance. SeattleWireless and NYCwireless, among other groups, have similar ideas, but are similarly stymied. Christian Sandvig of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who has been studying the brouhaha, believes regulators ought to enforce more openness.Broadcom and Atheros say that making the interface information public would be illegal, because it could allow users to change the parameters of a chip in ways that violate the rules for using unlicensed spectrum (for example, by increasing its power or changing its operating frequency). That is a worry, but it depends on rather a conservative interpretation of the law. The current rules apply to so-called “software-defined radios” (where the ability to send and receive signals is modifiable on the chip), and do not apply directly to Wi-Fi. Also, by supplying the data, manufacturers would not be held liable if a user chose to tweak the chip in unlawful ways. And in any case, if the firms are really worried, they could release most of the interface, keeping back those features that are legally sensitive.Nor is the interface information commercially sensitive. Engineers are not asking for the computercode that drives the interfaces, merely for the means to talk to them. And having the interface information in the public domain should eventually result in more chips being sold. So it is hard to see what the problem is beyond a dog-in-themangerish desire not to give anything away. Time to open it up, boys.Passage 2Not as boring as you thoughtWatching paint dry may lead to some exciting new technologiesBelieve it or not, there are a small but significant number of people in this world who watch paint dry for a living. And watching paint dry, if you look closely enough, is fascinating. Honest. Plenty of researchers are enthralled by exactly how the paint comes off the brush, how the polymers within it interact in order to adhere to a surface, and what happens when the water, or other solvent, evaporates. This sort of thing reveals how the chemistry really works, and thus how to make better paint.The excitement of watching a molecule of water lift off from the surface of a wall is, however, hampered by the fact that the only available photographs of the action are stills. It is like trying to work out how to play football from a series of time-lapse frames. But help is at hand. Andrew Humphris, chief technology officer of Infinitesima, a small firm based in Bristol, in Britain, has come up with a system that allows you to take a movie of drying paint.The existing method of photographing molecules is more “feely” than “movie”. The camera is a device called an atomic-force microscope (AFM). This works by running the tip of a probe over the molecules in question, rather as the stylus of an old-fashioned record player runs across the surface of an LP. The bumps and grooves picked up by an AFM can be translated into a picture, but it takes between 30 seconds and a minute to build up an image. Scan much faster than that and the stylus starts to resonate, blurring the result.But Infinitesima's VideoAFM can, according to Dr Humphris, go 1,000 times faster than a standard AFM. That is fast enough to allow videos to be taken of, for example, molecules evaporating—information of great value to the paint-making industry, to which Dr Humphris hopes to sell many of his machines. He is coy about exactly how they work, since the paper describing the details is awaiting publication in Applied Physics Letters. But the process for keeping the stylus under control seems to involve some high-powered computing and signal processing.Infinitesima is testing the VideoAFM by looking at polymers as they crystallise. The movies resemble frost spreading across a chilly window. But the VideoAFM can do more than mere analysis. It can do synthesis as well. Just as a carelessly applied stylus can alter the surface of a record, so an AFM can alter the surface it is scanning at the molecular level, in effect writing on that surface. Such writing, if it were fast enough, could be used as a form of lithography for making devices whose components had dimensions of nanometres (billionths of a metre). Nanotechnology, as engineering at this scale is known, is all the rage, and nanotech firms could end up using the VideoAFM's descendants in their factories. In the meantime, live paint-drying action could soon becoming to a television near you.Passage 3Games people playThe co-operative and the selfish are equally successful at getting what they want MANY people, it is said, regard life as a game. Increasingly, both biologists and economists are tending to agree with them. Game theory, a branch of mathematics developed in the 1940s and 1950s by John von Neumann and John Nash, has proved a useful theoretical tool in the study of the behaviour of animals, both human and non-human.An important part of game theory is to look for competitive strategies that are unbeatable in the context of the fact that everyone else is also looking for them. Sometimes these strategies involve co-operation, sometimes not. Sometimes the “game” will result in everybody playing the same way. Sometimes they will need to behave differently from one another.But there has been a crucial difference in the approach taken by the two schools of researchers. When discussing the outcomes of these games, animal behaviourists speak of “evolutionarily stable strategies”, with the implication that the way they are played has been hard-wired into the participants by the processes of natural selection. Economists prefer to talk of Nash equilibria and, since economics is founded on the idea of rational human choice, the implication is that people will adjust their behaviour (whether consciously or unconsciously is slightly ambiguous) in order to maximise their gains. But a study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by Robert Kurzban of the University of Pennsylvania and Daniel Houser of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, calls the economists' underlying assumption into question. This study suggests that it may be fruitful to work with the idea that human behaviour, too, can sometimes be governed by evolutionarily stable strategies.Double or quits?Dr Kurzban and Dr Houser were interested in the outcomes of what are known as public-goods games. In their particular case they chose a game that involved four people who had never met (and who interacted via a computer) making decisions about their own self-interest that involved assessing the behaviour of others. Each player was given a number of virtual tokens, redeemable for money at the end of the game. A player could keep some or all of these tokens. Any not kept were put into a pool, to be shared among group members. After the initial contributions had been made, the game continued for a random number of turns, with each player, in turn, being able to add to or subtract from his contribution to the pool. When the game ended, the value of the pool was doubled, and the new, doubled value was divided into four equal parts and given to the players, along with the value of any tokens they had held on to. If everybody trusts each other, therefore, they will all be able to double their money. But a sucker who puts all his money into the pool when no one else has contributed at all will end up with only half what he started with.This is a typical example of the sort of game that economists investigating game theory revel in, and both theory and practice suggests that a player can take one of three approaches in such a game:co-operate with his opponents to maximise group benefits (but at the risk of being suckered), free-ride (ie, try to sucker co-operators) or reciprocate (ie, co-operate with those who show signs of being co-operative, but not with free-riders). Previous investigations of such strategies, though, have focused mainly on two-player games, in which strategy need be developed only in a quite simple context. The situation Dr Kurzban and Dr Houser created was a little more like real life. They wanted to see whether the behavioural types were clear-cut in the face of multiple opponents who might be playing different strategies, whether those types were stable, and whether they had the same average pay-off.The last point is crucial to the theory of evolutionarily stable strategies. Individual strategies are not expected to be equally represented in a population. Instead, they should appear in proportions that equalise their pay-offs to those who play them. A strategy can be advantageous when rare and disadvantageous when common. The proportions in the population when all strategies are equally advantageous represent the equilibrium.And that was what happened. The researchers were able to divide their subjects very cleanly into co-operators, free-riders and reciprocators, based on how many tokens they contributed to the pool, and how they reacted to the collective contributions of others. Of 84 participants, 81 fell unambiguously into one of the three categories. Having established who was who, they then created “bespoke” games, to test whether people changed strategy. They did not. Dr Kurban and Dr Houser were thus able to predict the outcomes of these games quite reliably. And the three strategies did, indeed, have the same average pay-offs to the individuals who played them—though only 13% were co-operators, 20% free-riders and 63% reciprocators.This is only a preliminary result, but it is intriguing. It suggests that people's approaches to cooperation with their fellows are, indeed, evolutionarily stable. Of course, it is a long stretch from showing equal success in a laboratory game to showing it in the mating game that determines evolutionary outcomes. But it is good to know that in this context at least, nice guys do not come last. They do just as well as the nasty guys and, indeed, as the wary majority.Passage 4Moon river?The latest news from TitanA PICTURE may be worth a thousand words. But when the picture in question is of an alien world, it is difficult to be sure what those thousand words should be. And in the case of the images that have arrived from Titan, Saturn's largest moon, that world is very alien indeed.On January 14th Huygens, a space probe built by the European Space Agency (ESA), landed on Titan and began to deliver its precious cargo of data to anxiously waiting scientists. The most striking finding so far is a picture taken as the probe descended. It appears to show pale hills crisscrossed with drainage channels containing dark material, leading to a wide, flat darker region. The landing site itself produced less striking, but still significant images. It is flat, strewn with rounded pebbles andappears to be a dry riverbed.On Earth, or even on Mars, drainage channels and rounded pebbles would be taken as evidence for the erosive effects of liquid water. But at -180°C, Titan is too cold for water to be liquid. It is, however, not too cold for various hydrocarbons to be so (indeed, the most likely candidates, methane and ethane, are gases at terrestrial temperatures). Many people have suggested that Titan's dark regions might be lakes made of such hydrocarbons, or of tar that is composed of hydrocarbons which are too cold to be truly liquid, but have not frozen solid. The presence of hydrocarbons in Titan's atmosphere was confirmed on the probe's journey through it. Huygens's instruments detected both methane and ethane. But the pebbles in the picture probably are made of water—in the form of ice.Because all of the raw images from Huygens were immediately made available to the public via the internet, amateurs have been racing ESA and its American cousin NASA to create processed, composite images. Some scientists say that a glitch led ESA to publish more data than it had originally intended, something that ESA denies. Nevertheless, a few minutes after the Huygens data were published on one website, they were mysteriously yanked off the web again.The availability of the data, though, has led to the publication on the internet of a short movie compiled from a series of 80 still images taken of the landing site. This five-second film appears to show movement, with small white objects crossing the camera's field of vision.ESA's scientists were quick to point out that any movement seen was likely to be an artefact that owed its existence to nothing more than the fact that the images had not been put together correctly. Whether that interpretation is correct should be clear when ESA's own “official” movie is released, which had not happened as The Economist went to press.Nevertheless there is, privately, a debate among planetary scientists as to whether the white blobs are an artefact, or pieces of ice being carried past the lander on a thin stream of liquid hydrocarbon a few centimetres deep.That would be exciting. A stream is a stream, whether it is made of water or hydrocarbon. At the moment, Earth is the only body known to have them. But, as Ralph Lorenz, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, points out, the lesson from places such as Mars—and indeed Arizona—is that features created by liquids may exist, but the processes that carved them may be transitory or long gone. It is possible that rare but violent events, rather than continuous erosion, are responsible for shaping Titan's landscape. Whether Huygens has collected enough data to tell the difference remains to be seen.Passage 5Greener than you thoughtGenetically modified sugar beet is good for the environmentThough often conflated in the public mind, arguments against the planting of genetically modified (GM) crops fall into two distinct groups. One, which applies only to food crops, is that they might, for some as yet undemonstrated reason, be harmful to those who eat them. The other, which applies to them all, is that they might be bad for the environment.Proponents of the technology counter that in at least some cases GM crops should actually be good for the environment. Crops that are modified to produce their own insecticides should require smaller applications of synthetic pesticides of the sort that Greens generally object to. But in the case of those modified to resist herbicides the argument is less clear-cut. If farmers do not have to worry about poisoning their own crops, environmentalists fear, they will be more gung-ho about killing the wild plants that sit at the bottom of the food chain and keep rural ecosystems going—or weeds, as they are more commonly known.Research just published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society suggests, however, that it may be possible for all to have prizes. Get the dose and timing right and you can have a higher crop yield and a higher weed yield at the same time—and also use less herbicide.The research was done at Broom's Barn Research Station in Suffolk, by a team led by Mike May, the head of the station's weeds group. The team was studying GM sugar beet. This was one of the species examined in the British government's Farm-Scale Evaluations (FSEs) project, a huge, three-year-long research programme designed to assess the effects (including the environmental effects) of herbicide use on GM crops.The results for sugar beet, which competes badly with common weed species and thus relies heavily on the application of herbicides for its success, came in for particular criticism from environmentalists when the trials concluded in 2003. They indicated that fields planted with GM beet and treated with glyphosate, the herbicide against which the modification in question protects, had fewer weeds later in the season. These produced fewer seeds and thus led to reduced food supplies for birds. Some invertebrates, particularly insects, were also adversely affected.The Broom's Barn researchers, however, felt that this problem might be overcome by changing the way the glyphosate was applied. They tried f our different treatment “regimes”, which varied the timing and method of herbicide spraying, and compared them with conventional crop management regimes such as those used in the FSEs.The best results came from a single early-season application of glyphosate. This increased crop yields by 9% while enhancing weed-seed production up to sixteen-fold. And, as a bonus, it required 43% less herbicide than normal. Genetic modification, it seems, can be good for the environment, as well as for farmers' pockets.Passage 6Corpus colossalHow well does the world wide web represent human language?LINGUISTS must often correct lay people's misunderstandings of what they do. Their job is not to be experts in “correct” grammar, ready at any moment to smack your wrist f or a split infinitive. What they seek are the underlying rules of how language works in the minds and mouths of its users. In the common shorthand, linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive. What actually sounds right and wrong to people, what they actually write and say, is the linguist's raw material.But that raw material is surprisingly elusive. Getting people to speak naturally in a controlled study is hard. Eavesdropping is difficult, time-consuming and invasive of privacy. For these reasons, ling uists often rely on a “corpus” of language, a body of recorded speech and writing, nowadays usually computerised. But traditional corpora have their disadvantages too. The British National Corpus contains 100m words, of which 10m are speech and 90m writing. But it represents only British English, and 100m words is not so many when linguists search for rare usages. Other corpora, such as the North American News Text Corpus, are bigger, but contain only formal writing and speech.Linguists, however, are slowly coming to discover the joys of a free and searchable corpus of maybe 10 trillion words that is available to anyone with an internet connection: the world wide web. The trend, predictably enough, is prevalent on the internet itself. For example, a group of linguists write informally on a weblog called Language Log. There, they use Google to discuss the frequency of non-standard usages such as “far from” as an adverb (“He far from succeeded”), as opposed to more standard usages such as “He didn't succeed—f ar from it”. A search of the blogitself shows that 354 Language Log pages use the word “Google”. The blog's authors clearly rely heavily on it.For several reasons, though, researchers are wary about using the web in more formal research. One, as Mark Li berman, a Language Log contributor, warns colleagues, is that “there are some mean texts out there”. The web is filled with words intended to attract internet searches to gambling and pornography sites, and these can muck up linguists' results. Originally, such sites would contain these words as lists, so the makers of Google, the biggest search engine, fitted their product with a list filter that would exclude hits without a correct syntactical context. In response, as Dr Liberman notes, many offending websites have hired computational linguists to churn out syntactically correct but meaningless verbiage including common search terms. “When some sandbank over a superslots hibernates, a directness toward a progressive jackpot earns frequent flier miles” is a typical example. Such pages are not filtered by Google, and thus create noise inresearch data.There are other problems as well. Search engines, unlike the tools linguists use to analyse standard corpora, do not allow searching for a particular linguist ic structure, such as “[Noun phrase] far from [verb phrase]”. This requires indirect searching via samples like “He far from succeeded”. But Philip Resnik, of the University of Maryland, has created a “Linguist's Search Engine” (LSE) to overcome this. When trying to answer, for example, whether a certain kind of verb is generally used with a direct object, the LSE grabs a chunk of web pages (say a thousand, with perhaps a million words) that each include an example of the verb. The LSE then parses thesample, allowing the linguist to find examples of a given structure, such as the verb without anobject. In short, the LSE allows a user to create and analyse a custom-made corpus within minutes.The web still has its drawbacks. Most of it is in English, limiting its use for other languages (although Dr Resnik is working on a Chinese version of the LSE). And it is mostly written, not spoken, making it tougher to gauge people's spontaneous use. But since much web content is written by non-professional writers, it more clearly represents informal and spoken English than a corpus such as the North American News Text Corpus does.Despite the problems, linguists are gradually warming to the web as a corpus for formal research. An early paper on the subject, written in 2003 by Frank Keller and Mirella Lapata, of Edinburgh and Sheffield Universities, showed that web searches for rare two-word phrases correlated well with the frequency found in traditional corpora, as well as with human judgments of whether those phrases were natural. What problems the web throws up are seemingly outweighed by the advantages of its huge size. Such evidence, along with tools such as Dr Resnik's, should convince more and more linguists to turn to the corpus on their desktop. Young scholars seem particularly keen.The easy availability of the web also serves another purpose: to democratise the way linguists work. Allowing anyone to conduct his own impromptu linguistic research, some linguists hope, will do more to popularise their notion of studying the intricacy and charm of language as it really exists, not as killjoy prescriptivists think it should be.。

考研英语阅读材料汇编之科技类(1)_毙考题

考研英语阅读材料汇编之科技类(1)阅读是考研英语的重要题型之一，也是保障英语成绩的关键题目。

因此，考研学子们要充分重视英语阅读，除了平时多多阅读英语杂志、报纸外，还需要针对阅读进行专项训练。

小编整理了关于考研英语阅读题源的系列文章考研英语阅读材料汇编之科技类(1)，请参考!Is Snuppy the Puppy for Real?With Hwang s scientific credibility in shambles, the status of the world s most famous dog hangs in the balance. The embattled scientist maintains that Snuppy is the world s first canine clone, and he even hired an independent Korean DNA lab, Human Pass Inc, to verify that assertion. The verdict: Human Pass CEO Seung Jae Rhee told TIME last week, There is no dispute about these results, and so I am 100% certain on Snuppy s authenticity. But since Human Pass is in essence working for Hwang, that s hardly good enough for the investigative panel at Seoul National University, which is carrying out independent tests, or for the editors of Nature, who have ordered an investigation.If Snuppy really was cloned from the ear cell of a 3-year-old male Afghan named Tai, itshouldn t be tough to prove, even to those outside investigators. As long as they have tissue samples from both the clone and the parent, they should be able to determine whetherDNA in the nuclei of both animals cells is identical-the first hallmark of a true clone.Ian Wilmut, the Scottish scientist who created Dolly the sheep in 1996, had to provide such samples to prove to skeptics that he had created history s first mammalian clone.Even with the controversy raging over his stem-cell paper, Hwang could have forestalledsome of the questions about Snuppy if he had offered one additional bit of confirmingproof in his original paper in Nature. That piece of critical evidence comes from the animals mitochondria, tiny energy-producing structures within each cell. While most of a mammal s DNA resides in the nucleus, there s also some in the mitochondria. (Nuclear DNA formsthe animal s basic genetic blueprint; mitochondrial DNA contains instructions for making proteins involved in various metabolic functions within the cell. )Mitochondrial DNA is passed down from the mother as gart of the egg s genetic contribution. Identical twins, for example, have the same nuclear and mitochondrial DNA, since they re produced when a single egg is fertilized and the resulting embryo splits in two. With a clone, the situation is different. Because the cloning process that Hwang says he used to create Snuppy involves two dogs-one for the nucleus and another for the egg-Snuppy s mitochondrial DNA should not match Tai s. That s what Rhee s scientists say they ve found and what Hwang undoubtedly hopes the university and Nature will find as well. Final, ironclad proof of Snuppy s provenance would involve showing that the dog s mitochondrial DNA matches that of his egg donor .It s not clear, however, whether that test is being done.词汇注解重点单词credibility /;kredi biliti/【文中释义】n. 可信用，确实性，可靠【大纲全义】n. 可信用，确实性，可靠balance / b ləns/【文中释义】n.天平，平衡【大纲全义】v. 称，(使)平衡;权衡n.天平; 平衡，均衡;差领，余放; 结存maintain /men tein/【文中释义】v. 坚特【大纲全义】v. 维修，保养，维持，供养，坚持，主张，支持verify / verifai/【文中释义】v. 查证，核实【大纲全义】v. 证实，查证;证明panel / p nl/【文中释义】n. 专门问题小组【大纲全义】n. 面板，嵌板，座谈小组，专门问题小组v. 嵌镶tissue / tisju:/【文中释义】n. (动、植物的)组织【大纲全义】n. 织物，薄娟，纸巾;(劝，位物的)组织nuclei / nju:kliai/【文中释义】n. (nucleus的复数形式)细胞核【大纲全义】n. (nucleus的复数形式)核，核心，原子核;细胞核additional /ə diʃənl/【文中释义】adj. 附加的，另外的【大纲全义】adj. 额外的，附加的，另外的nucleus / nju:kliəs/【文中释义】n. 细胞核【大纲全义】n. 核，核心，原子核;细胞核blueprint / blu:,print/【文中释义】n. 蓝图【大纲全义】n. 蓝图，设计图，计划v. 制成蓝图，计划超纲单词shamble n. 满跚，摇羌embattled adj. 陷入重围的canine adj. 犬的，犬科的hallmark n. 品质证明，标志mammalian adj. 哺乳劝物的mitochondria n. 线粒体metabolic adj. 新陈代谢的embryo n. 胚胎重点段落译文随着黄禹锡的科学信用的动摇，这个世界上最著名的狗的身份也悬而未定。

2012考研英语阅读真题：考研英语(二)第3篇_毙考题

2012考研英语阅读真题：考研英语（二）第3篇In 2010. a federal judge shook America s biotech industry to its core. Companies had won patents for isolated DNA for decades by 2005 some 20% of human genes were patented. But in March 2010 a judge ruled that genes were unpatentable. Executives were violently agitated. The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO)，a trade group, assured members that this was just a preliminary step in a longer battle.On July 29th they were relieved, at least temporarily. A federal appeals court overturned the prior decision, ruling that Myriad Genetics could indeed hold patents to two genes that help forecast a woman s risk of breast cancer. The chief executive of Myriad, a company in Utah, said the ruling was a blessing to firms and patients alike.But as companies continue their attempts at personalized medicine, the courts will remain rather busy. The Myriad case itself is probably not over. Critics make three main arguments against gene patents: a gene is a product of nature, so it may not be patented; gene patents suppress innovation rather than reward it; and patents monopolies restrict access to genetic tests such as Myriad s. A growing number seem to agree. Last year a federal task-force urged reform for patents related to genetic tests. In October the Department of Justice filed a brief in the Myriad case, arguing that an isolated DNA molecule is no less a product of nature... than are cotton fibres that have been separated from cotton seeds. Despite the appeals court s decision, big questions remain unanswered. For example, it is unclear whether the sequencing of a whole genome violates the patents of individual genes within it. The case may yet reach the Supreme Court。

2017考研英语阅读材料：没有声音的闹钟_毙考题

2017考研英语阅读材料：没有声音的闹钟每天早上当还在香甜的梦中的时候却被一阵恼人的铃声吵醒，这对很多人来说都是很痛苦的，那么如果是用香味叫醒你会是怎样的体验。

下面一起来看一下网的专家精心的为大家准备的关于2017考研英语阅读材料：没有声音的闹钟的一些资料，帮助同学们更好的做好考研英语的复习备考工作。

This scent-producing alarm clock wakes you up with the smell of coffee and croissants没有声音的闹钟：让香味唤醒你Nobody likes waking up in the morning to the nagging, electronic bleep of regular alarm clocks or smartphones, but the smell of just-baked croissants and freshly roasted coffee? Now you re talking.没有人喜欢早晨普通闹钟或智能手机里闹铃发出的吵闹不休的声音，那刚烤好的羊角面包和刚煮好的咖啡的味道呢?这还差不多。

The Sensorwake, currently debuting at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, takes a vastly different approach to getting your attention when it s time to wake up. Instead of using sound to stir you, the clock uses smell, thanks to the timed release of an aroma of your choice .气味闹钟最近在拉斯维加斯举行的消费电子展上首次登台亮相，它采用一种完全不同的方式喊你起床。

2018考研英语二真题及参考答案

2018考研英语二真题及参考答案2018年考研英语二真题已经公布，对于即将考研的同学来说，这是一次难得的练手机会。

本文将介绍2018考研英语二真题及参考答案，希望对大家有所帮助。

一、阅读理解本次考研英语二阅读理解部分共四篇文章，相信很多同学都已经做了练习。

其中，第一篇“Social Media and Teens”是考研历年的热门话题之一，主要讲述社交媒体对青少年的影响以及可能带来的问题。

第二篇“Death on Demand”则着重介绍现代社会的自杀现象以及相关的参考数据。

第三篇“Who Uses Solar Power”则是一篇科技类文章，主要介绍了太阳能发电的原理和使用情况。

最后一篇“Smiling”则是一篇文化类文章，探讨了不同文化中微笑的含义及其对于人际交往的影响。

阅读理解难度参差不齐，建议同学们根据自己的实际情况进行把握。

二、完形填空完形填空部分是考研英语二的最大难点之一，本次真题则着重考查了单词和语境的理解能力。

文章讲述了关于蜜蜂和花粉的故事，用生动的比喻诠释了人类和自然界之间复杂的关系。

此外，文章还探讨了生物和地理之间的相互作用。

建议同学们在做完整篇文章之后，再回过头来对照题干进行逐一分析，尤其要注重句子之间的逻辑关系，以免错失分数。

三、翻译翻译部分依旧是考研英语二的难点之一，本次考题则涉及到了医疗相关的话题。

要求同学们从中文翻译成英文，考查了一定的语法和词汇功底，同时也考查了语境和表达能力。

建议同学们在平时的练习中，多关注重点词汇和语法结构，同时注意熟练使用相关的语言表达技巧。

四、写作写作部分是考研英语二的另一个重点，本次考试的写作题目为大家熟悉的“红包文化”问题。

以“Red Packets in Modern China”为题目，要求同学们对红包文化进行概括性阐述，并探讨其背后的文化意义和社会影响。

然后，再根据所给的观点，简述自己的看法并加以论述。

建议同学们注意文章结构和语言流畅度，同时要注重论述的逻辑性和总结的凝练性。

研究生英语阅读教程答案-重庆大学出版社 Unit3 Technology

Unit 3 Technology课后练习答案Passage ARethinking What Leads the Way: Science, or New Technology?KEYS TO EXERCISESI. Reading comprehension1. D2. B3. A4. A5. B6. B7. B8. A9. D 10. DII. Vocabulary1. A2. A3. B4. B5. B6. C7. D8. B9. C 10. A11. D 12. A 13.D 14.A 15.A 16.C 17.A 18. B 19. A 20. AIII. Word bank1.cautious2. discrete3. arrive at4. prognostication5. reassessment6. inspiration7. endow8. automated9. elusive 10. theoreticalIV. Cloze1. A2. B3. D.4. D5. B6. A7. B8. A9. C 10. B1. A 12. B 13. C 14. D 15. CV. Translation1.Happiness is an illusion for some people and elusive to others, but for families who get theirrecipes right, happiness is an all-pervasive emotion that follows them wherever they go and whatever they do.2.Psychologists have also found that if you sleep after thinking about your problems there is abetter chance that you arrive at a solution the next day.3.Setbacks can help you accumulate experience, and experience can, in return, enrich yourmind.4.His talk was evocative of the bygone days.5.In this world, what is it to set apart people who love each other?6.What can't be denied is that technology, no matter its faults, makes life a whole lot easier. Itallows us to communicate with more people in less time; it can make conversation simple—no small talk required. It can be therapeutic: robots are now used to help care for the elderly. But it can also be seductive, providing more stimulation than our natural lives. But is anyone of those feelings on par with the kind we feel when engaged in real, face-to-face intimacy? Online, you can ignore others' feelings. In a text message, you can avoid eye contact. That doesn't spell disaster, but it does mean we might want to start thinking about the way we want to live.VI. Discussion1.How does technology influence our life?2.How do you think about the issue of food safety?课文参考译文重新考量孰先孰后：科学还是技术？设想一下如果没有显微镜、望远镜以及像DNA自动测序这样更为先进的新进技术的话，科学会是什么状态？这样的科学仍然植根于人类的感知和推理。

研究生科技英语阅读答案3

Unit 4Is Time Travel Possible?I. comprehension and Appreciation1. What do you think about the opening of the text?It is a very good one. After the introduction of his profession as a physicist and cosmologist, a solid ground for his being something of a dreamer is also established, which makes what he will tell us readers in the following sound reasonable.2. If you want to see how time travel might be possible, what need you do? And how many dimensions do all physical object have? And what are they?We need to look at time at the fourth dimension as physicists do. All physical objects exist in three dimensions. They are width, height and length.3. What example does the author use to make the 3 ordinary dimensions easier understood?The author takes the everyday car travel as an example to make the 3 ordinary dimesions easier understood with the aim to an introduction about the expected dimension, that is, the fourth dimension.4. How does the author like time travle movies?According to his stereotyped ideas that time travel movies often feature a vast, energy-hungry machine which creates a path through the fourth dimension, a tunnel through time, in which a time traveller, a brave, perhaps foolhardy individual, prepared for who knows what, steps into the time tunnel and emerges who knows when, the author thinks that the concept may be far-fetched, and the reality may be very different from what is featured in the movies, but the idea itself is not that crazy.5. Could portals to the past or the future ever be possible within the laws of nature? And what does the author call them?According to the author, portals to the past or the future are possible within the laws of nature. He calls them wormholes, and he says the truth is that wormholes are all around us, only they're too small to see. Wormholes are very tiny. They occur in nooks and crannies in space and time.6. How does the author justify his idea of wormholes?He argues as follows: There are tiny crevices, wrinkles and voids in time. Down at the smallest of scales, smaller even than molecules, smaller than atoms, we get to a place called the quantum foam. This is where wormholes exist. Tiny tunnels or shortcuts through space and time constantly form, disappear, and reform within this quantum world. And they actually link two separate places and two different times.7. Are time tunnels are big enough for a human to pass through? If not, why?No, they are too small for a human to pass through for these real-life time tunnels arejust a billion-trillion-trillionths of a centimetre across.8. Are there chances that a giant wormhole could be constructed in space one day in the future?Yes, there are. Theoretically, a giant wormhole could be constructed in space with the aid of given enough power and advanced technology one day in the future.9. What does the author do to convince the readers to accept the problem of paradoxes,a well-known problem with time travel to the past?He recreates a paradoxical situation in which a scientist uses the wormhole to shoot his earlier self for it vilate a fundamental rule that governs the entire universe - that causes happen before effects, and never the other way around.10. How does the author conclude his opinions about time travle?He concludes that any kind of time travel to the past through wormholes or any other method is probably impossible, otherwise paradoxes would occur.II. Vocabulary1. shortcut2. attentive3. twisty4. indulge in5. emerge6. far-fetched7. wrinkle8. capture9. tricky10. paradox11. violation12. transmitted13. amplified14. expanded15. inflationIII. Translation1.(1) the fastest manned vehicle最快的人造交通工具go more than 2,000 times faster达到该速度的2000倍a tricky concept to wrap your head around需要你绞尽脑汁的抽象概念fire the shot开枪violate a fundamental rule违反了一个基本规定the other way around倒过来the sound system 声音系统a twisty mountain road 崎岖不平的山路a truly remarkable device 一个非同凡响的设备real-life time tunnels 真实生活中的时间隧道(2)把时间看成为第4维进一步理解了爱因斯坦狭义相对论的意义。

考研英语阅读资料-科技类3

考研英语怎么复习？在考研复习中，复习资料的选择至关重要。

中公考研辅导老师为考生整理了【考研英语-阅读理解知识点讲解和习题】，同时可以为大家提供名师考研英语视频、考研英语复习资料、考研英语真题和考研英语辅导等，助您冲击名校！Text 3本文背景知识：反科学（anti-science）：违背科学发展规律的一种伪（假）科学论点；一种反对科学的思潮，与“伪科学”的含义应区别对待。

反科学与伪科学是不同的，伪科学是假冒科学，以此来达到不可告人的目的。

与“伪科学”不同的是，“反科学”表达的是一种怀着批判的态度直接反对、质疑科学的精神。

科学一定会是人类进步吗？面对任何问题，我们都要怀着质疑的态度。

空气污染、全球变暖、科技的进步人类丧失了很多能力等等，这都应该是人们重新反思科学对于人类的意义。

Science has long had an uneasy relationship with other aspects of culture. Think of Galileo’s 17th century trial for his rebelling belief before the Catholic Church or poet William Blake’s harsh remarks against the mechanistic worldview of Isaac Newton. The schism between science and the humanities has, if anything, deepened in this century.Until recently, the scientific community was so powerful that it could afford to ignore its critics —but no longer. As funding for science has declined, scientists have attacked “antiscience” in several books, notab ly Higher Superstition, by Paul R. Gross, a biologist at the University of Virginia, and Norman Levitt, a mathematician at Rutgers University; and The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan of Cornell University.Defenders of science have also voiced their concerns at meetings such as “The Flight from Science and Reason,” held in New York City in 1995, and “Science in the Age of (Mis) information,” which assembled last June near Buffalo.Antiscience clearly means different things to different people. Gross 词汇记忆任务：1. uneasy 不协调的，矛盾的2. trial 审判，审讯3. rebel 反抗权威4.Catholic Church 天主教5. harsh 苛刻的，难听的6. remarks 批评，评论7. mechanistic 机械论的，机械学的8. schism 分裂9. afford to 承担，承受得起10. funding 资金，赞助11. decline 减少，下降12. attack 抨击，非难13. notably 特别，尤其14. defenders 辩护人，保卫者15. voice 表示，表达（感情或意见）16. flight 远离，逃离17.assemble 集合and Levitt find fault primarily with sociologists, philosophers and other academics who have questioned science’s objectivity. Sagan is more concerned with those who believe in ghosts, creationism and other phenomena that contradict the scientific worldview.A survey of news stories in 1996 reveals that the antiscience tag has been attached to many other groups as well, from authorities who advocated the elimination of the last remaining stocks of smallpox virus to Republicans who advocated decreased funding for basic research.Few would dispute that the term applies to the Unabomber, whose manifesto, published in 1995, scorns science and longs for return to a pre-technological utopia. But surely that does not mean environmentalists concerned about uncontrolled industrial growth are antiscience, as an essay in US News & World Report last May seemed to suggest.The environmentalists, inevitably, respond to such critics. The true enemies of science, argues Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, a pioneer of environmental studies, are those who question the evidence supporting global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer and other consequences of industrial growth.Indeed, some observers fear that the antiscience epithet is in danger of beco ming meaningless. “The term ‘antiscience’ can lump together too many, quite different things,” notes Harvard University philosopher Gerald Holton in his 1993 work Science and Anti-Science. “They have in common only one thing that they tend to annoy or thre aten those who regard themselves as more enlightened.”18. Buffalo 布法罗（Buffalo）是美国纽约州西部伊利湖东岸的港口城市。

2012考研英语阅读真题：考研英语(一)第3篇-毙考题

2012考研英语阅读真题：考研英语(一)第3篇-毙考题2012考研英语阅读真题：考研英语（一）第3篇In the idealized version of how science is done,facts about the world are waiting to be observed and collected by objective researchers who use the scientific method to carry out their work.But in the everyday practice of science, discovery frequently follows an ambiguous and complicated route.We aim to be objective, but we cannot escape the context of our unique life experience.Prior knowledge and interest influence what we experience, what we think our experiencesmean, and the subsequent actions we take.Opportunities for misinterpretation, error, and self-deception abound.Consequently, discovery claims should be thought of as protoscience.Similar to newly staked mining claims, they are full of potential.But it takes collective scrutiny and acceptance to transform a discovery claim into a mature discovery.This is the credibility process, through which the individual researcher’s me, here,editors and reviewers act as gatekeepers by controlling the publication process;other scientists use the new finding to suit their own purposes;and finally, the public (including other scientists) receives the new discovery and possibly accompanying technology.As a discovery claim works it through the community,the interaction and confrontation between shared and competing beliefs about the science and the technology involvedtransforms an individual’s discovery claim into the communit y’s credible discovery.Two paradoxes exist throughout this credibility process.First, scientific work tends to focus on some aspect of prevailing knowledge that is viewed as incomplete or incorrect.Little reward accompanies duplication and confirmation of what is already known and believed.The goal is new-search, not re-search.Not surprisingly, newly published discovery claims and credible discoveries that appear to be important and convincingwill always be open to challenge and potential modification or refutation by future researchers.Second, novelty itself frequently provokes disbelief.Nobel Laureate and physiologist Albert Azent-Gyorgyi once described discovery as“seeing what everybody has seen and th inking what nobody has thought.”But thinking what nobody else has thought and telling others what they have missed may not change their views.Sometimes years are required for truly novel discovery claims to be accepted and appreciated.In the end, credibility “happens” to a discovery claima process that corresponds to what philosopher Annette Baier has described as the commons of the mind.“We reason together, challenge, revise, and complete each other’s reasoning and each other’s conceptions of reason.”在科学研究的理想状态下，关于世界的事实正在等待着那些客观的研究者来观察和搜集，研究者们会用科学的方法来进行他们的工作。

公共英语二级阅读试题：科技类三

The World’s Largest InsectThis giant insect can be used as a toy.A child ties one end of a string to a stick and the other end around the “neck”of an insect. Holding the stick, the child lets the insect go. With a loud whirring sound, the insect takes off, pulling the string in a large curve over the child’s head. The child laughs as the stick jumps around. The child is African, and the toy is the African Goliath beetle, the largest insect in the world.The Goliath is a true insect because it has six legs and a body that is divided into three parts. Like all beetles, it has two pairs of wings. The front pair are thick and stiff and protect the back pair, which are soft. It is these soft back wings that make the beetle fly forward. They also cause the loud whirring sound the beetle makes when it flies. To steer, the beetle twists and turns its legs the same way you steer a bike by turning its front wheel.African children often use the Goliath beetle as a toy. Although it is over 15 centimeters long, it is quite harmless.1. The African Goliath beetle is _______.A. the world’s largest insectB. a toy used in many parts of the worldC. the only insect found in AfricaD. the world’s smallest insect2. What made the whirring sound that the child heard?A. The curved string.B. The beetle’s soft wings.C. The beetle’s six legs.D. The beetle’s body.3. We know the Goliath beetle is a true insect because it _______.A. makes a whirring sound when it fliesB. has both soft and hard wingsC. has six legs and a body with three partsD. can fly4. When flying, the Goliath steers by_______.A. turning its soft back wingsB. twisting and turning its hard front wingsC. twisting and turning its legsD. twisting and turning its whole body5. What made the stick jump in the child’s hand?A. The stick jumped because the child laughed.B. The beetle pulled on the string when it flew.C. The child bounced the stick to make the beetle fly.D. The child made the stick jump.【答案与解析】本文介绍了世界上最大的昆虫the Goliath beetle。

考研英语阅读2024 科技类

考研英语阅读2024 科技类In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, the realm of artificial intelligence (AI) stands as a beacon of innovation and possibility. As we delve deeper into the 21st century, the integration of AI into various facets of our lives becomes increasingly pronounced, revolutionizing industries and reshaping our daily experiences. This inexorable march of progress has also made its mark on the landscape of education, particularly in the realmof preparing for entrance exams such as the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) in English.The 2024 edition of the GRE in the technology category encapsulates this intersection of education and AI, presenting a diverse array of passages and questions designed to assess not only candidates' comprehension skills but also their ability to critically analyze technological advancements and their implications. Gone are the daysof rote memorization and regurgitation of facts; the modern GRE demands a nuanced understanding of how technology shapes society and vice versa.One prominent theme in the 2024 GRE technology section is the ethical considerations surrounding AI implementation. As AI algorithms become increasingly sophisticated, questions of bias, privacy, and accountability loom large. Passages delve into real-world examples where AI systems have perpetuated societal inequalities or infringed upon individual rights, prompting test-takers to grapple with the complex ethical dilemmas inherent in AI development and deployment.Furthermore, the GRE technology section explores the intersection of AI and other cutting-edge technologies, such as biotechnology and quantum computing. Passages may delve into the potential synergies between AI and biotech in revolutionizing healthcare,or the implications of quantum computing for encryption and cybersecurity. Test-takers are challenged to synthesize information from disparate fields and discern the broader implications of technological convergence.Another salient theme in the 2024 GRE technology category is the impact of AI on the future of work. As automation and machine learning algorithms encroach upontraditional job roles, questions arise regarding the implications for employment dynamics and socioeconomic inequality. Passages may present contrasting viewpoints on whether AI will lead to mass unemployment or simply necessitate a shift in the nature of work, prompting candidates to evaluate the evidence and construct cogent arguments.In addition to substantive passages, the GRE technology section may also incorporate excerpts from seminal works in the field of AI, such as Alan Turing's seminal paper on computing machinery and intelligence or Ray Kurzweil's treatise on the singularity. By engaging with foundational texts, test-takers are not only tested on their comprehension skills but also encouraged to reflect on the historical trajectory of AI and its implications for the future.To excel in the 2024 GRE technology section, candidates must adopt a multifaceted approach that combines deep subject matter expertise with critical thinking skills. Beyond simply regurgitating facts, test-takers must demonstrate the ability to analyze complex issues, evaluate evidence, and construct persuasive arguments. Moreover, familiarity with ethical frameworks and an awareness of the societal implications of AI are crucial for navigating passages that probe the ethical dimensions of technological advancement.In conclusion, the 2024 GRE technology category represents a microcosm of the broader societal discourse surrounding AI and its implications. By engaging with diverse passages that span ethics, emerging technologies, and the future of work, candidates are challenged to demonstrate not only their comprehension skills but also their ability to think critically about the role of technology in shaping our world. As AI continues to permeate every aspect of our lives, the ability to navigate its complexities will be an indispensable skill for the leaders and innovators of tomorrow.。