综合题
Complete the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 19-22 on your answer sheet.
According to a recent study, well-lit streets do not______ or make neighbourhoods safer to live in.
Inefficient lighting increases______ because most electricity is produced from coal, gas or oil.
Efficient lights from going into areas where it is not needed.
In dealing with light pollution______ is at least as important as passing new laws.
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You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
A very brief history of time
These days, time is everything. We worry about being late, we rush to get things done or to be somewhere and our daily schedules are often planned down to the minute. Of course, none of this would have been possible without the humble clock. The internationally accepted division of time into regular, predictable units has become an essential aspect of almost all modern societies yet the history of time keeping is almost as old as civilisation itself. Nearly 3000 years ago, societies were using the stars in order to keep track of time to indicate agricultural cycles. Then came the sundial, an Egyptian invention in which the shadow cast by the sun was used to measure the time not of the seasons but of the day.
The first manufactured clock, believed to have come from Persia, was a system which recreated the movements of the stars. All the celestial bodies which had been used to tell the time of year were plotted onto an intricate system in which the planets rotated around each other. Not being dependent on either sunlight or a clear night, this was one of the earliest systems to divide a complete day. Although ingenious for its time, this method suffered from incorrect astrological assumptions of the period, in which it was believed that the Earth was the centre of the universe.
The Greeks were next to develop a more accurate clock using water to power a mechanism that counted out the divisions of the day. The simplest water clock consisted of a large urn that had a small hole located near the base, and a graduated stick attached to a floating base. The hole would be plugged while the urn was being filled with water, and then the stick would be inserted into the urn. The stick would float perpendicular to the surface of the water, and when the hole at the base of the urn was unplugged, the passage of time was measured as the stick descended farther into the urn.
Then, for nearly one thousand years, there was little in the way of progress in time keeping until the European invention of spring-powered clocks in the late fourteenth century. Unreliable and inaccurate, the early models of these clocks were useful in that they gave direction to new advances. In 1656 Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch scientist, made the first pendulum clock, which had an error of less than one minute a day, the first time such accuracy had been achieved. His later refinements reduced his clock’s error to less than 10 seconds a day. Some years later, Huygens abandoned the pendulum for a balance wheel and spring assembly which allowed for a whole new generation of time piece —the wristwatch. Still found in some of today’s wristwatches, this improvement allowed portable seventeenth-century watches to keep time to 10 minutes a day.
While clock making and musical chime clocks became increasingly popular, it was the invention of the cuckoo clock, designed and made by Franz Anton Ketterer, which really caught people’s imagination. The design was not particularly complex. The clock was mounted on a headboard, normally a very elaborate carving reflecting the tastes of the artist. Many of the original cuckoo clocks are still kept today because of the artwork on the headboard. Using the traditional circular pendulum design, the clock could run accurately for up to a week, using a weight to keep the pendulum in motion. Again, the weight was often carved with a design making it as much an art form as a timepiece. The most innovative feature of these cuckoo clocks, as the name implies, is that a small carved cuckoo came out of the clock to chime the hour. Particularly ingenious was the placement of bellows inside the clock, which were designed to recreate the sound made by the bird, although later models included a lever on the bottom of the clock which could be used to stop this hourly chime.
Refinements to this original pendulum concept meant that by 1721 the pendulum clock remained accurate to within one second per day by compensating for changes in the pendulum’s length due to temperature variations. Over the next century, further refinements reduced this to a hundredth of a second a day. In the 1920s, a new era of clock making began which is still popular today — the quartz clock. When under pressure, quartz generates an electric field of relatively constant frequency, and it was discovered that this electric signal was sufficient to power a clock. Quartz crystal clocks were better because they had fewer moving parts to disturb their regular frequency. Even so, they still rely on a mechanical vibration and this depends on the size of the crystal, and as no two crystals can be exactly alike, there is a degree of difference in every quartz watch.
Comparing performance to price, it is understandable that quartz clocks still dominate the market. Yet they are no longer the most accurate. Scientists had long realised that each chemical element in the universe absorbs and emits electromagnetic radiation at its own specific frequencies. These resonances are inherently stable, thus forming the basis for a reliable system of time measurement, all the more so because no moving parts are needed to record these resonances. Yet the cost of these atomic clocks mean that such timekeeping precision is a long way from becoming common.
Questions 1-6
Look at the following types of clock (Questions 1-6) and the list of descriptions below.
Match each type of clock with the correct description, A-H.
Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.
List of Descriptions
A relied on basic scientific principles
B was the first to replace the pendulum
C is the most common method of timekeeping
D is the most accurate clock
E is the earliest known method of measuring time during the day
F was inaccurate because of misconceptions of the age
G was often highly ornamental
H had only a 10-second margin of error per day
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Complete the summary using the list of words, A-H, below.
Write the correct letters, A-H, in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.
Comparison between Quartz clock and Atomic clock
The invention of quartz clock in early 20th century originated from the finding that a clock could be powered by electric current provided by pressurized quartz. It is still popular among buyers nowadays with a cheaper【R11】______compared with atomic clock. However, the atomic clock is the most accurate. Without【R12】______, the atomic clock relies on essential【R13】______ and thus can get rid of disturbance.
A price B accuracy C resonances
D basis E precision F similarity
G mechanical vibration H moving parts
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You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
Question 14-18
Reading Passage 2 has nine paragraphs, A-I.
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-F from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-ix, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.
Light Pollution
Light Pollution is a threat to Wildlife, Safety and the Starry Sky A After hours of driving south in the pitch-black darkness of the Nevada desert, a dome of hazy gold suddenly appears on the horizon. Soon, a road sign confirms the obvious: Las Vegas 30 miles. Looking skyward, you notice that the Big Dipper is harder to find than it was an hour ago.
B Light pollution — the artificial light that illuminates more than its intended target area—has become a problem of increasing concern across the country over the past 15 years. In the suburbs, where over-lit shopping mall parking lots are the norm, only 200 of the Milky Way’s 2,500 stars are visible on a dear night. Even fewer can be seen from large cities. In almost every town, big and small, street lights beam just as much light up and out as they do down, illuminating much more than just the street. Almost 50 percent of the light emanating from street lamps misses its intended target, and billboards, shopping centres, private homes and skyscrapers are similarly over-illuminated.
C America has become so bright that in a satellite image of the United States at night, the outline of the country is visible from its lights alone. The major cities are all there, in bright clusters: New York, Boston, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, and, of course, Las Vegas. Mark Adams, superintendent of the McDonald Observatory in west Texas, says that the very fact that city lights are visible from on high is proof of their wastefulness. ’When you’re up in an airplane, all that light you see on the ground from the city is wasted. It’s going up into the night sky. That’s why you can see it’
D But don’t we need all those lights to ensure our safety? The answer from light engineers, light pollution control advocates and astronomers is an emphatic ’no.’ Elizabeth Alvarez of the International Dark Sky Association (IDA), a non-profit organization in Tucson, Arizona, says that overly bright security lights can actually force neighbours to close the shutters, which means that if any criminal activity does occur on the street, no one will see it. And the old assumption that bright lights deter crime appears to have been a false one: A new Department of Justice report concludes that there is no documented correlation between the level of lighting and the level of crime in an area. And contrary to popular belief, more crimes occur in broad daylight than at night.
E For drivers, light can actually create a safety hazard. Glaring lights can temporarily blind drivers, increasing the likelihood of an accident. To help prevent such accidents, some cities and states prohibit the use of lights that impair night-time vision. For instance, New Hampshire law forbids the use of ’any light along a highway so positioned as to blind or dazzle the vision of travellers on the adjacent highway.’
F Badly designed lighting can pose a threat to wildlife as well as people. Newly hatched turtles in Florida move toward beach lights instead of the more muted silver shimmer of the ocean. Migrating birds, confused by lights on skyscrapers, broadcast towers and lighthouses, are injured, sometimes fatally, after colliding with high, lighted structures. And light pollution harms air quality as well: Because most of the country’s power plants are still powered by fossil fuels, more light means more air pollution.
G So what can be done? Tucson, Arizona is taking back the night. The city has one of the best lighting ordinances in the country, and, not coincidentally, the highest concentration of observatories in the world. Kitt Peak National Optical Astronomy Observatory has 24 telescopes aimed skyward around the city’s perimeter, and its cadre of astronomers needs a dark sky to work with.
H For a while, that darkness was threatened. ’We were totally losing the night sky,’ Jim Singleton of Tucson’s Lighting Committee told Tulsa, Oklahoma’s KOTV last March. Now, after retrofitting inefficient mercury lighting with low-sodium lights that block light from ’trespassing’ into unwanted areas like bedroom windows, and by doing away with some unnecessary lights altogether, the city is softly glowing rather than brightly beaming. The same thing is happening in a handful of other states, including Texas, which just passed a light pollution bill last summer. ’Astronomers can get what they need at the same time that citizens get what they need: safety, security and good visibility at night,’ says McDonald Observatory’s Mark Adams, who provided testimony at the hearings for the bill.
I And in the long run, everyone benefits from reduced energy costs. Wasted energy from inefficient lighting costs us between $1 and $2 billion a year, according to IDA. The city of San Diego, which installed new, high-efficiency street lights after passing a light pollution law in 1985, now saves about $3 million a year in energy costs.
J Legislation isn’t the only answer to light pollution problems. Brian Greer, Central Ohio representative for the Ohio Light Pollution Advisory Council, says that education is just as important, if not more so. ’There are some special situations where regulation is the only fix,’ he says. ’But the vast majority of bad lighting is simply the result of not knowing any better.’ Simple actions like replacing old bulbs and fixtures with more efficient and better-designed ones can make a big difference in preserving the night sky.
*The Big Dipper a group of seven bright stars visible in the Northern Hemisphere.
List of Headings
i Why lights are needed
ii Lighting discourages law breakers
iii The environmental dangers
iv People at risk from bright lights
v Illuminating space
vi A problem lights do not solve
vii Seen from above
viii More light than is necessary
ix Approaching the city
Example Answer
Paragraph A ix
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Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A—I, below.
Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 33-37 on your answer sheet.
A because it is both cold and painful.
B because the outer layer of the skin can mend itself.
C because it can be extremely thin.
D because there is light pressure on the skin.
E because we do not need the others to survive.
F because there is a good blood supply to the skin.
G because of a small amount of pain.
H because there is a low temperature and pressure.
I because it is hurting a lot.
J because all humans are capable of experiencing it.
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Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
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Complete the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 19-22 on your answer sheet.
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Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
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Questions 7-10
Label the diagram below.
Choose NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet.
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You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.
Unmasking Skin
A If you took off your skin and laid it flat, it would cover an area of about twenty-one square feet, making it by far the body’s largest organ. Draped in place over our bodies, skin forms the barrier between what’s inside us and what’s outside. It protects us from a multitude of external forces. It serves as an avenue to our most intimate physical and psychological selves.
B This impervious yet permeable barrier, less than a millimetre thick in places, is composed of three layers. The outermost layer is the bloodless epidermis. The dermis includes collagen, elastin, and nerve endings. The innermost layer, subcutaneous fat, contains tissue that acts as an energy source, cushion and insulator for the body.
C From these familiar characteristics of skin emerge the profound mysteries of touch, arguably our most essential source of sensory stimulation. We can live without seeing or hearing — in fact, without any of our other senses. But babies born without effective nerve connections between skin and brain can fail to thrive and may even die.
D Laboratory experiments decades ago, now considered unethical and inhumane, kept baby monkeys from being touched by their mothers. It made no difference that the babies could see, hear and smell their mothers; without touching, the babies became apathetic, and failed to progress.
E For humans, insufficient touching in early years can have lifelong results. ’In touching cultures, adult aggression is low, whereas in cultures where touch is limited, adult aggression is high,’ writes Tiffany Field, director of the Touch Research Institutes at the University of Miami School of Medicine. Studies of a variety of cultures show a correspondence between high rates of physical affection in childhood and low rates of adult physical violence.
F While the effects of touching are easy to understand, the mechanics of it are less so. ’Your skin has millions of nerve cells of various shapes at different depths,’ explains Stanley Bolanowski, a neuroscientist and associate director of the Institute for Sensory Research at Syracuse University. ’When the nerve cells are stimulated, physical energy is transformed into energy used by the nervous system and passed from the skin to the spinal cord and brain. It’s called transduction, and no one knows exactly how it takes place.’ Suffice it to say that the process involves the intricate, split-second operation of a complex system of signals between neurons in the skin and brain.
G This is starting to sound very confusing until Bolanowski says: ’In simple terms people perceive three basic things via skin: pressure, temperature, and pain.’ And then I’m sure he’s wrong. ’When I get wet, my skin feels wet,’ I protest. ’Close your eyes and lean back,’ says Bolanowski
H Something cold and wet is on my forehead — so wet, in fact, that I wait for water to start dripping down my cheeks. ’Open your eyes.’ Bolanowski says, showing me that the sensation comes from a chilled, but dry, metal cylinder. The combination of pressure and cold, he explains, is what makes my skin perceive wetness. He gives me a surgical glove to put on and has me put a finger in a glass of cold water. My finger feels wet, even though I have visual proof that it’s not touching water. My skin, which seemed so reliable, has been deceiving me my entire life. When I shower or wash my hands, I now realize, my skin feels pressure and temperature. It’s my brain that says I feel wet.
I Perceptions of pressure, temperature and pain manifest themselves in many different ways. Gentle stimulation of pressure receptors can result in ticklishness; gentle stimulation of pain receptors, in itching. Both sensations arise from a neurological transmission, not from something that physically exists. Skin, I’m realizing, is under constant assault, both from within the body and from forces outside. Repairs occur with varying success.
J Take the spot where I nicked myself with a knife while slicing fruit. I have a crusty scab surrounded by pink tissue about a quarter inch long on my right palm. Under the scab, epidermal cells are migrating into the wound to close it up. When the process is complete, the scab will fall off to reveal new epidermis. It’s only been a few days, but my little self-repair is almost complete. Likewise, we recover quickly from slight burns. If you ever happen to touch a hot burner, just put your finger in cold water. The chances are you will have no blister, little pain and no scar. Severe burns, though, are a different matter.
Questions 27-30
Reading Passage 3 has ten paragraphs, A-J.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-J, in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.
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Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 31-32 on your answer sheet.