08年考研英语模拟试题及答案

　　Sample 4

　　Directions:

　　You are going to read a list of headings and a text. Choose the most suitable heading from the list A-F for each numbered paragraph (41-45). The first and last paragraphs of the text are not numbered. There is one extra heading which you do not need to use. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. (10 points)

　　Nowadays, as the developments of society progress forward, especially the achievement in the economy and technology, but more and more problems appear. Among these problems, what is the worst belongs to the area of environment.

　　［A］ It is futile to adjust to the chemicals.

　　［B］ The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings.

　　［C］ We have subjected enormous numbers of people to contact with these poisons, without their consent and often without their knowledge.

　　［D］ During the past quarter century the power to influence the nature has not only become increasingly great but it has changed in character（性质）.

　　［E］ The rapidity of change follows the impetuous pace of man rather than the deliberate pace of nature.

　　［F］ It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth.

　　41��

　　The new products come from our laboratories in an endless stream; almost five hundred annually find their way into actual use in the United States alone. Among them are many that are used in man’s war against nature. Since the mid 1940’s over 200 basic chemicals have been created for use in killing insects, weeds, and other organisms described as “pests.”

　　42��

　　Given time not in years but in millennia life adjusts, and a balance has been reached. But in the modern world there is no time.

　　43��

　　The most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world the very nature of its life. Chemicals sprayed on croplands or forests or gardens lie long in soil, entering into living organisms, passing from one to another in a chain of poisoning and death.

　　44��

　　To a large extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth’s vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the environment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life actually modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. Only in the present century has one species man acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.

　　45��

　　Radiation is now the unnatural creation of man’s tampering with the atom. The chemicals are the synthetic5 creations of man’s inventive mind, having no counterparts in nature.

　　Part C

　　Directions:

　　Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Your translation should be written clearly on ANSWER SHET 2.(10 points)

　　People born in the autumn live longer than those born in the spring and are less likely to fall chronically ill when they are older, according to an Austrian scientist.（46） Using census data for more than one million people in Austria, Denmark and Australia, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in the northern German town of Rostock found the month of birth was related to life expectancy over the age of 50. Seasonal differences in what mothers ate during pregnancy, and infections occurring at different times of the year could both have an impact on the health of a new�瞓orn baby and could influence its life expectancy in older age. （47）“A mother giving birth in spring spends the last phase of her pregnancy in winter, when she will eat less vitamins than in summer,” said Gabriele Doblhammer, one of a team of scientists who carried out the research. （48）“When she stops breast�瞗eeding and starts giving her baby normal food, it’s in the hot weeks of summer when babies are prone to infections of the digestive system.” In Austria, adults born in autumn (October-December) lived about seven months longer than those born in spring (April-June), and in Denmark adults with birthdays in autumn outlived those born in spring by about four months. （49）In the southern hemisphere, the picture was similar. Adults born in the Australian autumn—the European spring—lived about four months longer than those born in the Australian spring. （50）The study focused on people born at the beginning of the 20th century, using death certificates and census data. Although nutrition at all times of the year has improved since then, the seasonal pattern persists, Doblhammer said.