大连理工大学2011年考博英语真题回忆.doc

大连理工大学2011年考博英语真题回忆（又回忆起了一篇阅读） 已有5人参与 yj-lzx(金币+3): thanks for sharing 2011-04-10 12:34:31网上找到了3篇阅读理解，又想起来一篇，4篇了！1.The West begun to take more notice of the East. The fifth volume of an enormous work re-assessing the Chinese contribution to science and technology is to be published next year. The first volume, which was published twenty years ago, set the tone for the whole work. In it, evidence was given to show that many inventions which, until then, western historians had claimed for Europe, were made first in China. The attempt to rewrite the intellectual history of the world was not received without protest by some reputable historians. However, the evidence that has been presented so far in the first four volumes has persuaded many historians who were skeptical at first. Chinas invention of paper, printing, the magnetic compass and gunpowder has never been disputed, but this new history has added advanced bridge design, mechanical clocks, paddle boats and many other inventions to the list. In the four volumes published so far no attempt has been made to explain why China has not kept up with the West in science and technology in modern times. It is probable that the answer is to be found in the social and economic history of China, where a static society under a relatively benevolent regime of scholar-gentry contrasts with the potentially revolutionary and dynamic society of the West at the end of the Middle Ages. In recent years, the Chinese government has been making every effort to catch up with the West again, and there is little doubt that the gap is being reduced year by year. But will China avoid the Wests mistakes? 2.In the atmosphere, carbon dioxide acts rather like a one-way mirror - the glass in the roof of a greenhouse which allows the suns rays to enter but prevents the heat from escaping.According to a weather experts prediction, the atmosphere will be 3 warmer in the year 2050 than it is today, if man continues to burn fuels at the present rate. If this warming up took place, the ice caps in the poles would begin to melt, thus raising sea level several metres and severely flooding coastal cities. Also, the increase in atmospheric temperature would lead to great changes in the climate of the northern hemisphere, possibly resulting in an alteration of earths chief food-growing zones.In the past, concern about a man-made warming of the earth has concentrated on the Arctic because the Antarctic is much colder and has a much thicker ice sheet. But the weather experts are now paying more attention to West Antarctic, which may be affected by only a few degrees of warming, in other words, by a warming on the scale that will possibly take place in the next fifty years from the burning of fuels.Satellite pictures show that large areas of Antarctic ice are already disappearing. The evidence available suggests that a warming has taken place. This fits the theory that carbon dioxide warms the earth.However, most of the fuel is burnt in the northern hemisphere, where temperatures seem to be falling. Scientists conclude, therefore, that up to now natural influences on the weather have exceeded those caused by man. The question is: Which natural cause has most effect on the weather?One possibility is the variable behavior of the sun. Astronomers at one research station have studied the hot spots and “cold” spots (that is, the relatively less hot spots) on the sun. As the sun rotates, every 27.5 days, it presents hotter or “colder” faces to the earth, and different aspects to different parts of the earth. This seems to have a considerable effect on the distribution of the earths atmospheric pressure, and consequently on wind circulation. The sun is also variable over a long term: its heat output goes up and down in cycles, the latest trend being downward.Scientists are now finding mutual relations between models of solar-weather interactions and the actual climate over many thousands of years, including the last Ice Age. The problem is that the models are predicting that the world should be entering a new Ice Age and it is not. One way of solving this theoretical difficulty is to assume a delay of thousands of years while the solar effects overcome the inertia (惯性) of the earths climate. If this is right, the warming effect of carbon dioxide might thus be serving as a useful counter-balance to the suns diminishing heat.3 The idea of test-tube babies may make you either delighted at the wonders of modem medicine or irritated while considering the moral, or legal, or technological implications of starting life in a laboratory. But if youve ever been pregnant yourself, one thing is certain: You wonder what its like to carry a test-tube baby. Are these pregnancies normal? Are the babies normal?The earliest answers come from Australia, where a group of medical experts at the Queen Victoria Medical Center in Melbourne have taken a look at the continents first nine successful in vitro pregnancies. The Australians report that the pregnancies themselves seemed to proceed according to plan, but at birth some unusual trends did show up. Seven of the nine babies turned out to be girls. Six of the nine were delivered by Caesarean section (剖腹产手术) . Andone baby, a twin, was born with a serious heart defect and a few days later developed life-threatening problems. What does it all mean? Even the doctors dont know for sure, because the numbers are sosmall. The proportion of girls to boys is high, but until there are many more test-tube babies noone will know whether thats something that just happened to be like that or something specialthat happens when egg meets sperm in a test tube instead of a Fallopian tube. The same thing istrue of the single heart defect; it usually shows up in only 15 out of 60,000 births in that part of Australia, but the fact that it occurred in one out of nine test-tube babies does not necessarilymean that they are at special risk. One thing the doctors can explain is the high number of Caesareans. Most of the mothers were older, had long histories of fertility problems and in some cases had had surgery on the fallopian tubes, all of which made them likely candidates forCaesareans anyway. The Australian researchers report that they are quite encouraged. All the babies are nowmaking normal progress even the twin with the birth defects.4Why is it that the more connected we get, the more disconnected I feel? Every advance in communications technology is a step back from the closeness of human interaction. With e-mail and instant messaging over the Internet, we can now communicate without seeing or talking to one another. With voice mail, you can conduct entire conversations without ever reaching anyone. If my mom has a question, I just leave the answer on her machine. As almost every imaginable contact between human beings becomes automatic by machine, the alienation quotient goes up. You cant even call a person to get the phone number of another person anywhere. Directory assistance is almost always fully automatic by machine. Pumping gas at the station? Why say good-morning to the worker when you can swipe (刷卡) your credit card at the pump and save yourself the bother of human contact? Placing money at the bank? Why talk to a clerk who might live in the neighborhood when you can just put your credit card into the ATM? Pretty soon you wont have the hard task of making eye contact at the grocery store. Some grocery chains are using a self-scanner so you can check yourself out, avoiding those annoying clerks who look at you and ask how you are doing. 61. The writers attitude towards advances in communications technology may be