自考试卷：2014年4月00836英语科技文选自考试题及答案

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全国2014年4月高等教育自学考试
英语科技文选试题
课程代码：00836
 

I. Directions: Read through the following passages. Choose the best answer and blacken the corresponding letter A, B, C or D on the ANSWER SHEET. (20%)
（A）
Babies living in bilingual homes get a perceptual boost by 8 months of age that may set the stage for more resilient thinking later in life, scientists reported on February 18 at the American Association of the Advancement of Science annual meeting. Infants raised bilingual from birth can distinguish not only between their two native tongues but between two languages they’ve never been exposed to, just by watching adults speak without hearing what they say, said psychologist Janet Werker of the University of British Columbia. Babies being raised to speak one language lack these visual discrimination skills, Werker and her colleagues have found. Given regular exposure to two languages, infants develop a general ability to track closely what they hear and see in decoding languages, Werker proposed. In the visual realm, such information may include lip movements, the rhythm of the jaw opening and closing, and the full ensemble of facial movements while talking. Her earlier studies found that newborn babies that had been exposed parentally to two languages prefer to listen to those languages over others and distinguish between sounds in the tongues that they regularly hear spoken. “Bilingual infants are able to keep their languages distinct from birth and may develop an increased sensitivity to voice and face cues for different languages,” Werker said. Early perceptual strides taken by infants in bilingual homes may represent the beginnings of an increased ability, relative to one-language speakers, to focus attention and think in complex ways later in life, suggested psychologist Ellen Bialystock of York
University in Toronto. Bialystock’s group has found that among more than 400 0lder adults diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, those who speak two languages fluently are, on average, four to five years older than those who speak one language. “Bilingual adults are better able to cope with the disease’s effects on mental function,” Bialystock proposed. Werker’s team studied a total of 48 babies, all 8 months old, from families that spoke Spanish only, Catalan only or both Spanish and Catalan. Each infant sat on his or her mother’s lap and watched videos of three women, all bilingual in English and French, reading sentences in those languages without any sound. Once babies got bored with clips in one language and began to look away and fidget, they were shown different clips of a woman reciting sentences either in the same language as before, or in a different tongue. Babies from bilingual Spanish/Catalan homes homed in on faces speaking a different language and largely kept ignoring a language that they had just heard, even though both English and French were new languages to them. Babies from Spanish-only and Catalan-only families paid little attention to switches between French and English.
1. What is the main theme of the passage?
A. Early perceptual progress is made by infants at home.
B. Two languages are better than one for infant perception.
C. How infants become bilingual.
D. Bilingual infants are perceptive.
2. The author states that infants raised bilingual ______.
A. always look at adults’ faces when they speak
B. seldom look away when adults speak
C. can distinguish between two languages they’ve never heard
D. have better hearing ability than one-language infants
3. According to the passage, why is some people’s mental function not much affected when they are ill?
A. Because they are strong-willed.
B. Because they speak two languages.
C. Because they do not know much about the disease.
D. Because they are mentally healthy.
4. The phrase “homed in” in line 4 from the bottom is closest in meaning to “______”.
A. looked at
B. chose
C. dwelt
D. lived
5. According to the passage, which of the following statements can be said as true?
A. Bilingual adults are generally less susceptible to Alzheimer’s disease.
B. Bilingual infants are more susceptible to Alzheimer’s disease.
C. Monolingual adults are less sensitive to voice and face cues for different languages.
D. Monolingual infants are more sensitive to voice and face cues for different languages.
(B)
Food prices offer a good proxy for agriculture’s health, notes Gerald Nelson, an economist with the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C. Rising prices signal increasing resource scarcity, he explains, which can be triggered by expanding populations, growing incomes and declining crop yields. Recent food-price shocks and yield shortfalls initially surprised analysts, note IFPRI’s Derek Headey and Shenggen Fan in a November 18 report. Government officials had been lulled into complacency by decades of falling food costs. But prices bottomed out around 2000 and have since begun climbing in response to commodities speculation and a string of poor harvests. Nelson and his colleagues have now used computer models to get some grasp on how crop yields and prices might respond, several decades out, to Earth’s continuing low-grade fever. The team considered three scenarios of income and population growth that might reasonably be expected to occur between 2020 and 2050. Then they applied four “plausible” climate scenarios with warmer temperatures and anywhere from slightly to substantially wetter weather. They also included an “implausible fifth scenario of perfect mitigation (a continuation of today’s climate into the future).” The resulting scenarios all indicated that in contrast to the 20th century, when food prices fell, the 21st century would see prices rise. Probably by a lot. Even with today’s climate, food prices would rise over the next 40 years in response to pressures from growing populations and incomes. Rice prices, for instance, would increase roughly 11 to 55 percent. Throwing in additional warming, prices can rise substantially more—a minimum of 31 percent for rice and perhaps a doubling for corn. The analyses clearly point to “climate change as a threat-multiplier,” concludes Nelson. Lighter wallets are hardly the most dire fallout of rising food costs. An analysis that Nelson’s group issued last year projected that food affordability by 2050 will likely trigger a decline in intake throughout the developing world. This could hike childhood malnutrition rates 20 percent above what would occur in the absence of climate change. Investments could be made to offset the negative impacts of climate on agriculture and childhood malnutrition. But they’d be high, IFPR I estimated: more than $7 billion annually. Last year’s greenhouse-gas releases have been fueling pessimism that nations will be able to brake their emission trajectories soon. Owing to the global recession, people had expected 2009 greenhouse-gas releases to drop precipitously, notes climate scientist Pierre Friedlingstein of the University of Exeter in England. “Global emissions did decrease 1.3 percent, but that was only equivalent to four days of emissions.” “The globe essentially faces a daunting task in terms of climate change,” notes Bruce Campbell, director of a climate and food program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. Despite climate’s impacts on food production, agriculture remains largely ignored in international negotiations of climate and emissions policies. “What we’re hoping,” Campbell says, “is that agriculture gets to put on the agenda.”
6. The word “proxy” in line 1 is closest in meaning to “______”.
A. example
B. reason
C. signal
D. result
7. Which of the following is NOT mentioned as a reason why the world’s resources are getting increasingly scarce?
A. Increasing populations.
B. Growing incomes.
C. Crop yield shortfalls.
D. Commodities speculation.
8. What would probably happen if today’s climate continued into the future?
A. There would be increasing population growth.
B. Food prices would rise.
C. Incomes would grow substantially.
D. Even the people in the developed countries would suffer malnutrition.
9. According to the passage, why did the 2009’s global emissions increase pessimism?
A. Because there would be more commodities speculation.
B. Because nations would be able to brake their emissions trajectories soon.
C. Because world greenhouse-gas releases were meager.
D. Because climate would change drastically.
10. What can be inferred from the passage about the government officials’ attitude toward food production?
A. Complacent.
B. Critical.
C. Indifferent.
D. Worried.
 
II. Directions: Add the affix to each word according to the given Chinese, making changes when necessary. (10%)
11. artificial          人工制品
12. custom            合乎风俗习惯的
13. coincide          巧合
14. compass          包含
15. sphere             半球
16. bewilder          迷惑不解
17. forerun            预兆
18. different          区分
19. company         伴星
20. audible            听不见的
III. Directions: Fill in the blanks, each using one of the given words or phrases below in its proper form.(12%)
in common  in response to   cater for    fond of      bring into play   comply with
end up      as for          rest upon   account for   a spectrum of    be concerned with
21. Success in management ultimately ________ good judgment.
22. The two particles have nothing ________.
23. Nick can stay, but ________ you, you can get out of my sight.
24 The law was passed ________ public pressure.
25. He will ________ in prison if he is not careful.
26 The chef is pleased to ________ vegetarian diets.
27. The term “special needs” covers ________ problems.
28. A whole complex system of muscles ________ for each movement of the body.
29. Recent pressure at work may ________ his behavior.
30. He is not very ________ country music.
31. All the people ________ children’s education.
32. Children of whatever background have to ________ the tests as they are compulsory.
IV. Directions: Fill in each blank with a suitable word given below. (8%)
contrast    to    scientific    absent    inform    with    even    between
The purpose of scientific literature is to inform and persuade peers as to the validity of observations and conclusions and the forensic efficacy of methods. Popular science attempts to _33_ and convince scientific outsiders (sometimes along with scientists in other fields) of the significance of data and conclusions and to celebrate the results through epideictic rhetoric. Statements in _34_ literature are often qualified and tentative, emphasizing that new observations and results are consistent _35_ and similar _36_ established knowledge wherein qualified scientists are assumed to recognize the relevance. By _37_, popular science emphasizes uniqueness and generality, taking a tone of factual authority _38_ from the scientific literature. Comparisons _39_ original scientific reports and derivative science journalism and popular science typically reveal at least some level of distortion and oversimplification which can often be quite dramatic, _40_ with politically neutral scientific topics.
V. Directions: Translate the following sentences into English, each using one of the given words or phrases below in its proper form. (10%)
suffice for    compatible with    in the works    allow for    be exposed to
41．他进大学时，接触到许多新思想。
42．午餐有两瓶葡萄酒就够了。
43．他的证词和第一个证人的不一致。
44．你应该考虑到飞机误点。
45．我们听说那位作家正在写一部新小说。
VI. Directions: Translate the following paragraphs into Chinese. (15%)
46. A very common operation in industry is that of pick and place. This would be typified by a packing operation, such as that shown in the figure, where items are taken from a conveyor and placed into a pallet.
The position of the item on the conveyor and the pallet position provide constraints on the endpoints of the trajectory of the item, but it does not matter from a functional point of view what path is taken by the robot. In practice, the path which gives the shortest time to perform the task will be the best. Note, however, that it will be desirable to constrain the robot to avoid collisions. Thus, once it has gripped the object it should move upwards from the conveyor, then move across to a position over the pallet, and then move downwards before releasing the object.
VII. Read the following passage, and then fill in the table with the information based on the passage. (10%)
What Could Possibly Go Wrong: Genetically-Modified Mosquitoes
As carriers for diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever, mosquitoes are the deadliest creatures on the planet, responsible for millions of human deaths every year. And as the planet warms, the insects are broadly expanding their turf and bringing their diseases with them; thousands of cases of dengue, a tropical disease, have appeared in the U.S. in the past five years. DDT was long used to control the mosquito population, but it is now widely banned, and in any case, many scientists believe that mosquitoes quickly build up a resistance to the insecticide. That, in part, is why the battle against mosquitoes has gone genetic.
Generally speaking, the goal of gene-based mosquito-control projects is either to kill the insects or make them benign. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, for example, are studying mosquitoes that were made malaria-resistant through the activation of a gene responsible for a protein that blocks the infection. And the British company Oxitec has engineered a strain of mosquito that cannot survive without regular doses of tetracycline; in the wild, these mosquitoes would survive just long enough to mate and pass on their tetracycline-junkie genes to their doomed offspring. In a trial in the Cayman Islands last year, Oxitec-modified mosquitoes were able to cut the overall population by 80 percent in just six months.
But the problem is that we don’t fully understand how mosquitoes and the diseases they carry would adapt in response to such experiments. New strains of malaria and other diseases could emerge. Jo Lines, a malaria expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has described the process as “a series of arms races that the [malaria] parasite has consistently won.”
Three percent of the offspring from Oxitec’s tetracycline-dependent mosquitoes survive-what happens if those bugs breed with wild mosquitoes?
It’s even possible that the changes we induce in mosquitoes could move into other animals. Horizontal gene transfer could result in midges, gnats and black flies developing the same mutations, including the unfortunate characteristic of dying shortly after hatching-and a mass die-off of insects that provide sustenance to birds, bats, frogs and fish would be a food-chain disaster.
Genetically-Modified Mosquitoes

VIII. Directions: Write a passage (150-200 words) in English on the following title. Develop the ideas according to the Chinese outline given below. (15%)
52. School Education and Self-taught Learning
(1)学校教育与自学的关系；
(2)各自利弊；
(3)你更喜欢哪种方式。

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