Section 2 Reading Comprehension(In this section you will find after each of the passages a number of questions or unfinished statements about the passage, each with 4 (A, B, C and D) choices to answer the question or complete the statement You must choose the one which you think fits best Blacken the corresponding letter as required on your machine-scoring ANSWER SHEET.)
1.When the first of the two Viking landers touched down on Mars on July 20, 1976, and began to send camera images back to earth, the scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory could not suppress a certain nervous anticipation, like people holding a lottery ticket that they have a one-in-a-million chance of winning. The first photographs that arrived, however, did not contain any evidence of life. What revealed itself to them was merely a barren landscape littered with rocks and boulders. The view resembled nothing so much as a flat section of desert. The scientists were soon ready to turn their attention from visible life to microorganisms.The twin Viking landers carried three experiments designed to detect current biological activity and one to detect organic compounds, because researchers thought it possible that life had developed on early Mars just as it is thought to have developed on earth, through the gradual chemical evolution of complex organic molecules. To detect biological activity, Martian soil samples were treated with various nutrients that would produce characteristic by-products if life forms were active in the soil. The results from all three experiments were inconclusive. The fourth experiment heated a soil sample to look for signs of organic material, but found none, an unexpected result because at least organic compounds from the bombardment of the Martian surface by meteorites were thought to have been present. The absence of organic materials, some scientists speculated, was the result of intense ultraviolet radiation penetrating the atmosphere of Mars and destroying organic compounds in the soil. Although Mars’ atmosphere was, at one time, rich in carbon dioxide and thus thick enough to protect its surface from the harmful rays of the sun, the carbon dioxide had gradually left the atmosphere and been converted into rocks. This means that even if life had gotten a start on early Mars, it could not have survived the exposure to ultraviolet radiation when the atmosphere thinned. Despite the disappointing Viking results, there are those who still keep the possibility of life on Mars open. They point out that the Viking data cannot be considered the final word on Martian life because the two landers only sampled two limited ——and uninteresting ——sites. The Viking landing sites were not chosen for what they might tell of the planet's biology.They were chosen primarily because they appeared to be safe for landing a spacecraft. The landing sites were on parts of the Martian plains that appeared relatively featureless from orbital photographs. The type of Martian terrain that these researchers suggest may be a possible hiding place because active life has an earthly parallel: the ice-free region of southern Victoria Land, Antarctica, where the temperatures in some dry valleys average below zero. Organisms known as endoliths, a form of blue-green algae that has adapted to this harsh environment,were found living inside certain rocks in these Antarctic valleys. The argument based on this discovery is that if life did exist on early Mars, it is possible that it escaped worsening conditions by similarly seeking refuge in rocks. Skeptics object, however, that Mars in its present state is simply too dry, even compared with Antarctic valleys, to sustain any life whatsoever. Should Mars eventually prove to be completely barren of life, as some suspect, then this would have a significant impact on the current view of the chemical origin of life. It could be much more difficult to get life started on a planet than scientists thought before the Viking landings.
【正确答案-参考解析】：参加考试可见2.The economy may be troubled, but one area is thriving: social media. They begin with Facebook and extend through a dizzying array of companies that barely existed five years ago: Twitter, LinkedIn,Groupon,Yammer — and the list goes on. These companies are mostly private, but have attracted the ardent attention of Wall Street and investors, with Facebook now worth purportedly US$75 billion and Groupon valued at close to US$25 billion. There can be little doubt that these companies enrich their founders as well as some investors. But do they add anything to overall economic activity? While jobs in social media are growing fast, there were only about 21,000 listings last spring, a tiny fraction of the 150 million-member U.S. workforce. So do social-media tools enhance productivity or help us bridge the wealth divide? Or are they simply entertaining socially, and diverting us when it comes to national economic health? The answers are vital, because billions of dollars in investment capital are being spent on these ventures, and if we are to have a productive future economy, that capital needs to grow the economic pie — and not just among the elite of Silicon Valley and Wall Street. The problem is that these tools are so new that it is extremely difficult to answer the questions definitively. Flash back nearly 20 years and the same question was being asked about the first Internet wave. Were Netscape and the Web enhancing our economy, or were people just spending more time at work checking out ESPN.com? Official statistics weren’t designed to capture the benefits, and didn’t capture them until statistics experts at the Federal Reserve, urged on by Alan Greenspan, refined the way they measured productivity.As a result of these somewhat controversial innovations, the late 1990s became a period of substantial technology-driven gains. It is possible that the same gap exists today, that social-media tools are indeed laying the groundwork for new industries and jobs, but aren’t yet registering on the statistical radar.Many companies believe social media make them more competitive. Ford and Zappos, for instance,use Twitter to market their products and address consumer complaints. One big question is what proportion of that benefit will be captured economically by consumers vs. corporations. Sure, social media allow people to compare prices and quality and assess which companies are good to work for and where jobs might be. They also may enhance education and idea sharing, but the caveat is that the people who use these tools are the ones with higher education and income to spend on technology, not the tens of millions whose position in today’s world has eroded so sharply. According to a recent Pew Foundation study, only 45 percent of adults making less than US$30,000 have access to broadband,which is an essential component of using content-rich social media effectively. And that is the rub. Like so many things these days, social media contribute to economic bifurcation. Dynamic companies are benefiting from these tools,even if the gains are tough to nail down in specific figures. Many individuals are benefiting too, using Linkedln to find jobs and Groupon to find deals. But now, the irony is that social media widen the social divide, making it even harder for the have-nots to navigate. They allow those with jobs to do them more effectively and companies that are profiting to profit more. But so far, they have done little to aid those who are being left behind. They are, in short, business as usual.
【正确答案-参考解析】：参加考试可见Section 3 Cloze Test(In the following passage, there are 20 blanks representing words that are missing from the context.Below the passage，each blank has 4 choices marked by letters A, B, C and D respectively.There is only ONE right answer.Blacken the corresponding letter as required on your machine-scoring ANSWER SHEET.)
1.The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks,which run in a chain from the Himalayas to the Tianshan Mountains on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows. The discovery has___（91） scientists, who had believed that around 50 billion tons of melted water were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall. The study is the first to survey all the world's icecaps and glaciers and was made___（92） by the use of satellite data. Overall, the___（93） of melting ice outside the two largest caps — Greenland and Antarctica — is much___（94） than previously estimated, with the lack of______（95） loss in the Himalayas and the other high___（96） of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy. Bristol University glaciologist Professor Jonathan Bamber said, “The very unexpected result was the______（97） mass loss from high mountains of Asia, which is not___（98） different from zero.” The melting of Himalayan glaciers caused___（99） in 2009 when a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change mistakenly stated that they would disappear by 2035, instead of 2350.___（100）, the scientist who led the new work is clear that while greater uncertainty has been discovered in Asia’s highest mountains,the melting of icecaps and glaciers around the world______（101） a serious concern. “Our results and those of everyone else show we are___（102） a huge amount of water into the oceans every year,” said Professor John Wahr of the University of Colorado.His team’s study concludes___（103） 443 to 629 billion tons of melted water overall are added to the worlds oceans each year. This is___（104） sea level by about 1.5 mm a year, the___（105） reports, in addition to the 2 mm a year caused by___（106） of the warming ocean. The scientists are___（107） to point out that lower-altitude glaciers in the Asian mountain ranges are___（108） melting. Satellite images and reports___（109）this. But over the study period from 2003 to 2010, enough ice was added to the peaks to___（110）.
【正确答案-参考解析】：参加考试可见
