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.Declining house prices, rising job layoffs, skyrocketing oil costs and a major credit crunch have brought consumer confidence to its lowest point in five years. With a relatively long recession looking increasingly likely, many American families may be planning to tighten their belts. Interestingly, restraining our consumer spending, in the short term, may cause us to actually loosen the belts around our waists. What’s the connection? The brain has a limited capacity for self-regulation, so exerting willpower in one area often leads to backsliding in others. The good news, however, is that practice increases willpower capacity, so that in the long run, buying less now may improve our ability to achieve future goals — like losing those 10 pounds we gained when we weren't out shopping. The brain’s store of willpower is depleted when people control their thoughts, feelings or impulses, or when they modify their behaviors in pursuit of goals. Psychologist Roy Baumeister and others have found that people who successfully accomplish one task requiring self-control are less persistent on a second, seemingly unrelated task. In one pioneering study, some people were asked to eat radishes while others received freshly baked chocolate chip cookies before trying to solve an impossible puzzle. The radish-eaters abandoned the puzzle in eight minutes on average，working less than half as long as people who got cookies or those who were excused from eating radishes. Similarly, people who were asked to circle every “e” on a page of text then showed less persistence in watching a video of an unchanging table and wall. Other activities that deplete willpower include resisting food or drink, suppressing emotional responses, restraining aggressive or sexual impulses, taking exams and trying to impress someone. Task persistence is also reduced when people are stressed or tired from exertion or lack of sleep. What limits willpower? Some have suggested that it is blood sugar, which brain cells use as their main energy source and cannot do without for even a few minutes. Most cognitive functions are unaffected by minor blood sugar fluctuations over the course of a day,but planning and self-control are sensitive to such small changes. Exerting self-control lowers blood sugar, which reduces the capacity for further self-control. People who drink a glass of lemonade between completing one task requiring self-control and beginning a second one perform equally well on both tasks, while people who drink sugarless diet lemonade make more errors on the second task than on the first. Foods that persistently elevate blood sugar,like those containing protein or complex carbohydrates, might enhance willpower for longer periods. In the short term, you should spend your limited willpower budget wisely. It can be counterproductive to work toward multiple goals at the same time if your willpower cannot cover all the efforts that are required. Concentrating your effort on one or, at most, a few goals at a time increases the odds of success. Focusing on success is important because willpower can grow in the long term. Like a muscle, willpower seems to become stronger with use. The idea of exercising willpower is seen in military boot camp, where recruits are trained to overcome one challenge after another. No one knows why willpower can grow with practice, but consistently doing any activity that requires self-control seems to increase willpower — and the ability to resist impulses and delay gratification is highly associated with success in life.
【正确答案-参考解析】：参加考试可见2.If there is any endeavor whose fruits should be freely available, that endeavor is surely publicly financed science. Morally, taxpayers who wish to should be able to read about it without further expense. And science advances through cross-fertilization between projects.Barriers to that exchange slow it down. There is a widespread feeling that the journal publishers who have mediated this exchange for the past century or more are becoming an impediment to it. One of the latest converts is the British government. Recently it announced that, the results of taxpayer- financed research would be available, free and online, for anyone to read and redistribute. Britain’s government is not alone. Soon the European Union followed suit. In the U.S., the National Institutes of Health (NIH, the single biggest source of civilian research funds in the world) has required open-access publishing since 2008. And the Wellcome Trust, a British foundation that is the world’s second-biggest charitable source of scientific money, after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, also insists that those who receive its support should make their work available free. Criticism of journal publishers usually boils down to two things. One is that their processes take months, when the Internet could enable them to take days. The other is that because each paper is like a mini-monopoly, which workers in the field have to read if they are to advance their own research, there is no incentive to keep the price down. The publishers thus have scientists — or, more accurately, their universities, which pay the subscriptions 一 in an armlock. That, combined with the fact that the raw material (manuscripts of papers) is free, leads to generous returns. In 2011, Elsevier, a large Dutch publisher, made a profit of £768 million on revenues of £2.06 billion — a margin of 37 percent. Indeed, Elsevier's profits are thought so egregious by many people that 12,000 researchers have signed up to boycott the company’s journals. Publishers do provide a service. They organize peer reviews, in which papers are criticized anonymously by experts (though those experts, like the authors of papers, are seldom paid for what they do). They also sort the scientific sheep from the goats, by deciding what gets published, and where. That gives the publishers huge power. Since researchers, administrators and grant-awarding bodies all take note of which work has got through this filtering mechanism, the competition to publish in the best journals is intense, and the system becomes self-reinforcing, increasing the value of those journals still further. But not, perhaps, for much longer. Support has been swelling for open-access scientific publishing: doing it online，in a way that allows anyone to read papers free of charge. The movement started among scientists themselves, but governments are paying attention and asking whether they might also benefit from the change. Much remains to be worked out. Some fear the loss of the traditional journals' curation and verification of research. Even Sir Mark Walport, the director of the Wellcome Trust and a fierce advocate of open-access publication, worries that the newly liberated papers have ended up in different places rather than being consolidated in the way they want. A revolution, then, has begun. Technology permits it; researchers and politicians want it. If scientific publishers are not trembling in their boots, they should be.
【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.There is a myth out there that too many people believe: that when we reach a certain age, we can no longer be happy, independent and productive members of society. How____(91) that is!Recently I had a serious hip injury that landed me in the hospital. I was ___(92) at first, but I was only facing a short-term crisis. Now, after good medical___ (93),I’m back on my feet, back to work, and feeling great. Sure, I have my aches and pains, and I Move____ (94) slower than I did when I was 18, but who doesn"t? And then last night, I was ____(95) when my niece said, “Aunt Eileen, I want to be like you when I’m older.You’re 76 years old,____ (96) you’re happy, healthy, and still working. You’re actually____(97)!” She was right. However, I haven’t always felt so secure. Years ago, my grandmother ____(98) serious financial problems. Fortunately, our family was able to take her in, and she ____(99) lived to the ripe old age of 94. However, her situation _____(100) me think about my own financial future. I was in my early 30s. Would I have sufficient_____(101) to live comfortably for another 50 or 60 years? The answer was probably no,so I decided to take action to improve the odds. I____ (102) to worry about becoming old, poor, and lonely, but not any____ (103). I am not wealthy, but I am___ (104)compared to many others of my age. So how did I accomplish this? Well, first I____ (105) a financial advisor. She said I had been too happy-go-luck with my____ (106). As a result, I might run out of my money and should ameliorate the risks by saving more right away. When I finally retired, I had to face some____ (107) choices about what to do next. Did I want to move to an inexpensive apartment in a warmer climate,____ (108) hobbies all day? No, I did not! So, I took some courses to improve my skills. Then I found a part-time job I really like.____ (109) I started this second career mostly for _____(110) income, I believe that working keeps me alive and mentally alert.
【正确答案-参考解析】：参加考试可见
