南开大学
Researchers have found that migrating animals use a variety of inner compasses to help them navigate. Some direct themselves by the position of the sun. Others navigate by the stars. Some use the sun as their guide during the day, and then switch tn star navigation by night. One study shows that the homing pigeon uses the Earth's magnetic fields as a guide in finding its way home, and there are indications that various other animals, from insects to mollusks, can also make use of magnetic compasses. It is of course very useful for a migrating bird to be able to switch to a magnetic compass when clouds cover the sun; otherwise it would just have to land and wait for the sun to come out again.Even with the sun or stars to guide by, the problems of navigation are more complicated than they might seem at first. For example, a worker honeybee that has found a rich source of nectar and pollen flies rapidly home to report. A scientist has discovered that the bee sent out to look for food delivers her report through a complicated dance to the other workers not only how far away the food is, but also what direction to fly in relation to the sun. But the sun does not stay in one place all day. As the workers start out to gather the toed, the sun may already have changed its position in the sky somewhat. In later trips during the day, the sun will seem to move farther and farther toward the west. Yet the worker bee seem to have no trouble at all in finding the food source. Their inner clocks tell them just where the sun will be, and they change their course correspondingly.1.The author mentions all the following natural phenomena that help animals navigate EXCEPT ().2.What makes it necessary for a bird to rely on a magnetic compass when navigating?3.According to the passage what information does the dance of the scout bee communicate to the other worker bees?4.What enables the bees to fly by the sun even though the sun’s position is not fixed?
In the last 12 years total employment in the United States grew faster than at any time in the peacetime history of any country—from 82 to 110 million between 1973 and 1985—that is, by a full one third. The entire growth, however, was in manufacturing, and especially in non-blue-collar jobs.This trend is the same in all developed countries, and is, indeed, even more pronounced in Japan. It is therefore highly probable that in 25 years developed countries such as the United States and Japan will employ no larger a proportion of the labor force in manufacturing than developed countries now employ in farming—at most, 10 percent. Today the United States employs around 18 million people in blue-collar jobs in manufacturing industries. By 2010, the number is likely to be no more than 12 million. In some major industries the drop will be even sharper. It is quite unrealistic, for instance, to expect that the American automobile industry will employ more than one-third of its present blue-collar force 25 years hence, even though production might be 50 percent higher.If a company, an industry or a country does not in the next quarter century sharply increase manufacturing production and at the same time sharply reduce the blue-collar work force, it cannot hope to remain competitive—or even to remain “developed.” The attempt to preserve such blue-collar jobs is actually a prescription for unemployment.This is not a conclusion that American politicians, labor leaders or indeed the general public can easily understand or accept. What confuses the issue even more is that the United Stales is experiencing several separate and different shifts in the manufacturing economy. One is the acceleration of the substitution of knowledge and capital for manual labor. Where we spoke of mechanization a few decades ago, we now speak of “robotization” or “automation”. This is actually more a change in terminology than a change in reality. When Henry Ford introduced the assembly line in 1909, he cut the number of man— hours required to produce a motor car by some 80 percent in two or three years—far more than anyone expects to result from even the most complete robotization. But there is no doubt that we are facing a new sharp acceleration in the replacement of manual workers by machines—that is, by the products of knowledge.1.According to the author, the shrinkage in the manufacturing labor force demonstrates( ) .2.American politicians and labor lenders tend to dislike( ) .3.According to the author, in the coming 25 years, a developed country or industry, in order to remain competitive, ought to( ) .4.This passage may have been excerpted from( ) .
In general, our society is becoming one of giant enterprises directed by a bureaucratic management in which man becomes a small, well-oiled cog in the machinery. The oiling is done with higher wages, well-ventilated factories and piped music, and by psychologists and “human-relations” experts; yet all this oiling does not alter the tact that man has become powerless, that he does not wholeheartedly participate in his work and that he is bored with it. In fact, the blue-collar and the white-collar workers have become economic puppets who dance to the tune of automated machines and bureaucratic management.The worker and employee are anxious, not only because they might find themselves out of a job; they are anxious also because they are unable to acquire any real satisfaction or interest in life. They live and die without ever having confronted the fundamental realities of human existence as emotionally and intellectually independent and productive human beings.Those higher up on the social ladder are no less anxious. Their lives are no less empty than those of their subordinates. They are even more insecure in some respects. They are in a highly competitive race. To be promoted or to fall behind is not a matter of salary but even more d matter of self-respect. When they apply for their first job, they are tested for intelligence as well as for the tight mixture of submissiveness and independence. From that moment on they are tested again and again by the psychologists, for whom testing is a big business, and by their superiors, who judge their behavior, sociability, capacity to get along. etc. This constant need to prove that one is as good as or better than one's fellow-competitor creates constant anxiety and stress, the very causes of unhappiness and illness.Am I suggesting that we should return to the preindustrial mode of production or to nineteenth-century “free enterprise” capitalism? Certainly not. Problems are never solved by returning to a stage which one has already outgrown. I suggest transforming our social system from a bureaucratically managed industrialism in which maximal production and consumption are ends in themselves into a humanist industrialism in which man and full development of his potentialities—those of love and of reason—are the aims of all social arrangements. Production and consumption should serve only as means to this end, and should be prevented from ruling man.1.By “a well-oiled cog in the machinery” the author intends to render the idea that man is ( ).2.From die passage we can inter that real happiness of life belongs to those( ) .3.To solve the present social problems the author suggests that we should( ) .4.The author's attitude towards industrialism might best be summarized as one of( ) .
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