西安交通大学
Farming is still the world’s greatest industry. On average, over half of the population spend their lives ploughing the soil, planting seeds, harvesting crops, and raising animals which provide us with meat, milk, eggs, wool, leather, and many other products. Traditional farming, in which most of the hard work on the farm is done by manual labor and animals, is still practiced in many countries. But traditional methods cannot produce enough food to cope with the great explosion in population.Only with modern methods of farming—using machines to replace men and animals, artificial fertilizers to enrich the soil, and chemicals to keep weeds and diseases under control, can man hope to avoid a catastrophic world food shortage. Forming methods are well advanced in most parts of Europe and North America, and farmers elsewhere are being helped by such organizations as the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) to modernize as quickly as possible.Machinery has brought about the greatest revolution in farming. By far the most important machine is the tractor, which is used for pulling many kinds of implements—ploughs to break up the soil, drills to sow the seeds, trailers to carry manure, and so on. In this respect, it does the same kind of work as teams of horses, or oxen once did. But a tractor does more than just pull. It also provides power to drive other machinery, such as mowing machines, and potato harvesters.The standard type of tractor has two massive wheels at the rear and two small ones at the front, but those designed for traveling over heavy ground or for pulling heavy loads have caterpillar or crawler tracks. Tractors supply power to drive other machinery either through a pulley wheel driven by the engine or by means of what is called power take-off (p.t.o). In p.t.o drive, the moving part of the machine the tractor is pulling, such as the knife blade of a mower, is turned directly by a shaft driven by the engine.Among the many other farm machines, combine harvesters are probably the most important. They are so called because they combine the actions of reaping and threshing. Cereals are the main, but not the only crops that are harvested with the combine. Peas and beans can also be harvested with it.Growing plants take their nourishment from the soil. They need certain essential elements, particularly calcium, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, if they are to grow well. It stands to reason that after every crop there will be less of these elements remaining in the soil for a subsequent crop. To ensure a good crop every time, farmers apply fertilizers to the soil before planting to replace the essential elements the previous crop removed.The farmer’s traditional fertilizer is farm-yard manure, a rotted mixture of dung and straw. It improves the texture of the soil as well. But there is not enough manure to supply the needs of a modern farmer, and artificial fertilizers are widely used instead. There are a variety of artificial fertilizers, each supplying certain of the essential elements. Sulphate of ammonia supplies nitrogen, super phosphate of lime supplies phosphorus, bone meal supplies both nitrogen and phosphorus, sulphate of potash supplies potassium, and there are many, many more. Super phosphate is probably one of the most widely used of all the fertilizers. Lime is also added to the soil on a large scale. It is valuable not only as a fertilizer but also as a soil conditioner.Of course, stimulating crops into better growth makes the weeds grow better, too! Fortunately the chemist has come to the aid of farmers and developed selective weed-killers, properly called herbicides, for use with their crops. Herbicides have a selective action in that they kill the weeds but leave the crop unharmed. They are used particularly with the cereal crops. Chemists have also developed a wide range of fungicides to kill fungus diseases, such as potato blight or rust n wheat, which could devastate the crops. Farmers wage continual war against insects, too. Maggots, beetles, and weevils can do untold damage if they are not checked. Again, modern science has produced powerful insecticides to protect crops against insect attack.1. What is the symbol of traditional farming?2. According to the author, tractor ______.3. To supply the needs of modern farming ______.4. It can be inferred from the passage that ______.5. The word “revolution” in line 1 of paragraph 3 can be best replaced by ______.6. The word “they” in line 2 of paragraph 5 refers to ______.7. The phrase “come to the aid of” in line 2 of the last paragraph most probably means ______.
People can be addicted to different things—for example, alcohol, drugs, certain foods, or even television. People who have such an addiction are compulsive; that is, they have a very powerful psychological need that they feel they must satisfy. According to psychologists, many people are compulsive spenders. They feel that they must spend money. This compulsion, like most others is irrational—impossible to explain reasonably. For compulsive spenders who buy on credit, charge accounts are even more exciting than money. In other words, compulsive spenders feel that with credit, they can do anything. Their pleasure in spending enormous amounts is actually greater than the pleasure that they get from the things they buy.There is even a special psychology of bargain hunting. To save money, of course, most people look for sales, low prices and discounts. Compulsive bargain hunters, however, often buy things that they don’t need just because they are cheap. They want to believe that they are helping their budgets, but they are really playing an exciting game. When they can buy something for less than other people, they feel that they are winning. Most people, experts claim, have two reasons for their behavior: a good reason for the things that they do and the real reason.It is not only scientists, of course, who understand the psychology of spending habits, but also business-people, Stores, companies, and advertisers use psychology to increase business. They consider people’s needs for love, power, or influence, their basic values, their beliefs and opinions and so on in their advertising and sales methods.Psychologists often use a method called ‘behavior therapy’ to help individuals solve their personality problems. In the same way, they can help people who feel that they have problems with money.Although behavior has many causes, most scientists seek to isolate single causes. This makes the scientific study of behavior hard. Many researchers in psychology use controlled experiments in which they can examine the effect of one factor at a time in a particular kind of behavior. Some investigators design experiments to test the behavioral effects of several factors in various combinations. Still other researchers study behavior in the ‘real’ world by observing people in their daily activities. Observing behavior outside controlled experiments cannot prove that one thing causes another. But studying people in the real world often helps scientists see the ways in which causes identified in experiments actually operate in people’s daily lives.Specialists in many fields study behavior. Psychologists and some biologists study animal behavior in controlled experiments. Other psychologists study individuals or small groups of people in controlled games or tasks to understand many aspects of behavior, including the reasons for people’s feelings, thoughts and motives. These studies help establish principles that can be used to explain, predict, and modify behavior. Educational researchers study how people behave in the classroom. In sociology, behavioral research focuses mainly on the behavior of people in large groups and social institutions, such as businesses, churches, governments, and hospitals. An anthropologist may live in an isolated community to study behavior patterns of a whole group.1. According to the psychologists, a compulsive spender is one who spends money ______.2. According to the writer, compulsive bargain hunters are in constant search of the lowest possible prices ______.3. The article is mainly about ______.4. From the passage we may safely conclude that compulsive spender or compulsive bargain hunters ______.5. From the passage, we know that scientific study of behavior is ______.6. A controlled experiment in this passage is one in which ______.7. We can infer that ______.
Human beings are capable (1) thought; they are swayed by emotions. We can leave to the philosopher and the physician such questions (2) the power of the mind to abstract, to comprehend and to reason, the nature of instincts, the action and interaction of intellect and will and emotions. (3) when men think and feel deeply, their normal reaction is to wish to communicate their thoughts and their feelings. The sharing fulfills a (4) need in human nature. Men live in society; they do not normally live in isolation. When one human being wished to convey his (5) to another, he has to make use of a medium, a bridge. That bridge is language.The science (6) object is the study of language is known as Linguistics. The student of Linguistics is concerned with every aspect of this conveying of ideas from one mind to another, with language as a means of inter-communication, whether it is spoken, pictured or written. The more specialized branch of this study which is concerned only with spoken language, more specifically with the sounds used in speech, (7) known as Phonetics.Now even in this scientific age, communication is still (8) oral. It is still true to say the great majority of information is conveyed by means of the spoken word. It is self-evident that before any language can be written it must be spoken. It is, (9), quite possible, as we know from examples up to own times, to have literature without literacy. The pen and the printing press merely hive visual permanence to messages which would otherwise have to be transmitted by the tongue and received by the ear. Writing is, of course, a powerful defense against the ravages of time or distance, a more permanent and reliable storehouse (10) human memory.
Passage 1Several promising drug development strategies are emerging in the fight against tuberculosis (TB), which continues to claim nearly two million lives worldwide each year, largely in developing countries. As the TB bacterium evolves to resist anti-TB drugs, and patients find it difficult to stick to existing drug regimes the search is on for both new drugs and good diagnostics. Some promising drugs are in early clinical trials, which could reduce the time needed to treat TB—but the odds are stacked against them because fewer than ten per cent of antibiotics that enter early clinical trials ever gain approval. But researches are finding that fields involving the study of genes, proteins and metabolism offer the potential to unlock new information about the bacterium and its interactions with people in unprecedented detail.Passage 2As far as Web 2.0 is concerned, bigger is definitely better. Bigger text, that is. Large text is easy on the eye, and coupled with snappy copywriting makes information easy to absorb. The layout of Web 2.0 sites might be described as minimal. With a focus on legibility and ease of use, good use is made of white space. White space allows important information to stand apart, provides rest for the eye, and imparts a sense of calm and order. Generous leading also makes text copy easier for the eye to follow. Some Web 2.0 layouts are so minimal that they verge on boring, but designed well, an uncluttered page can be incredibly tasteful. Friendly, informal copywriting allows a more personal relationship with website visitors.Passage 3The project management team must be careful not to confuse quality with grade. Low quality is always a problem; low grade may not be. Determining and delivering the required levels of both quality and grade are the responsibilities of the project manager and the project management team. In addition, quality improvement initiatives undertaken by the performing organization can improve the quality of the project management as well as the quality of the project product. However, there is an important difference that the project management team must be acutely aware of—the temporary nature of the project means that investments in product quality improvement, especially defect prevention and appraisal, must often be borne by the performing organization since the project may not last long enough to reap the rewards.
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