一、单选题
根据以下材料，回答1-20题
Fluid intelligence is the type of intelligence that has to do with short-term memory and the ability to think quickly, logically, and abstractly in order to solve new problems. It 1 in young adulthood, levels out for a period of time, and then 2 starts to slowly decline as we age. But 3 aging is inevitable, scientists are finding out that certain changes in brain function may not be.
One study found that muscle loss and the 4 of body fat around the abdomen are associated with a decline in fluid intelligence. This suggests the 5 that lifestyle factors might help prevent or 6 this type of decline.
The researchers looked at data that 7 measurements of lean muscle and abdominal fat from more than 4,000 middle-to-older-aged men and women and 8 that data to reported changes in fluid intelligence over a six-year period. They found that middle-aged people 9 higher measures of abdominal fat 10 worse on measures of fluid intelligence as the years 11 .
For women, the association may be 12 to changes in immunity that resulted from excess abdominal fat; in men, the immune system did not appear to be 13 . It is hoped that future studies could 14 these differences and perhaps lead to different 15 for men and women.
16 there are steps you can 17 to help reduce abdominal fat and maintain lean muscle mass as you age in order to protect both your physical and mental 18 . The two highly recommended lifestyle approaches are maintaining or increasing your 19 of aerobic exercise and following Mediterranean-style 20 that is high in fiber and eliminates highly processed foods.
1、第1题答案是 .
A、pauses
B、returns
C、peaks
D、fades
解析：
：本题考查动词辨析及上下文逻辑关系。根据文章首段首句可知，流体智力是一种与短期记忆和快速、逻辑和抽象思考解决新问题有关的智力类型。在描述这种智力随年龄的变化时，选项中的动词需要与智力水平的变化相符合。其中，“peaks”（达到顶峰）符合描述流体智力在年轻时的状态，即达到最高点，随后可能逐渐下降。因此，答案为C。
根据以下材料，回答21-25题
How can British train operators possibly justify yet another increase to rail passenger fares? It has become a grimly reliable annual ritual: every January the cost of travelling by train rises, imposing a significant extra burden on those who have no option but to use the rail network to get to work or otherwise. This year’s rise, an average of 2.7 percent, may be a fraction lower than last year’s, but it is still well above the official Consumer Price Index (CPI) measure of inflation.
Successive governments have permitted such increases on the grounds that the cost of investing in and running the rail network should be borne by those who use it, rather than the general taxpayer. Why, the argument goes, should a car-driving pensioner from Lincoln shire have to subsidise the daily commute of a stockbroker from Surrey? Equally, there is a sense that the travails of commuters in the South East, many of whom will face among the biggest rises, have received too much attention compared to those who must endure the relatively poor infrastructure of the Midlands and the North.
However, over the past 12 months, those commuters have also experienced some of the worst rail strikes in years. It is all very well train operators trumpeting the improvements they are making to the network, but passengers should be able to expect a basic level of service for the substantial sums they are now paying to travel. The responsibility for the latest wave of strikes rests on the unions. However, there is a strong case that those who have been worst affected by industrial action should receive compensation for the disruption they have suffered.
The Government has pledged to change the law to introduce a minimum service requirement so that even when strikes occur, services can continue to operate. This should form part of a wider package of measures to address the long-running problems on Britain’s railways. Yes, more investment is needed, but passengers will not be willing to pay more indefinitely if they must also endure cramped, unreliable services, punctuated by regular chaos when timetables are changed, or planned maintenance is managed incompetently. The threat of nationalisation may have been seen off for now, but it will return with a vengeance if the justified anger of passengers is not addressed in short order.
2、The author holds that this year’s increase in rail passenger fares .
A、will ease train operators’ burden
B、has kept pace with inflation
C、is a big surprise to commuters
D、remains an unreasonable measure
解析：
根据题干中的关键词“this year’s increase in rail passenger fares”，我们可以定位到文章第一段。该段提到今年的火车票价平均上涨了2.7%，虽然涨幅比去年略低，但仍然远高于官方衡量通胀的消费者物价指数（CPI）。因此，作者认为火车票价上涨仍然是一个不合理的措施，故选D。
根据以下材料，回答26-30题
Last year marked the third year in a row of when Indonesia’s bleak rate of deforestation has slowed in pace. One reason for the turnaround may be the country’s antipoverty program.
In 2007, Indonesia started phasing in a program that gives money to its poorest residents under certain conditions, such as requiring people to keep kids in school or get regular medical care. Called conditional cash transfers or CCTs, these social assistance programs are designed to reduce inequality and break the cycle of poverty. They’re already used in dozens of countries worldwide. In Indonesia, the program has provided enough food and medicine to substantially reduce severe growth problems among children.
But CCT programs don’t generally consider effects on the environment. In fact, poverty alleviation and environmental protection are often viewed as conflicting goals, says Paul Ferraro, an economist at Johns Hopkins University.
That’s because economic growth can be correlated with environmental degradation, while protecting the environment is sometimes correlated with greater poverty. However, those correlations don’t prove cause and effect. The only previous study analyzing causality, based on an area in Mexico that had instituted CCTs, supported the traditional view. There, as people got more money, some of them may have more cleared land for cattle to raise for meat, Ferraro says.
Such programs do not have to negatively affect the environment, though. Ferraro wanted to see if Indonesia’s poverty-alleviation program was affecting deforestation. Indonesia has the third-largest area of tropical forest in the world and one of the highest deforestation rates.
Ferraro analyzed satellite data showing annual forest loss from 2008 to 2012—including during Indonesia's phase—in of the antipoverty program—in 7,468 forested villages across 15 provinces and multiple islands. The duo separated the effects of the CCT program on forest loss. With that, “We see that the program is associated with a 30 percent reduction in deforestation,” Ferraro says.
That’s likely because the rural poor are using the money as make shift insurance policies against inclement weather, Ferraro says. Typically, if rains are delayed, people may clear land to plant more rice to supplement their harvests. With the CCTs, individuals instead can use the money to supplement their harvests.
Whether this research translates elsewhere is anybody’s guess. Ferraro suggests the results may transfer to other parts of Asia, due to commonalities such as the importance of growing rice and market access. And regardless of transferability, the study shows that what’s good for people may also be good for the environment. “Even if this program didn't reduce poverty”, Ferraro says, “the value of the avoided deforestation just for carbon dioxide emissions alone is more than the program costs.”
3、According to the first two paragraphs, CCT programs aim to .
A、facilitate healthcare reform
B、help poor families get better off
C、improve local education systems
D、lower deforestation rates
解析：
根据题干中的关键词"CCT programs"和"aim to"可以定位到文章第二段。该段提到这些社会援助项目被称为有条件现金转移（CCTs），旨在减少不平等并打破贫困循环。因此，CCT项目的目的是帮助贫困家庭改善生活状况。选项B正确。
根据以下材料，回答31-35题
As a historian who’s always searching for the text or the image that makes us re-evaluate the past, I’ve become preoccupied with looking for photographs that show our Victorian ancestors smiling (what better way to shatter the image of 19th-centuty prudery?). I’ve found quite a few, and—since I started posting them on Twitter—they have been causing quite a stir. People have been surprised to see evidence that Victorians had fun and could, and did, laugh. They are noting that the Victorians suddenly seem to become more human as the hundred-or-so years that separate us fade away through our common experience of laughter.
Of course, I need to concede that my collection of ‘Smiling Victorians’ makes up only a tiny percentage of the vast catalogue of photographic portraiture created between 1840 and 1900, the majority of which show sitters posing miserably and stiffly in front of painted backdrops, or staring absently into the middle distance. How do we explain this trend?
During the 1840s and 1850s, in the early days of photography, exposure times were notoriously long: the daguerreotype photographic method (producing an image on a silvered copper plate) could take several minutes to complete, resulting in blurred images as sitters shifted position or adjusted their limbs. The thought of holding a fixed grin as the camera performed its magical duties was too much to contemplate, and so a non-committal blank stare became the norm.
But exposure times were much quicker by the 1880s, and the introduction of the Box Brownie and other portable cameras meant that, though slow by today’s digital standards, the exposure was almost instantaneous. Spontaneous smiles were relatively easy to capture by the 1890s, so we must look elsewhere for an explanation of why Victorians still hesitated to smile.
One explanation might be the loss of dignity displayed through a cheesy grin. “Nature gave us lips to conceal our teeth,” ran one popular Victorian saying, alluding to the fact that before the birth of proper dentistry, mouths were often in a shocking state of hygiene. A flashing set of healthy and clean, regular ‘pearly whites’ was a rare sight in Victorian society, the preserve of the super-rich (and even then, dental hygiene was not guaranteed).
A toothy grin (especially when there were gaps or blackened teeth) lacked class: drunks, tramps, and music hall performers might gum and grin with a smile as wide as Lewis Carroll’s gum-exposing Cheshire Cat, but it was not a becoming look for properly bred persons. Even Mark Twain, a man who enjoyed a hearty laugh, said that when it came to photographic portraits there could be “nothing more damning than a silly, foolish smile fixed forever.”
4、According to Paragraph 1, the author’s posts on Twitter_____.
A、changed people’s impression of the Victorians.
B、highlighted social media’s role in Victorian studies.
C、re-evaluated the Victorian’s notion of public image.
D、illustrated the development of Victorian photography.
解析：
根据题干中的关键信息，第一段主要描述了作者通过寻找和发布展示维多利亚时代祖先微笑的照片，来让人们重新评估过去的认知。作者在推特上发布的照片让人们看到了维多利亚时代的人们确实会微笑的证据，从而改变了人们对他们的印象。因此，正确答案是A，即作者的推特帖子改变了人们对维多利亚时代的印象。
根据以下材料，回答36-40题
From the early days of broadband, advocates for consumers and web-based companies worried that the cable and phone companies selling broadband connections had the power and incentive to favor affiliated websites over their rivals. That’s why there has been such a strong demand for rules that would prevent broadband providers from picking winners and losers online, preserving the freedom and innovation that have been the lifeblood of the Internet.
Yet that demand has been almost impossible to fill—in part because of pushback from broadband providers, anti-regulatory conservatives and the courts. A federal appeals court weighed in again Tuesday, but instead of providing a badly needed resolution, it only prolonged the fight. At issue before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was the latest take of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on net neutrality, adopted on a party-line vote in 2017. The Republican-penned order not only eliminated the strict net neutrality rules the FCC had adopted when it had a Democratic majority in 2015, but rejected the commission's authority to require broadband providers to do much of anything. The order also declared that state and local governments couldn't regulate broadband providers either.
The commission argued that other agencies would protect against anti-competitive behavior, such as a broadband-providing conglomerate like AT&T favoring its own video-streaming service at the expense of Netflix and Apple TV. Yet the FCC also ended the investigations of broadband providers that imposed data caps on their rivals’ streaming services but not their own.
On Tuesday, the appeals court unanimously upheld the 2017 order deregulating broadband providers, citing a Supreme Court ruling from 2005 that upheld a similarly deregulatory move. But Judge Patricia Millett rightly argued in a concurring opinion that “the result is unhinged from the realities of modem broadband service,” and said Congress or the Supreme Court could intervene to “avoid trapping Internet regulation in technological anachronism.”
In the meantime, the court threw out the FCC’s attempt to block all state rules on net neutrality, while preserving the commission’s power to preempt individual state laws that undermine its order. That means more battles like the one now going on between the Justice Department and California, which enacted a tough net neutrality law in the wake of the FCC’s abdication.
The endless legal battles and back-and-forth at the FCC cry out for Congress to act. It needs to give the commission explicit authority once and for all to bar broadband providers from meddling in the traffic on their network and to create clear rules protecting openness and innovation online.
5、There has long been concern that broadband providers would .
A、bring web-based firms under control
B、slow down the traffic on their network
C、show partiality in treating clients
D、intensify competition with their rivals
解析：
根据题干中的关键词“concern”可以定位到原文第一段。该段提到从宽带发展初期起，消费者和网络公司的拥护者就担心宽带提供商会倾向于支持附属网站而非竞争对手。因此，题目中询问的关于宽带提供商的担忧是它们会表现出对客户的不公平对待，选项C“显示对客户的不公平对待”符合原文中的描述。
根据以下材料，回答41-45题
In the movies and on television, artificial intelligence is typically depicted as something sinister that will upend our way of life. When it comes to AI in business, we often hear about it in relation to automation and the impending loss of jobs, but in what ways is AI changing companies and the larger economy that don’t involve doom-and-gloom mass unemployment predictions?
A recent survey of manufacturing and service industries from Tata Consultancy Services found that companies currently use AI more often in computer-to-computer activities than in automating human activities. One common application? Preventing electronic security breaches, which, rather than eliminating IT jobs, actually make those personnel more valuable to employers, because they help firms prevent hacking attempts.
Here are a few ways AI is aiding companies without replacing employees:
Better hiring practices
Companies are using artificial intelligence to remove some of the unconscious bias from hiring decisions. “There are experiments that show that, naturally, the results of interviews are much more biased than what AI does,” says Pedro Domingos, author of The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World and a computer science professor at the University of Washington.
In addition, (41) . One company that’s doing this is called Blendoor. It uses analytics to help identify where there may be bias in the hiring process.
More effective marketing
Some AI software can analyze and optimize marketing email subject lines to increase open rates. One company in the UK, Phrasee, claims their software can outperform humans by up to 10 percent when it comes to email open rates. This can mean millions more in revenue. (42) . These are “tools that help people use data, not a replacement for people,” says Patrick H. Winston, a professor of artificial intelligence and computer science at MIT.
Saving customers money
Energy companies can use AI to help customers reduce their electricity bills, saving them money while helping the environment. Companies can also optimize their own energy use and cut down on the cost of electricity. Insurance companies, meanwhile, can base their premiums on AI models that more accurately access risk. Domingos says, “(43) .”
Improved accuracy
“Machine learning often provides a more reliable form of statistics which makes data more valuable,” says Winston. “It helps people make smarter decisions.” (44) .
Protecting and maintaining infrastructure
A number of companies, particularly in energy and transportation, use AI image processing technology to inspect infrastructure and prevent equipment failure or leaks before they happen. “If they fail first and then you fix them, it’s very expensive,” says Domingos. “(45) .”
[A] AI replaces the boring parts of your job. If you’re doing research, you can have AI go out and look for relevant sources and information that otherwise you just wouldn’t have time for.
[B] One accounting firm, EY, uses an AI system that helps review contracts during an audit. This process, along with employees reviewing the contracts, is faster and more accurate.
[C] There are also companies like Acquisio, which analyzes advertising performance across multiple channels like Adwords, Bing and social media and makes adjustments or suggestions about where advertising funds will yield best results.
[D] You want to predict if something needs attention now and point to where it’s useful for employees to go to.
[E] Before, they might not insure the ones who felt like a high risk or charge them too much, or they would charge them too little and then it would cost the company money.
[F] We’re also giving our customers better channels versus picking up the phone to accomplish something beyond human scale.
[G] AI looks at resumes in greater numbers than humans would be able to, and selects the more promising candidates.
6、第41题答案是
A、AI replaces the boring parts of your job. If you’re doing research, you can have AI go out and look for relevant sources and information that otherwise you just wouldn’t have time for.
B、One accounting firm, EY, uses an AI system that helps review contracts during an audit.This process, along with employees reviewing the contracts, is faster and more accurate.
C、There are also companies like Acquisio, which analyzes advertising performance across multiple channels like Adwords, Bing and social media and makes adjustments or suggestions about where advertising funds will yield best results.
D、You want to predict if something needs attention now and point to where it’s useful for employees to go to.
E、Before, they might not insure the ones who felt like a high risk or charge them too much, or they would charge them too little and then it would cost the company money.
F、We’re also giving our customers better channels versus picking up the phone to accomplish something beyond human scale.
G、AI looks at resumes in greater numbers than humans would be able to, and selects the more promising candidates.
解析：
第41题所在的段落主要讨论了人工智能在招聘过程中的作用，强调了其能够处理大量简历并挑选出更有前途的候选人。选项G中提到了AI能够查看大量的简历，并挑选出更有前途的候选人，这与该段落的主旨相符，因此是正确答案。
二、简答题
请将材料中划线的句子翻译成46-50中文：
World War II was the watershed event for higher education in modem Western societies. (46) Those societies came out of the war with levels of enrollment that had been roughly constant at 3-5% of the relevant age groups during the decades before the war.
But after the war, great social and political changes arising out of the successful war against Fascism created a growing demand in European and American economies for increasing numbers of graduates with more than a secondary school education. (47) And the demand that rose in those societies for entry to higher education extended to groups and social classes that had not thought of attending a university before the war. These demands resulted in a very rapid expansion of the systems of higher education, beginning in the 1960s and developing very rapidly (though unevenly) during the 1970s and 1980s.
The growth of higher education manifests itself in at least three quite different ways, and these in turn have given rise to different sets of problems. There was first the rate of growth: (48) in many countries of Western Europe, the numbers of students in higher education doubled within five-year periods during the 1960s and doubled again in seven, eight, or 10 years by the middle of the 1970s. Second, growth obviously affected the absolute size both of systems and individual institutions. And third, growth was reflected in changes in the proportion of the relevant age group enrolled in institutions of higher education.
Each of these manifestations of growth carried its own peculiar problems in its wake. For example, a high growth rate placed great strains on the existing structures of governance, of administration, and above all of socialization. When a faculty or department grows from, say, 5 to 20 members within three or four years, (49) and when the new staff are predominantly young men and women fresh from postgraduate study, they largely define the norms of academic life in that faculty. And if the postgraduate student population also grows rapidly and there is loss of a close apprenticeship relationship between faculty members and students, the student culture becomes the chief socializing force for new postgraduate students, with consequences for the intellectual and academic life of the institution—this was seen in America as well as in France, Italy, West Germany, and Japan. (50) High growth rates increased the chances for academic innovation; they also weakened the forms and processes by which teachers and students are admitted into a community of scholars during periods of stability or slow growth. In the 1960s and 1970s, European universities saw marked changes in their governance arrangements, with empowerment of junior faculty and to some degree of students as well.
第（46）题
7、答案
解析：
划线句子表达的是战争结束时，现代西方社会的入学率水平。在战前的几十年里，这一入学率一直保持在相关年龄组的3%-5%。因此，答案为“战争刚刚结束时，这些社会的适龄群体入学率维持在战前几十年的3%-5%的水平”。
8、Directions:
A foreign friend of yours has recently graduated from college and intends to find a job in China. Write him/her an email to make some suggestions.
You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET.
Do not sign your own name at the end. Use “Li Ming” instead.
Do not write the address.(10 points)
解析：
此题要求写一封电子邮件，给一个即将在中国找工作的外国朋友提供建议。邮件需要包括祝贺毕业，提供找工作建议，表达希望这些建议能有所帮助，并祝愿他一切顺利。邮件应包含一份吸引人的简历的准备，理想职业的思考，面试时的自信表达等要点。同时，邮件结尾要用“Li Ming”代替自己的签名，并且不能写地址。
9、Directions:
Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the following picture. In your essay, you should
1) describe the picture briefly,
2) interpret its intended meaning, and
3) give your comments.
You should write neatly on the ANSWER SHEET. (20 points)
解析：
{这篇文章首先简要描述了图片中的情景，即小男孩和他的父亲关于学习传统京剧的对话。然后，作者解读了这幅图的深层含义，强调了传统中国文化的重要性以及现代社会中对传统遗产的忽视。最后，作者表达了他对传统与现代文化相结合的观点，认为在与时俱进的同时也要保留传统文化的重要性。符合题目的要求。}
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