新托福TPO21阅读原文(一)：Geothermal Energy
TPO21-1：Geothermal Energy
Earth's internal heat, fueled by radioactivity, provides the energy for plate tectonics and continental drift, mountain building, and earthquakes. It can also be harnessed to drive electric generators and heat homes. Geothermal energy becomes available in a practical form when underground heat is transferred by water that is heated as it passes through a subsurface region of hot rocks (a heat reservoir) that may be hundreds or thousands of feet deep. The water is usually naturally occurring groundwater that seeps down along fractures in the rock; less typically, the water is artificially introduced by being pumped down from the surface. The water is brought to the surface, as a liquid or steam, through holes drilled for the purpose.
By far the most abundant form of geothermal energy occurs at the relatively low temperatures of 80°to 180°centigrade. Water circulated through heat reservoirs in this temperature range is able to extract enough heat to warm residential, commercial, and industrial spaces. More than 20,000 apartments in France are now heated by warm underground water drawn from a heat reservoir in a geologic structure near Paris called the Paris Basin. Iceland sits on a volcanic structure known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, is entirely heated by geothermal energy derived from volcanic heat.
Geothermal reservoirs with temperatures above 180°centigrade are useful for generating electricity. They occur primarily in regions of recent volcanic activity as hot, dry rock; natural hot water; or natural steam. The latter two sources are limited to those few areas where surface water seeps down through underground faults or fractures to reach deep rocks heated by the recent activity of molten rock material. The world's largest supply of natural steam occurs at The Geysers, 120 kilometers north of San Francisco, California. In the 1990s enough electricity to meet about half the needs of San Francisco was being generated there. This facility was then in its third decade of production and was beginning to show signs of decline, perhaps because of over development. By the late 1990s some 70 geothermal
electric-generating plants were in operation in California, Utah, Nevada, and Hawaii, generating enough power to supply about a million people. Eighteen countries now generate electricity using geothermal heat.
Extracting heat from very hot, dry rocks presents a more difficult problem: the rocks must be fractured to permit the circulation of water, and the water must be provided artificially. The rocks are fractured by water pumped down at very high pressures. Experiments are under way to develop technologies for exploiting this resource.
Like most other energy sources, geothermal energy presents some environmental problems. The surface of the ground can sink if hot groundwater is withdrawn without being replaced. In addition, water heated geothermally can contain salts and toxic materials dissolved from the hot rock. These waters present a disposal problem if they are not returned to the ground from which they were removed.
The contribution of geothermal energy to the world's energy future is difficult to estimate. Geothermal energy is in a sense not renewable, because in most cases the heat would be drawn out of a reservoir much more rapidly than it would be replaced by the very slow geological processes by which heat flows through solid rock into a heat reservoir. However, in many places (for example, California, Hawaii, the Philippines, Japan, Mexico, the rift valleys of Africa)the resource is potentially so large that its future will depend on the economics of production. At present, we can make efficient use of only naturally occurring hot water or steam deposits. Although the potential is enormous, it is likely that in the near future geothermal energy can make important local contributions only where the resource is close to the user and the economics are favorable, as they are in California, New Zealand, and Iceland. Geothermal energy probably will not make large-scale contributions to the world energy budget until well into the twenty-first century, if ever.
TPO21-1译文：地热能
地球内部因放射产生的热量为板块运动、大陆漂移、造山运动和地震提供了能量。这种热量还可以用来驱动发电机发电以及为家庭供暖。水流经地表下可能
几百甚至几千英尺深的热岩区域(一种热储)被加热，当被加热的水将热量传递出来时，地热能就可以实际形式加以利用了。这些水通常是沿着岩石的断面下渗的天然地下水，少数情况下是人为从地表泵入的水。通过为了采集地热能所钻的孔，这些水会以液体或蒸汽的形式被带到地表。
到目前为止，最丰富的地热能形式介于相对较低的80到180摄氏度的温度。在此温度范围内的热储内循环的水可以提取出足够的热量供居住区、商业区和工业区取暖。目前在法国有20 000间以上的公寓是由温暖的地下水供暖的，这些地下水来自位于巴黎附近叫做巴黎盆地的地质构造的热储。冰岛位于一个被称为是大西洋中脊的火山构造之上。冰岛的首都雷克雅维克完全是用火山热产生的地热能供暖的。
温度高于180摄氏度的地热储集层可用来发电。这类地热储集层主要位于有近期火山活动的区域，以干热的岩石、天然热水或天然蒸汽的形式存在。后两种形式的储集层局限于少数区域，在这些区域，地表水通过地下断层或断裂渗入到被近期的熔岩活动加热的深层岩石。世界上最大的天然蒸汽供应位于加州旧金山以北120公里处的盖沙斯。二十世纪九十年代，那里产出的电能足够满足旧金山半数的需求。当时该电厂已经有三十个年头了，开始显示出发电量下降的迹象，这可能是由于过度的开发所致。到二十世纪九十年代末，加州、犹他州、内华达州和夏威夷约有70个地热发电厂在运转，产生的电能足够满足一百万人的需求。目前有18个国家在利用地热能发电。
要从极干热的岩石中提取热量存在一个更大的难题：岩石需要有裂缝才能让水流通，而且水必须是人工提供的。通过泵入高压水可以将岩石断裂。开发利用此能源的技术的实验正在进行之中。
就像大多数其它能源一样，地热能也具有一些环境问题。如果抽取地下热水而又不泵回，地表就会下沉。此外，地热加热的水含有从热岩中溶出的盐分和有毒物质。这些水如果不能被输送回抽取的地方，将会产生处理方面的问题。
地热能对世界能源未来的贡献是难以估量的。地热能在某种意义上讲是不可再生的，因为多数情况下，与热量流经坚硬的岩石到达热储这个极为缓慢的地质作用的更新速度相比，从热储提取热量的速度要快得多。不过，在很多地区(例如加州、夏威夷、菲律宾、日本、墨西哥、非洲的裂谷)，这种能源可能非常可观，它的前景将取决于经济的生产。目前，我们只能有效地利用天然形成的热水或蒸汽形式的地热能。尽管潜能巨大，近期之内地热能可能只能对毗邻用户以及经济状况良好的地区做出重要的局部贡献，就像在加州、新西兰和冰岛地区的情况一样。如果可能的话，地热能估计要到二十一世纪才能对世界的能源预算做出大的贡献。
新托福TPO21阅读原文(二)：The Origins of Agriculture
TPO21-2：The Origins of Agriculture
How did it come about that farming developed independently in a number of world centers (the Southeast Asian mainland, Southwest Asia, Central America, lowland and highland South America, and equatorial Africa) at more or less the same time? Agriculture developed slowly among populations that had an extensive knowledge of plants and animals. Changing from hunting and gathering to agriculture had no immediate advantages. To start with, it forced the population to abandon the nomad's life and become sedentary, to develop methods of storage and, often, systems of irrigation. While hunter-gatherers always had the option of moving elsewhere when the resources were exhausted, this became more difficult with farming. Furthermore, as the archaeological record shows, the state of health of agriculturalists was worse than that of their contemporary hunter-gatherers.
Traditionally, it was believed that the transition to agriculture was the result of a worldwide population crisis. It was argued that once hunter-gatherers had occupied the whole world, the population started to grow everywhere and food became scarce; agriculture would have been a solution to this problem. We know, however, that contemporary hunter-gatherer societies control their population in a variety of ways. The idea of a world population crisis is therefore unlikely, although population pressure might have arisen in some areas.
Climatic changes at the end of the glacial period 13,000 years ago have been proposed to account for the emergence of farming. The temperature increased dramatically in a short period of time (years rather than centuries), allowing for a growth of the hunting-gathering population due to the abundance of resources. There were, however, fluctuations in the climatic conditions, with the consequences that wet conditions were followed by dry ones, so that the availability of plants and animals oscillated brusquely.
It would appear that the instability of the climatic conditions led populations that had originally been nomadic to settle down and develop a sedentary style of life, which led in turn to population growth and to the need to increase the amount of food available. Farming originated in these conditions. Later on, it became very difficult to change because of the significant expansion of these populations. It could be argued, however, that these conditions are not sufficient to explain the origins of agriculture. Earth had experienced previous periods of climatic change, and yet agriculture had not been developed.
It is archaeologist Steven Mithen's thesis, brilliantly developed in his book The Prehistory of the Mind (1996), that approximately 40,000 years ago the human mind developed cognitive fluidity, that is, the integration of the specializations of the mind: technical, natural history (geared to understanding the behavior and distribution of natural resources), social intelligence, and the linguistic capacity. Cognitive fluidity explains the appearance of art, religion, and sophisticated speech. Once humans possessed such a mind, they were able to find an imaginative solution to a situation of severe economic crisis such as the farming dilemma described earlier. Mithen
proposes the existence of four mental elements to account for the emergence of farming: (1) the ability to develop tools that could be used intensively to harvest and process plant resources; (2) the tendency to use plants and animals as the medium to acquire social prestige and power; (3) the tendency to develop "social relationships" with animals structurally similar to those developed with people—specifically, the ability to think of animals as people (anthropomorphism) and of people as animals (totemism); and (4) the tendency to manipulate plants and animals.
The fact that some societies domesticated animals and plants, discovered the use of metal tools, became literate, and developed a state should not make us forget that others developed pastoralism or horticulture (vegetable gardening) but remained illiterate and at low levels of productivity; a few entered the modern period as hunting and gathering societies. It is anthropologically important to inquire into the conditions that made some societies adopt agriculture while others remained hunter-gatherers or horticulturalists. However, it should be kept in mind that many societies that knew of agriculture more or less consciously avoided it. Whether Mithen's explanation is satisfactory is open to contention, and some authors have recently emphasized the importance of other factors.
TPO21-2译文：农业的起源
农业是如何独立的在多个世界中心(东南亚大陆、西南亚、中美洲、南美的高地与低地以及赤道非洲地区)几乎同时发展起来的呢?在那些熟知动植物的人中农业发展得相当缓慢。从狩猎和采集转变为农耕并没有显而易见的好处。首先，它会迫使人们放弃游牧生活并定居下来，发明贮存方法和通常所需的灌溉系统。采集狩猎者往往可以选择在资源耗尽的时候迁到他处，对于耕作者来说就没这么容易。而且，考古学记录显示，农民的健康状况要比同时代的采集狩猎者差。
传统上认为向农业转变是世界性人口危机带来的结果。有人认为一旦采集狩猎者遍及全世界，人口开始增长，食物变得匮乏，农业便是解决这个问题的一个
方法。但是，众所周知，当代的采集狩猎者具有很多种控制人口的方法。因此世界性人口危机的想法就不太可能成立了，虽然在某些地区可能会存在人口压力。
有人提出冰河时代末期，也就是13000年前的气候变化是农业起源的原因。短时期内(以年而不是以世纪为单位)温度急剧上升使得食物资源丰富，采集狩猎者人口增加。但是，气候条件存在波动，造成干湿交替，以致可以获取的动植物数量忽高忽低。
似乎是气候条件的不稳定性使得那些原本放牧的人安定下来，逐渐发展出了定居的生活方式，这也反过来造成人口增长以及所需食物量的增加。在这些条件下，农业诞生了。后来，由于人口的急剧膨胀，这种生活方式就难以改变了。但是，我们可以说这些条件并不足以解释农业的起源。先前地球经历了多个气候变化的时期，但是也没有发展出农业。
考古学家斯蒂文?米森有一个观点，这在他的《思维的史前史》一书中有精彩的阐述，该观点认为约在40000年前，人类的思维形成了认知流动性，即对各种特化的思维加以整合：技术史、博物学(以理解自然资源的行为和分布)、社交智能以及语言能力。认识流动性解释了艺术、宗教以及复杂演讲的出现。一旦人类拥有了这样的思维，他们就可以找到创造性方法来解决严重的经济危机，例如先前所述的农业困境。米森提出存在四种可以解释农业起源的心理因素：(1)打造集中用于收割以及加工植物资源的工具的能力;(2)将动植物作为获取社会声望和权力的手段的趋势;(3)与动物发展出与人类结构相似的“社会关系”的趋势——具体说就把动物当做人(神人同形同性论)以及把人当做动物(图腾崇拜);(4)驯化动植物的趋势。
一些社会驯化动植物、发现金属工具的使用、开始识字并且形成国家，这些事实不应使我们忘记其他社会虽发展出了畜牧或园艺(蔬菜园艺)但是仍停留在文盲状态，并且生产力较低;只有少数社会进入了现代的狩猎采集社会。探究使某些社会选择农业而其他社会停留在狩猎采集或园艺的条件具有重要的人类学意义。但是，我们应该记住有很多知晓农业的社会几乎是有意不选择它。米森的解释是否恰当还有待讨论，而且近来有些作者已经强调其它因素的重要性了。
新托福TPO21阅读原文(三)：Autobiographical Memory
TPO21-3：Autobiographical Memory
Think back to your childhood and try to identify your earliest memory. How old were you? Most people are not able to recount memories for experiences prior to the age of three years, a phenomenon called infantile amnesia. The question of why infantile amnesia occurs has intrigued psychologists for decades, especially in light of ample evidence that infants and young children can display impressive memory capabilities. Many find that understanding the general nature of autobiographical memory, that is, memory for events that have occurred in one's own life, can provide some important clues to this mystery. Between ages three and four, children begin to give fairly lengthy and cohesive descriptions of events in their past. What factors are responsible for this developmental turning point?
Perhaps the explanation goes back to some ideas raised by influential Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget—namely, that children under age two years represent events in a qualitatively different form than older children do. According to this line of thought, the verbal abilities that blossom in the two year old allow events to be coded in a form radically different from the action-based codes of the infant. Verbal abilities of one year olds are, in fact, related to their memories for events one year later. When researchers had one year olds imitate an action sequence one year after they first saw it, there was correlation between the children's verbal skills at the time they first saw the event and their success on the later memory task. However, even children with
low verbal skills showed evidence of remembering the event; thus, memories may be facilitated by but are not dependent on those verbal skills.
Another suggestion is that before children can talk about past events in their lives, they need to have a reasonable understanding of the self as a psychological entity. The development of an understanding of the self becomes evident between the first and second years of life and shows rapid elaboration in subsequent years. The realization that the physical self has continuity in time, according to this hypothesis, lays the foundation for the emergence of autobiographical memory.
A third possibility is that children will not be able to tell their own "life story" until they understand something about the general form stories take, that is, the structure of narratives. Knowledge about narratives arises from social interactions, particularly the storytelling that children experience from parents and the attempts parents make to talk with children about past events in their lives. When parents talk with children about "what we did today" or "last week" or "last year," they guide the children's formation of a framework for talking about the past. They also provide children with reminders about the memory and relay the message that memories are valued as part of the cultural experience. It is interesting to note that some studies show Caucasian American children have earlier childhood memories than Korean children do. Furthermore, other studies show that Caucasian American mother-child pairs talk about past events three times more often than do Korean mother-child pairs. Thus, the types of social experiences children have do factor into the development of autobiographical memories.
A final suggestion is that children must begin to develop a "theory of mind"—an awareness of the concept of mental states (feelings, desires, beliefs, and thoughts), their own and those of others—before they can talk about their own past memories. Once children become capable of answering such questions as "What does it mean to remember?" and "What does it mean to know something?" improvements in memory seem to occur.
It may be that the developments just described are intertwined with and influence one another. Talking with parents about the past may enhance the development of the
self-concept, for example, as well as help the child understand what it means to "remember." No doubt the ability to talk about one's past represents memory of a different level of complexity than simple recognition or recall.
TPO21-3译文：自传式记忆
回忆你的童年并尝试找出你最早的记忆。那时你多大?大多数人无法描述出有关三岁前经历的记忆，这种现象就叫做婴儿期遗忘。为什么会发生婴儿期遗忘这个问题已经引发了心理学家们数十年的兴趣，尤其是有大量的证据说明婴幼儿表现出具有令人惊讶的记忆能力。不少人发现理解自传式记忆，即对在某人自己的生活中发生的事件的记忆的一般特性可以为这个不解之谜提供一些重要的线索。3到4岁的儿童开始可以对自己过去经历过的事情给出相当长的具有连贯性的描述。是什么因素导致了这个发育的转折点。
也许对这个问题的解释可以追溯到具有影响力的瑞士心理学家让·皮亚杰，他认为两岁以下的儿童与大于两岁的儿童回忆事件的方式有质的不同。根据这个思路，两岁的儿童发展出的语言能力可以使他们对事件的组织方式与婴儿基于动作的组织方式有根本的差异。事实上，一岁儿童的语言能力与他们一年后对事件的记忆有关。当研究人员让一岁的儿童们在第一次见到一个动作顺序后的一年模仿这个动作顺序，他们能否成功完成这个记忆任务与他们第一次看到这个事件时的语言能力相关。但是，即使是语言能力很差的儿童也显示出了记得该事件的证据，因此，语言能力可以促进记忆，但是记忆并不依赖于语言能力。
另有人提出在儿童能够讲述他们过去经历的事情之前，儿童需要对把自我当做一个心理实体有合理的认识。对自我的认识的发展在1到2岁之前非常明显，并在随后的几年中显示出迅速地细致化。根据这个假说，身体自我在时间上的连续性是出现自传式记忆的基础。
第三种可能是儿童在他们理解故事发生的一般形式，即叙述的结构以前无法描述他们自己的“生活故事”。有关叙述的知识来源于社会互动，尤其是父母给儿童讲故事以及父母尝试跟孩子聊聊孩子们过去经历的事情。当父母跟孩子们说起“昨天我们做了什么”或者“上周”或者“去年”时，他们就会引导儿童形成讲述往事的框架。他们还唤醒了孩子们的记忆，并且向孩子们传达了记忆是文化体验宝贵的一部分的信息。值得一提的是有些研究显示白种美国儿童比韩国儿童的童年记忆更早。此外，其它研究显示白种美国母亲与孩子交流过往的事情的次数是韩国母亲与孩子的三倍。因此，儿童具有的社会经验的类型是发展出自传式记忆的一个因素。
最后一种解释是儿童必须在他们能够讲述自己对过去的记忆前开始发展出一种“心理理论”——对他们自己或别人的心理状态(感觉、欲望、信仰和思想)概念的认识。一旦儿童能够回答诸如“记得是什么意思?”以及“知道某事或某物是什么意思?”等问题的时候，这就会促进他们可能发生的记忆。
可能上面描述的各种发育之间会相互交织并且相互影响。与父母聊聊往事可以加强自我认知的发展，举例来说，就像帮助儿童理解什么是“记得”一样。讲述自己的往事无疑代表了比简单的认出或回忆更为复杂的记忆。
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托福阅读难句专业翻译一 1. Wearing masks and costumes, they often impersonated other people, animals, or supernatural beings, and mined the desired effect – success in hunt or battle, the coming rain, the revival of the Sun – as an actor might. 戴着面具身着盛装的人们，经常扮演各种其他人物、动物或超自然生灵，并且作为一个扮演者所能做的，就是期盼一个在狩猎或战役中获胜、降雨的来临，阳光的重现的结果。 2.But these factors do not account for the interesting question of how there came to be such a concentration of pregnant ichthyosaurs in a particular place very close to their time of giving birth. 但是这些事实不能解释这个令人感兴趣的问题，就是为什么在一个特殊的靠近他们出生的地方如此的集中了这么多怀孕的鱼龙。 3.A series of mechanical improvements continuing well into the nineteenth century, including the introduction of pedals to sustain tone or to soften it, the perfection of a metal frame, and steel wire of the finest quality, finally produced an instruments capable of myriad tonal effects from the most delicate harmonies to an almost orchestral fullness of sound, from a liquid, singing tone to a ship, percussive brilliance. 十九世纪一系列持续的机械进步，包括踏板的传入、金属结构的完善和钢丝最完美的质量，最后产生了一种能容纳无数音调-从最精致的和弦到一个成熟管弦的声音或从一个清澈的歌声到辉煌的敲击乐的效 果-的乐器。 4.Accustomed though we are to speaking of the films made before 1972 as “silent”, the film has never been, in the full sense of the word, silent. 虽然我们习惯于谈到1972年以前的电影是无声的，但用一句完全感性的话来说电影从来就不是没有声音的。 5.For a number of years the selection of music for each film program rested entirely in the hands of the conductor or leader of the orchestra, and very often the principal qualifications for holding such a position was not skill or taste so much as the ownership of a large personal library of musical pieces. 多年以来电影音乐的选择程序完全掌握在导演和音乐督导手中，通常拥有这些权力的主要资格并非是自身的技艺和品味而更多的是因为拥有大量的个人音乐素材库。 6.Rather, they were made of a top layer of woolen or glazed worsted wool fabric, consisting of smooth, compact yarn from long wool fibers, dyed dark blue, green, or brown with a bottom layer of a coarser woolen material, either natural or a shade of yellow.
TOEFL阅读高难度句子举例解析及翻译 摘要：托福阅读中也会出现一些考验大家的托福阅读难句，遇到这些句子的时候，要在平时新托福阅读中注意积累，觉得用得到的要记下来，以下总结的托福阅读中的几个高难度句，希望对大家有所帮助。 "Sociologists have built on the distinction between expressive and instrumental ties to distinguish between two types of groups: primary and secondary. A primary group involves two or more people who enjoy a direct, intimate, cohesive relationship with one another. Expressive ties predominate in primary groups; we view the people as ends in themselves and valuable in their own right. A secondary group entails two or more people who are involved in an impersonal relationship and have come together for a specific, practical purpose. Instrumental ties predominate in secondary groups; we perceive people as means to ends rather than as ends in their own right. Sometimes primary group relationships evolve out of secondary group relationships." 很多同学，看到上面的“we view the people as ends in themselves”和“we perceive people as means to ends”就彻底晕菜了。这个其实是可以理解的，这两句话实际是哲学家Kant(康德)关于道德的哲学思想。我们先来看看康德是怎么说的： Humanity According to Kant, there are different ways to state what our duty is. One of them involves the idea of a law. Another involves the idea of humanity, or human reason. Morality says that you should never treat rational human beings merely as means to your end. Whenever you use someone’s skills or services to your own end, you should always also treat that person as an end in him- or herself. 翻译：康德认为，有不同的方式来陈述我们的职责。其中一个是涉及法律。另外一个是涉及人性和人道。道德论认为，你永远不应该把一个理性的人只是作为你达到你的目的中间手段。当你用其他的服务和技能作为你达到你的目的是，你应该尊重他们作为个体而不是你的手段而已。 分析：这里的mean实际上是一个途径，一个中间过程。如果我们把他人视为达成某种目标的中间途径,那就不是道德的。end在这里是终点，自身的结果。只有把他人视为end才是尊重别人才是道德的。 其实这个道理很简单。就是我们常说的：不已结婚为目的谈恋爱都是耍流氓。你不已结婚为目的，就是把女孩当成means了，所以很不道德。你如果是以结婚为目的话，就是当成ends了。
新托福TPO11阅读原文(一):Ancient Egyptian Sculpture TPO11-1：Ancient Egyptian Sculpture In order to understand ancient Egyptian art, it is vital to know as much as possible of the elite Egyptians' view of the world and the functions and contexts of the art produced for them. Without this knowledge we can appreciate only the formal content of Egyptian art, and we will fail to understand why it was produced or the concepts that shaped it and caused it to adopt its distinctive forms. In fact, a lack of understanding concerning the purposes of Egyptian art has often led it to be compared unfavorably with the art of other cultures: Why did the Egyptians not develop sculpture in which the body turned and twisted through space like classical Greek statuary? Why do the artists seem to get left and right confused? And why did they not discover the geometric perspective as European artists did in the Renaissance? The answer to such questions has nothing to do with a lack of skill or imagination on the part of Egyptian artists and everything to do with the purposes for which they were producing their art. The majority of three-dimensional representations, whether standing, seated, or kneeling, exhibit what is called frontality: they face straight ahead, neither twisting nor turning. When such statues are viewed in isolation, out of their original context and without knowledge of their function, it is easy to criticize them for their rigid attitudes that remained unchanged for three thousand years. Frontality is, however, directly related to the functions of Egyptian statuary and the contexts in which the statues were set up. Statues were created not for their decorative effect but to play a primary role in the cults of the gods, the king, and the dead. They were designed to be put in places where these beings could manifest themselves in order to be the recipients of ritual actions. Thus it made sense to show the statue looking ahead at what was happening in front of it, so that the living performer of the ritual could interact with the divine or deceased recipient. Very often such statues were enclosed in rectangular shrines or wall niches whose only opening was at the front, making it
托福阅读真题100篇原文+题目(一) 托福阅读在备考的过程中，大家可以多找一些真题来进行练习 PASSAGE 1 By the mid-nineteenth century, the term icebox had entered the American language, but icewas still only beginning to affect the diet of ordinary citizens in the United States. The ice tradegrew with the growth of cities. Ice was used in hotels, taverns, and hospitals, and by someforward-looking city dealers in fresh meat, fresh fish, and butter. After the Civil War (1861-1865),as ice was used to refrigerate freight cars, it also came into household use. Even before 1880, halfthe ice sold in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and one-third of that sold in Boston andChicago, went to families for their own use. This had become possible because a new householdconvenience, the icebox, a precursor of the modern refrigerator, had been invented. Making an efficient icebox was not as easy as we might now suppose. In the early nineteenthcentury, the knowledge of the physics of heat, which was essential to a science of refrigeration,was rudimentary. The commonsense notion that the best icebox was one that prevented the icefrom melting was of course mistaken, for it was the melting of the ice that performed the cooling.Nevertheless, early efforts to economize ice included wrapping the ice in blankets, which kept theice from doing its job. Not until near the end of the nineteenth century did inventors achieve thedelicate balance of insulation and circulation needed for an efficient icebox. But as early as 1803, an ingenious Maryland farmer, Thomas Moore, had been on the righttrack. He owned a farm about twenty miles outside the city of Washington, for which the villageof Georgetown was the market center. When he used an icebox of his own design to transport hisbutter to market, he found that customers would pass up the rapidly melting stuff
精选45句托福阅读长难句翻译及词汇注释 （涵盖部分句子简化题翻译） 1.The same thing happens to this day, though on a smaller scale, wherever a sediment（沉积物）-laden（装满的）river or stream emerges from a mountain valley onto relatively flat land, dropping its load as the current slows: the water usually spreads out fanwise, depositing（沉积）the sediment in the form of a smooth, fan-shaped slope（斜面）. 虽然是较为小型的，但类似的事情也在当下发生，无论什么地方的、大量携带沉积物的河水或溪流从山谷中流至较为平坦的地带，都会随着流速的减慢会沉淀下它的携带物。 河流通常以扇形蔓延，使沉积物以一种平滑的扇形斜面的形式沉积。 2.In lowland country almost any spot on the ground may overlie（躺在某上） what was once the bed of a river that has since become buried by soil; if they ar e now below the water’s upper surface (the water table), the gravels （石子，砂砾）and sands of the former riverbed, and its sandbars（沙洲，堤坝）, will be saturated（浸湿）with groundwater. 在地势较低的城市里，地面上几乎所有曾是河床的地方都被土壤掩埋。如果曾是河床的地方现在处于河流（的上表面）之下，旧时河床的石砾、沙子和沙洲就会被地表水浸湿。 3.But note that porosity（孔隙度）is not the same as permeability（渗透率）, which measures the ease with which water can flow through a material; this depends on the sizes of the individual cavities（腔，洞）and the crevices （裂缝，缺口）linking them. 但是要注意的在测量水可以从一种材料间通过的轻松程度的时候，孔隙度并不等同于渗透率。这个要依材料中每个独立的洞和裂缝的大小而定。 4.If the pores（毛孔，气孔）are large, the water in them will exist as drops too heavy for surface tension to hold, and it will drain（使液体流走）away; but if the pores are small enough, the water in them will exist as thin films（薄膜）, too light to overcome the force of surface tension holding them in place; then the water will be firmly held. 如果气孔很大，其内部的水分会以滴的形式存在，水分会由于过重、不能被表面张力持住而流走。反之，如果气孔很小，其内部的水分会以薄膜的形式存在，水分太轻以至于不能克服固定它们的表面张力，因此水分就会被以膜的形式保留。 5.But the myths that have grown up around the rites（隆重的仪式或典礼）may continue as part of the group’s oral（口头的; 口述的）tradition and may even come to be acted out under conditions divorced（分离）from these rites.
托福写作翻译句子练习集团文件发布号：（9816-UATWW-MWUB-WUNN-INNUL-DQQTY-
1. 旅游业不但给政府带来税收而且给很多人提供了就业机会。 2. 赌博不但对健康有害，而且会影响家庭和睦。 3. 打工不但能让学生赚零花钱，而且还能让他们学到人际交往的能力。 4. 现在很多学校的校服不但贵，而且还难看，质量不好。 5. 政府不但要多建一些公路，还要鼓励人们多使用公交车。 6. 老人们既不需要很多的钱，也不需要很大的房子，他们最需要的是子女的关心和照顾。 7. 我喜欢旅游，但是，我既没有钱，也没有时间。 8. 在老人院，老人既能够接受到医疗，又能够找到很多有共同话题，共同兴趣的的伙伴。 9. 缴税既是有有利于国家，也是有利于个人。因为政府的税收主要用于公共服务，这个是每个人都会受益的。 10. 打电脑游戏既浪费时间，又有害视力。
11. 打电脑游戏既能使人放松，又能锻炼大脑的灵活性，反映能力 12. 依照最近的一项调查，每年有4，000，000人死于与吸烟有关的疾病。 13. 没有一项发明像互联网一样同时受到如此多的赞扬和批评。 14. 许多专家指出体育锻炼直接有助于身体健康。 15. 无可否认，空气污染是一个极其严重的问题：城市当局应该采取有力措施来解决它。 16. 考虑到问题的严重性，在事态进一步恶化之前，必须采取有效的措施。 17. 尽管这一观点被广泛接受，很少有证据表明飞机会造成灾难性的污染。 18. 没有人能否认：教育是人生最重要的一方面。 19. 事实上，我们必须承认生命的质量和生命本身一样重要。
20. 我们应该不遗余力地保护我们的环境。 21. 现在，人们普遍认为 22. 我同意后者，有如下理由： 23. 这一观点正受到越来越多人的质疑。 24. 使用自行车有助于人们的身体健康，并极大地缓解了交通阻塞。 25. 尽管自行车有许多明显的优点，但是它也存在它的问题。 26. 在速度和舒适度方面，自行车是无法和汽车、火车这样的交通工具相比的。 27. 通过以上讨论，我们可以得出结论：自行车的优点远大于缺点，并且在现代社会它仍将发挥重要作用。 28. 这个问题已经引起了广泛关注。 29. 很多人生活在这样的幻想之中。。。
为了帮助大家高效备考托福，为大家带来托福TPO46阅读Passage1原文文本+题目+答案解析，希望对大家备考有所帮助。 The Origins of Writing It was in Egypt and Mesopotamia(modern-day Iraq)that civilization arose,and it is there that we find the earliest examples of that key feature of civilization,writing.These examples,in the form of inscribed clay tablets that date to shortly before 3000 B.C.E.,have been discovered among the archaeological remains of the Sumerians,a gifted people settled in southern Mesopotamia. The Egyptians were not far behind in developing writing,but we cannot follow the history of their writing in detail because they used a perishable writing material.In ancient times the banks of the Nile were lined with papyrus plants,and from the papyrus reeds the Egyptians made a form of paper;it was excellent in quality but,like any paper,fragile.Mesopotamia’s rivers boasted no such useful reeds,but its land did provide good clay,and as a consequence the clay tablet became the standard material.Though clumsy and bulky it has a virtue dear to archaeologists:it is durable.Fire,for example,which is death to papyrus paper or other writing materials such as leather and wood,simply bakes it hard,thereby making it even more durable.So when a conqueror set a Mesopotamian palace ablaze,he helped ensure the survival of any clay tablets in it.Clay,moreover,is cheap,and forming it into tablets is easy,factors that helped the clay tablet become the preferred writing material not only throughout Mesopotamia but far outside it as well,in Syria,Asia Minor,Persia,and even for a while in Crete and Greece.Excavators have unearthed clay tablets in all these lands.In the Near East they remained in use for more than two and a half millennia,and in certain areas they lasted down to the beginning of the common era until finally yielding,once and for all,to more convenient alternatives. The Sumerians perfected a style of writing suited to clay.This script consists of simple shapes,basically just wedge shapes and lines that could easily be incised in soft clay with a reed or wooden stylus;scholars have dubbed it cuneiform from the wedge-shaped marks(cunei in Latin)that are its hallmark.Although the ingredients are merely wedges and lines,there are hundreds of combinations of these basic forms that stand for different sounds or words.Learning these complex signs required long training and much practice;inevitably,literacy was largely limited to a small professional class,the scribes. The Akkadians conquered the Sumerians around the middle of the third millennium B.C.E.,and they took over the various cuneiform signs used for writing Sumerian and gave them sound and word values that fit their own language.■A The Babylonians and Assyrians did the same,and so did peoples in Syria and Asia Minor.■B The literature of the Sumerians was treasured throughout the Near East,and long after Sumerian ceased to be spoken,the Babylonians and Assyrians and others kept it alive as a literary
新托福TPO19阅读原文(一)：The Roman Army's Impact on Britain TPO19-1：The Roman Army's Impact on Britain In the wake of the Roman Empire's conquest of Britain in the first century A.D., a large number of troops stayed in the new province, and these troops had a considerable impact on Britain with their camps, fortifications, and participation in the local economy. Assessing the impact of the army on the civilian population starts from the realization that the soldiers were always unevenly distributed across the country. Areas rapidly incorporated into the empire were not long affected by the military. Where the army remained stationed, its presence was much more influential. The imposition of a military base involved the requisition of native lands for both the fort and the territory needed to feed and exercise the soldiers' animals. The imposition of military rule also robbed local leaders of opportunities to participate in local government, so social development was stunted and the seeds of disaffection sown. This then meant that the military had to remain to suppress rebellion and organize government. Economic exchange was clearly very important as the Roman army brought with it very substantial spending power. Locally a fort had two kinds of impact. Its large population needed food and other supplies. Some of these were certainly brought from long distances, but demands were inevitably placed on the local area. Although goods could be requisitioned, they were usually paid for, and this probably stimulated changes in the local economy. When not campaigning, soldiers needed to be occupied; otherwise they represented a potentially dangerous source of friction and disloyalty. Hence a writing tablet dated 25 April tells of 343 men at one fort engaged on tasks like shoemaking, building a bathhouse, operating kilns, digging clay, and working lead. Such activities had a major effect on the local area, in particular with the construction of infrastructure such as roads, which improved access to remote areas. Each soldier received his pay, but in regions without a developed economy there was initially little on which it could be spent. The pool of excess cash rapidly stimulated a thriving economy outside fort gates. Some of the demand for the services
3.Early Food Production in Sub-Saharan Africa 在更新世末期（大约公元前10000年），食品生产的技术可能已经在非洲西部和中部 的热带雨林的边缘地区使用，在那里非洲山药等根茎型植物的普遍使用，使人们认识到自己种植食物的好处。这种原始形式的“蔬菜栽培”（块根植物和树本作物的种植）可 能已经成为了一种经济传统，基于这种传统，夏季降水谷类作物的种植也采用嫁接的办法，这种种植技术已经在撒哈拉沙漠南部边界地区的草原南部被使用。随着撒哈拉 沙漠在公元前5000年之后干涸，游牧民族（牧民）向南沿着主要河道迁移到了西非和苏丹的热带草原地带。 直到公元前3000年，正如埃及文明发源于尼罗河流域一样，这些游牧民族定居在了离南部很远的东非高原地区的中心。东非高原是理想的养牛场所，如今也是像马赛人（肯尼亚和坦桑尼亚的游牧狩猎民族）这样的有名的牧牛民族的家园。直到大约公元前3300 年，第一批牧牛人出现时，高地上居住着狩猎采集者，他们居住在平原附近的山区。和其他地方的情况一样，在非洲，牛是饲养起来很费劲的动物。如果要饲养各种规模 的牛群的话，这些牛至少每24小时就需要喝一次水，而且需要大片的牧场。饲养的秘 诀在于仔细挑选放牧场地，尤其是在季节性降雨会导致全年牧草质量有明显差异的环境中。即使是规模适中的牛群也需要大片的土地和相当大的可移动性。为了获得这样的土地，经常需要牛群移动相当远的距离，甚至是从夏季牧场移动到冬季牧场。同时，放牧人不得不让牲畜在有舌蝇出没的地带吃草。唯一能够保护人类和牲畜，不患上昏 睡病（一种由舌蝇传播的疾病）的办法，就是避免在这些地区定居或者放牧——对非 洲东部和中部地区的牧民来说，这个办法严重地限制了他们的迁移。结果是，小牛群迅速地向南部地区迁移，在那里人们可以放牧。在谷类农业占领最南部的撒哈拉沙漠之前，非洲东部和南部稀树草原地区的一些依靠狩猎和采集生活的人可能已经饲养了牛群和其他家养动物，他们将牲畜作为礼物交换，或者通过劫掠放牧的邻居，来获得这些牲畜。 和主流观点相反：没有所谓的“纯粹”的牧民，即只依靠牧群生存的社会。撒哈拉沙漠地 区为了躲避干旱而向南迁移的牧民，几乎肯定的是他们也在种植高粱、小米和其他热带降雨作物。到公元前1500年，谷类作物已经广泛分布于整个撒哈拉沙漠南部的稀树 草原带。小型农业社区遍布在草原和西非东部森林的边界处，这些小型农业社区都依赖于所谓的轮耕法。这种形式的农业包括清理林地，焚烧清理过的地块上的那些被砍倒的灌木丛，将灰烬混合在土壤中，然后在这些制备好的土地上耕种。几年后，土地耗尽了养分，于是农民们继续前进，开辟新的林地，让原来的荒地休耕。轮耕法，也 被称为“刀耕火种”，高度适用于没有犁的稀树草原地区的农民，因为这种方法能够消耗 最少的能量。
新托福TPO26阅读原文(一)：能源与工业革命 TPO26-1：nergy and the Industrial Revolution For years historians have sought to identify crucial elements in the eighteenth-century rise in industry, technology, and economic power known as the Industrial Revolution, and many give prominence to the problem of energy. Until the eighteenth century, people relied on energy derived from plants as well as animal and human muscle to provide power. Increased efficiency in the use of water and wind helped with such tasks as pumping, milling, or sailing. However, by the eighteenth century, Great Britain in particular was experiencing an energy shortage. Wood, the primary source of heat for homes and industries and also used in the iron industry as processed charcoal, was diminishing in supply. Great Britain had large amounts of coal; however, there were not yet efficient means by which to produce mechanical energy or to power machinery. This was to occur with progress in the development of the steam engine. In the late 1700s James Watt designed an efficient and commercially viable steam engine that was soon applied to a variety of industrial uses as it became cheaper to use. The engine helped solve the problem of draining coal mines of groundwater and increased the production of coal needed to power steam engines elsewhere. A rotary engine attached to the steam engine enabled shafts to be turned and machines to be driven, resulting in mills using steam power to spin and weave cotton. Since the steam engine was fired by coal, the large mills did not need to be located by rivers, as had mills that used water- driven machines. The shift to increased mechanization in cotton production is apparent in the import of raw cotton and the sale of cotton goods. Between 1760 and 1850, the amount of raw cotton imported increased 230 times. Production of British cotton goods increased sixtyfold, and cotton cloth became Great Britain’s most important product, accounting for one-half of all exports. The success of the steam engine resulted in increased demands for coal, and the consequent increase in coal production was made possible as the steam-powered pumps drained water from the ever-deeper coal seams found below the water table.