科技英语综合复习资料考试题型：1. 阅读理解，占40分；2. 选择题，20分；3. 完形填空20分；4. 翻译，20分。
Part I Reading ComprehensionDirections:There are twelve passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.Passage OneIf you have a credit card, you can buy a car, eat a dinner, take a trip, and even get a haircut by charging the cost to your account. In this way you can pay for purchases a month or two later, without any extra charge. Or you may choose to spread out your payments over several months and pay only part of the total amount each month. If you do this, the credit card company or the bank who sponsors the credit card will add a small service charge to your total bill. This is very convenient for the customer. With the credit card in your wallet or purse, you don’t have to carry much cash. This saves your trips to the bank to cash checks or withdraw cash. Also, if you carry credit cards instead of a lot of cash, you don’t have to be concerned about losing your money through carelessness or theft. The card user only has to worry about paying the final bill. This of course can be a problem if you charge more than you can pay for.Credit cards are a big business. Americans spend $16 billion a year on cards and there are already 590 million of them in circulation. Many banks sponsor their own credit companies and issue cards free to their customers. Other credit companies charge their members annual dues. The stores that accept credit cards must pay a small fee to the credit card company — a percentage of purchase price of the merchandise or service. In return, the credit card company promptly pays the store for the merchandise or service. Credit card companies make a profit from the fees they charge the store and also from the fees collected from customers who pay for their charges in monthly installments.However, credit card companies sometimes have problems collecting overdue payments from unreliable customers. Also, the use of stolen, lost, or counterfeit credit cards by criminals has become a big headache for the credit card company that is responsible for the goods and services illegally charged to its customers’ account.Yet, in many ways, the big loser in the credit card system is not the credit card company, the store, or the card user, but rather the general customer. The store makes up for the fees it pays to the credit card company by increasing prices for goods and services. Stores may have more sales if they accept cards, but the added cost to the store when credit cards are accepted instead of cash, is actually passed on to all customers in higher prices. In this way the cash customer suffers for the convenience the credit card customer enjoys.Many feel that it will only be a matter of time before credit cards completely replace cash and checks for both individuals and businesses. In such a credit card economy there would be only one ―super-credit-card-bank-company‖ and each individual would be given his or her card. Each person’s Social Security number would be used as the card number. Firms would use their Federal Identification number. Thus, every individual would be able to pay for everything by credit card —newspapers, cab fares, donations, tools, theater admissions, tuition, children’s allowances, everything. All salary payments would be credited to each individual’s account with the ―super-credit-card-bank-company‖ which would pay one’s bills, deduct state and federal taxes, and deposit what’s left —if anything —into a savings account. Just think of the convenience of getting rid of cash and checks and even eliminating loose change. No need, then, to worry as before, when you wanted to buy a newspaper and you only had a $20 bill.However, with a complete credit card economy, there would still be the problem of thefts of cards, forging of card and lost cards, so the credit card is really not that practical. Something else is needed that is small, always with us, cannot be forged, and easily identifies our account. The answer is your thumbprint; everyone’s thumbprint would be recorded with his or her Social Security number.1. The first paragraph mainly tells us ______.A. how the credit card company worksB. how the credit card company pays the bankC. the advantages of the credit cardD. the disadvantages of the credit card2. According to Paragraph 1, if you have a credit card, you will have to pay a small service charge to ______.A. the credit card companyB. the store where you purchase goodsC. the bank where you deposit moneyD. other customers3. From Paragraph 3 we know that the big loser in the credit card system is ______.A. the general customerB. the storeC. the card userD. the credit card company4. The author thinks that credit cards ______.A. will completely disappear in the futureB. will completely replace cash and checks for both individuals and businesses quicklyC. will completely replace cash and checks for both individuals and businesses sooner or laterD. will not replace cash and checks because there is a matter of time5. From the author’s point of view, the credit card is ______.A. perfect and practicalB. not easily forgedC. still faced with some problems and not so practicalD. more practical than one’s thumbprintPassage TwoSome people argue that the pressure on international sportsmen and sports women kill the essence of sports -- the pursuit of personal excellence. Children kick a football around for fun. When they get older and play for local school teams, they become competitive but they still enjoy playing. The individual representing his country cannot afford to think about enjoying himself; he has to think only about winning. He is responsible for an entire nation's hopes, dream and reputation. A good example is the football World Cup. Football is the world's most important sport. It is even more important now that the United States is seriously taking it up. Winning the World Cup is perhaps the summit of international sporting success. Mention "Argentina‖ to someone and the chances are that he'll think of football. In a sense, winning the World Cup "put Argentina on the map".Sports fans and supporters get quite irrational about the World Cup. People in England felt that their country was somehow important after they won in 1966. Last year thousands of Scots sold their cars, and even their houses, and spent all their money traveling to Argentina, where the finals were played.So, am I arguing that international competition kills the idea of sport? Certainly not! Do the Argentinians really believe that because eleven of their men proved the most skillful at football, their nation is in every sense better than all others? Not really. But it's nice to know that you won, and that in one way at least your country is best.1. What’s the author’s main purpose in the passage ?A) To prove that football is the world's most important sport.B) To show that Argentina is better than all others.C) To compare Scotland with Argentina.D) To explain the role of sport.2. In the second paragraph, the word ―summit‖ means ______.A) highest point B) mountain topC) award D) summary3. According to the passage, Argentina is world-famous because of its ______.A) large number of sports fans and supportersB) success in the football World CupC) obvious position on the mapD) excellence at all important sports4. According to the passage, if a sportsman only thinks about winning, he will ______.A) fail to succeed B) be successfulC) lose enjoyment D) be irrational5. What is the author's attitude towards international games?A) Nations that meet on a football field are unlikely to meet on a battlefield.B) Nations that won football World Cup are regarded best in all aspects.C) Nations that win in international games prove best on the sports field at least.D) Nations that give much attention to international competitions are world-famous in many ways.Passage ThreeAs evidence that the earth’s atmosphere is warming continues to accumulate, scientists are making slow progress toward an answer to the big question raised by the evidence: How much of the warming is due to human activity and how much to natural causes?The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group of scientists widely considered the most authoritative voice on the subject, has already concluded that there is a ―discernible human influence‖ on the global climate. Now the panel is deep into another of its periodic full-scale scientific assessments of global climate change.Some experts on the problem say the human imprint on climate is becoming clearer, and may even have been the dominant factor in the global warming of recent decades. Not everyone agrees and virtually all experts say that in any case, a reliable estimate of the human imprint’s magnitude still remains some distance off.A number of influences, both natural and man-made, cause the planet’s temperature to vary. The natural ones include changes in solar radiation, and sulfate droplets called aerosols cast aloft by erupting volcanoes, which cool the atmosphere by reflecting sunlight.The human influence stems mostly from emissions of waste industrial gases like carbon dioxide, which trap heat in the atmosphere, and sulfate aerosols from industrial smokestacks.Human factors appeared to be playing a part, but no judgment has been made on whether that part was big, small or in between.One recent piece of evidence suggesting a strong human influence, which seems like to carry some weight with the intergovernmental panel, appeared recently in the journal Nature. Scientists analyzed the global climate record of the last century in an effort to isolate and quantify the major factors producing the century’s rise of about 1 degree Fahrenheit in t he Earth’s average surface temperature.The research team found that in the earlier part of the century, the rise could be explained either by an increase in solar radiation or a combination of stronger solar radiation and heat-trapping greenhouse gases emitted by industrial economies. But they found that after the mid-1970s, when abo ut half the century’s warming took place, that warming resulted largely from the greenhouse gases. Other researchers have lately come to a similar conclusion.―The study represents another jigsaw puzzle piece,‖ said one expert. ―There is still a long way to go in completing the puzzle,‖ he said, ―but we are beginning to see the smile on the face of the Mona Lisa, I think—or perhaps it should be a frown.‖Meanwhile, though, evidence of warming and its effects continues to mount. Earlier this year, scientists at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Arizona reconstructed the average annual surface temperature trend of the Northern Hemisphere for the last 1000 years. While cautioning that margin of error was large enough for render data from the early centuries untrustworthy, they found that 20th century was the warmest of the millennium.This and other analyses have found that the warmest years of all occurred in the 1990s, with 1998 the warmest on record. El Nino, the great pool of warm water in the tropical Pacific Ocean that from time to time heats the atmosphere and disrupts weather patterns, was responsible for some of the 1998 heating. An analysis, however, has shown that when El Nino’s effects are filtered out of the global temperature record statistically, 1998 still ranks as the warmest year.Two studies reported in Nature last month suggest that the warming is being reflected in patterns of wildlife behavior and distribution. In one study, 13 scientists analyzed distribution patterns of 35 species, their range of habitat had shifted northward by 35 to 240 kilometers coincidentally with Europe’s warming trend.In the other study, some British scientists analyzed the nesting habits of 20 species of birds in Britain. They found that, again coincident with a recent warming trend, the birds were laying their eggs earlier in the spring. This is the latest in a series of studies indicating that meteorological spring is coming earlier in the Northern Hemisphere[5]. Some have also shownthat fall is coming later.A third study in Nature reported, on the basis of bubbles of atmospheric gas contained in ice cores extracted from the Antarctic ice sheet, that present-day atmospheric levels of heating-trapping carbon dioxide were higher than at any other time in the last 420000 years. At 360 parts per million, they are 20 percent higher than in any previous warm period between ice ages and double the typical concentrations during an ice age.1. The earth’s atmosphere is warming, ______.A. mainly because of human factorB. mainly because of natural causesC. the reason of which is completely unknownD. which is being studied by scientists2. Maybe sulfate aerosols are all caused by ______.A. erupting volcanoesB. industrial smokestacksC. both A and BD. none of the above3. Which of the following is TRUE?A. About half of the 20th century’s rise in average global climate resulted mostly from the greenhouse gases.B. Half of the 20th century warming took place in the last thirty years.C. The 20th century is the warmest in the last one thousand years.D. All of the above.4. The global climate rise in the earlier part of the 20th century is due to ______.A. an increase in solar radiation onlyB. greenhouse gasesC. eruption of volcanoesD. either an increase in solar radiation or a combination of stronger solar radiation and greenhouse effect5. According to the study of bubbles of atmospheric gas contained in ice cores extracted from the Antarctic ice sheet, we can infer that ______.A. present-day climate is the warmest in historyB. present-day climate is 20 percent hotter than that of the last 420 000 yearsC. present-day climate is twice hotter than that of an ice ageD. in 1998 the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere are the highest on recordPassage FourThe current energy security system was created in response to the 1973 Arab oil embargo to ensure coordination among the industrialized countries in the event of a disruption in supply, encourage collaboration on energy policies, and deter any future use of an ―oil weapon‖ by exporters. Its key elements are the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), whose members are the industrialized countries; strategic stockpiles of oil, including the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserves; continued monitoring and analysis of energy markets and policies; and energy conservation and coordinated emergency sharing of supplies in the event of a disruption. The emergency system was set up to offset major disruptions that threatened the global economy and stability, not to manage prices and the commodity cycle. Since the system’s inception in the 1970s, a coordinated emergency drawdown of strategic stockpiles has occurred only twice: on the eve of the Gulf War in 1991 and in the autumn of 2005 after Hurricane Katrina.Experience has shown that to maintain energy security countries must abide by several principles. The first and most familiar is what Churchill urged more than 90 years ago: diversification of supply. Multiplying one’s supply sources reduces the impact of a disruption in supply from one source by providing alternatives, serving the interests of both consumers and producers, for whom stable markets are a prime concern. But diversification is not enough. A second principle is resilience, a ―security margin‖ in the energy supply system that provides a buffer against shocks and facilitates recovery after disruptions. Resilience can come from many factors, including sufficient spare production capacity, strategic reserves, backup supplies ofequipment, adequate storage capacity along the supply chain, and the stockpiling of critical parts for electric power production and distribution, as well as carefully conceived plans for responding to disruptions that may affect large regions. Hence the third principle: recognizing the reality of integration. There is only one oil market, a complex and worldwide system that moves and consumes about 86 million barrels of oil every day. For all consumers, security resides in the stability of this market. Secession is not an option.A fourth principle is the importance of information. High-quality information underpins well-functioning markets. On an international level, the IEA has led the way in improving the flow of information about world markets and energy prospects. That work is being complemented by the new International Energy Forum, which will seek to integrate information from producers and consumers. Information is no less crucial in a crisis, when consumer panics can be instigated by a mixture of actual disruptions, rumors, and fear. In such situations, governments and the private sector should collaborate to counter panics with high-quality, timely information.As important as these principles are, the past several years have highlighted the need to expand the concept of energy security in two critical dimensions: the recognition of globalization of the energy security system, which can be achieved especially by engaging China and India, and the acknowledgement of the fact that the entire energy supply chain needs to be protected.1. The energy security system was established for the following long-term purpose EXCEPT ______.A. protecting profits of industrialized countries during Arab oil embargoB. making effective coordination among those industrialized countriesC. promoting cooperation in making policies about energyD. preventing oil exporters from using oil as a weapon against other countries2. Which of the following statements about International Energy Agency is NOT true?A. Its headquarter is located in Paris.B. Its members include developed and developing countries.C. It monitors and analyzes the energy market and policies.D. It makes great efforts to save energy and deal with oil disruption.3. The first and foremost thing that both consumers and producers are concerned about is ______.A. various supply sourcesB. stable energy marketsC. the largest profitsD. reasonable prices4. Integration, the third principle to maintain energy security, means to ______.A. recognize the reality of energy shortageB. guarantee the stability of energy marketC. realize the unity of the worldwide marketD. protect one’s independent interests5. The main purpose of this passage is to ______.A. convince readers that energy security is importantB. introduce the major energy organizations of U.S.C. inform readers what the energy security system is likeD. present principles for ensuring energy securityPassage FiveNormally a student must attend a certain number of courses in order to graduate, and each course which he attends gives him a credit which he may count towards a degree. In many American universities the total work for a degree consists of thirty-six courses each lasting for one semester. A typical course consists of three classes per week for fifteen weeks; while attending a university a student will probably attend four or five courses during each semester. Normally a student would expect to take four years attending two semesters each year. It is possible to spread the period of work for the degree over a longer period. It is also possible for a student to move between one university and another during his degree course, thoughthis is not in fact done as a regular practice.For every course that he follows a student is given a grade, which is recorded, and the record is available for the student to show to prospective employers. All this imposes a constant pressure and strain of work, but in spite of this some students still find time for great activity in student affairs. Elections to positions in student organizations arouse much enthusiasm. The effective work of maintaining discipline is usually performed by students who advise the academic authorities. Any student who is thought to have broken the rules, for example, by cheating has to appear before a student court. With the enormous numbers of students, the operation of the system does involve a certain amount of activity. A student who has held one of these positions of authority is much respected and it will be of benefit to him later in his career.The Internet seems to have just arrived, so how can we possibly imagine what will replace it? In truth, early versions of the Net have been around since the 1960s and 70s, but only after the mid-1990s did it begin to have a serious public impact. Since 1994, the population of users has grown from about 13 million to more than 300 million around the world.What will the Internet be like 20 years from now?Like the rest of infrastructure, the Internet will eventually seem to disappear by becoming widespread. Most access will probably be via high-speed, low-power radio links. Most handheld, fixed and mobile appliances will be Internet enabled. This trend is already discernible in the form of Internet-enabled cell phones and personal digital assistants. Like the servants of centuries past, our household helpers will chatter with one another and with the outside help.So many appliances, vehicles and buildings will be online by 2020 that it seems likely there will be more things on the Internet than people. Internet-enabled cars and airplanes are coming online, and smart houses are being built every day. Eventually, programmable devices will become so cheap that we will embed them in the cardboard boxes into which we put other things for storage or shipping. These passive ―computers‖ will be activated as they pass sensors and will be able to bo th emit and absorb information. Such innovations will facilitate increasingly automatic manufacturing, inventory control, shipping and distribution. Checkout at the grocery store will be fully automatic, as will payment via your digital wallet.The advent of programmable, mini-scale machines will extend the Internet to things with the size of molecules that can be injected under the skin, leading to Internet-enabled people. Such devices, together with Internet-enabled sensors embedded in clothing, will avoid a hospital stay for medical patients who would otherwise be there only for observation. The speech processor used today in cochlear implants for the hearing impaired could easily be connected to the Internet; listening to Internet radio could soon be a direct computer-to-brain experience!The Internet will undergo substantial alteration as optical technologies allow the transmission of many trillions of bits per second on each Internet’s fiber-optic backbone network. The core of the network will remain optical, and the edges will use a mix of access technologies, ranging from radio and infrared to optical fiber and the old twisted-pair copper telephone lines.By then, the Internet will have been extended, by means of an interplanetary Internet backbone, to operate in outer space.How will this pervasive Internet access affect our daily lives? More and more of the world’s inform ation will be accessible instantly and from virtually anywhere. In an emergency, our health records will be available for remote medical consultation with specialists and perhaps even remote surgery. More and more devices will have access to the global positioning system, increasing the value of geographically indexed databases. Using GPS with speech-understanding software that is emerging today, we will be able to get directions from our Internet as easily as we once got them at a filling station.Is there any downside to a society suffused with information and the tools to process it?Privacy will come at a premium. Enormous quantities of data about our daily affairs will flow across the Internet, working to make our lives easier. Despite our preference for giving up privacy in exchange for convenience, our experiences online may make us yearn for the anonymity of the past. Who should have access to our medical records and our financial information, and how will that access be controlled? Will we be able to search and use the vast information stored online without leaving trails across the Net? How will business transactions be taxed, and in what jurisdictions will disputed electronic transactions be resolved? How will intellectual property be protected? How will we prove that contracts were signed on a certain date, or that their terms and conditions have not been electronically altered? There are technical answers for many of these questions, but some will require international agreements before they can be resolved.Perhaps even more daunting, in the face of Internet-wide virus attacks, is the realization that we will depend in larger and larger measure on the network’s functioning reliably. Making this system of millions of networks robust is a challe nge for the present generation of Internet engineers. But I am an optimist and believe we are going to live in a world abundantwith information and with the tools needed to use it wisely.1. The main idea the author tries to convey is that ______.A. the Internet has already arrivedB. the Internet began to have a serious impact in 1990sC. the Internet is getting more and more popularD. the Internet is developing fast ever since its appearance2. The Internet might seem to disappear because most access to the Internet is probably realized by ______.A. high-speed, low-power radio linksB. handheld mobile appliancesC. internet-enabled cell phonesD. personal digital assistants3. The Internet will have a significant change thanks to optical technology, which ______.A. will make the Internet access more flexibleB. will make the Internet transmission more rapidlyC. will make the Internet communication more convenientD. will make the Internet more useful in our life4. The primary concern of online experience is ______.A. privacyB. convenienceC. pricingD. conflict5. The author’s attitude toward the future of the Internet is ______.A. doubtfulB. cheerfulC. biasedD. depressedPassage SixI spent some of the most exciting days of my life wor king on the eastern shores of Kenya’s Lake Turkana, searching for the fossilized remains of our early ancestors. We did not always find what we wanted, but every day there was much more to discover than the traces of our own predecessors. The fossils, some quite complete, others mere fragments, spoke of another world in which the ancestors of many of today’s African mammals roamed in the rich grassland and forest fringes between 1.5 million and 2 million years ago. The environment was not too different from the wetter grasslands of Africa today, but it was full of amazing animals that are now long extinct.One in particular I would have loved to see alive was a short-necked giraffe relative that had huge ―antlers‖, some with a span across the horns of close to almost 3 meters. There were buffalo-size antelopes with massive curving horns, carnivores that must have looked like saber-toothed lions, two distinct species of hippo and at least two types of elephants. We may never know the full extent of this incredible mammalian diversity, but there were probably more than twice as many species a million years ago as there are today.That was true not just for Africa. The fossil record tells the same story everywhere. Most of life’s experiments have ended in extinction. It is estimated that more than 95% of the species that have existed over the past 600 million years are gone.So, should we be concerned about the current spasm of extinction, which has been accelerated by the inexorable expansion of agriculture and industry? Is it necessary to try to slow down a process that has been going on forever?I believe it is. We know that the well-being of human race is tied to the well-being of many other species, and we can’t be sure which species are most important to our own survival.But dealing with the extinction crisis is no simple matter, since much of the world’s biodiversity resides in its poorest nations, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Can such countries justify setting aside national parks and nature reserves where human encroachment and even access is forbidden? Is it legitimate to spend large sums of money to save。
