第四部分：阅读理解(第3l～45题，每题3分，共45分)
下面有3篇短文，每篇短文后有5道题，每题后面有4个选项。请仔细阅读短文并根据短文回答其后面的问题，从4个选项中选择1个最佳答案涂在答题卡相应的位置上。
第一篇
Will Quality Eat up the U.S. lead in Software?
If U. S. software companies don't pay more attention to quality, they could kiss their business good-bye. Both India and Brazil are developing a world-class software industry. Their weapon is quality and one of their jobs is to attract the top U. S. quality specialists whose voices are not listened to in their country.
Already, of the world's 12 software houses that have earned the highest rating in the world, seven are in India. That's largely because they have used new methodologies rejected by American software specialists. For example, for decades, quality specialists, W. Edwards Deming and J. M. Juran had urged U. S. software companies to change their attitudes to quality. But their quality call mainly fell on deaf ears in the U. S—but not in Japan. By the 1970s and 1980s, Japan was grabbing market share with better, cheaper products. They used Deming's and Juran's ideas to bring down the cost of good quality to as little as 5% of total production costs. In U. S. factories, the cost of quality then was 10 times as high: 50%. In software, it still is.
Watts S. Humphrey spent 27 years at IBM heading up software production and then quality assurance. But his advice was seldom paid attention to. He retired from IBM in 1986. In 1987, he worked out a system for assessing and improving software quality. It has proved its value time and again. For example, in 1990 the cost of quality at Raytheon Electronics Systerns was almost 60% of total software production costs. It fell to 15% in l996 and has since further dropped to below 10%.
Like Deming and Juran, Humphrey seems to be winning more praises overseas than at home. The Indian government and several companies have just founded the Watts Humphrey Software Quality Institute at the Software Technology Park in Chennai, India. Let's hope that U. S. lead in software will not be eaten up by its quality problems.
31 What country has more highest-rating companies in the world than any other country has?
A Germany.
B The US.
C Brazil.
D India.
32 Which of the following statements about Humphrey is true?
A He is now still an IBM employer.
B He has worked for IBM for 37 years.
C The US pays much attention to his quality advice.
D India honors him highly.
33 By what means did Japan grab its large market share by the 1970s and the 1980s?
A Its products were cheaper in price and better in quality.
B Its advertising was most successful.
C The US hardware industry was lagging behind.
D Japan hired a lot of Indian software specialists.
34 What does the founding of the Watts Humphrey Software Quality Institute symbolize?
A It symbolizes the US determination to move ahead with its software.
B It symbolizes the Indian ambition to take the lead in software.
C It symbolizes the Japanese efforts to solve the software quality problem.
D It symbolizes the
C hinese policy on importing software.
35 What is the writer worrying about?
A Many US software specialists are working for Japan.
B The quality problem has become a worldwide problem.
C The US will no longer be the first software player in the world.
D India and Japan are joining hands to compete with the US.
第二篇
Controlling Robots with the Mind
Belle, our tiny monkey, was seated in her special chair inside a chamber at our Duke University lab. Her right hand grasped a joystick as the watched a horizontal series of lights on a display ptanel. She knew that if a light suddenly shone and she moved the joystick left or right to correspond to its position, she would be sent a drop of fruit juice into her mouth.
Belle wore a cap glued to her head. Under it were four plastic connectors, which fed arrays of microwires—each wire finer than the finest sewing thread—into different regions of Belle's motor cortex, the brain tissue that plans movements and sends instructions. Each of the 100 microwires lay beside a single motor neuron. When a neuron produced an electrica discharge, the adjacent microwire would capture the current and send it up through a small wiring bundle that ran from Belle's cap to a box of electronics on a table next to the booth. The box, in turn, was linked to two computers, one next door and the other half a country away.
After months of hard work, we were about to test the idea that we could reliably translate the raw electrical activity in living being's brain—Belle's mere thoughts—into signals that could direct the actions of a robot. We had assembled a multi jointed robot arm in this room, away from belle's view, that she would control for the first time. as soon as Belle's brain sensed a lit spot on the panel, electronics in the box running two real—time mathematical models would rapidly analyze the tiny action potentials produced by her brain cells. Our lab computer would convert the electrical patterns that would direct the robot arm. Six hundred miles north, in Cambridge, Mass, a different computer would produce the same actions in another robot arm built by Mandayam A. Srinvasan. If we had done everything correctly, the two robot arms would behave as Belle's arm did, at exactly the same time.
Finally the moment came. We randomly switched on lights in front of Belle, and she immediately moved her joystick back and forth to correspond to them. Our robot arm moved similarly to Belle's real arm. So did Srinivasan's Belle and the robots moved in synchrony, like dancers choreographed by the electrical impulses sparking inn Belle's mind.
In the two years since that day, our labs and several others have advanced neuroscience, computer science and microelectronics to.create ways for rats, monkeys and eventually humans to control mechanical and electronic machines purely by “thinking through,” or imagining, the motions. Our immediate goal is to help a person who has been unable to move by a neurological disorder or spinal cord injury, but whose motor cortex is spared, to operate a wheelchair or a robotic limb.
36 Belle would be fed some fruit juice if she __________.
A moved the joystick according to what she heard
B watched lights on a display panel
C sat quietly in a special chair
D moved the joystick to the side of the light
37 According to the second paragraph, the wires fixed under the cap Belle wore were connected to __________.
A a box of electronics and two computers
B a booth and two computers
C a box which, in turn, was linked to two computers
D a computer half a country away
38 Which of the following statements is NOT true of the robot arm built by Srinivasan? __________
A It was six hundred miles away from where belle was.
B It was directed by electric signals converted from the electrical activity in Belle's brain.
C It could produce the same actions as another robot arm.
D It could convert the electrical patterns into instructions for another robot arm.
39 Which of the following statements indicates the success of the experiment? (the 4th paragraph) __________.
A Belle responded to the robot arms successfully.
B The two robot arms moved the joysticks in time.
C The two robot arms and Belle corresponded to the lights at the same rate.
D Belle and the two robot arms were like impulsive dancers.
40 The final aim of the research was to help a person __________.
A who is unable to move but whose motor cortex is not damaged
B who can operate a wheelchair or a robotic limb
C whose motor cortex is damaged
D who has spinal cord injury but is able to move a wheelchair
第三篇
Electronic Mail (E-mail)
During the past few years, scientists the world over have suddenly found themselves productively engaged in task they once spent their lives avoiding-writing, any kind of writing, but particularly letter writing. Encouraged by electronic mail's surprisingly high speed, convenience and economy, people who never before touched the stuff are regularly, skillfully, even cheerfully tapping out a great deal of correspondence.
Electronic networks, woven into the fabric of scientific communication these days, are the route to colleagues in distant countries, shared data, bulletin boards and electronic journals. Anyone with a personal computer, a modem and the software to link computers over telephone lines can sign on. An estimated five million scientists have done so with more joining every day, most of them communicating through a bundle of interconnected domestic and foreign routes known collectively as the Internet, or net.
E-mail is starting to edge out the fax, the telephone, overnight mail, and of course, land mail. It shrinks time and distance between scientific collaborators, in part because it is conveniently asynchronous (writers can type while their colleagues across time zones sleep; their message will be waiting). If it is not yet speeding discoveries, it is certainly accelerating communication.
Jeremy Bernstei, the physicist and science writer, once called E-mail the physicist's umbilical cord. Lately other people, too, have been discovering its connective virtues. Physicists are using it; college students are using it, everybody is using it, and as a sign that it has come of age, the New Yorker has celebrated its liberating presence with a cartoon-an appreciative dog seated at a keyboard, saying happily, “On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.”
41 The reasons given below about the popularity of E-mail can be found in the passage EXCEPT __________.
A direct and reliable
B time-saving in delivery
C money-saving
D available at any time
42 How is the Internet or net explained in the passage? __________
A Electronic routes used to read home and international journals.
B Electronic routes used to fax or correspond overnight.
C Electronic routes waiting for correspondence while one is sleeping.
D Electronic routes connected among millions of users, home and abroad.
43 What does the sentence “If it is not yet speeding discoveries, it is certainly accelerating communication” most probably mean? __________
A The quick speed of correspondence may have ill-effects on discoveries.
B Although it does not speed up correspondence, it helps make discoveries.
C It quickens mutual communication even if it does not accelerate discoveries.
D It shrinks time for communication and accelerates discoveries.
44 What does the sentence “On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.”imply in the last paragraph? __________
A Even dogs are interested in the computer.
B E-mail has become very popular.
C Dogs are liberated from their usual duties.
D E-mail deprives dogs of their owners' love.
45 What will happen to fax, land mail, overnight mail, etc. according to the writer? __________
A Their functions cannot be replaced by E-mail.
B They will co-exist with E-mail for a long time.
C Less and less people will use them.
D They will play a supplementary function to E-mail.
