It is plain that in the year 2000 everyone will have at his elbow several times more mechanical energy than he has today.
There will be advances in biological knowledge as far-reaching as those that have been made in physics. We are only beginning to learn that we can control our biological environment as well as our physical one. Starvation has been predicted twice to a growing world population: by Malthus in about 1800, by Crookes in about 1900. It was headed off the first time by taking agriculture to America and the second time by using the new fertilizers. In the year 2000, starvation will be headed off by the control of the diseases and the heredity(遗传) of plants and animals—by shaping our own biological environment.
Now I come back to the haunting theme of automation. The most common species in the factory today is the man who works or minds a simple machine—the operator. By the year 2000, the repetitive tasks of industry will be taken over by the machines, as the heavy tasks were taken over long ago; and the mental tedium will go the way of physical exhaustion. Today we still distinguish, even among repetitive jobs, between the skilled and the unskilled; but in the year 2000 all repetition will be unskilled. We simply waste our time if we oppose this change; it is as inevitable as the year 2000 itself.
1. The article was written to _____.
[A] warn us of the impending starvation
[B] present facts about life in the near future
[C] oppose biological advances
[D] warn of the evil side of automation
2. Advances in biological knowledge were _____.
[A] kept pace with advances in physics
[B] been responsible for the invention of new machines
[C] surpassed those in physics
[D] lagged behind those in physics
3. According to the passage,starvation _____.
[A] can be predicted
[B] is unavoidable
[C] can be prevented
[D] is mainly caused by poor agriculture
4. Repetitive tasks in industry lead to _____.
[A] physical exhaustion
[B] mental stimulation
[C] mental exhaustion
[D] extinction
5. If the predictions of this writer are realized,the demand for the unskilled workers in the twenty-first century will be _____.
[A] very high
[B] very low
[C] the same as today
[D] constantly rising
参考答案：B D C C B
In these days of technological triumphs, it is well to remind ourselves from time to time that living mechanisms are often incomparably more efficient than their artificial imitations. There is no better illustration of this idea than the sonar system of bats. Ounce for ounce and watt for watt, it is billions of times more efficient and more sensitive than the radars and sonars designed by man. Of course, the bats have had some 50 million years of evolution to refine their sonar. Their physiological mechanisms for echo location, based on all this accumulated experience, therefore merit our thorough study and analysis. To appreciate the precision of the bats' echo location, we must first consider The degree of their reliance upon it. Thanks to sonar, an insect-eating bat can get along perfectly well without eyesight. This was brilliantly demonstrated by an experiment performed in the late eighteenth century by the Italian naturalist Lazure Spallanzani. He caught some bats in a bell tower, blinded them, and released them outdoors. Four of these blind bats were recaptured after they had found their way back to the bell tower, and on examining their stomachs' contents, Spallanzani found that they had been able to capture and fill themselves with flying insects. We know from experiments that bats easily find insects in the dark of night, even when the insects emit no sound that can be heard by human ears. A bat will catch hundreds of soft-bodied, silent-flying moths in a single hour. It will even detect and chase pebbles tossed into the air.
1. The passage is mainly about _____.
[A] living mechanisms and their artificial imitations
[B] the remarkable sonar system of bats
[C] the deficiencies of man-made sonars
[D] the experiment of "blind-bats"
2. Where of the following statements is true?
[A] Living mechanisms are always more efficient than their artificial imitations.
[B] Bats rely on their sonar system as well as eyesight to eat insects.
[C] The sonar system of bats has had 50 million years to be refined.
[D] People have discovered the bats' sonar system thousands of years age.
3. Lazzoro Spallanzani demonstrated that a bat can get along well without eyesight through _____.
[A] He caught soem bats and blinded them and released them.
[B] Four of these blind bats found their way back.
[C] He recaptured the four returned bats.
[D] The stomachs' of the blind bats found to be fill with flying insects.
4. Bats find insects in the dark of night with the help of _____.
[A] echoes
[B] eyesight
[C] sound waves
[D] none ofthe above
5 Implied but not stated _____.
[A] Pebbles tossed into the air make no sound that can be heard by human ears
[B] A bat will catch hundreds of months in a single hour
[C] Insect-eating bats are totally blind
[D] The sonar system of bats is as good as man-made sonar
参考答案：B C D D A
