Passage One Fifty volunteers were alphabetically divided into two equal groups, Group A to participate in a 7 weeks exercise program, and Group B to avoid deliberate exercise of any sort during those 7 weeks. On the day before the exercise program began, all 50 men participated in a step-test. This consisted of stepping up and down on a 16-inch bench at 30 steps a minute for 5 minutes. One minute after completion of the step-test, the pulse rate of each subject was taken and recorded. This served as the pretest for the experiment. For the next 7 weeks, subjects in the experimental group (Group A) rode an Exercycle (a motor-driven bicycle-type exercise machine) for 15 minutes each day. The exercise schedule called for riders to ride relaxed during the first day's ride, merely holding on to the handle bars and foot pedals as the machine moved. Then, for the next 3 days, they rode relaxed for 50 seconds of each minute, and pushed, pulled, and pedaled actively for 10 seconds of each minute. The ratio of active riding was increased every few days, so that by the third week it was half of each minute, and by the seventh week the riders were performing 15 solid minutes of active riding. At the end of the 7 weeks, the step-test was again given to both groups of subjects, and their pulses taker, The post-exercise pulse rates of subjects in the experimental group were found to have decreased an average of 30 heart beats per minute, with the lowest decrease 28 and the highest decrease 46. The pulse rates of subjects in the control group remained the same or changed no more than 4 beats, with an average difference between the initial and final tests of zero.
1. The step-test was given ______.
A.after each exercise period
B.at the beginning and at the end of the seven weeks period
C.only once, at the beginning of the seven weeks period
D.twice to the men in Group A and once to the men in Group B
Passage Two Every country tends to accept its own way of life as being the normal one and to praise or criticize others as they are similar to or different from it. And unfortunately, our picture of the people and the way of life of other countries is often a distorted (曲解) one. Here is a great argument in favor of foreign travel and learning foreign languages. It is only by traveling in, or living in a country and getting to know its inhabitants and their language that one can find out what a country and its people are really like. And how different the knowledge one gains this way frequently turns out to be from the second-hand information gathered from other sources! How often we find that the foreigners whom we thought to be such different people from ourselves are not very different after all! Differences between peoples do, of course, exist and, one hopes, will always continue to do so. The world will be a dull place indeed when all the different nationalities behave exactly alike, and some people might say that we are rapidly approaching this state of affairs. With the much greater rapidity and ease of travel, there might seem to be some truth in this at least as far as Europe is concerned. However this may be, at least the greater ease of travel today has revealed to more people than ever before that the Englishman or Frenchman or German is not some different kind of animal from themselves.
1. Every country criticizes ways of life in other countries because they are ______.
Passage Three When an art museum wants a new exhibit, it buys things in finished form and hangs them on its walls. When a natural history museum wants an exhibit, it often must build it realistically— from a mass of material and evidence brought together by careful research. An animal, for example, must first be skinned. Photographs and measurements are used to determine the animal's structure in a natural position fighting, resting, or feeding. Then muscle forms are built and a plaster shell is made. Finally the skin is pulled over the shell like a wet glove. This completes the animal subject. Displaying such things as stone heads, giant trees, and meteorites (陨石,陨星) is basically mechanical. Most other natural history exhibits present more difficult problems. For instance how can a creature be exhibited when it is too small to be seen clearly? In these cases larger-than-life models are built. The American Museum of Natural History has models of fleas (跳蚤), houseflies and a myriad (无数的) of other insects enlarged up to seventy-four times. The models show the stages of the insects' development and the workings of their bodies.
1. Natural history exhibits differ from art exhibits in that they ______.
Passage Four Relations between the United States and Colombia suffered for many years because of an incident involving the Republic of Panama. By the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, many Americans felt that an easier and faster way was needed to get ships from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Some people in the United States first believed that a canal across Nicaragua was the answer. However, President Theodore Roosevelt decided that a canal through Panama would be a better choice. In order to build the canal, the United States had to negotiate a treaty with Colombia, which at that time controlled Panama. Roosevelt offered Colombia $10 million plus $ 250000 a year for 99 years for a six-mile-wide strip of land across Panama. Colombia rejected the United States' offer. This angered President Roosevelt, and negotiations with Colombia ended. In 1903, a revolution broke out in Panama. The United States ships were sent by President Roosevelt to protect the Panamanian revolutionaries from Colombian forces. The revolution succeeded, and Panama declared its independence from Colombia. The United States then negotiated with the newly formed government. A treaty was signed, and the United States began building the canal. As a result of the incident, Colombia and the United States remained on bad terms for many years. Not until 1921, when the United States agreed to pay Colombia some compensation for its lost territory, did relations between the two countries improve.
1. According to the passage, the United States and Colombia were on bad terms because the United States had
A.at first wished to build a canal through Nicaragua
B.promised to pay Colombia $10 million for Panama
C.wished to build a canal through Panama
D.supported Panamanian revolutionaries in their fight for independence from Colombia
Passage Five It appears that the telephone is the principal organization element in the ordering of an information society. But whether a telephone takeover is within the realm of possibility or beyond it, today's ordinary telephone is capable of performing electronic tricks that just a few years ago seemed possible only in the realm of science fiction. Your telephone already can tell you, while you are speaking to one person over the telephone, that someone else is trying to reach you. The "call waiting" service emits a soft sound which only you can hear, letting you know that someone else is trying to get through. You can hold the first call and answer the second, and if necessary, switch back and forth between the two calls. "Call forwarding" makes it possible for all of your incoming calls to be transferred to another number, either at a place at which you plan to be, or where someone can take messages. "Three-way Calling", as the name suggests, allows for a three-way conversation. The future opens up even more interesting prospects of new telephone services. You could arrange to have incoming calls from preselected numbers identified by different ringing patterns so that, without picking up the telephone, you could tell who was calling. Instead of repeatedly dialing someone, you could tell your telephone to keep dialing the number, when it is free, it will let you know. Now, all current predictions about the use of home computers for shopping, education and information gathering involve a connection with the telephone system.
1. According to the author, today's telephone has ______.
A.a few functions, but it will perform all in the future
B.given up an important role in an information society
C.taken place of other means of communication system