2014年黑龙江哈尔滨工业大学考博英语真题
General English Admission Test For Non-English Major
Ph.D. program
(Harbin Institute of Technology)
Part I Reading Comprehension (40 points) Passage 1
Questions 1--------- 5 are bashed on the following passage.
The planet’s last intact expanses of forest are under siege. Eight thousand years ago,
forests covered more than 23 million square miles, or about 40 percent of Earth’s land
surface. Today, almost half of those forests have fallen to the ax, the chain saw, the
matchstick, or the bulldozer.
A map unveiled in March by the Washington-based World Resources Institute not only shows
the locations of former forests, but also assesses the condition of today’s forests worldwide.
Institute researchers developed the map with the help of the World Conservation Monitoring
Center, the World Wildlife Fund, and 90 forest experts at a variety of universities,
government organizations, and environmental groups.
Only one-fifth of the remaining forests are still “ frontier forests, ” defined as
relatively undisturbed natural forests large enough to support all of their native species.
Frontier forests offer a number of benefits: They generate and maintain
biodiversity, protect watersheds, prevent flooding and soil erosion, and stabilize climate.
Many large areas that have traditionally been classified as forest land don’t qualify as
“frontier” because of human influences such as fire suppression and a patchwork of logging.
“There’s surprisingly little intact forest left,” says research associate Dirk Bryant,
the principal author of the report that accompanies the new map.
In the report, Bryant, Daniel Nielsen, and Laura Tangley divide the world into four
groups:76 countries that have lost all of their frontier forest; 11 nations that are “on the
edge”; 28 countries with “not much time”; and only
eight----including Canada, Russia, and Brazil-----that still have a “great opportunity” to
keep most of their original forest. The United States is among the nations said to be
running out of time: In the lower 48 states, says Bryant, “great opportunity” to keep most
of their original forest. The United States is among the nations said to be running out of
time: In the lower48 states, says Bryant, “only 1 percent of the forest that was once there
as frontier forest qualifies today.”
Logging poses the biggest single threat to remaining frontier forests. “Our results
suggest that 70 percent of frontier forests under threat are threatened by logging,” says
Bryant. The practice of cutting timber also creates roads that cause erosion and open the
forest to hunting, mining, firewood gathering, and land clearing for farms.
What can protect frontier forests? The researchers recommend combining preservation with
sustainable land use practices such as tourism and selective timber extraction. “It’s
possible to restore frontiers,” says Bryant, “but the cost and time required to do so would
suggest that the smart approach is to husband the remaining frontier forest before it’s
gone.”
1. What is the main idea of the passage?
A. The present situation of frontier forest on Earth.
B. The history of ecology.
C. The forest map in the past.
D. Beautiful forests in different parts of the world.
2. The word “unveiled” in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to
_.
A. evaluated
B. decorated
C. designed
D. made public
3. Frontier forests have which of the following benefits?
A. They keep climate stable.
B. They enhance timber industry.
C. They provide people with unique scenery.
D. They are of various types.
4. The phrase “on the edge” in Paragraph 5
probably means
.
A surrounded by frontier forest
B near frontier forest
C about to lose their frontier forest
D under pressure
5. According to the passage, roads created by timber-cutting make it possible for people to
.
A travel to other places through the short –cut B
exploit more forest land
C find directions easily D
protect former forests
Passage 2
Questions 6--------- 10 are based on the following passage.
To get a chocolate out of a box requires a considerable amount of unpacking: the box has
to be taken out of the paper bag in which it arrived the cellophane wrapper has to be torn
off, the lip opened and removed; the lid opened and the paper removed; the chocolate itself
then has to be unwrapped from its own piece of paper. But this insane amount of wrapping is
not confined to luxuries: it is now becoming increasingly difficult to buy anything that is
not done up in cellophane, polythene, or paper.
The package itself is of no interest to the shopper, who usually throws it away immediately.
Useless wrapping accounts for much of the refuse put our by the average London household each
week. So why is it done? Some of it, like the cellophane on meat, is necessary, but most of
the rest is simply competitive selling. This is absurd. Packaging is using up scarce energy
and resources and messing up the environment.
Little research is being carried out on the costs of alternative types of
packaging. Just how possible is it, for instance, for local authorities to salvage paper,
pulp it, and recycle it as egg-boxes? Would it be cheaper to plant another forest? Paper is
the material most used for packaging---------------------------------------------- 20 million paper bags
are apparently used in Great Britain each day------------------ but very little is salvaged.
A machine has been developed that pulps paper, and then processes it into packaging, e.g.
egg-boxes and cartons. This could be easily adapted for local authority use. It would mean
that people would have to separate their refuse into paper and non-paper, with a different
dustbin for each. Paper is, in fact, probably the material that can be most easily recycled;
and now, with massive increases in paper prices, the time has come at which collection by
local authorities could be profitable.
Recycling of this kind is already happening with milk bottles, which are returned to
the dairies, and it has been estimated that if all the milk bottles necessary were made
of plastic, then British dairies would be producing the equivalent of enough plastic
tubing to encircle the earth every five or six days!
The trouble with plastic is that it does not rot. Some environmentalists argue that the
only solution to the problem of ever growing mounds of plastic containers is to do away with
plastic altogether in the shops, a suggestion unacceptable to many manufacturers who say
there is no alternative to their handy plastic packs. It is evident that more research is
needed into the recovery and reuse of various materials and into the cost of collecting and
recycling containers as opposed to producing new ones. Unnecessary packaging, intended
to be used just once, and making things look better so more people will buy them, is clearly
becoming increasingly absurd. But it is not so much a question of doing away with packaging
as resources for what is, after all, a relatively unimportant function.
6. The sentence “This insane amount of wrapping is not confined to luxuries” means that
.
A not enough wrapping is used for luxuries
B more wrapping is used for luxuries than for ordinary products
C it is not only for luxury products that too much wrapping is used D the
wrapping used for luxury products is unnecessary
7. The local authorities are
.
A the Town Council
B the police
C the paper manufacturers
D the most influential citizens
8 .If paper is to be recycled,
.
A more forests will have to be planted
B the use of paper bags will have to be restricted
C people will have to use different dustbins for their rubbish D the
local authorities will have to reduce the price of paper
9. British dairies are
.
A producing enough plastic tubing to go round the world in less than a week
B giving up the use of glass bottles
C increasing the production of plastic bottles D
reusing their old glass bottles
10. The environmentalists think that
.
A more plastic packaging should be used
B plastic is the most convenient form of packaging C too
much plastic is wasted
D shops should stop using plastic containers
Passage 3
Questions11------------ 18 are based on the following passage.
The tragic impact of the modern city on the human being has killed his sense of aesthetics,
the material benefits of an affluent society have diverted his attention from aesthetics,
the material benefits of an affluent society have diverted his attention from his city and
its cultural potentials to the products of science and technology: washing machines,
central heating, automatic cookers, television sets, computers and fitted carpets, He is,
at the moment, drunk with democracy, well-to-do, a car driver, and has never had it so good.
He is reluctant to walk. Statistics reveal that the distance he is prepared to walk from his
parking place to his shopping center is very short. As there are no adequate off-street
parking facilities, the cities are littered with kerb-parked cars and parking meters rear
themselves everywhere. Congestion has become the predominant factor in his environment, and
statistics suggest that two cars per
household system may soon make matters worse.
In the meantime, insult is added to injury by “land value”. The value of land results
from its use: its income and its value increase. “Putting land to its highest and best use”
becomes the principal economic standard in urban growth. This speculative approach and the
pressure of increasing population lead to the “vertical” growth of cities with the result
that people are forced to adjust themselves to congestion in order to maintain these
relatively artificial land values. Paradoxically the remedy for removing congestion is to
create no re of it.
Partial decentralization, or rather, pseudo-decentralization, in the form of large
development units away from the traditional town centers, only shifts the disease round the
anatomy of the town, if it is not combined with remodeling of the town’s transportation
system, it does not cure it. Here the engineering solutions are strongly affected by the
necessity for complicated intersections, which in turn, are frustrated by the extravagant
cost of land.
It is within our power to build better cities and revive the civic pride of their
citizens, but we shall have to stop operating on the fringe of the problem. We shall have
to radically to replan them to achieve a rational densities of population we have to provide
in them what can be called minimum “psychological elbow room”. One of the ingredients of
this will be proper transportation plans. These will have to be an integral part of the
overall planning process which in itself is a scientific process where facts are essential.
We must collect, in an organized manner, all and complete information about the city or the
town, if we want to