上海外语口译证书考试
问答题Practice 3 Dolly was no ordinary lamb. She was cloned from a single mammary cell of an adult ewe, overturning long- held scientific dogma that had declared such a thing biologically impossible. Her birth set off a race in laboratories around the world to duplicate the breakthrough and raised the specter of human cloning. A decade later, scientists are starting to come to grips with just how different Dolly was. Dozens of animals have been cloned since that first little lamb and it’s becoming increasingly clear that they are all, in one way or another, defective. It’s tempting to think of clones as perfect carbon copies of the original—down to every hair and quirk of temperament. It turns out, though, that there are various degrees of genetic replication. Not only are clones separated from the original template by time—-in Dolly’s case, six years—but they are also the product of an unnatural molecular mechanism that turns out not to be very good at making identical copies. But scientists see a role for cloning in treating human diseases—and perhaps someday conquering some of man’s most intractable conditions. It may be another 10 years or more before the approach yields anything safe and reliable enough to be used in real patients, and there is no guarantee that it will ever be successful. But nobody thought Dolly was possible until she made history that warm July night 10 years ago.
问答题Practice 3 In-state tuition. For decades, it was the one advantage big state schools had that even the Ivy League couldn’t match, in terms of recruiting the best and the brightest to their campuses. But these days, that’s no longer necessarily the case. Starting this September, some students will find a Harvard degree cheaper than one from many public universities. Harvard officials sent shock waves through academia last December by detailing a new financial-aid policy that will charge families making up to $180,000 just 10 % of their household income per year, substantially subsidizing the annual cost of more than $ 45,600 for all but its wealthiest students. The move was just the latest in what has amounted to a financial-aid bidding war in recent years among the U. S.’s élite universities. Though Harvard’s is the most generous to date, Princeton, Yale and Stanford have all launched similar plans to cap tuition contributions for students from low-and middle-income families. Indeed, students on financial aid at nearly every Ivy stand a good chance of graduating debt-free, thanks to loan-elimination programs introduced over the past five years. And other exclusive schools have followed their lead by replacing loans with grants and work-study aid. And several more schools are joining the no-loan club this fall. Even more schools have taken steps to reduce debt among their neediest students.
问答题Practice 3 Einstein was one of the intellectual heroes of history, and such heroes, like Newton and like Darwin, are always twofold — rebels in their work and heretics in society. He prized the integrity of man's personality more highly than man's science. Back in the 1920's he said, in some desultory interview, that two discoveries might destroy mankind: atomic energy and universal thought-reading. The wry prophecy sums up Einstein's passions. He saw deeply into nature, her promise and her threat, but he was not too abstracted to remember .the fallibility of men. For him the key to the world lay in the minds of men. He fought for freedom of the mind from his rebellious school-days and the manifesto of 1914 to his dying day. In his last years he spoke out constantly against the inquisition which then darkened America. But even his love for science and for freedom was not abstract. These were for him the high places of the human mind, and he lived those; he loved people. His richness of sympathy made him a symbol to an age. It carried his ideas beyond their scientific setting so that, more profoundly than the work of any philosopher, they changed the outlook of philosophy. All his ideas grew from one conception: that the world is not given to us absolutely, but is something which we actively observe and thereby shape. For Einstein was a practical thinker; to him, truth was that which is experienced in action. When he died, on April 18, 1955, Einstein had created a new empiricism, as revolutionary and as lasting as that with which Galileo laid the foundation of science.
问答题Practice 2 President Bill Clinton's My Wife shows US the progress of a remarkable American, who, through his own enormous energies and efforts, made the unlikely journey from Hope, Arkansas, to the White House—a journey fueled by an impassioned interest in the political process which manifested itself at every stage of his life:in college, working as an intern for Senator William Fulbright; at Oxford, becoming part of the Vietnam War protest movement;at Yale Law School, campaigning on the grassroots level for Democratic candidates;back in Arkansas, running for Congress, attorney general, and governor. We see his career shaped by his resolute determination to improve the life of his fellow citizens, all unfaltering commitment to civil rights, and an exceptional Understanding of the practicalities of political life. We come to understand the emotional pressures of his youth—born after his Father's death;caught in the dysfunctional relationship between his feisty, nurturing mother and his abusive stepfather, whom he never ceased to love and whose name he took;drawn to the brilliant, compelling Hillary Rodham, whom he was determined to marry;passionately devoted, from her infancy, to their daughter, Chelsea, and to the entire。Experience of fatherhood; slowly and painfully beginning to comprehend how his early denial of pain led him at times into damaging patterns of behavior.
问答题Practice 3 So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people: “Let it be told to the future world… that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive… that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it].” America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations. (Barack Obama: Inaugural Address)
问答题Practice 1 Modern intolerance, like ancient Gaul, is divided into three parts; the intolerance of laziness, the intolerance of ignorance and the intolerance of self-interest. The first of these is perhaps the most general. It is to be met with in every country and among all classes of society. It is most common is small villages and old-established towns, and it is not restricted to human beings. It is this particular variety of intolerance which makes parents shake their heads over the foolish behavior of their children, which has caused the absurd myth of “the good old days”; which makes savages and civilized creatures wear uncomfortable clothes; which fills the world with a great deal of superfluous nonsense and generally turns all people with a new idea into the supposed enemies of mankind. The second variety is much more, serious. An ignorant man is, by the very fact of his ignorance, a very dangerous person. But when he tries to invent an accuse for his own lack of mental faculties, he becomes a holy terror. For then he erects within his soul a granite bulwark of self-righteousness and from the high pinnacle of this formidable fortress, he defies all his enemies to show cause why they should be allowed to live. There remains as a third category the intolerance caused by self-interest. (Hendrik Willem Van Loon: Tolerance)
问答题Practice 1 The catchphrase of the hour is that America is living beyond its means. The expression is used so much by politicians, economists and editorial writers that it is depreciating faster than the dollar. But there's no way around it. It tells the story. The Data Resources numbers show Americans increase their spending this year almost three times as fast as their after-tax income. What else can we explain it? What is more, as a nation, the U.S. has been doing the same thing throughout the 1990s. For years the country has been consuming more than it produces, making up the difference by borrowing abroad. It can't go on. The stock market's tumble, which has caused a loss of $1 trillion in paper wealth, is but the first step in a process that must sober the nation. At the same time, in the next few years the U. S. will have to throw its amazing dream machine into reverse and start paying its debts. Inevitably, this will mean a lowering in the U.S. standard of living as Americans are forced to produce more than they consume to service a soaring foreign debt. Per capital income may keep rising but more slowly than in the past. The trade account will go slowly towards balance or even surplus in the mid-1990s. But in the meantime, Americans will receive less for their exports because the dollar will fall considerably before U. S. exports are competitive. And pressures to reduce the federal deficit will tighten the lid on defense spending.
问答题Practice 7 That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far- reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our healthcare is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet. On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics. This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America. (Barack Obama: Inaugural Address)
问答题Practice 5 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that they are among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among them, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than the right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity, which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. (Thomas Jefferso: The Declaration o f Independence)
问答题Practice 3 On his 10-day trip to Asia this week, President George W. Bush is likely to get a polite reception for his ambitious agenda. He wants to rally allies to the war on terror, the confrontation with North Korea and the expansion of transpacific trade. He’ll be asking Japan and China to allow their currencies to get stronger, so they will find it cheaper to buy more goods from struggling US manufacturers. Neither the Japanese nor the Chinese will say no outright, but they won’t say yes, either. Below the polite ambiguities, something disturbing is happening, at least from an American viewpoint. For all its military power, political clout and economic might, America could be losing its influence in what is arguably the most dynamic region of the world. Big changes are happening in Asia, for which America’s policies are increasingly out of step. Washington’s preoccupations—-the mess in Iraq, the jobless recovery and the escalating fiscal deficit at home—are not Asia’s preoccupations. When Bush looks into the future, he sees an American Century with a troubled story line dominated by the fight against terror. When Asians look into the future, they see an Asian Century dominated by rising prosperity and the emergence of China, with terror a minor subplot.
问答题Practice 3 What today’s global market economy teaches many of us who are involved in political life, is that even when they are inconvenient, the laws of economics, like the laws of physics, cannot be repealed for the convenience of governments. The economic principles for national success are as difficult to implement as they are easy to state. There is a paradox in all our countries at this moment. Just as a new global economy creates more to look forward to than ever before, it also brings more uncertainty and more change to worry about than ever before. That is why the challenge of crafting economic policy in your country as in mine is one of balance. A balance between moving toward necessary objectives and maintaining stability. A balance between responding to global realities and upholding domestic traditions. And a balance between the virtues of competition as the best known motivator and driver of success, and the importance of cohesion and cooperation as sources of strength for our societies. These balances will have to be struck and calibrated every year in every country in this new global economy. These measures are what one might call the intangible infrastructure of a modern market economy.
问答题Practice 1 If chief executives of leading U. S. agri-biotech companies have been suffering from heartburn lately, it isn’t because of anything they’ve been eating. Rather, it’s the unsettling knowledge that long-simmering European anxieties over genetically modified (g. m.) crops, like ocean-hopping viruses, are spreading across the world. Unlike Britons, whose concerns about what they eat have been on the rise ever since “mad cow disease” (even though it had nothing to do with genetic engineering), Americans have seemed indifferent to g.m. foods. If foodmakers can no longer count on the public’s unquestioning acceptance of their products, it’s not just because of activist theatrics and shrill agitprop. With billions of dollars at risk, the biotech industry has begun to fight back, forming corporate alliances and launching a major p. r. effort that includes lobbying, new research efforts to still public fears and TV, radio and newspaper ads. So far, the regulators have approved dozens of genetically modified plants for human consumption. But if public pressure grows, it may be forced to go slower in the future. One possibility: the FDA could begin applying to g.m. foods the powers it already has to regulate food additives. By overreacting to fears fanned by well-fed consumers in the industrialized world, food producers might uproot an industry that could someday provide billions of people in the rest of the world with crops they desperately need.
问答题Practice 5 Dell says the problem is that it dropped prices too much. But deeper, more threatening forces are also now at play. The first is the resurgence of rivals, which have caught up with Dell’s low price model. By driving prices down, Dell has unintentionally cut costs for its rivals too. “The supply chain has become as standardized as the components—the money has been wrung out,” explains an expert. Dell, by not working through retail outlets, is still more efficient, but the cost benefits that this once brought have been whittled away. The second factor hurting Dell is that growth in the computer business is coming from the consumer market and emerging countries rather than the corporate market, in which Dell sells around 85% of its machines. Increasing sales to consumers is difficult for Dell because individuals tend to want to see and touch computers before buying them. They also like to be able to return the machine easily if it breaks. Dell’s lack of retail presence, once ballyhooed as a benefit, has turned into grave disadvantage. A third problem facing Dell is its exclusive use of Intel chips rather than lower-priced ones made by Intel’s sworn rivals, AMD. This arrangement lets Dell buy chips inexpensively and benefit from Intel’s generous co-marketing programmes. But it has started to harm Dell’s sales for higher margin computer servers.
问答题Practice 3 Caesar was right. Thin people need watching. I’ve been watching them for most of my adult life, and I don’t like what I see. When these narrow fellows spring at me, I quiver to my toes. Thin people come in all personalities, most of them menacing. You’ve got your “together” thin person, your mechanical thin person, your condescending thin person, your tsk-tsk thin person, your efficiency-expert thin person. All of them are dangerous. In the first place, thin people aren’t fun. They don’t know how to goof off, at least in the best, fat sense of the word. They’ve always got to be adoing. Give them a coffee break, and they’ll jog around the block. Supply them with a quiet evening at home, and they’ll fix the screen door and lick S&H green stamps. They say things like “there aren’t enough hours in the day.” Fat people never say that. Fat people think the day is too damn long already. Thin people make me tired. They’ve got speedy little metabolisms that cause them to bustle briskly. They’re forever rubbing their bony hands together and eyeing new problems to “tackle.” I like to surround myself with sluggish, inert, easygoing fat people l the kind who believe that if you clean it up today, it’ll just get dirty again tomorrow. (Suzanne Britt Jordan: That Lean And Hungry Look)
问答题Practice 2 The magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance and makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number of brilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem and that scales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree. At the same time, for every person in the world who has access to this technology, five people don’t. That means many creative minds are left out of this discussion—smart people with practical intelligence and relevant experience who don’t have the technology to hone their talents or contribute their ideas to the world. We need as many people as possible to have access to this technology, because these advances are triggering a revolution in what human beings can do for one another. They are making it possible not just for national governments, but for universities, corporations, smaller organizations, and even individuals to see problems, see approaches, and measure the impact of their efforts to address the hunger, poverty, and desperation George Marshall spoke of 60 years ago.
问答题Practice 4 Some critics believe that the very concept of intellectual property is mistaken. Unlike physical property, ideas are non-rivalrous goods that can be used by many people at the same time without making them any less useful. The term “intellectual property” was widely adopted only in the 1960s, as a way to bundle trademarks, copyrights and patents. Those critics argue that today’s rights are too strict and make the sharing of knowledge too expensive. The paradox about intellectual property in IT and telecommunications is that it eases the exchange of technology and acts as a bottleneck for innovation at the same time. The whole system is in a stage of transformation. “Markets require institutions, and institutions take a long time to develop. Today, the institutions for a ‘market for technology’ are not well developed, and it is costly to use this market,” says a specialist. Ideas are to the information age what the physical environment was to the industrial one: the raw material of economic progress. Just as pollution or an irresponsible use of property rights threatens land and climate, so an overly stringent system of intellectual-property rights risks holding back technological progress. Disruptive innovation that threatens the existing order must be encouraged, but the need to protect ideas must not be used as an excuse for greed. Finding the right balance will test the industry, policymakers and the public in the years ahead.
问答题Practice 4 Bluetooth is the newest kid on the technology block, and it holds a lot of promise for the assistive technology industry. Named for a 10th Century King of Denmark who unified the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, Bluetooth is a shot-range wireless communication specification that promises to improve and increase electronic access to a number of environments by overcoming some of the obstacles typical of current technology. Bluetooth technology will enable devices to communicate and transfer data wirelessly and without the line-of-site issues of infra red technology. So how does it work? Bluetooth devices search each other out within their given operational range. Unlike devices that are wired together, Bluetooth devices do not have to be aware of the capabilities or properties of the devices to which they will connect beforehand. Bluetooth devices have a built-in mechanism that lets each device identify itself as well as its capabilities as it connects into this new Bluetooth network. This dynamic network does have a controlling device that designates itself as the master for the connection. Its programming and the capabilities necessary for the given task determine whether or not a device can be a master. For example, a cell phone may act as a master device when connecting to a headset, an ATM, or an information kiosk. However, the same cell phone or headset may act as a slave device to the information kiosk, now acting as the master device, broadcasting emergency evacuation information. The cell phone and kiosk can function in either capacity depending on the required function and their programming.
问答题Practice 5 The popular view when discussing urban transportation in American cities today is to decry its sorry state. Newspaper and journals are filled with talk of “urban transportation crisis,” of the “difficulties of getting from here to there,” and so on at great length. Matters are reported to get worse and very quickly. Everyone has his own favorite traumatic experience to report: of the occasion when many of the switches froze on New York’s commuter railroad; of the sneak snowstorm in Boston that converted thirty-minute commuter trips into seven hour ordeals; of the extreme difficulties in Chicago and other Midwestern cities when some particularly heavy and successive snowstorms were endured. One reason for the talk of an urban transportation crisis in the United States today perhaps lies in a failure to meet anticipations. Many commuters expected to reduce their commuting times as systems improved, but instead found themselves barely able to maintain the status quo in terms of time requirements. Another reason for talk of crisis, almost certainly, is the rate of improvement in the performance of urban transportation systems during rush hours has been markedly inferior to that expected during off-peak hours. Specifically, the ability to move quickly about American Cities during non-rush hours has improved in a truly phenomenal fashion.
问答题Practice 2 The news couldn’t be worse. Three years of recession or anemic economic growth, Argentina’s debt default and collapse and—more recently—Bolivia’s president run out of office by indigenous people fed up with his pro-business, pro-Washington agenda. Taken together, these trials have seemingly erased the promise of prosperity that wafted across the region a decade ago. Now there’s the specter of a return to the dark days of the 1970s and 80s when economic and political chaos were the norm. Social eruptions have prompted a wide-ranging and contentious reappraisal of the economic orthodoxy—the neoliberal model that has shaped policy in Latin America for the past 15 years. Market-oriented structural reforms have succeeded in a few crucial ways: they ended the ruinous era of hyperinflation, and inculcated a sense of fiscal responsibility among profligate governments. But belt-tightening has not led to the robust economic performance promised when reforms began. After enjoying encouraging GDP expansion in the early and mid-1990s, Latin America has stumbled through about five years of economic stagnation that have left the region’s have-nots in a surly mood. Latin America desperately wants increased access to markets in the United States and Europe, but the region doesn’t want to pursue trade deals on what it perceives to be unfair terms. (Newsweek)
问答题Practice 2 We must work passionately and indefatigably to bridge the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress. One of the great problems of mankind is that we suffer from a poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live. So much of modern life can be summarized in that suggestive phrase of Thoreau: “Improved means to an unimproved end. “ This is the serious predicament, the deep and haunting problem, confronting modern man. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the external of man’s nature subjugates the internal, dark storm clouds begin to form. (Martin Luther King: Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?)
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