Passage Four:Questions 26 to 30 are based on the following passage. Taking charge of yourself involves putting to rest some very prevalent myths. At the top of the list is the notion that intelligence is measured by your ability to solve complex problems; to read, write and compute at certain levels; and to resolve abstract equations quickly. This vision of intelligence asserts formal education and bookish excellence as the true measures of self fulfillment. It encourages a kind of intellectual prejudice that has brought with it some discouraging results. We have come to believe that someone who has more educational merit badges, who is very good at some form. of school discipline is “intelligent.” Yet mental hospitals are filled with patients who have all of the properly lettered certificates. A truer indicator of intelligence is an effective, happy life lived each day and each present moment of every day.
If you are happy, if you live each moment for everything it’s worth, then you are an intelligent person. Problem solving is a useful help to your happiness, but if you know that given your inability to resolve a particular concern you can still choose happiness for yourself, or at a minimum refuse to choose unhappiness, then you are intelligent. You are intelligent because you have the ultimate weapon against the big N.B.D.—Nervous Break Down.
“Intelligent people do not have N.B.D.’s because they are in charge of themselves. They know how to choose happiness over depression, because they know how to deal with the problems of their lives.
You can begin to think of yourself as truly intelligent on the basis of how you choose to feel in the face of trying circumstances. The life struggles are pretty much the same for each of us. Every one who is involved with other human beings in any social context has similar difficulties. Disagreements, conflicts and compromises are a part of what it means to be human. Similarly, money, growing old, sickness, deaths, natural disasters and accidents are all events which present problems to virtually all human beings. But some people are able to make it, to avoid immobilizing depression and unhappiness despite such occurrences, while others collapse or have an N.B.D. Those who recognize problems as a human condition and don’t measure happiness by an absence of problems are the most intelligent kind of humans we know; also, the most rare.
第26题:According to the author, the conventional notion of intelligence measured in terms of one’s ability to read, write and compute ________.
A. is a widely held but wrong concept
B. will help eliminate intellectual prejudice
C. is the root of all mental distress
D. will contribute to one’s self fulfillment
37 When Barth was a college student, he often shopped at thrift shops
A to save money.
B to save energy.
C to help the environment.
D to make friends with poor people.
38Which is true of the-messages posted on Cancer Chat?
AThey are available to all visitors.
BTheir writers get paid for them.
CThey are only about cancer treatments.
DTheir writers don't have to register.
下面的短文后列出了7个句子,请根据短文的内容对每个句子做出判断:如果该句提供的是正确信息,请选择A;如果该句提供的是错误信息,请选择B;如果该句的信息文中没有提及,请选择C。
Radiocarbon Dating
Nowadays scientists can answer many questions about the past through a technique called radiocarbon (放射性碳), or carbon-14, dating. One key to understanding how and by something happened is to discover when it happened.
Radiocarbon dating was developed in the late 1940s by physicist Willard F. Libby at he University of Chicago. An atom of ordinary carbon, called carbon-12, has six protons(中子) and six neutrons (质子) in its nucleus. Carbon-14, or C-14, is a radioactive, unstable form. of carbon that has two extra neutrons (原子核). It returns to a more stable form. of carbon through a process called decay (衰减). This process involves the loss of he extra neutrons and energy from the nucleus.
In Libby's radiocarbon dating technique, the weak radioactive emissions (放射) from his decay process are counted by instruments such as a radiation detector and counter. He decay rate is used to determine the proportion of C-14 atoms in the sample being dated.
Carbon-14 is produced in the Earth's atmosphere when nitrogen (氮)-14, or N-14,
interacts with cosmic rays (宇宙射线). Scientists believe since the Earth was formed, the mount of nitrogen in the atmosphere has remained constant. Consequently, C-14 formation is thought to occur at a constant rate. Now the ratio of C-14 to other carbon toms in the atmosphere is known. Most scientists agree that this ratio is useful for dating items back to at least 50,000 years.
All life on Earth is made of organic molecules (分子) that contain carbon atoms coming from the atmosphere. So all living things have about the same ratio of C-14
atoms to other carbon atoms in their tissues (组织). Once an organism (有机体) dies it tops taking in carbon in any form, and the C-14 already present begins to decay. Over time the amount of C-14 in the material decreases, and the ratio of C-14 to other carbon toms goes down. In terms of radiocarbon dating, the fewer C-14 atoms in a sample, the older that sample is.
16 Nowadays many scientists depend on radiocarbon for dating age-old objects
A Right
B Wrong
C Not mentioned