Part ⅡReading ComprehensionSection ADirections:There are several passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choice.Passage OneQuestions1to 5are based on the following passage.Last year, cellphone manufacturers introduced a new piece of technology — wireless telephones that come equipped with tiny digital cameras. More than 80 million of them have been sold around the world so far and these devices are raising some questions about how to protect privacy in the digital age.Critics of these new gadgets say there are a couple of reasons people should be concerned. First of all, cellphone cameras are small, which means the owners of these devices can secretly take pictures of things they probably shouldn't be taking pictures of. In Japan, for example, retailers have noticed that people are using their phones to take pictures of magazine pages. Rather than buying the magazines, it seems these individuals have been photographing the articles and then going home to read them on their computers. And here in the United States, believe it or not, a few health clubs have reported problems with individuals who've been using their phones to photograph people while they're showering and changing in the locker room. Because of this, the YMCA, one of the biggest and oldest health clubs in America, recently instituted a ban on camera cellphones.So far, private organizations are the only groups to take the step of banning cellphone cameras. But if a piece of legislation being sponsored by Ohio Representative Michael Oxley wins approval in Congress, the usage of these cameras could soon be restricted on all federal property. That would include national parks, cemeteries, even the Capitol Building. Tim Johnson, a spokesperson for Representative Oxley, says it isn't just the size of these cameras that has lawmakers concerned. He adds they're also concerned that the digital nature of the photographs allows for the pictures to be widely spread. "Congress is trying to update what we're sort of calling our old privacy laws, which were formed when people were just taking still photographs, to a day when you can have not just an electronic picture taken, but put it over the Internet, and suddenly you become very public to millions of people across the world," says Tim Johnson.The legislation wouldn't completely ban cellphone cameras on federal property, but it would ban the use of these devices to take pictures of anyone in "sensitive or compromising states." It would also ban the electronic distribution of any of these pictures.
Passage TwoQuestions6to 10are based on the following passage.Reading is not the only way to acquire knowledge of preceding work. There is another large reservoir which may be called experience, and the college student will find that every craftsman has something he can teach and will generally teach gladly to any college student who does not look down upon them with ill-concealed disdain. The information from these quarters differs from that in textbooks and papers chiefly in that its theoretical part -the explanations of why things happen — is frequently quite fantastic. But the demonstration and report of what happens, and how it happens, are sound even if the reports are in completely unscientific terms. Presently the college student will learn, in this case also, what to accept and what to reject. One important thing for a college student to remember is that if Aristotle could talk to the fisherman, so can he.Another source of knowledge is the vast store of traditional practices handed down from father to son, or mother to daughter, of old country customs, of folklore. All this is very difficult for a college student to explore, for much knowledge and personal experience is needed here to separate good plants from wild weeds. The college student should learn to realize and remember how much of real value science has found in this wide, confused wilderness and how often scientific discoveries turned out to be rediscoveries of what had existed in this wilderness long ago.
Passage ThreeQuestions 11to 15are based on the following passage.I first became aware of the unemployment problem in 1928. At that time I had just come back from Burma, where unemployment was only a word, and I had gone to Burma when I was still a boy and the post-war boom was not quite over. When I first saw unemployed men at lost quarters, the thing that horrified and amazed me was to find that many of them were ashamed of being unemployed. I was very ignorant, but not so ignorant as to imagine that when the loss of foreign markets pushes two million men out of work, those two million are any more to blame than the people who draw blanks in the Calcutta Sweep. But at that time nobody cared to admit that unemployment was inevitable, because this meant admitting that it would probably continue. The middle classes were still talking about "lazy idle loafers on the dole" and saying that "these men could all find work if they wanted to," and naturally these opinions spread among the working class themselves. I remember the shock of astonishment it gave me when I first mingled with tramps and beggars, to find that a fair proportion, perhaps a quarter, of these beings whom I had been taught to regard as cynical parasites, were decent young miners and cotton workers who could not understand what was happening to them. They had been brought up to work, and behold! It seemed as if they were never going to have the chance of working again. In their circumstances it was inevitable, at first, that they should be haunted by a feeling of personal degradation. That was the attitude towards unemployment in those days: it was a disaster which happened to you as an individual and for which you were to blame.
Passage FourQuestions 16to 20are based on the following passage.People who live and work in areas with elevated levels of ozone and other airborne pollutants appear to run an increased risk of lung cancer, US researchers report in the December issue of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. The researchers, Dr Beeson of Texas University and colleagues studied more than 4,000 female and 2,000 male, white, nonsmoking volunteers from 1977 to 1992.At the start of the study, the volunteers filled out questionnaires about their occupations, their exercise patterns, diet and other lifestyle choices, and their family's health history. The Questionnaires also asked whether the volunteers had any respiratory symptoms, how many hours they spent outdoors, and where they lived and worked. The researchers updated this information in 1987 and again in 1992.Using air quality monitoring station data, Beeson and colleagues then determined the levels of particle soot, ozone or "smog", sulfur dioxide, and other pollutants that the volunteers were exposed to, given where they lived and worked. Over the course of the 15-year study, 20 of the women and 16 of the men were diagnosed with lung cancer.Analyzing the relationship between exposure to airborne pollutants and lung cancer risk, the researchers found that both men and women regularly exposed to levels of particle soot that were lower than the National Ambient Air Quality Standard of 50 microgram per meter cubed ran an increased risk of lung cancer. And both men and women exposed to elevated levels of sulfur dioxide ran an increased risk of lung cancer.In addition, men regularly exposed to ozone levels of 80 parts per billion (ppb) ran more than three times the risk of lung cancer as men exposed to lower levels. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limit on ozone is 120 ppb, Beeson and colleagues report. Women, however, did not appear to run an increased risk of lung cancer if exposed to high levels of smog."This gender difference may be due to the males spending much more time outdoors than females," they write. "This was especially true for the summer when ozone levels are higher." The difference may also have been due to hormonal differences, they add. Some research findings also suggest that the female sex hormone estrogen may partly offset the consequences of exposure to high ozone levels."Our findings suggest that the current EPA standard of 120 ppb for ozone may not adequately protect the large portion of the US male population who live or work in communities where the current standard for ozone is frequently exceeded," Beeson and colleagues conclude. "More research with a larger number of incident cases of lung cancer is needed to better understand the observed gender difference in regard to ozone exposure as well as to better separate the independent effects of ozone, airborne particulate matter sulfur dioxide, and other airborne pollutants."