星火：2008年12月英语四级阅读理解预测试卷

　　Part Ⅳ Reading Comprehension (Reading in Depth) (25 minutes)

　　Section A

　　Directions: In this section, there is a short passage with 5 questions or incomplete statements. Read the passage carefully. Then answer the questions or complete the statements in the fewest possible words on Answer Sheet 2.

　　Questions 47 to 51 are based on the following passage.

　　Swiss Re Tower is a typical example of green architecture in London, and what is most remarkable about this building is its energy efficiency. Thanks to its artful design and some fancy technology, it is expected to consume up to 50% less energy than a comparable conventional office building. Green architecture is changing the way building are designed, built and run.

　　Green architecture, a term which only came into use in the 1990s, has its origins in the energy crisis of the 1970s, when architects began to question the wisdom of building enclosed glass and steel boxes that required massive heating and cooling systems.

　　The forward looking architects began to explore designs that focused on the long term environmental impact of maintaining and operating a building. This approach has since been formalized in a number of assessment and rating systems, such as the BREEAM standard introduced in Britain in 1990, and the LEED standard developed by the United States Green Building Council starting in 2000.

　　Going green saves money by reducing long term energy costs; a survey of 99 green buildings in America found that on average, they use 30% less energy than comparably conventional buildings.

　　Green buildings can also have other benefits. The use of natural daylight in office buildings, for example, as well as reducing energy costs, also seems to make workers more productive. Lockheed Martin, an aerospace(航空宇宙) firm, found that absenteeism(旷工) fell by 15% after it moved 2 500 employees into a new green building in Sunnyvale, California.

　　47. Owing to its delicate design and advanced technology, Swiss Re Tower in London uses less energy than those traditional office buildings by .

　　48. Green architecture could date back to .

　　49. Today, when assessing and rating architecture, the long term environmental effect in the maintenance of the building has been .

　　50. Green architectures can reduce expenditure on the maintenance by .

　　51. Besides the benefit of saving money, green buildings can also bring .

　　Section B

　　Directions: There are 2 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 and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.

　　Passage One

　　Questions 52 to 56 are based on the following passage.

　　Television is often viewed as an anti intellectual medium. But truly clever people know how to use even the most unpromising material, and that is what Val Curtis and her colleagues at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have done. They employed the mass market appeal of TV to test a long held, but unproven, hypothesis(假设): that the emotion of disgust evolved to protect people from disease.

　　They set up their experiment in October 2007, by publicizing it on a BBC program called "Human Instincts". Viewers were invited to visit a website and, after giving a few biographical(个人介绍的)details, to view a series of 20 pictures and rate each of them for disgustingness on a scale of one to five. They were also asked to choose, from a list of possible candidates, with whom they would least like to share a toothbrush.

　　The results showed that in all seven pairs, the disease distinct pictures were more disgusting than their counterparts. For things like the apparent depiction of bodily fluids, or of a face that had been "enhanced" with spots, that may come as no surprise. But a crowded railway carriage was more distinguishing than an empty one, and a louse more disgusting than a wasp.

　　These last results confirmed Dr Curtis's suspicion that disgust is not, as many disgust researchers believe, just a way of avoiding eating disease bearing materials. Rather, it extends to threats that might be contagious(传染性的). Indeed, one result of the study was to show that the young are easier to disgust than the old. Another result was that women are more easily disgusted than men. Both of these make evolutionary sense. The young have more reproductive potential than the old, so should be more careful about what they touch and eat. And women are usually burdened with bringing up the children, so have to be disgusted on their offspring's behalf, as well as their own.

　　The results of the toothbrush study made similar sense. Strangers are more likely to carry new bacteria than acquaintances. Hence, of the available choices of toothbrush partner, a postman came off worst, and a lover best. A brush notionally belonging to a weatherman was, however, preferred to the boss's. Clearly the British feel more intimacy with the former than the later. Perhaps it might have been instructive to include a famous television personality among the choices?