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Passage One
Questions 56 to 60 are based on the following passage.
The "paperless office" has earned a proud place on lists of technological promises that did not come to pass. Surely, though, the more modest goal of he carbon-paperless office is within the reach of mankind? Carbon paper allows two copies of a document to be made at once. Nowadays, a couple of keystrokes can do the same thing with a lot less fuss.
Yet carbon paper persists. Forms still need to be filled out in a way that produces copies. This should not come as a surprise. Innovation tends to create new niches( 合适的职业), rather than refill those that already exist. So technologies may become marginal, but they rarely go extinct. And today the little niches in which old technologies take refuge are ever more viable and accessible, thanks to the Internet and the fact that production no longer needs to be so mass; making small numbers of obscure items is growing easier.
On top of that, a widespread Technology of nostalgia(技术怀旧 ) seeks to preserve all the ways people have ever done anything, simply because they are kind of neat. As a result technologies from all the way back to the stone age persist and even flourish in the modern world. According to What Technology Wants, a book by Kevin Kelly, one of the founders of Wired magazine, America's flintknappers (燧石) produce over a million new arrow and spear heads every year. One of the things technology wants, it seems, is to survive.
Carbon paper, to the extent that it may have a desire for self-preservation, may also take comfort in the fact that, for all that this is a digital age, many similar products are hanging on, and even making comebacks. Indeed, digital technologies may prove to be more transient than their predecessors. They are based on the idea that the medium on which a file's constituent 0s and 1s are stored doesn't matter, and on Alan Turing's insight that any computer can mimic any other, given memory enough and time. This suggests that new digital technologies should be able to wipe out their predecessors completely. And early digital technologies do seem to be vanishing. The music cassette is enjoying a little renaissance, its very faithlessness apparently part of its charm; but digital audio tape seems doomed.
So revolutionary digital technologies may yet discard older ones to the dustbin. Perhaps this will be the case with a remarkable breakthrough in molecular(分子的) technology that could, in principle, store all the data ever recorded in a device that could fit in the back of a van. In this instance, it would not be a matter of the new extinguishing the old. Though it may never have been used for MP3s and PDFs before, DNA has been storing data for over three billion years. And it shows no sign of going extinct.
56. Which of the following is TRUE about the carbon paper?
A) It is the key to paperless office.
B) It will be replaced by the computer soon.
C) It is more troublesome than the computer.
D) It can hardly survive in the digital age.
57. According to the passage, "viable" ( Line 4, Para. 2) means __
A) secure
B) dynamic
C) feasible
D) flexible
58. Why does the author mention the example of What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly?
A) To point out that old Technology of nostalgia will flourish in the modern world.
B) To illustrate the importance of flintknappers.
C) To show that flintknapping is one of the stone age technologies.
D) To prove that old technologies seemingly never die.
59. What can be inferred about digital technologies?
A) Digital audio tape will be vanished because of its accuracy.
B) Digital technologies have been proved to outlive the old technologies.
C) Early digital technologies will never go extinct.
D) The future of digital technologies will be used for DNA research.
60. The passage mainly concerned with
A) the difficulty of the realization of paperless office
B) the fact that newest technologies may die out while the oldest survive
C) the reason why old technologies will never be on the edge of extinction
D) the importance of keeping improving technologies all the time
Passage Two
Questions 61 to 65 are based on the following passage.
Recent reports suggest that tea can cause brittle bones-but you'll probably be safe if you drink less than a gallon a day.
Do you fancy a cup of tea? We drink, on average, three mugs a day. But you might want to try another strong alcohol after hearing the case of a 47-year-old woman, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), who developed brittle bones and lost all of her teeth after drinking too much tea.
Tea may not be so great for prostates (前列腺) either. Last year, research from the University of Glasgow found that men who drank more than seven or more cups of tea a day had a 50% higher risk of prostate cancer. And in 2009 a paper in the British Medical Journal showed that drinking very hot tea(70ｏC or more) increased the likelihood of esophageal (食管的) cancer.
Still gasping for that cup of tea? There is some evidence that tea can be good for you too, with antioxidant properties, so maybe you're not actually drinking enough of the stuff.
The poor woman in the NEJM study is not alone. There are a few other cases of people who have damaged their bones through too much tea. But she (like those in other studies) was drinking excessive amounts: 100 - 150 tea bags a day to make 12 cups of tea. A litre of tea can contain up to 9mg of fluoride(氟化物), which in excess can cause skeletal fluorosis ( 氟中毒), reducing bone quality and causing pain and stiffening of the ligaments (韧带). Other studies show you generally need to drink a gallon a day for three decades to develop this condition.
You also shouldn't worry about the Glasgow study as it wasn't designed to show that drinking tea actually caused prostate cancer. All it proved was an association and people were only asked how much tea they drank at the start of the study, which went on for about 28 years.
The National Cancer Institute in the U.S. concludes that the evidence isn't good enough to say tea either harms or helps our health. However it does seem sensible in the light of the BMJ study to wait for your tea to cool down for a few minutes.
Black tea, which makes up 75% of the world's consumption, may have healthy properties from its plant chemicals called poly phenols(多酚), which are antioxidants. Green tea contains more poly phenols but isn't so nice to dunk digestives into.
A review of the evidence in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, sponsored by the Tea Council--which, the authors say, had no part in the study--found the research showed more than three cups of black tea a day reduced heart disease. It found no evidence of harm "in amounts typically consumed". So as long as you drink less than a gallon of tea a day you should be absolutely fine.
61. What can be inferred about tea from Paragraph 3?
A) Very hot tea may cause prostate cancer.
B) There may be a link between very hot tea and esophageal cancer.
C) Over-drinking tea is the cause of prostate cancer.
D) Drinking too much tea may worsen esophageal cancer.
62. Excessive intake of fluoride may
A) increase the likelihood of heart attack
B) cause the bone fracture
C) cause fluorosis in the blood
D) weaken the bone quality and hurt the ligaments
63. Which of the following instructions is encouraged to practice?
A) Drinking less tea in the future.
B) Drinking no tea at all.
C) Drinking tea that is not too hot.
D) Drinking green tea instead of black tea.
64. Black tea is considered as healthy drink because
A) it contains antioxidants
B) it is made from plant
C) poly phenols are added to it
D) it helps one digest
65. What can be inferred from the last paragraph?
A) Under no circumstance can you drink more than a gallon of tea a day.
B) Black tea can be seen as a cure for heart disease.
C) Drinking tea does no harm at all, regardless of how much you consume.
D) Tea Council's participation into the research may decrease its credibility.
