发布时间 : 星期六 文章B4 U9 大学英语更新完毕开始阅读
使它复活——如果真有那么一天的话。
很多人也许会对将来―醒来‖时没有身体感到困惑、忧虑。但是加菲尔德先生并不担心。 他对科学是如此地信心十足，他认为科学不仅能使他的大脑复活，而且还能给他构造一个新的身体。 ―他们只要取出一小片肌体组织，这一小片包含你全部的DNA，用该DNA在将来重新恢复你的身体。‖
加菲尔德先生极其尊重科学，胜过大多数人，包括科学家们自己。正统的科学界人士认为人体冷冻的想法有点荒唐，最近有一位科学家把这一想法比作是试图―把汉堡包变回到牛‖。 保存人体的过程先是用甘油或防冻液来替换血液。接着用冰将人体冷冻起来并移入储藏设备，在那里进行\冷冻休眠\处理。这包括把人体存放在一个装有液态氮的巨大瓶状容器中。从理论上说，人体可以保持这样状态几百年，不会进一步腐烂。
但主要的难题是，目前已经证明：冷冻人体对内部器官不可能不造成无法修复的损伤。水凝结成冰时会膨胀，发生在人体器官内时，就会造成细胞的破裂。 目前，经过常规冷冻后能复苏的―活体‖只有胚胎和精子。但这些活体都是极其微小的细胞群—他们没有器官。用同样的方法来保存一个完整的人体并使它复活，到目前为止还不可能。
正是出于这个原因，当南非研究人员宣称已使一颗经过冷冻的老鼠心脏重新跳动时，这一突破性进展使人体冷冻学家们感到乐观。他们希望最终能够用类似的技术使人类复生。 然而，科学家们对此仍持怀疑态度——南非研究小组的研究成果受到了曾经见过这些成果的所有科学家的一致否定。 那么那些想将自己的尸体冷冻的人又是出于什么心理呢？是什么促使他们想在未来几百年后―苏醒‖呢？社会学家杰姆·利帕德认为他们就像一群狂热的信徒，在寻找一种宗教的替代物。 ―这类人看起来几乎或者根本不信仰传统宗教，他们笃信科学和理性解决问题的能力。他们相信他们可以通过技术获得永生。‖
的确，他们中的大多数人似乎把死亡看成是一种应该被治愈的疾病；而其他一些人则把死亡等同于人们应该尽力避免的某种灾祸。正如某个人当被问到为什么想长生不老时说的那样，―这就好像在一艘即将沉没的船上，问人们为什么他们对救生船感兴趣。‖ 对于像保罗·加菲尔德这样的人来说，人体冷冻也许永远不会灵验这一事实并不能作为让他们放弃试验的理由。 ―我们也许是完全疯了，‖ 他说。 ―但是如果能成功，那绝对是件好事。而如果行不通，那么和死去也没有什么区别。仅此而已，对你来说也没什么损失。‖
Background File背景小档案
People’s Attitudes toward Cryonics 人们对人体冷冻法的看法
In an experiment participants were asked to respond to ten negative statements about their attitudes toward various aspects of cryonics. And their attitudes are measured as table 1 goes. Table 1. Scores Attitude 1 Strongly Agree 2 Agree 3 Not sure 4 Disagree 5 Strongly Disagree Average scores for the negative statements appear in Table2.
Table2. Average scores of negative attitude statements Negative Statements Q24. Cryonics doesn't interest me because I just don't think it will work. Q25. The cost of having my body frozen is far too expensive for me. Q26. Dealing with wills, insurance policies, and other legal matters is too much trouble to make Cryonics worthwhile. Q27. Extending one's life span through Cryonics is unnatural, selfish, and immoral. Q28. Cryonics is a bad idea because it would lead to an overpopulation problem. Q29. I don't think about Cryonics because I don't like thinking about death. Q30. Cryonically preserving me would be too hard/weird for my family/friends to handle. Q31. I'm too young and healthy to even care about it at this point. Q32. I would not want to wake up in a future time without my family or friends around. Q33. I don't think that people in the future will have any interest in reviving frozen bodies.
The scores in Table 2 suggest that people perceive cryonics as unaffordable, and they have mildly negative feelings about what the impact of being frozen would be on their friends and relatives as well as not having those friends or relatives around when they are revived in some future time. There was mild to moderate disagreement with the idea that considering one’s own death is so difficult that cryonics is hard to think about. There was also mild to moderate disagreement with the idea that people do not care about cryonics because they are young and healthy. There is also mild disagreement with the negative statement regarding all the paperwork involved in signing up for cryonics.
在对冷冻法的一些负面看法中，被调查者比较担心的是它难以承受的高额价格以及即使复活，也无法跟家人朋友重聚的遗憾。
Average Scores 3.11 2.21 3.22 3.20 2.90 3.69 2.83 3.52 2.73 3.36
III四级新题型操练
I
Directions: Read the following passage and choose the best word to fill in each blank.
Science rarely arrives at 1) ______ answers. The truth is that Nature does not yield its secret easily. Science is done step by step. First an idea is formed. Then this is tested by an experiment. The outcome, one hopes, 2)_____ an increase in knowledge.
Science is not a set of unquestionable results but a way of understanding the world around us. Its real work is slow. The scientific method, as many of us learned in school, is a gradual process that begins with a purpose or a problem or question to be answered. It includes a list of materials, a procedure to 3) ______, a set of observations to make and, finally, conclusions to reach. In medicine, when a new drug is proposed that might cure or control a disease, it is first tested on a large random group of people, and their reactions are then compared with those of another random group not given the drug. All reactions in both groups are carefully recorded and compared, and the drug is evaluated. All of this 4)______ time---and patience.
It’s the result, of course, that 5) _______ the best news---not the years of quiet work that 6)______ the bulk of scientific inquiry. After an experiment is concluded or an observation is made, the result continues to be examined critically. When it is submitted for publication, it goes to a group of the scientist’s colleagues, who 7) ______ the work. If the work is important enough, just before the report is published in a professional journal or read at a conference, a press release and an announcement is made to the world.
The world may think that the announcement 8) ______ the end of the process, but it doesn’t. A publication is really a challenge: ―Here is my result. Prove me wrong!‖ Other researchers will try to repeat the experiment, and the more often it works, the better the chances that the result is 9) _______. Einstein was right when he said: ―No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can at any time prove me wrong.‖
This is the way the scientific method is 10) _________ to work. Scientist spend years on research, announce their findings, and these findings are examined by other scientists. That’s how we learn. Like climbing a mountain, we struggle up three feet and fall back two. It’s a process filled with disappointment and reserves, but somehow we keep moving ahead.
1. A. sensible B. reasonable C. final D. hopeful 2. A. results in B. puts forward C. results from D. puts up 3. A. insist B. follow C. come D. invent 4. A. takes B. wastes C. indicates D. acquires 5. A. releases B. leads C. makes D. discovers 6. A. characterizes B. embodies C. identifies D. symbolizes 7. A. relive B. reveal C. revive D. review 8. A. signals B. signifies C. implies D. declares 9. A. sound B. complex C. internal D. delicate 10. A. arranged
答案及解析 1. 答案C
B. exposed
C. supposed
D. assured
2. 答案A result in:“导致，带来??的结果”；result from: 产生自……。 3. 答案B follow procedures: “按照步骤”
4. 答案A takes time---and patience: “需要时间和耐心”
5. 答案C It’s the result, of course, that makes the best news: “成为新闻热点的当然是结果。”
6. 答案A characterize:“是??的特征”；embody:“体现”；identify: “认出；等同于”；
symbolize：“象征”。 7. 答案D relive：“再生”； reveal：“展现；揭示”；revive：“使复苏”；review: “检查，审阅”。
8. 答案B signifies:“表示，意味”。signal 的意思是“发信号，用信号通知；以动作示意”。
9. 答案A sound:“可靠的，合理的，正确的” 。
10. 答案C be supposed to：“被期望或被要求做某事‖ 。 整句话的意思是：这就是科学
研究进行的应有方式。B 选项 be exposed to 的意思是“将?暴露于”。
II
It is impossible to measure the importance of Edison by adding up the specific inventions with which his name is associated. Far-reaching as many of them have been in their effect upon modern civilization, the total effect of Edison’s career surpasses the sum of them all. He did not merely make the incandescent lamp and the phonograph and innumerable other devices practicable for general use; it was given to him to demonstrate the power of applied science so concretely , so understandably, so convincingly that he altered the mentality of mankind. In his lifetime, largely because of his successes, there came into widest acceptance the revolutionary conception that man could by the use of his intelligence invent a new mode of living on this planet; the human spirit, which in all previous ages had regarded the conditions of life as essentially unchanging and beyond man’s control, confidently, and perhaps somewhat naively, adopted the conviction that anything could be changed and everything could be controlled.
This idea of progress is in the scale of history a very new idea. It seems first to have taken possession of a few minds in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as an accompaniment of the great advances in pure science. It gained greater currency in the first half of the nineteenth century when industrial civilization began to be transformed by the application of steam power. But these changes, impressive as they were, created so much human misery by the crude and cruel manner in which they were exploited that all through the century men instinctively feared and opposed the progress of machines, and of the sciences on which they rested. It was only at the end of the 19th century, with the perfecting of the electric light bulb, the telephone, the phonograph, and the like, that the ordinary man began to feel that science could actually benefit him. Edison supplied the homely demonstrations which insured the popular acceptance of science, and clinched （了结，结束）the popular argument, which had begun with Darwin, about the place of science in man’s outlook upon life. Thus he became the supreme propagandist of science and his name the great symbol of an almost blind faith in its possibilities.
1. According to the passage, what should Edison be chiefly remembered for?
A. Such of his great inventions as the incandescent lamp and the phonograph. B. The general use of his practicable devices.
C. His contributions in altering common people’s attitude towards science. D. His changing people’s mode of living.