考研英语（阅读）-试卷35
(总分60,考试时间90分钟)
2. Reading Comprehension
Section II    Reading Comprehension
Part ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.
A deal is a deal—except, apparently, when Entergy is involved. **pany, a major energy supplier in New England, provoked justified outrage in Vermont last week when it announced it wasreneging ona **mitment to abide by the state" s strict nuclear regulations.    Instead, **pany has done precisely what it would not:challenge the constitutionality of Vermont"s rules in the federal court, as part of a desperate effort to keep its Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant running. It" s a stunning move.    The conflict has been surfacing since 2002, when the corporation bought Vermont"s only nuclear power plant, an
aging reactor in Vernon. As a condition of receiving state approval for the sale, **pany agreed to seek permission from state regulators to operate past 2012. In 2006, the state went a step further, requiring that any extension of the plant"s license be subject to Vermont legislature"s approval. Then, too, **pany went along.    Either Entergy never really intended to live by **mitments, or it simply didn"t foresee what would happen next. A string of accidents, including the partial collapse of a cooling tower in 2007 and the discovery of an underground pipe system leakage, raised serious questions about both Vermont Yankee" s safety and Entergy"s management—especially after **pany made misleading statements about the pipe. Enraged by Entergy"s behavior, the Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 last year against allowing an extension.    Now **pany is suddenly claiming that the 2002 agreement is invalid because of the 2006 legislation, and that only the federal government has regulatory power over nuclear issues. The legal issues in the case are obscure: whereas the Supreme Court has ruled that states do have some regulatory authority over nuclear power, legal scholars say that Vermont case will offer a precedent-setting test of how far those powers extend. Certainly, there are valid concerns
about the patchwork regulations that could result if every state sets its own rules. But had Entergy kept its word, that debate would be beside the point.    **pany seems to have concluded that its reputation in Vermont is already so damaged that it has noting left to lose by going to war with the state. But there should be consequences. Permission to run a nuclear plant is a public trust. Entergy runs 11 other reactors in the United States, including Pilgrim Nuclear station in Plymouth. Pledging to run Pilgrim safely, **pany has applied for federal permission to keep it open for another 20 years. But as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission(NRC)reviews **pany" s application, it should keep in mind what promises from Entergy are worth.
1. The phrase "reneging on"(Para. 1)is closest in meaning to
A. condemning.        B. reaffirming.
C. dishonoring.        D. securing.
2. By entering into the 2002 agreement, Entergy intended to
A. obtain protection from Vermont regulators.
B. seek favor from the federal legislature.
C. acquire an extension of its business license.
D. get permission to purchase a power plant.
3. According to Paragraph 4, Entergy seems to have problems with its
A. managerial practices.
B. technical innovativeness.
C. financial goals.
D. business vision.
4. In the author" s view, the Vermont case will test
A. Entergy" s capacity to fulfill all its promises.
B. the nature of states" patchwork regulations.
C. the federal authority over nuclear issues.
D. the limits of states" power over nuclear issues.
5. It can be inferred from the last paragraph that
A. Entergy" s business elsewhere might be affected.
B. the authority of the NRC will be defied.
C. Entergy will withdraw its Plymouth application.
D. Vermont" s reputation might be damaged.
When prehistoric man arrived in new parts of the world, something strange happened to the large animals: they suddenly became extinct. Smaller species survived. The large, slow-growing animals were easy game, and were quickly hunted to extinction. Now somet
hing similar could be happening in the oceans.    That the seas are being overfished has been known for years. What researchers such as Ransom Myers and Boris Worm have shown is just how fast things are changing. They have looked at half a century of data from fisheries around the world. Their methods do not attempt to estimate the actual biomass(the amount of living biological matter)offish species in particular parts of the ocean, but rather changes in that biomass over time. According to their latest paper published in Nature, the biomass of large predators(animals that kill and eat other animals)in a new fishery is reduced on average by 80% within 15 years of the start of exploitation. In some long-fished areas, it has halved again since then.    Dr. Worm acknowledges thatthese figures are conservative. One reason for this is that fishing technology has improved. Today"s vessels can find their prey using satellites and sonar, which were not available 50 years ago. That means a higher proportion of what is in the sea is being caught, so the real difference between present and past is likely to be worse than the one recorded by changes in catch sizes. In the early days, too, longlines would have been more saturated with fish. Some individuals would therefore not have been cau
ght, since no baited hooks would have been available to trap them, leading to an underestimate of fish stocks in the past. Furthermore, in the early days of longline fishing, a lot of fish were lost to sharks after they had been hooked. That is no longer a problem, because there are fewer sharks around now.    Dr. Myers and Dr. Worm argue that their work gives a correct baseline, which future management efforts must take into account. They believe the data support an idea current among marine biologists, that of the "shifting baseline." The notion is that people have failed to detect the massive changes which have happened in the ocean because they have been looking back only a relatively short time into the past. That matters because theory suggests that the maximum sustainable yield that can be cropped from a **es when the biomass of a target species is about 50% of its original levels. Most fisheries are well below that, which is a bad way to do business.
6. The extinction of large prehistoric animals is noted to suggest that
A. large animals were vulnerable to the changing environment.
B. small species survived as large animals disappeared.
C. large sea animals may face the same threat today.
D. slow-growing fish outlive fast-growing ones.
7. We can infer from Dr. Myers and Dr. Worm" s paper that
A. the stock of large predators in some old fisheries has reduced by 90%.
B. there are only half as many fisheries as there were 15 years ago.
securingC. the catch sizes in new fisheries are only 20% of the original amount.
D. the number of larger predators dropped faster in new fisheries than in the old.
8. By saying "these figures are conservative "(Para. 3), Dr. Worm means that
A. fishing technology has improved rapidly.
B. the catch-sizes are actually smaller than recorded.
C. the marine biomass has suffered a greater loss.
D. the data collected so far are out of date.
9. Dr. Myers and other researchers hold that
A. people should look for a baseline that can work for a longer time.
B. fisheries should keep their yields below 50% of the biomass.
C. the ocean biomass should be restored to its original level.
D. people should adjust the fishing baseline to the changing situation.
10. The author seems to be mainly concerned with most fisheries"
A. management efficiency.
B. biomass level.
C. catch-size limits.
D. technological application.
The journal Science is adding an extra round of statistical checks to its peer-review process, editor-in-chief Marcia McNutt announced today. The policy follows similar efforts from other journals, after widespread concern that basic mistakes in data analysis are contributing to the irreproducibility of many published research findings.    "Readers must have confidence in the conclusions published in our journal," writes McNutt in an editorial. Working with the American Statistical Association, the journal has appointed seven experts to a statistics board of reviewing editors(SBoRE). Manuscript will beflagged upfor additional scrutiny by the journal" s internal editors, or by its existing Board of Reviewing Editors or by outside peer reviewers. The SBoRE panel will then find external statisticians to review these manuscripts.    Asked whether any particular papers had impelled the change, McNutt said: "The creation of the " statistics board" was motivated by concerns broadly with the application of statistics and data analysis in scientific research and is part of Science" s overall drive to increase reproducibility in the research we publish."    Giovanni Parmigiani, a biostatistician at the Harvard School of Public Health, a member o
f the SBoRE group, says he expects the board to "play primarily an advisory role." He agreed to join because he "found the foresight behind the establishment of the SBoRE to be novel, unique and likely to have a lasting impact. This impact will not only be through the publications in Science itself, but hopefully through a larger group of publishing places that may want to model their approach after Science."    John Ioannidis, a physician who studies research methodology, says that the policy is "a most welcome step forward" and "long overdue." "Most journals are weak in statistical review, and this damages the quality of what they publish. I think that for the majority of scientific papers nowadays, statistical review is more essential than expert review," he says. But he noted that biomedical journals such as Annals of Internal Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet pay strong attention to statistical review.    Professional scientists are expected to know how to analyze data, but statistical errors are **mon in published research, according to David Vaux, a cell biologist. Researchers should improve their standards, he wrote in 2012, but journals should also take a tougher line, "engaging reviewers who are statistically literate and editors who can verify the process".
Vaux says that Science" s idea to pass some papers to statisticians "has some merit, but a weakness is that it relies on the board of reviewing editors to identify "the papers that need scrutiny" in the first place."

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