Passage 2
Just 30 years ago some 700 million people lived in cities. Today the number stands at1,800 million, and by the end of the century it will top 3,000 million--more than half theworld’s estimated population.
The flood of ’urbanites’ is swallowing not the richest countries, but the poorest. By theyear 2000 an estimated 650 million people will crowd into 60 cities of five million or morewthree-quarters of them in the developing world. Only a single city in developed countries--Tokyo, which will have 24 million people--is expected to be among the global top five;London, ranked second in 1950 with ten million people, will not even make 2000’s top 25. In places where rates of natural population increase exceed three per cent annuallywmeaning much of the developing countries--that alone is enough to double a city’s populationwithin 20 years. But equally powerful are the streams of hopeful migrants from the countryside.More often than not, even the most horrible urban living conditions are an improvement onwhatever the migrants have left behind.
What confronts and shocks urban planners is the serious effect of these trends. Therehave never been cities ’of 30 million people, let alone ones dependent on roads, sewer and watersupplies barely adequate for urban areas a tenth that size.
The great urban industrial growth of Europe and America in the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies sustained the cities that it helped produce. But in today’s swelling cities, indeveloping countries, the flood of new arrivals far outstrips the supply of jobs--particularly asmodern industries put much value on technology rather than manpower. So it will be virtuallyimpossible to find permanent employment for 30 to 40 per cent of the 1,000 million new cityresidents.
36. The word "urbanites" in the second paragraph is closest in meaning to __
A. urban planners B. city residents
C. big cities D. city job hunters
37. In the author’s opinion, the sharp increase in a city’s population is the result of __
A. the high birth rate in the cities of those countries
B. the streams of migrants moving from the countryside to the city
C. the improvement in the urbanliving conditions
D. both A and B
38. It is implied in the passage that
A. urban planners should be criticized
B. great difficulties will arise if a city is overpopulated
C. an ideal city had better have a population of only 3 million
D. 13 million is a bad number for city planners
39. Which of the following statements is NOT true?
A. Urban industrial growth helped to give rise to cities.
B. The great urban industrial growth failed to provide enough food for the cities.
C. Technology is more important to modem industries than manpower.
D. Many of the new city residents will find no permanent employment.
40. The best title for the passage could be
A. Problems of Big Cities B. Advantages of Big Cities
C. Solutions to City Problems D. A Plan for Big Cities
Passage 3
The idea of test-tube babies may make you either delighted at the wonders of modem medicine or irritated while considering the moral, or legal, or technological implications of starting life in a laboratory. But if you’ve ever been pregnant(~v)~2)~)yourself, one thing is certain: You wonder what it’s like to carry a test-tube baby. Are these pregnancies normal? Are the babies normal?
The earliest answers come from Australia, where a group of medical experts at the Queen Victoria Medical Center in Melbourne have taken a look at the continent’s first nine successful ’ in vitro pregnancies. The Australians report that the pregnancies themselves seemed to proceed according to plan, but at birth some unusual trends did show up. Seven of the nine babies turned out to be girls. Six of the nine were delivered by Caesarean section ( 剖腹产手术 ) . Andone baby, a twin, was born with a serious heart defect and a few days later developed life-threatening problems.
What does it all mean? Even the doctors don’t know for sure, because the numbers are sosmall. The proportion of girls to
boys is high, but until there are many more test-tube babies noone will know whether that’s something that just happened to be like that or something specialthat happens when egg meets sperm in a test tube instead of a Fallopian tube. The same thing istrue of the single heart defect; it usually shows up in only 15 out of 60,000 births in that part of Australia, but the fact that it occurred in one out of nine test-tube babies does not necessarilymean that they are at special risk. One thing the doctors can explain is the high number of Caesareans. Most of the mothers were older, had long histories of fertility problems and in some cases had had surgery on the fallopian tubes, all of which made them likely candidates forCaesareans anyway.
The Australian researchers report that they are quite encouraged. All the babies are nowmaking normal progress even the twin with the birth defects.
41. What would people be most concerned about according to the author?
A. Whether the test-tube babies would be legally accepted by society.
B. Whether the test-tube babies would be normal from pregnancy to birth.
C. Whether modern medicine is advanced enough for test-tube babies’ delivery.
D. Whether there would be always more girls than boys out of the test-tube babies.
42. what does the Latin word "in vitro"(paragraph two) most probably mean?
A. normal B. test-tube C. virtual D. Fallopian tube
43. The Australian experiment of the test-tube babies has the following unusual trends except that
A. most of the babies are girls
B. most of the babies are delivered by means of surgical operations
C. there is a serious heart disease case
D. the babies do not appear to be normal
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