阅读理解

　　There is a real joke. When some guys were talking heatedly about“F4”in the living-room, the father came in and interrupted: “Which is more powerful. F-4 or F-16? ”The boys burst into laughter. Obviously, the father took F4 for a type of fighter plane. He didn’t know that F4 is a pop group extremely popular among young people these two years.

 　Then what does the “F” in F4 stand for? Fever or fortune? It is certainly not “failure”, for sure! We look at the success and appeal of these four stars from the popular drama Meteor Garden (流星花园), who took the island by storm during their brief visit here in November. For sure, they look good. Each of them being 1.80 metres tall, Jerry Yan, Vie Zhou, Ken Zhu and Vanness Wu are all very popular throughout the world.

　　But what exactly is the appeal of these four young guys? Nobody can tell. Maybe some young students are just following the fashion. Then why is Meteor Garden stopped from being shown on TV in China? Well, some young people just could not agree. But fact is fact. In fact, the students are not too young to tell black from white. And they must be clear that every coin has two sides.

　　While they find interest in F4, they must be clear what bad that drama will do to us.

1．The writer wants to make it clear to us that ________ .

[　　]

A．older people don't know about“F4”at all

B．“F4”has become the most famous pop stars in the world

C．not everything about“F4”seems good

D．“F4”is not really popular

2．What does the letter“F”in“F4”stand for?

[　　]

A．Failure.

B．Fever.

C．Four.

D．The writer doesn't tell us.

3．Which of the following can we learn from this text?

[　　]

A．Some young people are not happy when Meteor Garden is stopped from being shown on TV in China.

B．The writer thinks it wrong that Meteor Garden is stopped from being shown on TV in China.

C．None of the older people really like F4 and Meteor Garden.

D．F4 is no longer allowed to come to the Chinese mainland.

4．The writer wants to tell young people that ________ .

[　　]

A．when they think about something, they must throw a coin

B．unlike young people, old people can tell the difference between black and white

C．the drama Meteor Garden is wrong, so they should not watch it

D．they must know that everything has its bad effect as well as its good effect on us

It takes two to duet (二重唱), and one question for scientists is how these coordinated (协调的) performances arise — in birds. Are they the result of cooperation, a way in which one pair signals to others that they’ve got it together? Or are they the result of conflict, evolving to avoid one partner’s song interfering with the other’s?
A study of duetting in Peruvian warbling antbirds(蚁鸟) suggests that it might be a little of both, and that context is everything. Joseph A. Tobias and Nathalie Seddon of the University of Oxford show in Current Biology that sexual conflict can cause the female of a pair that normally cooperates to “jam” the male’s song by singing over it.
The researchers exposed antbird pairs to recorded songs of other antbirds and monitored the songs the pairs produced. In one experiment, they played the songs of an intruding pair. In this case, the resident pair “both are likely to lose their territory, so both should cooperate,” Dr. Tobias said. And they do. They produce a coordinated duet that in effect tells the intruders to keep away.
But when the researchers played the song of a single female, the pair behaved differently. “You’d expect the resident female to be highly motivated to defend her position in the partnership,” Dr. Tobias said. And that’s what occurs. The male sings its heart out, flirting(调情) with the single female, and the female of the pair does its best to interfere with the song by singing over it, apparently to make her mate less attractive to the other female.
“It’s clear that the male doesn’t like what she’s doing,” Dr. Tobias said. The behavior “breaks up what is otherwise a very cooperative situation into a more complicated signal,” he added.
It’s the first evidence of this kind of signal jamming among pairs, Dr. Tobias said.
And in that it leads the male to alter its song to avoid the female’s interfering notes, it shows that this kind of conflict could, over a long period, drive the evolution of coordinated song.

1. 1.

   What is the key factor of antbirds’ duet?

   1. A.
      Their cooperation.
   2. B.
      Their conflict.
   3. C.
      The context.
   4. D.
      Their instinct.
2. 2.

   How did the researchers conduct the experiment?

   1. A.
      They put the antbird pairs back to nature and observe them.
   2. B.
      They played different recorded songs of other antbirds.
   3. C.
      They put an antbird to the other’s territory and observed.
   4. D.
      They played the songs of an intruding pair.
3. 3.

   Why did the female bird sing according to Paragraph 4?

   1. A.
      It wanted to show its singing talent to the partner.
   2. B.
      It aimed at keeping the partnership with the male.
   3. C.
      It wanted to frighten the other females.
   4. D.
      It wanted to make her mate more attractive.
4. 4.

   Which of the following is the topic of this passage?

   1. A.
      The special phenomenon about birds pairs.
   2. B.
      The conflict of bird pairs.
   3. C.
      The cooperation of bird pairs.
   4. D.
      The piece of music for bird pairs.

Rene Descartes’ explanation of pain has long been acknowledged in medicine. He proposed that pain is a purely physical phenomenon – that tissue injury makes specific nerves send a signal to the brain, causing the mind to notice pain. The phenomenon, he said, is like pulling on a rope to ring a bell in the brain. It is hard to overstate how deeply fixed this account has become. In medicine, doctors see pain in Descartes’ terms — as a physical process, a sign of tissue injury.

The limitations of this explanation, however, have been apparent for some time, since people with obvious injuries sometimes report feeling no pain at all. Later, researchers proposed that Descartes’ model be replaced with what they called the gate control theory of pain. They argued that before pain signals reach the brain, they must first go through a gating mechanism in the spinal cord(脊髓). In some cases, this imaginary gate could simply stop pain signals from getting to the brain.

Their most amazing suggestion was that what controlled the gate was not just signals from sensory nerves but also emotions and other “output” from the brain. They were saying that pulling on the rope need not make the bell ring. The bell itself —the mind— could stop it. This theory led to a great deal of research into how such factors as mood, gender, and beliefs influence the experience of pain. In a British study, for example, researchers measured pain threshold and tolerance levels in 53 ballet dancers and 53 university students by using a common measurement: after immersing your hand in body-temperature water for two minutes to establish a baseline condition, you put your hand in a bowl of ice water and start a clock running. You mark the time when it begins to hurt: that is your pain threshold. Then you mark the time when it hurts too much to keep your hand in the water: that is your pain tolerance. The test is always stopped at 120 seconds, to prevent injury.

The results were striking. On average female students reported pain at 16 seconds and pulled their hands out of the ice water at 37 seconds. Female dancers were almost three times as long on both counts. Men in both groups had a higher threshold and tolerance for pain, but the difference between male dancers and male nondancers was nearly as large. What explains that difference? Probably it has something to do with the psychology of ballet dancers — a group known for self-discipline, physical fitness, and competitiveness, as well as by a high rate of chronic(慢性) injury. Their driven personalities and competitive culture evidently accustom them to pain. Other studies along these lines have shown that outgoing people have greater pain tolerance and that, with training, one can reduce one’s sensitivity to pain.

There is also striking evidence that very simple kinds of mental suggestion can have powerful effects on pain. In one study of 500 patients undergoing dental procedures, those who were given a placebo(安慰剂) injection and promised that it would relieve their pain had the least discomfort — not only less than the patients who got a placebo and were told nothing but also less than the patients who got actual drug without any promise that it would work.

Today it is abundantly evident that the brain is actively involved in the experience of pain and is no more bell on a string. Today every medical textbook teaches the gate control theory as fact. There’s a problem with it, though. It explains people who have injuries but feel no pain, but it doesn’t explain the reverse, which is far more common — the millions of people who experience chronic pain, such as back pain, with no signs of injury whatsoever. So where does the pain come from? The rope and clapper are gone, but the bell is still ringing.

1.The primary purpose of the passage is to               .

A. describe how modern research has updated an old explanation

B. support a traditional view with new data

C. promote a particular attitude towards physical experience

D. suggest a creative treatment for a medical condition

2.Which statement best describes Descartes theory of pain presented in paragraph 1?

A. The brain can shut pain off at will.

B. The brain plays no part in the body’s experience of pain.

C. Pain can be caused in many different ways.

D. Pain is an automatic response to bodily injury.

3.The author implies that the reason why the gate control was “amazing” was that it        .

A. offered an extremely new and original explanation

B. was just opposite to people’s everyday experiences

C. was grounded in an ridiculous logic

D. was so sensible it should have been proposed centuries before

4.The author refers to “chronic back pain” as an example of something that is        .

A. costly, because it troubles millions of people

B. puzzling, because it sometimes has no obvious cause

C. disappointing, because it does not improve with treatment

D. worrying, because it lies beyond the reach of medicine

5.The last sentence of the passage serves mainly to express that         .

A. scientific judgments are difficult to understand

B. theoretical investigations are generally useless

C. researchers still have a long way to go before the puzzle is made clear

D. there is always something puzzling at the heart of science