重庆师范大学考研真题 英语专业(2)

Yellowstone‘s steaming vents are 90°C (193°F) and provide an extremely acidic environment for any life-forms hardy enough to survive there. The pH, which is 1, can dissolve metals. The primary organisms living there are a bacterium associated with diseases such as leprosy and a photosynthetic alga that is one of the most acid-tolerant organisms of its kind. The alga probably obtains energy through photosynthesis, but the bacterium may get its energy from the surrounding metal-rich environment. Astrobiologists believe that this hot-vent ecosystem may be a good model of Mars during its warmer period: acidic, metallic, and hot. In addition, these organisms fossilize, holding a hope that even if life on Mars has died out, evidence in the form of fossils might remain.

But during the more-prevalent cool periods, Mars is more like the icy deserts of Antarctica, where the very salty environments, averaging about -32°C (-25°F), harbor a common type of Penicillium bacterium, as well as a fungus that usually thrives on insects not present in Antarctica‘s dry valleys. How these organisms arrived is a mystery, as is how they survive. The extreme saltiness of the environment lowers the freezing point of the water to as low as -56°C (-69°F), so that these organisms are in liquid water even in the extreme cold. This environment may be similar to the habitat under the Martian ice caps.

Everyone must be aware of the possibility that the rovers and probes have already inadvertently brought earthly life to Mars. A scientific committee recently reported that there are some organisms capable of surviving the flight to Mars in the rovers‘ circuitry. Once there, these organisms might even be able to survive the extreme UV pounding if concealed under as little as 1 millimeter of soil. Thus, scientists must be extremely careful both in sterilization techniques here at home and in interpretations of any signs of life found on the Red Planet.

1. Which of the following shows that there may be life on Mars?

A. Past water flow.

B. Ozone layer.

C. Atmosphere.

D. Temperature.

2. Which of the following is true?

招收专业：英语语言文学、外国语言学及应用语言学研究方向：英语语言学、文体学、英美文学、英语国家文化研究、英语教学理论及应用、现代英语研究、社会语言学、翻译理论

A. ―Astrobiologists‖ are scientists who study life beyond Earth,

B. Astrobiologists go to other planets to study life there.

C. The life astrobiologists have in mind is completely different from the life we know on earth.

D. Astrobiologists find the conditions on Mars conducive to life.

3. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?

A. The bacterium and alga found in hot-vent Yellowstone show that there may have been life on

Mars.

B. The study of Yellowstone ecosystem shows that it is possible to find signs of past life on Mars.

C. The Antarctic environment is similar to that under the ice caps of Mars.

D. The astrobiologists study the ecosystem in Yellowstone and the Antarctica in order to learn whether it is possible to find life on Mars.

4. The purpose of this article is to

A. explain why we believe life can be found on Mars.

B. call for people to protect the origins of life on Mars.

C. show the evidence of life on Mars.

D. prove the similarities between the earth and the Mars.

Passage Two

Someday someone – perhaps a composer is already at work on it – will write a great operatic cycle on the rise and fall of oil. In Wagner‘s Ring it was gold that was taken from the Rhinemaidens, to the curse of all who possessed it until the commodity could be returned to the river whence it came.

In the case of oil, it is ―black gold‖ that has been wrested from the earth where it has lain for millions of years, to bring wealth and misery in equal measure upon those who find it, those who own it and those who consume it. Only when the world can move away from the corrosive and corrupting substance can society be at ease with itself.

That is one narrative as the world faces the prospect that the peak of oil production is being reached and that, from now on, output will fall, prices will rocket and the industrialized and industrializing nations will find themselves in a fierce scrabble to ensure available supplies.

Then there is a different narrative, in which oil has been the great liberator of the past century; the fuel that has enabled hundreds of millions of ordinary people to embrace travel and an industrializing world to gain the energy to fuel its power and drive its manufacture.

Without it the citizen would have remained trapped and economies would have been unable to prosper. Look only to New Orleans, a city emptied, to see what happens when you have no electricity and no transport.

And on to this narrative. Of course, there is the tale of the industry that made it happen, the global oil giants that prefigured the worldwide companies of today, the ―seven sisters‖ (half of them, the bastard children of John D. Rockefeller‘s dismembered Standard Oil) that controlled for so long the supply and distribution of the fuel and which gave rise, in its turn, to a countercartel of oil exporting countries in OPEC.

It is no accident that Roman Abramovich, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other Russian oligarchs have virtually all made their money out of the privatization of the Soviet hydrocarbons industry, nor that three of the top 10 companies in the world are oil giants.

招收专业：英语语言文学、外国语言学及应用语言学研究方向：英语语言学、文体学、英美文学、英语国家文化研究、英语教学理论及应用、现代英语研究、社会语言学、翻译理论

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