英语六级阅读讲义

大学英语六级阅读讲义

第一部分（补充阅读）

主讲：赵南望

Text 1

Aristotle wrote that men come together in cities to live, but stay in them to live the good life. It was the Greeks who invented the idea of the city, and urbanity continues as a thriving tradition. But in the first decade of the 21st century, urban life is changing. “Cities are now junctions in the flows of people, information, finance and freight,” says Nigel Harris, a professor of development planning. “They’re less and less places where people live and work.”

The enlargement of the European Union in December in 2002 has given residents of up to 13 new member nations freedom of movement within its borders. At the same time, an additional 13.5 million immigrants a year will be needed in the EU just to keep a stable ratio between workers and pensioners over the next half century. All this mobility will make Europe’s cities nodes of nomadism, linked to each other by high-speed trains and cheap airline flights. The bustle around airports and train stations will make the cro wds in Europe’s great piazza look thin by comparison. Urban designers, with a freshly pricked interest in transience rather than stasis, are even now dreaming up cityscapes that focus on flows of people and fungible uses for buildings.

Public spaces are due for a revamp. Earlier architects conceived of train stations as single buildings; today’s designers are thinking of them as transit zones that link to the city around them, pouring travelers into bus stations and surrounding shops, In Amsterdam, urban planner Ben van Berkel, co-director of the design firm of UN Studio, has developed what he calls Deep Planning Strategy, which inverts the traditional “top-down” approach: the creation of a space comes before the flow of people through it. With 3-D modeling and animation, he’s able to look at different population groups use public spaces at different times of the day. He uses the data to

design spaces that accommodate mobs at rush hour and sparser crowds at other times.

The growing mobility of Europe has inspired a debate about the look and feel of urban sprawl. “Up until now, all our cultural heritage has been concentrated in the city center,” notes Prof. Heinrich Moding of the German Institute of Urban Affairs. “But we’ve got to imagine how it’s possible to have joyful vibrancy in these outlying parts, so that they’re not just about garages, highways and gasoline tanks.” The designs of new building are also changing to anticipate the emerging city as a way station. Buildings have been seen as disconnecting, isolating, defining. But increasingly, the quality of space that’s in demand is movement.

Text 2

Pain, unfortunately, is a horrible necessity of life. It protects people by alerting them to things that might injure them. But some long-term pain has nothing to do with any obvious injury. One estimate suggests that one in six adults suffer from a “chronic pain” condition.

Steve McMahon, a pain researcher at King’s College, London, says that if skin is damaged, for instance with a hot iron, an area of sensitivity develops around the outside of the burn where although untouched and undamaged by the iron the behavior of the nerve fibers is disrupted. As a result, heightened sensitivity and abnormal pain sensations occur in the surrounding skin. Chronic pain, he says, may similarly be caused not by damage to the body, but because weak pain signals become amplified.

This would also help explain why chronic pains such as lower-back pain and osteoarthritis fail to respond well to traditional pain therapies. But now an entirely new kind of drug, called Tanezumab, has been developed. It is an antibody for a protein called nerve growth factor (NGF), which is vital for new nerve growth during development. NGF, it turns out, is also crucial in the regulation of the sensitization of pain in chronic conditions.

Kenneth Verburg, one of the researchers involved in the development of Tanezumab at Pfizer, says it is not exactly clear what role NGF plays in normal physiology, but after an injury which involves tissue damage and inflammation, levels of NGF increase dramatically. NGF seems to be involved in transmitting the pain signal. As a consequence, blocking NGF reduces chronic pain.

Tanezumab must still complete the final stages of clinical trials before it can become a weapon in the toolkit for reducing human suffering. But unexpected pains do not always come from the body. According to Irene Tracey, a pain researcher at the University of Oxford, how pain is experienced also depends upon a person’s state of mind. If successive patients suffer the same burn, the extent to which it hurts will depend on whether one is anxious, depressed, happy or distracted.

Such ideas are being explored with brain scans which suggest that even if a low level of pain is bei ng sent to the brain, the signal can be turned up by the “mind” itself. Indeed, patients can even be tricked into feeling pain.

In one experiment volunteers were given a powerful analgesic and subjected to a painful stimulus—which, because of the analgesic, they could not feel. Then they were told the drug had worn off (although it had not), and subsequently complained that the stimulus hurt.

People can, therefore, feel pain simply because it is expected. They can fail to feel pain for exactly the same reasons, for example when they are given placebos or are distracted. But although pain may be subjective, that does not mean the final experience is controlled solely by the mind.

A recent paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has shown that genes play a role in determining sensitivity to pain. One gene, known as SCN9A, codes for a protein that allows the channels along which nerve signals are transmitted to remain active for longer and thus transmit more pain signals. It seems likely that this protein will attract a great deal more analgesic research. Variations in SCN9A may also explain why some patients prefer different classes of painkillers.

Although pain may be a horrible necessity, there is no doubt that humanity could cope with far less of the chronic sort. Understanding how the mind, the body and

people’s genes interact to cause pain should bring more relief.

Text 3

More than 41m Americans tuned in on March 7th to watch “The Hurt Locker” win the award for best picture at the Oscars, the annual ritual of glitz that reminds the world that Hollywood is the global centre of the film and entertainment industry. “The Hurt Locker”, however, was filmed in Jordan, not Hollywood. Perhaps that is as it should be for a film set in Iraq. But what about “Battle: Los Angeles”? Hitting cinemas next year, it is a film about marines fighting an alien invasion. And it is being shot in Louisiana.

California has been worrying about “runaway production” since 1998, when Canada began luring producers and their crews away from Los Angeles with tax breaks. Other places followed, and all but seven American states and territories and 24 other countries now offer, or are preparing to offer, rebates, grants or tax credits that cut 20%, 30% or even 40% of the cost of shooting a movie.

These incentives have become a huge factor in choosing where to shoot a film. Hollywood types are used to going on location, says Amy Lemisch, the director of the California Film Commission, a state body that tries to retain film production. These days, she says, producers first compare the incentives offered by the different locations and only then look at their scripts to see which of the places on the shortlist make sense. California’s world share of studio films (ie, those made by the six biggest studios) dropped from 66% in 2003 to 34% in 2008, she estimates, and has fallen further since then.

The decline in movie-shooting would have been even faster if California had not, last July, also got into the game of giving out incentives. Ten feature films which would otherwise have been made outside the state were filmed in Los Angeles in the second half of 2009 purely because of this financial aid. But California’s incentives are relatively modest, says Ms Lemisch, and are set to expire in 2014.

It may seem strange that even states with budget crises, such as Michigan, New York or California, choose to make their deficits worse with such giveaways—and in Michigan the tax credits have indeed become controversial. But states and countries are enthusiastic about hosting film crews, for good reason. With no factories to build, the economic benefit is instantaneous. Jack Kyser at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation estimates that the average film (with a budget of $32m) leads to 141 jobs directly, from caterers to make-up artists, and another 425 jobs indirectly. And it generates $4.1m in sales taxes and income taxes.

Even with its film schools and armies of cameramen and extras, therefore, Hollywood is not quite as unshakable as it once thought. The business of film-making may split, says Ms Lemisch, with the lawyers, agents and other suits staying in their Brentwood and Bel Air villas, and the crews decamping. Every time a film is shot in another state, moreover, the locals pick up skills that make subsequent shoots easier. In a sign of how desperate Los Angeles is becoming, the city is now considering offering its most treasured resource to crew members at no charge: parking places.

第二部分（新题型）

主讲：赵南望

Text 1

Graduating high school seniors looking to enter the workforce and other high school students searching for summer jobs are facing a tighter job market this year as the once red-hot U.S. economy continues to cool. Nationally, the jobless rate for 16- to 19-year-olds continues to rise. The unemployment rate for teenagers hit 14.2 percent in April, compared with 12.8 percent last year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

“It’s very obvious that it’s going to be a little harder this summer, because busines ses are much more reserved and cautious,” said Mark J. Gambill, the vice

president of marketing at Manpower Inc. , the nation’s largest temporary employment agency. The New York City-based company recently surveyed 16,000 public and private employers. It found manufacturing, light industry, and high-tech firms were least likely to be seeking employees.

Temporary jobs typically are the first to suffer in a slowing economy, but other sectors that employ teenagers heavily have fallen on leaner times as well. For instance, the amusement, recreation, and hotel industries shed a combined 43000 jobs in March and April, said John F. Stinson Jr. , an economist at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Ironically, the pinch comes as the nation’s overall jobless rate rem ains low. Statistics show that fewer teenagers have been jobless over the past few summers than at any time during the previous decade. “The jobless rates are still low by historical standards,” Mr. Stinson said. Ten years ago, for example, the unemploymen t rate for 16- to 19-year-old workers was 21.1 percent in June and 15.7 percent in July. Last year, the rate was 14.4 percent and 12.4 percent, respectively, federal figures show.

Experts say teenagers looking for summer work still can find jobs but not lots of pay. The continuing slump in the nation’s high-tech sector and lingering uncertainty over the general health of the economy have combined to limit teenagers’ job options to the type of work that American youths typically have thrived on——the retail and fast-food industries.

For the past several years, experts say, large numbers of teenagers found work with high-paying technology companies. But those heady days of $50000 starting salaries for those with computer skills and only a high school diploma have ended.

Nationally, some 2.8 million students are expected to graduate from public and private high schools this year, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Lacking some sort of post secondary education or training virtually ensures those graduates will garner low wages. Ron Bird, the chief economist at the Employment Policy Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit think tank, said economic projections show that wage growth for those with only a high school diploma will be the slowest among all groups.

“There is a fundamental shift evident in the U.S. economy, ties primarily to technology, that will reward more professional, management, and technical-type jobs as opposed to line operators,” he said.

Text 2

The United Stated is said to have a mixed economy because privately owned businesses and government both play important roles. Indeed, some of the most enduring debates of American economic history focus on the relative roles of the public and private sectors.

The American free enterprise system emphasizes private ownership. Private businesses produce most goods and services, and almost two-thirds of the nation’s total economic output goes to individuals for personal use (the remaining one-third is bought by government and business). The consumer role is so great, in fact, that the nation is sometimes characterized as having a “consumer economy”.

This emphasis on private ownership arises, in part, from American beliefs about personal freedom. From the time the nation was created, Americans have feared excessive government power, and they have to sought to limit government’s authority over individuals——including its role in the economic realm. In addition, Americans generally believe that an economy characterized by private ownership is likely to operate more efficiently than one with substantial government ownership.

When economic forces are unfettered, Americans believe, supply and demand determine the prices of goods and services. Prices, in turn, tell businesses what to produce; if people want more of a particular goods than the economy is producing, the price of the goods rises. That catches the attention of new or other companies that, sensing an opportunity to earn profits, start producing more of that goods. On the other hand, if people want less of the goods, prices fall and less competitive producers either go out of business or start producing different goods.

There are limits to free enterprise, however. Americans have always believed that

some services are better performed by public rather than private enterprise. For instance, in the United States, government is primarily responsible for the administration of justice, education, the road system, and national defense.

In this mixed economy, individuals can help guide the economy not only through the choices they make as consumers but through the votes they cast for officials who shape economic policy. In recent years, consumers have voiced concerns about product safety, environmental threats posed by certain industrial practices, and potential health risks citizens may face; government has responded by creating agencies to protect consumer interests and promote the general public welfare.

Text 3

It is not just meetings of the rich and powerful that are getting increasingly cosmopolitan. Gl obal universities are “reshaping the world”, argues Ben Wildavsky, the author of “The Great Brain Race”. Because big problems often transcend borders, many ambitious students demand a global education. The number of people studying outside their home country jumped from below 2m in 2000 to 3.3m in 2008, according to the OECD.

The most popular destination is the English-speaking world, led by America, which hosts 19% of the world’s mobile students. French and German universities are also popular, but more narrow in their allure. Most of the foreign students in France come from Europe or former colonies in Africa, but foreign students in America come from everywhere.

America’s lead is declining slightly, but remains huge at the top of the knowledge tree. Two-thirds of postgraduates who study abroad choose America. In some of the hardest disciplines most postgrads at American universities are foreign: 65% in computing and economics, 56% in physics and 55% in maths, notes Mr Wildavsky.

Text 4

Wine buffs are like art collectors. Few can tell the difference between a well-made fake and the real thing. Yet whereas counterfeit art has been around for centuries, wine forgery is relatively new. It started in the late 1970s when the prices of the best wines—especially those from Bordeaux—shot up. Today, with demand from China fuelling a remarkable boom, counterfeiting is rife. By some estimates 5% of fine wines sold at auction or on the secondary market are not what they claim to be on the label.

The simplest technique is to slap the label of a 1982 Chateau Lafite (one of the most prized recent vintages) onto a bottle of 1975 Lafite (a less divine year). Another trick is to bribe the sommelier of a fancy restaurant to pass on empty bottles that once held expensive wine, along with the corks. These can be refilled with cheaper wine, recorked and resealed. Empty Lafite and Latour bottles are sold on eBay for several hundred euros.

The margins are fruity. A great wine may cost hundreds of times more than a merely excellent one. Small wonder that oenophiles are growing more vigilant. Bill Koch, an energy tycoon and avid wine collector, currently has five lawsuits pending against merchants, auctioneers and other collectors. His grape-related gripes began in 2006, when he filed a complaint against a German wine dealer who sold bottles of Lafite he claimed had once belonged to Thomas Jefferson. The case is unresolved.

“There is a code of silence in the industry,” says Mr Koch, who owns 43,000 bottles of wine and estimates that he has spent $4m-5m on fakes. Some collectors are too proud to admit that they have been duped. Others fear sullying a vintage’s reputation and thereby reducing the value of their own collections. So instead of speaking out, “they dump their fa kes into auctions or sell them to other private collectors,” says Mr Koch.

Wine merchants and auction houses say they are doing everything they can to filter out the fakes. Simon Berry, the chairman of Berry Brothers & Rudd, a British

wine merchant, says his firm never buys wines from before 2000 unless they come from its own cellars. (Berry Brothers stores nearly 4m bottles on behalf of its customers.) Christie’s, an auctioneer, says all the wines it auctions are inspected three times by different people, using detailed checklists for condition and authenticity.

Fear of fakery has not stopped the boom. But the wines that win the best prices at auction are those whose provenance is certain. In May, Christie’s sold an impériale (six-litre bottle) of 1961 Latour for $216,000 in Hong Kong. It came directly from the cellars of Chateau Latour.

Text 5

Every profession or trade, every art, and every science has its technical vocabulary, the function of which is partly to refer to things or processes which have no names in ordinary English, and partly to secure greater exactness in nomenclature. Such special dialects, or jargons, are necessary in technical discussion of any kind. Being universally understood by the devotees of particular science or art, they have the precision of a mathematical formula. Besides, they save time, for it is much more economical to name a process than to describe it. Thousands of these technical terms are properly included in every large dictionary, yet, as a whole, they are rather on the outskirts of English language than actually within its borders.

Different occupations, however, differ widely in the character of their special vocabularies. In trades and handicrafts and other occupations, such as farming and fishing, that have occupied great numbers of men from remote times, the technical vocabulary is very old. It consists largely of native words, or of borrowed words that have worked themselves into the very fiber of our language. Hence, though highly technical in many particulars, these vocabularies are more familiar in sound, and more generally understood, than most other technicalities. The special dialects of law, medicine, divinity, and philosophy have also, in their older strata, become pretty familiar to cultivated persons, and have contributed much to the popular vocabulary.

Yet, every vocation still possesses a large body of technical terms that remain essentially foreign, even to educated speech. And the proportion has been much increased in the last fifty years, particularly in the various departments of natural and political science and in the mechanic arts. Here new terms are coined with the greatest freedom, and abandoned with indifference when they have served their turn. Most of the new coinages are confined to special discussions and seldom get into general literature or conversation. Yet no profession is nowadays, as all professions once were, a close guild. The lawyer, the physician, the man of science, and the cleric associate freely with his fellow creatures, and does not meet them in a merely professional way.

Furthermore, what is called "popular science" makes everybody acquainted with modern views and recent discoveries. Any important experiment, though made in a remote or provincial laboratory, is at once reported in the newspapers, and everybody is soon talking about it——as in the case of the Roentgen rays and wireless telegraphy. Thus, our common speech is always taking up new technical terms and making them commonplace.

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