2011职称英语考试完形填空小炒必备

第一篇 Captain Cook Arrow Legend
It was a great legend while it lasted, but DNA testing has finally ended a two-century-old story of the Hawaiian arrow carved from the bone of British explorer Captain James Cook who died in the Sandwich Islands in 1179.
“There is no Cook in the Australian Museum,” museum collection manager Jude Philip said not long ago in announcing the DNA evidence that the arrow was not made of Cook’s bone. But that will not stop the museum from continuing to display the arrow in its exhibition, “Uncovered: Treasures of the Australian Museum,” which dose include a feather cape presented to Cook by Hawaiian King Kalani’opu’u in 1778.
Cook was one of Britain’s great explorers and is credited with discovering the “Great South Land,” now Australia, in 1770. He was clubbed to death in the Sandwich Islands, now Hawaii.
The legend of Cook’s arrow began in 1824 when Hawaiian King Kamehamcha on his deathbed gave the arrow to William Adams, a London surgeon and relative of Cook’s wife, saying it was made of Cook’s bone after the fatal fight with islanders.
In the 1890s the arrow was given to the Australian Museum and the legend continued until it came face-to-face with science.
DNA testing by laboratories in Australia and New Zealand revealed the arrow was not made of Cook’s bone but was more likely made of animal bone, said Philp.
However, Cook’s fans refuse to give up hope that one Cook legend will prove true and that part of his remains will still be uncovered, as they say there is evidence not all of Cook’s body was buried at sea in 1779. “On this occasion technology has won,” said Cliff Thornton, president of the Captain Cook Society，in a statement from Britain. “But I am sure that one of these days … one of the Cook legends will prove to be true and it will happen one day.”

第二篇 Avalanche and Its Safety
An avalanche is a sudden and rapid flow of snow, often mixed with air and water, down a mountainside. Avalanches are （1\ among）the biggest dangers in the mountains for both life and property.
All avalanches are caused by an over-burden of material, typically snowpack, that is too massive and unstable for the slope (2 \B\that ) supports it. Determining the critical load, the amount of over-burden which is (3\ B\likely) to cause an avalanche, (4 \C\ is) a complex task involving the evaluation of a number of factors.
Terrain slopes flatter than 25 degrees or steeper than 60 degrees typically have a low (5\ C\risk )of avalanche. Snow does not ( 6\D\gather ) significantly on steep slopes; also, snow does not (7 \B\ flow)easily on fiat slopes. Human-triggered avalanches have the greatest incidence when the snow's angle of rest is (8 \B\between ) 35 and 45 degrees; the critical angle, the angle at which the human incidence of avalanches is greatest, is 38 degrees. The rule of thumb is: A slope that is ( 9\C\flat ) enough to hold snow but steep enough to ski

has the potential to generate an avalanche, regardless of the angle. Additionally, avalanche risk increases with (10.\ A \use ); that is, the more a slope is disturbed by skiers, the more likely it is that an avalanche will occur.
Due to the complexity of the subject, winter travelling in the backcountry is never 100% safe. Good avalanche safety is a continuous (11\ D \process ), including route selection and examination to the snowpack, weather (12 \ A\conditions), and human factors. Several well-known good habits can also ( 13 \B\reduce) the risk. If local authorities issue avalanche risk reports, they should be considered and all warnings should be paid (14 \C\ attention) to. Never follow in the tracks of others without your own evaluations; snow conditions are almost certain to have changed since they were made. Observe the terrain and note obvious avalanche paths where plants are (15\ A \missing) or damaged. Avoid traveling below others who might trigger an avalanche.

第三篇 What Is the Coolest Gas in the Universe?
What is the coldest air temperature ever recorded on the Earth? Where was this low temperature recorded? The coldest recorded temperature on Earth was -91℃ which (l\ B \occurred) in Antarctica in 1983．
We encounter an interesting situation when we discuss temperatures in (2 \B \space). Temperatures in Earth orbit actually range from about +120℃ to -120℃．The temperature depends upon (3\ A\ whether) you are in direct sunlight or shade．Obviously, -l20℃ is colder than our body can safely endure．Thank NASA science for well-designed space (4\D\suits) that protect astronauts from these temperature extremes．
The space temperatures just discussed affect only Our areal of the solar (5\ C \system)．Obviously，it is hotter closer to the Sun and colder as we travel away from the Sun．Astronomers estimate temperatures at Pluto are about -210℃．How cold is the lowest estimated temperature in the entire universe? Again，it depends upon your (6\D\location)．We are taught it is supposedly(7\ C\impossible) to have a temperature below absolute zero，which is-273℃，at which atoms do not move．Two scientists，whose names are Cornell and Wieman，have successfully cooled down a gas temperature barely (8\ A\above) absolute zero．They won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001 for their work—not a discovery，in this case2．
Why is the two scientists' work so important to science?
In the l920s，Satyendra Nath Bose was studying an interesting (9\B\theory) about
particles we now call photons．Bose had trouble (l0\ A\ convincing) other scientists to believe
(11\D\so) he contacted Albert Einstein．Einstein's calculations helped him theorize
(12\B\would) behave as Bose thought——but only at very cold temperatures．
Scientists have also discovered that (13\ D\ultra-cold)atoms can help them make the world's atomic clocks even more accurate．These clocks are so accurate today they w

ould only lose3 0ne second (14\ C\ every) six million years! Such accuracy will help us travel in space because distance is velocity times time4 (d=v×t)．With5 the long distances involved in space (15\A\travel) to know time as accurately as possible to get accurate distance．

第四篇 Animal’s “Sixth Sense”
A tsunami was triggered by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean in December, 2004. It killed tens of thousands of people in Asia and East Africa. Wild animals, however , seem to have escaped that terrible tsunami. This phenomenon adds weight to notions that they possess a “sixth sense” for disasters , experts said.
Sri Lankan wildlife officials have said the giant waves that killed over 24,000 people along the Indian Ocean island’s coast clearly missed wild beasts, with no dead animals found.
“No elephants arc dead, not even a dead rabbit. I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening,” H. D. Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka’s Wildlife Department, said about one month after the tsunami attack. The waves washed floodwaters up to 2 miles inland at Yala National Park in the ravaged southeast, Sri Lanka’s biggest wildlife reserve and home to hundreds of wild elephants and several leopards.
“There has been a lot of apparent evidence about dogs barking or birds migrating before volcanic eruptions or earthquakes. But it has not been proven,” said Matthew van Lierop, an animal behavior specialist at Johannesburg Zoo.
“There have been no specific studies because you can’t really test it in a lab or field setting ,” he told Reuters. Other authorities concurred with this assessment .
“Wildlife seem to be able to pick up certain phenomenon , especially birds … there are many reports of birds
detecting impending disasters,” said Clive Walker, who has written several books on African wildlife.
Animals certainly rely on the known senses such as smell or hearing to avoid danger slid as predators.
The notion of an animal “sixth sense” — or some other mythical power is an enduring one which the evidence on Sri Lanka’s ravaged coast is likely to add to.
The Romans saw owls as omens of impending disaster and many ancient cultures viewed elephants as sacred animals endowed with special power or attributes.

第五篇 Singing Alarms Could Save the Blind
If you cannot see, you may not be able to find your way out of a burning building — and that could be fatal. A company in Leeds could change all that with directional sound alarms capable of guiding you to the exit.
Sound Alert, a company run by the University of Leeds, is installing the alarms in a residential home for blind people in Sommerset and a resource centre for the blind in Cumbria. The alarms produce a wide range of frequencies that enable the brain to determine where the sound is coming from.
Deborah Withington of Sound Alert says that the alarms use most of the fre

quencies that can be heard by humans. “It is a burst of white noise that people say sounds like static on the radio,” she says. “Its life-saving potential is great.”
She conducted an experiment in which people were filmed by thermal-imaging cameras trying to find their way out of a large smoke-filled room. It took them nearly four minutes to find the door without a sound alarm, but only 15 seconds with one.
Withington studies how the brain processes sounds at the university. She says that the source of a wide band of frequencies can be pinpointed more easily than the source of a narrow band. Alarms based on the same concept have already been installed on emergency vehicles.
The alarms will also include rising or falling frequencies to indicate whether people should go up or down stairs. They were developed with the aid of a large grant from British Nuclear Fuels.

第六篇 Car Thieves Could Be Stopped Remotely
Speeding off in a stolen car, the thief thinks he has got a great catch. But he is in a nasty surprise. The car is fitted with a remote immobilizer, and a radio signal from a control center miles away will ensure that once the thief switches the engine 1、off, he will not be able to start it again.
For now, such devices 2、are only available for fleets of trucks4 and specialist vehicles used on construction sites. But remote immobilization technology could soon start to trickle down to ordinary cars5, and 3、should be available to ordinary cars in the UK 4、in two months.
The idea goes like this. A control box fitted to the car incorporates 5 、a miniature cellphone, a microprocessor and memory, and a GPS satellite positioning receiver. 6 、If the car is stolen, a coded cellphone signal will tell the unit to block the vehicle’s engine management system and prevent the engine 7 、being restarted.
There are even plans for immobilizers 8、that shut down vehicles on the moves , though there are fears over the safety implications of such a system.
In the UK, an array of technical fixes is already making 9、life harder for car thieves. “The pattern of vehicles crime has changed.” says Martyn Randall of Thatcham, a security research organization based in Berkshire11 that is funded in part 10、by the motor insurance industry.
He says it would only take him a few minutes to 11、teach a novice how to steal a car, using a bare minimum of tools . But only if the car is more than 10 years old.
Modern cars are a far tougher proposition, as their engine management computer will not 12 、allow them to start unless they receive a unique ID code beamed out by the ignition key. In the UK, technologies like this 13 、have helped achieve a 31 per cent drop in vehicle-related crime15 since 1997.
But determined criminals are still managing to find other ways to steal cars. Often by getting hold of the owner’s keys in a burglary. In 2000, 12 per cent of vehicles stolen in the UK were taken by using th

e owner’s keys, which doubles the previous year’s figure.
Remote-controlled immobilization system would 14 、put a major new obstacle in the criminal’s way by making such thefts pointless. A group that includes Thatcham, the police, insurance companies and security technology firms have developed standards for a system that could go on the market customer sooner than the expects.

第七篇 An Intelligent Car
Driving needs sharp eyes, keen ears, quick brain, and coordination between hands and the brain. Many human drivers have all these and can control a fast-moving car. But how does an intelligent car control itself?
There is a virtual driver in the smart car. This virtual driver has “eyes,” “brains,” “hands” and “feet,” too. The minicameras on each side of the car are his “eyes,” which observe the road conditions ahead of it. They watch the traffic to the car’s left and right. There is also a highly automatic driving system in the car. It is the built-in computer, which is the virtual driver’s “brain.” His “brain” calculates the speeds of other moving cars near it and analyzes their positions. Basing on this information, it chooses the right path for the intelligent car, and gives instructions to the “hands” and “feet” to act accordingly. In this way, the virtual driver controls his car.
What is the virtual driver’s best advantage? He reacts quickly . The minicameras are sending images continuously to the “brain.” It completes the processing of the images within 100 milliseconds. However, the world’s best driver at least needs one second to react. besides, when he takes action, he needs one more second.
The virtual driver is really wonderful. He can reduce the accident rate considerably on expressways. In this case, can we let him have the wheel at any time and in any place? Experts warn that we cannot do that just yet. His ability to recognize things is still limited . He can now only drive an intelligent car on expressways.

第八篇 A Biological Clock
Every living thing has what scientists call a biological clock that controls behavior. The biological clock tells plants when to form flowers and when the flowers should open. It tells insects when to leave the protective cocoons and fly away, and it tells animals and human beings when to eat, sleep and wake.
Events outside the plant and animal affect the actions of some biological clocks. Scientists recently found, for example, that a tiny animal changes the color of its fur because of the number of hours of daylight. In the short days of winter, its fur becomes white. The fur becomes gray brown in color in the longer hours of daylight in summer.
Inner signals control other biological clocks. German scientists found that some kind of internal clock seems to order birds to begin their long migration flight twice each year.
Birds prevented from flying become restless when it is time for the trip. But they become

calm again when the time of the flight has ended.
Scientists say they are beginning to learn which parts of the brain contain biological clocks. An American researcher, Martin Moorhead, said a small group of cells near the front of the brain seems to control the timing of some of our actions. These cells tell a person when to awaken , when to sleep and when to seek food. Scientists say there probably are other biological clock cells that control other body activities.
Dr. Moorhead is studying how our biological clocks affect the way we do our work. For example, most of us have great difficulty if we must often change to different work hours.
It can take many days for a human body to accept the major change in work hours. Dr. Moorhead said industrial officials should have a better understanding of biological clocks and how they affect workers. He said such understanding could cut sickness and accidents at work and would help increase a factory’s production.

第九篇 Wonder Webs
Spider webs are more than homes, and they are ingenious traps. And the world’s best web spinner may be the Golden Orb Weaver spider. The female Orb Weaver spins a web of fibers thin enough to be invisible to insect prey, yet tough enough to snare a flying bird without breaking.
The secret of the web’s strength? A type of super-resilient silk called dragline. When the female spider is ready to weave the web’s spokes and frame, she uses her legs to draw the airy thread out through a hollow nozzle in her belly. Dragline is not sticky, so the spider can race back and forth along it to spin the web’s trademark spiral.
Unlike some spiders that weave a new web every day, a Golden Orb Weaver reuses her handiwork until it falls apart, sometimes not for two years. The silky thread is five times stronger than steel by weight and absorbs the force of an impact three times better than Kevlar, a high-strength human-made material used in bullet-proof vests. And thanks to its high tensile strength, or the ability to resist breaking under the pulling force called tension, a single strand can stretch up to 40 percent longer than its original length and snap back as well as new. No human-made fiber even comes close .
It is no wonder manufacturers are clamoring for spider silk. In the consumer pipeline: high-performance fabrics for athletes and stockings that never run. Think parachute cords and suspension bridge cables. A steady supply of spider silk would be worth billions of dollars — but how to produce it？ Harvesting silk on spider farms does not work because the territorial arthropods have a tendency to devour their neighhors.
Now, scientists at the biotechnology company Nexia are spinning artificial silk modeled after Golden Orb dragline. The first step: extract silk-making genes from the spiders. Next, implant the genes into goat egg cells. The nanny goats that grow from the eggs secrete dragline silk proteins in their milk . “The young goats pass

on the silk-making gene without any help from us,” says Nexia president Jeffry Turner. Nexia is still perfecting the spinning process, but they hope artificial spider silk will soon be snagging customers as fast as the real thing snags bugs.

第十篇 Less Is More
It sounds all wrong — drilling holes in a piece of wood to make it more resistant to knocks. But it works because the energy from the blow gets distributed throughout the wood rather than focusing on one weak spot. The discovery should lead to more effective and lighter packaging materials.
Carpenters have known for centuries that some woods are tougher than others. Hickory, for example, was turned into axe handles and cartwheel spokes because it can absorb shocks without breaking. White oak, for example, is much more easily damaged. although it is almost as dense. Julian Vincent at Bathe University and his team were convinced the wood’s internal structure could explain the differences.
Many trees have tubular vessels that run up the trunk and carry water to the leaves. In oak they are large, and arranged in narrow bands, but in hickory they are smaller, and more evenly distributed. The researchers thought this layout might distribute a blow’s energy throughout the wood, soaking up a bigger hit. To test the idea, they drilled holes 0.65 millimetres across into a block of spruce, a wood with no vessels, and found that it withstood a harder knock. Rarely when there were more than about 30 holes per square centimetre did the wood’s performance drop off.
A uniform substance doesn’t cope well with knocks because only a small proportion of the material is actually affected . All the energy from the blow goes towards breaking the material in one or two places, but often the pieces left behind are pristine.
But instead of the energy being concentrated in one place, the holes provide many weak spots that all absorb energy as they break, says Vincent. “You are controlling the places where the wood breaks, and it can then absorb more energy , more safely.”
The researchers believe the principle could be applied to any material — for example, to manufacture lighter and more protective packaging. It could also be used in car bumpers, crash barriers and armour for military vehicles, says Ulrike Wegst, at the Max Plank Institute for Mental Research in Stuttgart. But she emphasizes that you’d need to design the substance with the direction of force in mind. “The direction of loading is crucial,” she says.

第十一篇 China to Help Europe Develop GPS Rival
China is to contribute to a new global satellite navigation system being developed by European nations. The Galileo satellite system will off a more accurate civilian alternative to the Global Positioning System (GPS), operated by the US military. China will provide 230m Euros (USD 259m) in funding and will cooperate with technical, manufacturing and market development. “China will help Galileo to bec

om the major world infrastructure for the growing market for location services,” said Loyola de Palacio, EU transport commissioner. A new center that will coordinate co-operation was also announced by the European Commission, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology not long ago. The China-Europe Global Navigation Satellite System Technical Training and Cooperation Center will be located at Beijing University. China has a substantial satellite launch industry and could potentially help launch the Galileo satellites.
The US has claimed that Galileo could interfere with the US ability to downgrade the GPS service during military conflicts. European officials say this is unfounded and counter that US opposition is due to the commercial challenge Galileo would present to GPS. Galileo will be precise to within a meter, while the civilian GPS service is accurate to around 10 meters.
The Galileo satellite constellation will consist of 27 operational and three reserve satellites orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 23,600 km. The satellites will be strung along three medium-Earth orbits ut 56 degrees inclination to the equator and will provide global coverage. The system should be operational by 2008 and the entire project is expected to cost around 3.2 billion Euros (USD 3.6 billion).
The European Commission has said Galileo will primarily be used for transportation technology, scientific research, land management and disaster monitoring.
Galileo will provide two signals: a standard civilian one and an encrypted , wide-band signal called the Public Regulated Service (PRS). This second signal is designed to withstand localized jamming and will be used by police and military services in Europe. European Commission officials have said China will not be given access to the PRS.
The first Galileo satellite is scheduled to launch late in 2004. Clocks on board the satellite will be synchronized through 20 ground sensors stations, two command centers and 15 uplink stations.
Receivers on the ground will use time signals from the satellites to precisely calculate their location. A “search and rescue” function will also let distress signals be relayed through the constellation of satellites.

第十二篇Smoking Can Increase Depressive Symptoms in Teens
While some teenagers may puff on cigarettes to "self-medicate" against the blues，scientists at the University of Toronto and the University of Montreal have found that smoking may actually increase depressive symptoms in some teens.
“This observational study is one of the few to examine the perceived emotional benefits of smoking among teens,” says lead researcher Michael Chaiton，a research associate at the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit of the University of Toronto．“although cigarettes may appear to have self-medicating effects or to improve mood，in the long term we found that teens who started to smoke reported higher depressive

symptoms.”
As part of the study，some 662 high school teenagers completed up to 20 questionnaires about their use of cigarettes to affect mood．Secondary schools were selected to provide a mix of French and English participants，urban and rural schools，and schools located in high, moderate and low socioeconomic neighbourhoods．
Participants were divided into three groups: never smokers；smokers who did not use cigarettes to self-medicate，improve mood or physical state；smokers who used cigarettes to self-medicate．Depressive symptoms were measured using a scale that asked how felt too tired to do things：had trouble going to sleep or staying asleep；felt unhappy，sad，or depressed；felt hopeless about the future；felt vexed，antsy or tense；and worried too much about things．
"Smokers who used cigarettes as mood improvers had higher risks of elevated depressive symptoms than teens who had never smoked," says co-researcher Jennifer 0’Loughlin，a professor at the University of Montreal Department of Social and Preventive Medicine．"0ur study found that teen smokers who reported emotional benefits from smoking are at higher risk of developing depressive symptoms."
The association between depression and smoking exists principally among teens that use cigarettes to feel better．"It’s important to emphasize that depressive symptom scores were higher among teenagers who reported emotional benefits from smoking after they began to smoke," says Dr．Chaiton．