雅思考试阅读全面解析及答案(21)

THE GAP of INGENUITY 2

Ingenuity, as I define it here, consists not only of ideas for new technolo gies like computers or drought-resistant crops but, more fundamentally, of idea s for better institutions and social arrangements, like efficient markets and c ompetent governments.

How much and what kinds of ingenuity a society requires depends on a range of factors, including the society's goals and the circumstances within which it must achieve those goals——whether it has a young population or an aging one, an abundance of natural resources or a scarcity of them, an easy climate or a punishing one, whatever the case may be.

How much and what kinds of ingenuity a society supplies also depends on man y factors, such as the nature of human inventiveness and understanding, the rew ards an economy gives to the producers of useful knowledge, and the strength of political opposition to social and institutional reforms.

A good supply of the right kind of ingenuity is essential, but it isn't, of course, enough by itself. We know that the creation of wealth, for example, de pends not only on an adequate supply of useful ideas but also on the availabili ty of other, more conventional factors of production, like capital and labor. S imilarly, prosperity, stability and justice usually depend on the resolution, o r at least the containment, of major political struggles over wealth and power. Yet within our economics ingenuity often supplants labor, and growth in the st ock of physical plant is usually accompanied by growth in the stock of ingenuit y. And in our political systems, we need great ingenuity to set up institutions that successfully manage struggles over wealth and power. Clearly, our economi c and political processes are intimately entangled with the production and use of ingenuity.

The past century’s countless incremental changes in our societies around t he planet, in our technologies and our interactions with our surrounding natura l environments have accumulated to create a qualitatively new world. Because th

ese changes have accumulated slowly, It’s often hard for us to recognize how p rofound and sweeping they've. They include far larger and denser populations; m uch higher per capita consumption of natural resources; and far better and more widely available technologies for the movement of people, materials, and espec ially information.

In combination, these changes have sharply increased the density, intensity, and pace of our inter actions with each other; they have greatly increased the burden we place on our natural environment; and they have helped shift power f rom national and international institutions to individuals and subgroups, such as political special interests and ethnic factions.

As a result, people in all walks of life-from our political and business le aders to all of us in our day-to-day——must cope with much more complex, urgen t, and often unpredictable circumstances. The management of our relationship wi th this new world requires immense and ever-increasing amounts of social and te chnical ingenuity. As we strive to maintain or increase our prosperity and impr ove the quality of our lives, we must make far more sophisticated decisions, an d in less time, than ever before.

When we enhance the performance of any system, from our cars to the planet' s network of financial institutions, we tend to make it more complex. Many of t he natural systems critical to our well-being, like the global climate and the oceans, are extraordinarily complex to begin with. We often can't predict or ma nage the behavior of complex systems with much precision, because they are ofte n very sensitive to the smallest of changes and perturbations, and their behavi or can flip from one mode to another suddenly and dramatically. In general, as the human-made and natural systems we depend upon become more complex, and as o ur demands on them increase, the institutions and technologies we use to manage them must become more complex too, which further boosts our need for ingenuit y.

The good news, though, is that the last century's stunning changes in our s ocieties and technologies have not just increased our need for ingenuity; they have also produced a huge increase in its supply. The growth and urbanization o f human populations have combined with astonishing new communication and transp ortation technologies to expand interactions among people and produce larger, m

ore integrated, and more efficient markets. These changes have, in turn, vastly accelerated the generation and delivery of useful ideas.

But—and this is the critical "but"——we should not jump to the conclusion that the supply of ingenuity always increases in lockstep with our ingenuity r equirement: While it's true that necessity is often the mother of invention, we can't always rely on the right kind of ingenuity appearing when and where we n eed it. In many cases, the complexity and speed of operation of today's vital e conomic, social, arid ecological systems exceed the human brains grasp. Very fe w of us have more than a rudimentary understanding of how these systems work. T hey remain fraught with countless "unknown unknowns," which makes it hard to su pply the ingenuity we need to solve problems associated with these systems.

In this book, explore a wide range of other factors that will limit our abi lity to supply the ingenuity required in the coming century. For example, many people believe that new communication technologies strengthen democracy and wil l make it easier to find solutions to our societies' collective problems, but t he story is less clear than it seems. The crush of information in our everyday lives is shortening our attention span, limiting the time we have to reflect on critical matters of public policy, and making policy arguments more superficia l.

Modern markets and science are an important part of the story of how we sup ply ingenuity. Markets are critically important, because they give entrepreneur s an incentive to produce knowledge. As for science, although it seems to face no theoretical limits, at least in the foreseeable future, practical constraint s often slow its progress. The cost of scientific research tends to increase as it delves deeper into nature. And science's rate of advance depends on the cha racteristic of the natural phenomena it investigates, simply because some pheno mena are intrinsically harder to understand than others, so the production of u seful new knowledge in these areas can be very slow. Consequently, there is oft en a critical time lag between the recognition between a problem and the delive ry of sufficient ingenuity, in the form of technologies, to solve that problem. Progress in the social sciences is especially slow, for reasons we don't yet u nderstand; but we desperately need better social scientific knowledge to build the sophisticated institutions today’s world demands.

Questions:

Complete each sentence with the appropriate answer, A, B, C, or D

Write the correct answer in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

27 The definition of ingenuity

28 The requirement for ingenuity

29 The creation of social wealth

30 The stability of society

A depends on many factors including climate.

B depends on the management and solution of disputes.

C is not only of technological advance, but more of institutional renovatio n.

D also depends on the availability of some traditional resources.

Question 31-33

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

Write your answers in boxes 31-33 on your answer sheet.

31 What does the author say about the incremental change of the last 100 ye ars?

A It has become a hot scholastic discussion among environmentalists.

B Its significance is often not noticed.

C It has reshaped the natural environments we live in.

D It benefited a much larger population than ever.

32 The combination of changes has made life.

A easier

B faster

C slower

D less sophisticated

33 What does the author say about the natural systems?

A New technologies are being developed to predict change with precision.

B Natural systems are often more sophisticated than other systems.

C Minor alterations may cause natural systems to change dramatically.

D Technological developments have rendered human being more independent of natural systems.

Question 34-40

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Pas sage 3?

In boxes 34-40 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement is true

NO if the statement is false

NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage

34 The demand for ingenuity has been growing during the past 100 years.

35 The ingenuity we have may be inappropriate for solving problems at hand.

36 There are very few who can understand the complex systems of the present world.

37 More information will help us to make better decisions.

38 The next generation will blame the current government for their conduct.

39 Science tends to develop faster in certain areas than others.

40 Social science develops especially slowly because it is not as important as natural science.

参考译文：

创新过程的空白

创造，就像笔者在这里定义的一样，不仅仅指那些关于计算机、抗早作物之类的新科技的构想，更重要的是指那些关于优化制度和社会安排的思想，例如高效市场、法定政府等。

一个社会需要多少创造及哪种创造，取决于多种因素，包括社会目标和达成这些社会目标时所处的社会环境一一无论它是年轻型社会还是老龄化社会：是自然物资丰富或是物资匮乏;是气候宜人或气候恶劣。

一个社会能提供多少或何种创造，同样取决于众多因素，例如人类创造和理解的本性、有用知识的制造者所获得的经济回报、以及社会制度改革的政治反对派的力量等。

充足优质的创造非常重要，当然这还不够。例如，我们知道财富的创造不仅取决于充足的、有价值的创意，还需要更多其他传统生产因素，如资本和劳动力。同样，繁荣、稳定、公正通常取决于对财富和权力的重大政治斗争的决议,或者至少是针对它们的遏制政策。然而目前，我们的经济创意常常将劳动力排挤在外，随着创意的增长，机器设备实体通常也随之增长。在现有的政治体系中，我们需要更多的创意来建设社会制度,从而成功地管控财富和权力斗争。很明显，我们的经济政治进程正紧密地与这些创意产物结合在一起。

过去的一个世纪中，在我们的整个社会范围、科技领域和我们与周围自然环境的互动中产生的不计其数并不断增加的变化，己经积累到了足以创造一个高品质的新世界。由于这些变化是慢慢积累起来的，所以我们通常很难认识到它们所影响的深度与广度。这些变化波及了更广泛、更密集的人群，它们使得人均自然资源消耗变得更高，并提供了更有效、更广泛的交通运输技术，尤其是信息传播技术。

总的来说，这些变化已经大大增加了我们彼此互动的深度、强度和速度：但也显著增加了人类对自然环境造成的负担;同时也促使人类社会将权力从国家和国际组织转移到个人和群体组织中，例如特殊政治利益和民族派别。

因此，来自不同领域的人们——从政治经济领袖到我们日常生活中的普通人——必须应对更为复杂、紧迫、甚至不可预料的社会环境。我们需要大量的、不断增长的社会和技

术创新来处理我们与新世界的关系。当人类努力保持或增强社会繁荣、提高生活质量时，我们必须在比以往更短的时间内做出更精确的决策。

从汽车到环球金融网络，我们再提升任何一个体系的效能时，都会不由自主地把它复杂化。人类赖以生存的自然环境体系通常也是相当复杂的，例如全球气候和海洋。由于这些复杂体系对微小扰动极其敏感，系统表现可以从一种模式急剧切换到另一种模式，所以人类很难精确预测它们的各种变化。通常，当我们赖以生存的人造体系和自然体系越来越复杂时，当我们对这些生存体系的要求越来越多时，我们用来控制这些体系的制度和科技也会越来越复杂，而这则会进一步增强我们对创意的需求。

好消息是，在社会与技术发生巨大变革的上个世纪中，我们不进增加了对创意的需求，也创造出了大量的创意.随着人口的增加、城市化进程的加速，新的通讯和物流技术也迅速增长，这大大拓展了人与人之间的交流，并催生了更广泛、更综合、更高效的市场：反过来，这些变化在很大程度上也加速了这个创意时代的思潮解放。

但是——用批判的眼光来看——我们不能直接得出结论说，我们的创意能一直跟上需求的脚步：虽然说需求是创造之母，但我们不能总指望在我们有需要的时候，恰好就有相应的创造产生。今天，在许多情况中，经济、社会、生态系统运转的复杂性和速度，都远远超出了人类大脑的应变范围。大部分人对这些系统的运转原理都知之甚少，人们仍然充满了数不胜数的“未知的未知”，这些未知使得人们很难创造出充足的创意来解决生活体系中的种种问题。

本书中，笔者研究分析了那些可能在新世纪中制约我们设计创意能力的各种因素。例如，许多人认为新的信息技术增强了社会民主性,并使得人们解决社会群体事件变得更容易，但事实似乎并非如此.日常生活中的信息拥塞反而分散了我们的注意力，减少了人们对公共政治等重要事件的思考时间，并使得政治观点更加表面化。

现代市场和科学是我们创意设计的重要组成部分。市场的重要性在于，它为企业家创造知识提供了经济动力。对于科学来说，尽管似乎没什么理论限制，但在实践环节上的制约会减缓科学的实现进程，至少在今后一段时间内都会如此。随着科学研究的深入，其成本也在逐渐上升。同时，科学的进步速率取决于人们研究的自然现象的特征，有些现象或领域就是比其他的现象或领域难,所以这些领域中的知识进步会非常缓慢。因此，在人们发现问题到提供解决问题的创意或技术之间，通常会有一段很长的滞后期。由于某些未知的原因，社会科学的进步尤其缓慢：但我们迫切需要更好的社会科学理论，以建立起符合现代世界需求的庞大制度体系。

雅思阅读试卷附完整参考答案

Section I Words A.Match the words with the same meaning.W rite down the letters on you answer sheet. (1(1’’*6) 1.epidermic 2.motivate 3.assume 4.appealing 5.controversy 6expertise A.skill or knowledge in a particular area B.dispute,argument C.attractive D.an outbreak of a contagious disease that spreads rapidly and widely E.to provide with an incentive;impel . F.to take for granted,suppose B.Fill in the blanks with proper forms of words given in the box,one word can be used more than once.(1(1’’*10) evolve prepare propose minimum peer through cheat weep address exploit except 1.Not surprisingly,his was not well received,even though it seemed to agree with the scientific information available at the time.. 2.The little girl with disappointment when she learned that her favourite Barbie Dolls were sold out. 3.The price is her,she refuses to lower it any further. 4.Apes,monkeys and many other primates have fairly elaborate systems of calls for communicating with other members of their species. 5.Some melodies are quite manipulative,working on our emotions very effectively,and composers have often this to the full. 6.I realized I’d been when I saw the painting on sale for half the price I paid for it. 7.To this problem,Counter Intelligence built a kitchen of its own and started making gagets to fill it with. 8.Most birds don’t have a good sense of smell,but fish-eaters such as petrels and shearwaters are significant. 9.Why bother a clear door,when you can put a camera in the oven to broadcast snapshots of the activities in the oven to a screen in another room? 10.Exploration will allow us to make suitable for dealing with any dangers that we might face,and we may be able to find physical resources such as minerals. SectionⅡ.Translation A.Translate the following sentences into English.(3(3’’*5) 1.Despite the hardship he encountered,Mark never (放弃对知识的追求) 2.由于缺乏对这种病的了解，许多人依然认为HIV受害者都是自作自受。(owing to; ignorance)

雅思阅读预测真题库4参考答案

Animal’s Self-Medicatin TRUE/NOT GIVEN/FALSE/TRUE pitch/terpenses/alkaloids/detoxity/hooks G/D/E/C Development of Public Management Theory BE/AD/AB/AC/A/B/D/C/B ---------------------------------------------17 Koalas C/C/A/B/A YES/NO/NO/NOT GIVEN/YES/NOT GIVEN/YES A Coastal Archaeology of Britain C/D/A TRUE/FALSE/TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN/TRUE/TRUE/ADF

Communication Styles and Conflict iii/vii/i/iv/ix/viii/v/ii TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN/TRUE/TRUE B Talc Powder Applied on Food and Agricultural Industries B/B/A/A/C/B 20/foam/waste water/harmful/biodegrade/droplet(s)/lamination(packing)/gr ape grower(s) Human Navigation-finding our way B / C / A / C / B / C / D / A / TRUE / NOT GIVEN / TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN Plant Scents B/A/F/C TRUE/NOT GIVEN/TRUE/FALSE B/B/C/D/A

雅思阅读模拟试题及答案解析(2)

雅思阅读模拟试题及答案解析（2）

Next Year Marks the EU's 50th Anniversary of the Treaty A. After a period of introversion and stunned self-disbelief，continental European governments will recover their enthusiasm for pan-European institution-building in . Whether the European public will welcome a return to what voters in two countries had rejected so short a time before is another matter. B. There are several reasons for Europe’s recovering self-confidence. For years European economies had been lagging dismally behind America (to say nothing of Asia)， but in the large continental economies had one of their best years for a decade， briefly outstripping America in terms of growth. Since politics often reacts to economic change with a lag，’s improvement in economic growth will have its impact in ， though the recovery may be ebbing by then. C. The coming year also marks a particular point in a political cycle so regular that it almost seems to amount to a natural law. Every four or five years， European countries take a large stride towards further integration by signing a new treaty： the Maastricht treaty in 1992， the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997， the Treaty of Nice in . And in they were supposed to ratify a European constitution， laying the ground for yet more integration—until the calm rhythm was rudely shattered by French and Dutch voters. But the political impetus to sign something every four or five years has only been interrupted，not immobilised， by this setback. D. In the European Union marks the 50th anniversary of another treaty—the Treaty of Rome， its founding charter. Government leaders have already agreed to celebrate it ceremoniously， restating their commitment to “ever closer union” and the basic ideals of European unity. By itself， and in normal circumstances， the EU’s 50th-birthday greeting to itself would be fairly meaningless， a routine expression of European good fellowship. But it does not take a Machiavelli to spot that once governments have signed the declaration (and it seems unlikely anyone would be so uncollegiate as to veto

雅思英语阅读练习题及答案12

雅思英语阅读练习题及答案：第十二篇雅思英语阅读练习题及答案：第十二篇 ★Next Year Marks the EU's 50th Anniversary of the Treaty A. After a period of introversion and stunned self-disbelief, continental European governments will recover their enthusiasm for pan-European institution-building in 2007. Whether the European public will welcome a return to what voters in two countries had rejected so short a time before is another matter. B. There are several reasons for Europe’s recovering self-confidence. For years European economies had been lagging dismally behind America (to say nothing of Asia), but in 2006 the large continental economies had one of their best years for a decade, briefly outstripping America in terms of growth. Since politics often reacts to economic change with a lag, 2006’s improvement in economic growth will have its impact in 2007, though the recovery may be ebbing by then. C. The coming year also marks a particular point in a political cycle so regular that it almost seems to amount to a natural law. Every four or five years, European countries take a large stride towards further integration by signing a new treaty: the Maastricht treaty in 1992, the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997, the Treaty of Nice in 2001. And in 2005 they were supposed to ratify a European constitution, laying the ground for

2015年雅思阅读模拟试题及答案解析三

Time to cool it 1 REFRIGERATORS are the epitome of clunky technology： solid， reliable and just a little bit dull. They have not changed much over the past century， but then they have not needed to. They are based on a robust and effective idea--draw heat from the thing you want to cool by evaporating a liquid next to it， and then dump that heat by pumping the vapour elsewhere and condensing it. This method of pumping heat from one place to another served mankind well when refrigerators' main jobs were preserving food and， as air conditioners， cooling buildings. Today's high-tech world， however， demands high-tech refrigeration. Heat pumps are no longer up to the job. The search is on for something to replace them. 2 One set of candidates are known as paraelectric materials. These act like batteries when they undergo a temperature change： attach electrodes to them and they generate a current. This effect is used in infra-red cameras. An array of tiny pieces of paraelectric material can sense the heat radiated by， for example， a person， and the pattern of the array's electrical outputs can then be used to construct an image. But until recently no one had bothered much with the inverse of this process. That inverse exists， however. Apply an appropriate current to a paraelectric material and it will cool down. 3 Someone who is looking at this inverse effect is Alex Mischenko， of Cambridge University. Using commercially available paraelectric film， he and his colleagues have generated temperature drops five times bigger than any previously recorded. That may be enough to change the phenomenon from a laboratory curiosity to something with commercial applications. 4 As to what those applications might be， Dr Mischenko is still a little hazy. He has， nevertheless， set up a company to pursue them. He foresees putting his discovery to use in more efficient domestic fridges and air conditioners. The real money， though， may be in cooling computers. 5 Gadgets containing microprocessors have been getting hotter for a long time. One consequence of Moore's Law， which describes the doubling of the number of transistors on a chip every 18 months， is that the amount of heat produced doubles as well. In fact， it more than doubles， because besides increasing in number，the components are getting faster. Heat is released every time a logical operation is performed inside a microprocessor， so the faster the processor is， the more heat it generates. Doubling the frequency quadruples the heat output. And the frequency has doubled a lot. The first Pentium chips sold by Dr Moore's company，Intel， in 1993， ran at 60m cycles a second. The Pentium 4--the last "single-core" desktop processor--clocked up 3.2 billion cycles a second. 6 Disposing of this heat is a big obstruction to further miniaturisation and higher speeds. The innards of a desktop computer commonly hit 80℃. At 85℃， they

雅思阅读模拟试题精选

雅思阅读模拟试题精选 1. Washing， brushing and varnishing fossils — all standard conservation treatments used by many fossil hunters and museum curators alike —vastly reduces the chances of recovering ancient DNA. 2. Instead， excavators should be handling at least some of their bounty with gloves， and freezing samples as they are found， dirt and all， concludes a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today. 3. Although many palaeontologists know anecdotally that this is the best way to up the odds of extracting good DNA， Eva-Maria Geigl of the Jacques Monod Institute in Paris， France， and her colleagues have now shown just how important conservation practices can be. This information， they say， needs to be hammered home among the

2019雅思阅读考试真题(19)

2019年雅思IELTS考试备考资料模拟试题及答案14 The nervous system of vertebrates is characterized by a hollow, dorsal nerve cord that ends in the head region as an enlargement, the brain. Even in its most primitive form this cord and its attached nerves are the result of evolutionary specialization, and their further evolution from lower to higher vertebrate classes is a process that is far from fully understood. Nevertheless, the basic arrangements are similar in all vertebrates, and the study of lower animals gives insight into the form and structure of the nervous system of higher animals. Moreover, for any species, the study of the embryological development of the nervous system is indispensable for an understanding of adult morphology. In any vertebrate two chief parts of the nervous system may be distinguished. These are the central nervous system (the nerve cord mentions above), consisting of the brain and spinal cord, and the peripheral nervous system, consisting of the cranial, spinal, and peripheral nerves, together with their motor and sensory endings. The term "autonomic nervous system" refers to the parts of the central and peripheral systems that supply and regulate the activity of cardiac muscle, smooth muscle, and many glands. The nervous system is composed of many millions of nerve and glial cells, together with blood vessels and a small amount of connective tissue. The nerve cells, or "neurons", are characterized by many processes and are specialized in that they exhibit to a great degree the phenomena of irritability and conductivity. The glial cells of the central nervous system are supporting cells collectively termed

雅思阅读预测真题库1参考答案

Flood C/B/F/A/E/D Mississippi/London/Netherlands/Berlin/LosAngeles B/D Texting the Television ii/vi/vii/i/v/ix A/D/C/D/E/A/C/F Company Innovation F/C/G/B/F/E T/NG/F/T C/A/D Rainwater harvesting Corpproduction/sugar-cane platations/Three wells/1998/Roofs of houses/storage tanks NOT GIVEN/YES/NO/YES/YES/NO/NOT GIVEN/NO Design Wobby Mats And Foot health TRUE/FALSE/TRUE/TRUE/NOT GIVEN C/B/A anatomy/stress/blood pressure/resistance/pathway

Tea and Industrial Revolution vi/v/ix/i/ii/iv/vii NG/T/F/F/NG/T Seed Hunters drugs and crops/extinction /pioneers /Sir Joseph Banks /underground vaults TRUE /NOT GIVEN /TRUE /TRUE /FALSE /TRUE In any order A food / B fuel The Power of Placebo A/G/B/H/F/A/D/C F/NG/T/T/F Animal Minds:Parrot Alex NG/NG/F/T/T/F particularly chosen/chimpanzees/100 English words/avian cognition/color/wrong pronunciation/teenager Compliance or Noncompliance for Children B/C/C/A/D/F/D/E/A NO/YES/YES/YES/NOT GIVEN

2019年雅思考试阅读理解模拟练习试题及答案

2019年雅思考试阅读理解模拟练习试题及答案A. When Denis Hennequin took over as the European boss of McDonald’s in January 2004，the world’s biggest restaurant chain was showing signs of recovery in America and Australia，but sales in Europe were sluggish or declining.One exception was France，where Mr Hennequin had done a sterling job as head of the group’s French subsidiary to sell more Big Macs to his compatriots.His task was to replicate this success in all 41 of the European countries where anti- globalisers’favourite enemy operates. B. So far Mr Hennequin is doing https://www.360docs.net/doc/d87691096.html,st year European sales increased by 5.8%and the number of customers by 3.4%， the best annual results in nearly 15 years.Europe accounted for 36%of the group’s profits and for 28%of its sales.December was an especially good month as customers took to seasonal menu offerings in France and Britain，and to a promotion in Germany based on the game of Monopoly. C Mr Hennequin’s recipe for revival is to be more open about his company’s operations，to be“locally relevant”，and to improve the experience of visiting his 6，400 restaurants.McDonald’s is blamed for making people fat，exploiting workers，treating animals cruelly，polluting the environment and simply for being American.Mr Hennequin says

雅思英语阅读练习题及答案

雅思英语阅读练习题及答案：第一篇内容摘要：The failure of a high-profile cholesterol drug has thrown a spotlight on the complicated machinery that regulates cholesterol levels. ★Why did a promising heart drug fail? Doomed drug highlights complications of meddling with cholesterol. 1. The failure of a high-profile cholesterol drug has thrown a spotlight on the complicated machinery that regulates cholesterol levels. But many researchers remain confident that drugs to boost levels of 'good' cholesterol are still one of the most promising means to combat spiralling heart disease. 2. Drug company Pfizer announced on 2 December that it was cancelling all clinical trials of torcetrapib, a drug designed to raise heart-protective high-density lipoproteins (HDLs). In a trial of 15000 patients, a safety board found that more people died or suffered cardiovascular problems after taking the drug plus a cholesterol-lowering statin than those in a control group who took the statin alone. 3. The news came as a kick in the teeth to many cardiologists because earlier tests in animals and people suggested it would lower rates of cardiovascular disease. "There have been no red flags to my knowledge," says John Chapman, a specialist in lipoproteins and atherosclerosis at the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM) in Paris who has also studied torcetrapib. "This cancellation came as a complete shock." 4. Torcetrapib is one of the most advanced of a new breed of drugs designed to raise levels of HDLs, which ferry cholesterol out of artery-clogging plaques to the liver for removal from the body. Specifically, torcetrapib blocks a protein called cholesterol ester transfer protein (CETP), which normally transfers the cholesterol from high-density lipoproteins to low density, plaque-promoting ones. Statins, in contrast, mainly work by lowering the 'bad' low-density lipoproteins. Under pressure 5. Researchers are now trying to work out why and how the drug backfired, something that will not become clear until the clinical details are released by Pfizer. One hint lies in evidence from earlier trials that it slightly raises blood pressure in some patients. It was thought that this mild problem would be offset by the heart benefits of the drug. But it is possible that it actually proved fatal in some patients who already suffered high blood pressure. If blood pressure is the explanation, it would actually be good news for drug developers because it suggests that the problems are specific to this compound. Other prototype drugs that are being developed to block CETP work in a slightly different way and might not suffer the same downfall. 6. But it is also possible that the whole idea of blocking CETP is flawed, says Moti Kashyap, who directs atherosclerosis research at the VA Medical Center in Long Beach, California. When HDLs excrete cholesterol in the liver, they actually rely on LDLs for part of this process. So inhibiting CETP, which prevents the transfer of cholesterol from HDL to LDL, might actually cause an abnormal and irreversible

雅思阅读模拟试题及答案解析(4)

雅思阅读模拟试题及答案解析（4）

Selling Digital Music without Copy-protection Makes Sense A. It was uncharacteristically low-key for the industry’s greatest showman. But the essay published this week by Steve Jobs， the boss of Apple，on his firm’s website under the unassuming title “Thoughts on Music” has nonetheless provoked a vigorous debate about the future of digital music，which Apple dominates with its iPod music-player and iTunes music-store. At issue is “digital rights management” (DRM)—the technology guarding downloaded music against theft. Since there is no common standard for DRM， it also has the side-effect that songs purchased for one type of music-player may not work on another. Apple’s DRM system， called FairPlay， is the most widespread. So it came as a surprise when Mr. Jobs called for DRM for digital music to be abolished. B. This is a change of tack for Apple. It has come under fire from European regulators who claim that its refusal to license FairPlay to other firms has “locked in” customers. Since music from the iTunes store cannot be played on non-iPod music-players (at least not without a lot of fiddling)， any iTunes buyer will be deterred from switching to a device made by a rival firm， such as Sony or Microsoft. When French lawmakers drafted a bill last year compelling Apple to open up FairPlay to rivals， the company warned of “state-sponsored piracy”. Only DRM， it implied， could keep the pirates at bay. C. This week Mr. Jobs gave another explanation for his former defence of DRM： the record companies made him do it. They would make their music available to the iTunes store only if Apple agreed to protect it using DRM. They can still withdraw their catalogues if the DRM system is compromised. Apple cannot license FairPlay to others， says Mr Jobs， because it would depend on them to produce security fixes promptly. All DRM does is restrict consumer choice and provide a barrier to entry， says Mr Jobs； without it there would be far more stores and players， and far more innovation. So， he suggests， why not do away with DRM and sell music unprotected？“This is