2014年全国硕士研究生入学统一考试英语(一)试题

As many people hit middle age, they often start to notice that their memory and mental clarity are not what they used to be.

当许多人步入中年时，他们常常开始注意到自己的记忆力和思维清晰度不如从前了。

We suddenly can't remember 1 we put the keys just a moment ago, or an old acquaintance's name, or the name of an old band we used to love.

我们突然记不起1我们刚才把钥匙放在哪里，或者一位老熟人的名字，或者我们曾经深爱的一支旧乐队的名字。

As the brain 2 , we refer to these occurrences as "senior moments.

当大脑2时，我们将这些现象称为"老年时刻"。

3 seemingly innocent, this loss of mental focus can potentially have a(n) 4 impact on our professional, social, and personal 5 .

3看似无害，这种注意力丧失可能会对我们的职业、社交和个人5产生4影响。

Neuroscientists, experts who study the nervous system, are increasingly showing that there's actually a lot that can be done.

神经科学家，即研究神经系统的专家，越来越多地表明实际上有很多事情可以做。

It 6 out that the brain needs exercise in much the same way our muscles do, and the right mental 7 can significantly improve our basic cognitive 8 .

结果表明大脑需要像肌肉一样进行锻炼，而适当的脑力锻炼可以显著提升我们的基本认知功能。

Thinking is essentially a 9 of making connections in the brain.

思考本质上是大脑中建立联系的 9。

To a certain extent, our ability to 10 in making the connections that drive intelligence is inherited.

在某种程度上，我们10在建立驱动智能的联系方面的能力是遗传的。

11 , because these connections are made through effort and practice, scientists believe that intelligence can expand and fluctuate 12 mental effort.

11 ，因为这些联系是通过努力和练习建立的，科学家认为智力可以随着 12精神努力而扩展和波动。

Now, a new Web-based company has taken it a step 13 and developed the first "brain training program" designed to actually help people improve and regain their mental 14 .

现在，一家新的基于网络的公司又向前迈进了一步 13，开发出了首个旨在真正帮助人们提高和恢复其心理 14的“大脑训练程序”。

The Web-based program 15 you to systematically improve your memory and attention skills.

基于网络的程序15帮助你系统地提高记忆和注意力技能。

The program keeps 16 of your progress and provides detailed feedback 17 your performance and improvement.

该程序保存16你的进度并提供详细反馈17你的表现和进步。

Most importantly, it 18 modifies and enhances the games you play to 19 on the strengths you are developing - much like a(n) 20 exercise routine requires you to increase resistance and vary your muscle use.

最重要的是，它18修改并增强你玩的游戏以19你正在培养的优势——就像20锻炼计划要求你增加阻力并变换肌肉使用方式。

In order to "change lives for the better" and reduce "dependency", George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, introduced the "upfront work search" scheme.

为了实现“改善人们的生活”并减少“依赖性”，英国财政大臣乔治·奥斯本推出了“提前求职”计划。

Only if the jobless arrive at the jobcentre with a CV, register for online job search, and start looking for work will they be eligible for benefit - and then they should report weekly rather than fortnightly.

只有失业者带着简历来到就业中心，注册在线求职，并开始找工作，他们才有资格领取福利——而且之后他们应该每周而不是每两周进行一次报到。

What could be more reasonable?

还有什么比这更合理呢？

More apparent reasonableness followed.

更加明显的合理性随之而来。

There will now be a seven-day wait for the jobseeker's allowance.

现在，求职者津贴的申请将需要等待七天。

"Those first few days should be spent looking for work, not looking to sign on," he claimed.

他声称，最初的几天应该用来找工作，而不是去申请津贴。

"We're doing these things because we know they help people stay off benefits and help those on benefits get into work faster.

我们之所以这么做，是因为我们知道这些措施有助于人们不领取福利金，同时帮助正在领取福利金的人更快地找到工作。

Help?

帮助？

Really?

真的吗？

On first hearing, this was the socially concerned chancellor, trying to change lives for the better, complete with "reforms" to an obviously indulgent system that demands too little effort from the newly unemployed to find work, and subsidises laziness.

乍一听，这似乎是一位关心社会的财政大臣，试图通过改革明显过于宽容的制度来改善人们的生活，这个制度对新失业者要求的努力太少，而且补贴了懒惰的行为。

What motivated him, we were to understand, was his zeal for "fundamental fairness" - protecting the taxpayer, controlling spending and ensuring that only the most deserving claimants received their benefits.

我们被告知，促使他这样做的是他对“根本公平”的热忱——保护纳税人，控制开支，并确保只有最值得获得的人才能领取他们的福利金。

Losing a job is hurting: you don't skip down to the jobcentre with a song in your heart, delighted at the prospect of doubling your income from the generous state.

失去工作是一件痛苦的事：你不会哼着歌兴高采烈地跑到就业中心，期待着从慷慨的国家福利中获得双倍收入。

It is financially terrifying, psychologically embarrassing and you know that support is minimal and extraordinarily hard to get.

这在经济上令人恐惧，在心理上令人尴尬，而且你知道得到的支持是极其有限的，而且非常难以获得。

You are now not wanted; you are now excluded from the work environment that offers purpose and structure in your life.

你现在不再被需要了；你已被排除在能为你生活提供意义和结构的工作环境之外。

Worse, the crucial income to feed yourself and your family and pay the bills has disappeared.

更糟糕的是，维持你和家人生活以及支付账单的关键收入已经消失。

Ask anyone newly unemployed what they want and the answer is always: a job.

问问任何刚刚失业的人他们想要什么，答案总是：一份工作。

But in Osborneland, your first instinct is to fall into dependency - permanent dependency if you can get it - supported by a state only too ready to indulge your falsehood.

但在奥斯本的政策下，你的第一反应是陷入依赖——如果可能的话，是永久的依赖——而国家也乐于支持你这种虚假的依赖。

It is as though 20 years of ever-tougher reforms of the job search and benefit administration system never happened.

就好像过去20年里，针对求职和福利管理系统的越来越严格的改革从未发生过一样。

The principle of British welfare is no longer that you can insure yourself against the risk of unemployment and receive unconditional payments if the disaster happens.

英国福利的原则已不再是你可以通过缴纳国民保险费来保障自己免受失业风险，并在灾难发生时无条件获得支付。

Even the very phrase "jobseeker's allowance" is about redefining the unemployed as a "jobseeker" who had no fundamental right to a benefit he or she has earned through making national insurance contributions.

甚至‘求职者津贴’这个说法本身，也是在重新定义失业者为‘求职者’，而他们并没有基于通过缴纳国民保险费所获得的任何基本权利。

Instead, the claimant receives a time-limited "allowance," conditional on actively seeking a job; no entitlement and no insurance, at £71.70 a week, one of the least generous in the EU.

相反，申请人只能获得一个有时间限制的‘津贴’，前提是他们积极寻找工作；这既不是任何权利，也不是任何保险，每周仅71.70英镑，是欧盟国家中最不慷慨的之一。

All around the world, lawyers generate more hostility than the members of any other profession - with the possible exception of journalism.

在全球范围内，律师这个职业比其他任何职业都更容易引发敌意——也许除了新闻业之外。

But there are few places where clients have more grounds for complaint than America.

但很少有地方比美国更能引起客户投诉的。

During the decade before the economic crisis, spending on legal services in America grew twice as fast as inflation.

在经济危机前的十年里，美国在法律服务上的支出增长速度是通货膨胀的两倍。

The best lawyers made skyscrapers-full of money, tempting ever more students to pile into law schools.

最优秀的律师赚取了足以填满摩天大楼的钱，这诱惑着越来越多的学生涌向法学院。

But most law graduates never get a big-firm job.

但大多数法学院毕业生从未获得大型律师事务所的工作。

Many of them instead become the kind of nuisance-lawsuit filer that makes the tort system a costly nightmare.

他们中许多人反而成为了那种制造麻烦诉讼的原告，使侵权法体系变成了昂贵的噩梦。

There are many reasons for this.

造成这种现象的原因有很多。

One is the excessive costs of a legal education.

其中一个原因是法律教育的过高成本。

There is just one path for a lawyer in most American states: a four-year undergraduate degree in some unrelated subject, then a three-year law degree at one of 200 law schools authorized by the American Bar Association and an expensive preparation for the bar exam.

在大多数美国州，律师的职业路径只有一条：先攻读四年制的与法律无关的本科专业，然后在获得美国律师协会授权的200所法学院之一攻读三年制的法律学位，接着还要花费高昂的费用准备律师资格考试。

This leaves today's average law-school graduate with $100,000 of debt on top of undergraduate debts.

这使得如今的普通法学院毕业生在本科债务的基础上，又背上了10万美元的债务。

Law-school debt means that they have to work fearsomely hard.

法学院的债务意味着他们必须非常努力地工作。

Reforming the system would help both lawyers and their customers.

改革这个体系将对律师及其客户都有好处。

Sensible ideas have been around for a long time, but the state-level bodies that govern the profession have been too conservative to implement them.

一些合理的改革想法已经存在了很长时间，但管理这一职业的州级机构却过于保守，未能实施这些想法。

One idea is to allow people to study law as an undergraduate degree.

其中一个想法是允许人们将法律作为本科专业来学习。

Another is to let students sit for the bar after only two years of law school.

另一个想法是让学生在法学院学习两年后就可以参加律师资格考试。

If the bar exam is truly a stern enough test for a would-be lawyer, those who can sit it earlier should be allowed to do so.

如果律师资格考试确实是对一个未来律师足够严格的测试，那么那些可以更早参加考试的人就应该被允许这样做。

Students who do not need the extra training could cut their debt mountain by a third.

不需要额外培训的学生可以将他们的债务山减少三分之一。

The other reason why costs are so high is the restrictive guild-like ownership structure of the business.

成本之所以如此高昂的另一个原因是该行业的限制性类似行会的所有权结构。

Except in the District of Columbia, non-lawyers may not own any share of a law firm.

除了哥伦比亚特区外，非律师不得拥有律师事务所的任何股份。

This keeps fees high and innovation slow.

这使得费用居高不下，创新进展缓慢。

There is pressure for change from within the profession, but opponents of change among the regulators insist that keeping outsiders out of a law firm isolates lawyers from the pressure to make money rather than serve clients ethically.

事实上，法律界内部存在改革的压力，但监管机构中反对改革的人坚持认为，阻止外部人员进入律师事务所，可以使律师免受赚钱而非以符合道德的方式服务客户的压力。

In fact, allowing non-lawyers to own shares in law firms would reduce costs and improve services to customers, by encouraging law firms to use technology and to employ professional managers to focus on improving firms' efficiency.

实际上，允许非律师拥有律师事务所的股份，将通过鼓励律师事务所采用技术并聘请专业经理来提高效率，从而降低成本并改善对客户的服务。

After all, other countries, such as Australia and Britain, have started liberalizing their legal professions.

毕竟，像澳大利亚和英国这样的其他国家已经开始放松其法律行业的管制。

America should follow.

美国也应该跟进。

The US$3-million Fundamental Physics Prize is indeed an interesting experiment, as Alexander Polyakov said when he accepted this year's award in March.

300万美元的基础物理学奖确实是一个有趣的实验，正如亚历山大·波利亚科夫在3月份接受今年奖项时所说。

And it is far from the only one of its type.

而且它远不是唯一一个此类奖项。

As a News Feature article in Nature discusses, a string of lucrative awards for researchers have joined the Nobel Prizes in recent years.

正如《自然》杂志的一篇新闻特写文章所讨论的，近年来一系列丰厚的科研奖项已经加入了诺贝尔奖的行列。

Many, like the Fundamental Physics Prize, are funded from the telephone-number-sized bank accounts of Internet entrepreneurs.

许多奖项，比如基础物理学奖，都是由互联网企业家们从他们电话号码般庞大的银行账户中资助的。

These benefactors have succeeded in their chosen fields, they say, and they want to use their wealth to draw attention to those who have succeeded in science.

这些资助者表示，他们在自己选择的领域取得了成功，现在想用自己的财富来引起人们对科学领域成功者的关注。

What's not to like?

有什么不喜欢的呢？

Quite a lot, according to a handful of scientists quoted in the News Feature.

据《新闻特写》中引用的几位科学家的说法，其实有很多不喜欢的地方。

You cannot buy class, as the old saying goes, and these upstart entrepreneurs cannot buy their prizes the prestige of the Nobels.

俗话说，你买不到品格，而这些新晋企业家也无法用金钱买到诺贝尔奖所拥有的声望。

The new awards are an exercise in self-promotion for those behind them, say scientists.

科学家们表示，这些新奖项对于其背后的支持者来说，只是一次自我宣传的尝试。

They could distort the achievement-based system of peer-review-led research.

它们可能会扭曲基于成就、以同行评审为主导的研究体系。

They could cement the status quo of peer-reviewed research.

它们可能会巩固以同行评审为主导的研究现状。

They do not fund peer-reviewed research.

它们并不资助经过同行评审的研究。

They perpetuate the myth of the lone genius.

它们延续了独行天才的神话。

The goals of the prize-givers seem as scattered as the criticism.

颁奖机构的目标似乎和批评一样分散。

Some want to shock, others to draw people into science, or to better reward those who have made their careers in research.

一些人希望引起轰动，另一些人则希望吸引更多人投身科学，或者更好地奖励那些以科研为职业的人。

As Nature has pointed out before, there are some legitimate concerns about how science prizes - both new and old - are distributed.

正如《自然》之前所指出的，人们对新旧科学奖项的分配方式存在一些合理的担忧。

The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, launched this year, takes an unrepresentative view of what the life sciences include.

今年设立的生命科学突破奖对生命科学所包含的内容采取了一种不具代表性的看法。

But the Nobel Foundation's limit of three recipients per prize, each of whom must still be living, has long been outgrown by the collaborative nature of modern research - as will be demonstrated by the inevitable row over who is ignored when it comes to acknowledging the discovery of the Higgs boson.

但诺贝尔基金会规定每个奖项最多只能有三位获奖者，且每位获奖者都必须仍然在世，这一限制早已无法适应现代研究的协作性质——这一点在承认希格斯玻色子发现时不可避免地引发争议时将得到证明。

The Nobels were, of course, themselves set up by a very rich individual who had decided what he wanted to do with his own money.

当然，诺贝尔奖最初也是由一位非常富有的个人设立的，他决定如何使用自己的资金。

Time, rather than intention, has given them legitimacy.

时间，而非初衷，赋予了它们合法性。

As much as some scientists may complain about the new awards, two things seem clear.

尽管一些科学家可能会对这些新奖项抱怨，但有两件事似乎很清楚。

First, most researchers would accept such a prize if they were offered one.

首先，如果大多数研究人员被提供这样的奖项，他们大概会接受。

Second, it is surely a good thing that the money and attention come to science rather than go elsewhere.

其次，这笔资金和关注投入到科学领域，而不是其他地方，显然是件好事。

It is fair to criticize and question the mechanism - that is the culture of research, after all - but it is the prize-givers' money to do with as they please.

批评和质疑这一机制是合理的——毕竟这本身就是科研文化的一部分——但这是颁奖机构决定如何使用他们自己的资金。

It is wise to take such gifts with gratitude and grace.

以感恩和优雅的态度接受这样的礼物是明智的。

"The Heart of the Matter," the just-released report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), deserves praise for affirming the importance of the humanities and social sciences to the prosperity and security of liberal democracy in America.

《问题的核心》这份由美国艺术与科学学院（AAAS）刚刚发布的报告，值得赞扬，因为它肯定了人文学科和社会科学对美国自由民主制度繁荣与安全的重要性。

Regrettably, however, the report's failure to address the true nature of the crisis facing liberal education may cause more harm than good.

然而令人遗憾的是，该报告未能正视自由教育所面临的真正危机，这可能会弊大于利。

In 2010, leading congressional Democrats and Republicans sent letters to the AAAS asking that it identify actions that could be taken by "federal, state and local governments, universities, foundations, educators, individual benefactors and others" to "maintain national excellence in humanities and social scientific scholarship and education.

2010年，美国国会的民主党与共和党领袖分别致信AAAS，要求其确定联邦、州和地方政府、大学、基金会、教育者、个人捐助者及其他各方可以采取的行动，以保持美国在人文学科和社会科学领域学术与教育的全国领先地位。

In response, the American Academy formed the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences.

作为回应，美国艺术与科学学院成立了人文学科与社会科学委员会。

Among the commission's 51 members are top-tier-university presidents, scholars, lawyers, judges, and business executives, as well as prominent figures from diplomacy, filmmaking, music and journalism.

该委员会的51名成员包括顶尖大学的校长、学者、律师、法官和企业高管，以及来自外交、电影制作、音乐和新闻领域的知名人士。

The goals identified in the report are generally admirable.

报告中提出的目标总体上是值得称赞的。

Because representative government presupposes an informed citizenry, the report supports full literacy; stresses the study of history and government, particularly American history and American government; and encourages the use of new digital technologies.

由于代议制政府预设了一个受过良好教育的公民群体，报告支持全面的读写能力；强调历史和政府课程的学习，特别是美国历史和美国政府；并鼓励使用新的数字技术。

To encourage innovation and competition, the report calls for increased investment in research, the crafting of coherent curricula that improve students' ability to solve problems and communicate effectively in the 21st century, increased funding for teachers and the encouragement of scholars to bring their learning to bear on the great challenges of the day.

为了鼓励创新和竞争，报告呼吁增加对研究的投资，制定连贯的课程体系以提升学生在21世纪解决问题和有效沟通的能力，增加对教师的资金支持，并鼓励学者将所学知识应用于当今的重大挑战。

The report also advocates greater study of foreign languages, international affairs and the expansion of study abroad programs.

报告还提倡加强对外语、国际事务的学习，并扩大出国学习项目。

Unfortunately, despite 2½ years in the making, "The Heart of the Matter" never gets to the heart of the matter: the illiberal nature of liberal education at our leading colleges and universities.

不幸的是，尽管这份报告耗时2½年完成，但《核心问题》（"The Heart of the Matter"）从未触及问题的核心：我们顶尖大学和学院中自由教育的非自由本质。

The commission ignores that for several decades America's colleges and universities have produced graduates who don't know the content and character of liberal education and are thus deprived of its benefits.

该委员会忽视了一个事实，即几十年来，美国的大学和学院培养出来的毕业生并不了解自由教育的内容和本质，因此无法享受其带来的益处。

Sadly, the spirit of inquiry once at home on campus has been replaced by the use of the humanities and social sciences as vehicles for publicizing "progressive," or left-liberal propaganda.

令人遗憾的是，曾经在校园中盛行的探究精神已被人文和社会科学作为宣传"进步"（即左翼自由主义）宣传的工具所取代。

Today, professors routinely treat the progressive interpretation of history and progressive public policy as the proper subject of study while portraying conservative or classical liberal ideas - such as free markets and self-reliance - as falling outside the boundaries of routine, and sometimes legitimate, intellectual investigation.

如今，教授们通常将进步的历史解读和进步的公共政策视为研究的正当主题，而将保守或古典自由主义的观点——例如自由市场和自立——描绘为超出常规、有时甚至是合法的学术研究范围之外的内容。

The AAAS displays great enthusiasm for liberal education.

美国科学促进协会（AAAS）对自由教育表现出极大的热情。

Yet its report may well set back reform by obscuring the depth and breadth of the challenge that Congress asked it to illuminate.

然而，它的报告可能会阻碍改革进程，因为它模糊了国会要求其阐明的这一挑战的深度和广度。