Section II Reading Comprehension

　　Part A

　　Directions:

　　Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. (40 points)

　　Text 1

　　The consequences of heavy drinking are well documented: failing health, broken marriages, regrettable late-night phone calls. But according to Gregory Luzaich's calculations, there can be a downside to modest drinking, too—though one that damages the wallet, not the liver.

　　The Pek Wine Steward prevents wine from spoiling by injecting argon, an inert gas, into the bottle before sealing it airtight with silicon. Mr. Luzaich, a mechanical engineer in Windsor, Calif. —in the Sonoma County wine country—first tallied the costs of his reasonable consumption in October 2001.“I'd like to come home in the evening and have a glass of wine with dinner,” he said. “My wife doesn't drink very much, so the bottle wouldn't get consumed. And maybe I would forget about it the next day, and I'd check back a day or two later, and the wine would be spoiled.” That meant he was wasting most of a $15 to $20 bottle of wine, dozens of times a year.

　　A check of the wine-preservation gadgets on the market left Mr. Luzaich dissatisfied. High-end wine cabinets cost thousands of dollars—a huge investment for a glass-a-day drinker. Affordable preservers, meanwhile, didn't quite perform to Mr. Luzaich's liking; he thought they allowed too much oxidation, which degrades the taste of a wine.

　　The solution, he decided, was a better gas. Many preservers pumped nitrogen into an opened bottle to slow a wine's decline, even though oenological literature suggested that argon was more effective. So when he began designing the Pek Wine Steward, a metal cone into which a wine bottle is inserted, Mr. Luzaich found that his main challenge was to figure out how best to introduce the argon.

　　He spent months fine-tuning a gas injection system. “We used computational fluid dynamics to model the gas flow, ” Mr. Luzaich said, referring to a computer-analysis technique that measures how smoothly particles are flowing. The goal was to create an injector that could swap a bottle's oxygen atoms for argon atoms; argon is an inert gas, and thus unlikely to harm a nice Chianti.

　　Mr. Luzaich, who had previously designed medical and telecommunications products, also worked on creating an airtight seal, to secure the bottle after the argon was injected. He experimented with several substances, from neoprene to a visco-elastic polymer (which he dismissed as “too gooey”), before settling on a food-grade silicon.

　　To save wine, a bottle is placed inside the Pek Wine Steward, the top is closed, and a trigger is pulled for 5 to 10 seconds, depending on how much wine remains. When the trigger is released, the bottle is sealed automatically, preserving the wine for a week or more, the company says. “We wanted to make it very easy for the consumer, ” Mr. Luzaich said. “It's basically mindless.”

　　The device, which resembles a high-tech thermos, first became available to consumers in March 2004, and 8, 000 to 10, 000 have been sold, primarily through catalogs like those of The Wine Enthusiast and Hammacher Schlemmer. The base model sells for $99; a deluxe model, which also includes a thermoelectric cooler, is $199.

　　21.According to Gregory Luzaich, the disadvantage of modest drinking is ______.

　　A.damaging the liver

　　B.costing much

　　C.breaking marriages

　　D.spoiling the wine

　　22.The word “tallied” (Line 3, Para. 2) probably means ______.

　　A.calculated

　　B.corresponded to

　　C.listed

　　D.gave

　　23.According to the text, the “Pek Wine Steward” is ______.

　　A.a metal cone

　　B.a thermoelectric cooler

　　C.a gas injector

　　D.a wine preserver

　　24.Mr. Luzaich created the seal to prevent the wine from declining with ______.

　　A.neoprene

　　B.visco-elastic polymer

　　C.silicon

　　D.argon

　　25.Mr. Luzaich's attitude to the automatic sealing is ______.

　　A.opposition

　　B.suspicion

　　C.approval

　　D.indifference

　　Text 2

　　In Don Juan Lord Byron wrote, "Sweet is revenge—especially to women." But a study released on Wednesday, supported by magnetic resonance imaging, suggests that men may be the more natural avengers.

　　In the study, when male subjects witnessed people they perceived as bad guys being stroke by a mild electrical shock, their M.R.I. scans lit up in primitive brain areas associated with reward. Their brains' empathy centers remained dull. Women watching the punishment, in contrast, showed no response in centers associated with pleasure. Even though they also said they did not like the bad guys, their empathy centers still quietly gloved.

　　The study seems to show for the first time in physical terms what many people probably assume they already know: that women are generally more empathetic than men, and that men, and that men take great pleasure in seeing revenge exacted. Men "expressed more desire for revenge and seemed to feel satisfaction when unfair people were given what they perceived as deserved physical punishment," said Dr. Tania Singer, the lead researcher, of the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience at University College London. But far from condemning the male impulse for retribution, Dr. Singer said it had an important social function: "This type of behavior has probably been crucial in the evolution of society as the majority of people in a group are motivated to punish those who cheat on the rest."

　　The study is part of a growing body of research that is attempting to better understand behavior and emotions by observing simultaneous physiological changes in the brain, a technique now attainable through imaging. "Imaging is still in its early days but we are transitioning from a descriptive to a more mechanistic type of study," said Dr. Klaas Enno Stephan, a co-author of the paper.

　　Dr. Singer's team was simply trying to see if the study subjects' degree of empathy correlated with how much they liked or disliked the person being punished. They had not set out to look into sex differences. To cultivate personal likes and dislikes in their 32 volunteers, they asked them to play a complex money strategy game, where both members of a pair would profit if both behaved cooperatively. The ranks of volunteers were infiltrated by actors told to play selfishly. Volunteers came quickly to "very much like" the partners who were cooperative, while disliking those who hided rewards, Dr. Stephan said. Effectively conditioned to like and dislike their game-playing partners, the 32 subjects were placed in scanners and asked to watch the various partners receive electrical shocks. On scans, both men and women seemed to feel the pain of partners they liked. But the real surprise came during scans when the subjects viewed the partners they disliked being shocked. "When women saw the shock, they still had an empathetic response, even though it was reduced," Dr. Stephan said. "The men had none at all." Furthermore, researchers found that the brain's pleasure centers lit up in males when just punishment was meted out.

　　The researchers cautioned that it was not clear if men and women are born with divergent responses to revenge or if their social experiences generate the responses. Dr. Singer said larger studies were needed to see if differing responses would be seen in cases involving revenge that did not involve pain. Still, she added, "This investigation would seem to indicate there is a predominant role for men in maintaining justice and issuing punishment."

　　26. Lord Byron's words mean .

　　A. Women are crueler than men

　　B. Revenge on women is sweeter

　　C. Women feel sweeter with revenge than men

　　D. Women love to revenge

　　27. According to the text, Dr. Singer's attitude to male revenge impulse is .

　　A. sympathetic

　　B. detached

　　C. positive

　　D. negative

　　28. According to the text, the study is originally aimed .

　　A. to show sex differences on revenge

　　B. to better understand human's behavior and emotions

　　C. to cultivate personal likes and dislikes

　　D. to see if the degree of empathy is connected with personal likes and dislikes

　　29. The word "infiltrated" (Line 5, Para. 5) probably means .

　　A. acted

　　B. mixed

　　C. taught

　　D. filtrated

　　30. Dr. Singer thinks men are more suitable to maintain justice and issue punishment than women because .

　　A. men's brain's empathy centers remained dull when punishment was executed

　　B. women's pleasure centers were lit up with punishment implemented

　　C. men have no response when seeing punishment executed

　　D. men had different experiences from women