考博英语模拟试题与参考解答及解析1.docVIP

考博英语模拟试题 Part I Listening Comprehension(15 points) (略) Part II Reading Comprehension (40 % ) Directions: There are 4 reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each or them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice and then mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet. Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following passage: Eight times within the past million years, something in the Earths climatic equation has changed, allowing snow in the mountains and the northern latitudes to accumulate from one season to the next instead of melting away. Each time, the enormous ice sheets resulting from this continual buildup lasted tens of thousands of years until the end of each particular glacial cycle brought a warmer climate. Scientists speculated that these glacial cycles were ultimately driven by astronomical factor: slow, cyclic changes in the eccentricity of the Earths orbit and in the tilt and orientation of its spin axis. But up until around 30 years ago, the lack of an independent record of ice-age timing made the hypothesis untreatable. Then in the early 1950s Emirian produced the first complete record of the waxwings and awnings of first glaciations. It came from a seemingly odd place, the seafloor. Single-cell marine organisms called foraminifera house themselves in shells made from calcium carbonate. When the foraminifera die, sink to the bottom, and become part of seafloor sediments, the carbonate of their shells preserves certain characteristics of the seawater they inhabited. In particular, the ratio of a heavy isotope of oxygen (oxygen- 18) to ordinary oxygen (oxygen - 16) in the carbonate preserves the ratio of the two oxygen’s in water molecules. It is now understood that the ratio of oxygen isotopes reflects the proportion of the worlds water locked up in glaciers and ice sheets. A kind of meteorological distillation accounts for the link. Water mol