职称英语理工类B级阅读理解文章33篇Word格式.docx

1、Three years ago, the company introduced the Think City two-seater car and a golf cart called the THINK or Think Neighhor6. It hoped to sell 5,000 cars each year and 10,000 carts. But a lack of demand means only about 1,000 of the cars have been produced, and less than 1,700 carts have been sold so f

2、ar in 2002. “The bottom line7 is we dont believe that this is the future of environment transport for the mass market,” Tim Holmes of Ford Europe said on Friday. “We feel we have given electric our best shot8.” The Think City has a range of only about 53 miles and up to a six-hour battery recharge t

3、ime. General Motors EVI electric vehicle also had a limited range, of about 100 miles. The very expensive batteries also mean electric cars cost much more than petrol-powered alternatives. An electric Toyota9 RAV4 EV vehicle costs over $42,000 in the US, compared with just $17,000 for the petrol ver

4、sion. Toyota and Nissan10 are now the only major auto manufacturers to produce electric vehicles. “There is a feeling that battery electric has been given its chance. Ford now has to move on with its hybrid program11, and that is what we will be judging them on,” Roger Higman, a senior transport cam

5、paigner at UK Friends of the Earth, told the Environment News Service. Hybrid cars introduced by Toyota and Honda in the past few years have sold well. Hybrid engines offer greater mileage than petrol-only engines, and the batteries recharge themselves. Ford says it thinks such vehicles will help it

6、 meet planned new guidelines12 on vehicle emissions13 in the US. However t it is not yet clear exactly what those guidelines will permit. In June, General Motors and Daimler Chrysler14 won a court injunction, delaying by two years Californian legislation requiring car-makers to offer 100,000 zero-em

7、ission and other low-emission vehicles in the state by 2003. Car manufacturers hope the legislation will be rewritten to allow for more low-emission, rather than zero-emission, vehicles.第二篇 World Crude Oil Production May Peak a Decade Earlier Than Some Predict In a finding that may speed efforts to

8、conserve oil, scientists in Kuwait predict that world conventional crude oil production will peak in 2014. This prediction is almost a decade earlier than some other predictionsTheir study is in ACS EnergyFuels1 Ibrahim Nashawi and colleagues point out that rapid growth in global oil consumption has

9、 sparked a growing interest in predicting peak oilPeak oil is the point where oil production reaches a maximum and then declines. Scientists have developed several models to forecast this point, and some put the date at 2020 or later. One of the most famous forecast models is called the Hubbert mode

10、l2. It assumes that global oil production will follow a bell shaped curve3. A related concept is that4 of Peak Oil. The term Peal Oil indicates the moment in which world wide production Will peak, afterwards to start on irreversible decline The Hubbert model accurately predicted that oil production

11、would peak in the United States in 1970. The model has since gained in popularity and has been used to forecast oil production worldwide However, recent studies show that the model is insufficient to account for5 more complex oil production cycles of some countriesThose cycles can be heavily influen

12、ced by technology changes, politics, and other factors, the scientists say. The new study describes development of a new version of the Hubbert model that provides a more realistic and accurate oil production forecastUsing the new model, the scientists evaluated the oil production trends of 47 major

13、 oil-producing countries, which supply most of the worlds conventional crude oil6 They estimated that worldwide conventional crude oil production will peak in 2014, years earlier than anticipated. The scientists also showed that the worlds oil reserves7 arebeing reduced at a rate of 2.1 percent a ye

14、ar. The new model could help inform energy-related decisions and public policy debate, they suggest.第三篇 Citizen Scientists （C级） Understanding how nature responds to climate change will require monitoring key life cycle event flowering, the appearance of leaves, the first frog calls of the spring all

15、 around the world. But ecologists cant be everywhere so theyre turning to non-scientists, sometimes called citizen scientists, for help. Climate scientists are not present everywhere. Because there are so many places in the world and not enough scientists to observe all of them, theyre asking for yo

16、ur help in observing signs of climate change across the world. The citizen scientist movement encourages ordinary people to observe a very specific research interest birds, trees, flowers budding, etc. and send their observations to a giant database to be observed by professional scientists. This he

17、lps a small number of scientists track a large amount of data that they would never be able to gather on their own. Much like citizen journalists helping large publications cover a hyper-local beat, citizen scientists are ready for the conditions where they live. All thats needed to become one is a

18、few minutes each day or each week to gather data and send it in. A group of scientists and educators launched an organization last year called the National Phenology Network. “Phenology”is what scientists call the study of the timing of events in nature. One of the groups first efforts relies on sci

19、entists and non-scientists alike to collect data about plant flowering and leafing every year. The program, called Project BudBurst, collects life cycle data on a variety of common plants from across the United States. People participating in the project which is open to everyone record their observ

20、ations on the Project BudBurst website. “People dont have to be plant experts they just have to look around and see whats in their neighborhood,” says Jennifer Schwartz, an education consultant with the project. “As we collect this data, well be able to make an estimate of how plants and communities

21、 of plants and animals will respond as the climate changes.”第四篇 Motoring Technology 1.2 million road deaths worldwide occur each year, plus a further 50 million injuries. To reduce car crash rate, much research now is focused on safety and new fuels. though some electric vehicle and biofuel1 researc

22、h aims at going faster. Travelling at speed has always been risky. One cutting edge area2 of research in motoring safety is the use of digital in-car assistants3. They can ensure you dont miss crucial road signs or fall asleep. The use of artificial intelligence software allows these assistants to m

23、onitor your driving and makes sure your phone or radio doesnt distract you at a vital moment. Most crashes result from human and not mechanical faults. Some safety developments aim to improve your vision. Radar can spot4 obstacles in fog, while other technology “sees through” high-sided5 vehicles bl

24、ocking your view6. And improvements to seat belts, pedal controls and tyres are making driving smoother and safer. The colour of a car has been found to be linked with safety, as have, less surprisingly, size and shape7. And alternatives to fossil-fuel8 based petrol, such as plant oils, are a hot ar

25、ea of research. Fuel cells9 based on hydrogen burn cleanly, and are the subject of a serious research effort. But whatever is in the fuel tank, you dont want a thief in the driving seat and there have been many innovations, some using satellite tracking and remote communications10, to fight against

26、car theft. These communication systems can also come into play11 if you crash, automatically calling for help. Accidents cause many traffic jams, but there are more subtle interplays between vehicles that can cause jams even on a clear but busy road. Such jams can be analysed using statistical tools

27、. Robotic drivers could be programmed to make traffic flow smoothly and will perhaps one day be everyones personal chauffeur, but their latest efforts suggest that wont be soon.第五篇 Late-Night Drinking Coffee lovers beware. Having a quick “pick-me-up” cup of coffee1 late in the day will play havoc wi

28、th2 your sleep. As well as being a stimulant, caffeine interrupts the flow of melatonin, the brain hormone that sends people into a sleep. Melatonin levels normally start to rise about two hours before bedtime. Levels then peak between 2 am and 4 am, before falling again3. “Its the neurohormone that

29、 controls our sleep and tells our body when to sleep and when to wake,” says Maurice Ohayon of the Stanford Sleep Epidemiology Research Center at Stanford University in California. But researchers in Israel have found that caffcinated coffee halves the bodys levels of this sleep hormone. Lotan Shilo

30、 and a team at the Sapir Medical Center in Tel Aviv University found that six volunteers slept less well after a cup of caffeinated coffee than after drinking the same amount of decaf. On average, subjects slept 336 minutes per night after drinking caffeinated coffee, compared with 415 minutes after

31、 decal. They also took half an hour to drop off4 twice as long as usual and jigged around5 in bed twice as much. In the second phase of the experiment, the researchers woke the volunteers every three hours and asked them to give a urine sample, Shilo measured concentrations of a breakdown product of melatonin. The results suggest that melatonin concentrations in caffeine drinkers were half those in decaf drinkers. In a paper accepted for publication in Sleep Medi