单项选择题

When I decided to quit my full time employment it never occurred to me that I might become a part of a new international trend. A lateral move that hurt my pride and blocked my professional progress prompted me to abandon my relatively high profile career although, in the manner of a disgraced government minister, I covered my exit by claiming"I wanted to spend more time with my family". Curiously,some two-and-a-half years and two novels later,my experiment in what the Americans term "downshifting" has turned my tired excuse into an absolute reality. I have been transformed from a passionate advocate of the philosophy of "having it all", preached by Linda Kelsey for the past seven years in the pages of She magazine, into a woman who is happy to settle for a bit of everything. I have discovered, as perhaps Kelsey will after her much-publicized resignation from the editorship of she after a build-up of stress, that abandoning the doctrine of "juggling your life", and making the alternative move into "downshifting" brings with it far greater rewards than financial success and social status. Nothing could persuade me to return to the kind of life Kelsey used to advocate and I once enjoyed: 12-hour working days, pressured deadlines, the fearful strain of office politics and the limitations of being a parent on "quality time". In America, the move away from juggling to a simpler, less materialistic lifestyle is a well- established trend. Downshifting--also known in America as "voluntary simplicity"--has, ironically, even bred a new area of what might be termed anti-consumerism. There are a number of bestselling downshifting self-help books for people who want to simplify their lives; there are newsletters, such as The Tightwad Gazette, that give hundreds of thousands of Americans useful tips on anything from recycling their cling-film to making their own soap; there are even support groups for those who want to achieve the mid-’’90s equivalent of dropping out. While in America the trend started as a reaction to the economic decline--after the mass redundancies caused by downsizing in the late’’ 80s--and is still linked to the politics of thrift, in Britain, at least among the middle-class downshifters of my acquaintance, we have different reasons for seeking to simplify our lives. For the women of my generation who were urged to keep juggling through the ’’ 80s, downshifting in th mid-’’90s is not so much a search for the mythical good life--growing your own organic vegetables, and risking turning into one--as a personal recognition of your limitations. The writer’’ s experiment shows that downshifting______.

A．enables her to realize her dream
B．helps her mold a new philosophy of life
C．prompts her to abandon her high social status
D． leads her to accept the doctrine or She magazine

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单项选择题

Manufacturers as mentioned in the passage tend to____________.

A．satisfy customers by writing long warnings on products
B．become honest in describing the inadequacies of their products
C．make the best use of labels to avoid legal liability
D．feel obliged to view customers’’ safety as their first concern

填空题

A large proportion of the studies of behavior used animals as subjects, especially pigeons, rats, and rabbits. There are a number of reasons why researchers in this field frequently choose to conduct their experiments with nonhuman subjects. First of all, the possibility of a placebo effect is minimized with animal subjects. 46)Whereas a human subject’’s behavior may be drastically altered by the knowledge that he or she is being observed, this is unlikely with animal subjects because most studies with animal subjects are conducted in such a way that the animal does not know its behavior is being monitored and recorded. Furthermore, it is unlikely that an animal subject will be motivated either to please or displease the experimenter, a motive that can ruin a study with human subjects. A second reason for using animal subjects is convenience. The species most commonly used as subjects are easy and inexpensive to care for, and animals of a specific age and sex can be obtained in any quantities the experimenter needs. 47)Once animal subjects are obtained, their participation is as regular as the experimenter’’s--animal subjects never fail to show up for their appointments, which is unfortunately not the case with human subjects.48) Probably the biggest advantage of domesticated animal subjects is that their environment can be controlled to a much greater extent than is possible with either wild animals or human subjects. This is especially important in experiments on learning, where previous experience can have a large effect on a subject’’s performance in a new learning situation. Likewise, if a human subject tries to solve some mystery as part of a learning experiment, the experimenter cannot be sure how many similar problems the subject has encountered in his lifetime. 49) When animals are bred and raised in the laboratory, however, their environments can be constructed to make sure that they have no contact with objects or events similar to those they will encounter in the experiment.A final reason for using animal subjects is that of comparative simplicity. 50)Just as a child trying to learn electricity is better off starting with a flashlight than a radio, researchers may have a better chance of discovering the basic principles of learning by examining creatures that are less intelligent and less complex than human beings The assumption here is that although human beings differ from other animals in some respects, they are also similar in some respects, and it is these commonalities that can be investigated with animal subjects.