考博英语阅读资料
Unit One
Passage 1
     The physical distribution of products has two primary aspects: transportation and storage. Both aspects are highly developed and specialized phases of marketing. The costs of both transporting and storing are built into the prices of products. Transportation can be by truck, railway, ship, or barge. For some items, such as exotic plants and flowers, or when rapid delivery is essential, air freight may be used.
     Storage, or warehousing, is a necessary function because production and consumption of goods rarely match: items generally are not sold as quickly as they are made. Inventories build up, both in warehouses and at retail establishments, before the foods are sold. The transportation function is involved in bringing goods to a warehouse and taking them from it to retail stores.
     Storage performs the service of stabilizing market price. If, for example, no agricultural product could be stored, all food would have to be put on the market immediately. This would, of course, create a glut and lower prices drastically. There would be an immediate benefit to consumers, but in the long run they would suffer. Farmers, because of low prices, would be forced off the land, and the amount of food produced would decrease. This, in turn, would raise consumer prices.
     Warehouses for storage are of several types. Private warehouses are owned by manufacturers. Public warehouses, in spite of their name, are privately owned facilities, but they are in-dependent of manufacturer ownership. General-merchandise warehouses store a great variety of products. Cold-storage warehouses store perishable goods, especially food products. Grain elevators are a kind of warehouse used to keep wheat and other grains from spoiling. A bonded warehouse is one that stores foods, frequently imported, on which taxes must be paid before they are sold. Cigarettes and alcoholic beverages are common examples.
     The distribution center is a more recently developed kind of warehouse. Many large com- panics have several manufacturing plants, sometimes located outside the country. Each plant does not make every company product but specializes in one or more of them. The distribution center allows a manufacturer to bring together all product lines in one place. Its purpose is to minimize storage and to ease the flow of goods from manufacturers to retailers rather than build up extensive inventories.  It reduces costs by speeding up product turnover.  Very large corporations will have several distribution centers regionally or internationally based
1. The main subject of this passage is______.
   A) transportation and storage      B) storage of products
   C) distribution center            D) two main aspects of product distribution
2. Warehousing is important in that _
   A) inventories build up before the goods are sold
   B) the prices will go down
   C) more goods are produced than can be consumed
   D) the food has to be put on the market immediately
3. How many types of warehouses for storage are discussed in the passage?
   A) 3.      B) 4.      C) 6.    D) 7.
4. Where might one find meat and milk?
    A) Grain elevator.                 B) Cold-storage warehouse.
    C) Private warehouse.              D) Bonded warehouse.
5. What is NOT true of a distribution center?
   A) It is a relatively new type of warehouse.
    B) Product is replaced more quickly and costs are down.
    C) Some distribution centers are not built in the sane country as the factory
    D) It builds up extensive inventories to minimize storage.

Passage 2
     How much pain do animals feel? This is a question which has caused endless controversy. Opponents of big game shooting, for example, arouse our pity by describing tile agonies of a badly-wounded beast that has crawled into a comer to die. In countries where the fox, the hare and the deer are hunted, animal-lovers paint harrowing pictures of the pursued animal suffering not only the physical distress of the chase but the mental anguish of anticipated death.
     The usual answer to these criticisms is that animals do not suffer in the same way, or to the same extent, as we de. Man was created with a delicate nervous system and has never lost his acute sensitiveness to pain; animals, on the other hand, had less sensitive systems to begin with and in the course of millions of years, have developed a capacity of ignoring injuries and disorders which human beings would find intolerable. For example, a dog will continue to play with a ball even after a serious injury to his foot; he may be unable to run without limping, but he will go on trying long after a human child would have had to stop because of the pain. We are told, moreover, that even when animals appear to us to be suffering acutely, this is not so; what seems to us to be agonized contortions caused by pain are in fact no more than muscular contractions over which they have no control.
      These arguments are unsatisfactory because something about which we know a great deal is being compared with something we can only conjecture. We know what we feel; we have no  means of knowing what animals feet. Some creatures with a less delicate nervous system than  ours may be incapable of feeling pain to the same extent as we do: that as far as we are entitled  to do, the most humane attitude, surely, is to assume that no animals are entirely exempt from  physical pain and that we ought, therefore, wherever possible, to avoid causing suffering even  to the least of them.
 6. Animal-lovers assume that animals, being hunted, would suffer from ____.
    A) a great deal of agony both in body and in spirit
    B) mental distress once they are wounded
    C) only body pains without feeling sad
    D) crawling into the comer to die
7. Supporters of game shooting may argue that animals ______.
   A) cannot control their muscular contractions
   B) have developed a capacity of feeling no pain
   C) are not as acutely sensitive as human beings to injuries
   D) can endure all kinds of disorders
8. The author feels sure that _____.
   A) animals don't show suffering to us
   B) dogs are more endurable than human children
   C) we cannot know what animals feel
   D) comparing animals with human beings is not appropriate
9. What is the author's opinion about animal hunting?
   A) We should feel the same as the hunted animals do.
   B) We should protect and save all the animals.
   C) We shouldn't cause suffering to them.
   D) We should take care of them if we can.
10. This passage seems to ____.
    A) argue for something          B) explain something
    C) tell a story                  D) describe an object

Passage 3
    In science, a theory is a reasonable explanation of observed events that are related. A the-ory often involves an imaginary model that helps scientists picture the way an observed event could be produced. A good example of this is found in the kinetic molecular theory, in which gases are pictured as being made up of many small particles that are in constant motion.
    A useful theory, in addition to explaining past observations, helps to predict events that have not as yet been observed. After a theory has been publicized, scientists design experimerits to test the theory. If observations confirm the scientists' predictions, the theory is sup-ported. If observations do not confirm the predictions, the scientists must search further. There may be a fault in the experiment, or the theory may have to be revised or rejected.
    Science involves imagination and creative thinking as well as collecting information and performing experiments. Facts by themselves are not science. As the mathematician Jules Henri Poincare said: "Science is built with facts just as a house is built with bricks, but a collection of facts cannot be called science any more than a pile of bricks can be called a house."
    Most scientists start an investigation by finding out what other scientists have learned about a particular problem. After known facts have been gathered, the scientist comes to the part of the investigation that requires considerable imagination. Possible solutions to the problem are formulated. These possible solutions are called hypotheses.
In a way, any hypothesis is a leap into the unknown. It extends the scientist's thinking beyond the known facts. The scientist plans experiments, performs calculations, and makes ob-servations to test hypotheses. For without hypotheses, further investigation lacks purpose and direction. When hypotheses are confirmed, they are incorporated into theories.