2000年考研英语试题及参考答案(2)All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing, and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. The mid-80s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of Americas industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition from overseas.How things have changed! In 95 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been struggling. Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as a devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. Self-doubt has yielded to blind pride. American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet, has learnt to be more quick-witted, according to Richard Cavanagh, executive dean of Harvards Kennedy School of Government, It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our businesses are improving their productivity, says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business School believes that people will look back on this period as a golden age of business management in the United States.51.The U.S.achieved its predominance after World War because_ .Ait had made painstaking efforts towards this goalBits domestic market was eight times larger than beforeCthe war had destroyed the economies of most potential competitorsDthe unparalleled size of its workforce had given an impetus to its economy52.The loss of U.S. predominance in the world economy in the 80s is manifested in the fact that the American_ .ATV industry had withdrawn to its domestic marketBsemiconductor industry had been taken over by foreign enterprisesCmachine-tool industry had collapsed after suicidal actionsDauto industry had lost part of its domestic market53.What can be inferred from the passage?AIt is human nature to shift between self-doubt and blind pried.BIntense competition may contribute to economic progress.CThe revival of the economy depends on international cooperation.DA long history of success may pave the way for further development.54.The author seems to believe the revival of the U.S. economy in the 90s can be attributed to the_ .Aturning of the business cycleBrestructuring of industryCimproved business managementDsuccess in educationPassage 2Being a man has always been dangerous. There are about 1 males born for every 0 females, but this ratio drops to near balance at the age of maturity, and among 70-year-olds there are twice as many women as men. But the great universal of male mortality is being changed. Now, by babies survive almost as well as girls do. This means that, for the first time, there will be an excess of boys in those crucial years when the are searching for a mate. More important, another chance for natural selection has been removed. Fifty years ago, the chance of a baby(particularly a boy baby)surviving depended on its weight. A kilogram too light or too heavy meant almost certain death. Today it makes almost no difference. Since much of the variation is due to genes one more agent of evolution has gone.There is another way to commit evolutionary suicide: stay alive, but have fewer children. Few people are as fertile as in the past. Except in some religious communities, very few women has children. Nowadays the number of births, like the age of death, has become average. Most of us have roughly the same number of offspring. Again, differences between people and the opportunity for natural selection to take advantage of it have diminished. India shows what is happening. The country offers wealth for a few in the great cities and poverty for the remaining tribal peoples. The grand mediocrity of today everyone being the same in survival and number of offspring means that natural selection has lost 80% of its power in upper-middle-class India compared to the tribes.For us, this means that evolution is over; the biological Utopia has arrived. Strangely, it has involved little physical change No other species fills so many places in nature. But in the pass 0,000 years even the pass 0year our lives have been transformed but our bodies have not. We did not evolve, because machines and society did it for us. Darwin had a phrase to describe those ignorant of evolution: they look at an organic being as average looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension. No doubt we will remember a 20th century way of life beyond comprehension for its ugliness. But however amazed our descendants may be at how far from Utopia we were, they will look just like us.55.What used to be the danger in being a man according to the first paragraph?AA lack of mates.BA fierce competition.CA lower survival rate.DA defective gene.56.What does the example