【正文】 t looked as though the making of semiconductors, which America had invented and which sat at the heart of the new puter age, was going to be the next casualty. ① All of this caused a crisis of confidence. ② Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. ③ They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing, and that their ines would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. ④ The mid1980s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of America’ s industrial decline. ⑤ Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing petition from overseas. ① How things have changed! ② In 1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been struggling. ③（ 14） Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as a devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. ④ Selfdoubt has yielded to blind pride. ⑤“ American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet, has learnt to be more quickwitted,” according to Richard Cavanaugh, executive dean of Harvard’ s Kennedy School of Government. ⑥“ 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 thinktank in Washington, DC. ⑦ 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.”［ 429 words］ 11. The . achieved its predominance after World War II because. ［ A］ it had made painstaking efforts towards this goal ［ B］ its domestic market was eight times larger than before ［ C］ the war had destroyed the economies of most potential petitors ［ D］ the unparalleled size of its workforce had given an impetus to its economy 12. The loss of . predominance in the world economy in the 1980s is manifested in the fact that the American. ［ A］ TV industry had withdrawn to its domestic market ［ B］ semiconductor industry had been taken over by foreign enterprises ［ C］ machinetool industry had collapsed after suicidal actions ［ D］ auto industry had lost part of its domestic market 13. What can be inferred from the passage? ［ A］ It is human nature to shift between selfdoubt and blind pride. ［ B］ Intense petition may contribute to economic progress. ［ C］ The revival of the economy depends on international cooperation. ［ D］ A long history of success may pave the way for further development. 14. The author seems to believe the revival of the . economy in the 1990s can be attributed to the. ［ A］ turning of the business cycle ［ B］ restructuring of industry ［ C］ improved business management ［ D］ success in education Passage 2 ①（ 15） Being a man has always been dangerous. ② There are about 105 males born for every 100 females, but this ratio drops to near balance at the age of maturity, and among 70yearolds there are twice as many women as men. ③ But the great universal of male mortality is being changed. ④ Now, boy babies survive almost as well as girls do. ⑤ This means that, for the first time, there will be an excess of boys in those crucial years when they are searching for a mate. ⑥ More important, another chance for natural selection has been removed. ⑦ 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. ⑧ Today it makes almost no difference. Since much of the variation is due to genes, one more agent of evolution has gone. ① There is another way to mit evolutionary suicide: stay alive, but have fewer children. ② Few people are as fertile as in the past. ③ Except in some religious munities, very few women have 15 children. ④ Nowadays the number of births, like the age of death, has bee average. ⑤ Most of us have roughly the same number of offspring. ⑥（ 16） Again, differences between people and the opportunity for natural selection to take advantage of it have diminished. ⑦ India shows what is happening. The country offers wealth for a few in the great cities and poverty for the remaining tribal peoples. ⑧ 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 uppermiddleclass India pared to the tribes. For us, this means that evolution is over。 the biological Utopia has arrived. ② Strangely, it has involved little physical change. ③ No other species fills so many places in nature. ④ But in the past 100, 000 years— even the past 100 years— our lives have been transformed but our bodies have not. ⑤（ 17） We did not evolve, because machines and society did it for us. ⑥ Darwin had a phrase to describe those ignorant of evolution: they “ look at an anic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his prehension.”⑦ No doubt we will remember a 20th century way of life beyond prehension for its ugliness. But however amazed our descendants may be at how far from Utopia we were, they will look just like us.［ 406 words］ 15. What used to be the danger in being a man according to the first paragraph? 6 ［ A］ A lack of mates. ［ B］ A fierce petition. ［ C］ A lower survival rate. ［ D］ A defective gene. 16. What does the example of India illustrate? ［ A］ Wealthy people tend to have fewer children than poor people. ［ B］ Natural selection hardly works among the rich and the poor. ［ C］ The middle class population is 80% smaller than that of the tribes. ［ D］ India is one of the countries with a very high birth rate. 17. The author argues that our bodies have stopped evolving because. ［ A］ life has been improved by technological advance ［ B］ the number of female babies has been declining ［ C］ our species has reached the highest stage of evolution ［ D］ the difference between wealth and poverty is disappearing 18. W