Passage One
Electronic books could revolutionize reading, but people ought to consider their far-reaching impacts as well. "The e-book promises to wreak a slow havoc (浩劫) on life as we know it," Jason Ohler, professor of technology assessment (评估), university of Alaska Southeast In Juneau, warned the World Future Society, Bethesda, Md. His assessment weighed the pros and cons (赞成和反对的理由) of e-book technology’s impact on social relationships, the environment, the economy, etc. Before you curl up (蜷曲) with an e-book, consider the disadvantages.
They increase eyestrain due to poor screen resolution, replace a relatively cheap commodity with a more expensive one, and displace workers in print book production and traditional publishing. E-books make it easy to share data, thereby threatening copyright agreements and reducing compensation of authors, as well as creating nonbiodegradable (不可生物降解的) trash.
On the other hand, e-books save paper
A. They are unable to be broken down into harmless products.
B. They consume a lot of natural resources.
C. They produce harmful gases.
D. They are capable of being reused.
Passage Three
The railroad industry could not have grown as large as it did without steel. The first rails were made of iron. But iron rails were not strong enough to support heavy trains running at high speeds. Railroad executives wanted to replace them with steel rails because steel was ten or fifteen times stronger and lasted twenty times longer. Before the 1870’s, however, steel was too expensive to be widely used. It was made by a slow and expensive process of heating, stirring and reheating iron ore.
Then the inventor Henry Bessemer discovered that directing a blast of air at melted iron in a furnace would burn out the impurities that made the iron brittle. As the air shot through the furnace, the bubbling metal would erupt in showers of sparks. When the fire cooled, the metal had been changed, or converted to steel. The Bessemer converter made possible the mass production of steel. Now three to five tons of iron could be changed into steel in a
A. In Pittsburgh.
B. In the Mesabi Range.
C. Near Lake Michigan.
D. Near Lake Erie.
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