阅读部分：
第一篇小说来自于“The MysteriousPortrait”的节选，作者NicolaiGogol。
文章大意：主角是一个不出名的作家和他的教授，教授认为别的画家可以为赚钱流于俗套，但是Nchartkoff是有天赋的人，应该更耐心地把精力花在创作上。建议他不要以赚钱为目的而创作。可是，年轻的艺术家并不认同这些观点，尤其他连自己的房租都付不起，并通过一系列的反问展现了内心的矛盾和痛苦。
文章原文：
Young Chartkov was an artist with a talent that promised much:in flashes and moments his brush bespoke power of observation, understanding, astrong impulse to get closer to nature.
"Watch out, brother," his professor had told him morethan once, "you have talent; it would be a sin to ruin it. But you'reimpatient. Some one thing entices you, some one thing takes your fancy—and youoccupy yourself with it, and the rest can rot, you don't care about it, youdon't even want to look at it. Watch out you don't turn into a fashionablepainter. Even now your colors are beginning to cry a bit too loudly. Yourdrawing is imprecise, and sometimes quite weak, the line doesn't show; you gofor fashionable lighting, which strikes the eye at once. Watch out or you'llfall right into the English type. Beware. You already feel drawn to the world:every so often I see a showy scarf on your neck, a glossy hat. . . It'senticing, you can start painting fashionable pictures, little portraits formoney. But that doesn't develop talent, it ruins it. Be patient.Ponder overevery work, drop showiness—let the others make money. You won't come out theloser."
The professor was partly right. Sometimes, indeed, our artistliked to carouse or play the dandy—in short, to show off his youth here andthere. Yet, for all that, he was able to keep himself under control. At timeshe was able to forget everything and take up his brush, and had to tear himselfaway again as if from a beautiful, interrupted dream. His taste was developingnoticeably. He still did not understand all the depth of Raphael, but wasalready carried away by the quick, broad stroke of Guido, paused beforeTitian's portraits, admired the Flemish school. 6 The dark surface obscuringthe old paintings had not yet been entirely removed for him; yet he alreadyperceived something in them, though inwardly he did not agree with hisprofessor that the old masters surpassed us beyond reach; it even seemed to himthat the nineteenth century was significantly ahead of them in certain things,that the imitation of nature as it was done now had become somehow brighter,livelier, closer; in short, he thought in this case as a young man thinks whoalready understands something and feels it in his proud inner consciousness. Attimes he became vexed when he saw how some foreign painter, a Frenchman or aGerman, sometimes not even a painter by vocation, with nothing but anaccustomed hand, a quick brush, and bright colors, would produce a general stirand instantly amass a fortune. This would come to his mind not when, allimmersed in his work, he forgot drinking and eating and the whole world, butwhen he would finally come hard up against necessity, when he had no money tobuy brushes and paints, when the importunate landlord came ten times a day todemand the rent. Then his hungry imagination enviously pictured the lot of therich painter; then a thought glimmered that often passes through a Russianhead: to drop everything and go on a spree out of grief and to spite it all.And now he was almost in such a situation.
“Yes! be patient, be patient!" he said with vexation."But patience finally runs out. Be patient! And on what money will I havedinner tomorrow? No one will lend to me. And if I were to go and sell all mypaintings and drawings, I'd get twenty kopecks for the lot. They've beenuseful, of course, I feel that: it was not in vain that each of them wasundertaken, in each of them I learned something. But what's the use? Sketches,attempts—and there will constantly be sketches, attempts, and no end to them.And who will buy them, if they don't know my name? And who needs drawings fromthe antique, or from life class, or my unfinished Love of Psyche, or aperspective of my room, or the portrait of my Nikita, though it's really betterthan the portraits of some fashionable painter? What is it all, in fact? Why doI suffer and toil over the ABC's like a student, when I could shine no worsethan the others and have money as they do?”
第二篇社会科学节选于
Remember That? No YouDon’t.
Study Shows FalseMemories Afflict Us All，作者Tara Thean
文章大意：现象解释性文章，第一段首先列出了一个现象：false memories是一种普遍存在的现象，即便那些记忆力超强，对经历的事情无论是时间地点还是其他具体细节都记得清清楚楚的人都会受到这种记忆误区的影响。加州大学的教授们据此展开了一系列研究，结果是so-called lures — words that would make subjects think of other,related ones是主要原因。
文章原文：
The phenomenon of false memories is common to everybody — theparty you’re certain you attended in high school, say, when you were actuallyhome with the flu, but so many people have told you about it over the yearsthat it’s made its way into your own memory cache. False memories can sometimesbe a mere curiosity, but other times they have real implications. Innocentpeople have gone to jail when well-intentioned eyewitnesses testify to eventsthat actually unfolded an entirely different way.
What’s long been a puzzle to memory scientists is whether somepeople may be more susceptible to false memories than others — and, byextension, whether some people with exceptionally good memories may be immuneto them. A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesanswers both questions with a decisive no. False memories afflict everyone —even people with the best memories of all.
To conduct the study, a team led by psychologist LawrencePatihis of the University of California, Irvine, recruited a sample group ofpeople all of approximately the same age and divided them into two subgroups:those with ordinary memory and those with what is known as highly superiorautobiographical memory (HSAM). You’ve met people like that before, and theycan be downright eerie. They’re the ones who can tell you the exact date onwhich particular events happened — whether in their own lives or in the news —as well as all manner of minute additional details surrounding the event thatmost people would forget the second they happened.
Word recall was also hazy. The scientists showed participantsword lists, then removed the lists and tested the subjects on words that hadand hadn’t been included. The lists all contained so-called lures — words thatwould make subjects think of other, related ones. The words pillow, duvet andnap, for example, might lead to a false memory of seeing the word sleep. All ofthe participants in both groups fell for the lures, with at least eight sucherrors per person—though some tallied as many as 20. Both groups also performedunreliably when shown photographs and fed lures intended to make them thinkthey’d seen details in the pictures they hadn’t. Here too, the HSAM subjectscooked up as many fake images as the ordinary folks.
“What I love about the study is how it communicates somethingthat memory-distortion researchers have suspected for some time, that perhapsno one is immune to memory distortion,” said Patihis.
What the study doesn’t do, Patihis admits, is explain why HSAMpeople exist at all. Their prodigious recall is a matter of scientific fact,and one of the goals of the new work was to see if an innate resistance tomanufactured memories might be one of the reasons. But on that score, theresearchers came up empty.
“It rules something out,” Patihis said. “[HSAM individuals]probably reconstruct memories in the same way that ordinary people do. So nowwe have to think about how else we could explain it.” He and others willcontinue to look for that secret sauce that elevates superior recall over theordinary kind. But for now, memory still appears to be fragile, malleable andprone to errors — for all of us.
第三篇科学阅读来自于2013年economist newspaper的beans’talk
文章大意：现象解释性文章。第一段首先列出了一个现象“植物可能是相互联系的”：当一个植物收到攻击或者影响，就会像其他植物发出报警信号，就像local Wi-Fi 一样，那么有一个理论被提出，是不是当有蚜虫攻击植物，植物就会通过一些 fungi 去给邻居植物发出信号呢。之后研究小组展开实验，分为8个小组，每个实验小组有5株植物，然后对于不同的植物进行不同的变量控制。实验结果显示，在根接触不到的情况下，每株植物都能通过hyphae来传递信息，当一株植物被蚜虫攻击的时候，这株植物都会释放化学物质驱赶蚜虫，吸引蚜虫的predator大黄蜂。而hyphae无法透出来的植物们，即使有的被蚜虫袭击，其他也不会释放这种物质。
文章原文：
THE idea that plants have developed a subterranean internet,which they use to raise the alarm when danger threatens, sounds more like thescience-fiction of James Cameron’s film “Avatar” than any sort of science fact.But fact it seems to be, if work by David Johnson of the University of Aberdeenis anything to go by. For Dr Johnson believes he has shown that just such aninternet, with fungal hyphae standing in for local Wi-Fi, alerts beanstalks todanger if one of their neighbors is attacked by aphids.
Dr Johnson knew from his own past work that when broad-beanplants are attacked by aphids they respond with volatile chemicals that bothirritate the parasites and attract aphid-hunting wasps. He did not know,though, whether the message could spread, tomato-like, from plant to plant. Sohe set out to find out—and to do so in a way which would show if fungi were themessengers.
As they report in Ecology Letters, he and his colleagues set upeight “mesocosms”, each containing five beanstalks. The plants were allowed togrow for four months, and during this time every plant could interact withsymbiotic fungi in the soil.
Not all of the beanstalks, though, had the same relationshipwith the fungi. In each mesocosm, one plant was surrounded by a mesh penetratedby holes half a micron across. Gaps that size are too small for either roots orhyphae to penetrate, but they do permit the passage of water and dissolvedchemicals. Two plants were surrounded with a 40-micron mesh. This can bepenetrated by hyphae but not by roots. The two remaining plants, one of whichwas at the center of the array, were left to grow unimpeded.
Five weeks after the experiment began, all the plants werecovered by bags that allowed carbon dioxide, oxygen and water vapor in and out,but stopped the passage of larger molecules, of the sort a beanstalk might usefor signaling. Then, four days from the end, one of the 40-micron meshes ineach mesocosm was rotated to sever any hyphae that had penetrated it, and thecentral plant was then infested with aphids.
At the end of the experiment Dr Johnson and his team collectedthe air inside the bags, extracted any volatile chemicals in it by absorbingthem into a special porous polymer, and tested those chemicals on both aphids(using the winged, rather than the wingless morphs) and wasps. Each insect wasplaced for five minutes in an apparatus that had two chambers, one of whichcontained a sample of the volatiles and the other an odorless control.
The researchers found, as they expected from their previouswork, that when the volatiles came from an infested plant, wasps spent anaverage of 3½ minutes in the chamber containing them and 1½ in the otherchamber. Aphids, conversely, spent 1¾ minutes in the volatiles’ chamber and 3¼in the control. In other words, the volatiles from an infested plant attractwasps and repel aphids.
Crucially, the team got the same result in the case ofuninfected plants that had been in uninterrupted hyphae contact with theinfested one, but had had root contact blocked. If both hyphae and roots hadbeen blocked throughout the experiment, though, the volatiles from uninfectedplants actually attracted aphids (they spent 3½ minutes in the volatiles’chamber), while the wasps were indifferent. The same pertained for the odor ofuninfected plants whose hyphae connections had been allowed to develop, andthen severed by the rotation of the mesh.
Broad beans, then, really do seem to be using their fungalsymbionts as a communications network, warning their neighbors to take evasiveaction. Such a general response no doubt helps the plant first attacked byattracting yet more wasps to the area, and it helps the fungal messengers bypreserving their leguminous hosts.
第四篇阅读是历史类双篇
Passage 1节选自1865年4月Frederich Douglass的演讲“What the Black Man Wants”
Passge 2节选于1865年6月Richard H. Dana Jr.的演讲 “To Consider the Subject of Re-organization of the RebelStates.”
两篇文章就黑人的社会地位问题展开，重点在黑人的法律地位并不等同于真正的社会地位。对黑人的歧视依然存在。作者1说到Banks Labor Policy对于黑人职业的限制，并没有真正的解放黑人，黑人需要利用内战之后和解放奴隶宣言之后的这个政治机会，继续努力争取真正的解放和完全的平等和自由。作者2认为解放黑奴不能只存留在纸面的法规政策上，而是要有切实行动。先对比了古代奴隶制度和美国奴隶制度的不同，然后说到解放奴隶宣言宣布之后黑人的状况，依然没有各方面的政治权利，然后呼吁改变。
文章原文：
I do not know, from what has been said, that there is anydifference of opinionas to the duty of abolitionists, at the present moment.How can we get up anydifference at this point, or any point, where we are sounited, so agreed? Iwent especially, however, with that word of Mr. Phillips,which is thecriticism of Gen. Banks and Gen. Banks' policy. I hold that thatpolicy is ourchief danger at the present moment; that it practically enslavesthe Negro, andmakes the Proclamation of 1863 a mockery and delusion. What isfreedom? It isthe right to choose one's own employment. Certainly it meansthat, if it meansanything; and when any individual or combination ofindividuals undertakes todecide for any man when he shall work, where he shallwork, at what he shallwork, and for what he shall work, he or they practicallyreduce him to slavery.[Applause.] He is a slave. That I understand Gen. Banksto do—to determine forthe so-called freedman, when, and where, and at what, andfor how much he shallwork, when he shall be punished, and by whom punished. Itis absolute slavery.It defeats the beneficent intention of the Government, ifit has beneficentintentions, in regards to the freedom of our people.
I have had but one idea for the last threeyears to presentto the American people, and the phraseology in which I clotheit is the oldabolition phraseology. I am for the "immediate,unconditional, anduniversal" enfranchisement of the black man, in everyState in the Union.[Loud applause.] Without this, his liberty is a mockery;without this, you mightas well almost retain the old name of slavery for hiscondition; for in fact, ifhe is not the slave of the individual master, he isthe slave of society, andholds his liberty as a privilege, not as a right. Heis at the mercy of the mob,and has no means of protecting himself.
第五篇科学文章节选于SAM HARDMAN的Gouldian finches’ head colour reflects their personality
文章大意：为了知道GF这种鸟头的颜色是不是影响它们的性情，Leah Williams通过实验测试了3种猜想：1. 研究黑头鸟和红头鸟，红头鸟更aggressive；2. 猜想是红头鸟更大胆，更愿意探索和冒险；3. 黑头鸟对新鲜事物更感兴趣。通过实验，结果很惊人，红头鸟比黑头鸟的攻击性高四倍。第二个prediction也得到了试验验证，明显黑头鸟更愿意接近和触碰。第三个prediction的验证显示，黑头鸟更愿意冒险，但黑红差距不如前两个实验明显。
文章原文：
Gouldian finches,Erythrura gouldiae,are an extraordinarily colourful species of passerine birdendemic tosubtropical woodlands of northern Australia. Both sexes are brightlycolouredwith red, green, black, yellow, red and purple markings, it is for thisreasonthat they are also sometimes known as rainbow finches.
In the wild the birdsexhibit twomain head colour morphs, black and red. Interestingly, studies ofcaptive birdshave shown that males with red heads are on average moreaggressive than thosewith black heads and that females have a preference forred-headed overblack-headed individuals. Red headed males were also found tohave higherlevels of testosterone and corticosterone than black headed maleswhen facedwith socially challenging situations.
What this suggests isthatbehavioural characteristics, such as aggression and other traits, maybecorrelated with particular head colour morphs meaning that head colourisindicative of different personality types. This idea has been tested in anewpaper by Leah Williams and her colleagues.
In order to determine ifhead colourreally does indicate personality traits in Gouldian finches Williamsand hercolleagues tested a number of predictions. First they looked at pairsofblack-headed birds which were expected to show less aggression towardseachother than pairs of red-headed birds, this makes sense since red-headedbirdshad previously been found to exhibit higher levels of aggression.
The second prediction wasthatred-headed birds should be bolder, more explorative and take more risksthanblack-headed birds. This hypothesis is based on previous studies ofotherspecies that have shown a correlation between aggression and thesebehaviouralcharacteristics. However, there is another possibility, red-headedbirds couldtake fewer risks for two reasons; first, they may be moreconspicuous topredators due to their bright colouration and second, it may payblack headedbirds to take more risks and be more explorative so they find foodresourcesbefore the dominant red-headed birds do.
In order to test the firstpredictionpaired birds of matching head colour were moved into an experimentalcagewithout food. After one hour of food deprivation a feeder was placed intothecorner of the cage where there was only enough room for one bird to feed atatime. aggressive interactions such as threat displays and displacementswerethen counted over a 30 minute period.
The results as shown inthe figurebelow were striking. Red-headed birds were significantly andconsistently moreaggressive than black-headed birds.
Figure shows the mean(+SE) timetaken for birds to return to their feeder after a “predator” wasintroduced.
Finally, the authorsinvestigated thebirds interest in novel objects or “object neophilia” which isdefined in thepaper as “exploration in which investigation is elicited by anobject’snovelty“. To do this a bunch of threads was placed on a perch withinthe cage,the time taken for the birds to approach the threads within one bodylength andto touch them were recorded over a one hour period. In line with theresultsfrom the risk taking experiment it was found that the aggressivered-headedbirds showed less interest in novel objects than did black-headedbirds. Thedifference is not so striking as the previous experiments but wasstatisticallysignificant nonetheless.
Figure shows the mean(+SE) timetaken for birds to approach a novel object relative to their head colour.
These experiments wererepeated aftera two month interval and showed that different birds differed intheirresponses but the responses of individual birds were consistent over time.Headcolour was found to predict the behavioural responses of the birds.Red-headedbirds were more aggressive than black-headed birds but took fewerrisks andwere not explorative.
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