105指考英文

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41. Where was the new felid fossil found?
(A) In Tanzania.
(B) In Tibet.
(C) In California.
(D) In Southeast Asia.

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42. According to the passage, which of the following statements is true regarding big cats?
(A) Some big cats evolved into jaguars 16 million years ago.
(B) The oldest fossil of big cats ever discovered is 3.8 million years old.
(C) Big cats are descendants of snow leopards living in high mountains.
(D) Tibetan blue sheep was a main food source for big cats in the Himalayas.

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43. What is the purpose of this passage?
(A) To promote wildlife conservation.
(B) To report on a new finding in paleontology.
(C) To introduce a new animal species.
(D) To compare the family trees of pantherine felids.

American cooking programs have taught audiences, changed audiences, and changed with audiences from generation to generation. In October 1926, the U.S. Department of Agriculture created this genre’s first official representative, a fictional radio host named Aunt Sammy. Over the airwaves, she educated homemakers on home economics and doled out advice on all kinds of matters, but it was mostly the cooking recipes that got listeners’ attention. The show provided a channel for transmitting culinary advice and brought about a national exchange of recipes.
Cooking shows transitioned to television in the 1940s, and in the 1950s were often presented by a cook systematically explaining instructions on how to prepare dishes from start to finish. These programs were broadcast during the day and aimed at middle-class women whose mindset leaned toward convenient foods for busy families. Poppy Cannon, for example, was a popular writer of The Can-Opener Cookbook. She appeared on various television shows, using canned foods to demonstrate how to cook quickly and easily.
Throughout the sixties and seventies, a few chef-oriented shows redefined the genre as an exhibition of haute European cuisine by celebrity gourmet experts. This elite cultural aura then gave way to various cooking styles from around the world. An example of such change can be seen in Martin Yan’s 1982 “Yan Can Cook” series, which demonstrated Chinese cuisine cooking with the catchphrase, “If Yan can cook, you can too!” By the 1990s, these cooking shows ranged from high-culture to health-conscious cuisine, with chefs’ personalities and entertainment value being two keys to successful productions.
At the beginning of the 21st century, new cooking shows emerged to satisfy celeb-hungry, reality-crazed audiences. In this new millennium of out-of-studio shows and chef competition reality shows, chefs have become celebrities whose fame rivals that of rock stars. Audiences of these shows tend to be people who are interested in food and enjoy watching people cook rather than those who want to do the cooking themselves, leaving the age-old emphasis on following recipes outmoded.
44. Which of the following is closest in meaning to “haute” in the third paragraph?
(A) Coarse.
(B) Civilian.
(C) Various.
(D) High-class.

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45. Which of the following is true about audiences of American cooking shows?
(A) Those in the ’30s preferred advice on home economics to cooking instructions.
(B) Those in the ’40s and ’50s were interested in food preparation for busy families.
(C) Those in the ’60s and ’70s were eager to exchange recipes with each other.
(D) Those in the ’80s enjoyed genuine American-style gourmet cooking.

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46. According to the passage, which of the following is true about the most recent cooking programs?
(A) They are often hosted by rock stars.
(B) They are often not filmed in the studios.
(C) They attract many celebrity viewers.
(D) They invite hungry audience members to be judges.

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47. Which of the following would most likely be a hit cooking show in the ’90s?
(A) A show dedicated to European cuisine and gourmet food.
(B) A show sponsored by food companies advertising new products.
(C) A show hosted by a humorous chef presenting low-calorie dishes.
(D) A show with a professional cook demonstrating systematic ways of cooking.

Screaming is one of the primal responses humans share with other animals. Conventional thinking suggests that what sets a scream apart from other sounds is its loudness or high pitch. However, many sounds that are loud and high-pitched do not raise goose bumps like screams can. To find out what makes human screams unique, neuroscientist Luc Arnal and his team examined a bank of sounds containing sentences spoken or screamed by 19 adults. The result shows screams and screamed sentences had a quality called “roughness,” which refers to how fast a sound changes in loudness. While normal speech sounds only have slight differences in loudness-between 4 and 5 Hz, screams can switch very fast, varying between 30 and 150 Hz, thus perceived as being rough and unpleasant.
Arnal’s team asked 20 subjects to judge screams as neutral or fearful, and found that the scariest almost always corresponded with roughness. The team then studied how the human brain responds to roughness using fMRI brain scanners. As expected, after hearing a scream, activity increased in the brain’s auditory centers where sound coming into the ears is processed. But the scans also lit up in the amygdala, the brain’s fear center.
The amygdala is the area that regulates our emotional and physiological response to danger. When a threat is detected, our adrenaline rises, and our body prepares to react to danger. The study discovered that screams have a similar influence on our body. It also found that roughness isn’t heard when we speak naturally, regardless of the language we use, but it is prevalent in artificial sounds. The most aggravating alarm clocks, car horns, and fire alarms possess high degrees of roughness.
One potential application for this research might be to add roughness to alarm sounds to make them more effective, the same way a bad smell is added to natural gas to make it easily detectable. Warning sounds could also be added to electric cars, which are particularly silent, so they can be efficiently detected by pedestrians.
48. What is the first paragraph mainly about?
(A) Different types of screams.
(B) Human sounds and animal cries.
(C) Specific features of screams.
(D) Sound changes and goose bumps.

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49. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT a finding by Arnal’s team?
(A) Changes in volume make screams different from other sounds.
(B) Only humans can produce sounds with great loudness variation.
(C) Normal human speech sounds vary between 4 to 5 Hz in loudness.
(D) Drastic volume variation in speech can effectively activate the amygdala.

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50. What does “it” in the third paragraph refer to?
(A) The study.
(B) Language.
(C) Roughness.
(D) The amygdala.