2018北京航空航天大学考博英语真题

责编：王娟 2026-08-25

2018年北京航空航天大学考博英语真题

Passage One

Sixty days walking over ice and snow in temperature as low as -45 °C, with nothing to keep you company except the occasional polar “bear”. This is no small achievement. Only a few people have ever walked to the North Pole unassisted, and if Christina Franco succeeds, she will have earned a place in the history books and met one of the few remaining challenges of exploration left to women.

Her 480-mile journey will begin in northern Canada, dragging a sledge that weighs as much as she does. At the end of each day’s walking or skiing, she will pitch her tent in subzero temperatures, get into a sleeping bag filled with ice, and attempt to sleep to the unsettling background sounds of howling wind and cracking ice, which may or may not signal the approach of one of those polar bears. “I’ll carry a pistol to scare any bears away,” says Franco, 42. “The bears that far north won’t have had contact with humans, fortunately, so they won’t associate me with food, but they will be curious and that’s dangerous. If it uses a paw to see what you are, it could damage your tent—or your arm. I imagine I’ll have quite a few sleepless nights.”

Many of the early polar explorers suffered from disease and injuries, and while modern technology (lightweight materials, satellite phones, places on stand-by to carry out rescue missions) has lessened the dangers, it can never make such an inhospitable landscape anything approaching safe. It can take just five minutes for any uncovered skin to become frostbitten and, once the sun has risen, Franco will only be able to remove her sunglasses inside her tent, otherwise the intensity of the sunlight reflecting off the snow would cause snow blindness. Just to heighten the danger, the cold will slow down her brain functions, so it will be more difficult to make split-second decisions in the event of a sudden crisis.

She will use about 8, 000 calories a day, losing nearly half a kilogram every 24 hours. “The problem is that the human body can only take on about 5, 500 calories a day,” she says. “So you have to fatten up before you set off or you’ll run out of energy.” Franco is currently trying to put on 19 kilos. She may complain about not fitting into any of her dresses, but when Franco weighs herself in front of me and finds she’s lost one kilo rather than gained two, as she’d expected, she’s very upset. “I hope my scales are wrong because, if not, I’ve lost weight,” she says, reaching for one of many bars of chocolate lying around her kitchen.

1. What does the writer say about the history of exploration?

A. Walking to the North Pole used to be considered easier than other journeys.

B. No woman has ever completed the journey to the geographic North Pole.

C. Female explorers have already done most of the world’s difficult journeys.

D. Franco is already an important historical figure for her previous journeys.

2. The word “unsettling” (in Paragraph 2) means ________.

A. comforting

B. worrying

C. exciting

D. surprising

3. What does Franco say about the danger from polar bears?

A. They could injure her without meaning to.

B. If they are hungry, they might attack her.

C. In that part of the Arctic they are harmless.

D. She will have to shoot any that attacks her.

4. Which of these is a real risk to Franco during her walk?

A. She won’t be able to think very quickly in emergencies.

B. Sunlight reflected by the snow could quickly burn her skin.

C. She will need to protect her eyes, even during the night.

D. If she’s ill or has an accident, there will be no medical care.

5. Why, when she is talking to the writer, does Franco want to eat chocolate?

A. She feels that she has little energy at the moment.

B. She’s just found out her weight has gone down.

C. She knows that her weight is actually going up.

D. She always eats chocolate when she’s upset.

Passage Two

As a volunteer, John Apollos is losing weight—the old-fashioned way—by eating less. Apollos has lowered his daily calorie intake 25% over the past eight months. The fat, not surprisingly, has melted away. But that’s not the real reason Apollos and the other participants in the program are eating only three-quarters of what they used to. The researchers are trying to determine whether restricting food intake can slow the ageing process and extend our life span. “I feel better and lighter and healthier,” says Apollos. “But if it could help you live longer, that would be pretty amazing.”

The idea is counterintuitive: If we eat to live, how can starving ourselves add years to our lives? Yet decades of calorie-restriction studies involving organisms ranging from microscopic yeast to rats have shown just that. Last July a long-term study led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin, found that calorie restriction seemed to extend the lives of humanlike rhesus monkeys (恒河猴) as well. The hungry primates fell victim to diabetes, heart and brain disease and cancer much less frequently than their well-fed counterparts did.

Scientists have suspected that calorie restriction could extend the life span of animals since at least 1935, when researchers at Cornell University noticed that severely food-restricted lab rats lived twice as long as normal ones and were healthier. Other investigators began exploring the idea and learned that the secret is not merely a matter of body weight.

One theory is that a state of slight hunger acts as a mild but constant stressor that makes an organism stronger and more resistant to the ills of ageing. Taking in fewer calories also slows metabolism, and some data indicate that humans with a slower metabolism live longer. But even if these theories are correct, simply defining the mechanism is not the same as identifying the molecular pathways behind it. If researchers could determine those pathways, they might be able to pharmacologically mimic the effect of calorie restriction. That could be the ultimate benefit of the CALORIE study. “Calorie restriction is pretty much the only thing out there that we know will not just prevent disease but also extend maximal life span,” says Dr. Marc Hellerstein, a nutritionist at the University of California.

6. The purpose of keeping diet for John Apollos and other participants is to ________.

A. lose weight in order to keep slim

B. prove how long people can survive if they lack food

C. prove if eating less food can extend life span and keep young

D. just keep good mood and live a healthier life

7. What’s the meaning of “counterintuitive” (Line 1, Para. 2)?

A. Unconventional.

B. Incorrect.

C. Comprehensible.

D. Meaningless.

8. What does the research on rhesus monkeys imply?

A. The less people eat, the shorter they will live.