56. What was Shaw trying to say to Churchill on his card？
A. Churchill should not go to the play alone.
B. Churchill should not bring too many people.
C. Churchill may have to waste the two tickets.
D. Churchill did not have any friend.
57. Why didn’t Churchill want the tickets for the first night？
A. He didn’t want to take Shaw’s insult（侮辱）.
B. The theatre would not be as crowded the second night.
C. He was busy on the first night of the show.
D. He couldn’t find a friend to go with him the first night.
B
American doctors say that mothers who smoke cigarettes before their babies are born may slow the growth of their babies， lungs. They say reduced lung growth could cause the babies to suffer breathing problems and lung disease later in life. Doctors in Boston， Massachusetts studied 1100 children. The mothers of some of the children smoked， the other mothers did not. Doctors found that the lungs of the children whose mothers smoked were 8％ less developed than the lungs of the children whose mothers did not smoke， and that the children whose mother smoked developed 20％ more cold and breathing diseases than other children later in life.
Another recent study found that children had a greater chance of developing lung cancer if their mothers smoked. The study also showed that the danger of lung cancer increased only for sons and not for daughters， and that the father’s smoking did not affect a child’s chance of developing lung cancer.
58. Mother who smokes before her child is born may .
A. slow the growth of her baby’s lung
B. cause her baby to suffer breathing problems and lung disease later in life
C. make her child develop lung cancer
D. All of above are right
59. Doctors in Boston studied 1100 children to_________.
A. examine whether these children were healthy
B. find out whether their mothers had smoked
C. find why these children suffered breathing problems and lung disease
D. look into the effect that mother’s smoking had on their children
60. Suppose John’s father was a heavy smoker， so was Mary’s mother. According this passage， _________.
A. John is more likely to develop lung cancer
B. Mary is more likely to develop lung cancer
C. John and Mary have the same chance to develop cancer
D. neither John nor Mary has the chance to develop cancer
61. This passage is to_________.
A. warn us of the danger of smoking before children
B. warn people with breathing problems not to smoke
C. warn us that mothers who smoke may affect their children’s health
D. warn us that fathers who smoke may affect their children as mothers
C
Prolonging human life has increased the size of the human population. Many people alive today would have died of childhood diseases if they had been born 100 years ago. Because more people live longer， there are more people around at any given time. In fact， it is a decrease in death rates， not an increase in birthrates， that has led to the population explosion.
Prolonging human life has also increased the dependency load. In all societies， people who are disabled or too young or too old to work are dependent on the rest of society to provide for them. In hunting and gathering cultures， old people who could not keep up might be left behind to die. In times of famine， infants might be allowed to die because they could not survive if their parents starved， where as if the parents survived they could have another child. In most contemporary（當代的） societies， people feel a moral obligation to keep people alive whether they can work or not. We have a great many people today who live past the age at which they want to work or are able to work； we also have rules which require people to retire at a certain age. Unless these people were able to save money for their retirement， somebody else must support them. In the United States many retired people live on social security checks which are so little that they must live in near poverty. Older people have more illness than young or middle aged people； unless they have wealth or private or government insurance， they must often “go on welfare” if they have a serious illness.
When older people become senile （衰老的） or too weak and ill to care for themselves， they create grave problems for their families. In the past and in some traditional cultures， they would be cared for at home until they died. Today， with most members of a household working or in school， there is often no one at home who can care for a sick or weak person. To meet this need， a great many nursing homes and convalescent（療養的） hospitals have been built. These are often profit making organizations， although some are sponsored by religious and other nonprofit groups. While a few of these institutions are good， most of them are simply “dumping（倒垃圾的） grounds” for the dying in which “care” is given by poorly paid， overworked， and underskilled personnel.
62. The author believes that the population explosion results from_________.
A. an increase in birthratesB. the industrial development
C. a decrease in death ratesD. human beings’ cultural advances
63. It can be inferred from the passage that in hunting and gathering cultures_________.
A. it was a moral responsibility for the families to keep alive the aged people who could not work
B. the survival of infants was less important than that of their parents in times of starvation
C. old people were given the task of imparting the cultural wisdom of the tribe to new generations
D. death was celebrated as a time of rejoicing for an individual freed of the hardships of life