福建医科大学2007博士研究生入学英语考试试卷.docVIP

PAGE PAGE 14 福建医科大学2007博士研究生入学英语考试试卷 考试科目代码:______________ 考试科目名称:______________ Part I. Reading Comprehension (40% 40 minutes) Directions: Read the following four passages. Answer the questions below each passage by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answer on ANSWER SHEET. Passage One Community cancer clusters are viewed more differently by citizen activists than by epidemiologists. Environments and concerned local residents, for instance, might immediately suspect environmental radiation as the culprit when a high incidence of cancer cases occurs near a nuclear facility. Epidemiologists, in contrast, would be more likely to say that the incidences were “inconclusive” or the result of pure chance. And when a breast cancer survivor, Lorraine Pace, mapped 20 breast cancer cases occurring in her West Islip, Long Island, community, her rudimentary research efforts were guided more by hope—that a specific environment agent could be correlated with the cancers—than by scientific method. When epidemiologists study clusters of cancer cases and other noncontagious conditions such as birth defects or miscarriage, they take several variables into account, such as background rate (the number of people affected ion the general population), cluster size, and specificity ( any notable characteristics of the individual affected in each case). If a cluster is both large and specific, it is easier for epidemiologists to assign blame. Not only must each variable be considered on its own, but it must also be combined with others. Lung cancer is very common in the general population. Yet when a huge number of cases turned up among World War II shipbuilders who had all worked with asbestos the size of the cluster and the fact that the men had had similar occupational asbestos exposures enabled epidemiologists to assign blame to the fibrous mineral. Although several known carcinogens have been discovered through these kinds of occupational or medical clu