题目内容
University of lower assistant professor of engineering Thomas Schnell is crammed into the seat behind me. Schnell created this lab-on wheels to gauge how a motorist's body reacts to driving. He wants car-makers to use his findings to design "smart" cars that make driving less stressful. I'm taking his rolling research facility of a white-knuckle evening spin in Chicago-home to some of the nations worst rush-hour traffic — to learn what happens to the human body during a long, frustrating commute.
So at 5:15 on a Monday, with a storm whipping in off Lake Michigan. I pull out of a downtown parking lot and begin creeping along interstate 90, heading west behind a line of cars that stretches as far as the eye can see. Now and then, the pace picks up, just as quickly, it slows to a halt, red brake lights glowing in the twilight.
If I had to do this every day, I'd grind my teeth to dust. After 45 minutes, Schnell and I have gone just 10 miles. As the car crawls along, Schnell occasionally asks, "What is your level of fun？" He notes my responses, some of them unprintable, on a clipboard. Here's what the computers I'm tethered to record:
I begin breathing harder and faster. My respiration rate leaps from 12 to 17 breaths per minute. My heat rate jumps from 74 to 80 beats per minute. The electrodes taped to the muscles in my forehead show increased activity (Translation. My brow furrows and I squint a lot).
While 1 was in no danger of keeling over, my heart rate and other symptoms offered clear evidence that I was under stress, says Robert Bonow, MD, president of the American Heart Association (AHA). Over time, that stress could take a heavy toll.
If you are among the roughly 113 million Americans who drive to work each day, you're probably grimacing with recognition. With traffic congestion getting worse each year, anyone who travels by car to the office or plant, or who simply shuttles kids from school to violin lessons to slumber parties, may be exposing himself or herself to serious hidden health threats.
All that commuter combat is bound to produce casualties. "People are experiencing more congestion and we know that's stressful," says Colorado State University psychologist Jerry Diefenbaker. Some results are predictable. Reckless driving sometimes in the form. of so-called road rage — is often spurred by traffic frustration. Consider 41-year-old Chris Heard. The mild- mannered engineer used to turn into Mad Max every day as he drove the nearly 50 miles of clogged roads between his home in Brookline, N. H., and his office near Boston. "It turned me into a very aggressive driver," he says, "taking risks, cutting people off, driving fast on back roads to make up for time I lost ," the result of his congestion-fueled fury？ A stack of speeding tickets and a number of near collisions. Finally he did something about it. He found a job closer to home.
According to the passage, Professor Thomas Schnell has created his lab-on wheels______.
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听力原文： W: I wonder if you can help me. I've been so busy sightseeing these days and I haven't had time to do any shopping. And now it's almost end of my tour and I'm leaving tomorrow. I need to buy and take presents for my family members.
M: I'm glad to be any help, although I'm new at this job I'm afraid. I'm American and I've been working with the travel agency for 3 months.
W: Well, I must buy a warm jumper for my mother so that she can wear it in winter back at home. My sister likes perfume but not expensive ones. And then some wine and after shave for my brother.
M: Can we stop for a moment and I'll tell you where you can get some of those things. Have you got your map there？ Well there's Scorch Wale shop here on the left hand side as you go down Region Street from the hotel you are staying at. They have all kinds of jumpers and skirts and…
W: Oh, but I want it for myself. I love those skirts. Do they sell socks too？ You know, socks for a woman, I mean.
M: I'm not sure, there is a sock shop on the opposite side of the road, in fact. Now, as for your perfume.
W: No. I've changed my mind. I think, a book for my sister and a record for my brother. Can I get those there too？
M: There is a big record shop in the Circus itself. You'd find good selection of books at Hacher's. That's a little away along the Piccadilly Street not the Circus. On south side, that is, about there on the map.
W: Ah, I see. Well, that's about everything then. What a lot of shopping. After that, we'll need a nice cup of English tea.
M: I can tell you where you can go for that. If you go along the Piccadilly, pass Harcher's, you will find a very good tea shops called Reshow on the same side of the street. Funny that one of the best tea shops in London has a French name.
(39)
According to the passage, the railroad first appeared in______.
Transportation is the movement or conveying of persons and goods from one location to another. As human beings, from ancient times to the 21st century, sought to make their transport facilities more efficient, they have always endeavored to move people and property with the least expenditure of time, effort and cost. Improved transportation had helped make possible progress toward better living, the modern systems of manufacturing and commerce, and the complex, interdependent urban economy present in much of the world today.
Primitive human beings supplemented their own carrying of goods and possessions by starting to domesticate animals — training them to bear small loads and pull crude sleds. The invention of the wheel, probably in western Asia, was a great step forward in transport. As the wheel was perfected, crude carts and wagons began to appear in the Tigris-Euphrates valley about 3500 BC, and later in Crete, Egypt, and China. Wheeled vehicles could not use the narrow paths and trails used by pack animals, and early roads were soon being built by the Assyrians and the Persians.
The greatest improvements in transportation have appeared in the last two centuries, a period during which the industrial Revolution has vastly changed the economic life of the entire world. Crude railways — horse-drawn wagons with wooden wheels and rails — had been used in English and European mines during the 17th century. Although it first appeared in England, the railroad had its most dramatic growth in the United States. By 1840 more than 4800 km of railroads were already operating in the eastern states, a figure 40 percent greater than the total railroad mileage of Europe. Since World War I, however, the U.S. railroads have been in a decline, due partly to the rapid development of private automobiles, trucks, buses, pipelines, and airlines.
The first new mode of transportation to challenge the railroad was the motor vehicle, which was made possible by the invention, in the 1860s and 70s, of the internal combustion engine. The automobile found its greatest popularity in the United States, where the first "horseless carriages" appeared in the 1890s. Two hundred million motor vehicles had been produced in the nation within 70 years of their first appearance. The automobile thus became in many ways as important to the 20th century as the railroads had been to the 19th.
During the same period intercity buses took over a large portion of commercial passenger travel, and trucks began carrying a great deal of the nation's freight.
Although the emphasis on fuel conservation waned in "the 1980s, few doubt that the issue will emerge again when oil scarcities loom, as they did in the 1970s. Future possibilities include automobiles with far greater fuel efficiency and improved mass-transit systems. Both will occur not only in response to oil-supply disruption, but also as an answer to increasing demands for cleaner air. Improvements in mass transit offer the most promise for the future. Amtrak's 1993 introduction of the Swedish high-speed "tilting train" should cut travel time between some East Coast cities by almost half, once tracks are entirely electrified.
From the first paragraph, it can be inferred that transport exerts a great influence on all the following EXCEPT______.
The overall purpose of the passage is______.
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