2022 年考研英语（一）真题

The idea that plants have some degree of consciousness first took root in the early 2000s; the term “plant neurobiology” was ___1___ around the notion that some aspects of plant behavior could be ___2___ to intelligence in animals. ___3___ plants lack brains, the firing of electrical signals in their stems and leaves nonetheless triggered responses that ___4___ consciousness, researchers previously reported.

But such an idea is untrue, according to a new opinion article. Plant biology is complex and fascinating, but it ___5___ so greatly from that of animals that so-called ___6___ of plants’ intelligence is inconclusive, the authors wrote.

Beginning in 2006, some scientists have ___7___ that plants possess neuron-like cells that interact with hormones and neurotransmitters, ___8___ “a plant nervous system, ___9___ to that in animals,” said lead study author Lincoln Taiz. “They ___10___ claimed that plants have “brain-like command centers” at their root tips.”

This ___11___ makes sense if you simplify the workings of a complex brain, ___12___ it to an array of electrical pulses; cells in plants also communicate through electrical signals. ___13___, the signaling in a plant is only ___14___ similar to the firing in a complex animal brain, which is more than “a mass of cells that communicate by electricity,” Taiz said.

“For consciousness to evolve, a brain with a threshold ___15___ of complexity and capacity is required,” he ___16___. “Since plants don’t have nervous systems, the ___17___ that they have consciousness are effectively zero.”

And what’s so great about consciousness, anyway? Plants can’t run away from ___18___, so investing energy in a body system which ___19___ a threat and can feel pain would be a very ___20___ evolutionary strategy, according to the article.

People often complain that plastics are too durable. Water bottles, shopping bags, and other trash litter the planet, from Mount Everest to the Mariana Trench, because plastics are everywhere and don’t break down easily. But some plastic materials change over time. They crack and frizzle. They “weep” out additives. They melt into sludge. All of which creates huge headaches for institutions, such as museums, trying to preserve culturally important objects. The variety of plastic objects at risk is dizzying: early radios, avant-garde sculptures, celluloid animation stills from Disney films, the first artificial heart.

Certain artifacts are especially vulnerable because some pioneers in plastic art didn’t always know how to mix ingredients properly, says Thea van Oosten, a polymer chemist who, until retiring a few years ago, worked for decades at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE). “It’s like baking a cake: If you don’t have exact amounts, it goes wrong,” she says. “The object you make is already a time bomb.”

And sometimes, it’s not the artist’s fault. In the 1960s, the Italian artist Piero Gilardi began to create hundreds of bright, colorful foam pieces. Those pieces included small beds of roses and other items as well as a few dozen “nature carpets” — large rectangles decorated with foam pumpkins, cabbages, and watermelons. He wanted viewers to walk around on the carpets — which meant they had to be durable.

Unfortunately, the polyurethane foam he used is inherently unstable. It’s especially vulnerable to light damage, and by the mid-1990s, Gilardi’s pumpkins, roses, and other figures were splitting and crumbling. Museums locked some of them away in the dark.

So van Oosten and colleagues worked to preserve Gilardi’s sculptures. They infused some with stabilizing and consolidating chemicals. Van Oosten calls those chemicals “sunscreens” because their goal was to prevent further light damage and rebuild worn polymer fibers. She is proud that several sculptures have even gone on display again, albeit sometimes beneath protective cases.

Despite success stories like van Oosten’s, preservation of plastics will likely get harder. Old objects continue to deteriorate. Worse, biodegradable plastics, designed to disintegrate, are increasingly common.

And more is at stake here than individual objects. Joana Lia Ferreira, an assistant professor of conservation and restoration at the NOVA School of Science and Technology, notes that archaeologists first defined the great material ages of human history — Stone Age, Iron Age, and so on — after examining artifacts in museums. We now live in an age of plastic, she says, “and what we decide to collect today, what we decide to preserve...will have a strong impact on how in the future we’ll be seen.”

As the latest crop of students pen their undergraduate application form and weigh up their options, it may be worth considering just how the point, purpose and value of a degree has changed and what Generation Z need to consider as they start the third stage of their educational journey.

Millennials were told that if you did well in school, got a decent degree, you would be set up for life. But that promise has been found wanting. As degrees became universal, they became devalued. Education was no longer a secure route of social mobility. Today, 28 per cent of graduates in the UK are in non-graduate roles, a percentage which is double the average among the OECD countries.

This is not to say that there is no point in getting a degree, but rather stress that a degree is not for everyone, that the switch from classroom to lecture hall is not an inevitable one and that other options are available.

Thankfully, there are signs that this is already happening, with Generation Z seeking to learn from their millennial predecessors, even if parents and teachers tend to be still set in the degree mindset. Employers have long seen the advantages of hiring school leavers who often prove themselves to be more committed and loyal employees than graduates. Many too are seeing the advantages of scrapping a degree requirement for certain roles.

For those for whom a degree is the desired route, consider that this may well be the first of many. In this age of generalists, it pays to have specific knowledge or skills. Postgraduates now earn 40 per cent more than graduates. When more and more of us have a degree, it makes sense to have two.

It is unlikely that Generation Z will be done with education at 18 or 21; they will need to be constantly upskilling throughout their career to stay employable. It has been estimated that this generation, due to the pressures of technology, the wish for personal fulfilment and desire for diversity, will work for 17 different employers over the course of their working life and have five different careers. Education, and not just knowledge gained on campus, will be a core part of Generation Z’s career trajectory.

Older generations often talk about their degree in the present and personal tense: “I am a geographer” or “I am a classicist”. Their sons or daughters would never say such a thing; it’s as if they already know that their degree won’t define them in the same way.

Enlightening, challenging, stimulating, fun. These were some of the words that Nature readers used to describe their experience of art-science collaborations in a series of articles on partnerships between artists and researchers. Nearly 40% of the roughly

The personal grievance provisions of New Zealand’s Employment Relations Act 2000 (ERA) prevent an employer from firing an employee without good cause. Instead, dismissals must be justified. Employers must both show cause and act in a procedurally fair way.

Personal grievance procedures were designed to guard the jobs of ordinary workers from “unjustified dismissals”. The premise was that the common law of contract lacked sufficient safeguards for workers against arbitrary conduct by management. Long gone are the days when a boss could simply give an employee contractual notice.

But these provisions create difficulties for businesses when applied to highly paid managers and executives. As countless boards and business owners will attest, constraining firms from firing poorly performing, high-earning managers is a handbrake on boosting productivity and overall performance. The difference between C-grade and A-grade managers may very well be the difference between business success or failure. Between preserving the jobs of ordinary workers or losing them. Yet mediocrity is no longer enough to justify a dismissal.

Consequently — and paradoxically — laws introduced to protect the jobs of ordinary workers may be placing those jobs at risk.

If not placing jobs at risk, to the extent employment protection laws constrain business owners from dismissing under-performing managers, those laws act as a constraint on firm productivity and therefore on workers’ wages. Indeed, in “An International Perspective on New Zealand’s Productivity Paradox” (2014), the Productivity Commission singled out the low quality of managerial capabilities as a cause of the country’s poor productivity growth record.

Nor are highly paid managers themselves immune from the harm caused by the ERA’s unjustified dismissal procedures. Because employment protection laws make it costlier to fire an employee, employers are more cautious about hiring new staff. This makes it harder for the marginal manager to gain employment. And firms pay staff less because firms carry the burden of the employment arrangement going wrong.

Society also suffers from excessive employment protections. Stringent job dismissal regulations adversely affect productivity growth and hamper both prosperity and overall well-being.

Across the Tasman Sea, Australia deals with the unjustified dismissal paradox by excluding employees earning above a specified “high-income threshold” from the protection of its unfair dismissal laws. In New Zealand, a 2016 private members’ Bill tried to permit firms and high-income employees to contract out of the unjustified dismissal regime. However, the mechanisms proposed were unwieldy and the Bill was voted down following the change in government later that year.

Five readers comment on Emma Marris’s article “The Case Against Zoos”.