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Within a large concrete room, cut out of a mountain on a freezing-told island just 1,000 kilometers from the North Pole, could lie the future of humanity.

The room is a vault (地下库) designed to hold around 2 million seeds, representing all known varieties of the world’s crops. It is being built to safeguard the world’s food supply against nuclear war, climate change, terrorism, rising sea levels, earthquakes and the collapse of electricity supplies. “If the worst came to the worst, this would allow the world to reconstruct agriculture on this planet.” says Cary Fowler, director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an independent international organization promoting the project.

The Norwegian (挪威的) government is planning to create the seed bank next year at the request of crop scientists. The $3 million vault will be built deep inside a sandstone mountain on the Norwegian Arctic island of Spitsbergen. The vault will have metre-thick walls of reinforced concrete and will be protected behind two airlocks and high-security doors.

The vault’s seed collection will represent the products of some 10,000 years of plant breeding by the world’s famers. Though most are no longer widely planted, the varieties contain vital genetic properties still regularly used in plant breeding.

To survive, the seeds need freezing temperatures. Operators plan to replace the air inside the

vault each winter, when temperatures in Spitsbergen are around -18℃. But even if some disaster meant that the vault was abandoned, the permanently frozen soil would keep the seeds alive. And even accelerated global warming would take many decades to penetrate the mountain vault.

“This will be the world’s most secure gene bank,” says Fowler. “But its seeds will only be used when all other samples have gone for some reason.”

The project comes at a time when there is growing concern about the safety of existing seed banks around the world. Many have been criticized for poor security, ageing refrigeration (冷藏) systems and vulnerable electricity supplies.

The scheme won UN approval at a meeting of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome in October 2005. A feasibility study said the facility “would essentially be built to last forever”.

21. The Norwegian vault is important in that _________________.

A. the seeds in it represent the rarest varieties of world’s crops.

B. the seeds in it could revive agriculture if the worst thing should happen

C. it is built deep in a mountain on a freezing-cold Arctic island

D. it is strong enough against all disasters caused by man and nature

22. The seed bank project was proposed by __________.

A. the Norwegian government B. Norwegian farmers

C. Spitsbergen residents D. agricultural scientists

23. The seeds in the vault will be stored ____________________.

A. as samples of world crop varieties

B. as products of world plant breeding

C. for their valuable genetic properties

D. for their resistance to plant diseases

24. For the seed bank project to be successful, the most important factor is probably________.

A. constructing tight airlocks B. maintaining high security

C. keeping freezing temperatures D. storing large quantities of seeds

25. Which of the following statements is true?

A. The Norwegian vault models after existing seed banks

B. The Spitsbergen seed bank is expected to last 10,000 years

C. The existing seed banks have potential problems

D. The UN financed the Spitsbergen seed bank

21.【答案】B

【解析】根据题干关键词Paragraph 1和Ms. Simmons was criticized for定位到文章首段第三句“But by the end of 2009 Ms. Simmons was under fire for having sat on Goldman’s compensation committee; how could she have let those enormous bonus payouts pass unremarked?”文中短语“be under fire”是对题干中“criticized”一词的同义替换。题目问的是 Ms. Simmons 受到批评的原因，答案就在“for”之后的部分，“她担任高盛公司薪酬委员会的职务，却怎能在无人注意的情况下轻易发放如此巨额的奖金呢?”这句话虽然没有直接给出她受到批评的原因，却用一个反问句告诉我们她做的事情，她作为薪酬委员会的成员让巨额的款项流失了，这是与她担任的职位不符的行为，即背离了她的职责，因此答案选 B。

A 项的干扰源自于“have let those enormous bonus payouts pass”，但“让巨额奖金得以发放”并不等同于“获得了太多的利益”，故 A 项不对，属于断章取义;C 项“拒绝妥协”属于无中生有，原文首段并未提到;D 项的干扰源自于“the next years Ms. Simmons had Left the board”，但这并不是受到批评的原因，而是结果，属于把原因和结果倒置。

22.【答案】D

【解析】根据题干直接定位到第二段首句“Outside directors are supposed to serve as helpful, yet biased, advisers on a firm’s board.”, 这句话告诉我们独立董事所扮演的角色是 advisers(顾问)，接下来，第二句话“they presumably have enough independence to disagree with the chief executive’s proposals.”指出独立顾问在公司中是享有独立性的，结合这两点可知，独立顾问实际是具有独立性的顾问，因此， D 项为正确答案。

A 项的干扰来自于“made their wealth…elsewhere”，但是“在别处创造了财富”并不等于“慷慨的投资人”，属于无中生有;B 项干扰是源于修饰词 biased，文章中确实提到了“biased advisers”，但是选项中的 executive 并不是 advisers，故不对;C 项的干扰源于文章第二段最后一句，“如果股价下跌，独立顾问应根据自己的经验给出建议”，但对于股价下跌给出建议，并不是预测股价，重点还是在建议上，因此不对。

23.【答案】C

【解析】根据题干信息“the researchers from Ohio University”和“after an outside director’s surprise departure”定位

到原文第三段第四句和第五句，“They found that after a surprise departure, the probability that the company will subsequently have to restate earnings increases by nearly 20%. The likelihood of being named in a federal class-actionlawsuit also increases, and the stock is likely to perform worse.”这两句话给出了公司在独立董事离开可能出现的三种情况，1)重申盈利状况的可能性增加了近 20%;2)被牵扯到联邦法院所受理的集体起诉案件中的可能性也随之增加;3)公司在股市的表现也会更糟。与这三种情况之一对应的是 C 项，故答案选 C。A 项“变得更稳定”，虽然第三段段末出现了 stable 一词，但与题干所问问题并无关系，属于无中生有的选项;B项利用文中“the probability that the company will subsequently have to restate earnings increases by nearly 20%”这一句话中三个放在一起的词语“restate earnings increases”设置干扰项，事实上通过分析句子结构，发现这个句子说的是“the probability… increases by 20%”(可能性增加)而非“earnings increases”(收入增加)，故 B 项不对; D 项干扰源自“The likelihood of being named in a federal class-action lawsuit also increases”，这句话指出独立董事离开后可能出现的第二种情况，“被牵扯到联邦法院所受理的集体起诉案件中的可能性也随之增加”，但并不等同于“在诉讼案件中表现更糟”，因此 D 项错误。

24.【答案】A

【解析】这是一道段落推断题，根据题干定位到文章最后一段。文章最后两句指出“如果公司想在艰难时期留住独立董事，就必须建立激励制度。否则，独立董事都将效仿 Simmons 女士”，由此，可以推断，独立董事如果有激励制度刺激的话，就可能留在公司，选项 A“可能由于诱人的条件而留在公司”是对这个意思的同义替换，其中的关键词 attractive offers 就等同于原文中的 incentives，故选 A。

B 项“通常在公司有不良行为的记录”，与最后一段首句逻辑相反;C 项在本段中根本没有涉及到，属于无中生有;D 项与文章最后两句意思相反，故排除。

25.【答案】B

【解析】这是一道观点态度题，问作者对独立董事所起作用的态度，需要纵观全文来判断。首先根据题干信息“the role of outside directors”可以回文定位到第二段首句“Outside directors are supposed to serve as helpful, yet less biased, advisers on a firm’s board”，讲述独立董事所扮演的角色是“helpful”和“less biased”的，这是对独立董事作用的积极评论;其次，文章最后一段指出“如果公司想在艰难时期留住独立董事，就必须建立激励制度”这说明独立董事对于一个公司确实是有用的，否则不会特意建立针对他们的激励制度。因此，综合全文而言，作者认为独立董事所起的作用是积极的，答案选 B。