公共英語一級閲讀理解文章附翻譯

對於公共英語一級的考試，儘管難度不大，但是考生如果不認真備考也是難以考出理想的成績的，下面，小編為大家提供兩篇公共英語一級閲讀理解文章，希望對大家有所幫助。

The modern age is an age of electricity. People are so used to electric lights, radio, televisions, and telephones that it is hard to imagine what life would be like without them. When there is a power failure, people grope about in flickering candlelight, cars hesitate in the streets because there are no traffic lights to guide them, and food spoils in silent , people began to understand how electricity works only a little more than two centuries ago. Nature has apparently been experimenting in this field for millions of years. Scientists are discovering more and more that the living world may hold many interesting secrets of electricity that could benefit humanity.

All living cells send out tiny pulses of electricity. As the heart beats, it sends out pulses of record; they form an electrocardiogram, which a doctor can study to determine how well the heart is working. The brain, too, sends out brain waves of electricity, which can be recorded in an electroencephalogram. The electric currents generated by most living cells are extremely small —— often so small that sensitive instruments are needed to record them. But in some animals, certain muscle cells have become so specialized as electrical generators that they do not work as muscle cells at all. When large numbers of these cells are linked together, the effects can be astonishing.

The electric eel is an amazing storage battery. It can send a jolt of as much as eight hundred volts of electricity through the water in which it lives. (An electric house current is only one hundred twenty volts.) As many as four-fifths of all the cells in the electric eel's body are specialized for generating electricity, and the strength of the shock it can deliver corresponds roughly to the length of its body.

當今時代是電氣時代。人們對電燈、收音機、電視和電話早已司空見慣以致很難想象沒有它們生活會變成什麼樣。當停電時，人們在搖曳不定的燭光下暗中摸索;因沒有紅綠燈的指示，汽車在道路上遲疑不前;冰箱也停止工作，導致食物變質。人們只是在兩個世紀前一點才開始瞭解電的使用原理，自然界卻顯然在這方面經歷過了數百萬年。科學家不斷髮現許多生物世界裏可能有益於人類的關於電的有趣祕密。所有生物細胞都會發出微小的電脈衝。當心髒跳動時，把它發出的脈衝記錄下來就成了心電圖，這可讓醫生了解心臟的工作狀況。大腦也發出腦電波，這可在腦電圖上記錄下來。許多生物細胞發出的電流都是極微小的，小到要用靈敏儀器才能記錄和測量。但一些動物的某些肌肉細胞能轉化成一個個發電機，以致完全失去肌肉細胞的功能。這種細胞大量地連接在一起時產生的效果將是非常令人吃驚的。電鰻就是一種令人驚異的蓄電池。它可以在水中發出相當於800伏特電壓電流(家庭用户的電壓只有120伏特)。在電鰻的`身體裏，多至五分之四的細胞都專門用來發電，而且發出的電流的強度大約和它身體的長度成正比。

Prices determine how resources are to be used. They are also the means by which products and services that are in limited supply are rationed among buyers. The price system of the United States is a complex network composed of the prices of all the products bought and sold in the economy as well as those of a myriad of services, including labor, professional, transportation, and public-utility services. The interrelationships of all these prices make up the"system" of prices. The price of any particular product or service is linked to a broad, complicated system of prices in which everything seems to depend more or less upon everything else. If one were to ask a group of randomly selected individuals to define "price", many would reply that price is an amount of money paid by the buyer to the seller of a product or service or, in other words, that price is the money value of a product or service as agreed upon in a market transaction. This definition is, of course, valid as far as it goes. For a complete understanding of a price in any particular transaction, much more than the amount of money involved must be known. Both the buyer and the seller should be familiar with not only the money amount, but with the amount and quality of the product or service to be exchanged, the time and place at which the exchange will take place and payment will be made, the form of money to be used, the credit terms and discounts that apply to the transaction, guarantees on the product or service, delivery terms, return privileges, and other factors. In other words, both buyer and seller should be fully aware of all the factors that comprise the total "package" being exchanged for the asked-for amount of money in order that they may evaluate a given price.

價格決定資源的使用方式。價格也是有限的產品與服務在買方中的配給手段。美國的價格系統是複雜的網狀系統，包括經濟生活中一切產品買賣的價格，也包括名目繁多的各種服務，諸如勞動力、專職人員、交通運輸、公共事業等服務的價格。所有這些價格的內在聯繫構成了價格系統。任何一種個別產品或服務的價格都與這個龐大而複雜的系統密切相關，而且或多或少地受到系統中其它成份的制約。如果隨機挑選一羣人，問問他們如何定義"價格"，許多人會回答價格就是根據賣方提供的產品或服務，買方向其付出的錢數。換句話説，價格就是市場交易中大家認同的產品或服務的貨幣量。該定義就其本身來説自有其道理。但要獲得對價格在任何一樁交易中的完整認識，就必須考慮到大量"非貨幣"因素的影響。買賣雙方不但要清楚交易中的錢數，而且要非常熟悉交易物的質量和數量，交易的時間、地點，採用哪種形式付款，有怎樣的緩付和優惠，對交易物的質量保證、交貨條款、退賠權利等等。也就是説，為了能估算索價，買賣雙方必須通曉構成交易物價格的通盤細節。