PartⅢ Reading Comprehension (45minutes, 30point) 
Directions: There are 5 passages in this part. Each passage is followed by 5 questions  or unfinished statements. For each of them there are 4 choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best one and mark the corresponding letter with a single bar across the square brackets on your machine-scoring  NSWER SHEET. 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　
Passage One 
Until last spring, Nia Parker and the other kids in her neighborhood commuted to school on Bus 59. But as fuel prices rose, the school district needed to find a way to cut its transportation costs. So the school's busing company redrew its route map, eliminating Nia's bus altogether. Now Nia and her neighbors travel the haft mile to school via a“walking school bus”agroup of kids, supervised by an adult or two, who make the walk together.
Like the rest of us, school districts are feeling pinched by rising fuel costs—and finding new ways to adapt. The price of diesel fuel has gone up 34 percent in the past two years. For the typical American school district, bus bills total 5 percent of thebudget. As administrators look to trim, busing is an inviting target, since it doesn'taffect classroom instruction (or test scores). More than one third of American school administrators have elim/nated bus stops or routes in order to stay within budget.
Many parents are delighted to see their kids walking to school, partly because many did so themselves: according to a 1969 survey, nearly half of school kids walked or biked to school, compared with only 16 percent in 2001. Modem parents have been unwilling to let kids walk to school for fear of traffic, crime or simple bullying, but with organized adult supervision, those concerns have diminished.
Schools and busing companies are finding other ways to save. In rural areas where busing is a must, some schools have even chosen fourday school weeks.Busing companies instruct drivers to eliminate extra stops from routes and to mm off the engine while idling. They are also using computer software to determine the most fuelefficient routes, which aren't always the shortest ones.
There could be downsides, however, to the busing cutbacks. If every formerly bused student begins walking to school, it's an environmental winbut if too many of their parents decide to drive them instead, the overall carbon footprint can grow. Replacing buses with many more parentdriven cars can also increase safety risks: A 2002 report concluded students are 13 times safer on a school bus than in a passenger car, since buses have fewer accidents and withstand them better due to their size. And some students complain about the long morning hikes, particularly when the route contains a really big hill.
31. The“walking school bus” _________.
A. does not consume fuel        B. aims to keep children fit
C. seldom causes traffic jams     D. is popular with school kids
32. In America the responsibility for busing kids to school lies with _______.
A. individual schools    B. school districts   C. teachers    D. parents
33. As regards walking to school, modern parents seem much concerned with the_____.
A. time spent on the way       B. changes in the route
C. kids' physical strength       D. safety of their children
34. To save money, some schools choose to _____________.
A. take the shortest routes        B. shorten the school week
C. give drivers better training     D. use fuelefficient buses
35. Busing cutbacks may eventually lead to ___________.
A. fiercer competition among bus companies
B. more students taking public transportation
C. an increase in carbon dioxide emissions
D. a decrease in the safety of school buses
36. Which of the following best describes the author's attitude towards busing cutbacks?
A. Favorable.  B. Critical.   C.Objective.   D. Indifferent.
Passage Two 
People are living longer than eve Two r, but for some reason, women are living longer than men. A baby boy born in the United States in 2003 can expect to live to be about 73, a baby girl, about 79. This is indeed a wide gap, and no one really knows why it exists. The greater longevity (長(zhǎng)壽) of women, however, has been known for centuries. It was, for example, described in the seventeenth century. However, the difference was smaller thenthe gap is growing.
A number of reasons have been proposed to account for the differences. The gap is greatest in industrialized societies, so it has been suggested that women are less susceptible to work strains that may raise the risk of heart disease and alcoholism. Sociologists also tell us that women are encouraged to be less adventurous than men (and this may be why they are more careful drivers, involved in fewer accidents).
Even smoking has been implicated in the age discrepancy. It was once suggested that working women are more likely to smoke and as more women entered the work force, the age gap would begin to close, because smoking is related to earlier deaths. Now, however, we see more women smoking and they still tend to live longer although their lung cancer rate is climbing sharply.
One puzzling aspect of the problem is that women do not appear to be as healthy as men. That is, they report far more illnesses. But when a man reports an illness, it is more likely to be serious.
Some researchers have suggested that men may die earlier because their health is more strongly related to their emotions. For example, men tend to die sooner after losing a spouse than women do. Men even seem to be more weakened by loss of a job.(Both of these are linked with a marked decrease in the effectiveness of the immune system.) Among men, death follows retirement with an alarming promptness.
Perhaps we are searching for the answers too close to the surface of the problem.Perhaps the answers lie deeper in our biological heritage. After all, the phenomenon is not isolated to humans. Females have the edge among virtually all mammalian (哺乳動(dòng)物) species, in that they generally live longer. Furthermore, in many of these species the differences begin at the moment of conception; there are more malev miscarriages (流產(chǎn)). In humans, after birth, more baby boys than baby girls die.
37. What can we learn from the first two paragraphs?
A. Men's lifespan remains almost unchanged.
B. Researchers have found the causes of the age gap.
C. The more advanced a society, the greater the age gap.
D. The age gap was noticed only recently.
38. As is suggested in Paragraph 2, the two factors relevant to women's longer lifespan are _____.
A. diseases and road accidents
B. industrialization and work strains
C. their immunity to heart disease and refusal of alcohol
D. their endurance of work strains and reluctance for adventure
39. According to Paragraph 3, which of the following statements is true?
A. The great number of male smokers contributes to the age gap.
B. The growing number of smoking women will narrow the age gap.
C. Female workers are more likely to smoke than male workers.
D. Smoking does not seem to affect women's longevity.
40. Which of the following phenomena makes researchers puzzled?
A. Men's health is more closely related to their emotions.
B. Though more liable to illnesses, women still live longer.
C. Men show worse symptoms than women when they fall ill.
D. Quite a number of men die soon after their retirement.
41. The word “edge”in Paragraph 6 means“___________”.
A. margin    B. side    C. advantage   D. quality
42. What is the main idea of the passage?
A. The greater longevity of women remains a mystery.
B. That women are healthier than men well explains their longevity.
C. People are living longer as a result of industrialization.
D. Women are less emotionally affected by difficulties in life.