2025年英语专业八级考试真题及答案解析

(1)A new study from researchers uncovers the kinds of infrastructure improvements that would make the biggest difference in increasing the number of electric cars on the road, a key step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. (2)The researchers found that installing charging stations on residential streets, rather than just in central locations such as shopping malls, could have an outsized benefit. They also found that adding on high-speed charging stations along highways and making supplementary vehicles more easily available to people who need to travel beyond the single-charge range of their electric vehicles could greatly increase the vehicle electrification potential. (3)The findings are reported in Nature Energy, in a paper by associate professor of energy studies Jessika Trancik, graduate student Wei Wei, etc. (4)The researchers developed a new methodology to identify charging solutions that would conveniently fit into people's daily activities. They used data collected from GPS tracking devices in cars, as well as survey results about people's daily driving habits and needs, including detailed data from local areas and more general data from the country as a whole. Greatly increasing the penetration of electric cars into the personal vehicle fleet is a central feature of climate mitigation policies at local and national levels, Trancik says. A goal of this study was“to better understand how to make these plans for rapid vehicle electrification a reality,”she adds. (5)In deciding how to prioritize different kinds of improvements in vehicle charging infrastructure, she says,"the approach that we took methodologically was to emphasize building a better understanding of people's detailed energy consuming behavior, throughout the day and year.” (6)To do that,“we examine how different people are moving from location to location throughout the day, and where they are stopping,"she says.“And from there we're able to look at when and where they would be able to charge without interrupting their daily travel activities.” (7)The team looked at both regular daily activities and the variations that occur over the course of a year. "The longitudinal view is important for capturing the different kinds of trips that a driver makes over time, so that we can determine the kinds of charging infrastructure needed to support vehicle electrification,"Wei says. (8)While the vast majority of people's daily driving needs can be met by the range provided by existing lower-cost electric cars, as Trancik and her colleagues have reported, there are typically a few times when people need to drive much farther. Or, they may need to make more short trips than usual in a day, with little time to stop and recharge. These"high-energy days,"as the researchers call them, when drivers are consuming more than the usual amount of energy for their transportation needs, may only happen a handful of times per year, but they can be the deciding factor in people's decision making about whether to go electric. (9)Even though battery technology is steadily improving and extending the maximum range of electric cars, that alone will not be enough to meet all drivers’needs and achieve rapid emissions reductions. So, addressing the range issue through infrastructure is essential, Wei says. The highest-capacity batteries tend to be the most expensive, and are not affordable to many, he points out, so getting infrastructure right is also important from an equity perspective. (10)“There are various ways to incentivize the expansion of such charging infrastructures,”he says. “There's a role for policymakers at the national level, for example, for incentives to encourage private sector competition in this space, and demonstration sites for testing out, through public-private partnerships, the rapid expansion of the charging infrastructure.”Governments at different levels can also play an important part in driving innovation by businesses, he says, and a number of them have already signaled their support for vehicle electrification. (11)Providing easy access to alternative transportation for those high-energy days could also play a role, the study found. Vehicle companies may even find it advantageous to provide or partner with convenient rental services to help drive their electric car sales. (12)In their analysis of driving habits, for example, the team found that the impact of either adding highway fast-charging stations or increasing availability of supplementary long-range vehicles for up to four days a year meant that the number of homes that could meet their driving needs with a lower cost electric vehicle increased from 10 percent to 40 percent. This number rose to above 90 percent of households when fast-charging stations, workplace charging, overnight public charging, and up to 10 days of access to supplementary vehicles were all available. Importantly, charging options at residential locations(on or off-street)is key across all of these scenarios. (13)The study's findings highlight the importance of making overnight charging capabilities available to more people. While those who have their own garages or off-street parking can often already easily charge their cars at home, many people do not have that option and use public parking.“It's really important to provide access—reliable, predictable access—to charging for people, wherever they park for longer periods of time near home, often overnight,”Trancik says. (14)That includes locations such as hotels as well as residential neighborhoods, she says.“I think it's so critical to emphasize these high-impact approaches, such as figuring out ways to do that on public streets, rather than haphazardly putting a charger at the grocery store or at the mall or any other public location.” (15)The study should help to provide some guidance to policymakers at all levels who are looking for ways to facilitate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, since the transportation sector accounts for about a third of those emissions overall.“If you have limited funds, which you typically always do, then it's just really important to prioritize,”Trancik says, noting that this study could indicate the areas that could provide the greatest return for those investments.

(1)I had been hanging around for a few years with a very party-time crowd, and my life was on a downward slide. I had gotten a Ph. D.and a divorce simultaneously. The fancy academic job never materialized. Soon I was playing flute in a street band, eating donated sandwiches, and spending every night in clubs dancing the night away. In a few years I was living in the mountains in a shack, and none of my friends worked. (2)When I saw the ad in the Sunday paper—BRAKEMEN WANTED—I thought of it as a chance to clean up my act and to get away. I felt that by doing work this dangerous, I would have to make a decision to live, to protect myself. I would have to choose to stay alive every day, to hang on to the sides of those freight cars for dear life. The railroad transformed the metaphor of my life. Nine thousand tons moving at sixty miles an hour into the fearful night. I now would ride that image, trying to stay alive within it. I know that later, when I sat behind the moving train in the darkness of the caboose( 供列车 员休息的车 厢), window open and the unknown fragrances of the land filling the space, the blackness of the night was my friend. It felt good to be powerless and carried along by the destiny of that motion. I felt happy and at peace. I was where I belonged. (3)The railroad didn't believe in lengthy formal training. They offered a two-week class which covered the book of rules, a three-hundred-page document with a dual purpose—to keep trains from running into one another and to prevent any situation in which the company might get sued. Rules of the road which you had to learn were mixed in with rules which you had to ignore in order to get the work done. But you had to know that you were ignoring a rule so that in the winter, when company officials had time to sneak around testing, you could work by the book. (4)The rulebook was also in a continuous state of revision. Revisions appeared in the timetable which you carried with you at all times. Further revisions appeared in regular timetable bulletins which were posted at work. Soon your rulebook resembled a scrapbook, with paragraphs crossed out, pages pasted in, and notes on changes which were then crossed out and changed weeks later. It drove you crazy. You always had to be on the lookout for a company official hiding in the bushes while you did your work. This individual would pop out and ask you questions about the latest rule revisions. A notation of failure would then appear in your personal file. These notations were referred to as“Brownies,”named after the official who devised the railroad demerit system. As trainmen were fond of pointing out, however, there was no merit system to go with it. (5)Out of seventeen student brakemen three of us were women. This was a large percentage, comparatively. The first women had been hired two years before, and they were around to give us advice. The point was to get through the class, and get over the probationary period known as the“derail.”Then you were in the union and a railroader for life. Getting over the derail took sixty days, and if either the crews you worked with or the company officers had a complaint, you were out. At the end of two weeks of classroom instruction, you bought a railroad watch, they gave you switch keys and a two-dollar lantern, and you marked up as extra board brakemen. (6)On the last day of class, they took us down to the freightyard to grapple with the equipment. We practiced getting on and off moving cars, climbing the ladders and cranking down the handbrakes, changing thee eighty-five-pound knuckles that joined the cars together, and hand and lantern signals. These signals were the way members of the crew talked to each other, and they were an art form. An old head could practically order a pizza from a half mile away. You would see lights, arcs and circles, stabs of light. It would repeat. You would stand there confused. Finally you would walk down the track and find the foreman in a deep state of disgust. (7)“I told you to hang three cars, let two go to the runaround, one to the main, go through the crossovers, and line behind. Now can't you read a signal, dummy?” (8)The day after our practice session, I got into my car and tried to roll the window down. My arms didn’'t work. This was my first moment of doubt about being able to do the job. It was hard to get the upper- body strength required to hang on and ride for long distances on the side of cars. Terror at falling beneath the wheels was a big motivator, however. Terror and ridicule. There was a lot of both during the probationary period and the student trips. On student trips we tagged along with a regular crew and tried to learn something. To me, what we were doing made no sense whatsoever. Just getting used to the equipment had me so disorientated that I had no idea where we had gone or how the crew did anything. One of the crew suggested to me that I go to a toy store and look at the model trains, to see how switches work. They say, though, that whatever you start out doing railroading, it gets imprinted, and that's what you are most comfortable doing from then on. I couldn’t have picked a better place to break in than Watsonville Junction. It was old-time, local- freight, full-crew switching. Kicking cars and passing signs. The basic stuff that you have to learn at first or you never get no matter how long you're out here.

(1)The storm came on slowly one afternoon. The clouds looked as if they were stumbling along before the wind, frightened. The sea took its cue. It started rising and falling in a manner that made my heart sink. I took in the net. Oh, you should have seen that landscape!What I had seen up till now were mere hillocks of water. These swells were truly mountains. The valleys we found ourselves in were so deep they were gloomy. Their sides were so steep the lifeboat started sliding down them, nearly surfing. The raft was getting exceptionally rough treatment, being pulled out of the water and dragged along bouncing. I deployed both sea anchors fully, at different lengths so that they would not interfere with each other. (2)Climbing the giant swells, the boat clung to the sea anchors like a mountain climber to a rope. We would rush up until we reached a snow-white crest in a burst of light and foam and a tipping forward of thee lifeboat. The view would be clear for miles around. But the mountain would shift, and the ground beneath us would start sinking in a most stomach-sickening way. In no time we would be sitting once again at the bottom of a dark valley, different from the last but the same, with thousands of tons of water hovering above us and with only our flimsy lightness to save us. The land would move once more, the sea-anchor ropes would snap to tautness, and the roller coaster would start again. (3)The sea anchors did their job well—in fact, nearly too well. Every swell at its crest wanted to take us for a tumble, but the anchors, beyond the crest, heaved mightily and pulled us through, but at the expense of pulling the front of the boat down. The result was an explosion of foam and spray at the bow. I was soaked through and through each time. (4)Then a swell came up that was particularly intent on taking us along. This time the bow vanished underwater. I was shocked and chilled and scared witless. I barely managed to hold on. The boat was swamped. I heard Richard Parker roar. I felt death was upon us. The only choice left to me was death by water or death by animal. I chose death by animal. (5)While we sank down the back of the swell, I jumped onto the tarpaulin (防水布) and unrolled it towards the stern, closing in Richard Parker. If he protested, I did not hear him. Faster than a sewing machine working a piece of cloth, I hooked down the tarpaulin on both sides of the boat. We were climbing again. Thee boat was lurching upwards steadily. It was hard to keep my balance. The lifeboat was now covered and the tarpaulin battened ( 用 压 条 固 定 ) down, except at my end. I squeezed in between the side bench and the tarpaulin and pulled the remaining tarpaulin over my head. I did not have much space. Between bench and gunnel (船舷边缘) there was twelve inches, and the side benches were only one and a half feet wide. But I was not so foolhardy, even in the face of death, as to move onto the floor of the boat. There were four hooks left to catch. I slipped a hand through the opening and worked the rope. With each hook done, it was getting harder to get the next. I managed two. Two hooks left. The boat was rushing upwards in a smooth and unceasing motion. The incline was over thirty degrees. I could feel myself being pulled down towards the stern. Twisting my hand frantically, I succeeded in catching one more hook with the rope. It was the best I could do. This was not a job meant to be done from the inside of the lifeboat but from the outside. I pulled hard on thee rope, something made easier by the fact that holding on to it was preventing me from sliding down the length of the boat. The boat swiftly passed a forty-five-degree incline. (6)We must have been at a sixty-degree incline when we reached the summit of the swell and broke through its crest onto the other side. The smallest portion of the swell's supply of water crashed down on us. I felt as if I were being pummelled(反复猛击)by a great fist. The lifeboat abruptly tilted forward and everything was reversed: I was now at the lower end of the lifeboat, and the water that had swamped it, with a tiger soaking in it, came my way. I did not feel the tiger—I had no precise idea of where Richard Parker was; it was pitch-black beneath the tarpaulin—but before we reached the next valley I was half-drowned. (7)For the rest of that day and into the night, we went up and down, up and down, up and down, until terror became monotonous and was replaced by numbness and a complete giving-up. I held on to the tarpaulin rope with one hand and the edge of the bow bench with the other, while my body lay flat against the side bench. In this position—water pouring in, water pouring out—the tarpaulin beat me to a pulp, I was soaked and chilled, and I was bruised and cut by bones and turtle shells. The noise of the storm was constant, as was Richard Parker's snarling. (8)Sometime during the night my mind noted that the storm was over. We were bobbing on the sea in a normal way. Through a tear in the tarpaulin I glimpsed the night sky. Starry and cloudless. I undid the tarpaulin and lay on top of it.