C.They all managed to graduate from college. D.They all worked three jobs to survive. 【答案】A

【解析】推理判断题。通读全文可知，他们三个人的共同点是：刚开始是穷人，经过努力之后，变成了富人，故选A。

B

IT is fashionable to say that tech firms will conquer the financial services industry. Yet in the case of Apple, it seems that the opposite is happening and finance is taking over tech by stealth( 悄然 ). Since the death of Steve Jobs, its co-founder, in 2011, the world’s biggest firm by market value has sold hundreds of millions of phones with bionic chips (仿生芯片)and know-it-all digital assistants. But it has also grown a financial operation that is already, on some measures, roughly half the size of Goldman Sachs.

Apple does not organize its financial activities into one subsidiary, but Schumpeter has lumped them together. The result—call it “Apple Capital”—has $262bn of assets, $108bn of debt, and has traded $1.6trn of securities since 2011. It appears to be run fairly cautiously and is part of a thriving firm, but it still deserves scrutiny. Companies have a history of being hurt by their financial arms; think General Electric (GE) or General Motors (GM).

Apple Capital has lots of responsibilities but three stand out. It invests the firm’s mountain of surplus profits, mainly in “highly rated” instruments (this task seems to fall to Braeburn Capital, a subsidiary in Nevada, which uses some external fund managers). Apple Capital also uses derivatives (衍生品 )in order to protect the firm against currency and interest-rate gyrations. And it manages America’s fifth-biggest corporate-debt pile by issuing Apple bonds as part of an elaborate strategy to limit tax bills.

Apple Capital has become important to its parent. Since Jobs died, its assets have risen by 221%, twice as fast as the company’s sales, reflecting Apple’s huge build-up of profits. Its investments are worth 32% of Apple’s market value, and its profits (investment income, plus gains on derivatives, less interest costs) have been 7% of Apple’s pre-tax profits so far this year. It is also sizeable compared with other financial firms. Consider four measures: assets, debt, credit exposure and profits. Depending on the yardstick, Apple Capital is 30-85% as big as Goldman Sachs. It is 22-42% as large as GE Capital was at its peak in 2007, just before things went down the tubes during the subprime crisis.

9

Apple Capital is different from these firms in important ways. It does not take deposits and has much lower leverage. In their prime Goldman and GE Capital were run by hard-charging financiers, and made lots of loans. By contrast, Apple Capital does not make loans, and is not meant to be a profit centre in its own right.

Apple’s core business is so profitable that it is—almost—incredible that a blow-up at Apple Capital could lead to it needing taxpayer or central-bank support, as was the case for GM and GE. Still, it is easy to imagine how Apple Capital could hurt its parent. A market shock could lead to losses on its portfolios. A two-percentage-point rise in interest rates would result in a loss of $10bn. If bond markets dried up, Apple might struggle to issue so much debt and have to bring home funds, incurring a big tax bill. It might also become tricky to run such a big derivatives portfolio.

According to a former manager who left in 2012, Apple’s financial gurus were careful because “nobody wanted that 3am call from Steve Jobs”. But Jobs isn’t there any more. In any case, a fear of rebuke is not enough. If the tax laws change Tim Cook, Apple’s boss should wind down the structure that the firm has created. Tech firms should seek to disrupt finance, not be seduced by it.

58. Which of the following is Not the responsibility of the \A.using its surplus profits to re-invest. B.providing related financial derivatives. C. issuing bonds to avoid high tax. D. exploring new electronic products. 【答案】D

【解析】细节理解题。依据文章第三段的主要内容可知苹果资本的职责众多主要包括使用巨额剩余利润的投资,使用金融衍生品以及发行债券,D项的开发新电子产品不属于其资本职责,故选择D顶。

59.The sentence \end of ________. A. paragraph 3 【答案】C

B. paragraph 4

C. paragraph 5

D. paragraph 6

10

【解析】细节理解题,所给句子表示\尽管如此,它的风险还是在诸多方面不断加大”,故此句前面表示的应该是苹果资本的益处,而在此之后应该是其所承担的风险,依据文章第五段最后 句话\own right(相比之下,苹果公司不发放贷款,基本身也|无意成为一个利润中心)”,后接\尽管如此,它的风险还是在诸多方面不断加大\是对前句的转折,两句连起来可以理解为\尽管苹果公司不发放贷款,其本身也无意成为一个利润中心,但它的风险还是在诸多方面不断加大,因此放在第五段的后面恰当,故选C.

60.What can be concluded according to the last two paragraphs? A. Apple 's development should be in line with GM and GE. B. The change of interest rates makes great difference to Apple. C. Apple's home funds can compensate for its loss in bond markets. D. Tech firms should be attached to finance. 【答案】B

【解析】]细节理解题.依据文章最后两段的内容可知,,苹果资本一旦出现问题也就会带来一系列的问题,更会给母公司带来巨大的伤害,故作者最后提出了\科技公司应该设法革金融业的命,而不是被它诱入岐途\项错误在于苹果的发展是不能步GM和GE的后尘的;C项说\债券市场发生问题后,苹果基金可以弥补亏空\与文中\might..have to bring home funds...(一旦债券市场发生问题,苹果就得让资金回流国内)\不符;根据文章最后一句话Tech firms should seek to disrupt finance,not be seduced by it.可知,D项与作者的观点正好相反;根据文章倒数第二段中\result in a loss of$10bn.(百分之二的利率上升将导致100亿美元的损失.)\可知,B项正确,即:利率的变化对于苹果的影响重大。

61. The passage is mainly developed by the followings except _________. A. making comparisons

B. providing data

C. following the order of importance D. giving examples 【答案】C

【解析】写作方法题。依据文章的主要内容可知,作者主要通过做比较、 举例子和列数据的写作方法来阐述苹果资本的相关问题,没有用\按重要性排序\的方法来安排内容 因此选C。

C

11

“ Hypotheses( 假 设 ) ,” said Medawarin 1964, “ are imaginative and inspirational in character”; they are ＂adventures of the mind＂. He was arguing in favour of the position taken by Karl Popper that the nature of scientific method is hypothetico — deductive and not, as is generally believed, inductive.

The myth(误区) of scientific method is that it is inductive: that the formulation of scientific theory starts with the basic, raw evidence of the senses — simple, fair, unprejudiced observation. Out of these sensory data — commonly referred to as ＂ facts ＂ — generalisations( 归纳 ) will form. The myth is that from a disorderly collection of factual information an orderly, relevant theory will somehow come out. However, the starting point of induction is an impossible one.

There is no such thing as an unprejudiced observation. Every act of observation we make is a function of what we have seen or otherwise experienced in the past. All scientific work of an experimental or exploratory nature starts with some expectation about the outcome. This expectation is a hypothesis. Hypotheses provide the motivation for the inquiry(探究), and influence the method. It is in the light of an expectation that some observations are held to be relevant and some irrelevant, that one method is chosen and others abandoned, that some experiments are conducted and others are not.

Hypotheses arise by guesswork, or by inspiration, but having been started they can and must be tested thoroughly, using the appropriate method. If the predictions you make as a result of deducing certain consequences from your hypothesis are not shown to be correct then you abandon or adjust your hypothesis. If the predictions turn out to be correct then your hypothesis has been supported and may be kept until such time as some further test shows it not to be correct. Once you have arrived at your hypothesis, which is a product of your imagination, you then move on to a strictly logical and thorough process, based upon deductive argument — therefore the term ＂hypothetico-deductive＂．

So don’t worry if you have some idea of what your results will tell you before you even begin to collect data; there are no scientists in existence who really wait until they have all the evidence in front of them before they try to work out what it might possibly mean.

The hypothetico-deductive method describes the logical approach to much research work, but it does not describe the psychological behaviour that brings it about. The psychological behaviour is a much more complicated process — involving guesses, reworkings, corrections, and above all inspiration, in the deductive as well as the hypothetic component. However, describing the logical approach is like writing the final thesis( 毕业论文 ) or published papers of research work. These thesises and papers have been, quite properly, organised into a more logical order so that the worth of the output may be evaluated independently of the behavioural processes by which it was obtained. It is the difference, for example between the academic papers with which Crick and

12