2015年英语四级真题长难句

Late November and December saw early snow and bone-chilling temperatures in much of the country, part of a year when, for the first time in two decades, record-cold days will likely turn out to have outnumbered record-warm ones.

11月下旬和12月，美国大部分地区出现了初雪和刺骨的低温，这是二十年来首次创纪录的寒冷天数可能超过创纪录温暖天数的一年的一部分。

The report qualifies the more optimistic findings of another new paper which suggests that the world will not have to dig up a lot more land for farming in order to feed 9 billion people in 2050, as the Food and Agriculture Organisation has argued.

该报告对另一篇新论文中更为乐观的研究结果进行了限定，该论文表明，正如联合国粮食及农业组织所主张的那样，为了在2050年养活90亿人口，世界不必再开垦大量土地用于农业。

There is no conclusive proof, but Mr. Hal Gregersen says it is unlikely that Mr. Jobs could have reshaped industries beyond computing, as he has done in his second term at Apple, without the experience outside the company, especially at Pixar—the computer-animation(动画制作) studio that created a string of critically and commercially successful movies, such as "Toy Story" and "Up."

没有确凿的证据，但哈尔·格雷格森先生表示，乔布斯先生不太可能在计算领域之外重塑行业，就像他在苹果的第二个任期内所做的那样，如果没有公司外部的经验，尤其是在皮克斯——这家电脑动画工作室创作了一系列在评论界和商业上都取得成功的电影，如《玩具总动员》和《飞屋环游记》。

Yet what other nations typically lack, Mr. Kao adds, is a social environment that encourages diversity, experimentation, risk-taking, and combining skills from many fields into products that he calls "recombinant mash-ups(打碎重组)," like the iPhone, which redefined the smartphone category.

然而，高先生补充道，其他国家通常所缺乏的是一种鼓励多样性、实验、冒险以及将多个领域的技能整合到他称之为“打碎重组”的产品中的社会环境，比如重新定义了智能手机类别的iPhone。

In an analysis of data from eight large previously published studies, a Harvard-led group reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that for every two hours per day spent channel surfing, the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes Journal of the American Medical Association(糖尿病) rose 20% over 8.5 years, the risk of heart disease increased 15% over a decade, and the odds of dying prematurely climbed 13% during a seven-year follow-up.

在一项对八项大型先前已发表研究数据的分析中，一个由哈佛大学领导的小组在《美国医学会杂志》上报告称，每天花两小时换台看电视，患2型糖尿病的风险在8.5年期间上升20%，心脏病风险在十年期间增加15%，过早死亡的几率在七年随访期间攀升13%。

The intimate nature of genuine criticism implies something about who is able to give it, namely, someone who knows you well enough to show you how your mental life is getting in the way of good writing.

真正批评的亲密本质暗示了关于谁能够给出它的某种东西，即，某个足够了解你以向你展示你的精神生活如何妨碍良好写作的人。

So large is the Pacific, covering 30% of the planet's surface, that the additional energy generated by its warming is enough to touch off a series of weather changes around the world.

太平洋是如此之大，覆盖了地球表面的30%，以至于其变暖所产生的额外能量足以引发全球一系列的天气变化。

EdX, the nonprofit enterprise founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to offer courses on the Internet, has just introduced such a system and will make its automated(自动的) software available free on the Web to any institution that wants to use it.

EdX，这家由哈佛大学和麻省理工学院（MIT）创立的、旨在提供互联网课程的非营利企业，刚刚推出了这样一个系统，并将使其自动软件在网络上免费提供给任何想要使用它的机构。

But the recent proposal by a county in California to ban McDonald's from including toys in its high-calorie "Happy Meals", because legislators believe it attracts children to unhealthy food, suggests there is a lot more left to do.

但是加利福尼亚州一个县最近提议禁止麦当劳在其高热量“快乐儿童餐”中包含玩具，因为立法者认为这会吸引儿童吃不健康的食物，这表明还有很多事情要做。

The experience of the 20th century, when greater longevity(长寿) translated into more years in retirement rather than more years at work, has persuaded many observers that this shift will lead to slower economic growth, while the swelling ranks of pensioners will create government budget problems.

20世纪的经验——当时更长的寿命转化为更多的退休年份而非更多的工作年份——已经使许多观察家相信，这种转变将导致更缓慢的经济增长，而不断膨胀的养老金领取者队伍将造成政府预算问题。

Everything about the look and feel of a wallet—the way the fastenings and materials wear and tear and loosen with age, the plastic and paper and gold and silver, and handwritten phone numbers and printed cinema tickets—is the very opposite of what our world is becoming.

关于钱包外观和手感的一切——搭扣和材料随着时间推移磨损、变松的方式，塑料、纸张、金银，以及手写的电话号码和打印的电影票——正是我们世界正在变成的样子的反面。

Two start-ups, Coursera and Udacity, recently founded by Stanford faculty members to create "massive open online courses," or MOOCs, are also committed to automated assessment systems because of the value of instant feedback.

两家初创公司，Coursera和Udacity，最近由斯坦福大学教员创立，旨在创建“大规模开放在线课程”（或MOOCs），也由于即时反馈的价值而致力于自动化评估系统。

The assumption is that children shouldn't chat in the classroom because it hinders hard work; instead, they should learn to delay gratification(快乐) so that they can pursue abstract goals, like going to college.

这种假设是孩子们不应该在教室里聊天，因为这妨碍努力学习；相反，他们应该学会延迟快乐，以便他们能够追求抽象的目标，比如上大学。

In fact, the more information flows throughout the entire society, the wider the gap becomes between "information haves" and "information have-nots", leading to digital divide.

事实上，整个社会中的信息流动越多，“信息拥有者”和“信息匮乏者”之间的差距就变得越宽，导致数字鸿沟。

What distinguishes children from adults is their strong ability to derive joy from what they are doing.

将儿童与成年人区分开来的是他们从自己正在做的事情中获得快乐的强大能力。

Before you brush this argument aside as rubbish, or think of joy as an unaffordable luxury in a nation where there is awful poverty, low academic achievement, and high dropout rates, think again.

在你将这种论点斥为无稽之谈，或者认为在一个存在可怕贫困、低学业成就和高辍学率的国家中，快乐是一种无法承受的奢侈品之前，请再三考虑。

I have visited some of the newer supposedly "effective" schools, where children shout slogans in order to learn self-control or must stand behind their desk when they can't sit still.

我参观过一些较新的据称“有效的”学校，在这些学校里，孩子们喊口号是为了学习自我控制，或者当他们不能静坐时必须站在课桌后面。

Many of the assignments and rules teachers come up with, often because they are pressured by their administrators, treat pleasure and joy as the enemies of competence and responsibility.

教师们提出的许多作业和规则，常常因为他们受到管理者的压力，将快乐和愉悦视为能力和责任的敌人。

What's less clear is whether divorce and separation rates rise in a recession—financial pressures mean couples argue more but make splitting up less affordable.

不太清楚的是经济衰退中离婚率和分居率是否会上升——经济压力意味着夫妻间争吵更多，但使得分手更难以负担。

The divide is most extreme in America, where well-educated baby-boomers(二战后生育高峰期出生的美国人) are putting off retirement while many less-skilled younger people have dropped out of the workforce.

这种差距在美国最为极端，在那里受过良好教育的婴儿潮一代（二战后生育高峰期出生的美国人）正在推迟退休，而许多技能较低的年轻人已经退出了劳动力市场。

But in single-sex schools teachers can tailor lessons to boys' learning style, letting them move around the classroom and getting them to compete in teams to prevent boredom, wrote the study's author, Abigail James, of the University of Virginia.

但在单性别学校，教师可以根据男孩的学习风格调整课程，让他们在教室里走动，并让他们组队竞争以防止无聊，该研究的作者、弗吉尼亚大学的阿比盖尔·詹姆斯写道。

Yet moments like this one are just the kind of intense absorption and pleasure adults spend the rest of their lives seeking.

然而像这样的时刻正是成年人花费余生所追求的那种强烈的专注与愉悦。

A child's ability to become deeply absorbed in something, and derive intense pleasure from that absorption, is something adults spend the rest of their lives trying to return to.

一个孩子全神贯注于某事并从这种专注中获得强烈快乐的能力，是成年人花费余生努力想要回归的状态。

The kind of shopping—where you hand over notes and count out change in return—now happens only in the most minor of our retail encounters, like buying a bar of chocolate or a pint of milk from a corner shop.

这种购物方式——即你递上纸币并数出零钱作为回报——现在只发生在我们最微不足道的零售接触中，比如从街角小店买一块巧克力或一品脱牛奶。

In other words, is it right for convicted murderers who kill when they are minors, that is under the age of 18, to receive the death penalty?

换句话说，对于在未成年时，即未满18岁时杀人的已定罪谋杀犯，接受死刑是正确的吗？

When good students turn in an essay, they dream of their instructor returning it to them in exactly the same condition, save for a single word added in the margin of the final page: "Flawless".

当优秀的学生提交一篇论文时，他们梦想着他们的老师以完全相同的状态把它还给他们，除了在最后一页的页边空白处添加了一个词：“完美无瑕”。

A look at what goes on in most classrooms these days makes it abundantly clear that when people think about education, they are not thinking about what it feels like to be a child, or what makes childhood an important and valuable stage of life in its own right.

看一看如今大多数教室里发生的事情，就非常清楚地表明，当人们思考教育时，他们不是在思考作为一个孩子是什么感觉，或者是什么使童年本身成为生命中一个重要且有价值的阶段。

A recent report makes several recommendations, including the abolition of most post-conviction penalties, except for those specifically needed to protect public safety.

一份近期的报告提出了几项建议，包括废除大多数定罪后的刑罚，但专门为保护公共安全所需要的刑罚除外。

Although many of his specific conclusions have been rejected or modified over the years, his ideas inspired thousands of studies by investigators all over the world.

尽管他的许多具体结论多年来已被拒绝或修改，他的思想启发了世界各地研究者的数千项研究。

Think of a 3-year-old lost in the pleasures of finding out what he can and cannot sink in the bathtub, a 5-year-old beside herself with the thrill of putting together strings of nonsensical words with her best friends, or an 11-year-old completely absorbed in a fascinating comic strip.

想象一下一个三岁的孩子，沉浸在发现浴缸里什么能沉、什么不能沉的乐趣中，一个五岁的孩子，因与她最好的朋友一起拼凑无意义的词串而兴奋不已，或者一个十一岁的孩子，完全沉浸在一部引人入胜的漫画中。

In what's known as the world's largest annual mass migration, millions of people are heading back to families for the start of the Chinese New Year holiday, which is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays.

在被称为世界上最大规模的年度人口迁徙中，数百万人正返回家庭，为中国新年假期的开始做准备，中国新年假期是中国传统节日中最重要的。

Even so, the authors admit that they didn't compare different sedentary activities to determine whether TV watching was linked to a greater risk of diabetes, heart disease or early death compared with, say, reading.

即便如此，作者们承认他们没有比较不同的久坐活动以确定看电视是否与更大的糖尿病、心脏病或早逝风险相关，相较于比如阅读。

Last year the Hewlett Foundation, a grant-making organization set up by one of the Hewlett-Packard founders and his wife, sponsored two $100,000 prizes aimed at improving software that grades essays and short answers.

去年，休利特基金会——一个由惠普创始人之一和他的妻子设立的赠款组织——赞助了两项10万美元的奖项，旨在改进给作文和简答题评分的软件。

His two collaborators and co-authors are Jeff Dyer, a professor at Brigham Young University, and Clayton Christensen, a professor at the Harvard Business School, whose 1997 book "The Innovator's Dilemma" popularized the concept of disruptive(颠覆性的) innovation.

他的两位合作者兼合著者是杨百翰大学教授Jeff Dyer和哈佛商学院教授Clayton Christensen，后者1997年的著作《创新者的困境》普及了颠覆性创新的概念。

It's true that the number of men who have left work to do their thing as full-time parents has doubled in a decade, but it's still very small: only 0.8% of married couples where the stay-at-home father was out of the labor force for a year.

确实，在十年内辞去工作以全职父母身份做自己事情的男性人数增加了一倍，但这个数字仍然非常小：仅占那些全职父亲脱离劳动力市场达一年的已婚夫妇中的0.8%。

"It's often people like Steve Jobs who can draw from a deep reservoir of diverse experiences that often generate breakthrough ideas and insights," says Hal Gregersen, a professor at the European Institute of Business Administration.

“往往是像史蒂夫·乔布斯这样的人，他们能够从丰富多样的经验储备中汲取养分，而这些经验常常能产生突破性的想法和见解。”欧洲工商管理学院教授哈尔·格雷格森说道。

Imagine taking a college exam, and, instead of handing in a blue book and getting a grade from a professor a few weeks later, clicking the "send" button when you are done and receiving a grade back instantly, your essay scored by a software program.

想象一下参加一场大学考试，并且，不是交上一本蓝皮答题册，几周后从教授那里得到一个成绩，而是在你完成后点击“发送”按钮，立即收到成绩，你的论文由一个软件程序评分。

As a Chinese woman working in China, and using traditional Chinese medical records, she rediscovered an ancient plant-based treatment for malaria that worked where modern therapies failed.

作为一名在中国工作的中国女性，并使用传统中医病历，她重新发现了一种古老的植物性疟疾治疗方法，这种方法在现代疗法失败的地方有效。

Since Steve Jobs resigned as chief executive of Apple, much has been said about him as a peerless business leader who has created immense wealth for shareholders, and guided the design of hit products that are transforming entire industries, like music and mobile communications.

自从史蒂夫·乔布斯辞去苹果公司首席执行官以来，关于他作为一位无与伦比的商业领袖的说法很多，他为股东创造了巨大财富，并主导了热门产品的设计，这些产品正在改变整个行业，如音乐和移动通信行业。

"Boys in mixed schools view classical music as feminine(女性的) and prefer the modern genre(类型) in which violence and sexism are major themes," James wrote.

“男女混合学校的男孩们将古典音乐视为女性化的，并更喜欢以暴力和性别歧视为主要主题的现代类型，”詹姆斯写道。

The authors note that "we have preferentially focused our crop improvement efforts on feeding animals and cars rather than on crops that feed people and are the basis of food security in much of the world."

作者们指出：“我们优先将我们的作物改良努力集中在喂养动物和汽车上，而不是集中在养活人类并构成世界大部分地区粮食安全基础的作物上。”

The burger business faces more pressure from regulators at a time when it is already adapting strategies in response to shifts in the global economy.

汉堡行业在已经为应对全球经济变化而调整策略的时期，面临着来自监管机构的更大压力。

I am not sure if she was more upset by my hubris(得意忘形) or by the fact that my English teacher had let my ego get so out of hand.

我不确定她是更因我的得意忘形而心烦，还是因我的英语老师让我的 ego 变得如此失控这一事实而心烦。

The more horrible the school circumstances, the more important pleasure is to achieving any educational success.

学校环境越糟糕，快乐对于取得任何教育成功就越重要。

During the recession companies set prices low, hoping that once they had tempted customers through the door they would be persuaded to order more expensive items.

在经济衰退期间，公司把价格定得很低，希望一旦他们把顾客吸引进门，顾客就会被说服订购更昂贵的商品。

It's your creative mind that gets meaning from the chaos of your experiences and brings order to your world.

正是你的创造性思维从你的经验的混乱中获取意义，并给你的世界带来秩序。

These laws are also counterproductive, since they make it harder for people with criminal records to find housing or land a job, two key factors that reduce backsliding.

这些法律也是有反效果的，因为它们使有犯罪记录的人更难找到住房或获得工作，这是减少故态复萌的两个关键因素。

The British are supposed to be famous for laughing at themselves, but even their sense of humor has a limit, as the British retailer Gerald Ratner found out to his cost.

英国人应该以自嘲闻名，但即使他们的幽默感也有一个限度，正如英国零售商杰拉尔德·拉特纳付出代价才发现的那样。

The good news is that a combination of sunscreen and covering up can reduce melanoma rates, as shown by Australian figures from their slip-slop-slap campaign.

好消息是，防晒霜和遮盖措施的结合可以降低黑色素瘤发病率，正如澳大利亚“套上-涂上-拍打”运动的数据所显示的那样。

Critics even complain that McDonald's, whose logo symbolises calorie excess, should not have been allowed to sponsor the World Cup.

批评者甚至抱怨，麦当劳的标志象征着热量过剩，本不应该被允许赞助世界杯。