2020年英语四级真题长难句

It might sound like science fiction, but researchers are increasingly focusing on the relationship between the knowledge and skills our brains absorb during the day and the fragmented, often bizarre imaginings they generate at night.

这听起来可能像科幻小说，但研究人员正越来越多地关注我们的大脑在白天吸收的知识和技能与它们在夜间产生的碎片化且常常离奇的想象之间的关系。

It's Ken Outlaw, a welder in rural North Carolina whose dream of going back to school at a local community college was dashed by Hurricane Florence—just one of the extreme weather events that have tipped the balance for struggling Americans across the nation.

这是肯·奥特洛，一名北卡罗来纳州农村的焊工，他在当地社区大学重返校园的梦想被佛罗伦萨飓风破灭——这只是众多极端天气事件中的一个，这些事件已经打破了全国范围内苦苦挣扎的美国人的平衡。

That number—12.9 percent—may not seem remarkable, but it was: Kids in San Jose whose families fell in the bottom quintile(五分位数) of income nationally had the best shot in the country at reaching the top quintile.

那个数字——12.9%——可能看起来并不显著，但它确实如此：圣何塞那些家庭收入在全国处于最底部五分位数的孩子，在达到最顶部五分位数方面，拥有全国最好的机会。

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.

关于钱包的外观和手感的一切——扣件和材料随着时间推移而磨损、松动的方式，塑料、纸张、金和银，以及手写的电话号码和印刷的电影票——正是我们世界正在变成的样子的反面。

One team of psychologists discovered that two-thirds of men and a quarter of women would rather self-administer electric shocks than sit alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes.

一组心理学家发现，三分之二的男性和四分之一的女性宁愿自行施加电击，也不愿独自坐着思考15分钟。

Being multicultural often falls back on weaving children of color into photographs, or creating a few supporting characters that happen to be ethnic—an improvement, but superficial nonetheless.

具有多元文化性常常依赖于将有色人种儿童编入照片，或创造一些恰好是少数民族的配角——这是一种改进，但仍然肤浅。

When he was forced to sell it, the shocked tourist agent at Puerto Princesa told him that the 77-pound giant pearl that he'd kept hidden in his run-down wooden house was the biggest pearl in the world, which was valued at 76 million pounds.

当他被迫出售它时，普林塞萨港震惊的旅行社代理人告诉他，那颗他藏在自己破旧木屋里的77磅重的巨型珍珠是世界上最大的珍珠，其价值为7600万英镑。

Whether the city still allows for upward mobility of poor kids today, though, is up for debate.

然而，如今这座城市是否仍然允许贫困儿童向上流动，还有待讨论。

But the fact that 4 in 10 Americans can't come up with $400 in an emergency is a commonly cited statistic for good reason: economic instability stretches across race, gender, and geography.

但每10个美国人中有4个在紧急情况下拿不出400美元这一事实是一个被频繁引用的统计数据，这是有充分理由的：经济不稳定存在于不同种族、性别和地理区域。

It even reaches into the middle classes, as real wages have stagnated(不增长) for all but the very wealthy and temporary spells of financial instability are not uncommon.

它甚至延伸到中产阶级，因为实际工资除极少数富人外都停滞不增长，且短暂的金融不稳定时期并不罕见。

The city has long had a large foreign-born population (26.5 percent in 1990), leading to broader diversity, which, the Harvard and Berkeley economists say, is a good predictor of mobility.

这座城市长期以来有大量的外国出生人口（1990年为26.5%），导致更广泛的多样性，哈佛和伯克利的经济学家说，这是流动性的一个良好预测因素。

The new trend was also a great example of planned obsolescence, that is, to design a product so that it will soon become unfashionable or impossible to use and will need replacing.

这种新趋势也是计划性淘汰的一个很好的例子，也就是说，设计一种产品，使其很快会过时或无法使用，并且需要更换。

In 1979, a National Academy of Sciences report used the term "global warming" to define increases in the Earth's average surface temperature, while "climate change" more broadly referred to the numerous effects of this increase, such as sea-level rise and ocean acidification(酸化).

1979年，一份美国国家科学院的报告使用“全球变暖”这一术语来定义地球平均表面温度的上升，而“气候变化”更广泛地指这种上升的众多影响，例如海平面上升和海洋酸化。

If that weren't already implied by the landscape—rolling green hills, palm trees, sun-kissed flowers—then it's evident in the many stories of people who grew up poor in these sleepy neighborhoods and rose to enormous success.

如果这一点尚未被这片风景——起伏的绿色山丘、棕榈树、阳光照耀的花朵——所暗示，那么它在许多人的故事中是明显的，这些人在这些宁静的社区中出身贫寒，并取得了巨大的成功。

Whether poor kids in San Jose today still have the chance to move upward is questionable.

如今圣何塞的贫困儿童是否仍然有向上流动的机会是值得怀疑的。

What did industrialists of the late 20th century resort to in order to mislead Americans?

20世纪晚期的实业家们为了误导美国人采取了什么手段？

That comment, says Mothering Justice director Danielle Atkinson, "was meant to shame" and relied on the familiar notion that a woman of color concerned about income inequality and programs that promote mobility must by definition be a single mom, probably with multiple kids.

育儿正义组织主任丹妮尔·阿特金森说，那条评论“意在羞辱人”，并依赖于一个常见的观念，即一个关注收入不平等和促进流动性项目的有色人种女性，根据定义，必定是一个单身母亲，可能有多个孩子。

"We deny our children's bids to help until they are 6 or 7 years old," Lancy says, "when many have lost the desire to help and then try to motivate them with payment. The solution to this problem is not to try to use money as an incentive to do housework, but to get children involved in housework much earlier, when they actually want to do it."

"我们拒绝我们孩子的帮助请求直到他们6或7岁，"兰西说，"当许多孩子已经失去了帮助的欲望然后尝试用报酬激励他们。这个问题的解决办法不是尝试用钱作为做家务的激励，而是让孩子更早地参与家务，当他们实际上想要做的时候。"

The first type is apparent in people being stressed about the normal ups and downs of investment markets—actually not so much the ups, but definitely the downs.

第一种类型在人们对投资市场正常的涨跌感到压力时表现明显——实际上，上涨带来的压力不太大，但下跌带来的压力肯定很大。

By 2009, a study of Los Angeles kindergarten classrooms found that five-year-olds were so burdened with academic requirements that they were down to an average of just 19 minutes per day of "choice time," when they were permitted to play freely with blocks, toys or other children.

到2009年，一项对洛杉矶幼儿园教室的研究发现，五岁儿童背负着如此沉重的学业要求，以至于他们每天平均只有19分钟的“选择时间”，在这段时间里，他们被允许自由地玩积木、玩具或与其他孩子一起玩耍。

In a recent study carried out by psychologists on the disruptive effects of smartphones, two groups of college students were given word search puzzles.

在一项由心理学家开展的关于智能手机干扰效应的近期研究中，两组大学生被给予了单词搜索谜题。

After spending years fretting(烦恼) over which toys to buy, which apps to download and which skill-building programs to send their kids to after school, letting them simply play—or better yet, playing with them—could seem like a step backward.

在花费数年时间烦恼该买哪些玩具、该下载哪些应用程序以及放学后该送孩子去哪些技能培养项目之后，让他们单纯玩耍——或者更好的是，和他们一起玩——可能看起来像是一种倒退。

The anti-pollution message of the reverse graffiti artists confuses city authorities since the main argument against graffiti is that it spoils the appearance of both types of property: public and private.

反向涂鸦艺术家的反污染信息使城市当局感到困惑，因为反对涂鸦的主要论点是它破坏了两种类型财产的外观：公共的和私人的。

It isn't a requirement that teachers share the same racial or ethnic background as their students, but the imbalance poses challenges, from the potential for unconscious bias to a lack of knowledge or comfort in discussing race and culture.

教师与学生拥有相同的种族或民族背景并非一项要求，但这种不平衡带来了挑战，从潜在的无意识偏见到在讨论种族和文化时缺乏知识或舒适度。

But UCLA pediatrician Carlos Lerner acknowledged that the pediatricians' new prescription may meet with skepticism(怀疑) from parents, who are anxious for advice on how to give their kids a leg up in the world.

但是加州大学洛杉矶分校的儿科医生卡洛斯·勒纳承认，儿科医生的新建议可能会遇到父母的怀疑，他们急于寻求关于如何让孩子在世界上占得先机的建议。

"It's liberating to be able to offer them this advice: that your spending time with your child and letting him play is one of the most valuable things you can do," he said.

"能够给他们提供这样的建议是解放性的：你花时间陪孩子并让他玩耍是你能做的最有价值的事情之一，"他说。

Luthar's suggested approach to allowance is compatible with that of writer Ron Lieber, who advises that allowances be used as a means of showing children how to save, give, and spend on things they care about.

卢瑟关于零花钱的建议方法与作家罗恩·利伯的方法兼容，罗恩·利伯建议零花钱应被用作向孩子们展示如何储蓄、给予以及在他们关心的事物上花费的一种手段。

Although many parents believe that paying an allowance for completing chores benefits their children, a range of experts expressed concern that tying allowance very closely to chores may not be ideal.

尽管许多父母认为为完成家务支付零用钱对他们的孩子有益，但一系列专家表达了担忧，即把零用钱与家务紧密联系可能不是理想的。

What does the man say is counterproductive to getting work done in the library?

那个男人说什么对在图书馆完成工作是起反作用的？

This shows that while our bodies are at rest, our brains are drawing what's important from the information and events we've recently encountered, then integrating that data into the vast store of what we already know.

这表明，当我们的身体处于休息状态时，我们的大脑正在从我们最近遇到的信息和事件中提取重要内容，然后将这些数据整合到我们已有的庞大知识库中。

They taught a series of dance moves to a group of patients with conditions like sleepwalking, in which the sleeper engages in the kind of physical movement that does not normally occur during sleep.

他们向一组患有诸如梦游之类病症的患者教授了一系列舞蹈动作，在这类病症中，睡眠者会进行那种通常在睡眠期间不会发生的身体活动。

Scientists have found that dreaming about a task we've learned is associated with improved performance in that activity (suggesting that there's some truth to the popular notion that we're "getting" a foreign language once we begin dreaming in it).

科学家们发现，梦到我们学过的一项任务与该活动中表现的提高有关联（这表明，一旦我们开始用一门外语做梦，我们就“掌握”了这门外语这一流行观点是有一定道理的）。

"There's tremendous opportunity to get a generation of people for whom suffering isn't their thing," Cocalis said.

"有巨大的机会去获得一代人，对他们来说，痛苦不是他们的事情，"科卡利斯说。

At the most cutting-edge retail stores Victoria Beckham on Dover Street, for instance you don't go and stand at any kind of cash register, when you decide to pay.

在最前沿的零售商店，例如多佛街的维多利亚·贝克汉姆商店，当你决定付款时，你不会去站在任何种类的收银台前。

"The key to healthy praise is to focus on the process rather than the outcome. It is the recognition of a child's attempt, or the process in which they achieved something, that is essential," she says.

“健康的表扬的关键在于关注过程而非结果。她说，重要的是对孩子努力的认可，或者他们实现某事的过程。”

Some of the world's most innovative companies are located here, providing opportunities such as the one seized by a 12-year-old Mountain View resident named Steve Jobs when he called William Hewlett to ask for spare parts and subsequently received a summer job.

世界上一些最具创新力的公司位于这里，提供了诸如由一位名叫史蒂夫·乔布斯的12岁山景城居民抓住的机会，当时他打电话给威廉·休利特索要 spare parts ，随后获得了一份暑期工作。

It's Tiffanie Standard, a counselor for young women of color in Philadelphia who want to be tech entrepreneurs—but who must work multiple jobs to stay afloat.

这是蒂法妮·斯坦达德，费城有色人种年轻女性的顾问，这些女性想要成为科技企业家——但她们必须做多份工作来维持生计。

They found that those who watched on average less than three hours' television a day showed a decline of around four to five percent, while those who tended to watch more than three hours a day declined by an average of eight to ten percent.

他们发现，那些平均每天看电视少于三小时的人表现出约百分之四到五的下降，而那些倾向于每天看超过三小时电视的人平均下降了百分之八到十。

In a 2010 study, researchers at Harvard Medical School reported that college students who dreamed about a computer maze(迷宫) task they had learned showed a 10-fold improvement in their ability to find their way through the maze compared with participants who did not dream about the task.

在2010年的一项研究中，哈佛医学院的研究人员报告称，那些梦到他们学过的电脑迷宫任务的大学生，与没有梦到该任务的参与者相比，在通过迷宫的能力上表现出10倍的提升。

Robert Stickgold, one of the Harvard researchers, suggests that studying right before bedtime or taking a nap following a study session in the afternoon might increase the odds of dreaming about the material.

罗伯特·斯蒂克戈尔德，哈佛大学的研究人员之一，认为在睡前学习或在下午学习后小睡一会儿可能会增加梦到该材料的几率。

Even if I get a promotion at my company, it's likely to be less sizable than if I were to get a job elsewhere.

即使我在公司获得晋升，其规模也可能比我在其他地方找到工作要小。

Worse, when Asian Americans do make an appearance in lesson books, it is often laced with problems.

更糟糕的是，当亚裔美国人确实在课本中出现时，它往往带有问题。

Lying in bed, eyes closed, one female patient on the tape performs the dance moves she learned earlier.

躺在床上，眼睛闭着，录音中的一位女患者表演她之前学过的舞蹈动作。

Considering that the government's standards are not nearly ambitious enough, the picture is clear: by not cooking at home, we're not eating the right things, and the consequences are hard to overstate.

考虑到政府的标准远不够雄心勃勃，情况很明显：通过不在家做饭，我们没有吃到正确的东西，其后果难以夸大。

In fact, there's a good chance the marketing department purposely priced the medium soda as a decoy(诱饵), making you more likely to buy the large soda rather than the small.

事实上，很有可能市场部故意将中杯苏打水定价为诱饵，使你更有可能购买大杯苏打水而不是小杯。

By contrast, the Multidimensional State Boredom Scale, developed in 2008, measures a person's feelings of boredom in a given situation.

相比之下，2008年开发的多维状态无聊量表，衡量一个人在特定情境中的无聊感。

Those whose boredom pumps had been primed were more productive.

那些无聊泵已被启动的人效率更高。

Now, of course, we know that whatever you call it, human behavior is warming the planet, with grave consequences ahead.

现在，当然，我们知道无论你怎么称呼它，人类行为正在使地球变暖，未来将有严重后果。

I have written about this peculiarity in human nature before with my friend Dan Ariely, who studied this phenomenon extensively after noticing pricing for subscriptions(订阅) to The Economist.

我以前和我的朋友丹·艾瑞里写过关于人类本性中的这种特殊性，他在注意到《经济学人》订阅定价后广泛研究了这一现象。

Now that sales are taking off, the vast majority of bike dealers are asking Cocalis when he'll make an ebike available.

既然销量正在上升，绝大多数自行车经销商都在问科卡利斯他什么时候会推出电动自行车。