1998年考研英语真题长难句

What is harder to establish is whether the productivity revolution that businessmen assume they are presiding over is for real.

更难确定的是，商人们认为他们正在主导的这场生产力革命是否真实存在。

Nowhere do 1980 census statistics dramatize more the American search for spacious living than in the Far West.

1980年人口普查统计数据最能生动地表明美国人对宽敞生活空间的追求的地方莫过于远西地区。

What the researchers found was at once both amazing and expected: the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Cosmic Background Explorer satellite—Cobe—had discovered landmark evidence that the universe did in fact begin with the primeval explosion that has become known as the Big Bang (the theory that the universe originated in an explosion from a single mass of energy).

研究人员的发现既令人惊讶又在预料之中：美国国家航空航天局的宇宙背景探测器卫星——COBE——已经发现了具有里程碑意义的证据，证明宇宙实际上确实始于原始爆炸，这种爆炸后来被称为“大爆炸”（该理论认为宇宙起源于单一能量团的爆炸）。

Odd though it sounds, cosmic inflation is a scientifically plausible consequence of some respected ideas in elementary particle physics, and many astrophysicists have been convinced for the better part of a decade that it is true.

尽管听起来很奇怪，宇宙膨胀是基本粒子物理学中一些受推崇理论在科学上可信的推论，并且许多天体物理学家在过去十年的大部分时间里一直相信它是正确的。

By contrast, they saw in the preceding hundred years from 1650 to 1750, when England was still a completely agricultural country, a period of great abundance and prosperity.

相比之下，他们认为在1650年至1750年之前的一百年里，当时英国仍是一个完全的农业国家，是一个极度富裕和繁荣的时期。

The trouble is that part of the recent acceleration is due to the usual rebound that occurs at this point in a business cycle, and so is not conclusive evidence of a revival in the underlying trend.

问题在于，近期加速的部分原因是商业周期中此时出现的通常反弹，因此并非潜在趋势复苏的确凿证据。

Emerging from the 1980 census is the picture of a nation developing more and more regional competition, as population growth in the Northeast and Midwest reaches a near standstill.

从1980年人口普查中浮现的是一个国家发展出越来越多区域竞争的景象，因为东北部和中西部的人口增长几乎停滞。

As funding for science has declined, scientists have attacked "anti-science" in several books, notably Higher Superstition, by Paul R. Gross, a biologist at the University of Virginia, and Norman Levitt, a mathematician at Rutgers University; and The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan of Cornell University.

随着科学 funding 的减少，科学家们在几本书中抨击了“反科学”，特别是《Higher Superstition》，作者是弗吉尼亚大学的生物学家 Paul R. Gross 和罗格斯大学的数学家 Norman Levitt；以及《The Demon-Haunted World》，作者是康奈尔大学的 Carl Sagan。

Scattered around the globe are more than 100 small regions of isolated volcanic activity known to geologists as hot spots.

散布在全球各地的是100多个小型孤立火山活动区域，地质学家称之为热点。

But even more important, it was the farthest that scientists had been able to look into the past, for what they were seeing were the patterns and structures that existed 15 billion years ago.

但更为重要的是，这是科学家们所能观测到的最遥远的过去，因为他们所看到的是150亿年前就存在的模式和结构。

The existence of the giant clouds was virtually required for the Big Bang, first put forward in the 1920s, to maintain its reign as the dominant explanation of the cosmos.

巨大云团的存在实际上是20世纪20年代首次提出的大爆炸理论维持其作为宇宙主导解释地位所必需的。

Few would dispute that the term applies to the Unabomber, whose manifesto, published in 1995, scorns science and longs for return to a pre-technological utopia.

很少有人会质疑这个术语适用于“邮包炸弹客”，他1995年发表的宣言嘲讽科学，并渴望回到前技术时代的乌托邦。

Inflation says that very early on, the universe expanded in size by more than a trillion trillion trillion trillion fold in much less than a second, propelled by a sort of antigravity.

宇宙膨胀理论指出，在非常早期，宇宙在远不到一秒的时间内，在一种反重力的推动下，尺寸膨胀了超过一万亿万亿万亿万亿倍。

Specialists in history and economics have shown two things: that the period from 1650 to 1750 was marked by great poverty, and that industrialization certainly did not worsen and may have actually improved the conditions for the majority of the populace.

历史和经济学专家已经表明了两件事：一是1650年至1750年期间以极度贫困为特征，二是工业化肯定没有恶化而且实际上可能改善了大多数民众的状况。

Thus just as earlier theories have explained the mobility of the continents, so hot spots may explain their mutability (inconstancy).

因此，正如早期理论已经解释了大陆的移动性一样，热点可能解释它们的可变性（易变性）。

Moreover, most of the changes that companies make are intended to keep them profitable, and this need not always mean increasing productivity: switching to new markets or improving quality can matter just as much.

此外，公司所做的大多数变革旨在保持其盈利，而且这并不一定总是意味着提高生产力：转向新市场或提高质量也同样重要。

The Aswan Dam, for example, stopped the Nile flooding but deprived Egypt of the fertile silt that floods left—all in return for a giant reservoir of disease which is now so full of silt that it barely generates electricity.

例如，阿斯旺大坝阻止了尼罗河泛滥，但剥夺了埃及洪水留下的肥沃淤泥——所有这些换来的是一个巨大的疾病水库，现在这个水库充满了淤泥，几乎不能发电。

They were, by far, the largest and most distant objects that scientists had ever detected: a strip of enormous cosmic clouds some 15 billion light-years from earth.

它们是迄今为止科学家所探测到的最大且最遥远的天体：一片巨大的宇宙云带，距离地球约150亿光年。

Leonard Schlesinger, a Harvard academic and former chief executive of Au Bong Pain, a rapidly growing chain of bakery cafes, says that much "re-engineering" has been crude.

伦纳德·施莱辛格，一位哈佛学者、Au Bong Pain的前首席执行官（Au Bong Pain是一家快速发展的烘焙咖啡馆连锁企业），表示许多“重组工程”都很粗糙。

Perhaps it is humankind's long suffering at the mercy of flood and drought that makes the idea of forcing the waters to do our bidding so fascinating.

或许正是人类长期受洪水和干旱摆布的苦难，使得强迫水域按我们的意愿行事这一想法如此吸引人。

First, some of the business restructuring of recent years may have been ineptly done.

首先，近年来的一些业务重组可能做得不熟练。

Moreover, demographers see the continuing shift south and west as joined by a related but newer phenomenon: More and more, Americans apparently are looking not just for places with more jobs but with fewer people, too.

此外，人口统计学家将持续的南移和西移视为伴随着一个相关但更新的现象：越来越多的美国人显然不仅在寻找有更多工作的地方，也在寻找人口更少的地方。

The relative motion of the plates carrying these continents has been constructed in detail, but the motion of one plate with respect to another cannot readily be translated into motion with respect to the earth's interior.

承载这些大陆的板块的相对运动已被详细地构建出来，但一个板块相对于另一个板块的运动不能轻易地被转化为相对于地球内部的运动。

As the dome grows, it develops deep fissures (cracks); in at least a few cases the continent may break entirely along some of these fissures, so that the hot spot initiates the formation of a new ocean.

随着穹顶的增长，它会形成深的裂缝（裂纹）；在至少少数情况下，大陆可能会沿着其中一些裂缝完全断裂，以至于热点会引发新海洋的形成。

It is not possible to determine whether both continents are moving in opposite directions or whether one continent is stationary and the other is drifting away from it.

不可能确定是两个大陆都在向相反方向移动，还是一个大陆静止不动而另一个正在远离它。

It is time that the world learned the lessons of Aswan.

现在是世界吸取阿斯旺教训的时候了。

It now appears that they also have an important influence on the geophysical processes that propel the plates across the globe.

现在看来，它们对推动板块在全球范围内移动的地球物理过程也有重要影响。

Cobe is designed to see just the biggest structures, but astronomers would like to see much smaller hot spots as well, the seeds of local objects like clusters and superclusters of galaxies.

宇宙背景探测器被设计用来只观测最大的结构，但天文学家也想要看到小得多的热点，即像星系团和超星系团这样的局部天体的种子。

Not all that shift can be attributed to the movement out of the snow belt, census officials say.

人口普查官员表示，并非所有这种变化都可归因于迁出雪带的人口流动。

Second, even if it was well done, it may have spread much less widely than people suppose.

第二，即使它做得很好，它的传播范围可能比人们想象的要小得多。

And the bank has done this even though its advisors say the dam will cause hardship for the powerless and environmental destruction.

并且银行已经这样做了，即使其顾问说大坝将给无权者带来困难并造成环境破坏。

As a result, California's growth rate dropped during the 1970s, to 18.5 percent—little more than two thirds the 1960s' growth figure and considerably below that of other Western states.

结果，加利福尼亚的增长率在20世纪70年代下降到18.5%——略高于20世纪60年代增长数字的三分之二，且显著低于其他西部各州的增长率。

Unlike most of the world's volcanoes, they are not always found at the boundaries of the great drifting plates that make up the earth's surface; on the contrary, many of them lie deep in the interior of a plate.

与世界上大多数火山不同，它们并非总是在构成地表的巨大漂移板块的边界处被发现；相反，它们中的许多深埋于板块内部。

The schism between science and the humanities has, if anything, deepened in this century.

科学与人文之间的分歧，如果说有什么变化的话，在本世纪已经加深了。

But they insisted that its immediate results during the period from 1750 to 1850 were widespread poverty and misery for the bulk of the English population.

但是他们坚持认为在1750年至1850年期间其直接结果是英国大多数人口的普遍贫困和苦难。

Meanwhile, in India, the World Bank has given the go-ahead to the even more wrong-headed Narmada Dam.

与此同时，在印度，世界银行已经批准了更加错误的讷尔默达大坝。

Over billions of years, the gas was compressed by gravity into galaxies, stars, planets and eventually, even humans.

在数十亿年的时间里，气体被引力压缩成星系、恒星、行星，最终甚至人类。

And since 1991, productivity has increased by about 2% a year, which is more than twice the 1978-87 average.

并且自1991年以来，生产力每年增长约2%，这是1978-87年平均水平的两倍多。

Until recently, the scientific community was so powerful that it could afford to ignore its critics—but no longer.

直到最近，科学界还如此强大以至于它能够忽视其批评者——但现在不再如此了。

Even so, that gain adds up to only 11.4 percent, lowest in American annual records except for the Depression years.

即便如此，该收益总计仅为11.4%，是美国年度记录中除大萧条时期外的最低值。

Africa and South America, for example, are moving away from each other as new material is injected into the sea floor between them.

例如，非洲和南美洲正在彼此远离，因为新的物质被注入它们之间的海底。

But when you are dealing with myths, it is hard to be either proper, or scientific.

但是当你在处理神话时，做到恰当或者科学是困难的。

And yet, the myth of controlling the waters persists.

然而，控制水域的神话仍然存在。

This view, however, is generally thought to be wrong.

然而，这种观点通常被认为是错误的。

Environmentalists were blamed for anti-science in an essay.

环保主义者在一篇文章中被指责为反科学。

Everywhere you go in America, you hear tales of corporate revival.

在美国，无论你走到哪里，你都会听到企业复兴的故事。

The benefits are for the powerful, but they are far from guaranteed.

利益是为了有权势的人，但它们远非有保障。

Except for Florida and Texas, the top 10 in rate of growth is composed of Western states with 7.5 million people—about 9 per square mile.

除了佛罗里达州和得克萨斯州，增长率排名前10的是由拥有750万人口的西部各州组成——大约每平方英里9人。

That was just about the moment that the universe was born.

那刚好是宇宙诞生的那一刻。

Well, no gain without pain, they say.

嗯，他们说，没有痛苦就没有收获。