【問題1 長文読解】
次の英文の(i)から(viii)を読んで、設問1から25の解答として最も適当なものを、(A)から(D)の中から選びなさい。
(i) The Akita is one of the oldest breeds in Japan and are believed to have descended from dogs that came to Honshu with hunters more than 2,000 years ago. Today's Akita developed primarily from the breed of dogs that lived in Akita Prefecture, which explains how the breed got its name.
Known for its loyalty, the breed was catapulted into popular imagination by the tale of Hachiko. Hachiko was born in 1923 and owned by professor Hidesaburo Ueno, who lived near Tokyo's Shibuya Station. The dog accompanied his master to and from the station each day. In 1925, Ueno suffered a fatal brain hemorrhage at work and yet Hachiko continued to return to the station and wait for his master to return from work each day until his death nine years later. In April 1934, less than a year before his death, Hachiko was immortalized in a bronze statue at Shibuya Station. The statue was melted down for munitions during World War II, but a new one was commissioned after the war, which now serves as a popular meeting spot for Tokyoites as well as a tourist attraction. In 2015, another statue to the famous pooch was unveiled at the University of Tokyo campus — this time depicting Hachiko as finally reuniting with his master.
1. Who gave this breed of dog the name "Akita”?
(A) Hunters
(B) Professor Ueno
(C) Tokyoites
(D) None of the above
2. Which of the following best describes Hachiko the dog?
(A) Catapulted
(B) Commissioned
(C) Reunited
(D) Waited
3. Which of the following did NOT occur after Hachiko died?
(A) Commissioned
(B) Immortalized
(C) Melted
(D) Unveiled
4. What is the main idea of this passage?
(A) Akita dogs were named after a prefecture.
(B) The Akita is Japan's oldest breed of dog.
(C) The history of Japanese dogs goes back 2,000 years.
(D) The story of a dog's loyalty increased a breed's popularity.
(ii) When you have allergies, your immune system overreacts to seemingly harmless triggers, such as pollen, and releases a chemical called histamine. Histamine is meant to protect you, but it also results in allergy symptoms. The pollens typically responsible for hay fever contain similar proteins to those found in certain raw fruits, vegetables and tree nuts. In some allergy sufferers, the immune system confuses the pollen proteins with the food proteins. Eating those foods can trigger a "cross-reaction," making allergy symptoms worse, but more often they cause oral-allergy syndrome, also known as pollen-food syndrome: itchy mouth, scratchy throat, swelling of the lips, mouth and throat. May tends to be the month when these allergies coincide. People with oral-allergy syndrome typically have an allergy to birch, ragweed or grass pollens, and symptoms typically appear in older children, teens and young adults who have been eating the fruits or vegetables in question for years without any problems. Oral-allergy syndrome usually doesn't affect young children.
Allergy sufferers may also feel better by avoiding spicy food, because eating chili peppers or powder can trigger the release of histamine, the chemical that causes nasal swelling and stuffiness.
Tortured by the thought of not eating apples in the fall or cherries in the summer? The good news is that people affected by oral-allergy syndrome can usually eat the same fruits or vegetables when they are cooked. The heat of cooking alters the proteins in fruits and vegetables so that the immune system no longer recognizes them as being similar to pollen proteins — it's the raw version of fruits and vegetables that can cause problems.
Carrie Dennett.
Got seasonal allergies Why avoiding certain foods may help.
5. What can help prevent oral-allergy syndrome from occurring?
(A) Cooking
(B) Eating
(C) Reacting
(D) Recognizing
6. How is the working of the immune system described?
(A Confuses
(B) Overreacts
(C) Releases
(D) All of the above
7. What is the main idea of this passage?
(A) Cooked foods relieve seasonal hay fever.
(B) Eating fresh fruit prevents hay fever symptoms.
(C) Histamine results in allergy symptoms.
(D) Raw fruit can cause hay fever-like symptoms.
(iii) Among the millions of items that were registered with Tokyo's lost and found center last year was an urn containing someone's ashes. And yet this should perhaps not surprise you — urns are handed in to lost and found centers more regularly than you might think. Last year alone, the Metropolitan Police Department's lost and found center in Bunkyo Ward tried to reunite as many as 10 urns with their owners. In every case, relatives of the deceased refused to come and collect them.
Umbrellas are one of the most common items that accumulate at the center, so much so that a 660 square-meter room has been dedicated to storing them in the basement. The room wasn't quite full as of late April but Shoji Okubo, head of the center, says that this situation will change once the 1 season starts in June. Okubo says that roughly 3,000 umbrellas are found in Tokyo on a typical rainy day. In 2016, the metropolitan police handled a total of 381,135 umbrellas across the entire year. Each umbrella is fitted with a tag that lists detailed information on when and where it was found. It is then stored according to the date it was handed in and the rail operators that logged it.
The center is where most waylaid items found in the capital end up after being temporarily stored at police stations or by facility administrators such as rail operators or department stores for about one or two weeks. On April 27, the center hosted around 900,000 unclaimed items, ranging from wallets and iPhones to sunglasses and the aforementioned urns that were found abandoned in various parts of the city.
8. About how many umbrellas in total are lost in Japan each year?
(A) 3,000
(B) 381,135
(C) 900,000
(D) Not enough information given
9. Where are lost items NOT stored?
(A) Convenience stores
(B) Department stores
(C) Police stations
(D) None of the above
10. What is the best title for this passage?
(A) How Lost Items are Processed in Tokyo
(B) Lost and Found Center Struggles to Return Lost Urns
(C) Metropolitan Police Handle Tokyo's Unclaimed Items
(D) Tokyo Overwhelmed by Mountain of Lost Goods
(iv) According to a study conducted through the heartbeat measurement app Cardiogram and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the Apple Watch is 97 percent accurate in detecting the most common abnormal heart rhythm when paired with an Al-based algorithm.
The study involved 6,158 participants recruited through the Cardiogram app on Apple Watch. Most of the participants in the UCSF Health eHeart study had normal electrocardiogram (EKG) readings. However, 200 of them had been diagnosed with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (an abnormal heartbeat). Engineers then trained a deep neural network to identify these abnormal heart rhythms from Apple Watch heart rate data.
So far this is just a study built on a preliminary algorithm but it holds promise in trying to identify and prevent strokes in the future. Atrial fibrillation, the most common abnormal heart rhythm, causes 1 in 4 strokes. One researcher says two-thirds of those types of strokes are preventable with relatively inexpensive drugs.
It should be noted mobile EKG readers have also made great strides in the past few years. The Mayo Clinic teamed up on a study involving AI and AliveCor's version of an EKG reader, which sticks onto the back of a smartphone and uses the Kardia app to determine abnormal heart rhythm, and determined it was as good as other EKG devices used in the doctor's office. The Mayo Clinic felt so strongly about this study it invested in AliveCor's latest $30 million round of funding.
Sarah Buhr.
Apple Watch can detect an abnormal heart rhythm with 97% accuracy.
11. Which of the following best describes the Apple Watch?
(A) Better than AliveCor in detecting heart disease as a whole.
(B) Can detect and prevent two thirds of strokes caused by atrial fibrillation.
(C) Can detect abnormal heart rhythms when used with an algorithm.
(D) May be able to identify and prevent strokes in the future.
12. Which of the following is NOT stated in the passage?
(A) Apple Watch detected 200 cases of atrial fibrillation.
(B) Kardia app proved superior to doctors' EKG devices.
(C) The Mayo Clinic has developed a new type of EKG reader.
(D) All of the above
13. What is the best title for this passage?
(A) Al-based Algorithm Helps Doctors Diagnose Strokes
(B) Apple Watch and Similar Devices Help Diagnose Heart Problems
(C) Challenges Facing Apple Watch in Preventing Atrial Fibrillation
(D) New Technologies Helping to Prevent Abnormal Heart Rhythms
(v) Young love burns bright, but when the flame is extinguished the pain can seem unbearable. As a parent you never want to see your child suffer, but you may struggle to find the right thing to say or do when puppy love turns sour. Here are some do's and don'ts to help your teen overcome the pain of a broken heart.
"When your child comes to you after a breakup, take their feelings seriously,” says Dr. Donna Haygood-Jackson, a therapist with Colonial Psychiatric Associates in Williamsburg, Virginia. “Telling your child that they are only 15' makes it sound like their feelings don't matter. While you as a parent know there will be many other relationships, to your teen their feelings about the relationship that just ended are everything."
You may be tempted to use a conversation about your child's breakup as an excuse to talk about other things that may be going on in their life, but Haygood-Jackson warns against doing that. “There is an appropriate time to have conversations about those things, but during this emotional time you must let your child have and experience their pain so they can work through it,” she says. “Ask open ended questions and let your child share what he or she feels comfortable with. Don't judge and don't pry.”
Children watch and mimic their parents' actions, and that includes how they behave in relationships. “Actions speak louder than words," says Haygood-Jackson. “If one partner is disrespectful or abusive to the other, kids will pick up on that. Take a look at your own marriage or relationship and think about the example you are setting for your teenager."
Jamie McAllister.
Help Your Teenager Heal Their Broken Heart.
14. What does the expert encourage parents to do?
(A) Excuse
(B) Judge
(C) Mimic
(D) None of the above
15. What does the expert feel is important for children who have experienced a breakup?
(A) Experience pain
(B) Struggle
(C) Watch parents
(D) None of the above
16. What is the best title for this passage?
(A) A Parent's Guide to Dating Among Young Adults
(B) Advice on Child Counseling for Parents
(C) Challenges of Young People's Relationships
(D) Helping Your Child Through a Breakup
(vi) You've just had a fight with your partner or a confrontation with a colleague. Now your heart's racing, and you're struggling to think straight. What should you do? Psychologists are not short on ideas for how to calm yourself down after a stressful experience. Seek out a friend? Yes, there's good evidence that can help. But what if there's no friend at hand? You could try to alter your view of what just happened from “Disaster!” to “Not really so bad.” But it can be difficult to engage in this kind of “cognitive reappraisal” when you're in the immediate aftermath of a stressful event — perhaps because acute stress compromises the neural circuitry that's involved in emotion regulation.
Your brain needs help if it's to quickly regain control and, according to a n Nature Human Behaviour, you can provide it by thinking back over good times. Mauricio Delgado and Megan Speer at Rutgers University, USA, made 134 volunteers feel stressed by videoing them while they plunged their hands into icy water. Some then spent 14 seconds reminiscing about a positive experience (like visiting Disneyland) while others reflected on an emotionally neutral event (such as getting luggage ready for the trip).
Afterwards, the group who'd recalled happy memories felt better, but not only that: the expected rise in their levels of the stress hormone cortisol was only 15 percent, on average, of the surge observed in the neutral memory group. Thinking about happy memories, then, went right to the heart of the physiological stress response.
Emma Young.
New evidence shows the calming power of reminiscing about happy times from BPS Research Digest.
17. According to the study, how should one calm down after a stressful event?
(A) Change one's perspective.
(B) Engage in cognitive reappraisal.
(C) Plunge hands in icy water.
(D) Recall a positive experience.
18. How do happy memories affect cortisol production?
(A) Don't affect
(B) Increase
(C) Prevent
(D) Suppress
19. What is the main idea of this passage?
(A) A simple memory trick could calm you down after a stressful situation.
(B) Psychologists offer advice on how to manage stressful memories.
(C) Researchers discover the cognitive processes of stress management.
(D) Your brain needs professional help after a stressful experience.
(vii) Imagine going to work at 7:30 every night and spending the next 12 hours, including meals and breaks, inside a factory where your only job is to insert a single screw into the back of a smartphone, repeating the task over and over and over again. During the day, you sleep in a shared dorm room, and in the evening, you wake up and start all over again.
That's the routine that Dejian Zeng experienced when he spent six weeks working at an iPhone factory near Shanghai, China, last summer. And it's similar to what hundreds of thousands of workers in China and other emerging economies experience every day and night as they assemble the gadgets that power the digital economy.
Unlike many of those workers, Zeng did not need to do the job to earn a living. He's a graduate student at New York University, and he worked at the factory, owned by the contract manufacturing giant Pegatron, for his summer project.
He told us:
1. He was paid 3,100 yuan (about 450 dollars) and housing for a month of work, including overtime.
2. He slept in a dorm room with seven other people.
3. Factory workers usually cannot afford new iPhones.
4. There's an Apple-promoted app that the factory wants all its workers to download.
5. Why it can get stinky in the factories.
6. Why he believes iPhone manufacturing will never come to the United States.
Kif Leswing.
Undercover in an Iphone factory.
20. How was Dejian Zeng different from other Chinese factory workers?
(A) American citizen
(B) College student
(C) Higher salary
(D) Night shift
21. Why did Dejian Zeng work in China?
(A) Easier to find a job than America
(B) Good pay and working conditions
(C) Graduate school summer project
(D) No iPhone manufacturing in the United States
22. What is the best title for this passage?
(A) Chinese Manufacturing Conditions Revealed
(B) Pegatron's Shanghai Factory Described
(C) What I Did Over Summer Vacation
(D) Working Conditions in an iPhone Factory
(viii) Men in the office have a standard, seemingly interchangeable rotation of the same suit to put on before work each morning. Having a socially acceptable uniform that's convenient and ubiquitous means they're able to save on time while still conveying competence. Women, without the luxury of such a uniform, are required to spend much more of their valuable time orchestrating an acceptable outfit for the day. Many women would be relieved to have an arsenal of work clothes they didn't have to think about, so they could spend their energy on the decisions of the day that do matter. Which is why MM.LaFleur was created. The company's purpose is to provide women with a rotation of professional, sharp clothes that can be thrown on in the morning with only cursory thought.
True to the mission of making women's lives easier by cutting steps instead of adding them, MM. LaFleur will deliver to your door a box of clothes specially picked out for you by one of their personal stylists. It's called their Bento Box, and it's either a one-time delivery or a subscription service if you so choose. Simply take a short quiz on things like your office dress code, your size and preferences, and how much you typically spend on your work wardrobe. When your box arrives, try on the clothes, keep what you like, and send back the ones you don't like. They'll only charge you for what you keep, and you never have to spend hours in a dressing room again.
23. What is the best description of men's clothing choices for the office?
(A) Convenient
(B) Interchangeable
(C) Socially acceptable
(D) All of the above
24. What is key to MM.LaFleur's service?
(A) Customized outfits
(B) Free delivery
(C) Tailored clothes
(D) Work uniforms
25. What is the advantage of using the MM.LaFleur service?
(A) Rotate clothing
(B) Save money
(C) Save time
(D) Standardize wardrobe
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