Question

It is hard to say that a telephone is just a telephone anymore. Not only does it let you hear Grandma's voice from miles away clearer than ever before, but it is providing even more important information services to its users. By the year 2000, American householders will rely on the telephone system for shopping, computing, playing the stock market, making airline reservations, and watching television. The lives of heart patients may depend on telephones with on line electronic systems altering their doctors to emergencies. This is in addition to American business managers who currently rely on their telephones for sales orders, inventory control, banking, video image transmission, and many other tasks.

New technologies, such as advanced computing and fiber optics, make telecommunications services cheap and quick. In addition, since the breakup of AT&T, the competition spawned (引起) among many phone companies has emphasized price changes and introduced innovative services.

But despite the stimulus to provide commercial benefits during normal operation, one essential ingredient is missing—the incentive to design for emergency preparedness in the event of disaster. The telephone system is improving its ability to respond to some emergencies such as wartime attack, but is not prepared to handle terrorism, natural disasters, fires or accidents.

Before divestiture (解体) AT&T operated a national emergency center that coordinated all procedures during a disaster. Today, in lieu of the previous AT&T center, a government agency—the National Communications System (NCS) —operates the National Coordinating Center to address disasters related to telecommunications. In addition, the numerous phone companies and large communications suppliers have developed mechanisms of their own to respond to limited emergency situations, but massive emergencies are beyond their capabilities.

　　 1. What does “anymore” in the first sentence of Paragraph 1 mean?

　　　　 A. in any case　　　　　　  B. at no time

　　　　 C. not longer　　　　　　   D. nowadays

　　 2. “In Lieu of” in Paragraph 4 is used to mean

　　　　 A. instead of　　　　　　　　 B. because of

　　　　 C. In spite of　　　　　　    D. due to

　　 3. The writer's main purpose is to

　　　　 A. describe phenomena

　　　　 B. propose a motion of the modem telecommunications sciences

　　　　 C. amuse attention to the limited uses of telephone in the event of disaster

　　　　 D. argue a belief of telephone

　　 4. What would the following paragraph after Paragraph 4 more probably deal with?

　　　　 A. the examples of emergencies that telephone system can not deal with

　　　　 B. different opinions towards the telephone services

　　　　 C. the writer's conclusion of the passage

　　　　 D. the disadvantages of the National Communications System

 

Answer 1

答案：1D2A3C4A
解析：