Relaxation therapy ( = treatment). If you read the sentence out loud, your blood pressure will go up. If you talk to another person, it will go still higher. If the talk is with your boss, your pressure will go even higher. If you speak to someone of the opposite sex, your pressure may show less change if you ’ re married than if you ’ re single. Dozens of times each day, your blood pressure changes with what you ’ re feeling and doing. These “ ups and downs” take place in everyone, but they are more severe in people with high blood pressure. That discovery is the basis for the newest therapy: controlling blood pressure by learning skills to control everyday stress. Many patients control their blood pressure with the relaxation response. This takes four simple things: a quiet environment, a comfortable position (sitting or lying down), the repeating of a word, prayer or phrase each time you breathe and having none of other thoughts. Something remarkable happens when you do this, according to research in Boston. Relaxation of the mind and body has the effect that some blood-p ressure pills would have. What ’ s more, the blood pressure stays lower, just as it would with a pill, after you have stopped the relaxation and have returned to the stress of daily life.
31. The first paragraph tells us the reason why your blood pressure goes up is that__________.
A. you read aloud a sentence
B. the man you talk to is your boss
C. you ’ re not married
D. you ’ re nervous
32. Which of the following statements is not true?
A. One ’ s blood pressure changes many times every day.
B. Your blood pressure changes with your feelings.
C. When you ’ re doing different things, your blood pressure, perhaps, is different.
D. The changes of blood pressure only happen to people with high blood pressure.
33. The last paragraph tells us relaxation therapy__________.
A. needs a new kind of medicine
B. has the same effect as blood-pressure pills
C. is more than blood-pressure pills
D. is working and can be improved
In what seems like the prehistoric times of computer history; the earth ’ s postwar era, there was quite a widespread rumor that computers would take over the world from man one day. Already today, less than fifty years later, as computers are relieving us of more and more of the routine tasks in business and in our personal lives, we are faced with a less dramatic but not less foreseen problem. People tend to be over-trusting of computers and are reluctant to challenge their authority. Indeed, they behave as if they were hardly aware that wrong buttons may be pushed, or that a computer may simply malfunction. Obviously, there would be no point in investing in a computer if you had to check all its answers, but people should also rely on their own internal computers and check the machine when they have the feeling that something has gone wrong. Questioning and routine double-checks must continue to be as much a part of good business as they were in pre-computer days. Maybe each computer should come with the warning: for all the help this computer may provide, it should not be seen as a substitute for fundamental thinking and reasoning skills.
37. According to the passage, the author would probably disapprove of__________.
A. investment in computers
B. complete dependence on computers
C. double-check on computers
D. the use of computer
38. In the author ’ s opinion, people should__________.
A. be reasonably doubtful about computers
B. use computers for business purposes only
C. substitute computers for basic thinking
D. check all their answers when using computers
39. What is suggested in this passage?
A. Computer won ’ t change our personal lives.
B. Computer can create unforeseen problems.
C. Computer has taken control of the world.
D. Computer cannot affect our businesses.
40. What is the main purpose of this passage?
A. To look back to the early days of computers.
B. To explain what technical problems may occur with computers.
C. To discourage investment in computers.
D. To warn against a mentally lazy attitude towards computers.