“US girls have now reached parity(平等)with boys, even in high school and even for measures requiring complex problem solving,” the Wisconsin researchers said. Although girls are still underrepresented in the ranks of young math prodigies, they said, that gap is narrowing, which undermines claims that a greater prevalence of profound mathematical talent in males is biologically determined. The researchers said this and other phenomenon “ provide abundant evidence for the impact of socio-cultural and other environmental factors on the development of mathematical skills and talent and the size, if any, of math gender gaps.”

　　The research council. an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, convened its expert panel at the request of Congress. The panel surveyed six disciplines—biology, chemistry, mathematics, civil and electrical engineering and physics----and based its analysis on interviews with faculty members at 89 institutions and data from federal agencies, professional societies and other sources.

　　The panel was led by Claude Canizares, a physicist who is vice president for research at M.I. T., and Dr. Sally Shaywitz of Yale Medical School, an expert on learning.

　　注意：此部分試題請在答題卡2 上作答。

　　47. In spite of much improvement, women still remain confronted with the inequalities in____。

　　48. Compared to the number of men Ph.D. in applicant pools, women Ph.D. are still _______________.

　　49. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin concluded that the achievement gap between boys and girls in their mathematics performance _________.

　　50. Those factors that affect the development of mathematical skills and talent are _________.

　　51. The panel has studied six disciplines and their analysis is based on _________ at 89　institutions as well as data from federal agencies, professional societies and other sources.

　　Section B

　　Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.

　　Passage One

　　Questions 52 to 56 are based on the following passage.

　　An epidemic of swine flu has recently developed in Mexico and the United States, says the CDC. Swine flu has killed many people, and the outbreak has features that suggest it could become a global pandemic(大流行病)A pandemic is an epidemic that spreads around the whole world. Pandemics also often cause more severe disease than epidemics.

　　Flu is a disease caused by the influenza virus. Humans, pigs, birds and other animals all can be infected by influenza viruses. Typically, influenza viruses can infect only one species, so the influenza viruses of humans are different from those pigs and birds. However, sometimes a virus can infect more than one species. For example, pigs sometimes can be infected not only with pig influenza viruses, but also with human and bird influenza viruses. Then these viruses can come up to one another secretly and swap (交換) genes, creating new viruses that have a mix of genes---from human, pig, and bird viruses. That is what has happened with this new swine flu virus.

　　Sometimes this swapping of genes allows a virus that was originally able to infect only pigs or only birds to also infect humans. When that happens, we refer to the illness as" swine flu" or" bird flu". This current virus could actually be called "swine/bird flu" , since it has some genes from pig flu viruses and other genes from bird flu viruses.