Russell Fazio, an Ohio State psychology professor who has studied interracial roommates there and at Indiana University, discovered an intriguing academic effect. In a study analyzing data on thousands of Ohio State freshmen who lived in dorms, he found that black freshmen who came to college with high standardized test scores earned better grades if they had a white roommate —even if the roommate’s test scores were low. The roommate’s race had no effect on the grades of white students or low-scoring black students. Perhaps, the study speculated, having a white roommate helps academically prepared black students adjust to a predominantly white university.
That same study found that randomly assigned interracial roommates at Ohio State broke up before the end of the quarter about twice as often as same-race roommates.
Because interracial roommate relationships are often problematic, Dr. Fazio said, many students would like to move out, but university housing policies may make it hard to leave.
“At Indiana University, where housing was not so tight, more interracial roommates split up,” he said. “Here at Ohio State, where housing was tight, they were told to work it out. The most interesting thing we found was that if the relationship managed to continue for just 10 weeks, we could see an improvement in racial attitudes.”
Dr. Fazio’s Indiana study found that three times as many randomly assigned interracial roommates were no longer living together at the end of the semester, compared with white roommates. The interracial roommates spent less time together, and had fewer joint activities than the white pairs.
Question 26-29
26. What do we know about Russell Fazio ?
27. Who benefited from living with a white roommate according to Fazio’s study?
28. What did the study find about randomly assigned interracial roommates at Ohio State University?
29. What did Dr. Fazio find interesting about interracial roommates who had lived together for 10 weeks?
【点评】：本文节选自2009年7月的《纽约时报》，原文标题为Interracial Roommates Can Reduce Prejudice。文章属于社会类话题，大意为俄亥俄州立大学的一位名为Russell Fazio的心理学教授研究不同人种混居的有趣现象以及结论。无独有偶，2011年6月四级真题阅读理解Section B的Passage 1也选用了相同的话题，大家平时在备考中要对真题重视起来哦!
Passage Two
In a small liboratory at the Medical University of South Carolina, Dr. Vladimir Mironov has been working for a decade to grow meat. A developmental biologist and tissue engineer, Dr. Mironov, is one of only a few scientists worldwide involved in bioengineering 'cultured' meat.
It's a product he believes could help solve future global food crises resulting from shrinking amounts of land available for growing meat the old-fashioned way.
“Growth of cultured meat is also under way in the Netherlands”, Mironov told Reuters in an interview, “but in the United States, it is science in search of funding and demand.”
The new National Institute of Food and Agriculture won't fund it, the National Institutes of Health won't fund it, and the NASA funded it only briefly, Mironov said.
"It's classic disruptive technology," Mironov said. "Bringing any new technology on the market, on average, costs $1 billion. We don't even have $1 million."
Director of the Advanced Tissue Biofabrication Center in the Department of Regenerative Medicine and Cell Biology at the medical university, Mironov now primarily conducts research on tissue engineering, or growing, of human organs.
"There's an unpleasant factor when people find out meat is grown in a lab. They don't like to associate technology with food," said Nicholas Genovese, a visiting scholar in cancer cell biology.
"But there are a lot of products that we eat today that are considered natural that are produced in a similar manner," Genovese said.
30. What does Dr. Mironov think of bioengineering cultured meat?
31. What does Dr. Mironov say about the funding for their research?
32. What does Nicholas Genovese say about a lot of products we eat today?
【点评】
这是路透社2011年初的一篇报道，题目为“South Carolina scientist works to grow meat in lab”。本文为食品科技类题材。大意为生物工程技术应用在实验室生产肉，可改变传统肉类获得方式，解决将来的食物危机，不过还需资金支持，同时人们还难以完全接受这种方式。
Passage Three