The greatest contribution to civilization last century may well be the air-conditioning, and amazing is the speed at which this

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问题     The greatest contribution to civilization last century may well be the air-conditioning, and amazing is the speed at which this situation came to be in America. Air-conditioning began to spread in industries as a production aid during World War II. Today most Americans need to take air-conditioning for granted to homes, offices, factories, theatres, shops, studios, schools, hotels, and restaurants.
    But not everybody is aware that high cost and easy comfort are merely two of the effects of the vast cooling of American. In fact, air conditioning has substantially altered the country’s character and customs.
    Many of the byproducts are so conspicuous that they are scarcely noticed. To begin with, air-conditioning transformed the face of America by making possible those glassy, boxy, sealed-in skyscrapers. It has been indispensable, no less, to the functioning of sensitive advanced computers, whose high operating temperatures require that they be constantly cooled. . .
    It has, at will, forced families into retreating into families with closed doors and shut windows, reducing the interactions of neighborhood life. It is really surprising that the public’s often noted withdrawal into self-pursuit and privacy has coincided with the historic spread of air-conditioning. Though science has little studied how habitual air-conditioning affects mind and body, some medical experts suggest that, like other technical avoidance of natural variations in climate, air-conditioning may damage the human capacity to adapt to stress. If so, air-conditioning is only like many other greatly useful technical developments that liberate man from nature by increasing his productivity and power in some way—while indirectly weakening him in others.
According to the passage, the chief consequence brought about by the wide application of air-conditioning is______.

选项 A、the loss of human capacity to adapt to changes in climate
B、the reduction of social communications of neighborhood life
C、the active life style of all its users
D、the decreased human production and power

答案B

解析 定位到原文最后一段“…forced families into retreating into families with closed doorsand shut windows,reducing the interactions of neighborhood life.”一句可知:空调使得人们窗门紧闭,从而使社区之内人际互动交流大大减少了。neighborhood life意为“社区生活”。需注意的是,选项A并未对应题干中的According to the author…,而是对应原文中的some medicalexperts suggest that…,千万不要被此类的命题圈套蒙蔽了。
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