A. some modern women prefer a life of individual freedom

B. the family is no longer the basic unit of society in present-day Europe

C. some professional people have too much work to do to feel lonely

D. most Europeans conceive living a single life as unacceptable

37. What is the author’s purpose in writing the passage?

A. To review the impact of women becoming high earners.

B. To contemplate the philosophy underlying individualism.

C. To examine the trend of young people living alone.

D. To stress the rebuilding of personal relationships.

（二）

It is hard to track the blue whale, the ocean’s largest creature which has almost been killed off by commercial whaling and is now listed as an endangered species. Attaching radio devices to it is difficult and visual sightings are too unreliable to give real insight into its behavior.

So biologists were delighted early this year when with the help of the Navy they were able to track a particular blue whale for 43 days monitoring its sounds. This was possible because of the Navy’s formerly top-secret system of underwater listening devices spanning the oceans. Tracking whales is but one example of an exciting new world just opening to civilian scientists after the cold war as the Navy starts to share and partly uncover its global network of underwater listening system built over the decades to track the ships of potential enemies.

Earth scientists announced at a news conference recently that they had used the system for closely monitoring a deep-sea volcanic eruption for the first time and that they plan similar studies. Other scientists have proposed to use the network for tracking ocean currents and measuring changes in ocean and global temperatures. The speed of sound in water is roughly one mile a second-slower than through land but faster than through air. What is most important different layers of ocean water can act as channels for sounds focusing them in the same way a stethoscope does when it carries faint noises from a patient’s chest to a doctor’s ear. This focusing is the main reason that even relatively weak sounds in the ocean especially low-frequency ones can often travel thousands of miles.

38. The passage is chiefly about ______. 　　

A an effort to protect an endangered marine species.

B the civilian use of a military detection system.

C the exposure of a U.S. Navy top-secret weapon.

D a new way to look into the behavior of blue whales.

39. The underwater listening system was originally designed ______. 　　 A to trace and locate enemy vessels 　　

B to monitor deep-sea volcanic eruptions 　　

C to study the movement of ocean currents 　　

D to replace the global radio communications network 　

40. The deep-sea listening system makes use of ____ . 　　

A the sophisticated technology of focusing sounds under water 　　

B the capability of sound to travel at high speed 　　

C the unique property of layers of ocean water in transmitting sound 　　

D low-frequency sounds travelling across different layers of water 　

41. It can be inferred from the passage that____. 　　

A new radio devices should be developed for tracking the endangered blue whales 　　

B blue whales are no longer endangered with the use of the new listening system 　　

C opinions differ as to whether civilian scientists should be allowed to use military           technology 　

D military technology has great potential in civilian use 　

42. Which of the following is true about the U.S. Navy underwater listening network?

A It is now partly acces