【推荐2】A farmer wanted to sell some baby dogs. He painted a _________ advertising (做广告) them and then set about nailing (用钉子钉牢) it to a post beside his yard. As he was driving the last nails into the post, he felt a sudden _________ on his trousers. He looked down into the eyes of a little boy. “Mister,” he said, “I want to buy one of your little dogs.”

“Sure,” said the farmer.

And with that he let out a whistle, “Here, Dolly!” he called.

Out from the doghouse and down the road ran Dolly the mother _________ by four little balls of fur. The little boy _________ his face against the fence. His eyes danced with _________.

As the dogs _________ their way to the fence, the little boy noticed something else moving inside the doghouse. _________ another little ball appeared, this one _________ smaller. In a somewhat _________ way the little dog began hobbling (蹒跚) towards the others, doing its best to __________.

“I just want that one,” the little boy said, pointing to it.

The farmer said, “He is not a wise __________ as he will never be able to run and play with you like these other dogs would.”

With that the little boy __________ from the fence, and began rolling up one leg of his __________. In doing so he showed a steel brace (钢支架) running down both sides of his leg. “You see, sir, I don’t __________ too well myself, so I know he will need someone who __________ him,” he said.

The world is full of people who need someone that understands.

【推荐3】The sun was beginning to sink as I set off into the Harenna Forest. I was on my way to_________a unique honey harvest. Here, in south-east Ethiopia, hand-carved beehives are placed in the__________.Reaching them to get the honey is difficult—and often__________.

I followed beekeeper Ziyad over a wide stretch of grassland__________entering a thick jungle. Ziyad began preparations. He gathered__________of damp tree leaves, wrapped them with string, and__________the bunch to create a torch(火把). Then, with one end of a rope tied to his waist and the other end around the trunk of a tree, Ziyad began_________.He stopped every few minutes to move the__________ higher up the tree trunk.

_________, Ziyad got close to the hive which was around 20 meters above the ground. Sitting on a branch, he _________towards it and blew smoke from his torch into a tiny hole in the hive. Suddenly, Ziyad_________a sharp cry. Within seconds, he’d__________the trunk and was back on the ground.

It was too__________to collect the honey. A cool summer had delayed__________.Baby bees were still in the honeycombs（蜂巢）. The angry adult bees kept attacking as Ziyad escaped from the tree. He had to wait for the right __________to go back up.

【推荐1】Eradajere Oleita thinks she may have a partial solution for two of her country’s persistent (持续的) problems: garbage and poverty (贫困). It’s called the Chip Bag Project. The 26-year-old student and environmentalist from Detroit is asking a (n) _________ of local snack lovers: Rather than _________ your empty chip bags into the trash (垃圾桶), _________ them so she can turn them into sleeping bags for the _________.

Chip eaters drop off their _________ bags from Doritos (多力多滋薯片), Lay’s (乐事薯片), and other favorites at two _________ in Detroit: a print shop and a clothing store, where Oleita and her volunteer helpers collect them. After they _________ the chip bags in soapy hot water, they _________ them open, lay them flat, and iron them together. They use soft materials from old coats to line the insides.

It _________ about four hours to sew a sleeping bag, and each takes around 150 to 300 chip bags, __________ whether they’re single-serve or family size. The result is a sleeping bag that is “waterproof, lightweight, and easy to carry __________,” Oleita told the Detroit News.

Since its start in 2020, the Chip Bag Project has __________ more than 800,000 chip bags and, as of last December, __________ 110 sleeping bags.

Sure, it would be simpler to __________ the money to buy new sleeping bags. But that’s only half the __________ for Oleita—whose family moved to the United States from Nigeria a decade ago with the hope of __________ a better life—and her fellow volunteers. “We are__________ ourselves to making an impact not only socially, but environmentally,” she says.

And, of course, there’s the symbolism of recycling bags that would otherwise land in the __________ and using them to help the homeless. It’s a powerful reminder that environmental problems and poverty often go __________. As Oleita told hourdetroit.com: “I think it’s time to show __________ between all of these issues.”

【推荐2】The East African country of Kenya has been at the forefront of the global war on plastic since 2017, when officials banned plastic bags. In June 2020, the government ________ the efforts with a ban on single-use plastics in protected areas. Unfortunately, the measures have ________ made any impact. Hundreds of tons of industrial and consumer polymer（聚合物）waste continue to get ________ into landfills daily. However, if 29-year-old Nzambi Matee has her way, the unpleasant plastic ________ will soon be transformed into colourful bricks.

The material engineer’s search to find a(n) ________ solution to control plastic pollution began in 2017. She quit her job as a data analyst at a local chemical factory and set up a small lab in her mother’s backyard. It took her nine months to produce the first brick and even longer to ________ a partner to help build the machinery to make them. But the determined eco-entrepreneur was confident in her idea and did not________.

She says, “I wanted to use my education in applied physics and material engineering to do something about the problem of plastic waste pollution. But I was very ________ that the solution had to be practical, sustainable, and affordable. The best way to do this was by ________ the waste into the construction and finding the most efficient and affordable material to build homes.”

Her company, Gjenge Makers, now hires 112 people and produces over 1,500 bricks a day. The pavers（铺路材料） are made using a mix of plastic products that cannot be reprocessed or recycled. The polymer is obtained ________ from factories or picked by hired locals from Nairobi's largest landfill, Dandora.

The collected plastic is ________ with sand, heated at very high temperatures, and compressed into bricks that vary in colour and thickness. The ________ product is stronger, lighter, and about 30 percent cheaper than concrete bricks.

Matee, who was recently ________ as one of the Young Champions of the Earth 2020 — the United Nations’ highest environmental ________. Her dream is to reduce the mountain of trash in Dandora to just a hill by increasing production and expanding her offerings. She says, “The more we recycle the plastic, the more we produce affordable housing, and the more we create ________ for the youth.”

【推荐3】Afroz Shah, a lawyer in Mumbai, hasn’t had a weekend off in four years. But he hasn’t spent this time preparing for_________.

His mission? Saving the world’s oceans from _________ pollution.

It’s a calling he found in 2015 after moving to a community in Mumbai called Versova Beach. He had played there as a child and was _________ to see how much it had _________. The sand was no longer _________ because it was covered by a layer of garbage more than five feet thick — most of it plastic waste.

“The whole beach was like a _________ of plastic,” he said. “It hurt me. The ugly mess.” What Shah had seen is part of a global environmental crisis. More than 8 million tons of plastic _________ in the world’s oceans each year. It’s _________ that by 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. “Plastic in the ocean is a _________. And the sea-species have no choice at all,” Shah said. “We are ____________ their habitats.”

In October 2015, Shah began ____________ up plastic waste from the beach every Sunday morning. At first, it was just him and a neighbor, and then he began calling on others to join in. Word ____________ and with the help from social media, more volunteers got ____________.

For Shah, the work has always been a ____________ journey, but it has earned global attention. After he was ____________ as a Champion of the Earth by the United Nations in 2016, Shah now devotes nearly all of his free time to this ____________.

He’s now spent 209 weekends on this mission, ____________ more than 200 ,000 volunteers, some of whom are young students, to join him in what’s been called the world’s biggest beach cleanup. By October 2018, Versova Beach was ____________ clean and Shah’s cleanups expanded to another beach as well as a stretch of the Mithi River and other regions of India.

“This world talks too much. I think we must talk ____________ and do action more,” he said when interviewed by CNN in October 2019. “We are a smart species. Well adapt. We’ll learn. And with these youngsters rising up, I see ____________.”

【推荐1】As anyone who has tried to lose weight knows, realistic goal setting generally produces the best results. That is partially _________ people who set realistic goals actually appear to work more efficiently, and make more effort, to achieve those goals.

What is far less understood by scientists, _________, are the potentially harmful effects of goal setting.

Newspapers relay (转发) reports of goal setting prevalent in industries and businesses up and down both Wall Street and Main Street, yet there has been surprisingly little research on how the practice of setting goals may have_________ to the current economic crisis, and unethical (不道德) behaviour in general.

“Goals are widely used and promoted as they have really_________ effects. And yet, the same motivation that can push people to make more effort in a constructive way could also motivate people to be more likely to_________ unethical activities,” says Maurice Schweitzer, professor at Penn’s Wharton School.

“It turns out there’s_________ economic benefit to just having a goal — you just get a psychological benefit,” Schweitzer says. “But in many cases, goals have economic_________ that make them more powerful.’

A typical example Schweitzer and his colleagues mention is the 2002_________ of energy-trading giant Enron, where managers used financial incentives (鼓励) to motivate salesmen to meet specific revenue goals. The problem, Schweitzer says, is the actual trades were not_________ .

Other studies have shown that__________ employees with unrealistic goals can force them to lie, cheat or steal. Such was the case in the early 1990s when Sears__________ specific sales quota (额度) for its auto repair staff. It__________ employees to complete repairs that were actually unnecessary just to meet the requirement.

Schweitzer admits his research runs counter to (违背) a very large body of literature that__________ the many benefits of goal setting. However, __________ of goal setting have argued with Schweitzer’s use of such evidence to support his conclusion that goal setting is widely__________ .

【推荐2】NASA   scientists have found evidence of flowing water on Mars. This opens up the possibility of _______ and wonders we cannot begin to imagine. The _______ undoubtedly is an astonishing achievement.

We may be excited by the thought of living things on another _______, but we seem to have lost _______ in our own. In the past four decades, the world has_______ 50% of its vertebrate(脊椎动物)wildlife. But across the latter half of this period, there has been a steep _______ in media coverage of the subject.

Think of what would change if we valued _______ on the earth as much as we value the possibility of water on Mars. _______3% of the water on this planet is fresh and of that, two-thirds is frozen. Yet we lay waste to the _______ part. Sixty per-cent of the water used in farming is ________ by careless irrigation. Rivers, lakes and aquifers (地下蓄水层)are sucked dry, while what remains is often so bad that it ________ the lives of those who drink it. As for salty water, which so interests us ________apparently detected on Mars, on Earth we express our ________ by destroying it. A new report suggests fish numbers have halved since 1970. Coral reefs are under such ________ that most could be gone by 2050.

A couple of weeks ago, I launched a column(专栏) focusing on extreme consumption, and ________ suggestions. They have flooded in. here are just a few of the ________. Wigs(假发)for babies, to allow “baby girls” with little or no __________ at all the opportunity to have a beautifully realistic hair style”. The iPotty, which ________ little children to keep playing while toilet training. A smartphone for dogs to take pictures of themselves…

As clever new ways of wasting stuff are continually ________, we become more used to the ________ consumption of the world’s precious resources. Isn’t it time for us to have seconds thoughts about our lifestyle?

【推荐3】Lawmakers in New Jersey recently advanced a bill that would ban businesses from going cashless—a move that would put the state at odds with the global trend toward electronic payments but would ________ resistance from local officials who see no-cash policies as unfair.

Almost 1 out of 3 Americans in 2018 say they don't use cash during a typical week of purchases, according to the Pew study released this week. The findings reveal that Americans are becoming less reliant on paper currency, mirroring ________ in Sweden, India and China. But state and local officials say that restaurants and shops that adopt cashless policies have left some members of the community behind— individuals without the ________ to open a bank account or who lack access to the mobile apps that power digital payments.

The New Jersey measure, which would apply only to face-to-face sales and would________Internet and phone purchases, comes as officials push ________ efforts to bar no-cash rules in New York and Philadelphia. ________ cashless policies offer consumers the promise of convenience and provide businesses greater protection against theft, they also can exclude low-income consumers or undocumented immigrants,critics say. "Cash-free businesses are discriminatory by design and pose ________ to low-income communities that may not have access to credit," New York Council member Torres said on Twitter when he introduced a bill that would ban the practice.

According to the Pew study, the decline in the use of ________ currency is uneven among the population when race, age and income are accounted for. Pew found a significant ________ in cashless adoption tied to annual household income, with adults making at least $75,000 more than twice as likely to make all their purchases without using cash in a typical week, ________ with people who make less than $30,000. The Pew findings suggest that the ________ of going cashless may come with a cost that only some groups of people will bear. Americans with lower incomes are roughly four times as likely as higher earners to make almost all of their purchases with cash, according to the study.

As has been noted, business leaders have ________ cashless policies by referring to higher security and ________ customer service and efficiency. Some advocates have focused on providing people who are underserved by the ________ banking system with more affordable options, attacking the root cause behind the ________ of cashless payments.