Giant pandas (大熊猫) are no longer endangered, Chinese officials have said, decades of work to save the creatures helped drive their population in the wild up to 1,800. The species will be listed as vulnerable (易危物种), Cui Shuhong, director of the Department of Natural Ecological Protection of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, said at a press conference on Wednesday.
China has spent half a century attempting to boost the population of its famous animals, creating panda reserves across several mountain ranges in an effort to save them from extinction. They were taken off the endangered list by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2016.
Since the 1970s, Chinese officials have worked on a campaign to drive up their numbers. To prevent habitat loss, officials created specially designed nature reserves in areas where their main food source, bamboo, is plentiful. In 2017, China announced plans for a 10,476-square-mile reserve, which is three times the size of Yellowstone National Park.
"China has established a relatively complete nature reserves system," Cui said on Wednesday as he announced the move. "Large areas of natural ecosystems have been systematically and completely protected, and wildlife habitats have been effectively improved."
Pandas are known in China as an umbrella species, which means experts believe measures to protect them would help protect other species, as well as the larger ecosystem. Cui added that the populations of some other rare and endangered species are gradually recovering as well. "The number of species such as Siberian tigers, Amur leopards, and Asian elephants has increased significantly." he said.
1. What has happened to giant pandas?| A．They will never be protected in future. |
| B．Their nature reserves will decrease sharply. |
| C．They are not listed as endangered species. |
| D．They have to face the worsening situations. |
| A．Increase. | B．Maintain. |
| C．Cancel. | D．Copy. |
| A．They can improve the production of umbrellas. |
| B．Protecting it is beneficial to a larger ecosystem. |
| C．They are not at the top of food chain in nature. |
| D．Protecting it means endangering other species. |
| A．A novel. | B．A business plan. |
| C．A guidebook. | D．A newspaper. |
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【推荐1】In the year 2000, as usual, my family were coming back from a T-ball game at the weekend. However, little did we know that a surprise was waiting for us in our driveway — two adult geese and a small goose. Obviously startled by our return, the adult flew away in panic, with their baby left behind.
Hours passed before night eventually fell. It was clear that the small goose needed protection, warmth and food to make it to the morning. We brought him to our backyard. Each morning, we would try to drive the small goose away to his parents, who kept coming back to our yard. He wouldn’t go to them, though, and neither would the adult geese come close enough to take him back. Realizing the young goose had apparently decided we were his family then, we gave him a name, calling the little guy Peeper.
Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. The little creature had grown into a big bird with two powerful wings before we knew it. One day, when my dad threw Peeper in the air, he just flew away and didn’t come back. With night falling, all of us became increasingly worried. We looked for him, called his name and anxiously expected his return. But he never appeared again. It took a long time before we accepted the fact that he was missing. We could only pray he found his parents and went off on his natural way.
So I was thrilled to see when, in 2019, an adult goose made his way back to my family home. He did all of the same things Peeper used to do! Much to my amazement, he even responded to the name Peeper. It became clear to me that my old best friend had returned many years later.
This experience has been as meaningful to me as anything in my life. Looking beyond our reach high in the sky, birds have feelings like human beings, so do many other living things. We human beings should learn to get along with them. We need each other’s care and protection for a better world.
1. Which of the following can best replace “startled” in paragraph 1?| A．Astonished. | B．Confused. | C．Terrified. | D．Embarrassed. |
| A．Because the small goose regarded himself as one of the family members. |
| B．Because the small goose was abandoned by its parents. |
| C．Because the small goose didn’t respond to the family when spoken to. |
| D．Because the small goose finally came back many years later. |
| A．Thrilled and Relieved. | B．Puzzled and Desperate. |
| C．Frightened and Upset. | D．Concerned and Sorrowful. |
| A．To raise people’s awareness of environmental protection. |
| B．To share a story about a goose and his family. |
| C．To remind readers to live in harmony with wild animals. |
| D．To call for people’s love and care for geese. |
【推荐2】Two weeks ago, I had volunteered to raise three newborn American barn owls. When the director of a local wildlife rehabilitation (康复) center first approached me and asked if I would be interested in raising “the babies” I was overjoyed! Twelve years earlier, the center had received a pair of barn owls, and since then more than 100 of them have been bred and released. Thoughts poured through my head of hours happily spent raising these babies and working with them until they were fully grown. Tossing them up into the sky where they would begin their lives anew in the wild would be so incredibly rewarding.
However, I had assumed incorrectly that we were going to release all of them. In fact, two of the owls were to be released, but the third owl was to be used as an educational animal. For the center to keep one owl when his two siblings were going to be freed seemed cruel, and this angered me. Sensing my anger, our director suggested that before I denounced the plan for this owl, I should at least go out and help with the educational assignment, to see what is accomplished. While still ready to regard this plan as a horrible use of an owl, I reluctantly agreed to go.
Then, things took a 180-degree turn. I found that I had been naive in my assumption that most people knew as much about wildlife as I did, and that they shared my respect for animals. The children at the school where I spoke had never seen the owls or the opossum that I showed them, though both were common inhabitants of our area. Many of them had never even heard of an ocelot. They were full of questions and eager to know more. At that moment, it occurred to me that in front of me were rooms full of 6-and 7-year-olds who, with the “help” of the owls, were learning to view nature in a whole new light.
That afternoon, I returned from the educational assignment with a new-found sense of purpose and happily commenced that task at hand — feeding little pieces of mice to Athena, our newest educational ambassador.
1. How did the author react to the director’s request?| A．He agreed readily. | B．He turned it down. |
| C．He reluctantly said yes. | D．He questioned his intention. |
| A．Finished. | B．Evaluated. | C．Changed. | D．Condemned. |
| A．They explored the outdoors often. |
| B．They were keen on raising an animal. |
| C．They were almost ignorant of the surrounding wildlife. |
| D．They had volunteered to join the animal education program. |
| A．A kept owl is safeguarding the owl’s future. | B．Saving the world begins with saving an owl. |
| C．The earth’s future is in the hands of children. | D．Releasing animals to the wild is not the end. |
【推荐3】The 1975 film Jaw s tells the story of a great white shark that attacks and kills swimmers. Jaws was a great success. It strengthened people’s long-held idea of the great white shark as a dangerous animal.
People have always been scared of sharks, but Jaws made things worse. It made people frightened of sharks. Many people started to believe that sharks were bad animals that ate humans. Some people stopped swimming in the sea. Other people started fishing for sharks, killing as many as they could. At that time, nobody cared if sharks were killed, or how many were killed. People just wanted them killed.
After 1975, the number of large sharks around America fell quickly, and soon fell around the world. This was not only due to fear of sharks, but also finning. Finning is a type of fishing where sharks are caught and their fins are cut off. The sharks are thrown back into the sea where they die slowly and painfully. Finning kills millions of sharks a year.
Finning would have an unexpected effect upon Peter Benchley, the man who wrote the book that the film Jaws was based on. In 1980, Benchley was diving when he came across an awful sight. It was an area where fishermen were finning, and the sea floor was covered with dead sharks. Benchley saw sharks being killed and this caused a deep change in him. He came to see people as a danger to sharks, rather than the other way round. From that day on, he fought to protect sharks. He admitted that his book was wrong about sharks’ behaviour. “Sharks don’t target humans,” he said. Experts have proved that sharks do not see people as food, and they attack us by mistake.
Fortunately, not everyone who watched the film Jaws became afraid of sharks—some became interested in understanding them. Today, as we learn more about sharks, more people than ever want to protect them from extinction.
1. How have people’s attitudes towards sharks changed after the film Jaws?| A．They become proud of sharks. |
| B．They are more frightened of sharks. |
| C．They begin to realize their importance. |
| D．They have the same attitude to sharks. |
| A．He became more afraid of sharks. |
| B．He continued to support shark finning. |
| C．He recognized humans as a danger to sharks. |
| D．He understood sharks are dangerous to humans. |
| A．To comment on Peter’s book. |
| B．To tell the success of the film Jaws. |
| C．To recommend a film to readers. |
| D．To raise awareness of shark protection. |
【推荐1】Billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday announced that he has formed a new artificial intelligence(AI) company, xAI, which has employed researchers from Google, OpenAI and other top technology companies. The goal, Musk tweeted, is “to understand reality.”
xAI is a separate company from Musk’s other businesses, such as Tesla and Twitter, but will work closely with them, according to the new company’s website.
Musk isn’t a novice to AI since Tesla uses the technology in its cars. While xAI didn’t mention what projects it will be working on, the company noted that its team of 11 researchers are drawn from top tech companies such as Microsoft Research, OpenAI and Google.
Musk suggested that the reason he picked July 12, 2023, to announce the start of xAI is connected with a science fiction (科幻小说) classic, Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” In his tweet, he noted that adding the date 7-12-23 equals 42, which the work of the fiction famously assumes is the answer to life.
“The goal of xAI is to understand the true nature of the universe,” the xAI website states.
The company said it will be advised by Dan Hendrycks, director of the Center for AI Safety. Hendrycks pointed out where AI could cause problems. “AIs could be used by bad people to make new deadly bioweapons (生物武器),” Hendrycks said in May. “Or people could make AI that tries to hurt people on purpose. If this AI was really smart, it could be a big danger to all of us.”
The first time xAI was shown to the public was after Musk talked about it in April to the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Musk told Carlson that OpenAI’s ChatGPT was a bit biased (有偏见的) and that he wanted to create a different tool that would be a super honest AI that tries to learn how everything in the world works.
The new company reflected (反映) Musk’s long-voiced concerns about a future in which AI systems could present a risk to human existence. The idea, Musk said, is that an AI that wants to understand humanity is less likely to destroy it.
1. What does the underlined word “novice” in paragraph 3 mean?| A．Boss. | B．Coach. | C．Partner. | D．Beginner. |
| A．He chose the date to remember a friend. |
| B．He was influenced by a number in a book. |
| C．It was suggested by a writer at his invitation. |
| D．It was the decision of all the 11 researchers of xAI. |
| A．It is quite worrying. | B．It is money-making. |
| C．It will not be smarter than humans. | D．It can be used to punish bad people. |
| A．It will take time to create a new AI. | B．OpenAI’s ChatGPT has its advantages. |
| C．Creating an honest AI is his dream. | D．It is hard to change people’s ideas of Al. |
【推荐2】Last Tuesday, a robotic ship called the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) set sail from Plymouth, England. The 15-meter ship will recreate the 1620 crossing of the Atlantic by the original Mayflower, which brought the first European settlers to what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts. But unlike the original Mayflower, there are no people on board. Everything about the ship is designed to run automatically. The ship is guided by an artificial intelligence (AI) system called “AI Captain”.
The MAS is a project run by a group called Pro Mare along with IBM, aiming to test different kinds of technologies for collecting information about the sea. The new Mayflower’s electric motor is powered by solar energy. The builders of the ship say they hope it can be used in the future to travel and research parts of oceans that are too difficult or dangerous for people to reach. If these can be handled by machines, it could be a big advance in ocean research.
Since the MAS didn’t have to carry humans, its designers were free to think about how to make the best ship for the job. Apart from cameras and radar to help the ship guide itself, the ship is carrying different kinds of tools and sensors. It has special listening devices which can detect whales and dolphins and even a special “tongue” that can report back on the chemicals in the seawater.
Last Friday morning, scientists tracking the ship noticed that it was going about half as fast as it should have been going. The AI Captain was working well, but there seemed to be something slowing the motor down. Since the ship had only covered 10% of the way across the Atlantic, the team decided to bring it back to Plymouth so that they could fix the problem and send it out again.
When the MAS finally does put out to sea again, it is expected to take about three weeks to cross the Atlantic Ocean. The fastest speed for the MAS is about 10 miles per hour. That may seem slow, but it’s about 5 times faster than the original Mayflower, which took 66 days to make the journey.
1. What might be the ultimate mission of the MAS project?| A．Developing new AI captain systems. | B．Testing the new robotic ship of IBM. |
| C．Exploring the ocean with high technologies. | D．Travelling across the Atlantic on the Mayflower. |
| A．Its operating system. | B．Its working principle. |
| C．Its functional equipment. | D．Its design philosophy. |
| A．The AI Captain sent wrong instructions. | B．The electric motor got affected by something. |
| C．The scientists wanted to change the ship’s route. | D．The ship needed to be serviced on a regular basis. |
| A．A Robotic Ship’s Global Voyage | B．New Mayflower Crossing The Atlantic |
| C．New Mayflower’s Failed Mission | D．AI Captain System Guiding A Robotic Ship |
【推荐3】Recycling plastic has always been a stop-start effort, and the wide variety of plastics we produce, the pollution from waste, and other limitations make recycling an economic(经济) problem. It’s estimated(估计)only 9% of plastic ever created has been recycled. But with the help of a chemical process, Canadian Miranda Wang and her company BioCellection want to change that.
Stability is one of plastic greatest qualities and downside. There's limited evidence that some plastics can biodegrade (生物降解)but largely photo-plastics degrade in the sun. It’s a long process, and the truth is that we can only estimate how long it takes. Wang is looking to break the inaction and BioCellection's task is to make most plastic waste recyclable.
She outlines two current methods. One is to take plastics like water bottles, wash them, cut them, melt and reconstitute them. “That's a very limited process” she says, due to the requirement that plastics be “clean” . The other, which can handle dirtier plastics and a level of pollution, is called hydrolysis(热解). Intense heat is applied to break down plastics so they can be reused as oils for energy, but “it’s not economical,’’ she says.
BioCellection’s solution builds on research from over ten years ago, Wang explains, when a US study discovered pure polyethylene powder (聚乙烯粉)could be broken down by a catalyst (催化剂). Wang and her co-founder Jean hit upon a bacterium being able to eat plastic. In the years since, they engineered a comparable catalyst capable of doing the same job, only faster, which even works on plastics no one else can recycle at present. “We have now found a catalyst that is much cheaper than the one that was used before, Wang says.
Currently focusing on plastic films like shopping hags, the three-hour process breaks clown plastic into chemicals that can act as the building blocks for more complex plastic products.
“Right now we’re able to achieve about 70% transformation from plastic waste material to these chemicals,” she adds, saying they’re working to increase that figure.
1. Why has so little plastic been recycled?| A．Plastic is chemically stable. | B．Recycling plastic led to pollution. |
| C．We produced various plastics. | D．Most photo-plastics degrade in the sun. |
| A．Highly effective and dynamic. | B．Expensive and pollution-causing. |
| C．Limited and energy-consuming. | D．Widely used and recognized. |
| A．Polyethylene powder. | B．Chemical products. |
| C．Plastic films. | D．A catalyst. |
| A．Miranda Wang and her company. | B．A new plastic recycling method. |
| C．The greatest downside of plastic. | D．Transformation of plastic waste. |
