【推荐2】Food Parts You Should Never Throw Away in the Garbage

Pineapple Core

When you carve out the core of a pineapple, don't throw it in the garbage. You can use the pineapple core for all kinds of recipes, and there are tons of vitamins and minerals hiding within. To use the pineapple core: chop it and add it to fruit salad, blend it into smoothies, cut it into cubes and freeze for later use, or simply add it to water or even tea to improve flavor.

Kiwi Skin

If you never thought you could eat kiwi in the way you eat a peach, think again. That skin really is good for you and contains a lot of vitamin C, and in fact, it's also higher in fiber than the rest of the fruit. Of course, that rough, ugly skin isn't for everyone, so if you don't like it, try adding a whole kiwi to a smoothie to hide the taste of the skin.

Banana Peel

Most of us eat the banana without giving the soft peel a second thought. Here's why that's a mistake: banana peel contains tryptophan(色氨酸), which increases "the happiness hormone" to help with mood regulation and nerve system. There are a few creative ways to use the peel. Cook or boil for at least 10 minutes to soften. You can add it to smoothies, stir-fries, or soups. And, for a treat, simply slice and bake a banana with the skin on.

Watermelon Skin and Seed

The delicious, red inside makes for a refreshing snack or juice, but you're able to get some powerful nutrients in the skin and seeds as well. Cut out the white part under the green outside and use it in your cooking. It has vitamin C and B6, to keep you healthy. As for the seeds, you can roast them in the oven. Then add them to salads or to nut snacks.

1. Which of the following has a larger amount of fiber than its other parts?

A．Pineapple cores.

B．Kiwi skin.

C．Banana peel.

D．Watermelon skin and seeds.

2. Which of the following statements is TRUE?

A．All the food above can be added to smoothies.

B．Kiwi skin can be roasted in the oven.

C．Banana peel can help lift people's moods.

D．The green part of watermelon has vitamin C and B6.

3. Where can we most probably read this text?

A．In a botany instruction.

B．In a medicine brochure.

C．In a fruitarian's recipe.

D．In a nutrition report.

【推荐3】阅读表达

Before ending up on a supermarket shelf, an avocado (牛油果) has produced 1.3 kilograms of carbon into the atmosphere. Its production alone consumes 60 gallons of water. Despite this, the fruit will often be thrown away as household waste.

Household food waste is the result of mismanagement. Much of the waste is avoidable and the food may have been eaten had it been better managed. To reduce household food waste, a growing number of food retailers determine to remove date labelling, such as the “use-by” or “best-before” date, from some fresh food items.

Past studies have confirmed the importance of date labelling. Almost 60% of Western European consumers surveyed said they “always” check date labels while purchasing. But date labelling has long come under criticism because failure to truly understand date labelling often leads to unreasonable decision making. Indeed, consumers commonly don’t accept edible (可食用的), but date-expired (过期的) food.

The removal of date labelling is therefore a promising start. Without date labels, information that may affect consumers’ understanding of what is edible is removed. Instead, consumers are encouraged to sense-check fresh food items.

In the case of an avocado, the advice given to consumers is that when ripe, it should have a “pleasant and slightly sweet aroma (气味)”, while the skin should be “dark green or brown”. Information is also provided on how an avocado should look, taste, and feel when “overripe”. It is hoped that a better informed consumer will be less likely to blindly throw away food due to an expiration date.

1. What do food retailers decide to do to reduce household food waste?
______________________________________________________________________________
2. Why has date labelling been criticized?
______________________________________________________________________________
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
•If consumers can be informed of the food’s nutritional value, they will be less likely to blindly throw away food due to date labels.
______________________________________________________________________________
4. Do you support the removal of date labelling? Why or why not? (In about 40 words)
______________________________________________________________________________

【推荐1】Is it to their body temperature? Save energy? Find food? Tiger sharks at Ninglaoo Reef are thought to search the seafloor for prey(猎物) as they dive down and scan for direction as they swim up to the surface. But could there be other reasons why the sharks continuously move up and down?

That’s what Sammy is hoping to find out for her Ph.D. research. Sammy attached tracking devices to 24 tiger sharks. Best described as Fitbits for sharks, the devices recorded activity rates and other data 20 times a second. Fitbits also contained video cameras, so Sammy could see the habitats the sharks moved through and the animals they met. She watched how the sharks reached to prey and how the prey reached to them.

Tiger sharks can be pretty lazy --- something as simple as a turtle noticing a shark and turning away could cause the shark not to bother hunting it. Stomach content analysis has found their normal prey items, such as turtles, rays and fish. But it has also found some really interesting things, such as licenses, cans and nails.

Sammy says that studying tiger sharks can help her better understand the ecosystem as a whole. How they move through water and feed can help her figure out how they might be influencing animals beneath them in the food chain.

“My time watching tiger sharks hunt was the best month of my Ph.D., if not any life.” Sammy says. “At first, I was a bit apprehensive about it...getting that close to some very big animals. But they were very chilled(温驯) once you had them controlled alongside the boat. They’d just sit there, you’d attached the tracking devices, you’d take the line off and they’d just swim off really calmly, it was pretty amazing to see. They’re just absolutely beautiful animals.”

1. Why does Sammy do her research?

A．To find some scientific data.

B．To develop others’ interest in tiger sharks.

C．To find out how tiger sharks move.

D．To further understand tiger sharks’ moving.

2. What does Sammy think of studying?

A．It’s of great benefit.

B．It’s a tiresome job.

C．It’s filled with challenges.

D．It’s simple and calls for little efforts.

3. What does the underlined word "apprehensive" in the last paragraph mean?

A．Curious.	B．Doubtful.
C．Fearful	D．Enthusiastic.

4. Which can be the best title for the text?

A．How do tiger sharks find food?

B．Why do tiger sharks dive?

C．What can we do to protect tiger sharks?

D．What roles do tiger sharks play in the food chain?

【推荐2】As we work to ease biodiversity losses and seek to reduce climate change, restoration is an important part of the global solution. But while it is widely understood that ecosystem restoration is the right thing to do, there is far less understanding of what exactly it means, and how it is to be achieved.

One of the most obvious misunderstandings about ecosystem restoration is that it is all about action, especially planting trees. It is important to understand that forest and woodland ecosystems are not the only crucial environments to restore. Ecosystem restoration consists of a huge range of different systems, from farmland soils and grassland systems to our seas and oceans.

Ecosystem restoration is not always about actively intervening (介入). In many instances, passive intervention can be just as effective, if not more so, than active. This involves simply letting nature take the reins. In short, in ecosystem restoration, what we don’t do can be as important as what we do. Often nature already has the answers. But there are situations in which humans have damaged the environment to such a degree that natural restoration is impossible. This is when carefully designed action is required.

Another key thing to remember is that we cannot succeed in ecosystem restoration without local people’s involvement or, ideally, their leadership. When a community feels a sense of belonging and a deep connection with the land, this provides a firm foundation for future conservation and restoration work.

While I dislike taking an overly human-centered view, environmental issues cannot be separated in our complex modern world from socio-economic ones. We need to look at people and the planet as a whole and appreciate the complex web of human life and its interaction with the natural world in order to form practical restoration solutions. It is important to understand how nature can thrive (繁荣) and still provide humans with the things we need. It is only when we consider the natural environment and human society as interconnected that we can really continue to make progress.

1. Which shows the right understanding of ecosystem restoration?

A．Ecosystem restoration involves a variety of systems.

B．Direct action on forest ecosystems should be avoided.

C．Community-led efforts should be reduced.

D．The more trees we plant, the better ecosystems will be.

2. In what case active intervention is often a must?

A．Active intervention can improve the local economy

B．The cost of passive intervention is high.

C．A large population relies on natural resources.

D．Nature fails to restore itself.

3. According to Paragraph 5, what should be done to make practical restoration plans?

A．To learn from developed countries.

B．To take both social factors and nature into account.

C．To make a study of local natural resources.

D．To put environmental protection first.

4. What is mainly talked about in the text?

A．What challenge people face in ecosystem restoration.

B．How people can benefit from ecosystem restoration.

C．How to repair damaged ecosystems more effectively.

D．Why ecosystem restoration becomes urgent.

【推荐3】Walk through the Amazon rainforest today and you will find it steamy, warm, damp and thick. But if you had been there around 15,000 years ago, during the last ice age, would it have been the same? For more than 30 years, scientists have been arguing about how rainforests might have reacted to the cold, dry climate of the ice ages, but till now, no one has reached a satisfying answer.

Rainforests like the Amazon are important for mopping up CO₂ from the atmosphere and helping to solve global warming.Currently the trees in the Amazon take in around 500 million tons of CO₂ each year: equal to the total amount of CO₂ given off in the UK each year.But how will the Amazon react to the future climate change? If it gets drier, will it survive and continue to draw down CO₂? Scientists hope that they will be able to learn in advance how the rainforest will manage in the future by understanding how rainforests reacted to climate change in the past.

Unfortunately, collecting information is incredibly difficult. To study the past climate, scientists need to look at fossilized pollen (花粉) kept in lake mud.Going back to the last ice age means drilling down into lake sediments (沉淀物), which requires specialized equipment and heavy machinery. There are very few roads and paths, or places to land helicopters and aeroplanes.Rivers tend to be the easiest way to enter the forest, but this still leaves vast areas between the rivers completely unsampled (未取样). So far, only a handful of cores have been drilled that go back to the last ice age and none of them provide enough information to prove how the Amazon forest reacts to climate change.

1. How do scientists study the past climate change?

A．By predicting the climate change in the future.

B．By drilling down deep into land sediments.

C．By taking samples from rivers in the Amazon.

D．By analyzing fossilized pollen in lake mud.

2. What is needed for drilling down into lake sediments?

A．The latest helicopter.

B．The special equipment.

C．The light machinery.

D．The narrow path.

3. What is the purpose of writing the passage?

A．To attract more people’s attention to CO2.

B．To call on people to protect rainforests.

C．To inform people of how scientists work on rainforests.

D．To warn people to stay away from the danger of rainforests.

【推荐2】After an evening of overtime work with her colleagues at the office, Jill Bien, 48, boarded a bus bound for Chicago, where she lived. About 35 miles into the 90-mile trip, Jill felt the bus drive away onto the right shoulder (路肩) of 1-94. The bus scraped (擦挂) a concrete barrier, and then turned back into traffic.

“Stop the bus!” Jill yelled to the driver from her seat just behind him. But then she saw his seat was empty. The driver, James Rogers, 68, lay unconscious in the buss step. “Call 911!” Jill screamed, and with the bus rushing in and out of traffic at about 60 mph in an uncontrollable way, she leaped into the driver’s seat and grabbed the wheel.

“My life flashed before my eyes,” Jill says now. “Everyone on the bus was bouncing around; they were lying in the aisle (过道). I thought, I don’t want anybody to get hurt.” Jill carefully turned the bus onto the shoulder, bringing it to a stop.

“Thank God she got that bus over to the side” says Marge Borkowski, who was a passenger that night. “She’s my hero.” Emergency personnel arrived a few minutes later and took 11 of the bus’s 34 passengers to the hospital, where doctors treated them for minor injuries. When Jill returned home after the accident, she “burst out crying” she says. “I kept visualizing (眼前浮现) it.”

Despite anxiety and injuries, Jill boarded a bus back to the office two days later. “I didn’t want my fear to build up,” she said. Kenosha County policeman Dan Ruth, who was at the scene of the accident, told reporters he hadn’t witnessed an act more heroic than Jill’s in his 18 years on the job. “It could have been much, much worse,” he says.

1. Where was Jill Bien going on the bus after overtime work?

A．To the airport.	B．To the police station.
C．To her home in Chicago.	D．To the hospital in Las Vegas.

2. What was Jill thinking after taking control of the wheel?

A．Her own life.	B．The bus’s problem.
C．The passengers’ safety.	D．The driver’s condition.

3. Why did Jill keep visualizing the accident?

A．She still felt frightened with worry.	B．She enjoyed the thrilling experience.
C．She was proud of what she had done.	D．She was relieved to get minor injuries.

4. According to the passage, Dan Ruth thinks Jill is ______.

A．overreacting to the accident	B．lucky to have survived the accident
C．a model of courage and selflessness	D．a troublemaker and causes the accident

5. What could be the best title for the passage?

A．Overcome Your Fears	B．Who’s About to Drive
C．Why Just Her	D．Stop the Bus

【推荐3】Playing sports is a lot of fun, but getting hurt is not.     1    

Wear protective equipment.

The equipment you wear depends on the sport you play. Helmets (头盔) are the most common protective equipment. They protect your head while you’re playing football, baseball, softball, biking, skateboarding, and so on.

Warm up.

    2     Doing some stretching (伸展) can get you prepared to hit the field. By warming up, you get yourself ready to play. Warming up your muscles and practicing a sport help keep you safe, too.

Know the rules of the games.

Traffic lights help prevent crashes between the many cars that drive on the roads together. This works because drivers know the rules and follow them.     3     When players know the rules of the game, fewer injuries happen. For example, you know that in soccer you can’t come from behind, crash into a player’s legs, and steal the ball.

    4    

Some rules don’t have anything to do with scoring points. Some rules are just about protecting other people. For example, a diver would make sure that the pool was clear before diving in. Otherwise, he or she might land on someone else.

    5    

This is a really important one. If you love sports, you may get right back in the game, even after an injury. But playing when you’re hurt is a bad idea. It can lead to an even worse injury.

A．You can take the following steps to prevent injuries .

B．It’s just like(就像……一样) sports.

C．Don’t play when you’re injured.

D．Don’t do too much exercise.

E．You and the other players know what to expect from each other.

F．It’s not a good idea to just go to the field and start playing.

G．Watch out (当心，注意) for others.