Greenhouse gas emissions from the way humans produce and consume food could add nearly 1 degree of warming to the Earth’s climate by 2100, according to a new study.
Continuing the dietary patterns of today will push the planet past the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit of warming sought under the Paris climate agreement to avoid the worst effects of climate change, according to the study published Monday in Nature Climate Change.
The study found that the majority of greenhouse gas emissions come from three major sources: meat from animals like cows and sheep, dairy and rice. Those three sources account for at least 19 percent each of food’s contribution to a warming planet, according to the study, with meat contributing the most, at 33 percent.
All emit(散发)large amounts of methane(甲烷), a potent(强有力的)greenhouse gas with more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide, in the way they are currently farmed. The researchers calculated that methane will account for 75 percent of food’s share of warming by 2030, with carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide accounting for most of the rest.
The study’s lead author, Catherine C. Ivanovich, a climate scientist at Columbia University and colleagues calculated the three major gases produced by each type of food over its lifetime based on current consumption patterns. They scaled the annual emissions over time by gas based on five different population projections. And then they used a climate model frequently used by the United Nations’ panel on climate change to simulate the effects of those emissions on surface air temperature change.
The study also offered some ways to change global food production and consumption that could limit warming.
“But reducing methane may be the most important goal of all. Although methane is far more potent than carbon, it is also much shorter-lived meaning cuts in methane emissions can have a quick benefit,” Ivanovich said.
1. What can we learn about the study?| A．Meat from some raised animals emits quantities of methane. |
| B．Current dietary patterns have no impact on the climate change. |
| C．Carbon dioxide and nitrous oxid are very common in our daily life. |
| D．Only methane should be blamed for its contribution to global warming. |
| A．By asking questions. | B．By analyzing causes. |
| C．By giving reasons. | D．By listing statistics. |
| A．Who initiated the study. | B．How the study was conducted. |
| C．Why the study was designed. | D．Where the study was carried out. |
| A．A desk diary. | B．A travel website. |
| C．A science magazine. | D．An academic paper. |
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【推荐1】Swimming at the beach or in a backyard pool are well-known Australian summer activities. But while it is usually a fun time of year, there is a serious side to summer that you might not know about.
In February, there were more than 80 different bushfires burning at the same time in New South Wales, a southeastern state of Australia. The Guardian newspaper reported that 42 homes were burned to the ground because of these fires.
Every household prepares for bushfire season and protects their property. But sometimes the fires are too big and people have to move to safety.
| A．The Australian summer is enjoyable. |
| B．The hot weather also causes other problems. |
| C．These homes are not like Chinese ones. |
| D．Thanks to climate change, this year’s situation is even worse. |
| E．That is why summer is also known as ‘bushfire season” in Australia. |
| F．The dry season lasts about six months, usually between April and October. |
| G．The extreme heat, which can go above 40°C in some cities, is very dangerous. |
【推荐2】Major Snow, the 21st solar term of the year, begins this year on Dec 7 and ends on Dec 20, marking the start of the season. It begins when the sun reaches the celestial longitude (天文经度) of 255° and ends when it reaches 270°
By the start of Major Snow, most of China has already seen the start of winter.
During Major Snow, people often eat jujube cakes, made from red jujube dates (枣) which are rich in vitamin C, protein, calcium, iron, vitamins and other nutrients.
In some areas, cured meats become a specialty product, as a way to store meat over the winter months. As the saying goes, small snow seals the ground, heavy snow seals the river.
Major Snow is an excellent season for people to replenish their bodies. There is another saying, “Replenishing your body in winter means you will be strong enough to fight a tiger in early spring.”
| A．A timely snow promises a good harvest |
| B．You can also eat some foods that nourish your Yin |
| C．A large number of citrus fruits, high in vitamin C, are in season |
| D．Temperatures have now dropped to below 0 °C in some northern regions |
| E．There is an old Chinese saying that “Three dates a day means no one gets old” |
| F．Now, many rivers are frozen, and people can go ice-skating with friends and family |
| G．At this time of year, it tends to snow more frequently over a wider area of the country |
【推荐3】If you could travel back in time, which period of history would you visit? It’s a great question to ask your friends, and time travel is the subject of many science fiction films. Of course, sci-fi is familiar to most of us, but what is cli-fi? The simple answer is climate fiction which focuses on the subject of climate change.
Many of the cli-fi examples we watch tend to be disaster films. It could be solar flares (太阳耀斑), ice ages devastating (摧毁) the planet, extreme flooding swamping the earth with water, or super-storms that threaten life as we know it. While films and novels of this style are often subject to the typical images of a hero or heroine battling to save the day, what sets it apart from most sci-fi films is that the plots will often draw on apparently reasonable outcomes in the near future.
Climate change and the potential threats have long been established. Some believe that the issue of climate change has even led to more fans watching films to learn more about what's happening to the world – seeing it as a form of edutainment. A study conducted by the Yale programme on Climate Change Communication tested the effects that two climate fiction novels can have on its readers and found “significant positive effects” in terms of their attitudes and beliefs towards the climate crisis – for example, understanding global warming will harm them and future generations.
Most climate films are not only extremely popular action films, but also cause our fear of what some see as the approaching end of the world. This sounds bad, but according to a study conducted on 310 adults in the US, watching such scary films can help us feel more prepared and less alone in situations such as the pandemic (疫情). So, it looks like cli-fi is here to stay – and there seem to be some benefits. Whether it’s there to educate, entertain or prepare you for a climate crisis, it might have a role to play.
1. Which of the following may be the subject of cli-fi?| A．Time travel. | B．Global warming. |
| C．Weather forecast. | D．Economic climate. |
| A．They are often about extreme natural disasters. |
| B．They want to show that man can conquer nature. |
| C．They usually have similar plots with sci-fi films. |
| D．They can show the true near future of the world. |
| A．To prove that climate change has potential threats. |
| B．To show that people like climate fiction novels. |
| C．To tell that cli-fi novels have positive effects on readers. |
| D．To explain how the climate crisis affect the human being. |
| A．Cli-fi films are very popular as action films. |
| B．A study was conducted on 310 adults in the US. |
| C．The pandemic make people scared and alone. |
| D．Cli-fi films are useful and will be here to stay. |
【推荐1】People who are at your age, like your classmates, are called peers. When they influence you on your decision or action, it’s called peer pressure. All of us, at some point in our lives, have had to deal with peer pressure.
Recent studies have shown that peer pressure might cause an upside to you. It can make you reflect on your actions and make changes to your ways to become a better one. Observing others working hard to reach their goals will definitely encourage you to make a great effort to achieve something positive. When a teen knows that his teammates are practicing hard to become better players then it will directly affect his own performance. He will put in twice the time and energy to raise the level of his game and ensure he has a place on the team.
Having a group that brings positive peer pressure can also help you pick up healthy habits that can shape both your personality and your future. For example, when a child knows that some of his friends regularly read storybooks, he may get into the habit of reading. Seeing that his friends exercise daily, even he may take up the habit.
Just as some influences can be positive, some can be negative too. Peer pressure sometimes can make a fall in your self-confidence. Some kids give in to peer pressure because they want to be liked, or because they worry that others might make fun of them if they don’t go along with the group. The idea that “everyone’s doing it” can influence them to leave their better judgment behind. Besides, it is common for teenagers to think that nobody understands them and that the whole world is against them. The influence of peer pressure is such that it keeps them completely away from their family and friends who mean well. They just shut themselves off and fall into bad company.
It’s likely that you’ve experienced the impact of peer pressure in different areas, ranging from the clothes you wear to the music you listen to. Sometimes it can be hard to resist(抵抗) and you may feel forced to do something you’re uncomfortable with. So being aware of and carefully choosing the influence of peers that will lead to healthy and happy experiences is a lifelong process.
1. What does the underlined part in Paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．A quick reaction. | B．A positive influence. |
| C．A serious challenge. | D．A possible conflict |
| A．Peer pressure can get teenagers to become less self-confident |
| B．Peer pressure can provide a positive model for teammates |
| C．Peer pressure can get teenagers to make fun of their peers. |
| D．Peer pressure can help teenagers improve relationship with family members |
| A．Just follow the trends ranging from clothes to music. |
| B．Accept it all because it is hard to resist. |
| C．Stay clear-minded and choose the influence wisely. |
| D．Fit into a healthy and happy lifestyle. |
| A．Science. | B．History. | C．Opinion. | D．Entertainment. |
【推荐2】New research suggests that even a simple exercise program might help older people with light memory problems. Doctors have long advised patients to do physical activity to help keep their brains healthy. But the U.S. government-supported research marks the longest study of whether exercise makes any difference once memory starts to decline.
Researchers found around 300 inactive older adults with memory changes called mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (轻度认知障碍). In the research, the participants were divided into two groups and half of them did aerobic exercises, while the rest did stretching and balance movements that raised their heart rates a little. After a year, testing of mental activity showed neither group had worsened, said lead researcher Laura Baker of Wake Forest School of Medicine. By comparison, similar MCI patients in another long-term study of brain health — but without exercise — experienced cognitive decline over a year.
Maria Carrillo is the Alzheimer’s Association chief scientific officer. She said earlier research has found regular physical activity of any kind may reduce damaging inflammation and increase blood flow to the brain. She added that the new study is especially interesting because the COVID-19 pandemic began halfway through the study. That meant the study participants became socially isolated. Social isolation has long been known to increase people’s risk of memory problems.
It is a difficult time for dementia (痴呆症) research. Doctors are not sure about prescribing (开处方) a high-priced new drug called Aduhelm. The drug is supposed to be the first to slow the progression of dementia but it is not yet clear if it really helps patients. Researchers last month reported another drug that works similarly failed in an important study. There is growing urgency to find whether exercise might offer at least some protection. Baker will lead an even larger study of older adults to see if adding exercise to other steps such as a healthy diet, brain games and social activities may reduce the risk of dementia.
1. What does the new study focus on?| A．Ways to slow the aging process. | B．Effective medicines for elders with MCI. |
| C．The influence of exercise on elders’ memory. | D．The causes of declining memory in older adults. |
| A．Diet plan. | B．Exercise type. |
| C．Professional background. | D．Previous physical condition. |
| A．It is meaningful. | B．It is impractical. |
| C．It is controversial. | D．It is time-consuming. |
| A．Find out how to lower the price of Aduhelm. |
| B．Develop a new drug to help patients with brain diseases. |
| C．Organize a wide variety of social activities for older people. |
| D．Conduct further research on how to reduce the risk of dementia. |
【推荐3】Johns Hopkins University researchers discovered precisely how spiders (蜘蛛) build webs in the dark. Their creation of a web-building playbook brings new understanding of how creatures with small brains are able to create elegant and complex structures.
Web-building spiders, which build blindly using only the sense of touch, have attracted humans for centuries. “The first step to understanding that is to study the behaviors and skills involved,” said Andrew Gordus, a Johns Hopkins behavioral biologist, “But until now it has never been done, mainly because of the challenge of detecting and recording the actions.”
His team studied a spider native to the western United States. To observe the spiders during their nighttime web-building work, the lab designed a stage with infrared (红外线的) cameras and infrared lights. They monitored and recorded six spiders every night and tracked millions of individual leg actions. “Even if you video record it, that's a lot of legs to track,”said lead author Abel Corver. “It's just too much to go through every frame (帧) and mark the leg points by hand so we trained machine vision software to detect the actions of the spider, frame by frame, so that we could record everything the legs do to build an entire web.”
They found that web-making behaviors are so similar across spiders that the researchers were able to predict the part of a web a spider was working on just from seeing the position of a leg. “Even if the final structure is a little different, the rules they use to build the web are the same,” Gordus said, “which confirms the rules are in their brains.”
Future work for the lab includes experiments with drugs to determine which circuits (回路) in the spider's brain are responsible for the various stages of web-building. Corver said, “This work could help us understand larger brain systems, including humans.”
1. What was the challenge in the previous studies on spiders' web-building?| A．Testing spiders' brains. |
| B．Tracking spiders' actions. |
| C．Observing spiders' webs at night. |
| D．Improving spiders' sense of touch. |
| A．Relying on the aid of special software. |
| B．Monitoring the safety of spiders. |
| C．Comparing varieties of spider webs. |
| D．Designing a set of infrared cameras. |
| A．The environment for humans. |
| B．The behavior of various spiders. |
| C．The drug for brain diseases. |
| D．The brain system of spiders. |
| A．Spiders, Elegant Creatures |
| B．Small Brains, Amazing Skills |
| C．Spiders' Web Secrets Uncovered |
| D．Spiders' Web-building Ability Developed |
【推荐1】A survey has shown that what you do on a plane can be determined by which nationality is listed on your passport.
According to the results of an international passenger survey. Australians are the biggest drinkers on board with 36 percent choosing to down the hatch (干杯), compared to 35 percent of Americans and 33 percent of Brits.
The Airline Passenger Experience Association (APEX) spoke to around 1,500 people, aged 18 and older, who have travelled by plane at least once during the last three months and were living in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, China, Singapore, Australia and Brazil.
The results found Chinese travelers are most likely to nod off (打瞌睡) once the seat-belt sign switches off. They are also the first to take out their credit card for some in-flight shopping and the biggest fans of gaming. Americans on the other hand like to use their time in the air more productively—when not drinking—choosing to work while flying at 35,000 feet.
Meanwhile, Brits and Germans are the best at making chats with random strangers—spending 50 percent more time than any other nationality. Comparatively, Brazilians conduct their conversations online via email, messaging apps or social media.
Despite plane food having a bad reputation, seven out of ten interviewees said they were happy to eat up on the selection of in-flight snacks and meals. In-flight magazines were also popular with four out of five passengers.
The international flyers did however express their desire for better in-flight entertainment. “The industry has greatly improved the comfort, entertainment and onboard service, and passengers are accepting those improvements”, said Russell Lemieux, APEX executive director. “At the same time, passengers are demanding more from their air travel experiences which will drive more improvements touching all aspects of the journey”, he added.
1. What can you probably see in the flight according to the passage?| A．Germans chat to kill the time. | B．Brazilians choose to drink. |
| C．Americans do in-flight shopping. | D．The Chinese switch off the seat-belt sign. |
| A．passengers from one nation have little in common |
| B．most passengers like to read in-flight magazines |
| C．more than half of the passengers don’t enjoy plane food |
| D．most people tend to use in-flight time to have a good sleep |
| A．Flyers have more and more demands from airlines. |
| B．Flyers are not satisfied with the improvements. |
| C．Flyers are expecting better flight experiences. |
| D．Flyers care little about entertainment. |
| A．To entertain readers with interesting stories. | B．To inform readers of the results of a survey. |
| C．To criticize impolite behaviors on the plane. | D．To encourage people to behave well in public. |
【推荐2】It has long been thought that only humans have personalities, but in recent decades, personalities have been found in animals from spiders to apes. Personalities have been linked to cognitive capabilities, like academic or work performance in humans. Thus in a new research article, Vedrana Slipogor and his colleagues from University of Vienna focused on exploring whether such a link is also present in many common marmosets (狨猴).
The researchers first individually assessed the personalities of these monkeys by measuring their reactions in various tasks, like their engagement with novel or strange objects, new types of food, or time needed to approach a toy snake. With the help of these tasks, they found that some monkeys were very explorative and bold (大胆自信的), while others rather tried to avoid the novel objects presented to them and keep a distance.
The researchers then assessed the monkeys’ learning performance in several learning tasks. For instance, in the simpler learning tasks, the monkeys were trained to hold a target training stick, to stand on a weighing scale (磅秤), and to reach the furthest point in the test set-up. The monkeys’ learning skills were also tested in other tasks, which were more challenging, where they had to either form an association between objects of the same size, but of different colors and shapes, or between objects that had the same features, but had different sizes. The results show that personalities could predict the learning speed in these monkeys. And the bold monkeys learned faster than the shy ones across different tasks.
Finally the researchers tested the learning performance of the female marmosets and male ones separately. The results also have differences.
1. How did the researchers evaluate the marmosets’ personalities?| A．By comparing them with bold human beings. |
| B．By measuring how they responded to different tasks. |
| C．By observing their speed of finishing tough tasks. |
| D．By letting them play with different kinds of monkeys. |
| A．There is no difference in their personalities. |
| B．Their personalities affect how fast they learn. |
| C．They can tell the numbers on a weighing scale. |
| D．They tend to avoid approaching strange objects. |
| A．Marmosets’ ability to distinguish objects’ shapes. |
| B．The challenges marmosets face when learning skills. |
| C．The research about shy and bold marmosets ‘learning speed. |
| D．Different learning performance of female and male marmosets. |
| A．A chemistry paper. | B．A history book. |
| C．A science magazine. | D．A travel journal. |
【推荐3】No doubt one of China’s greatest resources is its diverse cuisine. One of the most popular foods to be found is no doubt the street snacks that make up a large part of everyday life. “Compared with A Bite of China, which showcases chefs’ cooking processes and demonstrates delicious cuisine on air, Chinese Barbecue (烧烤) is more down-to-earth in depicting the people,” commented a viewer.
The new documentary series, called Chinese Barbecue, tells the story of this popular food option that sizzles (咝咝作响) over hot coals on just about every street corner in cities and towns across the country. Barbecued meat shining over hot coal containers, while not as elegant as some of the fine dining options in China, is an essential part of people’s night life. The pleasant smell and atmosphere surrounding the grilled (烤的) street food is “something that could entice a girl to fly downstairs at night wearing her pajamas (睡衣),” the documentary claims.
In many Chinese eyes，barbecue, regarded as the most ordinary and common night street snack, is different from homemade food by mothers as that is a symbol of kinship (亲切感). Barbecue is where you become connected to people in society. And unlike official business lunches, during which people are rather reserved and polite, barbecue lets people cut loose and relax with old friends and newly made friends, leaving a lasting impression of friendship.
On the other side of the world, in the United States, BBQ, well received by all ages, demonstrates the even more enthusiastic (热心的) personality of Americans, who grill large steaks on their outdoor stoves (炉子) at home and enjoy competing to see who has the better cooking skills. It’s safe to say that the world, as a whole, holds deep-rooted good feelings toward barbecue, either for the taste or the warmth generated by fire.
1. What is probably A Bite of China?| A．A commercial programme. | B．A popular documentary. |
| C．A soap opera of chefs. | D．A cuisine radio programme. |
| A．Inform. | B．Force. | C．Attract. | D．Remind. |
| A．Quality food. | B．Close bonds between friends. |
| C．Beautiful cooking style. | D．Polite atmosphere. |
| A．To indicate the popularity of BBQ. |
| B．To present special American culture. |
| C．To show friendship between countries. |
| D．To make a comparison with Chinese BBQ. |
