As the politicians made clear at last month’s COP26 (United Nations Climate Change
Conference), in Glasgow, now is the time to act on climate change. We need to cut carbon emissions, and knowing this, it is easy to be bleak: Can we really remake society to be much greener than it is now?
Strangely, I’m feeling optimistic. Especially compared to if you’d asked me a few years ago. And that’s mostly because of one factor: Batteries. It isn’t obvious but over the last decade or so, just as we’ve watched our computers get faster and screens get thinner, batteries have dramatically improved too.
According to the European Patent Office, the number of battery patents filed grew by an average of 14 per cent every year between 2005 and 2018, which means battery innovation is exploding. Energy storage is getting better, as more companies are discovering new chemistry and process to make them work more efficiently.
And the results of their work are astonishing. According to Bloomberg, energy density—the amount of power that can be stored in the same sized battery—has tripled in the last decade. And the cost of batteries has dramatically fallen too.
Today, battery power per kilowatt hour costs around only 10 per cent of what it did a decade ago. And the expectation is that the costs will continue to fall, both as battery chemistry improves and because manufacturing on a massive scale makes the production of individual batteries cheaper.
Given how much technology has improved batteries over the last decade, I can’t help but be strangely optimistic about the future. Batteries may not be as flashy as phones, rockets or other new technologies. But when it comes to technology to fight climate change, they’re definitely leading the charge.
1. Which is closest in meaning to “bleak ”in Paragraph 1?| A．Positive. | B．Negative. | C．Neutral. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．Because the storage of a battery has increased greatly. |
| B．Because our computer technology is developing very fast. |
| C．Because the chemical properties of the battery are improved. |
| D．Because battery chemistry and production are advancing. |
| A．By quotation. | B．By experiment. | C．By comparison. | D．By classification. |
| A．How battery technology can fight climate change. |
| B．How we can make the society greener than now. |
| C．What makes the battery industry develop quickly. |
| D．Why batteries are becoming cheaper and more efficient. |
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【推荐1】Pioneering research from the University of Portsmouth that aims to find a solution to the global plastic pollution crisis is to share in £15. 9 million of investment from the Solent Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP).
The Solent LEP will use the Government's“Getting Building Fund" allocation to finance the expansion of the University's Centre for Enzyme Innovation (CEI),which takes enzymes(酶） from the natural environment and adapts them in the laboratory to recycle and reuse some of our most polluting plastics. The CEI will receive £1 millon investment from the Solent LEP.
The CEI is one of several projects that have been funded by the Solent LEP,which plays a leading role in determining economic priorities in the region. The projects will benefit the region's economic recovery in the present environment.
The CEI Expansion-Industrial Engagement Hub project will almost double the current size of the CEI and create three new specialist laboratories, to bridge the gap between the current research capabilities and what this technology needs to develop into in order to be adopted by industry.
In addition, the Industrial Engagement Hub will be a space for interaction between researchers and industry collaborators and become a testbed for growing local and national partnerships.
Professor Graham Galbraith,Vice-Chancellor of the University of Portsmouth, said:“The CEI is a unique environment for industry and academia to work together to shape, refine,develop and test the new technologies emerging from this ground-breaking research.”
“The funding from the Solent LEP to support the development of the CEI will deliver significant economic and societal benefits and clearly delivers our ambitions for research with impact and sustainability(持续性） as set out in our vision for 2030.”
1. What's CEI' s experiment?| A．Collecting enzymes. | B．Making building material. |
| C．Removing waste land. | D．Recycling materials. |
| A．To get investment for the national program. |
| B．To help the Solent LEP manage its production. |
| C．To determine economic priorities in the region. |
| D．To get a chemical for the reduction of plastic pollution. |
| A．It is hard to reduce polluting plastics. |
| B．The LEP funding has short-term benefits. |
| C．The CEI has connected research and industry. |
| D．Scientific research must need industries' support. |
| A．University Receives Funding for Plastics Recycling |
| B．What's the Best Way to Get Rid of Polluting Plastics |
| C．Local and National Partnerships Strengthen the Research |
| D．Industries' Support is the Key to Reducing Polluting Plastics |
【推荐2】Never play games with a robot. It will find a way to cheat if it can. A team from Open AI, an artificial intelligence lab in San Francisco, has developed artificially intelligent robots that taught themselves to cooperate by playing hide-and-seek. The robots also learned how to use basic tools and learned to play against the laws of physics in order to win.
In April, 2019, a team of robots known as the Open AI Five beat the human world champions at the team-based video game Dota 2. The hide-and-seek robots use similar laws to learn, but the simpler game allows for more creative play.
Bowen Bakerat Open AI and his colleagues wanted to see if the team-based learning ability of the Open AI Five could be used to create skills that could one day be useful to humans. The researchers set their robots in an environment filled with fixed walls and movable boxes and left them to play team games of hide-and-seek millions of times. The robots each had their own view of the world and couldn’t communicate with each other directly. At first, the hiders simply ran away. However, they soon worked out that they could find objects in the environment to hide themselves from view. For example, they learned that boxes could be used to block doorways and build simple hiding places. The seekers learned that they could move a ramp around and use if to climb over walls. The robots then discovered that being a team player was the quickest way to win.
The hiders also learned to sabotage the other team such as hiding the ramp before hiding themselves so that the other team can`t make use of the ramp. “Once one team learns a new strategy. it creates this pressure for the other team to adapt,” says Baker.
Such tricks show that AIs are able to find solutions that humans miss, says Baker. “Maybe they’ll even be able to solve problems that humans don’t yet know how to,” However, there’s still a long way to go from online hide-and-seek to real problem-solving.
1. What is the Open AI Five?| A．It is a science team that managed to win Dota 2. |
| B．It is an AI lab designed to play hide-and-seek. |
| C．It is a science lab founded to do creative play |
| D．It is a team of Al robots at the game Dota 2. |
| A．The robots solve fewer problems than humans. |
| B．The robots are able to create tools in the game. |
| C．The robots learned new ways to solve problems. |
| D．The robots are quick to discover game winners. |
| A．To prevent on purpose. | B．To shoot at once. |
| C．To win at last. | D．To adapt on time. |
| A．AI will improve themselves and it won’t take long | B．There are ways for AI to solve real problems. |
| C．There are still limitation of Al applications. | D．AI finds more solutions than humans do. |
【推荐3】However exciting space exploration sounds, there’s a necessary and important point about it that needs to be considered: food supplies. Right now, astronauts typically rely on dry food in airtight bags and cans，since there are strict weight limits on items taken into space. Foods that we take for granted, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, are out of the question for space explorers.
For those who’ve made an effort to try to grow food during space flights, they’ve faced many difficulties, including the absence of gravity, and a lack of soil, air and humidity (湿度). However, growing food to add and minimize (最小化) the food that must be carried to space will be increasingly important on long-duration flights into space. Great efforts have been made to explore the concept (idea) of space farming. Recently, a team led by Federico Maggi at the University of Sydney in Australia have worked out how plants can absorb nutrients from human urine (尿), as was reported by New Scientist on March 27.
After over 20 years of experiments, the results suggested that human urine could supply three to four out of the six nutrients that plants need. The researchers also found out that urine-fertilized plants produce no harmful by-products, such as carbon dioxide or ammonia.
According to New Scientist, human urine is 95 percent water, with the other 5 percent made from nutrients which are harmful to the human body but not to plants. The advantage of this urine-fueled life support system is obvious: By recycling liquid waste and producing food, an efficient cycle will be created.
And most importantly, said New Scientist，the duration of space flights will be greatly extended to “20 years of flight”, meaning we may be soon sending astronauts on flights to Mars, or even beyond.
1. The underlined part out of the question in the first paragraph means ________.| A．impossible | B．unnecessary |
| C．unimportant | D．uncertain |
| A．Human urine is harmless to plants. |
| B．Human urine provides six necessary nutrients for plants. |
| C．Urine fertilizer is safer and more productive than chemical fertilizer. |
| D．Urine-fertilized plants only release a small amount of carbon dioxide. |
| A．It does little harm to the environment in space. |
| B．It could create conditions for long-term space flights. |
| C．It will greatly reduce the cost of farming in space. |
| D．Urine-fertilized plants are healthier and taste better. |
| A．The significance of space farming. |
| B．Problems facing astronauts on long-term space flights. |
| C．How to use human urine to produce food in space. |
| D．A possible new way to grow food in space. |
【推荐1】Fans of art believe that its main purpose is to make us look at life from many different angles. When it comes to Cubism(立体主义), however, the artists of this era wanted us to look at life from every angle.
The father of Cubism, Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, is among the art world's most famous names. Like many other great names before him, he felt restrained by the rules of his teachers and decided to do something: break them.
Early in his painting career, Picasso realized something important about how people view and remember scenes of beauty. When we look at a subject, we don't just see it from one angle, as many paintings appear. Instead, we study the subject from a number of different angles, heights and viewpoints. This is the aim of Cubism: It portrays(描绘) subjects from a wide range of angles; it doesn't force us to see things as the artist viewed them at the time he or she painted them. To bring his visions to life, Picasso and other Cubists took the most basic components of a subject and rearranged them in a way which let us see it in full detail.
“By breaking objects and figures down into distinct areas, Picasso aimed to show different viewpoints at the same time and within the same space,” in the words of the Tate Institution. Or as Lithuanian—born Cubist Jacques Lipchitz once put it: “Cubism is like standing at a certain point on a mountain and looking around. If you go higher, things will look different; if you go lower, again they will look different.”
Cubism stood out as it was an art movement which didn’t just rely on the artist to share their vision by painting what they saw. As cubist paintings mainly show their subjects in a deconstructed form, this means that viewers must use their imaginations to find the missing pieces for themselves. As Guardian art critic Johnathan Jones noted, this is part of the beauty of enjoying Picasso’s works. “If you can relax your gaze(凝视)enough and just enjoy the painting long enough, something really amazing happens. Your mind produces a solid feeling of the things Picasso was looking at. the world is revealed in its majesty(壮观),” he wrote.
1. What is a main feature of cubist works?| A．They are complicated (复杂的) pictures. |
| B．They break things down into parts. |
| C．They are mainly in black and white. |
| D．They present scenes of life to viewers. |
| A．To point out the origin of cubism. |
| B．To compare cubism with other schools of art. |
| C．To show his understanding of what cubism was. |
| D．To show that mountains were a common subject in cubism. |
| A．Seeing Every Angle. | B．The History of Cubism. |
| C．The Beauty of Enjoying. | D．Pablo Picasso: A Great Cubist. |
【推荐2】Filtration (过滤) systems are designed to remove multiple harmful substances from water or air at the same time, but pollutants in soil can only be tackled individually or a few at a time — at least for now. A method developed by research center could help turn soil improvement processes from piecemeal to wholesale.
Current methods of removing pollutants from soil take a lot of time and are expensive. Some purification techniques also generate secondary waste streams and use up significant amounts of water or electricity. A team of researchers from the research center showed that mixing polluted soil with non-poisonous compounds that drive electrical current, then destroying the mix with short bursts of electricity does flush out both organic pollutants and heavy metals without using water or generating waste.
The electricity bring soil temperature up to 1000 – 3000 degrees Celsius as needed in seconds, turning organic pollutants into non-poisonous minerals and poisonous heavy metals into steam. Moreover, the process is beneficial to soil fertility (肥沃).
“This newly established method, which we called high-temperature electrothermal process (HET), can remove multiple pollutants at a time,” said Bing Deng, the leader of research team. “It was surprising to us that we do not damage the soil in the process. Being able to regenerate the soil and put it right back where it was is a huge advantage over existing technologies,” said Tour, “Plants actually like it more, because of the minerals that get freed up in the thermal cycling.”
According to researchers, the process worked equally well on wet soil and it was economical and environmentally friendly. They developed two models for both off-and on-site experiments, and were looking forward to taking this process to the next stage—field testing.
1. What is the problem of the existing filtration system?| A．It is hard to operate. | B．It worsens pollution. |
| C．It is costly to repair. | D．It consumes more time. |
| A．Leave out. | B．Make up for. | C．Get rid of. | D．Mix up. |
| A．By heating the soil. | B．By adding new minerals. |
| C．By integrating pollutants. | D．By pouring in more water. |
| A．The new technology is still at experimental stage. |
| B．The new methods have proved useful to economy. |
| C．The two models have been widely used in the field. |
| D．The soil is greatly improved because of the research. |
【推荐3】Each day the online community reports on countless social justice issues around the world. From climate change and gun violence to natural disasters, readers come across a story, learn about an issue and often feel compelled (被迫的) to give some help. However，without any guidance on how to do it，many people stop the attempt and move on with their day.
Ideal Impact, a new web based app，sees it as a lost opportunity. The app is designed to connect news stories with efficient ways to help make a difference in the real world. Let’s say, for example, you recently read an article --“The heartbreaking world of captive (被抓的）special birds” and felt moved by the stories of the sad lives that those birds are forced to live. Once installed on your phone or browser, Ideal Impact would show you chances to volunteer, donate or join the people to help the poor birds.
Founder, Olivier Kamanda, explains in the company’s video: “What would happen when you come across a story that makes you want to get involved in?(介入、加入）That arouses(唤醒）a basic question, ‘How can I help? Unfortunately there is no platform that takes you from that moment of inspiration to a meaningful service opportunity. So every year 90 million people are inspired to get involved to do something with their time but they don’t know how, which leads to a cost of 207 billion dollars for volunteers’ time and donations.” Kamanda said in an interview with the Smithsonian，“Our app bridges the gap between people who are inspired to make a difference and organizations that need support.
Once the app is installed as a browser plugin (插件）on a desktop (台式电脑）or mobile device，you can read the news as you normally would. And then, when you come across a story that inspires you to take action, you can click on the Ideal Impact button that appears in the main menu of your browser. That will load the app and show you opportunities to get involved with non-profit organizations that are working to deal with the issue you just read about.
1. What is Ideal Impact?| A．It’s a charity group. | B．It’s a piece of software. |
| C．It’s a computer. | D．It’s a non-profit organization. |
| A．By making comparisons. | B．By giving figures. |
| C．By giving an example. | D．By giving quotations. |
| A．You will have fun news to read. |
| B．You will find a solution to a problem. |
| C．The main menu of your browser will appear. |
| D．You may get access to a related charity. |
