Near the edge of the Arctic region of Canada, the short summer is rapidly disappearing. The sun is pale, and the brief days of fall are being chased away by a constant cold wind from the north. It’s an icy cold region in which few animals or plants can survive.
One animal, though, actually grows strong in these freezing, lonely surroundings: the polar bear. Winter has the perfect weather for the huge white bear. According to Cam Elliot of the governmental group called Manitoba Conservation, polar bears are built for winter. These warm-blooded mammals spend most of their life on frozen seas, so they have adjusted to be able to handle the cold weather. Their thick fur protects them from the freezing winds. They have short tails and tiny ears, both of which help reduce heat loss. The heavy layer of fat helps to protect the animals from the cold and allows them to live for long periods of time without eating.
What is especially attractive in polar bears in terms of conservation (保护)is that it is an umbrella species. No other animal hunts the polar bear. Because of their status as “top killers”, scientists feel that the health of polar bears parallel (平行的) directly with the health of the environment. Global warming may be affecting the ice patterns, which are critical for the survival of the polar bear.
Anything in the global climate that would affect the stability or the length of the time that the ice is on Hudson Bay or the Arctic waters, is going to have immediate impact on them.
When the ice melts early, the bears may lose one month of hunting opportunities, which can have major effects on their ability to find enough food. Another issue with the situation is that when we develop any consideration for measures for polar bears, we are also protecting the entire ecosystem. That is to say, by making the changes needed to keep this umbrella species alive, the world will save any number of animals that have the same environmental requirements.
1. What makes the polar bear particularly suited to the extreme weather there?| A．Determination. | B．Short tails and large ears. |
| C．The ability of adaptation. | D．The thin layer of fat. |
| A．The Arctic has a relatively long autumn. |
| B．The ice pattern plays a key role in the survival of the polar bear. |
| C．Polar bears are hurting more and more other small animals. |
| D．The earlier melting of the ice may do good to small animals. |
| A．Because they can provide shelter for other species. | B．Because they are very strong. |
| C．Because they are large killers. | D．Because they are at the top of the food chain. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Uncaring. | C．Unclear. | D．Doubtful. |
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【推荐1】All insects have bodies that are split into three parts, with six legs. They also have two antennae which help them feel the world around them. Most insects can fly, and since they are so small, they can live almost anywhere.
You may not always see them, but when you go outside, you probably hear insects, especially in summer. Grasshoppers make noise by rubbing their legs against their wings. Crickets do the same, creating music in order to call other crickets or to attract females. Cricket fighting became popular in China during the Ming Dynasty.
Perhaps the most interesting insect is the butterfly. Butterflies are born from eggs as caterpillars. As caterpillars they have many small legs, a long body and survive on a diet of leaves. Once they are fully grown, caterpillars stop eating and find a safe place, usually the bottom of a leaf to make a cocoon.
Many insects have amazing strength. Ants are well known for building, and they can lift 50 times their own weight—imagine if you had to lift 50 of your friends at the same time!
Though insects are interesting, most people get upset when they come across them in everyday life.
| A．Cockroaches have existed for over 400 million years. |
| B．That is because many insects can hurt people. |
| C．If you want to learn more about insects, please look online. |
| D．Did you know that there are millions of different species of insects in the world? |
| E．Even today some children in China still keep crickets as pets, because of the sound they make. |
| F．Once inside the cocoon, the caterpillars grow wings and, a few weeks later, come out as butterflies. |
【推荐2】The koala(考拉) is possibly one of the best known Australian animals, and is found in four states: Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.
The word “koala” comes from an Australian word meaning “no drink”. Sometimes people call them “koala bears” but koala is not a bear. It belongs to a special group of Australian mammals, called marsupial(有袋类). Female marsupials have a pouch where the baby animals live after they are born.
Koalas have soft, thick, gray or brown fur on their backs. The fur on the stomach is white. The Koala in the south have thicker fur than those in the north because of the cold winters. However, the koalas in the northern part live in warm to hot weather most of the year, so they have thinner fur.A koala has a large nose and round ears. Koalas don’t have tails. Adult koalas weigh between 7kg and 14 kg.
Koalas spend nearly all their time in the trees. They sleep most of the day, but feed and move from tree to tree mainly at night.The reason koala sleep for much of the day is because their food, eucalyptus(桉树) leaves, are so hard that they need a lot of energy(能量;精力)to digest. Sleeping saves energy.
Each koala has a home made up of several trees that they visit regularly. They normally do not visit another koala’s home trees except that a male is looking for a female to mate with.
1. Which of the following statements is NOT true about the name “koala bear”?| A．The name was given by the native in Australia |
| B．The word “koala” is an English word |
| C．The name describes one of its living habits |
| D．The name is partly wrong. |
| A．House | B．Cave | C．Bag | D．Nest |
| A．The thick fur can protect them from the colder weather |
| B．It’s always hot in summer in the north |
| C．It’s always cold in the winter in the south |
| D．They have to move to the north in the winter |
| A．Their foods are poisonous |
| B．Their food needs too much energy. |
| C．They want to save energy for the activities at night |
| D．They can’t get enough water from their leaves |
【推荐3】After the heavy rain passes，a man at a company that lies on the riverbank arrives for work. At the water’s edge，he notices a baby beaver(海狸) balls up on the ground. Realizing that the animal needs help，the man picks him up and drives to a nearby animal hospital. From here the beaver is sent to the Calgary Wildlife Rehabilitation Society(CWRS)，where he will begin his recovery.
Vets check the beaver—now named Birch—for wounds or broken bones. Luckily they find no injuries. “But he’s a real little animal—only three and a half pounds，” says Andrea Hunt，a worker at the rehab center. According to his weight，they think that Birch is about eight weeks old. “Baby beavers stay with their families for one to two years，” Hunt says.“He’s not ready to care for himself. If he hadn’t been saved，he almost certainly wouldn’t have survived.”
To keep Birch from getting lonely，Hunt pairs him with another baby beaver named Aspen. At first they’re fed a milky cereal. A few weeks later，Birch and Aspen begin a diet(饮食) of solid food that includes leafy kale and collard greens. Wood is also on the menu. For exercise，each beaver receives its own pool to swim in.
About a year later，Birch weighs 27 pounds. “Not only is he healthy，but he’s also learned good survival skills，” Hunt says.“It’s time to let him go.” Early one morning the beaver is driven into a Canadian forest to be set free. Birch is carried in a cage(笼子) to the bank of a lake. When the door opens，he carefully steps out，then jumps into the water and swims away.“We’ll miss Birch，” Hunt says. “But nothing feels better than putting an animal back where it should be.”
1. On his way to work，the man ________.| A．gets caught in heavy rain |
| B．saves a little young animal |
| C．is driven to a hospital |
| D．sends a beaver home |
| A．moves to the rehab center with Hunt |
| B．loses his parents when he is born |
| C．is too young to care for himself |
| D．breaks his bones in an accident |
| A．Birch：a Lucky Beaver |
| B．Aspen：a Special Friend |
| C．Andrea Hunt：a Skilled Worker |
| D．The CWRS：Home to Injured Animals |
It’s common knowledge that the woman in Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous painting seems to look back at observers, following them with her eyes no matter where they stand in the room. But this common knowledge turns out wrong.
A new study finds that the woman in the painting is actually looking out at an angle that’s 15.4 degrees off to the observer’s right—well outside of the range that people normally believe when they think someone is looking right at them. In other words, said the study author, Horstmann, “She’s not looking at you.” This is somewhat ironic, because the entire phenomenon of a person’s gaze (凝视) in a photograph or painting seeming to follow the viewer is called the “Mona Lisa effect”. That effect is absolutely real, Horstmann said. If a person is illustrated or photographed looking straight ahead, even people viewing the portrait from an angle will feel they are being looked at. As long as the angle of the person’s gaze is no more than about 5 degrees off to either side, the Mona Lisa effect occurs.
This is important for human interaction with on-screen characters. If you want someone off to the right side of a room to feel that a person on-screen is looking at him or her, you don’t cut the gaze of the character to that side—surprisingly, doing so would make an observer feel like the character isn’t looking at anyone in the room at all. Instead, you keep the gaze straight ahead.
Horstmann and his co-author were studying this effect for its application in the creation of artificial-intelligence avatars when Horstmann took a long look at the “Mona Lisa” and realized she wasn’t looking at him.
To make sure it wasn’t just him, the researchers asked 24 people to view images of the “Mona Lisa” on a computer screen. They set a ruler between the viewer and the screen and asked the participants to note which number on the ruler intersected Mona Lisa’s gaze. To calculate the angle of Mona Lisa’s gaze as she looked at the viewer, they moved the ruler farther from or closer to the screen during the study. Consistently, the researchers found, participants judged that the woman in the “Mona Lisa” portrait was not looking straight at them, but slightly off to their right.
So why do people repeat the belief that her eyes seem to follow the viewer? Horstmann isn’t sure. It’s possible, he said, that people have the desire to be looked at, so they think the woman is looking straight at them. Or maybe the people who first coined the term “Mona Lisa effect” just thought it was a cool name.
1. It is generally believed that the woman in the painting “Mona Lisa”________.| A．attracts the viewers to look back |
| B．seems mysterious because of her eyes |
| C．fixes her eyes on the back of the viewers |
| D．looks at the viewers wherever they stand |
| A．confirm Horstmann’s belief |
| B．create artificial-intelligence avatars |
| C．calculate the angle of Mona Lisa’s gaze |
| D．explain how the Mona Lisa effect can be applied |
| A．Horstmann thinks it’s cool to coin the term “Mona Lisa effect”. |
| B．The Mona Lisa effect contributes to the creation of artificial intelligence. |
| C．Feeling being gazed at by Mona Lisa may be caused by the desire for attention. |
| D．The position of the ruler in the experiment will influence the viewers’ judgement. |
【推荐2】On a recent sunny day, 13,000 chickens roam over Larry Brown’s 40 windswept acres in Shiner, Texas. Some rest in the shade of a parked car. Others drink water with the cows. This all seems random, but it’s by design, part of what the $6.1 billion U.S. egg industry bets will be its next big thing: climate-friendly eggs.
These eggs, which are making their debut now on shelves for as much as $8 a dozen, are still labeled organic and animal-friendly, but they’re also from birds that live on farms using regenerative agriculture — special techniques to cultivate rich soils that can trap greenhouse gases. Such eggs could be marketed as helping to fight climate change.
“I’m excited about our progress,” says Brown, who harvests eggs for Denver-based NestFresh Eggs and is adding more cover crops that draw worms and crickets for the chickens to eat. The birds’ waste then fertilizes fields. Such improvements “allow our hens to forage for high-quality natural feed that will be good for the land, the hens, and the eggs that we supply to our customers.”
The egg industry’s push is the first major test of whether animal products from regenerative farms can become the next premium offering. In barely more than a decade, organic eggs went from being dismissed as a niche product in natural foods stores to being sold at Walmart. More recently there were similar doubts about probiotics and plant-based meats, but both have exploded into major supermarket categories. If the sustainable-egg rollout is successful, it could open the floodgates for regenerative beef, broccoli, and beyond.
Regenerative products could be a hard sell, because the concept is tough to define quickly, says Julie Stanton, associate professor of agricultural economics at Pennsylvania State University Brandywine. Such farming also brings minimal, if any, improvement to the food products (though some producers say their eggs have more protein).
The industry is betting that the same consumers paying more for premium attributes such as free-range, non-GMO, and pasture-raised eggs will embrace sustainability. Surveys show that younger generations are more concerned about climate change, and some of the success of plant-based meat can be chalked up to shoppers wanting to signal their desire to protect the environment. Young adults “really care about the planet,” says John Brunnquell, president of Egg Innovations. “They are absolutely altering the food chain beyond what I think even they understand what they’re doing.”
1. The climate friendly eggs are produced _________.| A．at a considerably low cost | B．on specially designed farms |
| C．as a replacement for organic eggs | D．at the demand of regular shoppers |
| A．reducing the damage of worms | B．accelerating the disposal of waste |
| C．creating a sustainable system | D．attracting customers to his products |
| A．the potential of regenerative product |
| B．the barriers in the egg industry |
| C．the doubts over natural feed |
| D．the promotional success of supermarket |
| A．are reluctant to change their diet |
| B．are likely to buy climate-friendly eggs |
| C．are amazed at agriculture advance |
| D．are concerned about environmental problems |
【推荐3】For many children in the United States, going back to school means more than returning to classes. It means getting back to school groups and student organizations interested in environmental protection.
April Peebler is the leader of a California-based group called Heirs to our Oceans. It tries to help 12-to-17-year-olds from around the world to learn about and fight for environmental protection. Peebler believed that young people are usually more active in environmental protection than adults.
Perhaps the most famous teenage environmental protector is 16-year-old Greta Thunberg from Sweden, the leader of Green Angel. She inspired others to start climate-change campaigns around the world last year. At a recent meeting in Davos, Thunberg said, "I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act." Thunberg plans to speak at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York City Inter this month. She will join world leaders who are expected to discuss plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (排放)，which are the main reason for global warming.
Joelle Alley is head of Earth Team, a California-based group. It offers programs for children interested in environmental protection and pays those who finally sign up. Alley says Earth Team organizes teams of 14 students from each high school in the Richmond, California. Then they work with adults to find environmental problems around them and then come up with measures to help solve the problems.
The Food Recovery Network is one of the largest student-led movements fighting food waste and hunger. Students at U.S. colleges connect college dining halls, local shelters and food bank to make sure leftover food is given to those in need. Regina Anderson, the group's director, says students have recovered 3.9 million pounds of food so far this year.
1. How many organizations are mentioned in the passage?| A．3. | B．4. |
| C．5. | D．6. |
| A．setting up local shelters |
| B．delivering food to colleges |
| C．making full use of food waste |
| D．producing food for the hungry |
| A．Ways to Protect the Environment |
| B．Small Acts Make a Big Difference |
| C．How to Set Up a Student Organization |
| D．Student Organizations to Protect the Planet |
