【推荐1】The streets and roofs of cities all absorb heat, making some urban areas hotter than rural ones. These “urban heat islands” can also develop underground as city heat spreads downward, and subway tracks and other subsurface infrastructure(基础设施) also constantly radiate warmth into the surrounding earth.

A new study of downtown Chicago shows underground hotspots may threaten the very same structures that give off the heat in the first place. “Without anyone realizing it, the city of Chicago’s downtown was deforming,” says study author Rotta Loria, an environmental engineer.

Humans aren’t the only potentially affected. “For a lot of things in the subsurface, it’s kind of ‘out of sight, out of mind’,” says Grant Ferguson, a geologist. But the underground world is full of creatures that have adapted to subsurface existence such as insects and snails. As the temperature rises because of climate change and underground urban development, scientists are keeping eyes on the potential implications for underground ecosystems.

But the question of how underground hotspots could affect infrastructure has gone largely unstudied. Because materials expand and contract with temperature change, Rotta suspected that heat coming from underground could be contributing to wear and tear on various structures. To understand how underground temperature difference has affected the ground’s physical properties, he used a computer model to simulate(模拟) the underground environment from the 1950s to now—and then to 2050. He found that by the middle of this century, some areas may lift upward by as much as 0.50 inch or settle by as much as 0.32 inch, depending on the soil makeup of the area involved. Though these may sound like small displacements, Rotta says they could cause cracks in the foundations of some buildings, causing buildings to fall.

Kathrin Menberg, a geoscientist in Germany, says these displacement predictions are far beyond her guesses and could be linked to the soft, clay-heavy soils. “Clay material is particularly sensitive,” she says, “It would be a big issue in all cities worldwide that are built on such material.”

Like climate change above the surface, underground changes occur gradually. “These effects took decades to develop,” Ferguson says, adding that increased underground temperatures would likewise take a long time to dissipate on their own. “We could basically turn everything off, and it’s going to remain there, the temperature signal, for quite a while.”

But Ferguson says this wasted heat energy could also be reused, presenting an opportunity to both cool the subsurface and save on energy costs. Still, this assumption could fail as aboveground climate change continues to boost underground warming. However slowly, this heat will gather beneath our feet. “It’s like climate change,” Rotta Loria says. “Maybe we don’t see it always, but it’s happening.”

1. The author quotes Rotta Loria in Paragraph 2 mainly to _______.

A．make a prediction	B．highlight a finding
C．draw a conclusion	D．raise an assumption

2. What can we learn from this passage?

A．“Urban heat islands” extend underground to spare ecosystems.

B．Surface climate change contributes to the reuse of underground heat.

C．Underground temperatures mirror the ground’s physical characteristics.

D．Buildings may collapse as a potential consequence of underground heat.

3. What does the underlined word “dissipate” in Paragraph 6 probably mean?

A．Show.

B．Stay.

C．Develop.

D．Disappear.

4. What does the author intend to tell us?

A．Underground climate change is a silent danger.

B．Humans fail to notice the dramatic climate change.

C．Cooling the subsurface helps control urban heat rises.

D．Researching underground heat helps save on energy costs.

【推荐2】You don’t need to be an expert to recognize luna moths (蚕蛾). They have hairy white bodies, red legs and huge green wings that stretch up to 4.5 inches across. And at the end of their wings are a pair of long tails that have attracted scientists for centuries.

Some of them theorized that it was possible that female moths judged the health and quality of a male by the size of his tails. But it turned out that female moths were not choosy at all. They just mate with the first males they could find. Others believed that the tails could increase luna moths’ size to make them harder for the bats-the main enemy of luna moths—to handle. But the theory proved wrong in 1903 when a scientist named Archibald Weeks put bats against a bigger species of moths that lacked tails. He found that the bats killed 66% of their targets. Luna moths, despite being smaller, were harder to catch. “Clearly, their tails provided an anti-bat advantage,” Weeks observed. “I think they were used to direct bats away from the moths’ body.”

He was roughly right. More than a century later, Jesse Barber from Boise State University put luna moths against bats in a dark room and filmed the hunting. Under normal circumstances, the bats only managed to catch 35% of the luna moths. But if Barber cut off their tails beforehand, the bats caught 81% of them. That was not because the moths became worse fliers—in fact, cutting the troublesome tails seemed to have improved their flying abilities.

Barber explained that bats were not visual hunters. They found their food with a special sound. To be protected from bats, luna moths needed something that made confusing sounds. That was what the luna moths’ tails did: As they flew, they waved behind them and produced sounds that were similar to their wing beats. To bats, they either sounded like a huge part of their target, or like an entirely different target. As a result, they aimed about half their attacks at the tails.

1. What is Arehibald Weeks’ important contribution?

A．He found that bats are the main enemy of luna moths.

B．He theorized that luna moths use their tails to confuse bats.

C．He proved that Juna moths’ size is important for their survival.

D．He observed that female moths prefer male moths with longer tails.

2. What can be learned about bats from Jesse Barber’s conclusion?

A．They are not visual hunters.

B．They usually hunt in the day.

C．They like bigger species of moths.

D．They can fly further than luna moths.

3. What does the underlined word “they” in the last paragraph refer to?

A．Bats.

B．Wings.

C．Luna moths.

D．Tail beats.

4. What can be a suitable title for the text?

A．Who Is Right About Luna Moths’ Tails, Barber or Weeks?

B．How Do Bats Use Their Special Sounds to Search for Food?

C．Why Do Luna Moths Have Such Troublesome Long Tails?

D．What Are the Disadvantages for Luna Moths to Have Long Tails?