For decades, scientists have tried to figure out ways to reverse (扭转) climate change by pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and storing it underground. Companies, researchers and the US government have spent billions of dollars on the research and development of different approaches, yet they remain too expensive to reduce carbon emissions.
Graphyte, a new company assisted by Bill Gates’s investment group Breakthrough Energy Ventures, announced earlier that it has created a method for turning bits of wood chips and rice hulls into low-cost, dried chunks of plant matter. Those carbon-storing chunks of plant, which look a bit like shoebox-sized Lego blocks, can then be buried deep underground for hundreds of years. The approach, the company claims, could store CO2 at an acceptable price.
Graphyte’s approach uses the power of plants and trees to photosynthesize(进行光合作用) and pull carbon dioxide from the air. While trees and plants are excellent at carbon capture, they don’t store that carbon for very long when a plant burns or rots. Graphyte plans to avoid that by taking plant waste from timber harvesters and drying it thoroughly, removing all the microbes that could cause it to decay and release greenhouse gases. Then, in a process that they call “carbon casting, ”it will press the waste together and wrap it into Lego-like bricks, for easier storage about 10 feet underground. With the right monitoring systems, it is said that the blocks can stay there for a thousand years.
“The simplicity of the Graphyte approach is so exciting, said Daniel Sanchez, who runs the Carbon Removal Lab at the University of California at Berkeley, and serves as a science adviser for Graphyte. ”You don’t need very expensive equipment or processes. And it locks up a lot of the carbon in the wood -nearly all of it. “Other approaches are much more complicated and, although proved, are much more costly than the new company’s estimated costs. Graphyte is planning its first project now.
1. What prevents the application of the previous research?| A．The disapproval from government. | B．The diverse opinions of companies. |
| C．The high expenses. | D．The lack of researchers. |
| A．How Bill Gates contributes to helping Graphyte. |
| B．The way of handling CO2 found by Graphyte. |
| C．The methods of reducing the cost of storing CO2. |
| D．How Graphyte applies Lego to their new invention. |
| A．They can be stored underground longer. | B．They are to help trees capture carbon. |
| C．They have their own monitoring system. | D．They are made of rotted plant matter. |
| A．The detailed price of the blocks. | B．The disadvantages of the blocks. |
| C．The future project of Graphyte. | D．The aid from more researchers. |
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【推荐1】At Serious Readers we understand that the creative mind requires many factors to function properly.
Creativity and inspiration can often strike when we least expent it, and disappear rapidly when we feel we most need it. Inspiration demands attention, at any hour of the day; that’s why Serious Lights use a special technology that allows us to closely replicate (模拟) natural daylight and bring it indoors. This means that wherever you are, and whatever time it is, you can write like you are bathed in a pool of natural sunshine.
“Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.”— Lisa See
Every author will tell you that the key to becoming a skilled writer is to devote yourself to reading. Reading develops your vocabulary, teaches you narrative structure, and provides a window to worldviews beyond your own. Time spent in front of a page is important for any hopeful wordsmith, and the longer you read, the better prepared you are to write. But many people struggle with reading for long periods of time. They experience blurred vision, headaches, hard concentrating and sore or dry eyes. These are symptoms of what is commonly known as eyestrain (视疲劳). A Serious Light works with your eyes to reduce these symptoms and allow you the freedom to read and write for as long as you desire.
“A writer is a world trapped in a person.”— Victor Hugo
Books often provide us with a sense of freedom. The common phrase “get lost in a book” indicates the sensation of allowing the world around you to fade away while the words on the page become a world inside your head. That feeling of freedom shouldn’t be hampered by tired and sore eyes. Most readers spend the majority of their time under some form of artificial light. This is where the problem starts. Most artificial light sources are not designed with your eyes in mind and will cause your eyes to overstrain and become tired and annoyed much faster. With a Serious Light you will experience sharper text, vivid colour, and breathtaking clarity, allowing you to read and write for as long as you desire.
1. What is the second paragraph mainly talk about?| A．The advantage of creativity. | B．The advantage of inspiration. |
| C．The function of Serious Lights. | D．The function of natural sunshine. |
| A．The importance of reading. | B．The method to write a book. |
| C．The future of their products. | D．The ways to be a wordsmith. |
| A．Explained. | B．Directed. | C．Satisfied. | D．Influenced. |
| A．Recommend Serious Lights products. | B．Offer directions of reading. |
| C．Introduce some books on Serious Lights. | D．Refer to benefits from reading. |
【推荐2】Never play games with a bot(robot)—it will find a way to cheat if it can. A team from OpenAI, an artificial intelligence lab in San Francisco, has developed artificially intelligent bots that taught themselves to cooperate by playing hide-and-seek. The bots also learned how to use basic tools to help them win.
Bowen Baker at Open AI and his colleagues wanted to see if the team-based dynamics of the OpenAI Five could be used to produce skills that could one day be useful to humans.
The researchers set their bots loose in a simulated (模拟的) environment filled with fixed walls, movable boxes and ladders, and left them to play team games of hide-and-seek. The bots each had their own view of the world and couldn’t communicate with each other directly.
At first, the hiders simply ran away. But they soon worked out that the quickest way to stop the seekers was to find objects in the environment to hide themselves from view. The seekers learned that they could move boxes around and use them to climb over walls. The bots then discovered that being a team-player -passing objects to each other or cooperating on a hideout -was the quickest way to win.
But the real surprise came when the bots started making use of problems or faults. Seekers found that if they pushed a ladder towards a wall, they could launch themselves into the air and spot hiders from above. Hiders found that they could get rid of the ladders by pushing them aside.
It shows 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, it is a large leap (跳跃) from virtual hide and seek to real problem-solving. “The main limitation is that it is in simulation,” says Chelsea Finn at Stanford University.
1. Why did Bowen and his colleagues conduct the research?| A．To teach bots to play games. |
| B．To train bots to use basic tools. |
| C．To find if bots may cheat like humans. |
| D．To see the potential of robots cooperation. |
| A．The tools of the research. | B．The design of the research. |
| C．The competitors of the game. | D．The environment of the game. |
| A．Making use of faults. | B．Moving boxes around. |
| C．Passing objects. | D．Hiding themselves from view. |
| A．It can bridge a gap in the AI research. |
| B．It will not be influenced by the real world. |
| C．It may not be realized out of the virtual world. |
| D．It will definitely help the real problem-solving. |
【推荐3】Human tears could carry a flood of useful information. With just a few drops, a new technique can spot eye disease and even signs of diabetes (糖尿病), scientists report July 20 in ACS Nano.
“We wanted to demonstrate the potential of using tears to detect disease,” says Fei Liu, a biomedical engineer at Wenzhou Medical University in China. It’s possible the droplets could open a window for scientists to look closely at the entire body, he says, and one day even let people quickly test their tears at home.
Tears contain tiny sacs (液囊) stuffed with cellular messages. If scientists could get these microscopic mailbags, they could offer new evidence on what’s happening inside the body. But collecting enough of these sacs is tricky. Unlike fluid (体液) from other body parts, just a small amount of liquid leaks from the eyes.
So Liu’s team invented a new way to obtain the sacs from tiny volumes of tears. First, the researchers collected tears from study participants. Then, the team added a solution containing the tears to a device and within minutes, the technique lets small molecules (分子) escape, leaving the sacs behind for analysis.
The results gave scientists an eyeful. Different types of dry-eye disease leave their own molecular fingerprints in people’s tears, the team found. What’s more, tears could potentially help doctors monitor how a patient’s diabetes is progressing.
Now, the scientists want to employ tears for evidence of other diseases as well as depression or emotional stress, says study coauthor Luke Lee, a bioengineer at Harvard Medical School. “This is just the beginning,” he says. “Tears express something that we haven’t really explored.”
1. What can we learn about human tears?| A．They contain many diseases. | B．They are useful in detecting disease. |
| C．They are the sign of diabetes. | D．They have a deep impact on the whole body. |
| A．The process of getting sacs. | B．The difficulty of collecting tears. |
| C．The method of using the device. | D．The technique of analyzing tears. |
| A．Stressful. | B．Profitable. | C．Challenging. | D．Promising. |
| A．A Solution to Eye Disease. |
| B．A Novel Treatment for Diabetes. |
| C．A New Technology Uses Human Teardrops to Spot Disease. |
| D．A Biomedical Engineer Finds the Potential Use of Human Tears. |
【推荐1】As people are becoming more socially conscious about where their food comes from and how it impacts the planet, they are choosing animal-free plant-based options. Cow-free meat has been around for quite some time and the popularity of brands like Beyond Meat and cultivated meat from Aleph Farms and other are soaring. While there are a large number of plant-based milk substitutes, none of have the same taste of cow’ milk. Now, an Israeli food-tech startup Remilk created real dairy products without harming a single cow or the planet.
The company stresses that their product Remilk is not a milk substitute but rather is the real deal. Made from a special process called microbial fermentation, milk is manufactured in a lab instead of in a cow. And the end product is very healthy. “In a very simple way, we take the gene that encodes for the milk protein,” said Aviv Wolf, CEO of Remilk. “The gene function as an instruction book for the production of the protein it encodes. And so, we insert the gene into a microbe that we’ve developed and it instructs our microbe to produce the specific protein in a very efficient way.”
The company says that the lab-produced milk tastes identical to the real thing and they hope to eventually replace cows by creating every dairy product sold. They expect to roll out plant-based cheese and yogurt in addition to milk. “Remilk was founded with the mission to stop using animal to produce our food because, as dairy lovers, we realize that giving up on milk is not an option,” Wolff said. “But today’s milk comes with an unreasonable price tag. The dairy industry is destructive to our planet, our health, and our animals, and is simply not sustainable any more.”
The environmental price tag of dairy farming is way too high. According to the World Wildlife Fund, dairy cows add a huge amount of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere and contribute to global warming and climate change as well as foul the air around them. Dairy operation consume large amounts of water and run-off of manure and fertilizers from there farms get into local waterways. The production of Remilk uses only 5 percent of the resources and produces only 1 percent of the waste of producing cow’s milk according to company. And they accomplish this by being 100 percent cruelty-free dairy farms.
1. What distinguishes Remilk from other milk substitutes?| A．It enjoys broad popularity. | B．It has the highest output. |
| C．It comes in various flavours. | D．It tastes the same as cow’s milk. |
| A．The production of Remilk. | B．The nutritional value of Remilk. |
| C．The role of gene in making protein. | D．The process of microbial fermentation. |
| A．Remilk was set up for animal protection. | B．Dairy industries should be shut down. |
| C．Remilk aims to produce animal-free food. | D．Price of cow’s milk are soaring there days. |
| A．Clean. | B．Heat. | C．Pollute. | D．Consume. |
【推荐2】The summer vacation is coming. If you do not know where to go, here are some cities to visit in 2019 recommended by Lonely Planet.
Copenhagen
With its modern design, 15 Michelin-starred restaurants and extremely bike-friendly culture, it is no surprise that Denmark' s capital has topped Lonely Planet's top 10 cities to visit in the 2019 list. Copenhagen' s street food scene is booming on Refshaleoen, a former industrial area with a food and craft market, Reffen. Copenhagen is also home to UNESCO-listed Roskilde Cathedral, where Denmark's queens and kings are buried, and the breathtaking Louisiana Museum.
Miami
The top 10 list offers a mix of well-known and a lesser -known locations. Those places include second place Shenzhen, China, Novi Sad, Serbia in third place, and Miami, Florida in fourth place. With its stunning beaches, the South Beach scene and art scene mixed with Cuban and other Caribbean and Latin American cultures, Miami is hopping with something for everyone.
Novi Sad
While Novi Sad isn't nearly as well-known as the capital of Belgrade, it 's much more fashionable. Nicknamed the “Athens of Serbia”, it's home to the country 's annual EXIT Festival, a music festival, which is held each July at the 18th century Petrovaradin Fortress. Next year, Novi Sad will be 2019* a European Youth Capital. It may be a practice run for 2021, when the city will celebrate the title of European Capital of Culture.
Kathmandu
Three years after it was hit by an earthquake, Kathmandu is welcoming visitors to a city that is much quieter, by design. It remains the doorstep to the Himalayas, with medieval (中世纪的) architecture, great food and nightlife. It is also much quieter than it has been in the past with cars banned from the historic center. It is also hosting the South Asia Games in 2019.
1. In which city can you see Roskilde Cathedral?| A．Copenhagen. | B．Miami. |
| C．Novi Sad. | D．Kathmandu. |
| A．There is a music festival. | B．There are beautiful beaches. |
| C．There are different street foods. | D．There is Petrovaradin Fortress. |
| A．Take a bike ride. | B．Climb the Alps. |
| C．Visit various castles. | D．Enjoy medieval architecture. |
【推荐3】Many of the serious health concerns in modern America can be linked to poor diet．People who regularly consume foods high in salt, sugar, and fats not only increase their chances of being overweight, but also increase their risks of developing diseases. Although some people who regularly consume unhealthy foods do so knowingly, there are also some people that remains undereducated about proper nutrition( 营 养 ). What is more, people who live in food deserts—areas in low-income(低收入) neighborhoods that lack easy access(路径) to healthy, affordable food—may not even have the opportunity to get nutritious food.
Food deserts are located in low-income areas and most often develop when major supermarket chains either move out of these areas or simply avoid building stores there in the first place. These supermarket chains tend to limit their store locations to richer urban or suburban neighborhoods．This means that those who live in low-income areas often live miles away from the fresh meats and dairy products available at supermarkets. People of these areas are thus forced to travel long distances to do their grocery shopping, or else they are limited to the food available at local convenience stores. These stores often only sell packaged, processed foods that offer little nutrition.
Furthermore, there are too many fast food restaurants in low-income areas; recent research suggests that those living in the poorest areas of a city experience 2.5 times more exposure to fast food restaurants than people in the richest areas of the city. Because people who live in food deserts often get their meals from fast food restaurants or convenience stores, they suffer from a variety of health problems．Research has found that people who live in low-income neighborhoods are much more likely to develop healthy problems than those who live in richer neighborhoods.
Of course, it seems obvious that more supermarkets should be built in low-income neighborhoods. But in fact, it is difficult to attract supermarket chains into poor areas because poorer people have less money to spend on food. One way that the government can help to solve this problem is by offering tax breaks or other inspiring policies for supermarkets in low-income areas. In 2010, the Obama administration started the Healthy Food Financing program, which is designed to help bring grocery stores into food deserts.
While the government can improve low-income people’s access to healthy food to some extent, local actions often have a stronger and more immediate influence．Community gardens, independent food stores, and farmers’ markets are all examples of local actions that can take the place of the opening of a major chain supermarket. These efforts can be extremely beneficial, not only in providing people with access to healthier foods, but also in producing a sense of community in the neighborhoods.
1. What is mainly talked about in this passage?| A．Relationship between diet and disease. |
| B．Lack of health awareness among people. |
| C．Problems of food deserts and their solutions. |
| D．Importance of grocery planting in poor areas. |
2. What can be learned from Paragraph 3 and Paragraph 4?
| A．People in rich areas are easier to develop diseases. |
| B．Fast food restaurants care much about people’s health. |
| C．People in low-income areas like shopping in supermarkets. |
| D．Supermarket chains are unwilling to open stores in poor areas. |
| A．Local actions should be encouraged and supported. |
| B．Supermarkets should take social responsibility. |
| C．Education for healthy diet must be improved. |
| D．Governments fail to improve people’s health. |
