Since I was born and brought up in a rural town, I have a great interest in nature. Using the chance of studying abroad in my second year at college, I decided to go to Canada just because I wanted to see the beautiful phenomena there So after I finished the study program, I went to Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories.
I clearly remember the sixth night in Yellowknife. Suddenly my host mother came to my room around 8 p.m. and told me to change clothes and go outside quickly carrying her camera.
The northern lights were flickering (闪烁) in the sky! I was shocked and just stood there with my mouth open. I forgot to take pictures of the mysterious lights.
Since that night, whenever it was sunny, I went outside at night and looked at the sky. It was so cold that I lost all feeling in my hands and feet.
As I took pictures of the northern lights, I came to find a characteristic movement of the lights. They first appear in the north part of the sky and then they gradually come down to the south part of the sky. After that, suddenly, they come in the middle of the north and south only for a while, which is the time when the best northern lights can be seen. Since it is only a few seconds for the northern lights to come down to the middle of the sky, it is very hard to get good pictures.
The stronger the sun acts, the better and stronger the northern lights flicker in the sky. That’s because they come about from the collisions (碰撞) between atmospheric gases and the solar wind. Much more solar wind comes to the earth when the sun is active, which leads to the best northern lights. And the colors of the northern lights depend on the height of the collisions and the kinds of gases.
1. Why did the host mother ask the author to go out?| A．She wanted to take a picture of him. |
| B．She wanted to take a walk with him. |
| C．She wanted to tell him something important. |
| D．She wanted him to see the northern lights. |
| A．the host mother didn’t remind him to take the camera |
| B．he was shocked by the wonderful sight |
| C．the lights flickering in the sky disappeared too soon |
| D．he lost all feeling in his hands and feet |
| A．When they appear in the north part of the sky. |
| B．When they come down to the south part of the sky. |
| C．When they are between the north and south. |
| D．When they rise in the east part of the sky. |
| A．Ways to take good pictures. |
| B．The relationship between the sun and the northern lights. |
| C．The colors of the northern lights. |
| D．The time of the best northern lights. |
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【推荐1】Shinrin-yoku means “forest bathing”. Forest bathing doesn't mean you take a bath in the forest; rather, you simply go for a walk in the woods or a city park, where youslackenby using all your senses to experience nature.
Yoshifumi Miyazaki, from Chiba University, is among a growing number of scientists who have begun studying the science behind the effects of nature on human health. In his bookShinrin-yoku: The Japanese Art of Forest Bathing.Miyazaki explains the techniques of forest bathing.
Miyazaki has an interesting theory about why shinrin-yoku is so effective. He points out that for more than 99.99% of the time, humans have lived in a natural environment. In fact, in 1800, only 3% of the world's population lived in cities, and by 2016, this figure reached 54%. This is only going to get worse; officials predict that by 2050, 66% will live in cities.
This suggests we live in our modern society with bodies that are still used to the natural environment, he writes in the book, because “genes cannot change over just a few hundred years". The science behind the research studies he presents in the book makes a convincing case that forest bathing is an effective method for reducing stress in today's world.
Now city planners are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of nature and are creating new kinds of “parks” out of empty spaces. There're also more city gardens where people can grow vegetables. For kids, kitchen gardens in schools are becoming popular. As Miyazaki stresses, you don't have to find a formal park or garden to practice shinrin-yoku. Instead, you can enjoy the effects of nature wherever there're plants.
Better yet, he says, we can bring nature closer to where we spend most of our time. Miyazaki's research has shown that just increasing the amount of plants in a room can affect the relaxation benefits of the room. What's more, even when people simply look at flowers, their bodies relax and stress levels decrease.
1. What does the underlined word in Paragraph 1 mean?| A．Behave. | B．Entertain. | C．Sleep. | D．Relax. |
| A．By giving examples. | B．By listing figures. |
| C．By making remarks. | D．By presenting research findings. |
| A．Human genes can change easily. | B．Nature is part of the modern society. |
| C．Human body can integrate into nature. | D．People can always get excited in nature. |
| A．It is easy to operate. | B．It is meant for gardeners. |
| C．It is unaffordable in the city. | D．It is inconvenient to practice. |
【推荐2】Calling someone a “birdbrain” is considered rude. It implies that someone has a small brain and thus is not smart. A new study found that the expression doesn’t do birds justice either: Birds’ brains are much bigger than we thought — at least compared to their small bodies.
An international team of 37 scientists measured the brain volume (脑容量) of hundreds of dinosaurs and extinct birds by scanning fossils of their skulls. The readings were compared to a large database containing the brain sizes of modern birds. These measurements were then analyzed, taking into consideration each bird’s body size — resulting in something called “relative brain size”. The results showed that a dramatic change of birds’ body size happened right after the mass extinction of dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
According to the study, published on April 23 in the journal Current Biology, birds and dinosaurs had similar brain sizes before the extinction. After the extinction of the dinosaurs, however, birds had to find a way to survive, so they shrank their bodies — since smaller animals need less food — but they kept their big brains.
“The changed landscape may have caused the rapid evolution of new brainbody scaling patterns (缩放比例) by favoring both larger brains and smaller bodies,” US paleontologist (古生物学家) Daniel Ksepka, who is the lead author of the study, told CNN.
This “evolutionary brain leap” — as scientists call it — also happened very rapidly. Without dinosaurs, birds quickly repopulated. They came in all types and sizes, which contributed to the diverse species of birds we see today.
But among all the bird species, certain ones “show above average rates of brain and body size evolution”, study co-author Adam Smith at Clemson University, US, said in a statement — with crows and parrots being the most evident. In fact, previous studies have already discovered that these birds have an amazing cognitive capacity (认知能力). They are able to use tools, imitate human speech and even remember human faces.
So, in the words of Smith, “calling someone ‘birdbrained’ is actually quite a compliment (恭维)”!
1. How did the scientists learn the brain sizes of dinosaurs and extinct birds?| A．By studying their fossil skulls. | B．By searching the database. |
| C．By experimenting on their brains. | D．By analyzing their body size. |
| A．The birds’ bodies shrank as their brains became smaller. |
| B．The birds’ bodies became larger while their brains became smaller. |
| C．The birds’ brains remained almost the same as their bodies shrank. |
| D．The birds’ brains became larger to adapt to the environment. |
| A．to make rude remarks | B．to laugh at one’s small body size |
| C．to praise one’s intelligence | D．to suggest the person is not smart |
| A．To describe how birds’ evolution happened. |
| B．To explain the origin of the word “birdbrain”. |
| C．To show the amazing abilities of bird species. |
| D．To present the latest study on birds’ brain size. |
【推荐3】Humans and elephants don’t always get along. In Africa and Asia, elephants damage equipment, farmers’ crops, and natural habitat for other species. If an elephant becomes a problem, humans may kill it. So local people and animal protectionists are trying to find better ways to keep elephants away from sensitive places. Now, researchers think they have a good tool to prevent elephants: honeybee pheromones (信息素).
“Elephants dislike being stung(叮咬) in the trunk, because it’s an extremely sensitive organ. Imagine being stung in your nose by a bee, and multiply that a few thousand times.” said Mark Wright, a professor at the University of Hawaii.
Kenyan farmers have long known that if they hang live beehives (蜂箱) around their farms, they will drive elephants away. The problem is how to manage hundreds of thousands of hives, if you have a huge area to protect. And then the idea came up to look at the alarm pheromones, which are chemicals that the bees release to launch an attack on something that’s damaging the hive.
So the researchers tested out an artificial mixture of chemicals that imitates (模仿) honey bees’ alarm pheromones. The researchers hung white socks treated with the artificial mixture as well as untreated control socks around an elephant watering hole, and then observed the animals’ behavior. “Elephants are really curious creatures. They’ll walk along and see something like a sock hanging on a branch. If it’s not treated with the alarm pheromones, they’ll pick it up, throw it around, and try to taste it, things like that. And in the case of the treated ones, they would show immediate signs of unease or uncertainty, and they’d eventually back off from them.”
In order to avoid the elephants more effectively, the researchers plan to make the pheromone mixture purer. That way, elephants will stay far away from wherever they should not be going-and both elephants and humans can coexist a bit more peacefully.
1. What can we infer from the underlined sentence in paragraph 2?| A．Bees enjoy stinging elephants. |
| B．Elephants’ trunk is a sensitive organ. |
| C．Being stung in the trunk is unbearable to elephants. |
| D．Honeybee pheromones make elephants suffer great pain. |
| A．Because it’s not practical. |
| B．Because it doesn’t work to elephants. |
| C．Because elephants like the taste of honey. |
| D．Because researchers prefer to invent new chemicals. |
| A．how the experiment was carried out |
| B．elephants’ reaction to the white socks |
| C．how to imitate honeybee alarm pheromones |
| D．why the team hung two different white socks |
| A．To cut down the number of elephants. |
| B．To keep elephants away with bees’ stings. |
| C．To prevent elephants from damaging crops. |
| D．To better the relation between humans and elephants. |
