1 . Great Barrier Reef Choking on Pollutants
Attempts to protect the Great Barrier Reef are failing. A report released Monday by the government in Australia says water quality in the Great Barrier Reef is far below what it should be. It showed that pollution have decreased, but not enough to reach environmental targets.
Sediment (沉淀物) and chemicals can weaken coral, hurting its ability to feed and grow. Coral are live animals that take root in the ocean floor, but they are not plants. Reefs are the hard skeletons (骨架) left at the bottom of the sea by small marine creatures called polyps (珊瑚虫). The polyps then form the larger structure of a reef. Corals also are some of the most diverse ecosystems on the entire planet. They can make a home for invertebrates, crustaceans, fish, and sea snakes.
Steve Miles is Queensland’s environment minister. He says the research shows the Reef needs more protection. “Over that five-year period, we did see some progress towards our targets. Sediment is down 12 percent and pesticides (杀虫剂) loads are down 30 percent. But what is most disturbing is that these results are far from our targets. Progress towards these targets flat-lined in the period 2013-2014. If one of my kids came home with a report card like this, I would be a bit disappointed. There is more bad news here than good news. ” said Steve Miles.
The report also found that fewer than one-third of Queensland’s sugar plantations used techniques to reduce the use of pesticides. Only 28 percent of land managers managed their land properly. They had reduced harmful water run off to protect the health of the Reef. The official target is a 90 percent reduction in pesticide use within three years.
Scientists at the University of Queensland and the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences published their findings Wednesday, July 18 in the journal Science Advances. It found between 1992 and 2010, the recovery rate dropped by an average of 84 percent. But there is hope. The study also found some corals can recover quickly if “acute and chronic stressors” are lessened.
Meanwhile, the Australian government released its updated reef protection plan Friday. It clearly states global temperatures must be stopped from rising in order to save the world’s largest living structure.
1. What does the underlined word “They” in Paragraph 2 refer to?| A．Diverse ecosystems. | B．Sediment and chemicals. |
| C．Reefs and corals. | D．Small sea creatures. |
| A．He is satisfied with the protection of the Reef. |
| B．He thinks that the Reef needs more protection. |
| C．He feels angry with what his children did. |
| D．He is very happy about the Reef progress protection. |
| A．Not increase significantly. | B．Disappear. |
| C．Speed up. | D．Miss the chance. |
| A．were tough to deal with | B．failed to manage their land properly |
| C．reduced the amount of harmful water | D．were eager to quit pesticide soon |
| A．A news report. | B．A science fiction. |
| C．A book review. | D．A guide book. |
2 . Renewable energy projects, including onshore and offshore wind and solar farms, have so far been subsidized (资助) by government support schemes. This has led to some to complain that clean energy is pushing up bills.
However, the most recently approved offshore wind projects will most likely operate with ‘negative subsidies’ -- paying money back to the government. The money will go towards reducing household energy bills as the offshore wind farms start producing power in the mid-2020s.
This is the conclusion of an analysis by an international team led by Imperial College London researchers published today in Nature Energy.
Lead researcher Dr Malte Jansen, from the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial, said: “Offshore wind power will soon be so cheap to produce that it will undercut fossil-fueled power stations and may be the cheapest form of energy for the UK. Energy subsidies used to push up energy bills, but within a few years cheap renewable energy will see them brought down for the first time. This is an astonishing development.”
The analysis for five countries in Europe, including the UK, focused on a series of government auctions (拍卖) for offshore wind farms between February 2015 and September 2019. Companies that want to build wind farms bid in the auctions by stating the price at which they will sell the energy they produce to the government.
These are known as ‘contracts for difference’ or CfDs. If a company’s bid is higher than the wholesale electricity price on the UK market once the wind farm is up and running, then the company will receive a subsidy from the government to top up the price.
However, if the stated price (规定价格) is less than the wholesale price, then the company will pay the government back the difference. This payback is then passed through to consumer’s energy bills, reducing the amount that homes and businesses will pay for electricity.
The winning companies said they could build new offshore wind farms for around £40 per megawatt hour (MWh) of power. This was a new record set by these wind farms with bids 30 percent lower than just two years earlier.
1. What does the passage mainly talk about?| A．Offshore wind farms to be built in the UK could reduce household energy bills by producing electricity very cheaply. |
| B．Offshore wind farms will not be subsidized by government in the near future. |
| C．The importance of CfDs. |
| D．The operation of negative subsidies. |
| A．will stop producing power in the mid-2020s |
| B．are paying money back to the government |
| C．will help reduce household energy bills |
| D．will all operate with ‘negative subsidies’ |
| A．make up |
| B．take up |
| C．cover |
| D．fill up |
| A．The renewable energy projects will lead to some to complain that clean energy is pushing up bills. |
| B．The company whose bid is less than the wholesale electricity price will receive a subsidy. |
| C．The stated electricity price is now higher than the wholesale electricity price. |
| D．Fossil-fueled power will be soon produced cheaply. |
| A．Curious. |
| B．Pessimistic. |
| C．Indifferent. |
| D．Optimistic. |
| A．A science fiction. |
| B．A financial magazine. |
| C．An advertisement. |
| D．A science report. |
3 . Not all vegetables need lots of sunshine. Mark Hoffman and his wife own a bed-and -breakfast guesthouse in rural Kempton, Illinois. They often serve their guests fresh products from the garden.
The Hoffmans have been growing food and flowers for twenty-five years. For almost ten of those years, Mr. Hoffman has been experimenting and working with shade (阴凉) plantings. He says, “The bottom line here is that most plants will produce more in full sun. But if you do not have full sun, there are other choices.”
For example, he grows tomatoes near oak trees. Oak trees can produce a lot of shade. But Mr. Hoffman says his tomato plants grow as long as they get five hours a day of direct sunshine, especially morning sun. Not only does this go against the traditional advice that tomatoes need six，eight，even twelve hours a day of full sun, it also shows how plants and trees roots can share nutrients and water．Mr. Hoffman also planted asparagus（芦笋）around a tree at its drip line，the area below the outer limit of the branches. So when it rains，all the rain drips down right on the asparagus．Mr. Hoffman says plants with wider leaves seem to do better in shady environments. He also found that his potatoes did better partly in shade than in full sun.
Moving them out of the sun helped control an insect problem. Mr. Hoffman does not use pesticide (农药). Instead, he planted the potatoes in the shade, especially on the east side of the tree. The potatoes get morning sun, but they are shaded during the hottest part of the day. Some insects dislike shade, and the hottest part day is when they do the worst of their damage.
Time of day, sun intensity (强度), shadows from trees, walls and buildings all influence how much sunlight falls on plants. And people interested in shade planting should also remember something else. The term “shade” can describe different amounts of darkness. It can even mean different things in different parts of the world.
1. What’s the author’s purpose of writing the passage?| A．To present a kind of eco-friendly lifestyle. |
| B．To recommend an approach to manage a website |
| C．To show vegetables can be planted in the shade. |
| D．To introduce Mark Hoffman and his family. |
| A．five hours a day | B．Six hours a day |
| C．Eight hours a day | D．Twelve hours a day |
| A．Food and flowers produce more in the shade. |
| B．Food growing in the shade contains more nutrients. |
| C．Sun can affect the production of some plants. |
| D．Food growing in the shade is the best choice for most plants. |
| A．asparagus prefer to grow in the shade. |
| B．how plants and tree roots share water. |
| C．vegetables grow better in partial shade. |
| D．how leaves gain sunshine under the tree. |
| A．environment | B．traveling |
| C．lifestyle | D．agriculture |
4 . Beaches are not only great for lying on and doing water sports, and in fact one of the best ways of enjoying them is a classic beach walk. Here at iWantSun.co.uk we’ve been searching the globe to find you the world’s best and most famous beach walks, and here’s our pick of the top. Click on the most interesting walks and join our tourist program.
The Footpath of the Gods, Amalfi Coast, Italy
The name says it all really and you truly feel excited there, walking along this wonderful mountain path, which offers some of the most striking views on the planet. The path begins at the town of Bomerano to charming Positano along the UNESCO World Heritage area of the Amalfi Coast. The whole walk will take you about four and a half hours to complete and pass over narrow rocky paths.
Sydney’s Great Coastal Walk, Australia
Sydney’s coastline is one of the most beautiful and diverse landscapes in the world. Here you have national parks, historic sites, shining and quiet beaches all in one place. Sydney’s Great Coastal Walk runs all the way from Barren Joey in the north to Royal National Park in the south and takes an unbelievable seven days to complete. However, if you’re not up to doing the full walk, there are many different parts of the walk that you can do right in the city itself. Walking from the city’s famous Bondi Beach to the sweeping curve(大半径曲线) of Bronte Beach takes just an hour, which takes in some top sceneries.
Great Ocean Walk, Australia
The Great Ocean Walk covers 104km along Victoria’s famous Great Ocean Road, located on the southern coast of Australia, from the holiday town Apollo Bay to the splendid Twelve Apostles. The Twelve Apostles are the area’s famous stone landmarks which stand out like giants from the sea. The walk passes through a range of landscapes and sights, from national parks, famous surfing spots and deserted beaches, to wild coastlines, waterfalls, lush(茂盛的) forests, historic lighthouses and ghostly(幽灵似的) ship wrecks(残骸). Day walks and shorter three-hour walks such as The Wreck Beach Walk or the Lighthouse Cemetery and Lookout Walk can also be enjoyed.
So next time when you’re looking for a beach holiday, don’t just think about the holiday towns and the sand, but consider a more active sun holiday. If you have interest in any of the above places, please contact us, and we can give you the best services.
1. When you arrive at Amalfi Coast, _____.| A．the scenic beauty can fill you with charm |
| B．the walking can be started from Positano |
| C．you must be fed up with the footpath |
| D．narrow rocky paths may trap you |
| A．It takes more than a week to complete. |
| B．It really has the longest coastline in the world. |
| C．It provides visitors with a variety of great landscapes. |
| D．It starts from Barren Joey in the south. |
| A．Apollo Bay is at the end of the Great Ocean Walk |
| B．visitors have various walking choices in the Great Ocean Walk |
| C．the Twelve Apostles stand below the surface of the sea |
| D．most visitors have to finish the 104 km walk quickly |
| A．an online advertisement | B．travel magazines |
| C．a handbook to tourists | D．a poster in a foreign travel agency |
5 . Average age is rising around the world——a demographic （人口统计）change that may pose a significant challenge to efforts to slow down climate change.
Hossein Estiri at Harvard University and Emilio Zagheni of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Germany, have found that energy use increases as we get older, and not just because we tend to get wealthier. An ageing population could mean a greater proportion of society with higher energy use, their study suggests.
They combined two decades, worth of data from thousands of US households and used this to build a model to reveal how energy use varied across 17 age groups between 1987 and 2009. They found that, on average, children's energy consumption （消耗）climbs as they grow up, before dipping slightly when they leave home. Consumption then rises again when people hit their 30s, before briefly dropping after 55, and then beginning to climb again. The study involved factors such as income, local climate and the age, type and size of a person's home. The increase in energy use at various points in our lifespan （寿命）seems to be the result of life style and how our needs change as we age.
Why does demand grow so much in our 30s? “We need more of everything. More space, a bigger TV two fridges," says Estiri. The study found that, in warmer parts of the US, energy use increases in people over the age of 65—probably as a result of increased use of air conditioning, This suggests that there is a feedback effect between climate change and an ageing population that will only make matters worse.
Heat waves have become more common in the US in recent years and are expected to become more frequent due to global warming. More older people using more electrical energy to keep cool as temperatures rise could add to emissions （排放），and thus drive more warming until our energy supply becomes entirely fossil fuel-free.
“This confluence （汇集）of population, ageing and climate change on energy demand is really important to start thin king about," says Estiri. Benjamin Sovacool at the University of Sussex, UK, says the work shows the importance of demographics when it comes to cutting carbon emissions. Most modelling of climate change mitigation （减缓气候变化的模型） assumes people's energy consumption either stays the same or only changes by a small amount over time.
"This study directly challenges that entire body of research by forcing it to fight with the temporality and complexity of the consumption of energy, says Sovacool.
Catherine Mitchell at the University of Exeter, UK, says the research could have an important influence on policy makers. "What the paper says is that there is a lot of work about how buildings use energy, but probably not enough about how the people in them use energy," she says.
1. By saying “not just because we tend to get wealthier" in Paragraph 2, the writer probably means that .| A．poor people can't bring down the high demand for energy |
| B．a comfortable life is not the main cause of in creased energy use |
| C．there are some other reasons leading to the increase in energy consumption |
| D．people being wealthy or not has nothing to do with the rise of energy consumption |
| A．Children consumes more energy when they leave home. |
| B．Energy consumption drops briefly before people hit 55. |
| C．The researchers built a model to study the data from US households. |
| D．Energy consumption varies with the change of lifestyle and demand at different ages. |
| A．Energy will stop increasing when people get older. |
| B．His research could inspire policymakers to change current polices. |
| C．Various factors influencing energy consumption should be considered. |
| D．Old people should use fossil fuel-free rather than electrical energy to keep cool. |
| A．It is expensive and difficult to promote. |
| B．It overestimates the household energy consumption. |
| C．It did not take climate change adaptation into account. |
| D．It regards energy consumption as stable or as only slightly changing. |
| A．More emphasis should be put on people's energy use. |
| B．The government can't do much without the support of the study. |
| C．It is the buildings, not the people in side, that consume the majority of the energy. |
| D．Policymakers have been working on how to cut down people's energy use. |
| A．Health. | B．Environment. |
| C．Human. | D．Technology. |
6 . When people learn to play video games, they are learning a new literacy. Of course, this is not the way the word “literacy” is normally used. Traditionally, people think of literacy as the ability to read and write. Why, then, should we think of literacy more broadly?
Nowadays, language is not the only important communication system. Images, graphs, diagrams and many other visual symbols are particularly significant. Thus, the idea of different types of “visual literacy” would seem to be an important one. For example, being able to read the images in advertising is one type of visual literacy.
Furthermore, very often today words and images of various sorts are juxtaposed in a variety of ways. In newspapers and magazines as well as in textbooks, images take up more and more of the space alongside words. In fact, in many modern high school and college textbooks, images not only take up more space, they now carry meanings that are independent of the words in the text. If you can’t read these images, you will not be able to understand their meanings from the words in the text as was more usual in the past.
Now there are different ways to read different types of texts. Literacy is multiple, then, in the sense that the legal literacy needed for reading law books is not the same as the literacy needed for reading physics texts or cartoon books. And we should not be too quick to dismiss the latter form of literacy. Many cartoon books are full of images that would make a modern literary critic’s heart beat fast and confuse any otherwise normal adult.
Once we see this multiplicity of literacy, we realize that when we think about reading and writing, we have to think beyond print. Reading and writing in any field, whether it is law, rap songs, academic essays or cartoon books, are not the only ways of decoding(解密) print. Video games are a new form of art. They will not replace books; they will sit beside them, interact with them, and change them and their role in society in various ways, as, indeed, they are already doing strongly with movies. We have no idea yet how people “read” video games, what meanings they make from them. Still less do we know how they will “read” them in the future.
1. What is the broad meaning of literacy?| A．The ability to read, write and view. |
| B．The ability to read, listen and play. |
| C．The ability to speak, write and think. |
| D．The ability to listen, speak and think. |
| A．Put together. | B．Pulled out. |
| C．Taken away. | D．Replaced with. |
| A．Proud. | B．Upset. |
| C．Grateful. | D．Curious. |
| A．are too violent to risk experimenting with for the purposes of understanding literacy |
| B．are unrealistic and should not fall into the same categories as the other texts he describes |
| C．are not yet entirely understood in terms of literacy, but are already impacting other forms of expression such as filmmaking |
| D．are irrelevant in academic discussion because no one has yet determined how to explain the ways that people understand them |
| A．A historical explanation of the very first video game and its evolution. |
| B．A technological definition of video games, how they are made, and how they are played. |
| C．Examples of the way that some people currently interpret video games and what they mean to them. |
| D．A price comparison of video game consoles and whether or not quality has a direct impact on literacy. |
| A．Education. | B．Health. |
| C．Advertisement. | D．Traveling. |
7 . Perhaps you spotted them on La Cienega Boulevard, flying north by the thousands near the Westfield mall. Maybe you saw them in Santa Anita crossing a quiet street in a thick line. You may have even driven with hundreds of them along the 105 Freeway, where they violently beat their small wings as if they were trying to catch a flight at Los Angeles International Airport. People may mistake these black — and — orange insects for moths (飞蛾) or monarchs (黑脉金斑蝶)due to the appearance. Actually, they are called painted ladies, and these butterflies are flying by the millions across the state.
The migration((迁徙)itself is nothing new. What's unusual this year is the number of butterflies making the journey. James burg, the director of Palm Desert, came across a pack of butterflies while riding a bike last week. "They were Hying with me, as I rode," he said. "It was absolutely magical. I felt like a Disney princess."
The painted lady's appearance is a welcome exception to California's current butterfly crisis. The number of butterflies in the state has been in a loss for decides, reaching historic lows in 2018. A monarch count led by the Xerces Society found only 28,129 of monarchs wintering along the California coast. That figure represents an 85% drop from the previous year and a 99.4% fall compared with 40 years ago. Other butterfly populations have been hit even worse.
No one is certain what is causing butterflies in California to disappear, but researchers have pointed several likely factors. They include the general loss of open spaces, which means fewer flowers and leaves for food, as well as changing agricultural practices that have reduced the number of butterfly-friendly plants along the edges of crop fields. The climate change plays a role, which produces higher temperatures that can dry plants out and make them uneatable.
Scientists say the reason for this year's painted ladies' appearance can be summed up in one word: rain. And more specifically, rain in the desert. “The more plants, the more butterflies," James Burg said.
1. What can learn about painted ladies from Paragraph 1 ?| A．They enjoyed flying in the sky. |
| B．The liked chasing the drivers. |
| C．They and moths look much alike. |
| D．They were big trouble to the airport. |
| A．Their quantities. | B．Their destination. |
| C．Their flying route. | D．Their flying distance. |
| A．By giving examples. | B．By quoting a statement. |
| C．By analyzing cause and effect. | D．By listing accurate numbers. |
| A．Open spaces in California decrease greatly. |
| B．Changes on agriculture affected butterflies. |
| C．Lack of food makes butterflies disappear. |
| D．Climate change drives butterflies away. |
| A．Travel. | B．Nature. |
| C．History. | D．Health. |
