1 . It was about a year ago when a positive change in a community started.
I was in fifth grade, and at the time I wrote a paper about the migration of the monarch butterfly and received a perfect score. I was so happy. I called my grandmother, Nana, to tell her the exciting news. All of my talk about monarchs evoked memories from Nana’s childhood. “I remember when I was a girl out on the farm,” she said, “those black and orange butterflies were a common sight. But there do seem to be fewer monarchs fluttering (翩翩飞舞) around the neighborhood each summer. Perhaps we should try to find out where they’ve gone.”
Nana and I decided to investigate.
That weekend, Nana met me at the public library and we started our research. Our research produced plenty of information. The best information was this: it doesn’t take lots of money, equipment (设备), or government organizations to save the monarch butterflies; it takes only a little bit of land, and dedicated (专心致志的) people to create what’s called a Monarch Waystation. When I read this, an idea came to mind. “What if we set up our own Monarch Waystation?” I suggested.
“We will need several people to help us!” she replied.
The next week, Nana presented the idea to her garden club; I talked to my friends and neighbors. Nana’s garden club decided to plant a butterfly garden next to the city park. The library put together a display of gardening and butterfly books. The editor of the local newspaper wrote an informative article on how to make our community monarch-friendly. As spring turned into summer, those volunteers also worked to weed (除杂草) and care for the public gardens. We all waited and watched to see whether our plan would work—it did work! Over twenty black and orange butterflies were noticed visiting the Waystations. As summer progressed, the monarchs grew more plentiful.
It happened on a day when the sun was shining and the sky was a deep blue. As monarchs fluttered around us, people laughed and danced; Nana cried tears of happiness. It was truly a meaningful experience.
1. What does the underlined word “evoked” in Paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Made up. | B．Took away. |
| C．Showed off. | D．Brought back. |
| A．The author’s personal wish. |
| B．The beauty of the monarch butterfly. |
| C．The author’s good performance in school. |
| D．The drop in numbers of the monarch butterfly. |
| A．It should be built in a park. |
| B．It can be created and used easily. |
| C．It needs continued support from the government. |
| D．It is the best way to protect the monarch butterfly. |
| A．It caused the community to miss the past. |
| B．It organized the community around a purpose. |
| C．It taught the community to use the public library. |
| D．It informed the community about gardening practices. |
2 . Don’t know how to take care of your plants? A little spider-like robot will chase the sunlight, run to shade, dance when it’s doing well and stomp (跺脚) when it needs to be watered.
It’s called the HEXA Plant, a six-legged machine created by Vincross, a robotics company in Beijing, China.
The robot plant will crawl toward the sunlight when it needs it, then will rotate (转动) when it enjoys the sun in order to absorb its rays on all sides. When it needs to cool off, it will look for shade. It also plays with humans and dances when it is happy, moving its legs up and down. But it gets “angry” when it’s thirsty by stomping its legs.
With six legs, the HEXA Plant can move anywhere-in any direction and around any objects in its path. It’s even nimble enough to navigate (导航) unexpected drops, like if it had to suddenly step over a gap between two tabletops. It has a variety of “eyes”, including an infrared sensor (红外线感应器), a distance sensor, and a 720p camera with night vision, which could be very handy if you want it to send it out like a guard dog at night, to go check on any sudden noises. It has a built-in Wifi as well as various ports (USB) to expand its many talents.
So sure, it’ s not as cute as a garden gnome (守护精灵), but it can do a lot more than just stand there and look cute.
The inventor of the cute robot, Sun Tiangi, was inspired by a dead sunflower. He had idea why it died-whether it was because of the lack of sunshine or water. That’s when he had the idea for the walking plant. He says plants are passive. He wants to allow plants to experience movement.
1. What can’t the HEXA Plant do?| A．Find a cool place when it feels hot. |
| B．Play with people. |
| C．Drink water when it’s thirsty. |
| D．Move in any direction. |
| A．Happy. | B．Clever. | C．Angry. | D．Passive. |
| A．A walking plant. | B．A dead sunflower. |
| C．Sunshine and water. | D．A strange animal. |
| A．In an advertisement. | B．In a novel. |
| C．In a science magazine. | D．In a storybook. |
3 . Over the past half-century, North America has lost more than a quarter of its entire bird population, or around 3 billion birds.
“We saw this great net loss across the entire bird community,” says Ken Rosenberg, a scientist in Ithaca, N.Y. “But we also knew that other bird populations were increasing. And what we didn’t know is whether there was a net change.”
Common birds with decreasing populations include dark-eyed juncos and red-winged blackbirds, says Rosenberg. Grassland birds have suffered a 53% decrease, and more than a third of the shorebird population has been lost. Bird populations that have increased include raptors (猛禽), like the bald eagle, and waterfowl.
“The numbers of ducks and geese are larger than they’ve ever been, and that’s not an accident,” says Rosenberg. It’s because hunters who mainly want to see healthy waterfowl populations for sportful hunting have raised their voices.
“People are doing a wonderful effort to try and understand our bird populations with a lot of uncertainty, but the actual systems that we have in place to try and answer really tough questions like this are really far short of what we need,” Ted Simons in North Carolina State University says.
“In all, the conclusions weren’t necessarily surprising,” says Kristen Ruegg, a biologist at Colorado State University. There have been hints (暗示) that the loss was this large from all kinds of sources over the past few years. But in most cases, these were species-specific records of local extinctions or models of projected losses, resulting from things like climate change. This really sort of wakes people up to the idea that this is happening.
Elise Zipkin, a quantitative ecologist at Michigan State University, says the loss can be a big problem. “Just because a species hasn’t gone extinct (灭绝) or isn’t even necessarily close to extinction, it might still be in trouble,” she says. We need to be thinking about conservation (保护) efforts for that.”
1. Which of the following becomes more than before?| A．Dark-eyed juncos. | B．The bald eagle. |
| C．Grassland birds. | D．The shorebirds. |
| A．To hunt for fun. | B．To provide rich foods. |
| C．To escape net loss. | D．To keep people healthy. |
| A．Extra. | B．Interesting. |
| C．Difficult. | D．Official. |
| A．Bird loss can be a big problem. | B．Climate change causes part of bird loss. |
| C．Protecting birds is quite necessary. | D．What is happening is worth considering. |
| A．By giving examples. | B．By showing ideas. |
| C．By explaining numbers. | D．By providing research results. |
