1 . Think of Japan in the spring and the image that comes to mind is likely the country’s famous cherry blossoms, also known as “Sakura” — white and pink flowers, blooming across cities and mountains.
The flowers, which experience a “peak bloom” that only lasts a few days, have been loved in Japan for more than a thousand years. Crowds celebrate with viewing parties, flocking to the most popular locations to take photos and have picnics underneath the branches.
But this year, cherry blossom season has come and gone in the blink of an eye, in one of the earliest blooms on record. Scientists warn it’s a symptom of the larger climate crisis threatening ecosystems everywhere.
Yasuyuki Aono, a researcher at Osaka Prefecture University, has gathered records from Kyoto back to 812 AD from historical documents and diaries. In the central city of Kyoto, cherry blossoms peaked on March 26, the earliest in more than 1,200 years, Aono said. And in the capital Tokyo, cherry blossoms reached full bloom on March 22, the second-earliest date on record.
The peak bloom dates shift every year, depending on numerous factors including weather and rainfall, but have shown a general trend of moving earlier and earlier. In Kyoto, the peak date stayed around mid-April for centuries, but began moving into early April during the 1800s. The date has only dipped into late March a handful of times in recorded history.
“Sakura blooms are very temperature sensitive,” said Aono. “Flowering and full bloom could be earlier or later depending on the temperature alone,” he said. “The temperature was low in the 1820s, but it has risen by about 3.5 degrees Celsius to this day.”
This year’s seasons in particular influenced the blossom dates, he added. The winter was very cold, but the spring came fast and unusually warm.
1. What is the best title of the passage?| A．Cherry blossom celebrations. |
| B．Warning of a climate crisis. |
| C．A strong love for cherry blossom. |
| D．Cherry blossom season coming earlier. |
| A．Blocking. | B．Flooding. | C．Running. | D．Following. |
| A．The peak blossom dates fall on a fixed date. |
| B．The cherry blossom rarely peaks in March. |
| C．The peak bloom dates mainly depend on weather and rainfall. |
| D．Cherry blossom peaks around mid-April in Tokyo. |
| A．To inform people the date of cherry blossom. |
| B．To show a study on cherry blossom dates. |
| C．To present a Japanese tradition of cherry blossom celebration. |
| D．To make people aware of the influence of climate change on cherry blossom. |
2 . Standing on the ruins（废墟）after the fire where his house had been, Peter Ruprecht admitted that he was not sure how or when to rebuild. He was still shocked by what Australia's increasingly changeable climate had already delivered: first a drought, then a destructive bush fire, then a foot of rain from a storm.
"It's unstoppable," said Mr. Ruprecht, a former dairy farmer. "We speak about the warmth of Mother Nature, but nature can also be vicious and wild and unforgiving."
Australia's' hellish（地狱的）fire season has eased（缓和）, but its people are facing more than a single disaster. With floods destroying homes not far from where fires recently spread, they are facing a cycle of what scientists call "compound extremes": one climate disaster strengthening the next.
Warmer temperatures do more than just dry out the land. They also heat up the atmosphere, which means clouds hold more moisture（水汽）for longer periods of time. So droughts get worse, giving way to fires, then to heavy rains that the land is too dry to absorb.
Many Australians in disaster zones complain that their government, after ignoring climate change for years, has not yet to draw up recovery plans that are clear and that take future threats into account.
At the same time, the economic costs of a changing climate are rising quickly. Philip Lowe, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, warned recently that Australia was already paying a price, and that it would only go up.
1. Why Peter Ruprecht is mentioned in the beginning?| A．To arouse readers' pity. | B．To introduce the topic. |
| C．To stress the problem. | D．To call on readers to help. |
| A．grateful | B．advanced | C．responsible | D．forcible |
| A．Government inaction. | B．Warmer temperature. |
| C．The lack of money. | D．No recovery plans. |
| A．guidebook. | B．A travel journal. | C．A news report. | D．A book review. |
3 . It's a typical morning: you wake up, take a shower, brush your teeth, and then prick(刺)your arm with a tiny needle. Wait, what? Unless you have a serious disease such as diabetes,you probably haven't ever tested your own blood. But in the future, that might change.
The company Cor already sells a system for home blood testing. You stick your arm using a supposedly painless cartridge. Then you stick the cartridge into a device that looks like the base for an electric toothbrush. A few minutes later, an app on your phone offers you updated information, including your current health status and tips on what to eat and how to exercise.It's true that blood provides abundant information about a person's health. Specific tests can reveal if a person is infected with a disease or at risk for a variety of problems. But most people don't test their own blood often. Healthy young adults get blood tests approximately every five years. Cor and similar companies are trying to change the situation. They think people deserve access to more information about their health.
But not everyone is convinced."The best-case scenario(情景)here is that you lose much money and then you're reminded to get more sleep and to eat more fruits, vegetables and fish,"Pieter Cohen of Harvard Medical School told The New York Times. Plus, the results of a home blood test might be wrong. It's hard to get accurate results from a tiny amount of blood. One company, Theranos, said it could perform medical blood tests on a fingerprick's worth of blood.But the company was soon stuck in a controversy((争议)and accused of cheating because its technology didn't work as promised. Thus, there's still a long way to go before the technology becomes advanced.
1. What's the function of Paragraph 1?| A．To express feelings. | B．To raise a question. |
| C．To make a prediction. | D．To introduce the topic. |
| A．Container. | B．Operation. | C．Medicine. | D．Scan. |
| A．To collect people's health information. | B．To offer people proper suggestions. |
| C．To help people track their health. | D．To cure people of blood diseases. |
| A．Ambiguous. | B．Objective. | C．Supportive. | D．Uncaring. |
