1 . As the effects of climate change become more disastrous, well-known research institutions and government agencies are focusing new money and attention on an idea: artificially cooling the planet, in the hopes of buying humanity more time to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
That strategy, called solar climate intervention (干预) or solar geoengineering, involves reflecting more of the sun’s energy back into space — abruptly reducing global temperatures in a way that imitates the effects of ash clouds flowing out from the volcanic eruptions. The idea has been considered as a dangerous and fancied solution, one that would encourage people to keep burning fossil fuels while exposing the planet to unexpected and potentially threatening side effects, producing more destructive hurricanes, wildfires floods and other disasters.
But. as global warming continues, producing more destructive hurricanes, wildfires floods and other disasters, some researchers and policy experts say that concerns about geoengineering should be outweighed by the imperative to better understand it, in case the consequence of climate change become so terrible that the world can’t wait for better solutions.
One way to cool the earth is by injecting aerosols (气溶胶) into the upper layer of the atmosphere. where those particles reflect sunlight away from the earth. That process works, according to Douglas MacMartin, a researcher at Cornell University.
“We know with 100% certainty that we can cool the planet,” he said in an interview. What’s still unclear, he added, is what happens next. Temperature, MacMartin said, is an indicator for a lot of climate effects. “What does it do to the strength of hurricanes?” he asked, “What does it do to agriculture production? What does it do to the risk of forest fires?”
Another institution funded by the National Science Foundation will analyze hundreds of simulations of aerosol injection, testing the effects on weather extremes around the world. One goal of the research is to look for a sweet spot: the amount of artificial cooling that can reduce extreme weather events without causing broader changes in regional rainfall patterns or similar impacts.
1. Why do researchers and government agencies work on cooling the earth?| A．To prevent natural disasters. | B．To win more time to reduce gas emissions. |
| C．To imitate volcanic eruptions. | D．To encourage more people to bur fossil fuels. |
| A．More volcanoes will throw out. |
| B．More solar energy will go into space. |
| C．More disasters will endanger the future of the world. |
| D．People will keep burning fossil fuels to keep warm. |
| A．He thinks more research remains to be done. |
| B．He is optimistic about the effect of cooling the earth. |
| C．He is concerned about the reduction in agriculture production. |
| D．He disapproves of the practice of solar climate intervention. |
| A．The rainfall pattern of a region. |
| B．The modest drop in temperature. |
| C．The number of extreme weather events. |
| D．The injection amount of aerosol. |
2 . Some people like to listen to the Beatles, while others prefer Gregorian chants. When it comes to music, scientists find that nurture (培养) can overpower nature.
A study shows musical preferences seem to be mainly shaped by a person’s cultural upbringing and experiences rather than biological factors. “Our results show that there is a profound cultural difference in the way people respond to consonant (和谐的) and dissonant (不和谐的) sounds, and this suggests that other cultures hear the world differently,” says Josh McDermott, a scientist in Cambridge.
Some scientists believe that the way people respond to music has a biological basis and that this would overpower any cultural shaping of musical preferences, effectively making them a universal phenomenon. Some musicians, by contrast, think that such preferences are more a product of one’s culture. If a person’s upbringing shapes their preferences, then they are not a universal phenomenon.
The trick to working out where musical preferences come from was to find and test people who hadn’t had much contact with Western music. McDermott and his team travelled by aeroplane, car and canoe (独木舟) to reach the remote villages of the Tsimane people, who are largely isolated from Western culture.
In their experiments, McDermott and his colleagues investigated responses to Western music by playing combinations of notes to three groups of people: the Tsimane and two other groups of Bolivians that had experienced increasing levels of exposure to Western music. The researchers recorded whether each group regarded the notes as pleasant or unpleasant.
The Tsimane are just as good at making acoustic (声响的) distinctions as the groups with more experience of other types of music, the scientists find. Most people prefer consonant tones, but the Tsimane have no preference between them. “This pretty convincingly rules out that the preferences are things we’re born with,” McDermott argues.
“Culture plays a role. We like the music we grew up with,” agrees Dale Purves, a scientist at Duke University. “Nature versus nurture is always a fool’s errand. It’s almost always a combination,” he adds.
1. Why does the author mention Beatles in the first paragraph?| A．To compare people’s preferences for music. |
| B．To stress the importance of music. |
| C．To introduce the topic to be discussed. |
| D．To encourage readers to listen to their music. |
| A．people’s music preference is a universal phenomenon |
| B．Chinese and Japanese have different music preferences |
| C．the way people respond to music is biologically decided |
| D．parents have nothing to do with children’s music preference |
| A．They prefer consonant tones. |
| B．They are born with excellent music talent. |
| C．They do well in telling acoustic distinctions. |
| D．They have never had contact with Western music. |
| A．Something meaningless. | B．Something significant. |
| C．Something reliable. | D．Something sensitive. |
3 . Social distancing is not a new concept in the natural world, where infectious diseases are commonplace. Through specialized senses animals can detect certain diseases and change their behavior to avoid getting ill.
In 1966, while studying chimps (猩猩) in a Tanzanian national park, zoologist Jane Goodall observed a chimp named McGregor who had caught a highly infectious virus. His fellow chimps attacked him and threw him out of the troop. In one instance, McGregor approached chimps in a tree. He reached out a hand in greeting, but the others moved away without a backward glance.
“For a full two minutes, old McGregor sat motionless, staring after them,” Goodall notes in her 1971 book In the Shadow of Man. “It’s really not that different to how some societies react today to such a tragedy.”
Not all animals are so aggressive toward their ailing neighbors. Sometimes it’s as simple as avoiding those who may infect you.
When Kiesecker, a lead scientist in America, studied American bullfrog in the late 1990s, he found that bullfrogs could not only detect a deadly smell of infection in other bullfrogs, but healthy members actively avoided those that were sick. Bullfrogs rely on chemicals signals to determine who is sick or not.
Caribbean lobsters also shun diseased members of their community, well before they become infectious. It takes about eight weeks for lobsters infected with the deadly virus Panulirus argus mininuceovirus to become dangerous to others. Normally social animals, lobsters begin keeping away from the diseased as early as four weeks after infection – once the lobsters can smell certain chemicals released by sick individuals.
Overall, it’s important to note that, unlike us, animals don’t realize if they stay home, they might actually reduce the infection rate,” Kiesecker explains. “As humans, we have that ability. It’s a big difference.”
1. What can we learn about the chimps from Goodall’s observation?| A．They kept a distance from one another. |
| B．They became aggressive when infected. |
| C．The infected avoided contact with others. |
| D．The infected were forced to leave the group. |
| A．Avoid. | B．Cure. | C．Get rid of. | D．Get along with. |
| A．Humans are more sensitive to virus. |
| B．Humans are less likely to get infected. |
| C．Humans treat infectious diseases in a wiser way. |
| D．Humans can detect chemical signals more quickly. |
| A．Help Me Out |
| B．Leave Me Alone |
| C．Stay Away From Us |
| D．Stay Home Stay Healthy |
4 . When you think of the Himalayas, you may picture tall, rocky, snow-covered peaks. But that’s not true.
The subnival (亚冰雪的) region is the zone between the treeline and the snowline. It is 5 to 5 times as large as the areas of glaciers and permanent snow, which means studying it is vital to understanding the Himalayas as a whole.
The treeline is the edge of an ecosystem where trees are able to grow, and beyond the treeline environmental conditions become too tough to allow tree growth. Meanwhile, snowlines are the boundaries on mountains that separate areas with permanent snow (where snow is present for the majority of the year) from areas with seasonal or no snow.
Researchers used satellite data from 1993 to 2018 to measure plant cover between 4,150 meters and 6,000 meters above sea level. The scientists discovered that the greatest increase in plant cover was between an altitude of 5,000 meters and 5,500 meters. Subnival plants mostly include small shrubs and grasses.
Even areas once completely occupied by glaciers now hold rocks covered with mosses, lichen, and sometimes even flowers. In addition, the snowline seems to be retreating, while the treeline is expanding. This shows that the region is becoming warmer, causing more melting of snow and allowing vegetation to move up in height.
In the past 40 years, 25% of all Himalayan ice has been lost due to global warming. Himalayan glaciers are reducing by about 0.5 meters each year. The rate of glacier melting has doubled in this decade. The melting of glaciers increases water in the region, making it wetter. Receding snow also forces the snowline to move up, providing a greater amount of area for the warm and moist conditions, which are perfect for vegetation growth.
As of now, we do not know whether vegetation will accelerate or slow down the rate of glacier melting.
1. How does the writer develop the third paragraph?| A．By explaining concepts. | B．By providing some examples. |
| C．By analyzing causes and effects. | D．By listing specific data. |
| A．Disappearing. | B．Lengthening. | C．Withdrawing. | D．Widening. |
| A．The snowline moves up. | B．Glaciers are melting faster. |
| C．The subnival area is wetter. | D．Plants grow much better. |
| A．The climate of the Himalayas is changing. | B．Icebergs in the Himalayas have disappeared. |
| C．Plants are diverse in the Himalayas. | D．Plant life spreads in the Himalayas. |
5 . On Monday, about 270 pilot whales got into difficulty on a sandbank at Macquarie Heads, near Strahan on Tasmania’s west coast, about 190 kilometres from Hobart. Another 200 of the animals were found early on Wednesday, making it Tasmania’s largest recorded stranding event. The Department of Primary Industry, Parks, Water and Environment (DPIPWE) said that about a third had died.
Marine biologists arrived in the area to carry out rescue operations. They planned to use specialized equipment such as special tarpaulins to push the whales back into the deep water. The local police also assisted in the rescue.
The whales that were stranded are Pilot Whales, and they are found in almost all the oceans of the world, according to the Marine conservation group. Pilot whales are in fact one of the largest members of the dolphin family, but they are treated as whales for the Marine Mammals Protection Regulations issued in 1992.They were named pilot whales because it was thought that each pod followed a ‘pilot’ in the group.
Cetacean stranding, commonly known as beaching, is a phenomenon in which whales and dolphins strand themselves on land, usually on a beach. Several explanations for why cetaceans strand themselves have been proposed, including changes in water temperatures, unusual features of whales’ echo location in certain surroundings, and geomagnetic disturbances, but none have so far been universally accepted as a definitive reason for the behavior.
In recent years, whale strandings have become more frequent around the world. In November 2018, a dead sperm whale that had washed ashore in eastern Indonesia consumed a horrifying collection of plastic trash, including 115 drinking cups, 25 plastic bags, plastic bottles, two flip-flops and a bag containing more than 1,000 pieces of string. In all, the plastic contents of the whale’s stomach weighed 13.2 pound (six kilograms). The bags are black due to a reaction with the creature’s stomach acids, according to Thai Whales organization. A person, on average, breathes or swallows at least 74,000 microscopic particles of plastic each year.
1. How many whales died according to DPIPWE?| A．About 160. | B．About 200. | C．About 270. | D．About 470. |
| A．Being put into danger. |
| B．Being trapped in trouble. |
| C．Being found in extinction. |
| D．Being left or driven ashore. |
| A．Whales mistake plastics for food. |
| B．Whales need the ability of self-protection. |
| C．Whales’ living conditions are worsening. |
| D．Whales have an excellent digestive system. |
| A．Protective measures for whales. |
| B．The reasons for whale stranding. |
| C．Studying whales’ stomach deeply. |
| D．Researching the oceans’ ecosystem. |
6 . A study of more than five million books, both fiction and non-fiction, has found a marked decline in the use of emotional words over time. The researchers form the University of Bristol used Google Ngram Viewer, an online database for finding the frequency of terms in scanned books, to look for more than 600 particular words identified as representing anger, dislike, fear, joy, sadness and surprise.
They found that almost all of the categories showed a drop in these “mood words” over time. Only in the category of fear was there an increase in usage.
“It is a steady and continuous decline,” said Dr Alberto Acerbi. He assumed that the result might be explained by a change in the position occupied by literature, in a crowded media landscape. “One thing could be that in parallel to books the 20th century saw the start of other media. Maybe these media—movies, radio, drama—had more emotional content than books.”
Although both joy and sadness followed the general downwards trend, the research, published in the journal PLOS One, found that they also exhibited another interesting behavior: the ratio (比率) between the two varied greatly, apparently mirroring historical events. During the Roaring Twenties the joy-to-sadness ratio reached its highest point that would not occur again until before the recent financial crash. Then, in 1941, the ratio plunged at the height of World War II.
Nevertheless, the researchers held a reserved opinion about their claim that their result reflected wider social trends. In the paper, they even argue that the opposite could be true. “It has been suggested, for example, that it was the suppression (压抑) of desire in ordinary Elizabethan English life that increased demand for writing ‘filled with romance’… perhaps,” they conclude, “songs and books may not reflect the real population any more than catwalk models reflect the average body.”
1. The study was carried out by way of_________.| A．scanning the books with an online scanner | B．counting the number of words in the books |
| C．searching digitized texts for emotional words | D．analyzing different topics of the books |
| A．Usage decreased in all the categories of mood words. |
| B．Usage of most mood words kept falling over time. |
| C．The decline was caused by the rise of other media. |
| D．The unfavorable position of literature led to the decline. |
| A．increased | B．changed | C．dropped | D．twisted |
| A．their research result reflected wider social trends. |
| B．their research result was the contrary of social trends. |
| C．there was a suppression of desire in Elizabethan English life. |
| D．catwalk models reflect the population better than songs and books. |
7 . After bikes and umbrellas are made sharable across China, some companies started eyeing the fitness market, so shared gym rooms have hit the streets in Beijing.
Unlike regular gyms that provide large, open spaces for many members to share at the same time, the newly built shared gym rooms are small, stand-alone rooms for a person to use, often set up near living communities.
Every four-square-meter room is equipped with a treadmill (跑步机), an air cleaner, a mirror, a television and an air conditioner, and users can let down the curtains for privacy. When exercising, users can listen to music, watch movies and check emails by connecting to the Internet by the screen fixed on the treadmill. There’s no shower or washbasin.
Similar to using a shared bike, users can locate a shared gym room by smartphone application, book a room in advance and then need to scan (扫描) a QR code for use. A refundable deposit (保证金) of 99 yuan is required, and users are charged 0.2 yuan per minute.
The shared gym rooms are created by Misspao, a Beijing-based technology company founded in July. Within two weeks since it was founded, the company has already got two rounds of funding valued over 100 million yuan, Yicai Global reports. The idea of the shared fitness experience is not entirely nascent. Last December, the Shanghai-based technology company VRUN set up shared treadmills in office and apartment buildings.
The sharing economy is still becoming popular in China. According to Yicai Global, confident investors are pouring millions into sharing start-ups. In March, the State Information Center published a report which predicts that the total value of China’s sharing economy will see a yearly growth of 40% in the coming years, and it is expected to contribute around 10% to the country’s GDP by 2020.
1. What makes the shared gym room different from the regular one?| A．Offering open spaces. | B．Standing in the living zone. |
| C．Holding one person at a time. | D．Having some advanced equipment. |
| A．Users can have a shower in it after exercise. |
| B．Users who want to use it need a smartphone. |
| C．Users who use it first need to pay for 99.2 yuan. |
| D．Users’ privacy can’t be protected while they are exercising. |
| A．Simple. | B．Popular. | C．Satisfying. | D．New. |
| A．To introduce shared gym rooms. |
| B．To advertise a technology company. |
| C．To predict the future of the sharing economy. |
| D．To persuade people to support the sharing economy. |
8 . The sixth mass extinction is not a worry for the future. It’s happening now，much faster than previously expected，and it's entirely our fault，according to a study puhlished Mooday.
Humans have already wiped out hundreds of species and pushed many more to the brink of extinction through wildlife trade，pollution，habitat loss and the use of toxic substances. The findings published in the scientific Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences( PNAS)show that the rate at which species are dying out has accelerated in recent decades.
Gerardo Ceballos González，a professor of ecology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and one of the authors of the study，said approximately 173 species went extinct between 2001 and 2014. “173 species is 25 times more extinct species than you would expect under the normal extinction rate. ”he told CNN in an email. He and his team found that in the past 100 years，more than 400 vertebrate(脊椎动物的)species went extinct. In the normal course of evolution，such extinctions would have taken up to 10，000 years，they said.
Mass extinctions are just as severe as their name suggests. There have been five mass extinction events in the Earth’s history，each wiping out between 70％and 95％of the species of plants，animals and microorganisms. The most recent，66 million years ago，saw dinosaurs disappear. The past events were caused by catastrophic changes of the environment，including massive volcanic eruptions or collision with an asteroid.
The sixth mass extinction the one happening now—is different：scientists say it’s caused by humans. The researchers also said the current coronavirus(冠状病毒)crisis shows people’s recklessness(鲁莽)towards nature can seriously hurt themselves. Many endangered species are dying in large numbers due to the trade in wild animals and plants.
1. What does the underlined word“toxic”in Para. 2 mean?| A．Poisonous | B．Useful |
| C．Alternative | D．Environment-friendly |
2. How does the writer convince readers of the seriousness of the mass extinctions?
| A．By listing reliable statistics. |
| B．By imagining a picture of the extinctions. |
| C．By mentioning some news from CNN. |
| D．By explaining the history of the extinctions. |
| A．To tell the difference between the fifth and sixth extinction. |
| B．To explain the cause of the coronavirus crisis. |
| C．To warn humans to get rid of their wrong actions. |
| D．To show the writer’s concern about the endangered species. |
| A．The changes of the environment do harm to wildlife. |
| B．The sixth mass extinction is much faster than expected. |
| C．Mass extinctions are just as severe as their name suggests. |
| D．The current coronavirus has arisen from the illegal trade. |
9 . Both of my parents worked fulltime when I was a little girl，so my grandmother would stay at our house during the day. We would watch game shows in the living room. Our favorite was The Price Is Right. We would call out our answers along with the contestants.
When I got older and started going to school，we couldn’t watch our game shows regularly. That was okay with me，though，because the one thing I liked better than watching game shows with my grandmother was helping her bake cakes. Watching her in the kitchen was amazing：she never seemed to need the recipes（食谱）but everything she made tasted delicious.
At first I would just sit in the kitchen and watch，even though I didn’t understand what she was doing. As I got older，she let me help with the easy parts，such as measuring the sugar. The day she let me separate the eggs，I felt like I had found complete pleasure.
At last，my parents decided that I could take care of myself，and my grandmother stopped coming over every day. The love of baking，however，stayed with me. I started baking by myself，and even if the cookies ended up burnt sometimes，more often they turned out pretty well. I tried out new recipes，and whenever I got to a thorny part，I would call my grandmother for advice. Sometimes I would call her just to talk too. I felt like I could talk to her about anything.
My grandmother passed away ten years ago，but I still think of her every day. Last week，I found a recipe book she made for me. It included her recipes for brownies，cookies，and my favorite，lemon pie. As I looked through the pages，I thought I could hear her voice. She was the one who taught me not just about baking，but about life.
1. The passage is mainly developed by .| A．analyzing causes | B．making comparisons |
| C．following the time order | D．examining differences |
| A．found it interesting | B．turned out to be a troublemaker |
| C．hoped to make a living by baking | D．regretted missing the game shows |
| A．Basic. | B．Common. |
| C．Special. | D．Difficult. |
| A．To describe her childhood memories. | B．To show her good baking skills. |
| C．To remember her grandmother. | D．To talk about her happy family life. |
10 . Bradley McConachie, a 33-year-old Australian is actually a student in international relations completing his PhD through Griffith University. He came to Beijing for a cooperative research at Beijing University two years ago. Such an academic life was colorful with a chance offered by the cultural exchanges project, “I'm in China".
Bradley was lucky to win the most "likes" for his photo story about his life in China and became one of 20 winners to visit locations by the project this summer. All the winners’ experiences were filmed to produce a reality show, My Chinese Working Day, which will be broadcast by mid-September.
Bradley was chosen to work as a recreational manager for a Chinese wedding. The film crew took them to many “amazing sites" and the staff at the resort taught them a lot about how to incorporate modern Chinese features while still keeping traditional customs.
“I would have to say two things stick out as the most memorable： the helicopter ride and talking with the staff at the hotel about how they organize weddings here in China," he said. That was Bradley's first time to be in a helicopter, and he was too absorbed with the “stunning" view of the coastline.
“I think it is so important to show other Australians the different landscapes China has to offer. I think so many Australians, when they think about China, imagine the historical sites of Beijing and the exciting things to see in Shanghai but have no idea about other beautiful places, like Sanya or the many other places people have been taken to in this TV series. It was nice to experience these little touches. I was happy to be a part of that experience!” Bradley said.
1. What made Bradley's life more colorful?| A．Obtaining his PhD. |
| B．The cultural exchanges project. |
| C．The research about Beijing University. |
| D．The interest in international relations. |
| A．He produced the reality show. |
| B．His life in China was interesting. |
| C．He was one of the top 20 winners. |
| D．He liked photo stories most. |
| A．Fantastic. | B．Confusing. |
| C．Agreeable. | D．Extreme. |
| A．It's difficult to produce moving TV series. |
| B．Beijing and Shanghai are historical sites. |
| C．Sanya is worth visiting for foreigners. |
| D．Many Australians know little about China. |
