“She needs me.” Those were the exact words I spoke to my husband when I spotted Dottie, a little dog we found at a local shelter eight years ago.
Dottie leaned (倾斜) away when I tried to pet her and refused to let me hold her. While the other dogs jumped and barked, Dottie returned to the back of the cage, curled up in a ball, hoping us to leave her alone.
On the entire drive home, Dottie was in fear. So, upon arrival at our house, we got right to work. I held her as much as possible, touching her head and softly singing in her ear. We learned that she loved belly touch, so every time we passed by, we would offer a gentle touch. Eventually, we noticed her presenting her belly as we walked by her. I knew we were making real progress when I found her quietly sleeping on a chair one day, her head resting on one of my shoes. My heart melted (融化) as I realized she had brought it there because it contained my smell, and she wanted it nearby.
Ever so slowly, our little dog came to life. She began to play with toys, enjoy walks, and rest on our laps. There was no special treatment, no fancy food or toys. All we did was love her. And she grew well. She was so broken when we first met her that we had no idea what her true personality would be. But now we found a sweet, playful, loving soul.
One day, a few years after her adoption, I was busy doing housework around the house, doing laundry and climbing the stairs from the basement up to the main floor. When I finished, I sat down and enjoyed a well-deserved break. That’s when I realized I hadn’t seen Dottie for a while. I called to her and began searching. My heart raced and my pace quickened as I began checking under beds and behind sofa.
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Suddenly, I remembered the door to the basement.
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I held her in my arms tightly, telling her how sorry I was.
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2 . Grace and her family thought they had lost Thor forever when they moved to Windsor, Nova Scotia from British Columbia last August.
“We probably spent seven or eight months looking for Thor,” Grace said. “What made it worse was that there were rumors(谣言) going around that there was dogfighting in our area. We still always hoped that somebody had taken him to be a pet, but you just never knew.”
“It was terrible. My daughter Bronwyn would try to find Thor everywhere, which had been a Christmas present for her. Even while watching TV programmes, she would say, ‘Oh, look! That dog looks like Thor!’” Grace said. Then the family moved, and the hope became impossible.
But one day, the phone rang. It was their former vet in British Columbia, saying Thor was in a rescue shelter(收容所) in High River, Alberta. He had been found at a work camp in the northern part of the place and taken to south by a man planning to keep him. But the man was forced to turn him over to the shelter when he couldn’t keep Thor in his rented home. Luckily, the ring on Thor’s neck gave people some information.
Thor was flown to Nova Scotia last week. The family picked him up at the airport. “Thor was just lying in his box and looking down, and my daughter walked over and said, ‘Hey Thor.’ He immediately stood up, trying to greet my daughter. We let him out and he jumped on her as if he was giving her a big hug and he kissed her face. Then he sat down suddenly at her feet and rolled over for attention. He was cute.” Grace said.
1. Who helped Thor back home?| A．The author. | B．Grace. | C．The former vet. | D．Bronwyn. |
| A．He came back by air. |
| B．He was killed in the dogfighting. |
| C．He was given to Grace by Bronwyn. |
| D．He moved to British Columbia with the family. |
| A．Anxious and shocked. | B．Excited and joyful. |
| C．Confused and annoyed. | D．Hopeful and calm. |
| A．A travel brochure. | B．A news report. |
| C．A geography text book. | D．A health magazine. |
3 . When micro-plastics end up in farm fields, the pollution can damage plant growth. But two young researchers now report that combining fungi (真菌) with certain farm wastes can partly overcome that problem.
May Shin, 20, and Jiwon Choi, 18, met in a research design class at the Fryeburg Academy, a high school in Maine. May had desired to explore how micro-plastics might affect the ecosystem. Jiwon was crazy about plants and fungi. The young scientists cooperated to test how long-lived plastics might affect farm crops.
Scientists have shown certain fungi can aid root growth and a plant’s nutrient uptake. Those organisms are named arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). Certain farm wastes, like straw, can provide nutrients to plants and help stabilize their roots. Such wastes are also known as mushroom substrate (基质) and people often grow mushrooms in them.
May and Jiwon planted over 2,000 scallion (大葱) seeds in pots of soil. Half the seeds got soil polluted with micro-plastics. The rest grew in plastic-free soil. The plants then were further divided into four groups. The young scientists added AMF to the soil in one group. Another group had a top layer of mushroom substrate. A third group got both treatments. The last group got none. For three weeks, the pair tracked how many scallions sprouted (发芽) in each group and measured the plants’ height once each week.
About twice as many scallions sprouted in clean soil compared to that containing plastic bits. But among plants surviving in the polluted soil, a combination of AMF and mushroom substrate helped them out. Those getting both treatments grew 5.4 centimeters per week. That was faster than either of the treatments alone or those getting none.
Jiwon and May then looked at the plant roots with a microscope. Where AMF had been added, it grew into those roots. That increased the scallion roots’ surface area, May said, which should promote their uptake of nutrients. So “I see this project as coming up with a sustainable solution for plant growth in polluted soils,” said May.
1. Why did May and Jiwon work together?| A．To see the effects of long-lived plastics on farm crops. |
| B．To find the relationship between plants and fungi. |
| C．To design a research on the growth of plants. |
| D．To explore the way that the ecosystem works. |
| A．To prove the existence of micro-plastics. | B．To compare fungi with farm wastes. |
| C．To tell the advantages of farm wastes. | D．To provide some related information. |
| A．Its purpose. | B．Its design. | C．Its findings. | D．Its reasons. |
| A．By keeping the plants more resistant to pollution. | B．By allowing the plants’ deep area more freedom. |
| C．By making nutrients more available to the plants. | D．By exposing the roots to a larger surface area. |
Years ago, the authors conducted human-wildlife conflict surveys in the Tibet Autonomous Region’s counties,
This effort greatly expanded knowledge of the snow leopard’s distribution in this region,
Importantly, in the past few years, a number of major transportation infrastructure (基础设施) projects
5 . Robots in space will be extracting (提取) gold from asteroids (小行星) within ten years if anew project backed by a Silicon Valley billionaire goes as planned. Peter Diamandis, the founder of Planetary Resources, said the company attempts to make the resources of space available to humanity.
The initial stage, to be achieved in the next 18 to 24 months, is to launch a series of private telescopes which will orbit Earth. These will be used to search for the right type of asteroids. The plan is to use commercially built robotic ships to extract rocket fuel and valuable minerals from the rocks that regularly pass by Earth. Diamandis predicts that they could have their version of a space-based petrol station up and running by 2025.
Several scientists not involved in the project argued that the project was daring, difficult and very pricey. They do not see how it could be cost-effective. But the founder of Planetary Resources has a track record of profiting from space exploration business. Diamandis was the first person to sell rides into space to tourists. “Before we started launching people into space as private citizens, people thought that was a ridiculous idea,” Diamandis said. “This is a long-term project. But it’s not a charity. We’ll make money.” The idea that asteroids could be mined for resources has been around for years. There are probably 1,500 asteroids that pass near Earth that would be good initial targets. They are at least 50 meters wide, and Diamandis figures ten percent of them have water and other valuable minerals.
Richard Binzel, Professor of Planetary Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says, “The idea might be many decades ahead of its time. But you have to start somewhere as it might offer a new perspective of saving the earth from being over explored.”
1. What is supposed to be the first step of the project?| A．Launching robots into Earth orbit. | B．Sending some telescopes into space. |
| C．Building a space-based petrol station. | D．Using robotic ships to extract rocket fuel. |
| A．By extracting gold from asteroids. | B．By providing space travels for tourists. |
| C．By being the first person to ride into space. | D．By selling tickets to sce tourists' rides into space. |
| A．It is risky. | B．It is complex. | C．It is worthwhile. | D．It is demanding. |
| A．Mining Asteroids | B．Humans and Asteroids |
| C．Space Exploration in Progress | D．The Project of Extracting Minerals |
6 . The Twenty-three-year-old Mumbai girl Vidhi Bubna is offering India’s first and only diving grant to explore the marine ecosystem.
Vidhi’s first diving experience turned out to be a heartbreaking one. While she expected a lot of colors underwater as she had seen on TV, Vidhi came across all white corals (珊瑚), which means they are almost dead from being bleached (褪色).
“It was very sad and I just started crying after coming out of the water,” she says.
Vidhi, an economics graduate from Ashoka University, did not enjoy working with numbers and turned to writing about social issues, including women’s rights and minority issues.
As an adventure lover, Vidhi went diving to explore the underwater beauty last year. Her disappointment at seeing dying corals led to the start of Coral Warriors, anon-profit organization that aims to raise awareness of marine protection and climate change.
“Nobody knows about climate change till they see it,” Vidhi says. The Mumbai-based organisation offers India’s first and only diving grant. The grant sponsors level-one scuba diving education in any location of their choice in India. While there is no specific standard, Vidhi says the selection process is strict, choosing candidates who are passionate about climate change and seeing that they do something of their choice. Four candidates have been awarded the grant so far and the organisation hopes to find at least five people every year.
“After the candidates return, we expect them to work on a climate change project of their choice, create communities, and work to create awareness and drive action-centric projects,” she explains.
Prior to starting coral warriors, Vidhi was hosting free online workshops to spread awareness of marine biodiversity and climate change, and has reached about 5, 000 people through them.
As a next step, Vidhi is planning to work on documentaries with high-quality underwater images and videos, considering not many can afford or have the courage to go diving to see what is happening underwater.
1. How did Vidhi feel on her first diving?| A．Excited. | B．Upset. | C．Awesome. | D．Awkward. |
| A．To focus more attention on social issues. |
| B．To further explore the underwater beauty. |
| C．To fuel people’s enthusiasm for adventure. |
| D．To make an appeal for marine conservation. |
| A．To help promote people’s sense of community. |
| B．To choose whatever they are passionate about. |
| C．To meet specific and strict selection standards. |
| D．To undertake activities relevant to climate change. |
| A．Ahoot documentaries. | B．Tackle climate change. |
| C．Encourage people to dive. | D．Host free online workshops. |
7 . A new research in Nature reveals that a warming world is increasing human-wildlife conflicts. “We found evidence of conflicts between people and wildlife exacerbated by climate change on six continents, in five different oceans, in marine systems, in freshwater systems-involving mammals, birds, fish and so on,” said lead author Briana Abrahms.
To identify trends, the team studied published, peer—reviewed incidents of human—wildlife conflicts and identified cases that were linked specifically to the effects of climate change. These include both short-term climate events-such as a drought-as well as longer-term changes. Warming in the Arctic, for example, is leading to loss of sea ice which has left polar bears short of food. They increasingly travel on land, sometimes entering human settlements and attacking people, as a recent incident in Alaska illustrates.
Most cases of human-wildlife conflicts linked to climate involve a shift in resources—not just for wildlife, but also for people.
A majority of cases on land also involved a change in precipitation (降水), which will continue to be affected by climate change. Many resulted in human deaths or injuries, as well as property damage. “Identifying and understanding this link between human-wildlife conflicts is not only a conservation issue,” said Abrahms. “It is also a social justice and human safety issue. These types of conflicts are likely to rise as climate change intensifies (加剧), particularly as mass migrations of people and wildlife increase and resources shift.”
But, it doesn’t have to be all bad news. “One major motivation in studying the link between climate change and human-wildlife conflicts is finding solutions,” said Abrahms. “As we learn about specific incidents, we can identify patterns and tends-and come up with interventions (干预) to try to address these conflicts.”
Some interventions may be as simple as public-awareness campaigns. Governments can also plan for times when extreme climate events will bring people and wildlife into closer contact. “Once you know the root causes of a conflict, you can design interventions to help both people and wildlife,” said Abrahms. “We can change.”
1. What does the underlined word “exacerbated” in paragraph 1 mean?| A．Anticipated. | B．Perceived. | C．Worsened. | D．Faded. |
| A．To show climate change can drive conflicts by altering animal habitats. |
| B．To compare humans’ behaviors with animal’s in increasing conflicts. |
| C．To inform humans of protecting wildlife in response to climate change. |
| D．To prove animals have a hard life in face of global warming nowadays. |
| A．Human-wildlife conflicts will be settled soon. |
| B．Human-wildlife conflicts can increase as resources shift. |
| C．There will be no conflicts if people and wildlife stay where they are. |
| D．The goal in studying human-wildlife conflicts is gaining support. |
| A．They are too simple. | B．They are out-of-date. |
| C．They are changeable. | D．They are beneficial. |
| A．Nancy. | B．Jason. | C．Mark. |
| A．She dislikes the animals’ smell. |
| B．She hates the long way there. |
| C．She’s busy with her business. |
10 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。
“Mom, where do you suppose they are?” my ten-year-old son Danny asked for the twentieth time as he stared out of the window at the range (牧场). “They” were our horses, Ginger, and her three-year-old son, Charcoal, both of whom had been missing for days.
Our range and woods offered plenty of grass for six horses. However, spring thunderstorms during the past ten days had forced the nearby river out of its banks. The other horses had come to the barn (畜棚) during the downpour, but not Ginger or Charcoal.
When the rain stopped, I took Spot, our dog, to do some first-hand searching. We went through trees and brush in wet lowlands near the river. All my calling and Spot’s smelling were in vain.
The next morning, the sun struggled to shine through gray clouds, but dampness filled the air. Suddenly, Danny shouted, “Mom, come quick! There’s Ginger!” The horse stood at the range gate crying impatiently and moving back and forth as if to say “Follow me”.
“Hurry, Danny,” I said, “get the pot with some oats (燕麦). I will bring a rope.” Ginger walked in front and we followed. “I see him! I see him!” Danny shouted. Charcoal was lying on his side, not moving. His right back leg was badly injured.
“Oh, Mom. How long do you think he’s been lying here with no food and nobody to care for him?” Tears formed in Danny’s blue eyes. “Probably several days, but we’ll never know. Ginger took care of him, though, protecting him from attacks from hungry wolves or other wild animals,” I said.
“What can we do now?” Danny asked anxiously. “There’s no way to drive a vehicle down here in all this mud.” “We just have to get him up and lead him out,” I said, keeping my voice confident. “Afterwards, we’ll have to call the vet (兽医) out.”
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
With our encouragement and the attraction of oats, Charcoal struggled and managed to stand up.
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Upon arriving at the barn, Danny started creating a bed for Charcoal.
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