1 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. technical     B. attributed     C. confined     D. observations     E. sensation     F. totaling     G. anticipatory H. consistent     I. precisely     J. suspicious     K. attached

For centuries, people have described unusual animal behavior just ahead of seismic (地震的) events: dogs barking endlessly, cows halting their milk, toads leaping from ponds. A few researchers have tried to prove a link, but most such attempts have relied largely on anecdotes and single     1    .

Now researchers at the University of Konstanz, along with a multinational team of colleagues, say they have managed to     2     measure increased activity in a group of farm animals prior to seismic activity. During separate periods     3     about four months in 2016 and 2017, the researchers     4     these highly sensitive biologgers and GPS sensors, which can record accelerated movements in any direction, to six cows, five sheep and two dogs living on a farm in an earthquake-prone area of northern Italy to keep track of the activities and the nervousness of animals. “Only now can we do continuous biologging,” says study co-author Martin Wikelski. “Because the     5     possibilities are finally there.”

The paper’s statistical analysis showed animals’ activity significantly increased before magnitude 3.8 or greater earthquakes when they were housed together in a stable — but not when they were out to pasture (吃草). Wikelski says this difference could be linked to the increased stress some animals feel in     6     spaces. Analyzing the increased movements as a whole, the researchers claim, showed a clear signal of     7     behavior hours ahead of tremors.

Besides, it showed that the farm animals appeared to anticipate quakes anywhere from one to 20 hours ahead, reacting earlier when they were closer to the origin and later when they were farther away. This finding is     8     with a hypothesis that animals somehow sense a signal that spreads outward. It holds that in the days before an earthquake, shifting tectonic plates (地壳板块) squeeze rocks along a fault line, causing the rocks to release minerals that force ions into the air, and then the animals react to this novel     9    .

Not involved with the new study, Wendy Bohon, a geologist from Washington, D.C., is     10     of the air ionization idea. Heiko Woith, a geologist at GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences, says the time frame was still too short and points out that limited data collection in many studies makes it impossible to determine whether a measured signal was related to a quake or was simply noise.

2 . Directions: After reading the passages below, fill in the blanks to make the passages coherent and grammatically correct For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper farm of the given word; far the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Sky Kurtz farms in the desert. The co-fbunder and CEO of Pure Harvest Smart Farms—    1    (locate) outside Abu Dhabi, where temperatures regularly top 113°F—and his team use the challenging environs to trial new crops and technologies that have the potential to change farming in climate-challenged areas. Pure Harvest also provides produce to supermarkets and restaurants in Dubai and across the region     2    (use) less water, which is important in one of the most arid regions of the world.

Kurtz founded Pure Harvest Smart Fanns in 2017 with his co-founders Mahmoud Adi and Robert Kupstas. Passionate about food insecurity, they spent the first year studying high-tech food-production systems around the world,     3     searching for the optimal site for their first farm.

Kurtz’s farms in the UAE started out with “    4     but a PowerPoint, a pile of dirt, and the promise of what we would do,” says Kurtz. But Pure Harvest quickly proved it was built on more than a promise. The founders’ research and technological innovation led to the development of a proprietary (专利的)Controlled-Environment Agriculture (CEA) system—a combination of high-tech greenhouses and vertical farms that     5     (provide) a stable year-round climate.   The first crop of tomatoes was planted in August 2018 and harvested in October. The company’s original farm is now its R&D facility, and Pure Harvest has expanded its facilities in the UAE to 16 hectares of growing area. It also operates a 6-hectare farm in Saudi Arabia, and is developing a 6-hectare farm in Kuwait.

It now produces 14 types of leafy greens; two varieties of strawberries, with seven more     6    (develop); and almost 30 varieties of tomatoes, the product that started it all. With limited availability of local, seasonal produce, the UAE has typically imported much of its food, often air-freighted,     7    comes at a high cost, both economically and environmentally. And while they are more expensive compared with locally grown seasonal produce, the company says its fruit and vegetables are typically up to 60% cheaper than air-freighted imports of comparable quality. “I think we’ve fundamentally changed a belief system that said local is     8    (bad).” says Kurtz.

Their vision fits in with a larger objective for Dubai to become more self-sufficient. The focus is not just on growing for premium markets but also developing affordable solutions    9    (help) democratize access to fresh food.

Kurtz hopes the company’s data-driven technology can become a model for other regions that are experiencing climate stress. “We believe that we can develop a local-for-local solution     10     it’s needed most, and we’ve battle-tested that capability in one of the harshest environments in the world." he says.

5 . As plastic waste increases rapidly around the world, an essential question remains unanswered: What harm, if any, does it cause to human health?

A few years ago, as microplastics began turning up in the organs of fish and shellfish, the concern was focused on the safety of seafood. Shellfish were a particular worry, because in their case, unlike fish, we eat the entire animal — stomach, microplastics and all. In 2017, Belgian scientists announced that seafood lovers could consume up to 11,000 plastic particles (粒子) a year by eating mussels (贻贝), a favorite dish in that country.

By then, however, scientists already understood that plastics continuously fragment small pieces in the environment, tearing over time into fibers even smaller than a strand of human hair — particles are so small that they easily fly in the air. A team at the U.K.’s University of Plymouth decided to compare the threat from eating polluted wild mussels in Scotland to that of breathing air in a typical home. Their conclusion: People will take in more plastic by breathing in or taking tiny, invisible plastic fibers floating in the air around them—fibers from their own clothes, carpets, and soft covering on furniture — than they will by eating the mussels.

So, it wasn’t much of a surprise when, in 2022, scientists from the Netherlands and the U.K, announced they had found tiny plastic particles in living humans, in two places where they hadn’t been seen before: deep inside the lungs of surgical patients, and in the blood of unknown donors. Neither of the two studies answered the question of possible harm. But together they signaled a shift in the focus of concern about plastics toward the cloud of dust particles in the air, some of them are so small that they can get into deep inside the body and even inside cells, in ways that larger microplastics can’t.

Dick Vethaak, a professor of ecotoxicology (生态毒理学), doesn’t consider the results alarming, exactly—“but, yes, we should be concerned. Plastics should not be in your blood.” “We live in a multi-particle world,” he adds, referring to the dust, pollen (花粉), and smog that humans also breathe in every day. “The trick is to figure out how much plastics contribute to that particle burden and what does that mean.”

1. What does the word “fragment” in para. 3 probably mean?

A．break into

B．take in

C．pick out

D．make up

2. The study done by a team at the U K.’s University of Plymouth shows that ________.

A．microplastics from things in our daily life ant more poisonous

B．people eating polluted mussels are more likely to get diseases

C．invisible plastic fibers are more harmful to the environment

D．the influence of microplastics in mussels is less than thought

3. It can be inferred from the passage that ________.

A．microplastics in polluted wild mussels can cause serious diseases

B．there’s no need to worry about the plastics found in human blood

C．we can avoid breathing particles by figuring out particle burden

D．more attention should be paid to the dust particles than plastics

4. Which of the following might be the best title for the passage?

A．Are Microplastics Harmful to Us?

B．Should Microplastics be in Our Blood?

C．Can Microplastics Get into Our Bodies?

D．Do We Know Anything about Microplastics?

6 . Directions: After reading the passages below fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Forests give us shade, quiet and one of the harder challenges in the fight against climate change. Even as we humans count on forests to soak up a good share of the carbon dioxide we produce, we    1     (threaten) their ability to do so. The climate change we are hastening could one day leave us with forests that emit more carbon than    2    absorb.

Thankfully, there is a way out of this trap—but it involves striking a subtle balance. Helping forests flourish as valuable “carbon sinks” long into the future    3       require reducing their capacity to absorb carbon now. California is leading the way, as it does on so many climate efforts, in figuring out the details.

The state's proposed Forest Carbon Plan aims to double efforts    4    (thin) out young trees and clear brush in parts of the forest. This temporarily lowers carbon-carrying capacity. But the remaining trees draw a greater share of the available moisture, so they grow and thrive,     5    (restore) the forest's capacity to pull carbon from the air. Healthy trees are also better able to fend off (抵挡) insects. The landscape is considered less easily burnable. Even in the event of a fire, fewer trees    6     (consume).

The need    7    such planning is increasingly urgent. Already, since 20l0, drought and insects have killed over 100 million trees in California, most of them in 2016 alone，and wildfires have burned hundreds of thousands of acres.

California plans to treat 35,000 acres of forest a year by 2020, and 60,000 by 2030—financed from the proceeds of the state's emissions-permit auctions. That's only    8     small share of the total acreage that could benefit, about half a million acres in all, so it will be vital to prioritize areas at greatest risk of fire or drought.

State governments are well accustomed to managing forests,     9     traditionally they've focused on wildlife, watersheds and opportunities for recreation. Only recently have they come to see the vital part forests will have to play in storing carbon. Califomia's plan,     10     is expected to be finalized by the governor next year, should serve as a model.

7 . The Man Who Ate his Boots is a fascinating account of expeditions that went wrong. The book examines the 19th century search for a route to Asia by way of the Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean. Author Anthony Brandt describes the many attempts by both land and sea that ended in failure and tragedy, including the 1845 expedition led by Sir John Franklin. Brandt shows how these brave, yet sometimes foolish, explorers could have avoided starvation, frostbite, and even death if they had copied the survival techniques of the local Inuit people. Some of the more surprising details the book reveals include:

IGLOOS The explorers, despite repeatedly watching the Inuit build igloos, insisted on using canvas tents. Tents freeze in sub-zero temperatures and give little protection to anyone inside them. If they had learned to build igloos, the explorers would have been warm even in the worst Arctic weather.

SEALSKIN If the explorers had worn sealskin and furs like the Inuit, they wouldn’t have suffered from the frostbite that was common among them, but rare among the Inuit.

DOG TEAMS Why didn’t the British use dog teams to pull their sleds? Pulling sleds themselves was a tradition among many explorers right into the early 20th century. It cost Scott and his men their lives on their return from the South Pole in 1912.

The British did get something right, however, when Captain Edward Parry grew salad vegetables in boxes on board his ship. It was known that fresh vegetables and fresh meat prevented scurvy (坏血病)，although at that time the reason for this (vitamin C) had not been discovered. Parry’s men wouldn’t have been as healthy if they hadn’t eaten the salads.

1. In The Man Who Ate his Boots’ the author mainly ________.

A．introduces some foolish explorers

B．focuses on some unsuccessful expeditions

C．analyzes the Inuit people’s survival techniques

D．explores the advances in equipment used for expeditions

2. According to Anthony Brandt, what should the explorers have done?

A．They should have learned more about how seals survived in cold water.

B．They should have set up more canvas tents to keep themselves warm.

C．They should have helped the Inuit people build igloos.

D．They should have used dogs to pull the sleds for them.

3. It can be inferred from the passage that________.

A．Edward Parry found a way to prevent scurvy by accident

B．Edward Parry’s successful voyage was a rare case at that time

C．Edward Parry was the first captain that grew salad vegetables on board

D．Edward Parry’s men could have been more healthy if they took vitamin C

8 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Scientists have discovered that dogs produce more facial movements when a human is paying attention to them than when they are being ignored or presented with a tasty small piece of food.

The research argues     1     the belief that animal facial expressions are largely unconscious movements, that reflect internal sentiments, rather than a way to communicate.

Their expressions are responsive to humans — not just to other dogs. That shows us how domestication     2    (shape) them.

“Facial expression is often seen as something that is very emotionally driven and is very fixed, and so it isn’t something that animals can change     3    (depend) on their circumstances,” said Bridget Waller, professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Portsmouth, and an author of the study.

Researchers     4    (involve) in the study published in Scientific Reports, used a video camera to record the facial movements of 24 dogs over a series of experiments     5     a human either faced the animal, or faced away, and presented the dog with a tidbit (小片食物), or did not. The recordings were then examined by the team frame by frame     6    (determine) changes in the facial muscles of the canines.

The results reveal that the dogs produced far more facial expressions when the human was facing the dog, than when they turned away — in particular, the animals were     7    (likely) to show their tongues and raise their inner eyebrows.

But the presence of food had no impact on the animals’ expressions. That suggested canine facial expressions were not just down to excitement, and cast doubt over     8     dogs use their facial expressions to twist their owners around their paws, said Waller.

“We wanted to see if dogs would produce the most facial expressions when they saw the face and the food, because that might then tell us they are trying to intentionally manipulate the human in order to get the food — and we didn’t see that,” said Waller.

The study suggested doggy expressions were not simply the result of internal emotions, but     9     be a mechanism of communication. The team noted their work didn’t show whether dogs simply learn to pull faces when a human pays attention to them, or whether it reflects a deeper connection. But, they said, it was notable that the animals tended to make their eyes appear bigger —     10     trait humans are known to find cute.

9 . There is a kind of climate pollution that we can’t see clearly. It isn’t in our rivers, lands or skies, it is in our minds. When climate disinformation goes unchecked, it spreads like wildfire, undermining the existence of climate change and the need for urgent action.

Like the biosphere that sustains us, the health of our information ecosystems is vital to our survival. As an artist, I feel a responsibility to create new ways of seeing the disinformation that has come to define the age of fake news.

Social media sites are honed to grab our attention. Using sophisticated algorithms, the corporations behind them decide what billions of people see around the world, dictated by what keeps you hooked, but also by what the companies paying social media sites choose to put in front of you.

Powerful corporate actors deploy clever influence campaigns via ads targeted at specific users based on what social media firms know about those people. Major oil and gas companies have spent billions of dollars over the years persuading consumers about their green proofs, when only 1 per cent of their expenditure in 2019 was on renewable energy. This is known as corporate greenwashing. Still, fossil fuel firms maintain that their climate policies are “responsible” and “in line with the science”.

To expose the scale of corporate greenwashing online, I was part of a team that recently launched Eco-Bot.Net. Co-created with artist Rob “3D” Del Naja of the band Massive Attack and Dale Vince, a green entrepreneur, Eco-Bot. Net’s AI-powered website ran throughout the COP26 climate summit, exposing climate change misinformation by releasing a series of data drops for heavily polluting sectors, including energy, agribusiness and aviation.

Academic definitions of climate disinformation and greenwashing were used to unearth posts across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and visualize them on our website. Eco-Bot.Net then flagged greenwashing ads and posts on the original social media site with a public health warning.

By digging into our data, journalists have already revealed that companies are targeting specific demographics in order to influence public perceptions about climate change – and even alter government policy.

One data drop focused on the 100 biggest fossil fuel producers, companies that have been the source of 71 per cent of global carbon emissions. It found that 16 of these companies ran 1705 greenwashing and climate misinformation ads globally on Facebook and Instagram this year. In total, they spent more than £4 million creating influence campaigns that generated up to 155 million impressions.

Social media companies could end most of the harms from climate disinformation on their platforms if they wanted to. Flagging systems were swiftly introduced to warn users of posts containing disinformation about covid-19. The scientific consensus on human-caused global warming has been resolute for decades, so why can’t a similar flagging system be implemented for related disinformation?

It is true that Twitter and Facebook have both introduced climate science information hubs, but these are little more than PR exercises that fail to directly tackle climate disinformation on any kind of scale.

This epidemic of climate change disinformation on social media is eroding collective ideas of truth. In this post-truth age of disinformation, we hope that the public, the press and policy-makers will be able to use our data findings to see what is hidden by what we see online.

For the first time, we can witness the regional scale of corporate greenwashing. The era of climate denial and delay is largely over — except, as Eco-Bot.Net has revealed, on social media.

1. What does the word “undermine” in the first paragraph mean in the passage?

A．Dig holes in the ground.	B．Make sth weaker at the base.
C．Increase or further improve.	D．Put a stop to sth.

2. The author used the case of major oil and gas companies in Paragraph Four in order to ________.

A．give the readers a precise definition of corporate greenwashing

B．show the dishonest claim by fossil fuel companies on their responsible climate policies

C．demonstrate the huge investment the corporations made to exert powerful influence on the targeted social media users based on algorithm

D．emphasize the tens of millions of dollars spent on renewable energy

3. Which of the following industry contributes most to climate change?

A．energy

B．agribusiness

C．aviation

D．social media

4. What is the author’s opinion of social media?

A．They are willing to help but feel powerless to do so.

B．They have the ability to make a change but refuse to do so as there are controversies over climate changes.

C．They have the ability to make a change and have made some sincere but fruitless efforts on it.

D．They lose their integrity in face of the money from the big corporations.

10 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

The Real Cost of Travel

Mass tourism is a relatively recent phenomenon. The tourism industry     1     (take) off in the middle of the last century and it’s been growing ever since. In the last ten years especially, more and more people have been traveling to places     2     we had previously only read about or seen on television. But what kind of impact does tourism have on the planet?

A voyage to the end of the earth?

A large cruise ship (邮轮) can carry as many as 6,000 passengers and there are upwards of 50 such ships currently     3    (sail) the seas. Cruise ships dump about 90,000 tons of waste into the oceans every year. Any harmful effects of this are made even worse by the fact     4     cruises tend to visit the same places over and over again, thus concentrating the waste in specific places.

Trash on top of the world

From remote ocean habitats to the world’s highest mountain, our trash is everywhere. Though far fewer people go climbing the Himalayas than on a cruise, their impact     5    (still feel). Tourism is vital to the economy of Nepal,     6     it is to many non-industrial countries. But for decades, climbers have been abandoning their unwanted equipment on Everest. For the last few years, clean-up teams of local and international climbers have been organizing hiking trips just     7    (pick) up the waste. One group has brought over eight tons of waste down from the mountain!

When more is not better

Tourism of a different kind is causing problems in Europe. Construction on the Mediterranean coast has been     8     control for years. Beach resorts form an almost unbroken line from Gibraltar to Greece, and natural habitats have disappeared under miles of concrete. And so we pollute the sea, the land, and the air. Low-cost air travel is booming, in spite of (or perhaps     9     (help) by) economic problems. For many Europeans, low-cost flights allow them to take several short vacations a year. Yet curiously, short flights actually have a much bigger effect on climate change than long flights. So, are there    10     (damaging) ways of seeing the world? Traveling by train, for example, is a much greener way of getting around.