1 . In Mumbai, there’s the ceaseless clamor of car homes as drivers edge through traffic. There’s pounding and buzzing from the construction of office towers and apartment blocks. Drumbeats and trumpet melodies spill out from weddings and countless festivals. And it’s all topped off by bellowing (大声吼叫的) street vendors and garbage trucks blasting Bollywood songs. Living in Mumbai requires a huge ______ for noise.

When Sumaira Abdulali began campaigning against noise pollution in India’s financial capital two decades ago, friends, acquaintances and even her lawyers insisted it was ______ . “People told me it’s foolish to even try, because Indians love noise,” she says. “We’re a noisy country.”

But in 2003, Abdulali won a lawsuit seeking to ______ environmental rules that had allowed loud music late into the night during a festival. ______ , the victory led to a ban on loudspeakers within 100 meters of schools, hospitals, courts and places of worship. And she has since won more than a dozen other actions both on her own and via the Awaaz Foundation (awaaz means “noise” in Hindi), which she launched in 2006.

The World Health Organization warns that noise is a top threat to human ______ , affecting not only hearing but also sleep, brain development and cardiovascular health. Abdulali claims Mumbai is the world’s ______ city. A study led by Ritesh Vijay, an expert from India’s National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, did find that noise levels in Mumbai and surrounding areas in 2020 dramatically exceed legal limits.

In recent years, the battle against noise has become increasingly ______ , with Abdulali often facing powerful interests who consider it an inevitable byproduct of growth. With increasing ______ , ever more people are exposed to continuous noise. In a rapidly expanding city such as Mumbai, with a population topping 12 million, demand for housing puts noise rules ______ development plans. Although sound barriers are required for construction projects, they’re expensive, so developers ______ installing them.

Traffic is a tougher problem. Noise on the road can reach 110 decibels (分贝) — a level that can lead to permanent hearing damage after just 15 minutes of exposure, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Luckily, ______ can help in the fight, Vijay says. He suggests devices that measure horn use, which would let officials offer ______ drivers rewards like deductions (扣除) on car insurance. Dynamic signaling, where sensors linked to stoplights detect traffic density, would improve vehicle flow and ______   the urge to resort to horns, he says. Local government also ______ . Mumbai decreed (颁布) India’s first “No-Honking” day in 2008, with police handing out booklets to raise awareness about traffic noise and imposing fines up to 1,000 rupees ($12) on offending motorists.

Far more important is the longer-term impact of the day-to-day noise, so that’s where Vijay believes activists should focus their energy. “In India we celebrate festivals with lots of noise,” he says. “But our ______ noise itself is beyond the allowed limit.”

1.

A．talent

B．potential

C．demand

D．tolerance

2.

A．encouraging

B．reasonable

C．ridiculous

D．depressing

3.

A．take advantage of

B．put an end to

C．lay emphasis on

D．throw light on

4.

A．Therefore

B．Similarly

C．Subsequently

D．However

5.

A．well-being

B．intelligence

C．interaction

D．behavior

6.

A．largest

B．busiest

C．loudest

D．richest

7.

A．difficult

B．successful

C．diverse

D．easy

8.

A．availability

B．capitalization

C．urbanization

D．convenience

9.

A．in pace with

B．in contact with

C．in league with

D．in conflict with

10.

A．recommend

B．justify

C．resist

D．advocate

11.

A．government

B．technology

C．finance

D．psychology

12.

A．quiet

B．brave

C．safe

D．alert

13.

A．trigger

B．satisfy

C．reduce

D．maintain

14.

A．steps in

B．takes over

C．cuts in

D．takes off

15.

A．traffic

B．construction

C．ceremony

D．background

2 . 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.

3 . 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 First Space Cat

In a few weeks, space scientists will celebrate a remarkable event — the 60th anniversary of the launch of the first cat into space, an astronautical success that has never been repeated.

In the early 60s, dogs and monkeys were the animals usually used by scientists to find out exactly     1    dangerous the conditions were in outer space. And they were also used to assess if humans     2     survive trips beyond the edge of Earth’s atmosphere.

A total of 14 street cats     3     (gather) at France’s space agency for selection as cat astronauts, but the cats were not given names on purpose in order to prevent scientists from becoming too fond of them. The cat selected to travel to space was simply known     4    C341. C341 flew on a French rocket in October 1963, taking it to a place     5    no cat had gone before.

Then,     6    the news of its flight was announced on 18 October 1963, the French press decided this cat had to have its name. They picked “Felix” after a cartoon cat character, only     7     (discover) that C341 was female, so her name was then adjusted to “Felicette” as a result. In putting Felicette in one of its rockets, France added a new species to the list of animals that scientists     8     (send) into space before. Previously, two garden spiders, Anita and Arebella, had been taken to the Skylab     9    (orbit) around the moon.

“In the 60s,     10    (concern) about the possible danger for a human to be in outer space, scientists and engineers primarily undertook animal space flights to see if they suffered or their lives were threatened by the weightlessness or increased radiation or other effects they might experience up there,” said astronomer Jake Foster at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. “The fact that they did not fail paved the way for humans to begin journeys into space.”

4 . The Grey’s Anatomy doctors are navigating the patients that have kept them on our screens for some 400 episodes of the show. But in this episode, for the first time, the _______ to the drama is the very real issue of climate change. It’s a relatively rare example of the many kinds of climate-related storylines that are typically missing from _______ TV and film worlds. Social scientists argue that climate is a topic that belongs in many kinds of on-screen stories, not just the _______ climate-disaster thriller.

But can seeing the realities of climate change affecting characters on the screen help us relate _______ to the unfolding climate crisis – to cope better, or even change our behavior?

Non-profit storytelling consultancy Good Energy believes it can. It is among a small but growing number of organizations _______ far more TV and film scripts to _______ climate-related storylines. In April 2022, it released its Good Energy Playbook, a set of guidelines for embedding climate change into any on-screen story. It joins other initiatives in drawing attention to the need for film and TV to _______ the numerous ways climate change leaves its mark on our everyday lives.

The Good Energy Playbook’s suggestions are appropriately wide-ranging: characters with climate anxiety and those fighting against injustice; utopian (乌托邦的) narratives that explore climate solutions; storylines that quietly _______ climate references into their characters’ worlds.

The playbook was created by Good Energy founder Anna Jane Joyner, “It started as a personal _______, where I just got on the phone with as many screenwriters as I could,” she says. She quickly learned that writers wanted to talk about climate, but “didn’t really have the support and toolset to be able to do it”.

Many research studies looked at the impact introducing climate stories had on viewers, and found it prompted greater concern about climate change. It also ________ people’s understanding of it and made them more likely to take action to reduce their emissions. ________, science tells us that stories have a power that hard facts often don’t. Research has long established that the human brain finds it easier to understand and remember information delivered as a ________, and has even found that stories can influence behavior.

Climate stories, then, seem like a pretty good idea. But these sorts of narratives have been few and far between. Julie Doyle, professor of media at the University of Brighton in the UK, says climate change has ________ for years to get into any form of fictional film or TV representation. “There’s been a silence around it,” she says.

It’s time to break the climate silence, says Doyle. “Mainstream media has tended to follow rather than lead, and it would be great if mainstream media could lead this.” Day-to-day mentions of climate change in media are especially important because, while blockbuster climate films can have a positive impact on awareness and action, the effect is sadly __________. People can feel inspired to take action in the moment, but the feeling __________ in a matter of weeks.

1.

A．resistance

B．background

C．response

D．application

2.

A．fictional

B．scientific

C．educational

D．theoretical

3.

A．logical

B．moral

C．occasional

D．spiritual

4.

A．differently

B．effortlessly

C．reluctantly

D．systematically

5.

A．depending on

B．referring to

C．identifying with

D．calling for

6.

A．restore

B．feature

C．demonstrate

D．sponsor

7.

A．reflect

B．maintain

C．eliminate

D．strengthen

8.

A．integrate

B．reverse

C．initiate

D．publish

9.

A．transition

B．campaign

C．achievement

D．association

10.

A．transferred

B．promoted

C．shifted

D．underestimated

11.

A．For example

B．As a result

C．On the contrary

D．In addition

12.

A．narrative

B．character

C．plot

D．memory

13.

A．explored

B．competed

C．struggled

D．appealed

14.

A．narrow-minded

B．ever-changing

C．short-lived

D．far-sighted

15.

A．resumes

B．fades

C．deepens

D．increases

5 . Directions: After reading the passage 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 form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Lovely Team Members

I fell in love with rhinos when I worked in a zoo in the 80s, and spent much of the next 20 years as the keeper of the largest captive (圈养的) group of rare black rhinos.

Being aggressive and stupid is     1     impresses urban residents about rhinos, but I discovered a group of sensitive, affectionate animals.     2     (weigh) over a ton, black rhinos are unexpectedly alert and have an unpredictable nature. However,     3     care and reassurance (安慰), they can be very trusting.

In the past few years, the number of rhinos has dropped dramatically, during     4     time I have helped look after rhinos being moved to reserves. Last year, I helped on a project to fly five black rhinos to the Serengeti National Park, where they had to be kept captive for a few weeks before     5     (release) into the wild. They lived in “bomas” wooden enclosures with “bedrooms”.

A couple of weeks before their planned release, the sky was filled with smoke and the flames were blowing over it.     6     (make) sure everything was fine, we rushed toward the bomas. I was terrified that the rhinos     7     (catch) fire, so my initial response was to release them. But I couldn’t, because they     8     (not fit) with transmitters (发射器). If I let them out, we would have great difficulty tracking them down. So I dashed back to the bomas and called the rhinos to their “bedrooms”. To my surprise, they moved without hesitation and were     9     (panicky) than I had thought. After half an hour, the wind changed direction and the fire began to die down.

That we and the rhinos had escaped unscathed (未受伤的) was a miracle. The relationship we had built with those lovely animals proved crucial.     10     it, all our work would have been for nothing. The teamwork of everybody there played a large part too and the rhinos were very much part of that team.

6 . Every year millions of breeding monarch butterflies in the U.S. and southern Canada search for milkweed plants on which to lay their eggs. Concern over shrinking habitat （居住地）has urged conservationists to create monarch-friendly spaces along roadsides, which are more than enough within the butterflies range and usually publicly owned. But traffic noise stresses monarch caterpillars out, a new study finds. They eventually do become desensitized to it—but that might cause trouble to them later on, too.

Noise pollution is known to affect the lives of birds, whales and other creatures. But until recently, scientists had never tested whether it leads to a stress response in insects. When Andy Davis, a conservation physiologist at the University of Georgia, noticed online videos of roadside monarch caterpillars apparently trembling as cars came by, he wondered how the constant noise might affect them. Davis built a custom caterpillar heart monitor, fitting a small sensor into a microscope to precisely measure monarch caterpillars’ heart rates as they listened to recordings of traffic sounds in the laboratory.

The hearts of caterpillars exposed to highway noise for two hours beat 17 percent faster than those of caterpillars in a silent room. But the heart rates of the noise-exposed group returned to baseline levels after hearing the traffic sounds nonstop for their entire 12-day development period, Davis and his colleagues reported in May in Biology Letters.

This desensitization could be problematic when the caterpillars become adults, Davis says. A rapid stress response is vital for monarch butterflies on their two-month journey to spend winters in Mexico, as they narrowly escape predators（捕食者）and fight wind currents.

Whether a noisy developmental period reduces monarchs’ survival rates remains unknown, notes Ryan Norris, an ecologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, who was not involved in the study. But in any case, he believes roadside habitat almost certainly drive up the butterflies’ death rates as a result of crashes with cars. ”There is so much potential road habitat for monarchs and other insects一it would be such a nice thing to capitalize on,” Norris says. ‌“But you just can’t get around the traffic.” Davis adds: ”I think roads and monarchs just don’t mix.”

1. By ‌“They eventually do become desensitized to it”, the writer means that.

A．monarch caterpillars react less strongly to noise

B．monarch caterpillars are stressed out by road noise

C．conservationists are worried about butterflies habitat

D．conservationists no longer create monarch-friendly spaces

2. What inspired Andy Davis to explore the effect of noise on monarch caterpillars?

A．There had been little research on monarch caterpillars.

B．Videos showed cars crashed into monarch caterpillars.

C．There was no such record of monarch caterpillars’ heart rates.

D．He found that monarch caterpillars shook with cars moving by.

3. According to Andy Davis, how will exposure to noise influence monarch butterflies?

A．They are likely to need more time to develop.

B．They are likely to lose their way on their journey.

C．They are more likely to be killed in their migration.

D．They are more likely to die before they become adults.

4. What is Ryan Norris most likely to agree with?

A．Monarchs5 survival rates are decreasing each year.

B．It is not recommended that roadside habitat be built for insects.

C．More capital is needed to study monarchs? developmental period.

D．Butterflies’ rising death rates have nothing to do with moving cars.

7 . 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.

9 . Peter and Minke van Wingerden have created something wild: a herd of cows floating on the sea. The Dutch husband-and-wife team’s experiment on sustainable agriculture, called Floating Farm, can be found in the port of Rotterdam. The modernist structure houses 40 cows, who collectively produce some 200 gallons of milk a day. In addition to helping nourish (滋养) the local community, the waterborne farm is playing a part in the global conversation about how the climate crisis is pushing farmers to reconsider how—and where—they produce food.

Floods, extreme heating, droughts and even rising night temperatures have sent the food system off balance. The race to outsmart the constant attack of extreme weather has made the world of farming unrecognizable from what it was only decades ago. A team of scientists in Mexico is developing wheat types that can adapt themselves to different climates, while Jack’s Solar Garden in Longmont, Colorado, is a testbed for the emerging method of solar farming.

Rotterdam has already established itself as one of the most climate-adaptive places in the world. Everything from office buildings to entire neighborhoods are built on water in the city, which is 90% below sea level. The Wingerdens’ Floating Farm was a new but necessary attempt. Should a weather crisis arise, a waterborne farm isn’t necessarily stuck in place. A former property developer with a background in engineering, Peter found his inspiration for the Floating Farm in a climate disaster in New York City, where Hurricane Sandy prevented the delivery of fresh food to millions.

The Wingerdens’ model is ripe for reproduction—which is exactly what the Floating Farm’s team of 14 are working on now. Plans are under way for a floating vegetable farm to move into the space next to the current Floating Farm. Permit applications are also out for similar structures in Dubai, Singapore and the Dutch cities of Haarlem and Arnhem.

The new projects will apply lessons learned from Floating Farm. “You need to build a house in order to know how to build a house,” Peter says. The biggest obstacles he sees ahead, however, are not financial or physical, but rather political and administrative. “One of the biggest challenges we come across worldwide is regulations. Cities need to have disruptive thinking, cities need to have disruptive departments, and cities need to have areas where you can say: OK, this is the experimental zone.” Because what Peter and his team are pulling off is of a different order than the typical sustainability measures. “We are not innovative,” he says. “We are disruptive.”

1. Which of the following is TRUE about the Floating Farm?

A．It is the first modern farming attempt to fight climate change.

B．It is a model of new agriculture in the age of climate crisis.

C．It has outsmarted other forms of farming like solar farming.

D．It copies a similar structure in Dubai ready for reproduction.

2. It can be inferred from the passage that ___________.

A．90% of the population in Rotterdam live below the sea level

B．The New York City is working hard to fight climate change

C．The local community will not be fed without new farming

D．Waterborne facilities are necessary to the future of Rotterdam

3. The phrase “disruptive thinking” in the last paragraph means “thinking __________”.

A．in a daring and unusual way	B．in a focused and logical way
C．in a careful and detailed way	D．in a rude and unpleasant way

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

A．Is Rotterdam Built on Water?

B．Can Floating Farming Survive?

C．Are Cows at Sea the Future of Farming?

D．Is Extreme Weather Affecting Agriculture?