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. authorities   B. conflicts   C. increasingly   D. infected E. invisibly F. oddly G. outbreaks   H. present   I. subjected   J. suspected   K. unexpected

Deadly virus approaches tigers

India’s most important tiger conservation body is to investigate growing concern that Asia’s wild tigers are     1     to a deadly new disease.

The National Tiger Conservation Authority is to fun d a study of Canine Distemper Virus(CDV) in six of the most important areas for the species, which could confirm a problem that a few experts have     2    for a number of years.

There have been     3    of CDV in wild tigers in other areas. According to Dr Dale Miquelle of the Wildlife Conservation Society, quite a few tigers were either killed or seriously affected by a disease that was probably CDV in 2010. And the Sikhote-Alin Biosphere Reserve has also reported a(n)     4     decline in tiger numbers.

CDV may also exist in the tiger population in Sumatra, where animals have been reported to be behaving     5    and losing their fear of humans.

Dr John Lewis of the British charity Wildlife Vets International is helping the Sumatran    6    to fight the risk by training local vets in what he calls “the world’s first tiger- disease monitoring program”.

Lewis also believes that the way CDV changes tigers’ behavior could be a factor where tiger- human     7    are an issue. This could be true of the Sundarbans, a large area shared by India and Bangladesh where man-eating is spreading.

Perhaps we should not be surprised that tigers are     8    with CDV. In 2004, it killed 1,000 lions in the Serengeti in Tanzania, and as wildlife reserves are    9    surrounded by people with dogs, the problem is only likely to get worse.

But as Miquelle told BBC Wildlife, “Very few people were aware of the potential threat, let alone looking for it, even if it is     10    in the system. But at least now they are.”

2 .

A．The summer this year is terribly hot.	B．Last summer was even hotter.
C．Hot weather helps people lose weight.	D．Light was stronger this morning.

3 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. houses   B. approaching   C. appear   D. talent   E. exclusively F. lowered   G. hiding   H. limits   I. dramatically   J. natural   K. sensitive

Dolphin Senses

New research involving trained dolphins seems to further prove that these animals can sense electricity. The     1     may allow them to better lock onto hidden fish hunted and direct the path.

The ability to sense electric fields is known as electroreception(电感受). All animals produce a weak electric field, but electroreception has almost     2     been found in water creatures. About a decade ago, scientists published research suggesting that some dolphins have passive electroreception. And in 2021, researchers in Germany released their own study finding that dolphins likely have it, too.

This new research is a follow-up to that latter study by the same team—one intended to better describe the     3     of electroreception in bottlenose dolphins. The researchers teamed up with scientists from the Nuremberg Zoo, which currently     4     six dolphins. They specifically worked with two bottlenose dolphins named Donna and Dolly. They first trained them to rest their jaws on a metal bar in the water, and then to respond to an electric field     5     them by swimming away within five seconds. They then gradually     6     the strength of this field to test the dolphins’ sensitivity.

The findings further prove that bottlenose dolphins can indeed sense electricity, but suggest that some dolphins are better at it than others. Donna, for instance, was a bit more     7     and able to respond correctly to a weaker field than Dolly.

The electroreception found in dolphins doesn’t     8     to be as strong as it is in the typical shark, but it’s probably still useful enough for them to find fish     9     underneath sand, stones or mud within a few centimeters away. Other studies have suggested that dolphins also possess a sense that acts as a sort of     10     GPS for them. So these dolphins’ electroreception might provide an explanation for that ability as well, Huttner said.

4 . What are they talking about?

A．The pollution in the air.

B．Smoke coming from the school.

C．Measures taken by the school.

5 . Not all birds sing, but those that do—some several thousand species—do it a lot. All over the world, as soon as light filters over the horizon, songbirds start singing. They sing to defend their territory and to impress potential mates.

“Why birds sing is relatively well-answered,” says Iris Adam, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of Southern Denmark. The big question for her was this: Why do birds sing so much? “For some reason,” Adam says, birds have “a crazy drive to sing.” This means hours every day for some species, and that takes a lot of energy. Plus, singing can be dangerous.

“As soon as you sing, you reveal yourself,” she says. “Like, where you are, that you even exist, where your territory is —all of that immediately is out in the open for predators, for everybody.”

In a new study published in the journal Nature Communications, Adam and her colleagues offer a new explanation for why birds take that risk. They suggest that songbirds may not have much choice. They may have to sing a lot every day to give their vocal muscles the regular exercise they need to produce top-quality song.

These findings could be related to human voices too. “If you apply the bird results to the humans,” says Adam, “anytime you stop speaking, for whatever reason, you might experience a loss in vocal performance.”

To figure out whether the muscles that produce birdsong require daily exercise, Adam designed a series of experiments on zebra finches —little Australian songbirds with striped heads and a bloom of orange on their cheeks.

Through these experiments. Adam’s conclusion is that “songbirds need to exercise their vocal muscles to produce top-performance song. If they don’t sing, they lose performance, their vocalizations get less attractive to females—and that’s bad.”

This may help explain songbirds’ constant singing. It’s a kind of daily vocal practice to keep their instruments in tip-top shape. It’s a good rule to live by, whether you’re a bird or a human—practice makes perfect, at least when it comes to singing one’s heart out.

1. What does Iris Adam try to figure out?

A．Why all the birds don’t sing.	B．Why songbirds sing so well.
C．Why songbirds sing so much.	D．Why birds have vocal muscles.

2. What do the underlined words “that risk” in Paragraph 4 probably mean?

A．Defending territory.

B．Impressing partners.

C．Singing all to death.

D．Threatening lives.

3. Which of the following agrees with Adam’s experiment conclusion?

A．Regular singing helps to exercise songbirds’ vocal muscles.

B．Songbirds have to sing their heart out to win their partners.

C．Zebra finches are born to have excellent vocal instruments.

D．Good vocal muscles are more attractive to female songbirds.

4. What can be the best title for the text?

A．A New Study of Songbirds	B．The Way That Songbirds Sing
C．Practice Makes a Perfect Song	D．The Reason Why Birds Sing Much

6 .

A．The Hawaii volcano eruption was destructive.

B．What the man said is not currently relevant.

C．The man should read newspapers of last year.

D．The locals in Hawaii suffered a great deal.

7 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。1.

A．Birds’ physical characteristics.	B．The migrating patterns of birds.
C．The size of bird population.	D．The behavior of migrating birds.

2.

A．They become tired of their partners.	B．They can’t reach home at the same time.
C．They are likely to find new mates.	D．They have conflicts during the flight.

3.

A．They are able to keep pace with their partners.

B．They migrate shorter distances than other birds.

C．They do not have to migrate for food.

D．They have little chance to meet new mates.

8 . In the rich countries of the West, the electric vehicle revolution is well underway. Climate-conscious consumers drive Teslas or Polestars for reasons of morality and fashion. Poorer countries are also experiencing a wave of electrified trend. In Bangladesh, electric three-wheeler taxis, known as tuk-tuks, are rapidly replacing gas-powered ones on the streets. Such electric vehicles are climate friendly, cost effective, and help reduce air pollution.

Yet a glance under the hood (引擎盖) of these vehicles reveals a poisonous secret: each tuk-tuk runs on five massive lead-acid batteries, containing almost 300 pounds of lead in total. Every year and a half or so, when those batteries need to be replaced and recycled, about 60 pounds of lead leak into the environment. Battery recycling, often at small-scale unregulated factories, is a highly profitable but deadly business.

Lead is dangerous, and any exposure to it is harmful to human health. Lead that has entered the environment hurts people on an extraordinary scale. The numerous ways lead enters air, water, soil, and homes across the developing world — and the enormous damage it does to human health, wealth, and welfare — causes one of the biggest environmental crises in the world yet receives little attention.

The World Bank estimates that lead kills 5. 5 million people per year, which would make it a bigger global killer than AIDS, malaria, diabetes, and road traffic deaths combined. On top of the shocking deaths, the social burden of lead poisoning is extraordinary, as is its contribution to global inequality — our research on the cognitive effects of lead poisoning suggests that it may explain about one-fifth of the educational achievement gap between rich and poor countries.

But unlike many challenges faced by developing countries, lead poisoning is a problem that is fixable with some attention and a relatively modest financial investment. Better monitoring, research, and rules can help protect children all over the world from the dreadful effects of lead poisoning and reduce the massive global costs it brings.

1. How does the author describe the lead problem in paragraph 2?

A．By making a comparison.	B．By analyzing hidden causes.
C．By listing convincing numbers.	D．By explaining its working principle.

2. What can we learn from the text?

A．Lead enters rich countries in various ways.

B．Lead poisoning may make poor societies poorer.

C．Exposure to lead doesn’t necessarily harm someone.

D．Lead leaking has caused great panic in both countries.

3. What can be done to solve lead poisoning in developing countries?

A．Fixing these used batteries.	B．Putting certain effort and money.
C．Prohibiting the illegal use of lead.	D．Reducing the cost of recycling lead.

4. Which of the following is the best title for the text?

A．The Impacts of Lead Poisoning on Human Health

B．The Outcomes of Using Electric Vehicles

C．The Ways to Solve Lead Problem

D．The Global Lead Poisoning Crisis

9 . Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize in no more than 60 words the main idea of the passage and how it is illustrated. Use your own words as far as possible. 

Are we greening our cities, or just greenwashing them?

Architecture and urban design is chasing a green fever dream. Everywhere you look, there are plans for “sustainable” buildings, futuristic eco-cities and aquaponic farms on the roof, each promising to add a green touch to the modern city.

All of these are surely good ideas at some level. They are trying to repair some of the damage our lifestyle has done to the planet. But, despite the rhetoric of reuniting the city with nature, today’s green urban dream is too often about bringing a technologically controlled version of nature into the city and declaring the problem solved, rather than looking at the deeper causes of our environmental and urban problems.

One of the most striking examples is Apple’s “spaceship” campus now under construction in Silicon Valley. Though it seems to be sustainable and energy efficient—80 percent of its 175-acre site is preserved for landscaping, it is by any measure a huge, expensive and massively resource-intensive project. As a suburban white-collar workplace, it must include vast garages for 13,000 Apple employees. Thus, it will leave no smaller environmental footprint than a traditional office park.

Designing a perfect green building or eco-city isn’t enough to save the world. Although our buildings, like our cars, have been inefficient environmentally, architecture isn’t directly responsible for humanity’s disastrous environmental impacts. An economic system based on the destruction of nature is the real problem. No green building can help us repair the ecological damage we have caused, nor can any number of aquaponic farms bring us back to the real nature.

Instead of adding “nature” to the urban lifestyle, architects may work to design better relationships between our cities and nature, and to promote just relationships between the people in them.

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10 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。
1. What is one suggestion for reducing waste during Christmas gift-giving, according to the passage?

A．Canceling all the gifts.	B．Applying a “one-gift” rule.
C．Giving children less time to play.	D．Encouraging buying second-hand gifts.

2. What is one alternative to material gifts, according to clinical psychologist Linda Blair?

A．Buying a rare and expensive souvenir.	B．Buying a hand-made craft product.
C．Giving something that won’t cost money.	D．Giving an experience of something new.

3. What is the passage mainly about?

A．The waste caused by Christmas gifts.

B．The importance of buying gifts for children.

C．The creative ideas of giving gifts to avoid waste.

D．The negative effects of receiving too many gifts.