Melati and Isabel deeply love their home on the island, surrounded by tropical rain forests, green fields, and a vast ocean. Enjoying a swim at their local beach was once a daily pleasure for them. But when Melati was fifteen, and Isabel just ten, the sisters started to lose their enthusiasm for swimming in the waters near their borne. More often than not, plastic bags would be around them as they swam and some were scattered on the beach. They got really upset about that.

Melati didn’t think much about it until one day her teacher gave a lesson on some world heroes. Each of those people had sparked movements of positive changes in the world. They believed in the impact they could have and they did inspire more people to do something meaningful. After school, Melati walked home slowly in silence, concerned about the vast amount of plastic rubbish on the beach. The heroes crossed her mind. If they could do it, we could do it too, she thought. The idea lit her up. She couldn’t wait to share what she thought with Isabel and quickened her pace.

“So many plastic bags around! The beach is dirty and messy! It’s so terrible! We have lost the clean and beautiful beach. Can’t we do something to get it back?” Melati said heartily. Isabel felt a bit puzzled at what to do, but she also had a strong desire to do something. Picturing a beach as fascinating as before in mind, the pair jumped with joy.

They talked a lot, anxious to know how Dad and Mom would respond to their ideas. That night when the family sat by the dinner table, the sisters eagerly got their ideas across. While Mom and Dad listened to the girls carefully, their eyes shone. “How amazing that would be! We are so proud of you!” Dad exclaimed. Mom came up, gave them a thumb up and hugged the sisters.

Melati and Isabel decided to make a positive impact straight away.

One month later, Melati received a call from the local newspaper.

Nature has always fascinated me. To brighten up the urban environment, there is nothing better     1     some attractive plants and flowers.

Growing up, I was always fortunate to be around well-tended gardens. My grandfather could actually have been considered to be quite “green-fingered”, as there were always impressive flowers in his garden. I had been a passive     2    (admire) of the work done by him and gardeners generally until quite recently,     3     I decided to turn my hand to cultivating some plants.     4     my grandfather, I only have a small balcony on which to conduct my activities, but that has not discouraged me in the slightest. It’s possible to make a nice “garden” even in the most     5    (limit) space, but one must also limit one’s ambitions to a certain extent. I decided to take the seeds of one humble little tomato and plant them in a number of pots. After several weeks, I     6    (amaze) by the results. I now have about 15 tomato plants on my balcony in different stages of     7    (grow).

It’s     8     rewarding sight to see this greenery on my balcony. I keep my fingers crossed that one day this little bit of nature will give me something very practical: some nice     9    (taste) tomatoes. It’s also very rewarding to be engaging in a practice which is as old as time itself, as plant life is     10    (essential) the most basic and oldest technology on our planet.

4 . Any schoolchild knows that a whale breathes through its blowhole. Fewer know that a blowhole is a nostril (鼻孔) slightly changed by evolution into a form more useful for a mammal that spends its life at sea. And only a dedicated expert would know that while toothed whales, such as sperm whales, have one hole, baleen (鲸须) whales, such as humpback and Rice whales, have two.

Even among the baleen whales, the placing of those nostrils differs. In some species they are close together. In others, they are much further apart. In a paper published in Biology Letters Conor Ryan, a marine biologist at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, suggests why that might be. Having two nostrils, he argues, helps whales smell in stereo (立体空间).

Many types of baleen whales eat tiny animals known as zooplankton (浮游动物), which they catch by filtering (过滤) them from seawater using the sheets of fibrous baleen that have replaced teeth in their mouths. But to eat something you first have to find it. Toothed whales do not hunt by scent. In fact, the olfactory bulb—the part of the brain that processes smell—is absent in such creatures. But baleen whales still have olfactory bulbs, which suggests smell remains important. And scent can indeed give zooplankton away. Zooplankton like to eat other tiny creatures called phytoplankton (浮游植物). When these are under attack, they release a special gas called dimethyl sulphide, which in turn attracts baleen whales.

Most animals have stereoscopic senses. Having two eyes, for instance, allows an animal to compare the images from each in order to perceive depth. Having two ears lets them locate the direction from which a sound is coming. Dr Ryan theorized that paired blowholes might bring baleen whales the same sorts of benefits.

The farther apart the sensory organs are, the more information can be extracted by the animal that bears them. The researchers used drones to photograph the nostrils of 143 whales belonging to 14 different species. Sure enough, baleen whales that often eat zooplankton, such as the North Atlantic right whale, have nostrils that are farther apart than do those, such as humpback whales, that eat zooplankton occasionally. Besides allowing them to breathe, it seems that some whales use their blowholes to determine in which direction dinner lies.

5 . I was young and determined to take an adventurous trip. But _________ nearly 875 yards out of a cable car (缆车), with a rubber band attached to my ankles, was not part of my plan. It’s _________ how intentions can change.

Staring over the _________ of the cable car, my heart was in my throat. I _________ heard the others behind me counting down. How could I have let myself be _________ into this? It was crazy!

My palms were _________, and my heart was pounding.

“Five.” They started the _________ for the second time, ignoring my useless protests.

“Four.”

“Three.”

“Two.” In that instant I _________ my mind a million times and came to the final _________ that there was no way I could allow myself to leap out of the cable car, suspended so high off the ground.

__________ my ankles please!

Then...

“One.”

I let go and leaped out as far as I could. If there had been time to __________ it for another second, I would have stopped myself. But instead, I jumped.

It felt as if all my fears, insecurities, and doubts were being let go. An enormous sense of __________ rose up in me. As I fell toward the earth __________ first, I saw my new friends waiting for me on the ground and could hear them __________ my victory over fear.

Jumping out of the cable car put me on __________ of the world, and that’s where I am determined to remain for the rest of my life.

10 . Solar farms offer one way to meet the world’s decarbonization targets, but they could also be used to deal with another of the planet’s big problems: loss of biodiversity. The approach is starting to take off. Residents of Barnsdale, for example, will soon play host to a new solar farm lined with grass field of wildflowers and native grasses, which Banks Group, the developer, says will promote pollinating insects.

The idea comes from the combination of two long-term trends: declining numbers of pollinating insects and the growing amount of land distributed to solar farms. According to the Center for Biological Diversity in Arizona, more than 40 percent of insect pollinators globally are listed as “highly threatened”—an issue that could seriously threaten food security. Meanwhile, solar-energy competence has been increasing. Matthew O’Neal, a scientist at Iowa State University, would like to see more solar developers seize this opportunity.

The benefits of such projects don’t stop at the insects. Research from Yale’s Center for Business and the Environment indicates that pollinator-friendly solar farms can raise crop output on nearby farmland, increase the recharging of groundwater and reduce soil erosion. In 2018, a US Department of Energy study found that if all existing and planned solar facilities near soybean and cranberry crops included pollinator home and increased output by just one percent, annual crop values could rise by US $1.75 million, US $4 million and US $233,000, respectively.

“Farmers could identify unprofitable areas, such as poor, highly erodible lands, as candidates for a pollinator-friendly solar farm. There’s the potential to increase their net income with pollinator motivation projects,” says O’Neal.

With enough forward thinking, these studies show, clean energy can provide new environmental opportunities. “We’re at a turning point with energy production and we’re seeing more opportunities to provide extra benefits that wouldn’t have been considered with older methods of energy generation,” says O’Neal. “You never heard of a coal mine planning pollinator conservation.”