1 . Whales are threatened by a variety of human activities off the West Coast of the United States, including fishing, ship traffic, and pollution. They have bad effects on whale populations, but are rarely addressed by current whale-protection policies in California, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.
The study, published for open access this week in the journal Marine Policy, examines the main causes of death for nine whale species in the California Current Ecosystem, which stretches from British Columbia, Canada to Baja California, Mexico. The whales considered in the study include gray, blue, fin, minke, North Pacific right, and killer whales.
“We find that it is people that deem fishing causes whale death,” said co-leading author Eliza Oldach. “But a number of human activities have made the modern ocean a really tough environment for whales to survive. We’re excited about efforts that look broadly to rebuild healthy oceans.”
The report found that main contributors to whale death are currently, targeted with relevant policy responses: noise, water quality and marine (海洋的) rubbish. But three other threats-nutritional stress, disease and predation (捕食) -need to also be considered to provide a more whole approach toward managing whale deaths.
“Gray whales migrate (迁徙) over 5,000 miles between their breeding grounds at either end of the California Current,” said co-leading author Helen Killeen. “Throughout their journey, they must pass through a large number of human activities, fighting with changes to their environment caused by climate change.”
The study comes as the California Ocean Protection Council (COPC) aims to develop a plan for achieving zero death for whales in the California Current Ecosystem this year. Achieving such a goal requires understanding the key drivers of whale deaths and opportunities for policy change, the report said.
1. Which activity will lead to whales’ death?| A．Going fishing with your friends in a river. | B．Playing with your friends beside the sea. |
| C．Going sailing with your family on weekends. | D．Throwing rubbish in the sea as you are playing. |
| A．Catch. | B．Complain. | C．Think. | D．Describe. |
| A．Gray whales are fond of travelling. | B．Gray whales’ migration is full of danger. |
| C．Human being is the only killer of whales. | D．Whales’ death is mainly caused by climate. |
| A．Get rid of the present policy. | B．Plant more trees along the sea. |
| C．Know what actually leads to it. | D．Find a right place for them to live. |
2 . Millions of migratory(迁徙的)birds occupy seasonally favorable breeding(繁殖)grounds in the Arctic, but scientists know little about the formation, maintenance and future of the migration routes of Arctic birds and the genetic determinants of migratory distance. In a new study, a multinational team of researchers under the leadership of Dr. ZHAN Xiangjiang from the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences integrated two state-of-the-art techniques-satellite tracking and whole genome sequencing(基因排序)-and established a continental-scale migration system of peregrine falcons in Eurasian Arctic.
The researchers tracked 56 peregrine falcons from six Eurasian Arctic breeding populations and sequenced 35 genomes from four of these populations to study the migration of this species. They found that the birds used five migration routes across Eurasia, probably established between the last Ice Age 22, 000 years ago and the middle-Holocene 6, 000 years ago. “Peregrine falcons initiated their autumn migration mainly in September, and arrived at their wintering areas mainly in October, " said Professor Mike Bruford, an ecologist at Cardiff University. “Peregrine falcons that depart from different breeding grounds use different routes, and winter at widely distributed sites across four distinct regions. Individual birds that were tracked for more than one year exhibited strong path repeatability during migration, complete loyalty to wintering locations and limited breeding dispersal(扩散). ”
The researchers quantified the migration strategies and found that migration distance is the most significant differentiation. They used whole genome sequencing and found a gene-ADCY8, which is known to be involved in long-term memory in other animals in previous research- associated with differences in migratory distance. They found ADCY8 had a variant at high frequency in long-distance migrant populations of peregrine falcons, indicating this variant is being favorably selected because it may increase powers of long-term memory thought to be essential for long-distance migration.
“Previous studies have identified several candidate genomic regions that may regulate migration-but our work is the strongest demonstration of a specific gene associated with migratory behavior yet identified, ”Professor Bruford said. The researchers further looked at models of likely future migration behavior to predict the impact of global warming. If the climate warms at the same rate as it has in recent decades, they predict peregrine populations in western Eurasia have the highest probability of population decline and may stop migrating altogether.
“Our work is the first to begin to understand the way ecological factors may interact in migratory birds, ” said Dr. ZHAN Xiangjiang. “We hope it will serve as a cornerstone to help conserve migratory species in the world. ”
1. What can we learn from the first two paragraphs?| A．Five birds’ historical migration routes were rebuilt. |
| B．Peregrine falcons stick to the areas where they winter. |
| C．Two novel research methods of migration were invented. |
| D．Peregrine falcons leave for Arctic regions in September. |
| A．It is a newly-discovered gene in the new study. |
| B．It serves as a fundamental part of long-distance migration. |
| C．It could be strengthened by the power of long-term memory. |
| D．It turned out to be more favored by birds than the other animals. |
| A．It has discovered a new genomic region of birds. |
| B．It has predicted the rate at which the climate warms. |
| C．It analyses the reasons for the decrease of peregrine falcons. |
| D．It encourages attention to environmental effects on migratory birds. |
| A．Researchers Help Conserve Migratory Species |
| B．Biologists Find Evidence of Migration Gene in Birds |
| C．How Long-term Memory Helps Long-distance Migration |
| D．How Ecological Factors Affect Birds’ Migratory Distances |
3 . Have you ever seen one of the many videos of an elephant grabbing a paintbrush, putting it in paint, and producing a painting similar to something a 5-year-old could create? While watching an elephant paint is an amazing sight, we can’t help but wonder whether the training methods and results reflect animal cruelty.
A 2014 study on four captive (圈养的) Asian elephants at the Melbourne Zoo in Australia sought to identify stress-related behaviors around the activity of painting. While the researchers found that the elephants had a neutral response to painting—not stressful, nor enriching—it seemed that when an elephant was not selected to paint, it displayed non-interactive behavior. This is seen as a possible signal of stress in the animals.
In addition, PETA, a famous animal rights group, has cited several American zoos that use harmful training methods to get elephants to paint, perform tricks, play instruments, and more. Not every zoo that organizes elephant painting uses aggression (攻击) to encourage the elephants. However, PETA argues that animal shelters should not force animals to do tricks at all.
Activist organizations warn that elephants can undergo extreme discomfort in the training process. Furthermore, many of the painting elephants are very young, at an age where they should still be with their mothers. It raises questions about whether there’s a chance they were caught for the express purpose of performing, or if they could somehow be restored to a return to the wild.
It is difficult to support any kind of trained behavior that differs greatly from a wild animal’s natural tendencies. The role of a shelter, ideally, is to allow an animal to live as close to its normal life as possible, perhaps with an eye to returning the animal to the wild; teaching them to paint does not seem to align with that target, particularly if it’s not a learned behavior that the animal would be willing to do independently.
1. What can be safely concluded from the 2014 study?| A．Researchers didn’t collect solid evidence. |
| B．Painting promoted elephants’ interaction. |
| C．Negative effects of painting were confirmed. |
| D．Elephants made strong responses to painting. |
| A．Complexity of the training process. | B．Purposes of elephants’ performance. |
| C．Daily activities of captive elephants. | D．Potential for elephants’ return to nature. |
| A．Wander off. | B．Set up. | C．Consist with. | D．Go against. |
| A．How PETA Helps? | B．Why Animal Rights? | C．Should Elephants Paint? | D．Should Elephants live in captivity? |
4 . My name is McKenzie Skiles and I’m a snow hydrologist (水文学家) at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
I am most interested in the impact of warming temperatures on snow melting rates, and I have started studying snowmelt since 2009 in Utah and Colorado. When I skied to research sites in Utah to collect snow for my experiment, the mountainous landscapes were covered in dust.
In areas with heavy dust deposition, such as the southern Rocky Mountains, dust speeds up melting by one or two months. Warming air temperatures affect snow gathering, but dust builds up over time and darkens the surface.
I’m now exploring different ice and snow landscapes for further research. For example, how black-carbon buildup following forest fires affects melting.
| A．The dust caused a lot of trouble. |
| B．I went for miles in the wilderness. |
| C．Doing my research is no easy task. |
| D．One of the goals is to develop snowmelt models. |
| E．In Colorado, the red dust from desert soils had also blown in. |
| F．As a result, the snow will absorb more sunlight and quicken melting. |
| G．My job is to ski in the wilderness to measure dust on top of snow each spring. |
5 . This is the time of year when many gardeners are harvesting tomatoes. Gardening expert Jessica Damiano recently reported about the many pictures of strangely shaped tomatoes sent to her from fans of her gardening advice.
Not every tomato on an affected plant will be deformed (改变形状), however. What are the possibilities? Under the right conditions (temperatures that are too hot or even too cold), this could affect one or two tomatoes per plant, depending on where they are in the development process and what the (weather) conditions are, said Timothy McDermott, a professor at Ohio State University. The possibility of one of your tomatoes developing a locule oddity (怪异) is about one in a thousand, McDermott said.
And, when harvesting your crop, remember:
| A．select the good-looking ones. |
| B．Any tomato can grow an extra locule. |
| C．the funny-looking tomatoes taste just as good! |
| D．What causes the unusual appearance of tomatoes? |
| E．Unless otherwise diseased, they are perfectly good for eating. |
| F．She said people sometimes question if the tomatoes are okay to eat. |
| G．Provide shade for your plants when temperatures are predicted to remain above 32℃. |
6 . I have discovered that I have a second shadow these days as I go outside. This one, however, has four legs instead of two. It is my daughter’s adopted, black cat: Miss Alice. Every time I go out the door she is waiting on my front porch, meowing to be petted. Then she follows me down the hill to my car sometimes running in front so she can get in my way for even more petting. And when I finally return home she is there asking for attention again.
It wasn’t always this way. The very first time I saw Miss Alice she was hiding under my house just having had a family of kittens. When I looked under there I got an angry hiss (嘘声) from her, warning me I was in for a clawing if I got near her kittens. It took a lot of time, patience, kindness, love, and cat food from my daughter to tame her. At first she didn’t want to be touched at all. Then she would only allow an occasional petting. Now my daughter can pick her up and carry her up the road to her house like a little baby. It still makes me smile to see how my daughter’s loving, caring and sympathetic spirit tamed this wild cat and made her as lovable as the most affectionate dog.
I guess that is the power of love. It can heal a hurting heart. It can save a broken spirit. It can uplift a sunken soul. It can free you from fear. It can transform your life. It can even take a violent, wild cat and turn her into a puppy dog in a cat suit.
Embrace (拥抱) the love in your own life then. Welcome the love of your family and friends into your life. And let your own love flow through everything you think, everything you say, and everything you do.
1. What do we know about the cat from the first paragraph?| A．It enjoys staying with the author. | B．It tends to be in the author’s road. |
| C．It is often ignored by the daughter. | D．It gets well along with the daughter. |
| A．Feed her up. | B．Make her mild. | C．Arrange for her. | D．Dress her up. |
| A．The lovely dog. | B．The daughter’s love. | C．The cat’s babies. | D．The harmonious family. |
| A．Where there is life, there is hope. |
| B．A friend in need is a friend indeed. |
| C．Love is life in its fullness like the cup with its wine. |
| D．Do what you fear, and fear that nature will fade away. |
7 . Building good transportation is a good idea. To have environmental value, new transportation has to sufficiently replace or eliminate driving to cut energy consumption overall. That means that a new traffic system has to be supported by reduction in car use. Traffic lanes should be eliminated or converted into bike or bus lanes. Ideally, these should be combined with higher fuel taxes, and parking fees. Needless to say, I have to struggle to make myself extensively understood. But they’re necessary, because you can’t make people drive less, in the long run, by taking steps that make driving more pleasant, economical, and productive.
Lengthy commuting (通勤) time is a forceful factor which can slow the growth of suburbs. The farther people live away from cities, the longer commuting time they need, which means more pollution their cars produce. If, in a misguided effort to do something of environmental value, governments take steps that make long-distance car commuting faster or more convenient—by adding lanes, building bypass, employing traffic-control measures that make it possible for existing roads to accommodate more cars with fewer delays—we are actually encouraging people to live still farther from their jobs, stores, and schools. As a result, governments are forced to further extend road networks, water lines, and other facilities. If you cut commuting time by 10 percent, people who now drive fifty miles each way to work can find reason to move five miles farther out, because their travel time won’t change.
Traffic congestion (拥堵) isn’t an environmental problem; traffic is. Relieving congestion without doing anything to reduce the total volume of cars can only make the real problem worse. Highway engineers have known for a long time that building new car lanes only temporarily reduces congestion, because the new lanes add additional driving. Widening roads makes traffic move faster in the short term, but the improved conditions eventually attract additional drivers, and congestion reappears. With more car on the roads, people think about widening roads again. Moving drivers out of cars and into other forms of transportation can have the same effect, if existing traffic lanes are kept in service: road space stimulates road use.
One of the arguments that cities inevitably make in promoting transportation plans is that the new system, by relieving automobile congestion, will improve the lives of those who continue to drive. No one ever promotes a transportation system by arguing that it would make travelling less convenient—even though, from an environmental perspective, inconvenient travel is a worthy goal.
1. In the first paragraph, the author gives us the hint that his recommendations are ______.| A．not widely supported | B．costly to carry out |
| C．generally recognized | D．temporarily beneficial |
| A．Drivers will become more productive employees. |
| B．Mass transportation will be extended farther into suburban areas. |
| C．Drivers will be more willing to live farther from their working place. |
| D．Mass transportation will carry fewer passengers and receive less government funding. |
| A．They are environmentally beneficial and should be carried out immediately. |
| B．They are well intentioned but ultimately lead to environmental harm. |
| C．They will definitely arouse people’s awareness of environmental protection. |
| D．They will only work if they can make driving more economical and productive. |
| A．support the claim that efforts to reduce traffic actually increase traffic. |
| B．oppose the belief that improving mass transportation systems is good for the environment. |
| C．provide a balance between suburban expansion and traffic congestion. |
| D．indicate that making driving less agreeable is a way to reduce negative effects of traffic. |
8 . What Is Your Pet Trying to Tell You
Animals want our attention, and sometimes they’re quite obviously about asking for it. Unusual behaviors are often our pets’ way of telling us to stop what we’re doing and play with them. It’s why Fido constantly chases his tail and why Kitty keeps rolling around. A desperately bored pet may have “bad” behaviors to get a reaction-even a negative one!
Feed me.
Sure, your dog loves you, but that’s not why he’s licking(舔)your face. A puppy learns to lick his mother’s mouth to get a little leftover food, so Spot isn’t kissing you in our sense of the word; he just wants a snack.
I’m stressed.
Cat owners also misinterpret their furry friends’ kisses. While a cat might lick you to show love, sometimes she’ll do it to ease herself. One way to tell if her licking is stress-related is to see if it goes on for an extended period of time. Birds also overclean when they feel anxious. Some will even drag out their own feathers.
My tail tells all.
Dogs wag(摇)their tails to the right when they see something or someone they want to approach, and to the left when they see something they want to avoid. When frightened, dogs curl their tails in, while cats wrap theirs around themselves. And if a cat’s tail looks like a question mark, she’s eager to play.
1. What does a dog show if it kisses its owner?| A．Hunger. | B．Love. | C．Fear. | D．Sadness. |
| A．Two. | B．Three. | C．Four. | D．Five. |
| A．They will drag others’ feathers. |
| B．They will approach someone they like. |
| C．They will clean their feathers more than necessary. |
| D．They will stare at their owners for a longer time. |
9 . A major benefit of growing your own tomatoes is variety. If you visit a garden center, you will find seeds and small starter plants for yellow tomatoes, purple tomatoes, huge tomatoes, and even very small tomatoes.
Tomatoes grow best in soil with a pH level between 6.0 and 6.8. If the pH reading is lower than 6.0, you can add about 2 cups of dolomitic lime (石灰) into the soil for each plant.
If you want to grow really big tomatoes, try following these seven tips from expert growers: Select tomato seeds with names like Big Zac or Bull’s Heart.
Start seeds early indoors and re-plant them into larger containers several times before moving them outdoors.
Remove new flowers that develop at the top of the plant when older fruits near the bottom begin to grow.
Remove the small growths where the plant’s stems and branches meet. This will prevent them from taking away nutrients and shading developing fruit under them.
Finally, water, fertilize and weed!
| A．Plant them deep each time |
| B．Rich soil benefits the growth |
| C．Tomatoes are not difficult to grow |
| D．Skills are demanding in growing tomatoes |
| E．Cut back the plants to keep only one main branch |
| F．They are all genetically designed to produce large fruit |
| G．This will force the plant to produce fewer but larger tomatoes |
My husband Erik and I had promised the kids a Labrador puppy.
I’d seen the ad at the local hardware store. “Thirteen puppies in all, “Sally, the owner, said when I called. ”There’ re only three left. “I decided to take a look the next day. The boys jumped and shouted excitedly as I copied down directions and hung up the phone.
Early the next morning, still discussing names, we wound our way through the mountains to meet our family’s new best friend. Our boys had simple names: Ike, Sam, Ben, and Dom, so they Preferred simple names like Rosy ,too. Finally, we met the sweet little dog. ” Rosy, “the boys called it softly. Our little puppy cocked her head. ” She likes it,“they cheered and set about making Rosy comfortable for the long drive home. They offered her a chew toy and lifted her up so she could see out the window. They took turns holding her in their arms lovingly and offered her a snack.
Though small, Rosy grew strong and healthy beneath her shiny black coat. And, just as I’d hoped, she was a calming addition to our houseful of noisy boys. But something was wrong. “It’s like she doesn’t know how to play,” Sam commented one day after school. “Dogs have different personalities, just like people,”I said. “Besides, she’s still very young. ” “But her legs aren’t very long, and one eye is smaller than the other,”Ike added, trying to make sense of why Rosy was different from other puppies he’d met.
I looked across the room to where Rosy sat between the boys. The last golden rays of autumn sunshine shone brightly on her face. Sure enough, one eye was misshapen. Not only that, it didn’t glint (闪光) in the afternoon light. I drew in a breath. Rosy, our puppy with a name as short as her four little legs, was blind in one eye.
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。
Everyone in the room became serious and sad.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Surprisingly, the boys refused to give the little puppy back.
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