1 . One great way to spend time outdoors is to garden. Here are some benefits you can get from gardening.

    1    

Studies have found evidence that being in nature is linked with less anxiety, less depression and many other positive effects. The nice thing about a garden is that it can be right in your yard.     2    , you’re much more likely to be outside when the work of a garden requires it.

Eat healthfully

A garden can make the freshest and healthiest foods available. And the types of foods can have a great impact on your mental health.     3    .

Practice acceptance

Most suffering comes from trying to control things that you can’t. The more you can accept the limits of your control in your life, the more peace of mind you can find — and gardening is a great way to practice.     4    . You just bring your best efforts to what you can control, and let go of the rest.

Develop a growth mindset (思维模式)

Psychologist Carol Dweck developed the difference between “fixed” and “growth” mindsets, and gardening is a great opportunity to develop the latter.     5    . When something doesn’t work out the way you hoped, you view it as a learning opportunity rather than as a failure.

A．If you like healthy food

B．Spend more time in nature

C．While you spend time sitting in your yard

D．With a growth mindset, we’re constantly learning

E．Acceptance in the garden or elsewhere doesn’t mean giving up

F．Studies shows that diet changes can be helpful for depression

G．There’s the added benefit of knowing you played a role in growing the food

2 . 阅读下面短文, 在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is road testing a new way to keep winter roads ice-free by spreading on them cheese brine, the salty liquid     1    (use) to make soft cheeses, like mozzarella(马苏里拉奶酪).

Wisconsin, also called “America’s Dairyland”, is famous for its cheese. The state produced 2.8 billion pounds of cheese last year! As a result, there     2    (be) a lot of leftover cheese brine.     3    (dispose) of the brine can be expensive. So what should cheese makers do     4     the waste?

Cheese brine has salt in it,     5    , like the rock salt, helps lower water’s freezing point.

    6    (normal), towns use rock salt to de-ice streets. The salt lowers water’s freezing point, causing ice     7    (melt). But using cheese brine could help both cheese     8    (produce) and cities save money, while keeping roads safe.

In addition to saving money, cheese brine could also be a more eco-friendly option. Many people suspect that all the rock salt used every winter     9    (harm) the environment, because road crews spread about 20 million tons of salt on U. S roads every year!     10    , by spreading cheese brine on streets before adding a layer of rock salt, Milwaukee may be able to cut its rock salt use by 30 percent.

3 . An international team of researchers, led by Dr Christine Batchelor of Newcastle University, UK, used clear pictures of the seafloor to show just how quickly a former ice cover retreated (退去) at the end of the last Ice Age, about 20,000 years ago.

The team mapped more than 7,600 small-scale landforms across the seafloor. The ridges (山脊) are less than 2.5m high and are spaced between about 25 and 300 metres apart. These landforms are understood to have formed when the ice cover’s retreating edge moved up and down with the tides (潮汐), pushing seafloor into a ridge every low tide. Given that two ridges would have been produced each day, the researchers were able to work out how quickly the ice cover retreated. Their results, reported in the journal Nature, show the former ice cover rapidly retreats at a speed of 50 to 600 metres per day.

The seafloor landforms also give light into the way in which such rapid retreat can happen. Dr Batchelor and co-workers noted that the former ice cover had retreated fastest across the flattest parts of its bed.

“An ice can go away from the seafloor and retreat quickly when it becomes buoyant (有浮力的),” explained co-author Dr Frazer Christie. “This retreat only happens across relatively flat beds, where less melting (融化) is required to thin the overlying ice to the point where it starts to float (漂浮).”

The researchers believe that the quick retreat could soon be observed in parts of Antarctica. This includes at West Antarctica’s vast Thwaites Glacier. The authors of this new study suggest that it could go through quick retreat because it has recently retreated close to a flat area of its bed.

“Our findings suggest that present-day rates of melting are enough to cause quick short retreat across flat-bedded areas of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, including at Thwaites,” said Dr Batchelor. “Satellites (卫星) may well know this ice-cover retreat in the near future, especially if we continue our climate warming.”

1. What is the purpose of Paragraph 1?

A．To provide some advice for the readers.

B．To add some background information.

C．To make the story interesting.

D．To bring in the topic.

2. What does the second paragraph mainly tell us?

A．Where the ice cover’s retreating lies.

B．Why the ice cover’s retreating is formed.

C．What the result of ice cover’s retreating is.

D．How the speed of ice cover’s retreating is worked out.

3. Why is Thwaites Glacier mentioned in the text?

A．To give an example of quick retreat.

B．To tell where it is located.

C．To compare different types of retreat.

D．To explain why it is important.

4. What is Dr Batchelor’s attitude to the ice cover’s retreating?

A．Unclear.	B．Anxious.
C．Positive.	D．Doubtful.

4 . Sleep is so important that it has long interested scientists. Scientists have studied everything from mice to fruit flies in the lab to get a better understanding of what happens when animals sleep and why they do it. However, gathering data (数据) on how animals sleep in their natural habitat has always been hard to do.

But scientists did just that with wild chinstrap penguins in Antarctica. In doing so, researchers found the birds took over ten thousand microsleeps throughout the day — adding up to a 11-hour-long sleep.

To study the penguins, scientists put devices (设备) into a small group of penguins’ brain and neck muscles, which provided the brain wave and location data. The devices had never been used before, so this data collection was only supposed to be a test. However, the process went so well and the data was published in this study.

Researchers found that the microsleeps last only seconds. Researchers think that being able to sleep for such a short time might help the animals avoid predators (捕食者) that might more likely attack if the penguins were asleep for longer — especially when one parent goes out feeding in the ocean for days, leaving the other parent to protect the eggs from predatory birds.

The study is an early insight into a relatively large missing scientific knowledge about sleep.

“Almost every study on sleeping birds discovers something new, something we didn’t know about before,” says study co-author Paul-Antoine Libourel.

Vladyslav Vyazovskiy, a sleep neuroscientist at the University of Oxford who didn’t join in the study, is excited about this new data because “most of what we know about the animal sleep was gained in laboratory conditions, which are totally different from conditions where sleep developed”.

1. What is paragraph 3 mainly about?

A．The study method.	B．The device introduction.
C．The research purpose.	D．The background information.

2. What is a possible reason for penguins’ microsleeps?

A．Feeding baby birds.	B．Getting longer sleep.
C．Avoiding being hunted.	D．Attacking other birds.

3. What’s Vyazovskiy’s attitude towards the study?

A．Doubtful.

B．Positive.

C．Confused.

D．Objective.

4. What can be a suitable title for the text?

A．Animal Sleep Is Researched in the Lab

B．Penguins Gain a Different Way of Sleep

C．Sleep Is of Great Importance to Penguins

D．Penguins Take Thousands of Microsleeps a Day

5 . San Francisco’s waterfront (海滨) is on the National Register of Historic Places for good reason.

Its beautiful old landmarks, like the Ferry Building and the Bay Bridge, have been seen in many books, TV shows and movies—from the stories and novels of Jack London to the 1970s TV series The Streets of San Francisco. The future of San Francisco’s waterfront, however, isn’t safe.

In 2016, the National Trust for Historic Preservation put part of the city’s shoreline on its list of the U. S.’s most endangered historic places, in part because of the threat of sea level rise. The waterfront landmarks of many cities are under increasing threat from floods and rising sea levels brought on by human-driven climate change. St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, Italy and the Venice Beach boardwalk in Los Angeles face similar challenges to San Francisco.

“The whole issue of climate change and historic preservation intersects (交织) right at the waterfront,” said Elaine Forbes, director of the Port of San Francisco. As she watched the boats come and go on a sunny afternoon, Forbes said, “Sea level rise hasn’t historically been as much of a threat to San Francisco as major earthquakes.” However, that’s changed. Parts of the main road that runs along the waterfront have flooded from heavy rains in recent years. The state estimates (预估) the water could rise up to about two and a half feet above its present level by 2060, and possibly up to seven feet by the turn of the century.

Now, San Francisco is considering measures to save its historic shoreline. But the growing magnitude and frequency of the climate-related threats, the high costs and effort needed in saving heritage sites, and competing ideas about what’s worth saving and what isn’t, can make it hard for cities to know what to do first.

1. What is San Francisco’s waterfront famous for?

A．Old landmarks.	B．Famous beaches.
C．Beautiful bridges.	D．Comfortable climate.

2. What challenge is the waterfront facing?

A．The loss of public support.	B．The threat from rising sea levels.
C．The influence of tourist activities.	D．The competition from other cities.

3. Why is the earthquake mentioned in paragraph 4?

A．To give an example of existing threats.	B．To stress the seriousness of sea level rise.
C．To compare different types of natural disasters.	D．To show the difficulty in the waterfront protection.

4. What can be learned from the text?

A．Heritage sites are in ruins.	B．Threats have been removed.
C．The shoreline has been flooded.	D．Solutions are under consideration.

6 . The world loves a cup of tea. It only takes a few grams to make a cup of tea and millions of tons of tea are consumed every year. Tea can be good for you because it contains some things that help lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Tea also contains caffeine(咖啡因), which improves not only mental alertness but can also increase anxiety and cause other problems.

What would be agreeable is a tea plant that provides all the taste and goodness but with little or none of caffeine. Chen Liang and Jin Jiqiang in the Tea Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences think they have found just such a plant, growing wild in a remote area in southern China’s Fujian Province. Known locally as hongyacha, the discovered plant grows only between 700 meters and 1,000 meters above sea level around a handful of Chinese villages. As they report in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, not only is the tea plant naturally caffeine-free but it also contains a number of unique medicinal compounds that, the locals believe, offer considerable health benefits.

The researchers are now exploring methods to protect hongyacha in its natural habitat while further studies are carried out. It can take time—and sometimes it does not work—for new plant varieties to be bred for commercial use. A pair of naturally caffeine-free coffee plants were discovered in 2003, but little progress has been reported. Tea lovers will be watching hongyacha with interest. And others will wonder what else is out there.

1. What’s the disadvantage of drinking tea according to paragraph 1?

A．It can make people hard to sleep.	B．It can make people feel anxious.
C．It can get people addicted.	D．It can take people much time.

2. What can we learn about hongyacha in paragraph 2?

A．It is nothing but just medicine.	B．It can only survive in greenhouses.
C．It is a good pick for caffeine lovers.	D．It has a good taste and little caffeine.

3. What might the follow-up study focus on about hongyacha?

A．Its future location.	B．Its natural habitats.
C．Its future market.	D．Its production process.

4. Where is the text probably taken from?

A．A health magazine.	B．An advertising brochure.
C．A travel guidebook.	D．A newspaper.

7 . Some breathtaking blue lakes may not be so blue in the future, thanks to climate change.

In the first global record of lake color, researchers find that roughly one-third of Earth’s lakes are blue. But, should average summer air temperatures rise by a few degrees, some of those clear waters could turn a cloudy green or brown, the team reports in the Sept. 28 Geophysical Research Letters.

The changing colors could change how people use those waters and offer information about the balance of lake ecosystems. Lake color depends in part on what’s in the water, but factors such as water depth and surrounding land use also matter. Compared with blue lakes, green or brown lakes have more algae (水藻) and organic matter, says one of the researchers.

The scientists then looks at local climates during that time to see how they may be linked to lake color around the world. Lakes in places with average summer air temperatures that was below 19°C were more likely to be blue than lakes with warmer summers, the researchers find. If average summer temperatures increase another 3°C — an amount that scientists think is possible by the end of the century — those 3,800 lakes could turn green or brown. That’s because warmer water helps algae produce more flowers, which changes the qualities of the water, giving it a green-brown color, Yang says.

If some lakes do become less blue, people will probably lose some of the resources they have come to value, says O’Reilly, a scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallss. But the color changes wouldn’t necessarily mean that the lakes are any less healthy. “Humans don’t value lots of algae in a lake, but if you’re a certain type of fish species, you might be like this is great, ” O’Reilly says.

Lake color can hint at the balance of a lake’s ecosystem and it gives sickness a baschins for assessing how climate change is affecting Earth’s freshwater resources. Continued increasing of lakes could help scientists discover future changes.

1. Which factor connecting lake color isn’t mentioned?

A．Water depth.	B．People’s use of water.
C．Surrounding land use.	D．Contents in the water.

2. Why could lake color change if average summer temperatures rise by 3°C?

A．Because people will lose what they value.

B．Because the quantities of the water is changed.

C．Because algae grows more in warmer water.

D．Because 3800 lakes could turn green or brown.

3. What is O’Reilly’s attitude toward color change of the lakes?

A．Doubtful.

B．Positive.

C．Disapproving.

D．Objective.

4. What is the main idea of the passage?

A．Climate change could change lake color.

B．Lake color shows the heath conditions of lakes.

C．The change of lake color affects the lake ecosystem.

D．Color change in lakes does harm to the environment.

8 . Japan has started releasing wastewater into the ocean. But this isn’t the kind of wastewater that flows from city streets into stormwater drains. It’s treated nuclear wastewater used to cool damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, stricken by an earthquake over a decade ago.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has approved the plan by Japan to release more than a million tons of treated nuclear waste water from the destroyed Fukushima power plant into the ocean, believing Japan’s claims that the wastewater would be safe. However, Neighboring countries and other experts say it remains environmentally harmful that will last generations and may affect ecosystems all the way to North America.

Local fishermen, who heavily depend on the ocean’s resources, fear a huge decrease in their marketability. “Japan’s self-interest should not harm the well-being of humanity in the long run.” They said.

The release of the wastewater into the sea is a threat to the ocean environment and will damage Japan’s international image. The amount of money Japan would need to spend in restoring (恢复) its international image will far exceed that required to solve the problem in an eco-friendly way.

1. What kind of water has Japan released into the ocean?

A．Treated nuclear wastewater.	B．Water used to cool Fukushima.
C．Water flowing into stormwater drains.	D．Water polluted by an early earthquake.

2. Who believes the wastewater will do no harm to the environment?

A．Japanese fishermen.	B．The IAEA.
C．North America.	D．Neighboring countries

3. What does the underlined word “exceed” in paragraph 4 probably mean?

A．be similar to

B．be more than

C．be smaller than

D．be better than

4. Which of the following can be the best title of the text?

A．Environmental Problem in Japan	B．Fukushima’s Treated Radioactive Water
C．Concerns on Japan’s Wastewater Release	D．Experts’ Response to Japan’s Wastewater Release

9 . Can wine corks(酒瓶塞) be used in architecture? This is the innovation(创新) that Yan Sze Hon, a 31-year-old Hong Kong man, is striving for in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Great Bay Area(GBA).

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Yan came to Guangzhou in 2021 after several years of doing remodeling projects for old houses in Portugal. With the establishment of the GBA, “I saw the great opportunity and market prospects(前景) in the area,” Yan said.

Yan wanted to bring back an innovative idea from Portugal—using wine corks as an environmentally friendly building material.

“I love wine, and Portugal is the largest cork producer in the world,” Yan said. “It occurred to me that by recycling the corks, we can actually use them inside doors and walls to make them more sound-proof, which can provide a quieter private space for people.” According to Yan, he was one of the first to put this idea into practice, and obtained success in Portugal.

“Now I want to be the one that takes the first step in China,” Yan said.

Yan said that companies like his have benefited a lot from the supportive policies of the GBA. Since the establishment of the GBA, Guangdong has built 13 innovation and entrepreneurship bases, providing resources and services for nearly 600 Hong Kong and Macao entrepreneurship teams. He chose Guangzhou’s Tianhe district because it offers cheaper accommodation and office space to Hong Kong and Macao businessmen. “Also, the opening of new ports has made it very convenient for the flow of goods and talented people,” Yan said.

“I’m sure GBA will be the right place for me to start my business on the Chinese mainland,” Yan said. One day, he wants his business to operate in Shanghai, Zhejiang and more places.

1. What innovation is Yan Sze Hon trying to achieve in the GBA?

A．Designing environment-friendly buildings.

B．Using wine corks as a building material.

C．Establishing an architectural enterprise.

D．Remodeling projects for the old houses.

2. What can we know about the wine corks?

A．They are accessible in the world.

B．They can create a soundless place.

C．They do harm to the environment.

D．They have been recycled in Portugal.

3. How have companies like Yan Sze Hon’s benefited from the local support?

A．They have access to cheaper accommodation and offices.

B．They have been able to hire talented people to the GBA.

C．They have been granted loans for innovative projects.

D．They have received financial support from the 13 bases.

4. Which of the following can best describe Yan Sze Hon?

A．Intelligent and humorous.	B．Cautious and far-sighted.
C．Ambitious and creative.	D．Supportive and outgoing.

10 . One year after WildAid started its new program to protect ocean wildlife in China, Chinese world-famous pianist Lang Lang has joined the latest public campaign (运动), “Play Your Part in the Oceans Symphony” on Friday.

The campaign video public service announcement (PSA) impressed the public with Lang Lang playing his song “Stay”, greatly calling attention to the beauty and importance of protecting the marine life in China’s waters such as whale sharks, sea turtles, dolphins and spotted seals.

A new series of messages calls on the public to help protect marine biodiversity (生物多样性) by supporting marine protected areas (MPAs) and the protection of ocean wildlife. The campaign video PSA and billboards, which will be displayed across China, were released (发布) at a Beijing press event hosted by WildAid, with China Green Carbon Foundation and the First Institute of Oceanography of the Ministry of Natural Resources (FIO) as key partners.

Ranked among “the world’s 100 most influential people” by Time magazine, Lang Lang has served as WildAid ambassador for more than 12 years, contributed to protecting endangered wildlife and nature. Speaking at the event he said, “we can all play our part in protecting our oceans by taking simple steps, such as refusing to eat endangered wildlife such as sea turtles, reporting illegal wildlife trade, and reducing the use of single-use plastics.”

WildAid also designed online activities for this campaign in which Lang Lang invites users to re-create his song “Stay” through the two most popular social platforms in China: Weibo and Tik Tok.

Lang Lang joined this campaign following a survey report conducted by WildAid and FIO that discusses public awareness of MPAs and marine biodiversity in China.

The report finds that more than 80% of the survey takers believe that MPAs are very important, but their understanding of the functions of MPAs is low. More than half do not know the term “marine biodiversity” and have not received enough information about marine protection.

“Play Your Part in the Oceans Symphony” campaign PSA and billboards will be given out at outdoor places across China, reaching millions of viewers.

1. What is the purpose of the latest PSA of WorldAid?

A．To show the special beauty of marine life in China’s waters.

B．To stress the importance of protecting China’s ocean wildlife.

C．To call on the public to support marine protected areas (MPAs).

D．To invite world-famous pianist Lang Lang to join the campaign.

2. What does Lang Lang ask people to do to protect the ocean life?

A．Report illegal wildlife hunting to FIO.	B．Stop eating endangered wildlife.
C．Re-create his song “Stay” on line.	D．Call on friends to join the campaign.

3. What is one of the findings of the survey report?

A．Lots of Chinese do not clearly know how to protect the ocean life.

B．The Chinese public would like to help protect marine biodiversity.

C．The Chinese public awareness of marine biodiversity should be raised.

D．Weibo and Tik Tok are the two most popular social platforms in China.

4. Which of the following best describe the campaign PSA?

A．Interesting.

B．Demanding.

C．Beneficial.

D．Enjoyable.