1 . Young male zebra finches (斑胸草雀) learn to communicate by listening to adults. In the lab, researchers have found that these songbirds can learn from audio recordings. But zebra finches learn better when they listen to live male finches, notes Ralph Simon. He studies how animals make and use sounds at the Nuremberg Zoo in Germany. Simon is part of the team that built RoboFinch, a robotic singing coach for finches.
The researchers recorded videos of adult males to analyze how their beaks (喙) move when they sing. They then programmed their robots to copy those beak movements. Finally, the researchers painted their RoboFinches the same colors as the real birds.
The team divided 45 young finches into four groups. Some only heard recordings of finch songs played by a speaker. Others listened with female birds that weren’t singing. RoboFinches taught the two other groups of chicks. The birdsongs played from a speaker right behind the robots. And the robots’ beaks moved either in or out of syne (协调) with the songs. That allowed the team to investigate whether beak or head movements aid song learning.
The birds housed with RoboFinches eventually spent most of their time near the robot and its speaker. During the first week, finches living with a RoboFinch whose song was in sync with its beak motions spent 27 percent of their time near the robot. Those caged with a robot playing songs out of syne only spent 5 percent of their time near the setup during the first week. Finches that heard only the audio without RoboFinch or female birds spent even less time around the sound source. Young finches partnered with RoboFinches sang less while the songs played. This was especially true when the robots’ beaks moved in sync with the songs. Those paired with a female also sang less while hearing songs. The young finches seemed to pay close attention to the robots’ movements during training sessions.
Simon hopes researchers will adapt this approach to building robots of other species, too.
1. Whose song did the researchers record?| A．Adult male finches’. | B．Adult female finches’. |
| C．Yong finches’. | D．RoboFinches’. |
| A．By how fast they learn. | B．By where they were kept. |
| C．By how they react to the robot. | D．By what they are accompanied with. |
| A．speakers behind them |
| B．female finches keeping silent |
| C．RoboFinches moving their beaks to the songs |
| D．a recorder playing the songs |
| A．RoboFinches Are Used as Singing Coaches |
| B．Machine Learning Are Adapted to Building Robots |
| C．Yong Finches Communicate Through Beak Movements |
| D．Researchers Discovered How Finches Make and Use Sounds |
2 . A happy beagle (小猎犬) called Bella loves Amazon boxes. It tears into them while ignoring other delivery boxes. Little Bit, a tortoiseshell cat, is similarly consumed — but by socks. It raids (偷袭) the laundry basket in the middle of the night and also paws through the open suitcases of house guests, who almost always find themselves missing a sock in the morning. Pets do some pretty weird things. But these strange behaviors often make perfect sense to the pets, said scientists who study animal behaviors. “These behaviors are not invented on the spot,” said Carlo Siracusa, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. The pets are doing behaviors that their wild ancestors did, but they’ve changed them a bit to fit their new lives as pets.
Dogs can be trained to roll over and play dead. But their ancient instincts from their wolf ancestors are still there. Instincts, or instinctive behaviors, are behaviors that are done without thinking. They don’t have to be learned. For example, some dogs will scratch the ground after pooping(排便). But they’re not trying to bury their poop. They want other animals to notice it. “They are depositing smell in those areas,” Siracusa said. “It’s almost like drawing a picture with a big red marker around it,” he added.
Cats, on the other hand, almost always bury their waste. “They are covering their tracks,” says Monique Udell, an expert on human-animal interactions who works at Oregon State University. Cats are predators, meaning they hunt other animals for food. But other animals hunt them, too. So they don’t want to be seen-or smelled. Mikel Delgado, the founder of a California-based cat behavior consulting service, said that many other cat behaviors, arise from cats’ wild origins.
While dogs share many behaviors inherited (继承) from wolves, they’ve also developed a few of their own. “Puppy dog eyes”, the innocent look that many humans are helpless to resist, is one. Over the time period that they’ve lived with people, dogs have developed certain muscles around their eyes. This helps them make the adorable expressions that win over humans. Like wolves, dogs also like to lick faces. Humans think their pets are kissing them, but they are not. “It’s how wolf puppies get food from their parents’ mouths,” Siracusa said. “It also can be a sign of submission. When a lower-ranking individual approaches a higher-ranking one, it gets down real low and licks the dominant one to say: ‘I’m not a threat to you.’”
1. What has been done to introduce the topic in Paragraph 1?| A．Telling a story. | B．Making a comparison. |
| C．Presenting research results. | D．Criticizing pets’ bad behaviors. |
| A．leaving | B．hiding | C．removing | D．detecting |
| A．Cats are interested in burying their waste. |
| B．Humans like the fact that their pet cats bury their waste. |
| C．Pet cats bury their waste because their wild ancestors did so. |
| D．Cats have changed a lot after becoming pets. |
| A．Wolves run energetically around dominant wolves. |
| B．Wolves show dominant wolves “puppy dog eyes”. |
| C．Wolves beg food from dominant wolves. |
| D．Wolves lick dominant wolves’ faces. |
3 . Cuckoos (布谷鸟) are masters of cheating. When it comes to raising young, they don’t spend the energy building a nest, protecting eggs or feeding children. Instead the female passes these roles on to other birds. They don’t raise their own young. Usually, they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, fooling other birds into thinking the cuckoo eggs are theirs.
To succeed in doing this, a female cuckoo watches over her chosen nest to observe feeding times. When the host parent leaves its nest in search of food, the cuckoo quickly lays her eggs among those already in the nest. Sometimes, she will even destroy and remove one of the host’s eggs to make room for her own.
Cuckoos are medium-sized birds with long tails, and often have gray or brown backs. When they hatch (孵化) and begin to grow in a host’s nest, the difference between the two can be obvious to an onlooker. Often the cuckoo is twice the size of its foster (收养的) parents, but still continues to receive food from them.
The cuckoo imposter (冒名顶替者) is usually the only baby bird that the host parent has to care for. This is because when the cuckoo hatches after around 11 days, it gets rid of all the other eggs in the nest. It will lift each egg onto its back before throwing them one by one over the edge of the nest. Even then, the non-biological parent will continue to treat it as one of its own.
Also, cuckoos have developed to produce eggs that are similar in color to their main hosts’. This reduces the chances of eggs being attacked. Female cuckoos have been known to take host birds’ attention away after laying their eggs by producing a noise similar to Eurasian sparrowhawks, scaring birds away from returning to the nest and allowing time for the cuckoo to make her escape unnoticed.
1. What do mother cuckoos usually do when it comes to raising their young?| A．Attend to eggs. | B．Build a new nest. | C．Depend on other birds. | D．Learn feeding skills. |
| A．Other cuckoos. | B．Baby cuckoos. | C．Birth parents. | D．Host parents. |
| A．It usually hatches out earlier than the other eggs in the nest. |
| B．It throws all the other eggs out of nest with its mother’s help. |
| C．It often makes a noise to scare other birds away from the nest. |
| D．It looks much larger than other eggs in the nest before hatching. |
| A．How cuckoos fool other birds. | B．How cuckoos protect their children. |
| C．How cuckoos destroy others’ nests. | D．How cuckoos produce eggs in host nests. |
4 . By 2100, cities around the world could warm by 4℃ on average, exposing the growing urban population to conditions that will damage human’s life. Cities are on the frontlines, dealing daily with the impacts of climate change.
At this year’s 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) announced a new initiative—the Nature for Cool Cities Challenge, which encourages cities to use the cooling power of nature. Solutions such as forests, green belts and parks in and around cities can deliver cooling services, without damaging emissions (排放). The cooling benefits of such solutions are well-documented, but they need to be better understood and managed to bring about changes at a global level.
Cities across the world that are already too hot in summer are taking a variety of measures from insisting new buildings have gardens on their roofs, painting existing roofs white, to coloring roads light grey and planting trees in streets and open spaces. The good news is that all these measures work, mitigating land surface temperatures by 2℃ to 3℃ in the areas where they are applied.
Qatar, host country of 2022 World Cup, surprises the world with an open mind about using technological innovation to deal with the environmental challenges of living in the desert. The government has implemented (实施) a pilot “cool pavement project in the capital, Doha, which involves the use of a cooling material to decrease the temperature of the asphalt (沥青) on roads. Unlike conventional asphalt, which contributes to increased temperatures by absorbing up to 95 percent of sunlight, the so-called “cool pavement” reflects UV rays and absorbs solar radiation to a lesser extent, contributing to overall temperature reduction in a greener way. The government, using the World Cup event as a platform, is seeking for partnership with more countries in addressing global environmental issues.
Many hands make light work. Just as Sheila Aggarwal-Khan, Director of UNEP’s Economy Division put it, “Truly effective solutions require partnership between governments, the private sectors, experts, and practitioners, nationally and internationally. It is decisive that the joint efforts from financial institutions, investors and businesses help make this vision a reality.”
1. What does UNEP’s new initiative aim to do?| A．Cool cities with nature-based methods. |
| B．Cut down the emissions in public places. |
| C．Document the benefits of living in the city. |
| D．Decrease urban population to improve living. |
| A．Reducing. | B．Increasing. | C．Maintaining. | D．Adjusting. |
| A．It takes in much of the sunlight. |
| B．It enlarges the exposure to solar radiation. |
| C．It helps improve the air quality of Doha effectively. |
| D．It absorbs less and reflects more than conventional materials. |
| A．Finance. | B．Cooperation. | C．Professionalism. | D．Management. |
5 . Many people think of sharks as dangerous monsters. But human beings cause a far greater danger to them than they do to us. Although shark attacks do occur, they are quite rare. According to one estimate, however, humans kill 100 million sharks every year.
Why should we save the sharks?
Sharks take up the top position on the food chain in the ocean. As sharks die off, the population of the animals that sharks consume will increase. This, in turn, means that the number of the creatures those animals eat will drop.
Don’t use shark products
First, vitamin energy drinks and leather goods can be made from shark parts.
| A．It is time for children to learn about sharks. |
| B．Shark oil is also used in many popular beauty products. |
| C．Then the shark dies slowly, sometimes over several days. |
| D．Actually, the killing of sharks will affect the whole planet. |
| E．People in some countries are especially keen on shark products. |
| F．Among them are some sea fish that humans consume every day. |
| G．This number is a warning that many kinds of sharks may die out. |
6 . Concrete has served as the foundation stone of the construction industry for hundreds of years. However, the process of producing concrete is one of the most environmentally unfriendly processes in the world. In the process, not only is carbon dioxide (二氧化碳) released into the air by the energy used to heat the limestone, but the limestone itself also gives out a huge amount of the element.
Luckily, a number of start-ups throughout the world are using creative thinking to make the construction industry a whole lot more friendly for the planet.
A Canadian company called CarbonCure, has found a way to inject (注入) concrete with carbon dioxide itself. Not only does this trap the carbon dioxide into the concrete, keeping it from running away into the atmosphere, but it also creates a super strong material called calcium carbonate, which reduces the total amount of concrete that needs to be used.
California-based Brimstone, is creating carbon-negative concrete by doing away with limestone entirely and instead using silicate rock, a material that does not release carbon dioxide when heated. Instead, the process produces magnesium (镁) , which absorbs carbon dioxide, as the basis for their concrete.
Additionally, researchers at Australia’s RMIT University have recently released a study showing that adding coffee grounds instead of sand to concrete could make it much stronger, reducing both the amount of sand used, as well as the amount of concrete that would need to be used in the final product.
The biggest barrier at this point is convincing members of the industry that the new types of concrete are safe to be used, according to Stacy Smedley, director at a nonprofit focused on decarbonizing construction.
Hopefully these new solutions to the environmental problems of concrete will soon be widely adopted. Given the significant part the construction industry has in releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, great improvements can be made when more environmentally-friendly materials are used.
1. What is the environmental issue associated with traditional concrete production?| A．The high demand for energy. | B．The processing of waste materials. |
| C．The mass release of carbon dioxide. | D．The use of non-renewable resources. |
| A．By using silicate rock as the basis. | B．By putting carbon dioxide into concrete. |
| C．By replacing sand with coffee grounds. | D．By absorbing carbon dioxide with magnesium. |
| A．Difficulty in making profits. | B．Convincing the public of the convenience. |
| C．Lack of funding for research. | D．Removing the industry members’ safety concerns. |
| A．To promote an alternative to concrete. | B．To advocate environmental protection. |
| C．To introduce new ways to produce concrete. | D．To emphasize the significance of creativity. |
Pets aren’t just hairy toys for your children. Recently it
Pets often act as
8 . In British Bristol, 70 English women at once entered into legal "marriage" with dozens of trees in protest (反对，抗议) against their being cut down. They "married" the trees in an attempt (试图) to prevent them from being cleared for construction (建造) of residential buildings worth £55 million in the forest. The British construction company has applied for the construction of 166 houses in Bristol, including luxury (奢华的) cottages. At the same time, the townspeople were especially angry at the fact that the application did not show the exact number of trees that are planned to be cut down. So, in order to attract the attention of the government, the activists organized an unusual wedding ceremony to save the forest.
The event took place at a park on Spike Island. The women who went there, dressed in wedding dresses, held photographs of the "suitors" in their hands. The celebration itself took place according to the classic storyline—with groomsmen and wedding vows (誓词). The organizer was John Tarleton, a professor at the Bristol Veterinary School, According to him, this action was supposed to suggest that tees are partners of people throughout their life.
The idea to hold such a ceremony came from Siobhan Kierans, who admitted that she came up with it by the story of women from the environmental movement Chipko, who chained (链在一起) themselves to trees in the 1970s to save them from destruction by logging companies.
The protesters said that Bristol needs trees more than luxury private housing. One of the "brides", Suzan Hackett, said, "To get married to a tree is a real honor. It's not a show. It's highly significant (important) and symbolic."
1. Why did the women marry trees?| A．To protect the trees from going extinct (dying out). |
| B．To appeal to (呼吁) people to plant more trees. |
| C．To draw the government's attention to save the forest. |
| D．To blame the company for damaging trees. |
| A．The men to marry. | B．The companies to build houses. |
| C．The buildings to be pulled down. | D．The trees to be saved. |
| A．A previous (以前的) environmental campaign. |
| B．Cruel behavior of logging companies. |
| C．Movements of women fighting for rights. |
| D．Women chained to trees for their faults. |
| A．Interesting. | B．Meaningful. |
| C．Pioneering. | D．Emotional. |
9 . Coffee is one of the world’s favorite drinks. Globally, 600 billion cups are drunk each year—profits from global coffee production will top ＄400 billion in 2021. However, the coffee bean itself is under threat from climate change. Now a Finnish research group has grown beans in the lab to offer the world a sustainable espresso (浓缩咖啡).
Plant cells were adapted to produce coffee cell cultures (培养物) and then grown at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. Bio-technologists, chemists, and food scientists worked together to select the right cell lines and developed a roasting process. Afterwards, a group of specialists created the taste and smell pattern. The result is a drink that smells and tastes almost the same as the traditionally grown coffee. “It’s not perfect,” admitted lead researcher Heiko Lash, “because good coffee-making is an art, but this could be the start of something beautiful.”
Scientists say the issues with coffee as a commercial crop are widely known. The worst of them are the loss of trees (especially in major exporting countries like Brazil), water pollution and bio-diversity loss. Lab-grown coffee could actually do the planet a huge favor. Growing coffee cultures takes a lot of energy, but transportation can be reduced to the lowest level if production takes place locally. Besides, chemicals are not needed at all, and any water used in the process can be recycled.
“We have now proved that lab-grown coffee can be a reality,” said VTT’s Paige Rischer. “The true effect of this scientific work will happen through companies who are willing to re-think about food production. Finally, all efforts would result in more sustainable and healthy food for the benefit of the consumer and the planet.”
The Sustainable Coffee Challenge (SCC) thinks coffee consumption could triple (三倍) by 2050, so society will need to produce the drink in much more efficient ways. Solving some of its most painful problems is a priority, but with science on our side, at least we have better alternatives.
1. What can we know about the VTT research on their coffee?| A．It is grown in a traditional way. | B．It is the result of a new art. |
| C．It develops without cell lines. | D．It tastes similar to common coffee. |
| A．Coffee beans will be recycled. | B．Water pollution will be reduced. |
| C．Little energy will be needed. | D．Chemicals will be better used. |
| A．A scientific way to grow coffee. | B．Consumers’ changed attitudes. |
| C．People’s environmental awareness. | D．The food companies’ participation. |
| A．Drinking coffee is becoming a global trend. | B．Coffee bean production is under threat. |
| C．Lab-grown coffee has become a reality. | D．Problems of coffee growing will be solved. |
10 . When people think about ways to help the environment, encourage biodiversity and decrease greenhouse gases, they don’t usually think about the impact of food waste.
Producing food for a growing global population is a complex challenge with a lot of negative environmental consequences, so food waste creates unnecessary stress on our fragile environment. Here are four things you can do to cut food waste.
Single-use plastics. Many of us are seeking to decrease the amount of single-use plastics in our lives, and in our shopping baskets. This is good but often these plastics and packaging keep food fresh for longer.
Dish up smaller portions. This results in up to 20% less food waste. Many of us put our leftovers in the fridge, then forget about them. Fortunately, there are many ways to manage our fridge contents effectively and decrease food waste.
Buy directly from local suppliers. Our food systems and supply chains are incredibly complex, which leads to high levels of food loss and waste. In contrast, buying directly from local suppliers results in less waste.
| A．Set your freezer to below 5℃. |
| B．Store the food in the fridge. |
| C．These range from apps, to the humble post-it note, or pen. |
| D．Support a local business, eat quality food, and decrease waste. |
| E．The most commonly wasted foods are fresh fruit and vegetables. |
| F．Fortunately, there are significant developments towards a post-plastic world. |
| G．Yet food waste is responsible for up to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. |
