1 . Each year, as many as one billion birds are killed in the US from collisions (相撞) with glass windows and buildings every year. Birds that crashed into Philadelphia buildings began to be collected in the 1890s. Nearly 100 species of birds are known to have died out from crashes with buildings and other structures in Philadelphia. Many other species are probably affected in the city.
Called Lights Out Philly, the voluntary program in Philadelphia encourages buildings to turn out or dim unnecessary external and internal lights between midnight and six o’clock early in the morning to protect birds as they pass through during migration seasons.
Bird migration seasons are from April l to May 31 in spring and from August 15 to November 15 in fall. Each year, millions of birds pass through Philadelphia along a migration route known as the Atlantic Flyway. Bird-glass crashes are very common for migrating birds, most of which travel at night. Glass is difficult for them to recognize as hard surfaces, and artificial light can fool them into crashing with buildings and outdoor structures. Turning off lights between midnight and sunrise helps minimize the effect of artificial light when most birds are migrating.
On Oct. 2, 2020, a stormy and foggy day, Philadelphia had its largest mass collision event in more than 70 years with an estimated 1,000 birds crashing with buildings in one 3.5-square block area in just one day. Paired with a terrible storm of weather and fog conditions, the bright city and building lights attracted and confused the migrating birds, causing them to crash with buildings and outdoor structures.
Even if you don’t play a part in managing the lights of a big building, you can help birds avoid crashes by making the glass opaque to reduce the amount and intensity of artificial light at night, changing the color of lighting to blue or green, shortening the duration lights are on, directing the lighting downward or screening lighting.
1. What is the first paragraph mainly about?| A．The rich biological diversity in Philadelphia. |
| B．Great efforts to protect migrating birds in Philadelphia. |
| C．The present and the past of the bird conservation in America. |
| D．The serious consequence of bird-glass crashes in Philadelphia. |
| A．Bad weather conditions. | B．Traveling in the day. |
| C．The mistaken route. | D．Too many buildings. |
| A．Light-reflecting. | B．Delicate. | C．Lightproof. | D．Clean. |
| A．It Is Difficult to Save the Migrating Birds |
| B．Philadelphia Turns out Lights to Save Migrating Birds |
| C．External and Internal Lights Affect the Bird Migration |
| D．Lights Out Philly Program Helps Save Endangered Birds |
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5 . Tsunami(海啸)is a natural disaster, which is a Japanese word that means “sea wave”.A tsunami is a huge sea wave that forms mainly in the Pacific Ocean area.People die and property is destroyed when a tsunami hits land.What causes these dangerous sea waves? Sometimes, tsunamis are caused when earthquakes take place underwater.Then, water begins to move up and down from the top of the ocean right down to the bottom.Waves begin to form, and each wave is called a tsunami.
A tsunami is less than one meter high and can move at a speed of almost 800 kilometers per hour while it is far out in the ocean.But the tsunami rises much higher and moves more slowly as it comes closer to land.
The weather bureau(气象局)warns people over the radio and television when a tsunami is heading for land.These warnings have helped save many lives.
1. The Japanese word tsunami means ________.| A．Earthquake | B．sea wave | C．ocean water | D．tornado |
| A．an underwater earthquake | B．heavy rains |
| C．waves hitting land | D．tornado |
| A．picks up more speed | B．becomes far less dangerous |
| C．rises higher and higher | D．rises lower and lower |
| A．a tsunami can’t cause lots of trouble |
| B．people can save their lives when a tsunami is coming |
| C．the warning from the weather bureau can help people save their lives |
| D．no one can escape when a tsunami is coming |
6 . A 2020 study in the journal Science concluded that marine heat waves have increased more than 20-fold as a result of climate warming. The authors found that in the first decade after satellites began recording ocean temperatures (i.e., after 1981), there were 27 large marine heat waves, with an average duration of 32 days and an average peak temperature anomaly of 8.5°F; in the 2010s, there were 172, which lasted 48 days on average with an average peak temperature almost 10°F above normal.
Much remains unclear about marine heat waves. For example, explains Nicholas Bond, research scientist at the University of Washington and Washington’s state climatologist, there is the question of why so many persist for weeks or months. “There must be something else going on that helps maintain them,” he says. He notes that one explanation is that as the ocean surface warms, it radiates heat into the atmosphere that prevents cloud cover from forming, exposing the seawater to increased sunlight and further warming.
However, enough is known about marine heat waves for scientists to be gravely concerned about their potential impacts. Of special note is the fact that those impacts can last long after the heat waves have disappeared. After three years of the Blob, the waters of the northeastern Pacific began to cool in 2016; but years later, scientists are still determining the extent to which the region’s ecosystem is likely to return fully to its pre-Blob status. Similarly, notes Scannell, who is a data scientist with Jupiter Intelligence, Inc., following the 2010-11 Western Australia event, “lots of kelp(巨藻) forests died, and it takes literally decades for those ecosystems to bounce back”.
Eric Oliver, a scientist from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, expressed his own opinion about the potential impact of the heat waves in tropical waters. “I think that’s really a tough issue,” he says. Life in the tropics, he notes, is adapted to “quite a narrow range of temperatures. So that’s where things can get really messy. We can have complete shifts in tropical systems.”
1. What can we infer from the figures listed in para. 1?| A．The problem of marine heat waves is becoming worse. |
| B．The satellites enable scientists to record ocean temperature precisely. |
| C．Climate change is the main cause of the marine heat waves. |
| D．Marine heat waves have been found by scientists for about 30 years. |
| A．Various factors that lead to marine heat waves. |
| B．The possible impacts of a warm ocean surface. |
| C．The possible reason why marine heat waves last long. |
| D．Scientists’ efforts in exploring the causes of heat waves. |
| A．The impact will disappear shortly after the sea water cools. |
| B．It takes long before the ecosystem makes a complete recovery. |
| C．Scientists have known enough to restore the impact. |
| D．The northeastern Pacific and Western Australia are the worst cases. |
| A．Concerned. | B．Indifferent. | C．Doubtful. | D．Optimistic. |
7 . Nowadays, with the popularity of modern traffic and modern communication means, our world is becoming much smaller. Thus our life today is much easier than it was hundreds of years ago, but meanwhile it has brought new problems, the biggest one of which is pollution. For a long time ever since, man has been polluting the earth. The more people, the more pollution.
To pollute means to make things dirty. Pollution comes in many ways. We see it, smell it, drink it and even hear it. Many years ago, the problem was not so serious because there were not so many people. When the land was used up or the river was dirty in one place, man moved to another place. But this is no longer true. Man is now slowly polluting the whole world.
Air pollution is still the most serious. It’s bad for all living things in the world, but it is not the only one kind of pollution. Water pollution kills our fish and pollutes our drinking water. Noise pollution makes us angry more easily.
Many countries are making rules to fight pollution. They stop people from burning coal in houses and factories in the city, and from putting dirty smoke into the air. Pollution by SO2 is now the most dangerous kind of air pollution. It is caused by heavy traffic. We are sure that if there are fewer people driving, there will be less air pollution.
The earth is our home. We must take care of it. That means keeping the land, water and air clean. And we must take care of the rise in pollution at the same time.
1. What is the reason for the world to become much smaller?| A．The rise in pollution. | B．Science and technology development. |
| C．The earth is being polluted day and night. | D．The earth is blown away by the wind every year. |
| A．Air pollution. | B．Rubbish pollution. |
| C．Noise pollution. | D．Water pollution. |
| A．It makes much noise. | B．It makes us angry more easily. |
| C．It makes our rivers and lakes dirty. | D．It’s bad for all living things in the world. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Critical. | C．Doubtful. | D．Indifferent. |
8 . Hibernation (冬眠) is a classic topic of science fiction. In movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, or Passengers, crew members are put into a state of sleep to take year-long journeys to space. Now a new study from Washington University has shown that human hibernation may soon become a reality.
The research team carried out tests on rats — animals that do not naturally hibernate. They first identified a group of neurons (神经元) in a deep brain region, which were found to be involved in controlling body temperature during hibernation. They showed that, in mice, these neurons could be stimulated using ultrasound (超声波), which was delivered through a helmet without causing an injury.
When receiving the ultrasound, the mice showed a drop in body temperature of about3°C, and their heart rates fell by about 47%. When the ultrasound system was switched off, they woke up again. The result was “surprising and fascinating”, said Hong Chen, a professor who led the work.
Researchers are also trying to determine how to harness the power of hibernation to help humans. They believe that it could be key to addressing health conditions like heart disease, and Alzheimer’s. Furthermore, hibernation’s ability to slow aging, which was observed in bats, could benefit space exploration, enabling longer missions with less food requirements. Research in animals also suggests that bodies of hibernating astronauts might lose less bone and muscle, making them fit and ready to start challenging exploration soon after they wake up.
By unlocking the secrets of this remarkable process, researchers may uncover ways to improve human health, as well as gain new insights into the natural world. Therefore, the exploration of hibernation is an exciting area that is sure to yield numerous benefits in the years to come.
The scientists now plan to look at how lowered body temperature might affect the cognitive abilities of humans. “Our next experiments will test working memory in monkeys. This is important because while astronauts physically hibernate as they fly into deep space, their brain still needs to be working,” said Chen.
1. How did researchers put rats into hibernation?| A．By lowering their body temperature. |
| B．By activating specific brain neurons. |
| C．By putting a regular helmet on them. |
| D．By using ultrasound through an operation. |
| A．Employ. | B．Challenge. | C．Overlook. | D．Discover. |
| A．It improves people’s mental health. |
| B．It predicts a variety of heart diseases. |
| C．It helps astronauts keep physically fit. |
| D．It enables astronauts to build up muscle. |
| A．To point out the significance of the study. |
| B．To bring out the focus of follow-up studies. |
| C．To discuss other factors affecting hibernation. |
| D．To explain practical applications of the finding. |
9 . 
The number of seabirds killed by colliding (撞击) with wind turbines could be cut by painting black-and-white stripes on the blades (叶片), and poles, say researchers. Graham Martin at the University of Birmingham, UK, and Alex Banks at Natural England, a public organization that has a say in planning applications for offshore wind farms in England, wanted to design a pattern that could be easily painted onto turbines to reduce their impact on bird life.
Between 140,000 and 328,000 birds are killed each year by onshore wind turbines in the US, according to, one estimate. It is harder to tell how many birds are killed by offshore turbines each year, says Martin, as they fall into the ocean.
A previous study, published in 2020, looked at the effect of painting a single blade black on four onshore turbines in Norway. Bird collisions were reduced by 70 percent compared with all-white turbines nearby. Martin believes that further improvements could have an even greater impact. Based on analysis of previous studies into bird vision and bird collisions with wind turbines, the two researchers came up with a series of guiding principles to aid their design of a turbine that would harm. fewer birds.
“Most birds do not see too much fine detail in their vision - especially compared to humans,” says Martin, so any design shouldn’t be too complex. Many collisions occur in low light, so the design should be easy to decipher in the dark, while high internal contrast would help the turbine stand out against different backgrounds, such as a cloudy or sunny sky. In low levels of light, black-and-white patterns are best, says Martin. “In the dark, a red-and-white pattern would rapidly look like shades of grey,” he says. The design hasn’t yet been tested, but Martin hopes that manufacturers will consider it, particularly as it would be easy and cheap to implement.
1. What can we know about Martin and Banks?| A．They have a say in planning applications. |
| B．They improve the efficiency of wind turbines. |
| C．They seek to reduce negative influence on bird life. |
| D．They design colorful turbines to help birds see clear. |
| A．To state the seriousness of bird collisions. | B．To estimate the death rate of bird collisions. |
| C．To compare the different wind turbine designs. | D．To criticize the poor design of the wind turbines. |
| A．Differ. | B．Recognize. | C．Clarify. | D．Impress. |
| A．A severe seabird collision phenomenon. | B．A new study on seabirds vision. |
| C．A potential wind turbine application. | D．A novel wind turbine design. |
10 . Being highly connected to a strong social network has its benefits. Now a new study is showing the same goes for trees, thanks to their underground neighbors. The study is the first to show that the growth of adult trees is linked to their participation in fungal (真菌) networks living in the forest soil. Though past research has focused on young trees, these findings give new insight into the importance of fungal networks to older trees — which are more environmentally beneficial for functions like capturing carbon.
“Large trees make up the main part of the forest, so they drive what the forest is doing,” said researcher Joseph Birch, who led the study. When they live in the forest soil, fungal networks act as a sort of highway, allowing water, nutrients and compounds to flow back and forth among the trees. The network also helps nutrients flow to resource-limited trees like family units that support one another in times of stress.
Cores taken from 350 Douglas firs (花旗松) showed that annual tree ring growth was related to the extent of fungal connections a tree had with other trees. They had much higher growth than those that had only a few connections. The research also showed that trees with more connections to many unique fungi had much greater growth than those with only one or two connections. “If you have this network that is helping trees grow faster, that helps capture more carbon year after year. These networks may help trees grow more steadily even as conditions become more stressful, and could even help protect them against death.” said Birch.
Birch hopes his findings lead to further studies in different kinds of forests in other geographical areas, because it’s likely that the connections among trees change from year to year. He said, “Knowing whether fungal networks are operating the same way in other tree species could inform how we reforest areas after harvesting them, and inform how we plant trees to preserve these networks.”
1. In what way do the new findings differ from the previous ones?| A．They reveal the value of fungal networks to adult trees. |
| B．They clarify misunderstandings of fungal networks. |
| C．They demonstrate a new way to capture carbon. |
| D．They confirm the benefits of fungal networks. |
| A．By acting as the center of family units. |
| B．By maintaining the balance of resources. |
| C．By fighting against diseases. |
| D．By bettering forest soil conditions. |
| A．Tree rings. |
| B．Cores from Douglas firs. |
| C．Douglas firs. |
| D．Fungal networks. |
| A．The fungal networks support one another in times of stress. |
| B．The fungal networks enable us to know more about reforestation. |
| C．The findings can apply to different kinds of forests in other geographical areas. |
| D．The fungal networks will help trees grow more steadily if conditions become more stressful. |
