1 . Houseplants have been rising in popularity for good reasons. They can brighten our spaces, freshen the air and benefit our mental health. While the benefits aren't quite as measurable as getting our daily minerals and vitamins, plenty of positive findings show plants help us thrive.
Plants bring color and vitality to our worlds. Though maybe only subtly, our mood can be impacted by the surroundings. Green plants and cheery flowers are known to have a positive effect on mood because the mind equates plant life to the soothing, uplifting area of nature.
Taking care of plants gives us a sense of pride and achievement.
Plants' presence can cut down on stress. Interacting with plants reduce signs of both psychological and physical stress. When we engage in positive tasks that require mindful focus, we can absolutely benefit on both physical and psychological levels.
We don't necessarily need houseplants to survive, but they certainly can make a positive difference in our lives when we bring them into our homes. The benefits of indoor plants are undeniable.
| A．Parenting plants can be tough. |
| B．Treat plant care as a mindfulness practice. |
| C．So give plant-parenting a shot for yourself. |
| D．Plants remind us that change is a part of life. |
| E．Keeping plants reminds us of our link to people around us. |
| F．Green gives the mind a comforting sense of calm and positivity. |
| G．Caring for plants during leisure time is beneficial to housewives. |
2 . Sometimes people make history. George Washington became the first president of the United States and made history. Sometimes wars make history. The two World Wars are examples. Sometimes nature even becomes part of history. Shaking earthquakes are recorded in history books.
Sixteen years ago, nature caused just such a history-making event. In September 2005, Hurricane Katrina came ashore in New Orleans, Louisiana. The deadly storm flooded New Orleans. Before Katrina, no other big American city had ever flooded in the history of the country. This natural disaster caused great harm and death.
New Orleans is located below sea level. This location places it at great risk. Levees were built to protect New Orleans from the ocean. (A levee is like a wall between the city and the ocean.) When Hurricane Katrina came ashore, water moved over the levees into the city. Flooding made it necessary for everyone to leave the city. Before Katrina, Creole food (a special kind of cooking only in Louisiana) filled the air with delicious smells. The sound of jazz music traveled through the streets. Now the city has to return to its former glory.
Before Katrina, the U.S. government had never made everyone leave a city. People in New Orleans had to find shelter quickly. Some had to stay at the Superdome Sports Center. Some rode on buses to other towns. Thousands drove their cars to get away from the storm. The roads and shelters filled up fast.
The lesson learned from Katrina was that cities must be better prepared for big storms and other terrible disasters caused by nature. Being prepared might have kept more people safe. Hurricane Katrina is one of the history-making events that will be remembered forever. Today, history is still being made that will shape the future.
1. What does the author tell us about New Orleans?| A．It was built above sea level. |
| B．It had few jazz musicians after Katrina. |
| C．It was the first U.S. city that had been flooded. |
| D．It created a wholly new way to cook after Katrina. |
| A．They were almost useless for fighting Katrina. |
| B．They helped people leave New Orleans quickly. |
| C．They made New Orleans a special American city. |
| D．They should be built to match the size of New Orleans. |
| A．Put up more shelters in the city. | B．Build more levees around the city. |
| C．Teach people how to avoid floods. | D．Try to get ready for natural disasters. |
| A．Storms are dangerous | B．Katrina makes history |
| C．Floods shape Louisiana | D．History must be remembered |
I still remember the sunshine that came in from the floor-to-ceiling windows of Pudong Airport on the morning of the 29th. It was brilliant and brilliant. The anxiety and excitement of careful thought were not obliterated（抹杀）by the three-hour rumbling sound, so that he almost lost his pass when he passed the customs.
The first thing I saw was the red double-decker airport bus, quietly nestling in the same bright sunshine in Hong Kong. The bus passed a bridge, followed by a green area, and then a bridge. On the sea were various cargo ships, unconsciously matching each other with colorful containers to create the colors of Hong Kong. The clouds are like cotton candy just out of the oven, densely crowded in the sky not too far away.
I started walking around on the first day. After packing my luggage at the hotel, I went to a small well-known "Yishun Milk Company" near Jordan. I ordered double skin milk and a portion of something else. I don’t remember the taste. I just remember that the uncles and aunts over there are very friendly. I sat under the air-conditioning blower silly to eat, and the uncle greeted me to change my seat and told me to be careful of catching a cold. It's really easy to have a good impression of a city. One sentence makes the mood as crystal clear as the weather in October.
Paragraph 1：
Then I went to the most prosperous area in Yau Ma Tei.
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Paragraph 2：
Suddenly, it rained heavily in the sky.
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4 . There's nothing better than a walk in the countryside for lifting our spirits. Connecting with nature has been proven to help our mental health. For some, the best medicine is to take a walk through a forest, but as we admire the trees that surround us. It's worth knowing these trees are doing more than just being nice things to look at.
We’re already aware of the healing properties of trees—they produce oxygen and clean the air we breathe by absorbing about a quarter of all human-caused carbon dioxide emissions. But there's more to these impressive forms of plants than we might think. Researchers have discovered evidence that proves they are actually clever.
It's thought that trees talk and share resources right under our feet, using a fungal network. Under the ground are tree roots, and “communication” among them, along with bacteria, are thousands of superfine hyphae. And research has shown that they are all interconnected. They can help each other by sharing nutrients, and can even warn of approaching threats. Scientists say its like the trees are talking to one another.
Ecologist Suzanne Simard has called this network the Wood Wide Web. She discovered that parent trees use this network to help their offspring. Speaking to the BBC, she said: “We found that the parent trees would favour those seedlings that were of their own kind” by sending them more nutrients. She also found that trees are smart enough to change their behaviour and have managed to adapt and survive in a changing environment.
So it seems trees really are the stars of our natural world, and with around three trillion of them on our planet, it's time to show them some respect if we want them to flourish.
1. How do trees help improve the air quality?| A．By taking in carbon dioxide emissions. | B．By taking on a nice and clean look. |
| C．By share resources right under the ground. | D．By communicating with each other. |
| A．Roots. | B．Sunshine. | C．Water. | D．Hyphae. |
| A．Friends. | B．Sisters. | C．Neighbors. | D．Children. |
| A．How Trees Help | B．Intelligent Trees |
| C．Stars of Our Natural World | D．Properties of Trees |
5 . When you walk on a sandy beach, it takes more energy than striding down a sidewalk — because the weight of your body pushes into the sand. Turns out, the same thing is true for vehicles driving on roads. The weight of the vehicles creates a very shallow indentation (凹陷) in the pavement (路面) — and it makes it such that it’s continuously driving up a very shallow hill.
Jeremy Gregory, a sustainability scientist at M.I.T. and his team modeled how much energy could be saved — and green-house gases avoided — by simply stiffening (硬化) the nation’s roads and highways. And they found that stiffening 10 percent of the nation’s roads every year could prevent 440 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions over the next five decades — enough to offset half a percent of projected transportation sector emissions over that time period. To put those emissions savings into context — that amount is equivalent to how much CO2 you’d spare the planet by keeping a billion barrels of oil in the ground — or by growing seven billion trees — for a decade.
The results are in the Transportation Research Record.
As for how to stiffen roads? Gregory says you could mix small amounts of synthetic fibers or carbon nanotubes into paving materials. Or you could pave with cement-based concrete, which is stiffer than asphalt (沥青).
This system could also be a way to shave carbon emissions without some of the usual hurdles. Usually, when it comes to reducing emissions in the transportation sector, you’re talking about changing policies related to vehicles and also driver behavior, which involves millions and millions of people — as opposed to changing the way we design and maintain our pavements. That’s just on the order of thousands of people who are working in transportation agencies. And when it comes to retrofitting (翻新) our streets and highways — those agencies are where the rubber meets the road.
1. Why does the author mention “walk on a sandy beach” in paragraph 1?| A．To present a fact. | B．To make a contrast. |
| C．To explain a rule. | D．To share an experience. |
| A．Hardening the road. | B．Keeping oil in the ground. |
| C．Growing trees for decades. | D．Improving the transportation. |
| A．Gaining more support. | B．Consuming less money. |
| C．Involving more people. | D．Facing fewer usual obstacles. |
| A．Those agencies are likely to make more rules. |
| B．Those agencies will change some related policies. |
| C．Those agencies might put more rubber tires on the roads. |
| D．Those agencies will play a key role in making this happen. |
6 . British sculptor Jason Taylor has made it his mission to use his talent to conserve our ecosystems by creating underwater museums. Over the years, the environmentalist has put over 850 massive artworks underwater worldwide. On February 1, 2021, Taylor launched his latest work---The Underwater Museum of Cannes.
“The main goal was to bring attention to the fact that our oceans need our help,” Taylor told Dezeen. “Ocean ecologies have been destroyed by human activity in the Mediterranean over the past few decades, and it is not obvious what is taking place when observing the sea from afar.”
The Underwater Museum of Cannes contains 6 sculptures featuring local residents of various ages. They range from Maurice, an 80-year-old fisherman, to Anouk, a 9-year-old student. Towering over 6-feet-tall and weighing 10 tons, the faces are sectioned into two parts, with the outer part like a mask. The mask indicates that the world’s oceans appear powerful and unbeatable from the surface but house an ecosystem that is extremely fragile to careless human activities.
Though the waters surrounding the sculptures now appear a pristine blue, the seabed was filled with old boat engines, pipes, and other human-made trash when the project began about four years ago. Besides removing the trash, Taylor also restored the area’s seagrass. Just one square meter of the seagrass can generate up to 10 liters of oxygen daily. The seagrass also helps prevent coastal erosion and provides habitats for many ocean creatures.
“The idea of creating an underwater museum was to draw more people underwater and develop a sense of care and protection,” Taylor told Dezeen. “If we threw unwanted waste near a forest, there would be a public outcry. But this is happening every day in our surrounding waters and it largely goes unnoticed.”
1. What are the underwater museums intended to do?| A．To make huge profits. | B．To raise awareness of protecting the ocean. |
| C．To show Jason Taylor’s talent. | D．To draw attention to endangered sea animals. |
| A．To popularize the features of the locals. |
| B．To remind people to protect themselves. |
| C．To reflect people’s protection of the ocean. |
| D．To stress the sensitiveness of the ecosystem. |
| A．How the project was started. | B．How the seagrass was restored. |
| C．What recovery effort the project made. | D．Why the surroundings were improved. |
| A．The situation of the ocean is easily ignored. |
| B．The destruction caused to the ocean is noticeable. |
| C．Forests play a more important role in ecosystems. |
| D．People have zero tolerance to damage done to nature. |
7 . If you’ve ever had a dog, you know just how deep a connection you can develop with “man’s best friend”. But a dog has a much shorter life span — about 12 to 15 years long — than humans, which means every dog owner has to go through the heartbreaking moment when their loving pet passes away.
Why not make a clone of that dog then? This is the solution offered by a South Korean company, Sooam Biotech Research Foundation. The company has successfully cloned at least 400 dogs, mostly for US customers, ever since it pioneered the technique in 2005. Now, Sooam Biotech is planning to introduce their business to UK dog owners, offering them dogs that look just like their lost ones.
Meanwhile, another dog is selected to supply an egg. Researchers then replace the DNA in the egg with that from the skin cell and implant the egg into the womb (子宫) of a female dog. The egg grows into a puppy over the following two months. To clone a dog, researchers first need to take a skin cell from a living dog or one that has just died.
The whole process takes less than a day, but it comes at a shockingly high price — around £63,000 (614,000 yuan). But if you can’t afford it now, you can also save the cells in a laboratory and access them at a later date. Just like identical twins of humans, they share the exact same DNA but there will still be small differences between them. “The spots on a Dalmatian clone will be different, for example,” Insung Hwang, head of Sooam Biotech, told The Guardian. However, as magical as cloning might sound, there is no guarantee that the cloned dog will be a perfect replica of the original one.
Dog owners will also have to accept the fact that personality is not “clone-able”. Apart from genes, personality is also determined by upbringing and environment, which are both “random elements [that] cloning technologies simply cannot overcome”, Professor Tom Kirkwood at Newcastle University, UK, told The Telegraph.
Perhaps bringing our dogs back with cloning is not the best way to remember them after all.
Kirkwood, a dog owner himself, pointed out: “An important aspect of our relationship with them is coming to terms with the pain of letting go.”
1. According to the article, Sooam Biotech Research Foundation is ______.| A．working on plans to help dog owners enjoy their pets longer |
| B．offering a way to help dogs give birth to more puppies |
| C．providing a service that will make copies of pet dogs |
| D．introducing a completely new technique to clone dogs |
| A．Dog cloning technology hadn’t been put into practice until recently. |
| B．Dog cloning is very expensive and usually takes several months to complete. |
| C．Dog cloning is very popular among US and UK pet owners. |
| D．Cloned dogs might develop different habits and characteristics even though they look very similar. |
a. an egg is taken from another dog
b. a skin cell is taken from the pet dog and saved in a laboratory
c. the egg is placed in the womb of a female dog
d. the DNA of the egg is replaced by the DNA from the skin cell
e. the egg grows into a puppy in two months
| A．acbde. | B．adbce. | C．bacde. | D．badce. |
| A．disapproves of | B．supports | C．is afraid of | D．is curious about |
Four men once came to a wet place in the roadless forest to fish. They cast their tent upon pine-clothed rocks. On sweet-smelling branches they slept the sleep of unsuccessful fishermen, for the sun made them lazy and the rain made them wet in turn. Finally they ate the last bit of bacon and the last wonderful cake.
Immediately a little man volunteered to stay and hold the camp while the remaining three should go miles to a farmhouse for supplies. They looked at him dismally (沮丧地). “There's only one of you — the devil is your brother,” they said and disappeared down the hill. Then night came and the three had not returned. The little man sat close to the campfire and added branches. Suddenly he heard the coming rustle (沙沙声) of the dead leaves. The little man arose slowly to his feet, his clothes refused to fit his back, his pipe dropped from his mouth, and his knees struck each other. “Hah!” he cried. A low voice replied and a bear paced into the light of the fire. The little man supported himself upon a tree and recognized his visitor — a bear.
The bear was obviously an experienced fighter, for its fur had become deep yellow with age. There was confidence in his small pace and in his shining eyes. It rolled back its lips and exposed its white teeth. The fire enlarged the red of its mouth. The little man had never come across the terrible animal before and was too scared to breathe. “Ah!” The bear interpreted this silence as a gladiator (角斗士). It approached cautiously and slowly. As it came near, the boots of fear were suddenly upon the little man's feet. He cried out and then ran around the campfire. “Ho!” said the bear to himself, “this thing won't fight — he runs. Well, let me catch him.” It started strongly around the campfire. The little man screamed and ran violently. Twice around they went.
In desperation the little man flew into the tent.
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The little man went into giggling (咯咯笑).
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9 . The amount of plastic pollution in the oceans is rapidly increasing. This is problematic, as at least 700 species of sea animals may mistake it for a tasty snack. While we know that some species seem to eat plastic because it looks like jellyfish or some other food source, less research has been carried out into what plastic smells like to marine animals.
But now, a study from the University of North Carolina has found that the coating of algae that naturally builds up on ocean plastics causes the rubbish to give off the scent of food.
The researchers took 15 loggerhead turtles, each around five months old, and placed them in a laboratory tank. They then piped in clean water, clean plastic, turtle food, and plastic that had been immersed in the marine environment for five weeks.
The turtles showed no reaction to the smell of clean water or clean plastic. But when they were exposed to the smell of ocean-soaked plastic 'or turtle food, they exhibited food-seeking behaviors like reaching their noses out of the water or showing increasing activities.
“This finding is the first demonstration that the smell of ocean plastics causes animals to eat them,” said Dr. Kenneth J Lohmann, who took part in the study. "It's common to find loggerhead turtles with their digestive systems fully or partially blocked because they've eaten plastic materials. There are also increasing reports of sea turtles that have become ill and stranded on the beach due to their ingestion of plastic."
According to the researchers, areas of the ocean with dense concentrations of plastic may trick turtles and other animals into thinking that there is an abundant food source. "Once these plastics are in the ocean, we don't have a good way to remove them or prevent them from smelling like food," said Lohmann.
1. Why is plastic pollution posing a threat to marine animals?| A．It may eat up all jellyfish. | B．It may mislead them as food. |
| C．It may kill them with its smell. | D．It may trap 700 species of sea animals. |
| A．Sea water | B．Clear water | C．Brand-new plastic | D．Sea-soaked plastic |
| A．Turtles should be trained to be more intelligent. |
| B．Plastics should be kept from getting into the ocean at all. |
| C．An abundant food source should be offered to sea animals. |
| D．Researchers should come up with a solution to the current problem. |
| A．Ways Found to Remove Plastics | B．Loggerhead Turtles Faced with Food Shortage |
| C．Ocean Plastics- Trick or Treat? | D．Plastic Pollution- Compromise or Control? |
10 . Since it was completed in 1869, the Suez Canal has been one of the world's most important bodies of water and bases of the global economy. But the giant container ship that has been stuck across the waterway sparks a very modern problem: About a tenth of global trade passes through the Suez Canal, and it could be facing a weeks-long blockage.
The blockage originates from its vital location in geography - the importance of the canal stems first and foremost from its location; it is the only place that directly connects the waters of Europe with the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the countries of the Asia-Pacific. Without the Suez, shipments traveling between those parts of the world would have to travel through the entire continent of Africa, adding large amounts of costs and extending their journey time a lot.
Dating back to history, caused by French interests and exploration, the Suez was built over the course of 10 years by local peasants forced into labor. Financial troubles forced the Ottoman governor of Egypt to sell a controlling stake(股份) in the waterway to Britain in 1875; 13 years later, a multinational summit resulted in an agreement that the canal would be free for all countries to use, both in peace and war.
Nowadays, more than 80% of global trade by volume is moved by sea, and disruptions are adding billions of dollars to supply chain costs. Commerzbank analysts said on Friday that the episode could cause oil to become more expensive for consumers because of higher tanker rates as a result of the incident.
1. What effect did the blockage have on shipments traveling according to Paragraph 2?| A．Decreasing the cost. | B．Consuming less amounts of time. |
| C．Cutting off the connection. | D．Extending the traveling route. |
| A．French peasants were forced to build the Canal. |
| B．British colonists played a leading part in building the Canal. |
| C．The Ottoman governor contributed to the construction of the Canal. |
| D．The canal was freely available to all countries after 1888. |
| A．Oil prices would be rising. |
| B．The incident caused the rise of the supply chain costs. |
| C．More than half of the global trade relied on sea transportation. |
| D．Consumers would have to pay more to travel across Europe. |
| A．A research paper. | B．A guidebook. | C．A news report. | D．A biography. |
