Space Station Rice Tests Show Promise
Chinese astronauts have successfully grown rice seedlings (幼苗) onboard the Tiangong space station.
There have been other rice
China launched the Wentian space laboratory into orbit on July 24. The space lab, which weighs 23 metric tons and is 17.9 meters tall, is the country’s
“We want to investigate how microgravity affects the plant flowering time on the molecular (分子的) level
“If we want to land on and explore Mars, food
2 . Scientists at MIT have managed to change ordinary spinach (菠菜) plants into natural sensors which can find chemicals used in bombs. The secret to giving spinach these special powers is nanotech (纳米技术), which is scientific area that deals with making or changing things that are extremely tiny.
“Ordinary spinach plants can be found everywhere and easy to store; like other plants, they normally take in carbon dioxide gas,” the scientists say. “But actually they can sense small changes of soil and water potential and respond to them. If we tap into this point, there is a wealth of information to access.” That’s what the scientists use to power their tiny experiments.
For this experiment, the scientists placed two different kinds of tiny nano-materials into spinach plants. To get them into the plants, the scientists put a liquid containing them on the bottom of the plant’s leaves. As part of its natural process, the spinach plant pulls water through its roots and into its leaves. If the water contains certain chemicals used in bombs, the tiny sensors in the leaves make the nano-tubes, which, along with the sensors, were placed into the spinach plant before by the scientists, produce a slightly special kind of light. By watching the plant constantly using a camera attached to a cheap computer, the scientists set up a system that can send a warning email if chemicals from explosives are found in the water.
The computer the scientists used is about the size of a playing card. They say that in the future, their system could even use a cell phone with its camera changed slightly. Discovering chemicals used in bombs is just one of the many uses the researchers are exploring. They have used such plants to discover several other dangerous chemicals as well. From their point of view, there’s no doubt that in the future, such systems could give farmers specific information about the health of the land and water on their farms.
1. Why do the scientists use plants to do the experiment?| A．They are common in the daily life. | B．They are environmentally responsive. |
| C．They absorb much carbon dioxide gas. | D．They are small in size and easy to store. |
| A．To control the camera. | B．To contain the liquid. |
| C．To fix the tiny sensors. | D．To give off plant light. |
| A．It’s diverse. | B．It’s unexpected. | C．It’s limited. | D．It’s cheap. |
| A．Spinach Is Sensitive to Chemicals in Bombs |
| B．Spinach Sends Warning Emails Using Nanotech |
| C．Nanotech Helps Spinach Grov Healthily |
| D．Nanotech Protects Spinach from Danger |
China has formally made an announcement of its first five national parks of 230, 000 from Tibet to Hainan, focusing on
Giant Panda National Park will surely be
The intersection (交汇处) of Jilin and Heilongiang provinces is home to Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park, which
China’s best-preserved rainforest is in Hainan, the only place in the world
Unlike those three, Wuyishan National Park in Fujian Province and Sanjiangyuan National Park on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau focus
Now, with some tourist programs
4 . Until recently, gravitational waves could have been the stuff of Einstein’s imagination. Before they were detected, these waves in space time existed only in the physicist’s general theory of relativity, as far as scientists knew. Now, researchers are on the hunt for more ways to detect the waves. “The study of gravitational waves is booming,” says astrophysicist Karan Jani of Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “This is just remarkable. No field I can think of in fundamental physics has seen progress this fast.”
Just as light comes in a variety of wavelengths, so do gravitational waves. Different wave lengths point to different types of origins of the universe and require different kinds of detectors. Gravitational waves with wavelengths of a few thousand kilometers—like those detected by the United States, Italy and Japan—come mostly from pairs of black holes 10 or so times the mass of the sun, or from collisions of dense cosmic blocks called neutron stars (中子星). These detectors could also spot waves from certain types of exploding stars and rapidly moving neutron stars.
In contrast, huge waves that span light-years are thought to be created by orbiting pairs of bigger black holes with masses billions of times that of the sun. In June, scientists reported the first strong evidence of these types of waves by turning the entire galaxy (星系) into a detector, watching how the waves make slight changes to the timing of regular blinks from neutron stars throughout the Milky Way.
Physicists now hope to dive into a vast, cosmic ocean of gravitational waves of all sorts of sizes. These waves could reveal new details about the secret lives of exotic objects such as black holes and unknown parts of the universe.
Physicist Jason Hogan of Stanford University thinks there are still a lot of gaps in the coverage of wavelengths. “But it makes sense to cover all the bases. Who knows what else we may find?” he says. The search for capturing the full complement of the universe’s gravitational waves exactly could take observatories out into the moon, to the atomic area and elsewhere.
1. What does Karan Jani think of the current study on gravitational waves?| A．It is rapid and pioneering. |
| B．It is slow but steadily increasing. |
| C．It is interrupted due to limited detectors. |
| D．It is progressing as fast as any other field. |
| A．The creation of different kinds of detectors. |
| B．Collisions of planets outside the solar system. |
| C．The presence of light in different wavelengths. |
| D．Activities involving black holes and neutron stars. |
| A．By analyzing sunlight. |
| B．By locating the new galaxy. |
| C．By using the whole galaxy as a tool. |
| D．By observing the sun’s regular movement. |
| A．It’ll exclude the atomic field. |
| B．It’ll focus exactly on the mapping of the galaxy. |
| C．It’ll require prioritizing certain wavelengths on the moon. |
| D．It’ll explore potential places to detect gravitational waves. |
5 . My, what a big beak you have!
For humans, adapting to climate change will mostly be a matter of technology. More air conditioning, better-designed houses and bigger flood defenses may help to make the effects of a warmer world less harmful.
In some species of Australian parrot, for instance, beak size has increased by between 4% and 10% since 1871. Another study, this time in North American dark-eyed juncos, another bird, found the same pattern.
All that is perfectly consistent with evolutionary theory. “Allen’s rule”, named for Joel Asaph Allen, who suggested it in 1877, holds that warm-blooded animals in hot places tend to have larger body parts than those in temperate (温带的) regions.
Ms. Ryding is not the first researcher to take that approach. But it is hard, when dealing with individual species, to prove that climate change was the cause of an anatomical (解剖学的) changes. All sorts of other factors, from changes in prey to the evolving reproductive preferences of males or females, might have been driving the changes.
| A．However, looking at the bigger picture makes the pattern clearer. |
| B．For now, at least, the increase is small, never much more than 10%. |
| C．Animals will have to rely on changing their bodies or their behaviors. |
| D．It seems that the future world is going to be hotter than humans are used to. |
| E．Therefore, the negative effects of a warmer world are visible in these animals’ bodies. |
| F．Such adaptations boost an animal’s surface area relative to its body, helping it to release extra heat. |
| G．Similar trends are seen in mammals, with species of mice and bats evolving bigger ears, legs and wings. |
6 . When a leafy plant is under attack, it doesn’t sit quietly. Back in 1983, two scientists, Jack Schultz and Ian Baldwin, reported that young maple trees getting bitten by insects send out a particular smell that neighboring plants can get. These chemicals come from the injured parts of the plant and seem to be an alarm. What the plants pump through the air is a mixture of chemicals known as volatile organic compounds, VOCs for short.
Scientists have found that all kinds of plants give out VOCs when being attacked. It’s a plant’s way of crying out. But is anyone listening? Apparently. Because we can watch the neighbours react.
Some plants pump out smelly chemicals to keep insects away. But others do double duty. They pump out perfumes designed to attract different insects who are natural enemies to the attackers. Once they arrive, the tables are turned. The attacker who was lunching now becomes lunch.
In study after study, it appears that these chemical conversations help the neighbors .The damage is usually more serious on the first plant, but the neighbors, relatively speaking, stay safer because they heard the alarm and knew what to do.
Does this mean that plants talk to each other? Scientists don’t know. Maybe the first plant just made a cry of pain or was sending a message to its own branches, and so, in effect, was talking to itself. Perhaps the neighbors just happened to “overhear” the cry. So information was exchanged, but it wasn’t a true, intentional back and forth. Charles Darwin, over 150 years ago, imagined a world far busier, noisier and more intimate (亲密的) than the world we can see and hear. Our senses are weak. There’s a whole lot going on.
1. What does a plant do when it is under attack?| A．It makes noises. | B．It gets help from other plants. |
| C．It stands quietly | D．It sends out certain chemicals. |
| A．The attackers get attacked. |
| B．The insects gather under the table. |
| C．The plants get ready to fight back. |
| D．The perfumes attract natural enemies. |
| A．predict natural disasters |
| B．protect themselves against insects |
| C．talk to one another intentionally |
| D．help their neighbors when necessary |
| A．The world is changing faster than ever. |
| B．People have stronger senses than before |
| C．The world is more complex than it seems |
| D．People in Darwin’s time were imaginative. |
7 . Sitting inside the Shenzhou XVI spacecraft, Gui Haichao, the first Chinese civilian on a spaceflight, together with the other two astronauts,
Born in 1986, Gui’s
Gui then pursued postdoctoral research overseas and published about 20 SCI academic papers in top international journals. After returning to China, he received Beihang’s invitation to teach
In the spring of 2018, Gui was told that China’s manned space authorities had made a decision
8 . With no special equipment, no fences and no watering, two abandoned agricultural fields in the UK have been rewilded (重新野化), in large part due to the efforts of jays, which actually “engineered” these new woodlands. Researchers now hope that rewilding projects can take a more natural and hands-off approach and that jays can shed some of their bad reputations.
The two fields, which researchers have called the New Wilderness and the Old Wilderness, had been abandoned in 1996 and 1961 respectively. The former was a bare field, while the latter was grassland—both lay next to ancient woodlands. Researchers had suspected that the fields would gradually return to wilderness, but it was impressive to see just how quickly this happened, and how much of it was owed to birds.
Using aerial data, the researchers monitored the two sites. After just 24 years, the New Wilderness had grown into a young, healthy wood with 132 live trees per hectare, over half of which (57%) were oaks. Meanwhile, the Old Wilderness resembled a mature woodland after 39 years, with 390 trees per hectare.
“This native woodland restoration was approaching the structure (but not the species composition) of long-established woodlands within six decades,” the researchers explained in the study.
Part of this reforestation was done by the wind, and researchers suspect that previous ground disturbance may have aided the woodland establishment—which is good news, as it would suggest that agricultural areas may be reforested faster than anticipated. However, animals—Eurasian jays, thrushes, wood mice, and squirrels—also played an important role in helping the forests take shape. This handful of species provided much of the natural regeneration needed for the forest to develop. Jays, in particular, seem to have done a lot of heavy lifting.
1. What does the underlined word “shed” in Paragraph 1 refer to?| A．Be opposed to. |
| B．Be ashamed of. |
| C．Get used to. |
| D．Get rid of. |
| A．The scale of the woodlands. |
| B．The diversity of the fields. |
| C．The rate of the changes. |
| D．The frequency of the wilderness. |
| A．The woodland restoration was approaching the structure of long-established ones. |
| B．Much of the wilderness of the fields was owed to birds. |
| C．Previous ground disturbance aided the woodland establishment. |
| D．How quickly the fields returned to wilderness over time. |
| A．The essential role of humans in the reforestation. |
| B．The factors that contribute to the reforestation. |
| C．The importance of woodland establishment. |
| D．The threats faced by a handful of wild animals. |
9 . For thousands of years, Chinese writers have travelled all over the country to take down notes about the geographical conditions of each city. Among them, well-known Chinese geographer and writer Li Daoyuan, in the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534), composed his book, Commentary on the Water Classics, after studying the original literary version, Water Classics. He later expanded the river records to 1, 252 from the original 137.
The book is now being studied again by Professor Li Xiaojie and his team from Fudan University. They have been using drawing software and 3D modelling to recreate the waterway situations on a map based on the book description. So far, they have completed research on four rivers.
“Ancient people knew really well how to apply the power of nature to technical considerations,”Li said, giving the example of Qianjin’e, one of the most famous ancient water conservation projects in Luoyang, Henan. In order to lead the river into the city for irrigation (灌溉) in ancient Luoyang, the officials built a canal branch by separating a northwest-southeast river. However, the canal water wasn't enough to support the citizens in dry seasons. To solve that, on the northern side of the canal branch, the officials built a reservoir (水库) and a channel to lead the water to the canal branch, where the waterways would converge and flow together to the city.
In Commentary on the Water Classics, a total of 2, 800 cities are recorded with details. Still, the process of recreation takes much effort. After doing a lot of text analysis and fieldwork, the team has gradually created the model with 3D modelling software based on repeated deductions (推论).
For Professor Li, the book is not only a record of the natural landscape over 1, 000 years ago, but also a detailed description of humanity and culture and a treasure for today’s reference.
1. What can we learn about the book Commentary on the Water Classics?| A．It has been out of date. | B．It explains 3D modelling. |
| C．It keeps records of 137 rivers. | D．It is based on previous studies. |
| A．Join. | B．Pass. | C．Cross. | D．Begin. |
| A．Its major problems. | B．Its detailed analysis. |
| C．Its complex process. | D．Its successful application. |
| A．3D Technology Fuels Modern Research |
| B．Ancient Classics Inspire Modern Research |
| C．An Effective Approach to Model Recreation |
| D．A Famous Writer of Chinese Ancient Classics |
10 . Traditionally, profiting from forests often meant capitalizing on timber (木材)——choosing commercial timber. Yet increasingly, there is an understanding that it’s of greater significance to keep trees standing than cut them down for financial profit. Money is not everything. We have to recognize real and lasting value is from natural resources. But money is a fact of life.
Good news is that we can expect entire natural woodland is left undamaged and still provides a revenue (收益) stream. Leaving woodland complete does not necessarily mean that we do not touch it at all. Conservation work may involve building back biodiversity or the removal of foreign plant species.
A healthy woodland system can provide a range of yields (产物). Besides eatable yields——top fruit, berries, and food crops, it produces substances for chemical use. The non-timber forest products provided by natural ecosystems will vary significantly depending on where they are. But there’re almost always ways to explore to acquire revenue.
A project in the U.K. shows woodland is also a draw for visitors. It engages a community who creates a sustainable area of woodland. The sale of handmade wooden items and non-timber forest products is involved. But the community largely obtains revenue by opening up parts of the natural woodland to the public with an adventure playground and outdoor recreational activities on the site. It also offers courses on nest building, special wildlife events and more. The project is thought to have great uniqueness. In terms of revenue, it centers round the existing natural land; the yields woodland can provide become side products.
Recreational activities, tours, and classes are just the commencement. A rich and biodiverse woodland can be an ecosystem that draws in people looking for a beautiful place to stay. Woodland has great value in ecological and social terms. And when you nurse it, it could also add to the income from your land.
1. What do people increasingly think about forest conservation?| A．It is difficult to carry out. |
| B．It means making full use of timber. |
| C．It outweighs financial development. |
| D．It should centre on building back biodiversity. |
| A．It makes woodland itself the main product. |
| B．It focuses on protecting natural land. |
| C．It aims to promote ecotourism. |
| D．It provides educational experiences. |
| A．Intention. |
| B．Wish. |
| C．Exception. |
| D．Beginning. |
| A．Woodland Brings Profit While Staying Complete |
| B．A Project Creates Sustainable Woodland |
| C．Forest Conservation Has Been a Top Priority |
| D．Non-timber Products Help Gain More Revenue |
