1 . One man’s trash is another man’s treasure is absolutely the case in Turkey where garbage collectors started collecting books that have been thrown away and ended up opening a library.
It started when garbage man Durson Ipek found a bag of abandoned books when he was working and then it snowballed from there. Ipek and other garbage men started gathering the books they found on the streets that were ready for landfills (垃圾填埋地) and as their collection started to grow, so did word of mouth. Soon, local residents started donating books directly. The library was initially available only to the garbage employees and their families to use but as the collection grew, so did public interest and the library was opened to the public in 2017.
“On the one hand, there were those who were leaving these books on the streets. On the other hand, others were looking for these books,” Ankaya mayor Alper Tasdelen told CNN. “We started to discuss the idea of creating a library from these books. When everyone supported it, this project happened.”
All the books that are found are sorted and checked for condition. If they pass, they go on the shelves. Today, the library has over 6,000 books that range from fiction to nonfiction and there’s a very popular children’s section that even has a collection of comic books. An entire section is devoted to scientific research and there are also books available in English and French. The collection has grown so large that the library loans books to schools and educational programs.
“Village school teachers from all over Turkey are requesting books,” Tasdelen told CNN. The government has to hire a full-time employee to manage the library.
This library is incredibly popular. It is frequently filled with the children of the city’s workers and students from nearby schools. There is a waiting room set up for readers and chess boards for the people who visit the library. You can even enjoy a cup of tea in the waiting room.
1. What does the underlined word “snowballed” in paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Declined quickly. | B．Grew slowly. | C．Developed rapidly. | D．Worsened steadily. |
| A．Its great popularity. | B．Its potential significance. |
| C．Its huge collection of books. | D．Its wide variety of readers. |
| A．To raise people’s awareness of recycling. | B．To classify and check the donated books. |
| C．To expand the social influence of the library. | D．To meet the huge demand from rural teachers. |
| A．It’s an excellent place to enjoy tea. | B．It’s crowded with readers every day. |
| C．It needs to improve its management. | D．It provides a very considerate service. |
2 . We humans often say that a growling dog is “angry” or a purring cat is “happy”. But those terms are of little use to scientists like David Anderson who studies the brain circuits (脑回路) involved in emotional behaviors.
“We have to do more than just project our own emotions onto other animals,” he says. Yet Anderson describes research from his lab that suggests the brain circuits underlying human emotions have a lot in common with circuits found in animals’. “What lies beneath feelings,” he says, “is brain states that produce certain behaviors. And that’s the part of emotions we share in common with animals and that scientists can study.”
For example, Anderson’s lab has investigated fruit flies that become much more active when they see a moving shadow looking like their natural enemy. “We see that the more times we deliver the shadow the jumpier the flies become,” he says. And the flies keep jumping long after the shadow is gone. Anderson would behave much the same if he saw a snake. “I’d jump in the air,” he says. “Even for minutes after the snake had slipped away into the bushes, my heart would be pounding, and I’d probably jump every time I saw a snakelike object—even if it was a stick.”
That sort of behavior is typical of an ongoing brain state called defensive arousal(防御性唤醒). It’s present in both fruit flies and people which is why Anderson believes studying fear of an insect or a mouse is meaningful as it can reveal a lot about human emotions. “We can try to figure out how the brain is generating that state and what makes the animal finally calm down,” Anderson says. “We now understand specific parts of the circuit that increase fear and other parts of the circuit that decrease fear,” Anderson says. The next step, he says, is to figure out how to tweak that circuit to reduce the fear response of people with certain diseases like PTSD.
1. What does Anderson think about people’s common description of animals emotions?| A．It is limited by people’s knowledge of brain functions. |
| B．It is too subjective to be regarded as scientific evidence. |
| C．It is actually some misunderstanding of animals behavior. |
| D．It is meaningless to the study of animals’ emotional behavior. |
| A．To prove the effect of natural enemies on flies’ behavior. |
| B．To show similarities between human and animal emotions. |
| C．To mention the great influence of Anderson’s bad experience. |
| D．To stress the effects of negative emotions on people and animals |
| A．Replace. | B．Predict. | C．Adjust. | D．Observe. |
| A．Looking beyond human feelings. | B．Figuring out more human brain states. |
| C．Finding a cure for certain mental diseases. | D．Changing traditional ways of treating animals. |
3 . In order to learn about advanced scientific technology and ideas for combating desertification, Rezaali Pakzad left the Iranian capital Teheran, in 2018, to study in Northwest China’s Gansu Province.
He is a 27-year-old doctoral student at Lanzhou University, focusing on soil desertification control. In his view, Iran, like other arid and semiarid countries, faces environmental problems such as desertification. When he did field surveys and research in Minqin county, Gansu, he found that the local desertification characteristics were very similar to those of his hometown.
“Minqin is between two deserts. From being “about to disappear” to being gradually green, from being ravaged by “sand devils” to being covered by vast green plants, the scientific and effective prevention and control methods of the Chinese government have greatly changed the county, and made me see the hope of improving the ecology in my hometown,” he says.
He believes that China has certainly contributed to the global effort to combat desertification, and that the Chinese contribution is worth learning from. China has developed advanced technology models, such as quicksand fixation and vegetation restoration, and protective forest systems along major transport routes, which have introduced more green to deserts.
Already among the top nations in the world in the field of combating desertification, China has shared its experience with other countries, carried out international exchanges and cooperation, and contributed to global desertification control, he says.
He believes he has made progress during his five years of living and studying in China. By learning more about the Chinese language and culture, he has adapted to life in China and enjoyed the help and sincere concern of his teachers, classmates and friends here.
He hopes to achieve a lot, at a high level, in his research field and to contribute to international exchanges and cooperation in desertification control. “I want to be an ‘ecological messenger’ by spreading green ideas,” he says.
1. What problem does Pakzad want to solve?| A．Shortage of greens. | B．Water pollution. |
| C．Energy reduction. | D．Drought. |
| A．Protected. | B．Constructed. | C．Destroyed. | D．Reduced. |
| A．Generous and ambitious. | B．Responsible and hopeful. |
| C．Hard-working and creative. | D．Determined and tolerant. |
| A．China seldom participates in the global affairs. |
| B．China has solved the problem of desertification. |
| C．China is the top nation in international cooperation. |
| D．China plays a vital role in global desertification control. |
4 . The truest explanation of recycling involves taking a material, melting(融化) it down, and turning it back into itself over and over. This can be done with glass and metal, which can both be remelted and reformed into bottles or cans forever. This is a closed-loop(闭环) system, so it’s very desirable. On the other hand, some materials slowly degrade(降解) over time, meaning they can be reformed maybe once or twice, but after a while the chemical composition of the original substance has changed and it can no longer be turned back into what it once was. This is called downcycling(降级回收).
The downcycling of plastic is one of the serious issues surrounding this material. For example, plastic water or soda bottles are seldom turned back into bottles. The other is the fact that plastic never biodegrades(生物降解). Many materials newspaper included, will biodegrade at the end of their lives. When paper enters the environment, given exposure to the air, it breaks down, leaving the world undamaged. Plastic, on the other hand, photodegrades(光降解), and this is very concerning. As discussed earlier, in the process of photodegrading, wind, sun, and water break plastic down into smaller and smaller particles(颗粒) that will cause great damage to the ocean ecosystem.
Finally, there is concern about heating food in plastic containers. Avoid reheating food in plastic containers in the microwave, and stop covering food with plastic wrap. Storing cool food in plastic containers isn’t as big a concern, but avoid heating food and plastic together to eliminate the possibility of plastic into your food.
So the disadvantages to plastic are that it can’t really be recycled in the true meaning of the term, it will never disappear from our environment because it can’t biodegrade, and it is a vehicle to deliver dangerous chemicals into our food chains.
1. What is a satisfying recycling system?| A．It’s easy to find alternative metals. | B．Its process is an open-loop system. |
| C．Materials can be reused over and again. | D．Composition of materials can be changed. |
| A．The threat to oceans. | B．The impact on foods. |
| C．The process of breaking down. | D．The pollution of the atmosphere. |
| A．Assess. | B．Remove. | C．Weight. | D．Reduce. |
| A．Positive. | B．Indifferent. | C．Negative. | D．Unclear. |
