1 . New research links outdoor air pollution — even at levels considered safe — to an increased risk of diabetes (糖尿病) globally, according to a study from the VA St. Louis Health Care System. The findings raise the possibility that reducing pollution may lead to a drop in diabetes cases in heavily polluted countries such as India and less polluted ones such as the United States.
Diabetes is one of the fastest growing diseases, affecting more than 500 million people worldwide. The main drivers of diabetes include eating an unhealthy diet, having a sedentary lifestyle and obesity, but the new research indicates the extent to which outdoor air pollution plays a role.
“Our research shows a significant link between air pollution and diabetes globally,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. “We found an increased risk, even at low levels of air pollution currently considered safe by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO). This is important because many industry lobbying (游说) groups argue that current levels are too stringent and should be relaxed. Evidence shows that current levels are still not sufficiently safe and need to be tightened.”
While growing evidence has suggested a link between air pollution and diabetes, researchers have not attempted to quantify that burden until now. “Over the past two decades, there have been bits of research about diabetes and pollution,” said Al-Aly. “We wanted to thread together the pieces for a broader, more solid understanding.”
The researchers also found that the overall risk of pollution-related diabetes tilted (倾斜) more toward lower-income countries such as India that lack the resources for environmental mitigation systems and clean-air policies. For instance, poverty-stricken countries facing a higher diabetes-pollution risk include Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea and Guyana, while richer countries such as France, Finland and Iceland experience a lower risk. The US experiences a medium risk of pollution-related diabetes.
1. What does the underlined word “stringent” in paragraph 3 mean?| A．Strict. | B．Slight. |
| C．Bright. | D．Ordinary. |
| A．To identify the causes of diabetes. |
| B．To make better air pollution control policies. |
| C．To lead the study of diabetes and air pollution. |
| D．To figure out the link between pollution and diabetes. |
| A．India. | B．Finland. |
| C．The US. | D．Guyana. |
| A．Current pollution control levels need to be tightened |
| B．Diabetes is one of the fastest growing diseases globally |
| C．Air pollution contributes significantly to diabetes globally |
| D．Poverty-stricken countries face a higher diabetes-pollution risk |
2 . Animals, including humans, feel sound as well as hear it, and some of the most meaningful communication happens at frequencies (频率) that people can’t hear. Elephants, for example, use these low-frequency sounds to, among other things, find family or a mate across long distances. Whales do it, too.
But you don’t have to weigh a ton to make a sound. In fact, you don’t have to be bigger than a pea. Consider, for example, the tree-hopper, a curious little animal that lives on the stems (茎) of the leaves. University of Missouri biologist Rex Cocroft has spent much of his time listening closely to tree-hoppers with his team.
The team discovers that all the sounds being heard from tree-hoppers are produced by males. They do it by vibrating (振动) their abdomens (腹部) to make a wide variety of strange sounds. There is almost no airborne sound produced with these vibrational sounds. Cocroft explained, “If a tree-hopper were to stand on your finger and produce a sound, you would feel the vibration but hear no sound.”
They showed that some sounds, not surprisingly, seem to be aimed at attracting females. And some are aimed at other males.
Cocroft explained, “When two males meet each other, or when they are mate-searching on a branch, we’re hearing ‘purring, bdddddrrrr…’ sounds that males give.” Normally, a person couldn’t hear any of this, because the sound travels along the stem, inside it. And that’s how other tree-hoppers detect it.
Cocroft said tree-hoppers have very sensitive legs. And they stand around on stems, which are good at spreading vibrations. So they just use what nature gives them to communicate with each other.
“They have so many different forms of social behavior and grouping,” Cocroft explained. “And once there are animals living in groups, then there will be all sorts of interesting possibilities for communication.”
1. What does Cocroft’s research focus on about tree-hoppers?| A．Their variety. | B．Their communication. |
| C．Their living areas. | D．Their numbers. |
| A．They sense sounds by legs. |
| B．They knock the stems to make sounds. |
| C．Their sounds can be easily heard by humans. |
| D．Females make sounds to meet each other |
| A．It is key to their survival. |
| B．It drives an increase in their numbers. |
| C．It often leads to communication. |
| D．It contributes much to the division of animal types. |
| A．A Magic Moment in Nature | B．A Journey to the Wildlife |
| C．Learning From Nature | D．Communication Sounds Among Animals |
3 . Every year the start of the Atlantic hurricane season is another reminder for Margarite August that she still doesn’t have a roof.
The 70-year-old retired teacher’s home on the small Caribbean island nation of Dominica was mostly wiped out by hurricane Maria six years ago.
Six years after hurricane Maria, Dominicans like Margarite August still haven’t been able to rehabilitate their homes.
August is not alone. Since Maria, the government of Dominica has built 7,000 new homes—about a quarter of its housing stock-with materials to fight another Category 5 hurricane. They’ve also relocated two communities. But an untold number of the island’s 70,000 or so residents are like August, rebuilding their homes in any way they can afford.
Hurricane Maria is often referred to as a once-in-a-lifetime disaster. Scientists put much of the blame on warming ocean temperatures that could make frequent (频繁的) storms like it.
Maria damaged a terrible 95% of Dominica’s housing stock and 226% of the nation’s GDP. Before the storm, the country’s economy had long struggled since its independence from Great Britain in 1978. Unlike its more famous touristy neighbors along the chain of eastern Caribbean islands it lies on, Dominica is more known for its rugged mountains and jungles (丛林) than white sandy beaches.
The jungle mountains that crash down to the coast are beautiful but disasters visit easily. “I don’t think anybody ever got over Maria,” says Christine John of the Dominica Red Cross. “There are a lot of persons today—if it just starts to rain outside, they get anxious.”
1. What does the underlined word “rehabilitate” in paragraph 3 mean?| A．Rebuild. | B．Leave. | C．Decorate. | D．Buy. |
| A．Over-farming. | B．Loss of the land. |
| C．The disappearance of the forests. | D．Climate change. |
| A．Its good economy. | B．Its architecture. |
| C．Its mountains and jungles. | D．Its sandy beaches. |
| A．They have to stay bored at home. | B．Their houses are easy to take in water. |
| C．They don’t know how to make umbrellas. | D．They are afraid of another disaster like Maria. |
4 . Animal rescuer Douglas Thron’s passion for animals began when he was a little kid. “I wanted to be a wildlife cinematographer (电影摄影师),” Thron recalled.
When Thron grew up, he did just that, working as a cinematographer for shows like Shark Week, filming great white sharks off the coast of Santa Cruz. It was the hurricane in the Bahamas in 2018 that pushed him to do animal rescue work.
The first animal Thron ever rescued was a dog after the hurricane. Then Thron was testing out using a drone (无人驾驶飞机) and found the dog in the middle of the ruins where hundreds of houses had been destroyed. Equipped with an infrared scope (红外线镜), the camera of the drone used heat to detect the animals at night. “The animal’s body temperature will produce light on the screen and you can pick it out amongst the ruins,” explains Thron. He rescued him. And as nobody claimed him after 30 days, he adopted him. “He is a wonderful partner,” Thron laughed.
Thron has been going non-stop since then. His TV show, Doug to the Rescue, shows some of his heartwarming animal rescues, including after Hurricane Laura in Louisiana and after fires in Northern California and Oregon. Thron also helped rescue koalas after fires damaged parts of Australia, using drones to help locate the animals.
Thron’s dream is to one day have an animal rescue center where he can train others to fly drones and to make Infrared drones as popular for rescuing animals as helicopters are for rescuing people after a disaster.
“It blows me away how many more animals we’re able to save,” Thron says, “and how much faster we can save them before they might pass away after a disaster.”
1. What was Thron mainly responsible for as a cinematographer?| A．Reporting natural disasters. | B．Protecting sharks. |
| C．Advertising drones. | D．Filming wild animals. |
| A．A hurricane in the Bahamas. | B．A terrible fire in California. |
| C．The bad situation of sharks. | D．A TV show named Shark Week. |
| A．It rescued Thron in return. |
| B．It passed away after 30 days. |
| C．It was trained to rescue other animals. |
| D．It became good company for Thron. |
| A．To help animals recover from disasters. |
| B．To raise awareness about animal protection. |
| C．To train people to use drones to rescue animals. |
| D．To provide shelter for the animals he has rescued. |
1. What do bees do when they need to relax?
| A．Fly all day. | B．Make honey. | C．Play with balls. |
| A．One. | B．Two. | C．Three. |
| A．A sugary treat. | B．A special treat. | C．A flowery treat. |
| A．Bees are more thoughtful. |
| B．Bees are more hardworking. |
| C．Bees are hard to get along with. |
6 . Are you sure you know how to protect the environment? Many of us believe that we lead lives that respect nature but our consumption habits give us away.
Eating too much meat and fruit
These foods are essential for our diet, although they are not very healthy for the natural environment. In a 2018 report, Greenpeace warned that 14.5% of all greenhouse gas (GHG ) emissions come from industrial stock farming. The meat industry, for example, negatively affects land use as between 75 and 80% of the world’s agricultural land is used for stock breeding. But if the same land was used for growing vegetables, there could be food for 4 billion people more.
Using paper bags
We think that because they are made of paper they are not as harmful as the plastic bags that we use around the world, according to the UN.
Drinking bottled water
Plastic bottles are a clear example of environmental pollution.
| A．Many little practices that seem to be sustainable are in fact polluting |
| B．According to Greenpeace, they take about 500 years to break down |
| C．What’s more, you can be a responsible fruit consumer by choosing seasonal varieties |
| D．A good replacement for them are long-lasting, washable and reusable cotton ones |
| E．There is only one Earth and everything that we do for it counts, and you can eat less by controlling yourself |
| F．But the reality is very different: they are rarely reused and tend to end up in the organic waste bin |
| G．By reducing bottled water consumption we save more than 600 million euros every year |
7 . For a few moments, the tourists thought they were about to witness something terrible.
“Many of us thought it may be a shark attack. But it was not. Instead of the
“The fact that you can see the blood means the
Schulman-Janiger admitted she’d never
“Whales are born with soft fins (鳍) that take about 24 hours to become
| A．Instead | B．Therefore | C．Unfortunately | D．Eventually |
| A．Diving | B．Looking | C．Turning | D．Backing |
| A．blue | B．green | C．red | D．black |
| A．chance | B．cost | C．protection | D．end |
| A．loss | B．first | C．mistake | D．punishment |
| A．baby | B．family | C．shark | D．swimmer |
| A．ignored | B．appreciated | C．documented | D．accepted |
| A．rare | B．expensive | C．dark | D．terrible |
| A．regret | B．forget | C．remember | D．wish |
| A．wanted | B．witnessed | C．investigated | D．given |
| A．late | B．brave | C．lucky | D．weak |
| A．delicious | B．warm | C．strong | D．long |
| A．search for | B．hold up | C．follow up | D．put down |
| A．water | B．soil | C．forest | D．air |
| A．carelessly | B．unfriendly | C．secretly | D．frequently |
8 . Dry lightning(雷电)can still be harmful even when conditions aren’t so dry, said a study published in Geophysical Research Letters last month. Dry lightning during little to no rainfall was previously thought to cause wildfire danger only with less than 2.5mm of rain in a day. A Washington State University-led study of wildfires in the US West found dry lightning caused wildfires despite up to 7.7 mm of rain.
“The rainfall amounts we recorded should help provide a better understanding of just how much rain can cause a fire risk,” said Dmitri Kalashnikov, lead author of the study.
The researchers analyzed(分析)cases on more than 4,600 naturally caused fires from 2015 to 2020. They matched 3,726 of those to the lightning strikes that likely started them with the help of National Lightning Detection Network.
The study found that 15.3% of those were holdover fires which burn without smoke, bringing about over a hundred fires each year. Analyzing the rainfall amounts around the time of the lightning strikes showed greater rainfall than previously thought among the earlier found fires ranging from 1.7 mm to 4.6 mm.
While humans still cause most fires either by accident or on purpose, lightning-caused wildfires burn the most areas. Nearly 70% of the wildfire-burned land in the West was from lightning-caused fires according to the study. For example, the largest wildfire burn area in California history took place in August 2020 after dry lightning caused many wildfires at once.
Dry lightning can also start wildfires in places that are hard for firefighters to reach. This study found the places where holdover fires happened repeatedly were in the forested mountains of the Southwest as well as the middle and southern Rocky Mountains. Holdover fires cause the problem because they are so hard to notice.
1. The new study found dry lightning can still cause wildfires with a daily rainfall of __________.| A．7.7 mm | B．8.0mm | C．9.4mm | D．10.2mm |
| A．The finding of the research. | B．The number of the cases. |
| C．The process of the study. | D．The designers of the test. |
| A．They are difficult to notice. | B．The fire service is short-handed. |
| C．Campers often smoke there. | D．The locals fail to call firefighters. |
| A．A history textbook. | B．A science magazine. |
| C．A course plan. | D．A book review. |
9 . In the first test of its kind in Europe, and only the second in the world, Belgian researchers tested 39 brands of straws (吸管) for the group of synthetic (合成的) chemicals known as poly-and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The straws are made from five materials — paper, bamboo, glass, stainless steel and plastic. PFAS were found in the majority of the straws tested and were most common in those made from paper and bamboo. They were not found only in steel straws tested.
PFAS are used to make everyday products, from outdoor clothing to non-stick pans, resistant (抵抗to water, heat and stains. They are, however, potentially harmful to people, wildlife and the environment. They have been related to a number of health problems, including lower response to vaccines (疫苗), lower birth weight, thyroid disease, liver damage, kidney cancer and testicular cancer. They break down very slowly over time and can last thousands of years in the environment, a property that has led to them being known as “forever chemicals”.
A growing number of countries, including the UK and Belgium, have sopped the sale of single-use plastic products, including drinking straws, and plant-based versions have become popular. The PFAS concentrations (浓缩物) were low in them and, bear in mind that most people tend to only use straws occasionally, bringing a limited risk to human health. However, PFAS can remain in the body for many years and concentrations can build up over time.
It isn’t known whether the PFAS were added to the straws by the producer for waterproofing or the PFAS were the result of contamination. Potential sources of contamination include the soil the plant-based materials were grown in and the water used in the production process. However, the presence of the chemicals in almost every brand of paper straws means it is likely that it was, in some cases, being used as a water-resistant coating, say the researchers.
1. Why are PFAS called “forever chemicals”?| A．They are commonly seen in daily life. |
| B．They bring humans health problems. |
| C．They remain in the environment for long. |
| D．They can resist water, heat and stains. |
| A．By bringing people air pollution. |
| B．By polluting humans’ food. |
| C．By building up little by little in humans’ body. |
| D．By making people addicted to drinking easily. |
| A．Pollution. | B．Discovery. | C．Experiment. | D．Development. |
| A．More and more countries give up single-use plastic products. |
| B．PFAS are widely used in the production of daily necessities. |
| C．Certain kinds of new synthetic chemicals were discovered. |
| D．Environment-friendly drinking straws are actually harmful. |
10 . A Danish company named Too Good To Go has been working to combat food waste in the United States and around the world. In the U. S., more than a third of food produced goes uneaten, contributing to environmental issues. Too Good To Go addresses this problem by partnering with restaurants to sell their end-of-day leftovers at discounts, typically ranging from 60% to 80% off.
The app of the same name, which started in Denmark in 2015, has expanded to 17 countries and multiple U. S. cities, including New York, Phoenix, and Seattle, with Los Angeles proving to be one of its most successful markets. The company is now looking to expand its footprint in the southeast.
While the cost savings for customers and businesses are significant, the primary focus of Too Good To Go is reducing food waste, which is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. The app allows users to track their environmental impact by displaying the electricity and carbon emissions prevented through their purchases. To date, the app claims to have saved over 250 million meals, making a substantial impact.
Food waste contributes to climate change in several ways, including the emission of methane gas from rotting food in landfills, the resources used to grow the food, and the energy expended in food transportation and preparation. Too Good To Go estimates that its efforts are equal to taking about 135, 000 cars off the road for a year, and it plays a crucial role in addressing the approximately 6% of total greenhouse gas emissions caused by food loss and waste in the U. S.
Alexandria Coari, the vice president of food waste nonprofit ReFED, recognizes the potential of apps like Too Good To Go. She believes that they have the capacity to reduce the carbon emissions equal to 870, 000 cars in a year, positioning them as one of the top 10 solutions to combating food waste and climate change.
While the app has been successful in the restaurant industry, its expansion into grocery stores and manufacturing is still a work in progress.
1. What do we know about the app Too Good To Go?| A．It primarily operates in Los Angeles. |
| B．It has saved over 250 million dollars so far. |
| C．It focuses on fighting against food waste. |
| D．It helps sell fresh groceries at full price. |
| A．To show the environmental impact of the app. |
| B．To highlight the cost savings for customers. |
| C．To emphasize the company’s expansion plans. |
| D．To illustrate the app’s success in reducing resources. |
| A．Skeptical | B．Negative. | C．Neutral. | D．Supportive. |
| A．The history of food waste reduction efforts. |
| B．Challenges Too Good To Go’s expansion faces. |
| C．The impact of climate change on the food industry. |
| D．Strategies for reducing food waste in grocery stores. |
