1 . Vast lands of America are dominated by corn, nearly 100macres of it, stretching from Ohio to the Dakotas. What once was forest today produces the corn that feeds people, cattle and, when made into ethanol (乙醇), cars.
Now, the nation’s airlines want to power their planes with corn, too. United Airlines signed a deal with a Nebraska ethanol company to buy enough sustainable fuel, to power 50,000 flights a year. The government could decide on its tax incentives (税收激励) for the industry as soon as December. “Mark my words, the next 20 years, corn farmers are going to provide 95% of all the sustainable airline fuel,” President Biden said in July.
The airlines’ ambitious goal would likely require nearly doubling ethanol production, which airlines say, with great expectation, would decrease their greenhouse gas emissions. If they succeed, it could transform America’s Corn Belt, stimulating farmers and ethanol producers, but potentially further damaging one of the nation’s most important resources: groundwater.
Corn requires a lot of water to grow and it can take hundreds of gallons to produce a single gallon of ethanol. But as airlines take the idea of ethanol, the vital groundwater faces serious risks. “We’re on track to massively increase water usage without any real sense of how sensitive our groundwater is,” said Jeffrey Broberg, who is concerned about groundwater in Minnesota, a major corn state.
The Department of Energy said in a statement that “water use is a critical part of the conversation surrounding bio-energy sustainability”. It pointed to a 2022 department study that concluded that the United States could significantly reduce pressure on groundwater by shifting fuel production away from water-intensive crops like corn, instead growing more crops that don’t require irrigation (灌溉), like various types of straw, grasses and trees. Hopefully, a better approach will be soon studied and adopted.
1. What can we learn from the first two paragraphs?| A．Farmers will increase 95% of their ethanol production. |
| B．The sustainable fuel will not be popular in the future. |
| C．Corn will be an influential source in the fuel industry. |
| D．The government stops the new fuel for the groundwater. |
| A．Preventing. | B．Motivating. | C．Destroying. | D．Impressing. |
| A．The shortage of corn production. |
| B．The increase in global warming. |
| C．A rise in clean-energy tax credits. |
| D．Higher stress on the groundwater. |
| A．Expand the corn planting area. |
| B．Use some alternative materials. |
| C．Cut down the daily water usage. |
| D．Turn to the government for help. |
2 . Army ants make a habit of killing organisms, often much larger than themselves, breaking them into pieces and dragging them back to their bases. They don’t eat everything. Waste full with discarded bits of prey is a feature of army ant bases. But little is known about which animals make use of army ant leavings.
As recounted in a paper in Ecology &. Evolution, Christoph von Beer en at the Technical University of Darmstadt and Daniel Kronauer at the Rockefeller University in New York, went to the rainforests of Costa Rica to find out. They found an entire ecosystem thriving among the leftovers.
Monitoring tiny insects in a rainforest is tricky. But the researchers hoped modern DNA analysis techniques might make the job manageable. Working with a team of colleagues, they followed ant trails back to their bases, finding 34 sites in total.
The researchers used a handheld vacuum cleaner to suck up all the bugs at waste and brought the samples back to a field laboratory. To keep the task manageable, the team confined themselves to examining only the beetles they had collected. They identified the beetles they could and ran DNA analyses on those they could not.
In total, they collected 8, 364 adult beetles, 511 beetle larvae and 24 beetle eggs. Those were spread across 91 species, several of which were entirely new to science. Aside from that being far more than anyone had expected, the presence of the larvae and eggs indicates that the leftovers are not so much convenient restaurants as full-on homes, where the beetles live out their entire lives.
Precisely how these species manage to avoid being eaten themselves by their army-ant hosts remains to be determined. Dr. von Beeren speculates that a hygiene instinct that keeps the ants from eating material that has been taken to their waste is partially responsible. And many species of beetles are able to produce compounds that smell disgusting to ants. The chances are high that among these insects are some predators too, seeking to feed on unsuspecting scavengers (食腐动物) in turn.
1. What do army ants do with organisms?| A．They consume some of organisms. |
| B．They drag organisms to waste piles. |
| C．They kill organisms and eat them all. |
| D．They break organisms into discarded bits. |
| A．By examining the beetles they had sucked up. |
| B．By classifying the insects into different varieties. |
| C．By using DNA analysis techniques on all beetles. |
| D．By running DNA analyses on the unknown insects. |
| A．The leftovers are like restaurants to the beetles. |
| B．The leftovers are just like homes to the beetles. |
| C．The army ants kill some of the larvae and eggs. |
| D．The larvae and eggs are eaten by the army ants. |
| A．In the Leavings the Insects Are the King |
| B．One Insect’s Leavings Is Another’s Meal |
| C．Where There’re Leavings, There’re Insects |
| D．When the Ants Away, the Insects Will Play |
3 . 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. |
4 . Some exhibitions and new displays create lots of waste. So museums are increasingly aware of the role they have to play in dealing with that. At Manchester Museum, John Miller and Robert O’Conner have developed their own approach to creating a circle from the exhibition, to exhibition changeover, and back to the museum workshop, reusing materials in any way they can.
Holding different exhibitions and displays means that museums are often left with structures (结构体) that won’t be used again. At the end of an exhibition, John and Robert carefully take down and cut all materials into workable units, ready to be reused wherever needed. When Pinc College based at Manchester Museum needed new classrooms, the workshop team were able to use completely recycled materials to build them.
While it’s easy to think of new as being better, reusing materials doesn’t mean you can’t create beautiful displays. Last year, the museum placed Illuminating Nature, a surprising window display showing some objects under UV light. Almost every part of it was reused. The only thing that needed to be bought was the UV lights, proving you don’t need to spend much to create something impressive.
No matter how many materials you try to reuse there will always be something left over. Why not keep an eye out for charities or local groups who would welcome a donation? As with many museums, paint is often bought for an exhibition. And there will be a few extra cans left over. Manchester Museum usually takes them to Betel UK, a charity that supports people losing their jobs. The paint is used by Betel UK in their workshops for people to learn special skills and then refresh furniture (家具) which is then sold in their shops.
The impressive efforts of John and Robert are a shining example of a museum team that is establishing best practices and proving its determination to build a greener world. Their work inspires other teams to move away from the growth-model thinking that’s been influential in museums for the past twenty years.
1. What are John and Robert trying to do?| A．Put on exhibitions on waste problems. |
| B．Improve people’s interest in traditional art. |
| C．Turn exhibition waste into something useful. |
| D．Change people’s attitudes to museum exhibitions. |
| A．To advertise the beautiful exhibition. |
| B．To teach people to use UV lights properly. |
| C．To show a successful case of material reuse. |
| D．To encourage people to enjoy the beauty of nature. |
| A．By storing it away for future use. |
| B．By selling it to local people at a low price. |
| C．By using it to decorate the museum again. |
| D．By donating it to an organization in need of support. |
| A．Their effectiveness has been questioned by other museums. |
| B．They provide new ideas for the development of museums. |
| C．They inspire more artists to hold creative exhibitions. |
| D．Their limitations have been well removed. |
5 . A team of scientists is studying the sound of the forest in Ecuador to learn how artificial intelligence (AI) could follow animal life in recovering environments.
When scientists want to measure new forest growth, they can study large areas of land with tools like satellites. But understanding how fast and in what number wildlife is returning to an area is more difficult. Sometimes it requires an expert to listen through sound recordings and pick out animal calls.
Jorg Muller, an expert on birds, wondered if there was a different way. So, he turned to bioacoustics (生物声学), which uses sound to learn more about animal life and their living environments. Muller and his team recorded wildlife sounds in Ecuador. They first had experts listen to the recordings and list the sounds of different animals. Then, they examined the sound quality to measure the environment. Finally, they ran two weeks of recordings through an AI computer program trained to understand 75 different bird calls.
The program was able to pick out the calls on which it was trained. However, scientists wondered if the program could correctly identify the number of different kinds of plants and animals in each environment. To see if the program could do that, the team used two different controls. One was from the experts who listened to the recordings, and the second was based on examples from each environment, which can be used to understand biodiversity (生物多样性).
Since the number of sounds that are found to be used to train is limited, the AI program could only identify one-fourth of the bird calls experts could. But it was still able to correctly measure biodiversity levels in each environment, the study said. It also said the results show the AI program is a powerful tool to measure the recovery of animal societies in some forests. The study showed that biodiversity found from recordings can be measured in a cost-effective and complete way and measure environments.
There are still areas for improvement, including the lack of animal sounds on which to train AI models. And the method can only catch animals that use sound to communicate.
1. What does the study focus on?| A．Studying plant growth. | B．Observing birds’ behavior. |
| C．Understanding AI’s effect on wildlife. | D．Measuring wildlife recovery. |
| A．Bioacoustics. | B．Satellite recording. |
| C．Sound recording by AI. | D．Direct observation by experts. |
| A．Identifying plant species. | B．Tracking weather change. |
| C．Measuring biodiversity levels. | D．Identifying all the bird calls. |
| A．Measuring more bird environments. |
| B．Catching animals that use sound to communicate. |
| C．Training the program on a wider variety of sounds. |
| D．Having experts study more and understand bird calls. |
6 . There are two ways to forget about troubles in life: music and cats.
At the Hey Cat Cafe in Wuhan, Hubei Province, you can have both. About 30 furry creatures, each wearing a red burp cloth with its name on it, welcome and “serve” the guests. The “employees” are all stray (流浪的) black cats, most of whom were rescued by caring people after being abandoned by their owners.
Opened in September 2021, the cafe is one of the first nonprofit cat cafes in China. Manager Du Fan told China Daily that all the profits are used to help homeless animals.
The 41-year-old said he opened the black cat cafe to dispel (消除) the myth that such cats are “inauspicious”, as described in some movies and TV dramas. Over the past 17 years, a lot of people have come to Du to adopt cats, but many said they didn’t want black cats. “Actually, in traditional Chinese culture, black cats can drive away evil spirits and bring luck. They should be mascots (吉祥物),” he said. So are black cats as reserved and mysterious as folk tales suggest? Well, perhaps not.
Hearing two young women open the door, six or so passionate “cafe workers” waited and greeted them. When the visitors sat down, one cat rubbed against the bottom of one woman’s pants, while another climbed onto her knee. Some of the cats simply fell asleep against the guests’ legs.
While these cats are rescued, they also help people with developmental or social anxiety disorders learn to open their hearts. “Cats possess certain qualities that humans don’t have,” Du added. “Many people with psychological problems can find comfort in cats.”
1. How do the cats “serve” guests at the Hey Cat Cafe?| A．They can bring coffee to customers. |
| B．They can really serve the guests. |
| C．They can help reduce people’s anxiety. |
| D．They can wear a red burp cloth. |
| A．Loving and charitable. | B．Cat-addicted and strange. |
| C．Creative and modest. | D．Moody and generous. |
| A．Stupid. | B．Lovely. | C．Unlucky. | D．Lazy. |
| A．To make an introduction to a cat cafe. |
| B．To call on people to protect homeless animals. |
| C．To inform people that black cats can be mascots. |
| D．To introduce what people can do with homeless cats. |
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is road testing a new way to keep winter roads ice-free by spreading on them cheese brine, the salty liquid
Wisconsin, also called “America’s Dairyland”, is famous for its cheese. The state produced 2.8 billion pounds of cheese last year! As a result, there
Cheese brine has salt in it,
In addition to saving money, cheese brine could also be a more eco-friendly option. Many people suspect that all the rock salt used every winter
8 . A lot more animals glow under a special light than scientists previously thought. This ability to glow is known as fluorescence (荧光), which happens when light is absorbed as one wavelength and emitted as another wavelength.
Travouillon, a scientist from Harvard, wondered why so many animals had this unusual quality, and he asked one key question: Is there a function behind the ability? To address the question, Travouillon and his team took a closer look at the life histories of the glowing mammals.
The team discovered that the fluorescence was mainly found in light-colored areas of an animal’s skin and fur. Then they looked at where the fluorescence was found in the animal’s body. They compared that to the animal’s diet and how the animals moved. They also checked whether the animal was nocturnal or diurnal, Travouillon explained. Animals that are nocturnal are most active at night, whereas animals that are diurnal are most active during the day.
One finding was that fluorescence was more common among ground-dwelling, tree-dwelling and burrowing mammals compared to animals that live in water, Travouillon said. The team also found that having a fluorescent coat was more common among nocturnal animals compared to diurnal animals. One potential explanation for that fact is that having a fluorescent coat could help no cturnal animals become more visible to potential partners.
“So, for example, with a species like a quoll that has white spots on its back, the fluorescence would simply brighten their spots,” Travouillon said. “In this way, they are more easily seen. Fluorescence might help members of a species find each other and perhaps recognize each other from a distance,” Travouillon added.
On a closing note, Travouillon cautioned wildlife enthusiasts not to go searching for glowing critters with a UV light. That’s because UV light can damage the animal’s eyesight. Instead, if you want to look for animals in the dark, he recommended using a red light, since it isn’t as bright.
1. What kind of animals are most active at night according to the passage?| A．Diurnal animals. | B．Nocturnal animals. | C．Glowing animals. | D．Underwater animals. |
| A．To live in water. | B．To help them move easily at night. |
| C．To see the members of their species clearly. | D．To brighten other nocturnal animals’ spots. |
| A．UV light is harmful for the animal’s eyesight. |
| B．Wildlife enthusiasts can’t search for glowing critters. |
| C．Nocturnal animals can be found easily by wildlife enthusiasts. |
| D．Wildlife enthusiasts had better use bright light to search for glowing mammals. |
| A．Active mammals with fluorescent. | B．Suggestions for animals enthusiasts. |
| C．Animals glow under special lights. | D．Mammals with an unusual ability in the night. |
1. 灾情发生的时间和地点；
2. 灾情造成损失和伤亡情况；
3. 前往救援的人员以及给与的物资和捐款情况。
注意：1. 写作词数应为80左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
A Flood disaster
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________10 . An international team of researchers, led by Dr Christine Batchelor of Newcastle University, UK, used clear pictures of the seafloor to show just how quickly a former ice cover retreated (退去) at the end of the last Ice Age, about 20,000 years ago.
The team mapped more than 7,600 small-scale landforms across the seafloor. The ridges (山脊) are less than 2.5m high and are spaced between about 25 and 300 metres apart. These landforms are understood to have formed when the ice cover’s retreating edge moved up and down with the tides (潮汐), pushing seafloor into a ridge every low tide. Given that two ridges would have been produced each day, the researchers were able to work out how quickly the ice cover retreated. Their results, reported in the journal Nature, show the former ice cover rapidly retreats at a speed of 50 to 600 metres per day.
The seafloor landforms also give light into the way in which such rapid retreat can happen. Dr Batchelor and co-workers noted that the former ice cover had retreated fastest across the flattest parts of its bed.
“An ice can go away from the seafloor and retreat quickly when it becomes buoyant (有浮力的),” explained co-author Dr Frazer Christie. “This retreat only happens across relatively flat beds, where less melting (融化) is required to thin the overlying ice to the point where it starts to float (漂浮).”
The researchers believe that the quick retreat could soon be observed in parts of Antarctica. This includes at West Antarctica’s vast Thwaites Glacier. The authors of this new study suggest that it could go through quick retreat because it has recently retreated close to a flat area of its bed.
“Our findings suggest that present-day rates of melting are enough to cause quick short retreat across flat-bedded areas of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, including at Thwaites,” said Dr Batchelor. “Satellites (卫星) may well know this ice-cover retreat in the near future, especially if we continue our climate warming.”
1. What is the purpose of Paragraph 1?| A．To provide some advice for the readers. |
| B．To add some background information. |
| C．To make the story interesting. |
| D．To bring in the topic. |
| A．Where the ice cover’s retreating lies. |
| B．Why the ice cover’s retreating is formed. |
| C．What the result of ice cover’s retreating is. |
| D．How the speed of ice cover’s retreating is worked out. |
| A．To give an example of quick retreat. |
| B．To tell where it is located. |
| C．To compare different types of retreat. |
| D．To explain why it is important. |
| A．Unclear. | B．Anxious. |
| C．Positive. | D．Doubtful. |
