1 . Ekaterina Sky is a wildlife conservation (保护)artist. She began her art journey at the School of Fine Arts in Yaroslavl, Russia. There, she completed a fine arts program, which gave her the background she needed to become a conservation artist. She also received a scholarship to the Art School of Museum of Tel-Aviv. There, she expanded upon her knowledge and skills, learning to create her own unique style. She combined her love for animals and art to create the works we see today.

Ekaterina painted pictures at wildlife reserves and rescue centers, in high schools and in visitors’centers. She painted a piece for the Burning Man festival, choosing to paint primates(灵长类动物的)eyes since they are closely related to humans. This piece gave her the confidence to start a world tour, as she had never painted a picture that size before.

Ekaterina went on a tour to different countries worldwide, painting pictures of various endangered species. She hoped that her paintings would encourage viewers to look deeply into their own lifestyles and question how they might harm animals. She said, “We all can make a difference if we look at ourselves as a small piece of a greater whole.”

With each picture, she made the audience look directly into the animals’ eyes. She painted pictures to encourage people to show more compassion and care to animals and raise awareness of the importance of efforts in wildlife conservation. “As I believe, we connect through our eyes, which are windows into our soul, and I believe that when we get to meet someone’s soul, we don’t have a heart to hurt them,” she said.

1. What does paragraph 1 mainly tell us about Ekaterina Sky?

A．Her art works.	B．Her unique drawing skills.
C．Her love for animals.	D．Her road to a conservation artist.

2. Why does Ekaterina Sky paint primates’ eyes for the Burning Man festival?

A．The painting gave her confidence.	B．Primates are closely related to humans.
C．She’d like to make more money.	D．She wanted to expand on her skills.

3. What does the underlined word “compassion” in the last paragraph probably mean?

A．Pity.

B．Blame.

C．Motivation.

D．Gratefulness.

4. What are Ekaterina Sky’s art works intended for?

A．Reducing garbage thrown by tourists.	B．Introducing various animals worldwide.
C．Drawing attention to endangered animals.	D．Advertising the school she graduated from.

2 . Every spring, as the weather warms, trees up and down the East Coast explode in a display of bright green life as leaves fill their branches, and every fall, the same leaves provide one of nature’s great color displays of vivid yellow, orange and red.

Thanks to climate change, the timing of these events has shifted over the last two decades, Harvard scientists say.

Andrew Richardson, an associate professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, and research associate Trevor Keenan worked with colleagues from seven different institutions on a study which found that forests throughout the eastern United States are showing signs of spring growth dramatically earlier, and that the growing season in some areas extends further into the fall.

Richardson said, “Climate change isn’t just about warmer temperatures. It’s also about changes in precipitation (降水) patterns... so in the future, an earlier spring might not help forests take up more carbon dioxide if they end up running out of water in mid-summer.”

The research combined information from three sources. Using satellite data, Keenan tracked when forests across the region began to turn green in the spring, and when leaves began to turn yellow in the fall. Ground observations made every three to seven days at the Harvard Forest in Petersham and a long-term research site in New Hampshire provided information about the state of buds, leaves and branches. When combined with records from instrument towers, the data sets allowed the researchers to paint a richly detailed picture that shows spring starting earlier, and the growing season lasting longer than at any point in the past two decades.

Another important result, Richardson said, was the discovery of a significant source of error in existing computer models on how forest ecosystems work.

“This shows an opportunity to improve the models and how they simulate how forests will work under future climate scenarios forecast.” he said.

The real power of the findings, however, may be in helping to make the effects of climate change clearer to the public, the researchers said.

1. What is the reason of the earlier spring according to the Harvard scientists?

A．The human activities.	B．The climate change.
C．The tree growth.	D．The reduction in water.

2. What can we infer from Richardson’s words in the fourth paragraph?

A．An earlier spring can only bring benefits.

B．The influence of climate change is complex.

C．The water in mid-summer will increase.

D．The role of forests becomes less important.

3. What is closest in meaning to the underlined word simulate in the seventh paragraph?

A．Change

B．Explain

C．Imitate

D．Create

4. What is the real power of the findings of the research?

A．It helps scientists to figure out how forest ecosystems work.

B．It reflects how the growing season is extending faster.

C．It provides an opportunity to improve the computer models.

D．It helps to make the effects of climate change clearer to the public.

5. What is the purpose of this text?

A．To tell us people should be more aware of the climate change.

B．To tell us the climate change has some effects on the world.

C．To tell us the early spring in eastern USA is a good time to travel.

D．To tell us high technology is useful to detect the climate change.

3 . Billionaire Sir Christopher Hohn expects the greatest “demand disruption (中断)” for oil since the 1970s shock to cause an increase in renewable energy investment.

He said high oil prices are “a positive thing” for the climate as the energy crisis results in a “dramatic speed-up” in decarbonisation (碳减排). “The whole world should now be focused on seeking alternatives, whether they’re renewables or hydrogen fuels. All of these things are far more economic.”

He pointed to the recent boost of EU (欧盟) for renewable energy funding, as part of a plan to reduce imports of gas. Even as oil and gas companies obtain record profits from the high prices at present, Hohn said climate-focused investors will ultimately benefit from the energy price shock.

“The oil price increase leads to plans for accelerated decarbonisation,” said Hohn. “I personally believe that we’ll have demand disruption as we had in the 70s, and that there will be a dramatic acceleration in decarbonisation. I actually view it as a positive thing.”

Hohn has pressured companies to give shareholders a vote on their climate plans. Spanish airport operator Aena and aircraft manufacturer Airbus improved their emissions (排放) tar-gets as a result. Hohn has also pushed for stricter regulation on corporate climate promises. “Corporate decarbonisation isn’t going to happen through voluntary methods,” Hohn said.

Hohn is also backing a new rating agency that will grade company emissions strategies, through his charity, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation. The Climate Action-plan Rating Centre (Climate-Arc) will analyse public company data and publish climate plan ratings.

Investors often struggle to analyse corporate climate plans. “Because though some organizations declare their commitment to environmental protection, they actually do the opposite,” Hohn said, “I expect a large proportion of companies will get graded F if they’re not doing enough. Even companies with net zero emissions targets have failed to set out plans about how to reach those goals. The impact is going to be a bit like, ‘the emperor has no clothes’.”

1. Why are high oil prices a positive thing according to Hohn?

A．They will reduce energy demand.

B．They will bring economic benefits.

C．There will be a shift to clean energy.

D．There will be a reduction in energy imports.

2. What does Hohn argue for in paragraph 5?

A．Climate regulation should be stricter.

B．Decarbonisation should be voluntary.

C．Emissions targets should be debated.

D．Climate plans should be informed to the public.

3. What can we learn from the last paragraph?

A．The method of avoiding being graded F.

B．The suggestion about helping investors.

C．The method of reaching zero emissions targets.

D．The suggestion about reducing carbon emissions.

4. Which would be the best title for the text?

A．Energy crisis—a hard nut

B．Energy crisis—a wake up call

C．Energy crisis—a cruel circle

D．Energy crisis—a cause of economic depression

5 . 阅读下面材料, 根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段, 使之构成一篇完整的短文。

On a sunny afternoon in July, my husband Lenny decided to run our garbage. Living on a farm where no pick-up service was available, we burned what we could and took the rest to the town’s landfill(垃圾填埋场). After unloading, Lenny walked around to see what others had thrown away. Being a person who finds treasure in what others call trash, Lenny would sometimes bring home what he called “great finds”. He’d say, “You’ll never know when this will come in handy”or“Look at what someone threw away. I can fix and use that”. As a family on a tight budget, we appreciated his finds.

As Lenny walked around that day, he picked up a few items and threw them on a large pile of garbage. Suddenly, he heard a “meow” and he looked around for what he thought would be a wild cat, but he saw nothing. Then he saw a shoebox in the garbage pile move slightly, and he heard the cries again. He picked up the box, which was sealed with tape. When Lenny cut the tape and cautiously tore open the shoebox, he found a black-and-white little cat, approximately eight weeks old. It was so frightened that it jumped into Lenny’s arms and clung on to him with its tiny claws. The little cat wasn’t afraid of him. The poor thing was very thin and had probably been taken away from its mother only recently.

My husband wasn’t a great cat lover. He did not feel they should be household pets. Our two daughters had a different perspective as they had recently got another kitten from a local farmer. Even though he didn’t like cats, he knew he couldn’t leave this cat in the shoebox. It would probably be eaten by a fox.

注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右;
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。

So he decided to bring it home.

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Later, Lenny and the cat became best friends, too.

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6 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Throughout the world, only 15% of the material that are used to make clothing is properly recycled, according to the Alle SacUrthur Club, an organization in Liverpool, UK, that boosts the circular economy. Most clothing waste—an     1    (estimate) 82 million tonnes from the fashion industry alone-produced every year ends up buried or burnt.

    2    (handle) all that waste, methods to recover and reuse the material are intended as an active response to the future risks by researchers and start-up companies. Much of their focus is on chemical recycling,     3     the material is broken down into its building blocks and applied to create new materials, including fibres that     4     (weave) into new clothes. The challenges lie in     5     (develop) the processes for such treatment. They have to be practical, but they also have to be at least as cost-effective as simply making new fibres.

    6     the natural cellulose fibres from cotton, some other materials include human-made cellulosic fibres. They are derived from wood-pulp cellulose and may be used to produce materials such as viscose (rayon) and a similar material called lyocell.

A change in the manufacturing process is being applied to the textile-waste problem by Essen, a start-up in Seattle, Washington.     7     the company has fundamentally devoted to the process is that it uses discarded textiles, instead of wood, as the source of its cellulose. It has also adjusted the process to produce a fibre that the firm’s co-founder and president Christo Stan says is superior to     8     other cellulosics and cotton, and that can be recycled more times.

Although there are abundant technical challenges, the main barrier     9     widespread textile recycling could be economic, says materials engineer Lijiang Jiang at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Atlanta. “Most of the materials are not that invaluable,” Jiang says. So cheap it is to produce polyester, cotton and other fabrics     10     there’s little profit margin unless the recycling processes themselves are very inexpensive.

7 . Why we should spare parasites

Growing up, Chelsea Wood dreamed of becoming a marine biologist and studying large, exciting animals like sharks. Instead, she later found herself peering through a microscope at the organs of a snail. She had often plucked snails off rocks and collected them in buckets, but she had never looked inside of one. Seen through the microscope, they are surprisingly charming. “I couldn’t believe that I’d been looking at snails for as long as I had and missing all the cool stuff,” says wood. “I just totally fell in love with them.”

Nearly half of all known animals are parasites. One study projects that a tenth of them may be doomed to extinction because of climate change, loss of their hosts, and deliberate attempts at eradication. Though it seems few people care — or even notice.

    1    . But most parasites have evolved not to kill their hosts, and not all of them even cause noticeable harm to them.

Scientists warn of dire consequences if we continue to ignore the dangerous situation of parasites. Not only are some of them useful to humans [such as medicinal leeches, still employed in some surgeries], but they also play crucial roles in ecosystems, keeping some populations in check while helping to feed others.

Some experts say there’s an aesthetic argument for saving them.     2    . They’ve evolved clever means of survival, from becoming a fish’s tongue to controlling the minds of cockroaches.

We’ve barely begun to identify all the parasites. “That’s just not something that we’ve prioritized,” says Skylar Hopkins, an ecologist at North Carolina State University. So, Hopkins pulled together a group of scientists interested in parasites, and they started sharing what they knew.

Since parasites rely on other species, they can be easily hurt, Take, for example, the endangered pygmy hog-sucking louse. It only lives on another species that is itself endangered, the pygmy hog, which is disappearing fast. Then there’s the California condor louse. In the 1970s, desperate to save the California condor, biologists began raising them in captivity. Part of the protocol was to delouse every bird, on the assumption that parasites were bad for condors, though it’s not clear that they actually were.

While the death of parasites might seem like no big deal, ecologists caution that wiping them out could end up dooming the planet.     3    . Big predators would lose out too. Many parasites move into their next host by manipulating the host they’re in, which drives that host into a predator’s mouth so that the predator can be fed.

Even human health wouldn’t entirely benefit from wiping out parasites. The human immune system evolved alongside a group of parasites, and if we were to kill them off, our immune systems would then began attacking ourselves.

However, scientists aren’t out to save all parasites. The Guinea worm, for instance, should not be spared. It grows inside a person’s abdomen, causing harm to one’s health.

If anyone would want to get rid of all parasites, you’d think it would be Bobbi Pritt. As medical director for the Mayo Clinic’s human parasitology lab, Pritt identifies harmful parasites found all over the country and in every body part. Yet even Pritt has a soft spot for parasites. As a physician, she favors wiping out parasites that cause disease and suffering.     4    .

Ultimately, we do not want a war against all of them, because there’s still so much we don’t understand.

A．Without parasites keeping them in check, the populations of certain animals would explode.

B．Beyond their aesthetic or scientific importance, parasites are an integral part of the biosphere.

C．Parasites are sometimes rejected by the scientific communities that study the animal world because they rely on a host.

D．“But as a biologist,” she says, “purposefully trying to make something extinct just doesn’t sit well with me.”

E．Therefore, she has committed herself to finding more effective approaches to eliminate all harmful parasites.

F．If you get past their “gross” appearance, you may find parasites’ way of living strangely charming.

8 . 阅读下面短文，根据所给情节进行续写，使之构成一个完整的故事。

Three days earlier, 12-year-old Michael had disappeared from his campsite in the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina. He had loved and read the books about young boys surviving in the woods alone. However, a massive search had passed and there was hardly any sign of the boy. People were about to lose hope when one dog, named Gandalf, stepped in.

Misha and Gandalf, her two-year-old dog, had trained for a year with the South Carolina Search and Rescue Dog Association. But this was their first real job, and Misha decided she had to cooperate well with her dog.

After leaving home in the early morning, Misha gathered with her team members, and they headed to the mountains. All they found in the whole morning was some thin slices of fried potato. They were west of Michael’s campsite along a fire road that ran deep inside. Then they found footprints leading to another path and then to a stream about a quarter mile from the camp. It was a fairly good path, but they lost the tracks at the stream.

Now the sun went down and the temperature began to drop below freezing. Thankfully, Michael had been wearing a red coat and good boots. Misha breathed a sigh of relief and hoped the boy had found shelter.

Worried as she was, Misha remained calm. She took out the bag containing the shred (碎片) of Michael’s shirt and let Gandalf sniff it. Head up and nose high, the dog started up the path. Misha concentrated on the search ahead. She didn’t want anything negative to cloud her focus. “Michael is alive. We’re going to find him,” she told Gandalf.

Night was coming and it was time for the researchers to turn back and go downhill. It seemed that Gandalf wouldn’t stop. He ran to the left, out of sight behind the edge of the cliff (悬崖). Misha turned the bend, trying not to be left behind.

注意:
1.所续写短文的词数应为150 左右;
2.续写部分分为两段，每段的开头语已为你写好;
Paragraph 1:

Suddenly 50 yards up on the cliff side lay a boy in a red coat.

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Paragraph 2:

As it turned out, Michael’s experience was nothing like what he read in his novels.

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9 . 选词填空

A. poisoned     B. destruction     C. survived     D. increased     E. especially F. chemicals     G. concern     H. decline     I. occasionally     J. sensitive     K.extinction

More recent research has shown that many kinds of amphibians(两栖动物) are declining or have become extinct. Amphibians are animals, such as frogs, that live partly in water and partly on land. And they have been around for over 350 million years. They have     1     three mass extinctions, including the     2     of the dinosaurs. Why are they dying out now?

The most serious aspect of amphibian loss, however, goes beyond the amphibians themselves. Scientists are beginning to think about what amphibian     3     means for the planet as a whole. If the earth is becoming unlivable for amphibians, is it also becoming unlivable for other kinds of animals and human beings as well?

Scientists now believe that amphibian decline is due to several environmental factors. One of these factors is the     4     of habitat, the natural area where an animal lives. Amphibians are very     5     to changes in their habitat. If they cannot find the right conditions, they will not lay their eggs. These days, as wild areas are covered with houses, roads, farms, or factories, many kinds of amphibians are no longer laying eggs.

There are a number of other factors in amphibian decline. Pollution is one of them. In many industrial areas, air pollution has     6     the rain, which then falls on ponds and kills the frogs that live there. In farming areas, the heavy use of     7     on crops has also killed off amphibians. Another factor is that air pollution has led to    8     levels of ultraviolet (UV) light. This endangers amphibians, which seem to be     9     sensitive to UV light.

All these reasons for the disappearance of amphibians are also good reasons for more general     10     . These factors affect human beings, too.

10 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。1.

A．Three.

B．Four.

C．Five.

D．Six.

2.

A．4,830 km.	B．3,926 m.
C．2,575 km.	D．3,830 km.

3.

A．Between the U.S. and North Africa.

B．Between Senegal and Brazil.

C．Between Greenland and Scotland.

D．Between Senegal and North Africa.