A.They are not used to living in hot places. |
B.They will get away from the hot days. |
C.They will not be back until it gets cold. |
D.They are reluctant to go on holiday. |
2 . This Halloween, scare off evil spirits while protecting the earth!
1. Create home-made costumes
Apart from the fact that they’re expensive, flammable and mostly unoriginal, shop bought Halloween outfits are a terrific burden on the environment. From the much-too-high amount of water that is used to create them to the seven million costumes that will be thrown straight into the bin, and the microfibres released into the water from the ones that do get washed there are PLENTY of reasons against shop buying.
And let’s be frank, home-made costumes are far more unique and fun to create. For the scariest costume we could possibly imagine, why not dress up as the earth on fire?
2. Be considerate with your pumpkins
Pumpkins are a wonderful Halloween tradition but can be more damaging to the environment than you’d originally think. Harmful pesticides and fertilizers are used during farming and the nature of their large-scale production means they can be transported over vast distances Similarly, how you dispose of them once you’re done determines how big an impact they have.
Don’t let their delicious innards go to waste and instead make a yummy pumpkin treat, even go so far as to save the pumpkin seeds either for you or the birds. Then, once your carved pumpkin is past it’s best, make sure to compost (制成堆肥) it rather than throwing it in the bin-this will prevent the release of methane as it breaks down.
3. Scare yourself silly at home
Rather than travelling to far-flung places, keep the frights closer to home.
Halloween party to get everyone together and encourage car-pooling or the use of public transport.
Read scary stories and create a Halloween hunt in your garden for children to run around and find treats.
4. Make your own trick-or-treating goodies
If you’ve taken on the American tradition of trick-or- treating, why not whip up a few Halloween treats of your own? Apart from being tastier and more fun to look at, they’ll also reduce your consumption of packaging and likely will have a lower carbon footprint. Suggest to any neighbours that they might do the same, and if you go trick-or-treating yourself, be sure to use a reusable carrier.
1. What can we do to help the environment during the Halloween according to the passage?A.Making use of the pumpkin innards to make fertilizers for your garden. |
B.Going to the local shop to buy some costumes and recycling them after using. |
C.Throwing a Halloween party with your friends out of town. |
D.Inviting your neighbors to taste your home-made treats. |
A.Harmful pesticides. | B.High carbon footprint. |
C.Damage to birds. | D.Harmful gas emission. |
A.What to do to celebrate the Halloween traditionally |
B.Why is it important to have an eco-friendly Halloween |
C.How to have a Halloween beneficial to the environment |
D.How to celebrate the Halloween to cheer yourself up |
A. deliberately B. justifiable C. accumulating D. consume E. spills F. spent G. potential H. charging I. boost J. subscription K. collected |
Is rental fashion the future?
With a cost-of-living crisis and climate awareness sitting heavily at the forefront of our minds, many of us are having to make choices about what we
Even the fastest of fashion retailers are taking note; this summer, BooHoo announced that they will be
However, there will still be times where a new item feels like a
So here comes rental fashion. The set-up is simple. Rent three, five or ten items and swap (替换) every month, with prices starting from £39 a month for a three-item. In the case of any accidents, do not fear
At the end of each cycle, you’ll receive an email reminding you to choose your next box. With a three-item return, items can be returned at a local drop-off point, whilst bigger parcels will be
4 . When Carolyn Kurle first visited Alaska’s Hawadax Island, then known as Rat Island, she immediately noticed the silence. “When you’re on an island that’s never had rats, it’s just like birds everywhere — it’s really loud,” she says. “So when you get to an island that does have rats, you really notice because it’s cacophony versus quiet.”
Nowadays Hawadax is once again a noisy place. Roughly a decade after a successful effort to rid the island of its predatory rodents (捕食性啮齿动物), a mass of seabirds has returned. And the benefits have extended across the island’s entire seashore ecosystem, which is again full of diverse life. These findings, published in Scientific Reports, show that certain ecosystems can recover with surprising speed if given the chance.
“This study is an example of something positive that can happen when we humans take action to clean up after ourselves,” says Kurle, who is lead author of the study and a conservation ecologist at the University of California, San Diego. “It also highlights how everything is interlinked, especially in coastal systems.”
The greedy rodents colonized Hawadax after a Japanese shipwreck in the 1780s, and they quickly wiped out seabird communities. Kurle’s first findings, published in 2008, showed that the rats affected not just birds but the entire food chain — all the way down to algae (藻类). Without birds to eat seashore invertebrates (无脊椎动物), populations of snails and other species feeding on plants exploded and consumed much of the marine kelp (巨藻), which provides crucial habitat for other organisms. “Certain invasive species can have impacts beyond those that are most obvious,” Kurle says.
Those early findings inspired the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in partnership with The Nature Conservancy and Island Conservation, to wipe out the rats by dropping poison on Hawadax. Kurle and her colleagues secured funding to survey the island 5 and 11 years after taking the action. They found that its ecosystem had steadily recovered and now resembles that of other Aleutian Islands that were never invaded by rats, with significantly fewer marine invertebrates and much more kelp cover.
“Very few rat-eradication projects have focused on the impact on marine ecosystems, so the Hawadax Island case is really noteworthy,” says University of Tennessee, Knoxville, ecologist Daniel Simberloff, who was not involved in the study. “This is a very cool, elegant result from an academic ecology standpoint and, of course, is important in terms of conservation.”
1. What does “cacophony” in paragraph 1 most probably mean?A.Silent night. | B.Messy beach. |
C.Limited space. | D.Disagreeable sounds. |
A.Greedy rodents. | B.Marine kelp. |
C.Seashore invertebrates. | D.Invasive species. |
A.setting traps and catching rats |
B.raising money for follow-up study |
C.joining hands with conservation groups |
D.comparing Hawadax with other rat-free islands |
A.Birds and rats cannot co-exist. |
B.Rats are invasive species that must be rooted out. |
C.Ecosystem is too delicate to restore itself once disturbed. |
D.Removing invaders on land can benefit marine populations. |
A. species | B. informed | C. awareness | D. indicate |
E. additional | F. figures | G. advanced | H. sticking |
I. state | J. reliance | K. based |
Sensors for Houseplants
Over the past two years Jasmin Moeller, a 38-year-old in Germany, has been buying more houseplants, making her feel more comfortable.
Actually, the fact that people have spent much more time
Yet it is one thing to buy a houseplant and quite another to successfully look after it. Luckily, some
A sensor made by German firm Greensens has approximately 5000 plant
Another app released by German business Fyta tells users how their plants are by analyzing the uploaded pictures of the plants. It also includes
However, Botanist Silver Spence is worried that
Back in Germany, Ms Moeller says she is sure that the sensors are helping her improve gardening skills.
6 . Otters, are cute, this no one can deny. They have big eyes, short and flat noses and claws (爪子) like tiny hands. They look even cuter when they wear hats and throw food balls into their mouths as if they were bar snacks, like Takechiyo, a pet otter in Japan. Documenting Takechiyo’s funny behavior has earned his owner nearly 230,000 followers on Instagram, a photo-sharing app.
Takechiyo’s fame reflects a craze across east and South-East Asia for keeping the cute creatures as pets. Enthusiasts in Japan visit cafés where they pay to hug them; Indonesian owners parade their pets around on leads or go swimming with them, then share their pictures online. But these enjoyable photos mask a trade that is doing a lot of damage. Even before they became fashionable companions for humans, Asia’s wild otters faced plenty of threats. Their habitats are disappearing. They have long been hunted for their coats, or killed by farmers who wish to prevent them consuming fishes. The pet trade, which began picking up in the early 2000s but appeared to speed up a few years ago, has made things worse. The numbers of wild Asian small-clawed otters and smooth-coated otters, two species that are in highest demand, have declined by at least 30% in the three decades to 2019.
The international agreement that governs trade in wildlife, known as CITES, now prohibits cross-border trade in these species. But laws banning ownership are often poorly implemented, as in Thailand, or full of holes, as in Indonesia. And the otter-keeping craze has been dramatically improved by the internet, says Vincent Nijman of Oxford Brookes University. In 2017 TRAFFIC, a British charity that monitors the wildlife trade, spent nearly five months looking at Facebook and other social-media sites in five South-East Asian countries. During that time, it found around 1,000 otters advertised for sale online.
In any case, otters do not even make particularly good pets. Every year the Jakarta Animal Aid Network, a charity in Indonesia’s capital, receives some ten otters from people who have struggled to look after them. Faizul Duha, the founder of an Indonesian otter-owners’ group, admits that his two animals emit a “very specific” (read: fishy) smell. They bite humans and chew on furniture. Their scream can be heard blocks away. And their cages need cleaning every two-to-three hours. That is how often they empty their bowels (肠道).
1. The function of the first paragraph is to ________.A.present the main idea | B.introduce the main topic |
C.set readers thinking | D.illustrate the writer’s point |
A.The demand for pet otters. | B.The disappearance of otters’ habitats. |
C.The popularity of otter coats. | D.The decrease of fishes. |
A.the laws that prohibit cross-border trade are strict in Asia |
B.social media plays a significant role in the online otter trade |
C.people usually give up otters because they are endangered |
D.otters are suitable pets because they are friendly to humans |
A.advertise for a photo-sharing app |
B.introduce the popularity of pet otters |
C.discourage the illegal otter pet trade |
D.describe the characteristics of otters |
A massive fire tore through the main market in the city of Hargeisa in northern Somalia overnight, injuring about two dozen people and
Images
Officials said it started on Friday evening but was largely brought under control by dawn on Saturday, although some small areas were still burning.
“The town has never witnessed such a massive calamity,” Hargeisa’s mayor, Abdikarim Ahmed Mooge, told reporters at the scene. “This place was the economic centre of Hargeisa and
The Somaliland president, Muse Bihi Abdi, said during a visit to Waheen
Hargeisa chamber of commerce chairman Jamal Aideed said the loss of the market was immense
“I have lost everything tonight, this fire was the biggest I have ever seen in my life,” said market trader Bashi Ali. “I had several businesses in the market and all of them burned to ashes.
Life in the Clear
Transparent animals let light pass through their bodies the same way light passes through a window. These animals typically live between the surface of the ocean and a depth of about 3,300 feet-as far as most light can reach. Most of them are extremely delicate and can be damaged by a simple touch. Sonke Johnsen, a scientist in biology, says, “These animals live through their life alone. They never touch anything unless they’re eating it, or unless something is eating them.”
And they are as clear as glass. How does an animal become see-through? Ifs trickier than you might think.
The objects around you are visible because they interact with light. Light typically travels in a straight line. But some materials slow and scalier(散射) light bouncing it away from its original path. Others absorb light, stopping it dead in its tracks. Both scattering and absorption make a.n object look different from other objects around it, so you can see it easily.
But a transparent object doesn't absorb or scatter light, at least not very much. Light can pass through it without bending or stopping. That means a transparent object doesn't look very different from the surrounding air or water. You don't see it- you see the things behind it.
To become transparent, an animal needs to keep its body from absorbing or scattering light. Living materials can stop light because they contain pigments(色素) that absorb specific colors of light. But a transparent animal doesn’t have pigments, so its tissues won’t absorb light. According to Johnsen, avoiding absorption is actually easy. The real challenge is preventing light from scattering.
Animals are built of many different materials—skin, fat, and more—and light moves through each at a different speed. Every time light moves into a material with a new speed, it bends and scatters. Transparent animals use different tricks to fight scattering. Some animals are simply very small or extremely flat. Without much tissue to scatter light, it is easier to be see-through. Others build a large, clear mass of non-living jelly-like(果冻状的) material and spread themselves over it.
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9 . For millions of years, Arctic sea ice has expanded and shrunk in a rhythmic dance with the summer sun. Humans evolved in this icy world, and civilization relied on it for climatic, ecological and political stability. But now the world comes ever closer to a future without ice. The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that 2019’s minimum arctic sea ice extent was the second lowest on record. Arctic summers could become mostly ice-free in 30 years, and possibly sooner if current trends continue. As the northern sea ice declines, the world must unite to preserve what remains of the Arctic.
Although most people have never seen the sea ice, its effects are never far away. By reflecting sunlight, Arctic ice acts as Earth’s air conditioner. Once dark water replaces brilliant ice, Earth could warm substantially, equivalent to the warming caused by the additional release of a trillion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere and declining sea ice threatens wildlife, from the polar bear to algae that grow beneath the sea ice, supporting the large amount of marine life.
To avoid the consequences the scientific community should advocate not just for lowering greenhouse gas emissions, but also for protecting the Arctic from exploitation. The Antarctic shows the way. In the 1950s, countries raced to claim the Antarctic continent for resources and military installations. Enter the scientists. The 1957-1958 International Geophysical Year brought together scientists from competing countries to study Antarctica, and countries temporarily suspended their territorial disputes (争议). In 1959, 12 countries signed the Antarctic Treaty to preserve the continent for peaceful scientific discovery rather than territorial and military gain.
Sixty years later, we must now save the Arctic. A new Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary (MAPS) Treaty would protect the Arctic Ocean as a scientific preserve for peaceful purposes only. Similar to Antarctica, MAPS would prohibit resource exploitation, commercial fishing and shipping, and military exercises. So far, only 2 non-Arctic countries have signed MAPS; 97 more need to sign on to enact it into law. Scientists can help—just as they did for the Antarctic—by giving statements of support, asking scientific organizations to endorse (支持) the treaty, communicating the importance of protecting the arctic to the public and policy-makers, and above all, by convincing national leaders to sign the treaty. In particular, Arctic nations must agree that recognizing the arctic as an international preserve is better than fighting over it. In 2018, these countries successfully negotiated a 16-year moratorium on commercial fishing in the Arctic high seas, demonstrating that such agreements are possible.
Humans have only ever lived in a world topped by ice. Can we now work together to protect Arctic ecosystems, keep the northern peace, and allow the sea ice to return?
1. What can be inferred from the passage?A.wildlife relies on sea ice for food and water. |
B.The Arctic would be ice-free in 30 years. |
C.Sea ice slows down the global warming. |
D.The melting of sea ice releases CO2. |
A.remind readers of the past of the Antarctic |
B.propose a feasible approach for the Arctic |
C.stress the importance of preserving sea ice |
D.recall how the Antarctic Treaty came into being |
A.battle | B.ban |
C.memo | D.protection |
A.Antarctic: a Successful Comeback? | B.Sea Ice and Global Warming |
C.Arctic: the Earth’s Future | D.Life Without Ice? |
1.
A.In 1815. | B.In 1848. | C.In 1850. | D.In 1855. |
A.High school education. | B.Two-year study programs. |
C.100 education programs. | D.Four-year college programs. |
A.California has the most state colleges and universities in America. |
B.California is a large city with more than 4, 000, 000 people. |
C.California is the largest state in land area throughout America. |
D.California has only a few high-technology companies. |