1 . A selection of wildlife sculptures made out of recycled rubbish is being displayed at an exhibition at the Harley Gallery in Glasgow, England. The sculptures have, been created by Glasgow — based artist Michelle Reader, who has been working with recycled materials for over 20 years. The inspiration behind this collection of artwork was the increase in fly-tipping during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Fly-tipping is when people illegally dump rubbish or litter in a public place.
Reader told the BBC, “Glasgow Wildlife Trust showed me some of the materials that were found on their reserves — a washing machine, rusty bike frame, car tyres.” She decided to create wildlife sculptures out of these materials to encourage people to think about the damage fly-tipping can do to the environment and wildlife. Her three-dimensional artworks included recycled items such as skis, a gas mask, and washing machine, parts.
Reader often drew inspiration from the “beauty of the natural world,” and said that the large model of the white-tailed bee was inspired by the many hours she spent on her distribution during the pandemic. Another sculpture, of a bearded eagle, was inspired by the sighting of one such bird in the Peak District in July 2020. This was only the second time it had been spotted in the UK.
Other projects Reader has been involved with have highlighted issues such as the importance of recycling and reducing food waste. In April, the National Space Centre in Leicester, England, launched their Home Planet gallery, which featured an art installation from Reader. Using rubbish found in rivers, such as plastic bottles, tennis balls, footwear, and toys, Reader created a large wave sculpture to highlight the problem of littering.
Reader says that through her sculptures she draws attention to environmental issues in an attractive and humorous way. The exhibition is on at Harley Callery in Glasgow, England, until 24 July.
1. What inspired the exhibition at the Harley Gallery?| A．Recycled materials. | B．The covid -19 pandemic. |
| C．Wildlife sculptures. | D．The increasing fly-tipping. |
| A．To be environmentally-friendly. | B．To protect wildlife animals. |
| C．To love the sculpture art. | D．To improve creative ability. |
| A．A family survey. | B．A health magazine. |
| C．An environmental magazine. | D．A science guide. |
| A．Look at the art from another angle. | B．Explore the artistic talents in your life. |
| C．Wildlife sculptures made from rubbish. | D．A new way to live a sustainable life. |
| A．Freezing and wet. | B．Sunny and warm. | C．Sunny but windy. |
Global warming is pushing the population on polar bears to
Polar bears live by hunting seals in the Arctic Ocean, but as more and more ice
Studies show that
“What we’ve shown is that, first, we’ll lose the
The study comes
4 . I couldn’t believe it when Ron said, “Honey, I bought us two camels!” I’d always been an animal
They were babies when bought and I
Last fall, Sybil was believed to be in a deadly
In 2016, Ron was diagnosed with cancer. We were both
Yet it wasn’t until I watched Nadia and Sybil live through
| A．feeder | B．lover | C．doubter | D．guardian |
| A．train | B．raise | C．describe | D．observe |
| A．returned | B．showed | C．brought | D．named |
| A．gave birth to | B．got close to | C．got out of | D．gave rise to |
| A．sky | B．earth | C．incident | D．loss |
| A．as usual | B．in particular | C．by coincidence | D．in practice |
| A．beauty | B．strength | C．ambition | D．awareness |
| A．behavior | B．mistake | C．panic | D．condition |
| A．made sense | B．tried out | C．held on | D．built up |
| A．liberty | B．survival | C．application | D．shelter |
| A．amazed | B．helped | C．convinced | D．promoted |
| A．secretly | B．nearly | C．temporarily | D．extremely |
| A．busy | B．weak | C．serious | D．nervous |
| A．independent | B．existing | C．running | D．practical |
| A．exhausted | B．disabled | C．treated | D．balanced |
| A．warned | B．reminded | C．surprised | D．recommended |
| A．absurdness | B．annoyance | C．adaptation | D．darkness |
| A．fruitless | B．wonderful | C．scary | D．remote |
| A．contently | B．aimlessly | C．elegantly | D．anxiously |
| A．figure | B．possession | C．blessing | D．burden |
5 . Nashville-based helicopter pilot Joel Boyers had just finished his job on Saturday morning and was heading home when he received a call for help from a woman in Pennsylvania. Her brother Johnson’s home in Waverly, Tennessee, was underwater and he was trapped on a roof with his daughters. Could Boyers help?“I thought how I would feel if I told her I was not even going to try?” he said in a Thursday interview. “She just so happened to call the right person, because I’m the only person crazy enough to even try to do that.”
The weather was terrible and Boyers had to deal with hills and power lines on the way to Waverly, a small city about 60 miles west of Nashville. Just before reaching the town, he found the Internet was down, making it impossible to locate the house he was looking for. He flew on anyway.
“When I arrived, it was nothing but raging water below me,” he said. A few people were out in boats, rescuing the trapped. Boyers was alone in the sky. He started flying up and down the flooded area, grabbing anyone he could.
Boyers said he ended up rescuing 17 people that day. He was proud of that, but said he was the one who should be thanking them. “I literally prayed just days before this that I would be given some meaning in my life, and then I end up getting this call,” he said. He had flown over disasters before including floods, but “The police are usually there, and my hands are tied. This time there isn’t any,” he said.
To perform the rescues, Boyers had to carefully avoid power lines, balance his skids (打滑) on sloped rooftops, and fly over flood waters. It took all the skills learned over 16 years of flying, including for a television news station, for documentaries and for country music stars. “I don’t want to lie,” he said. “It was almost a little fun for me.”
1. Why did Boyers fly to Waverly？| A．Because he had to do his routine tasks. |
| B．Because his brother was caught in the flood. |
| C．Because he was going to have an interview. |
| D．Because he received an emergency call. |
| A．A long distance. | B．The Internet failure. |
| C．High mountains. | D．Fallen power lines. |
| A．Caring and courageous. | B．Ambitious and demanding. |
| C．Modest and creative. | D．Humorous and cooperative. |
| A．Surviving a Crisis | B．Performing a Task |
| C．Braving a Flood | D．Testing Flight Skills |
6 . Since 1960, considerable scientific researches have been done on chimps in their natural habitats. Scientists have found out that the social behaviors of chimps are very different from humans’. Chimps just cooperate in certain ways. But beyond the minimum requirements as social beings, they have little instinct (本能) to help one another. Chimps in the wild seek food for themselves. Even chimp mothers regularly refuse to share food with their children.
In the laboratory, chimps don’t naturally share food either. If a chimp is put in a cage where he can reach one plate full of food for himself or, with no greater effort, a plate that provides food for a neighbour in the next cage, he will pull casually—he just doesn’t care whether his neighbour gets fed or not. Chimps are truly selfish.
Human children, on the other hand, are extremely cooperative. The psychologist Michael Tomasello has studied this cooperation in a series of experiments with very young children. He finds that if babies aged 18 months see a worried adult with hands full trying to open a door, almost all will immediately try to help.
There are several reasons to believe that the urges to help, inform and share are not taught, but naturally possessed in young children. One is that these instincts appear at a very young age before most parents have started to train their children to behave socially. Another is that the helping behaviors are not improved if the children are rewarded. A third reason is that social intelligence develops in children before their general cognitive (认知的) skills, at least when compared with chimps. In tests conducted by Tomasello, the human children did no better than the chimps on the physical world tests but were considerably better at understanding the social world.
The central part of what children’s minds have and chimps’ don’t is what Tomasello calls shared intentionality. Part of this ability is that they can infer what others know or are thinking. But beyond that, even very young children want to be part of a shared purpose.
1. What can be known about chimps from the first paragraph?| A．They behave identically as humans do. | B．They don’t care about others a lot. |
| C．They are willing to share food. | D．They are social animals as humans. |
| A．To link his studies with home schooling. |
| B．To teach those babies how to be cooperative. |
| C．To show worried parents how to raise babies. |
| D．To better understand humans’ instinct to cooperate. |
| A．They did better than chimps in physical tests. |
| B．They are born with the urges to help and share. |
| C．Their ability to know the social world is as good as chimps’. |
| D．Their helping behaviors will be improved if they are rewarded. |
| A．Chimps’ Outstanding Social Behaviors | B．Chimps: Mankind’s Closest Living Relatives |
| C．Difference Between Humans and Chimps | D．Close Connection Between Humans and Chimps |
Living in a city can be
The park
“Sometimes it doesn’t seem real because we are close to a city of eight million inhabitants (居民)
“Visitors to the park can see between 25 to 35 different species of birds,” Cantor said. Ten years ago, the hill was completely deforested,
But workers began to replant local trees and flowers to bring the forest back to life.
As that heat rises, some of it is
Several gases in the atmosphere
9 . The destruction of our natural resources and contamination of our food supply continue to occur, largely because of the extreme difficulty in attaching legal responsibility to those who continue to treat our environment with careless abandon(放任). Attempts to prevent pollution by legislation, economic encouragement and friendly persuasion have been met by lawsuits, personal and industrial denial and long delays--not only in accepting responsibility, but more importantly, in doing something about it.
It seems that only when government decides it can afford tax encouragement or production sacrifices is there any initiative for change. Where is industry’s and our recognition that protecting mankind’s great treasure is the single most important responsibility? If ever there will be time for environmental health professionals to come to the frontlines and provide leadership to solve environmental problems, that time is now.
We are being asked, and, in fact, the public is demanding that we take positive action. It is our responsibility as professionals in environmental health to make the difference. Yes, the ecologists, the environmental activists and the conservationists serve to communicate, stimulate thinking and promote behavioral change. However, it is those of us who are paid to make the decisions to develop, improve and enforce environmental standards, I submit, who must lead the charge.
We must recognize that environmental health issues do not stop at city limits, county lines, state or even federal boundaries. We can no longer afford to be tunnel-visioned in our approach. We must visualize issues from every perspective to make the objective decisions. We must express our views clearly to prevent media distortion and public confusion.
I believe we have a three-part mission for the present. First, we must continue to press for improvements in the quality of life that people can make for themselves. Second, we must investigate and understand the link between environment and health. Third, we must be able to communicate technical information in a form that citizens can understand. If we can accomplish these three goals in this decade, maybe we can finally stop environmental degradation, and not merely hold it back. We will then be able to spend pollution dollars truly on prevention rather than on bandages.
1. We can infer from the first two paragraphs that the industrialists disregard environmental protection chiefly because _________.| A．they are unaware of the consequences of what they are doing |
| B．they are reluctant to sacrifice their own economic interests |
| C．time has not yet come for them to put due emphasis on it |
| D．it is difficult for them to take effective measures |
| A．Legislation and government intervention. |
| B．The industry’s understanding and support. |
| C．The efforts of environmental health professionals. |
| D．The cooperation of ecologists, environmental activists and conservationists. |
| A．narrow-minded |
| B．blind to the facts |
| C．short-sighted |
| D．able to see only one aspect |
| A．Efforts should be exerted on remedial measures on pollution. |
| B．More money should be spent in order to stop pollution. |
| C．Ordinary citizens hardly have any idea of technical information on pollution. |
| D．Environmental degradation will be stopped by the end of this decade. |
10 . El Nino, a Spanish term for “the Christ child”, was named by South American fisherman who noticed that the global weather pattern, which happens every two to seven years, reduced the amount of fishes caught around Christmas. El Nino sees warm water, collected over several years in the western Pacific, flow back eastwards when winds that normally blow westwards weaken, or sometimes the other way round.
The weather effects, both good and bad, are felt in many places. Rich countries gain more from powerful Nino, on balance, than they lose. A study found that a strong Nino in 1997-98 helped American’s economy grow by $15 billion, partly because of better agricultural harvest: farmers in the Midwest gained from extra rain. The total rise in agricultural incomes in rich countries in growth is greater than the fall in poor ones.
But in Indonesia extremely dry forests are in flames. A multi-year drought in south-east Brazil is becoming worse. Though heavy rains brought about by El Nino may relieve the drought in California, they are likely to cause surface flooding and other disasters.
The most recent powerful Nino, in 1997-98, killed around 21,000 people and caused damage worth $36 billion around the globe. But such Ninos come with months of warning, and so much is known about how they happen that governments can prepare. According to the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), however, just 12% of disaster-relief funding in the past two decades has gone on reducing risks in advance, rather than recovery and rebuilding afterwards. This is despite evidence that a dollar spent on risk-reduction saves at least two on reconstruction.
Simple improvements to infrastructure(基础设施) can reduce the spread of disease. Better sewers make it less likely that heavy rain is followed by an outbreak of the disease of bad stomach. Stronger bridges mean villages are less likely to be left without food and medicine after floods. According to a paper in 2011 by Mr. Hsiang and co-authors, civil conflict is related to El Nino’s harmful effects—and the poorer the country, the stronger the link. Though the relationship may not be causal, helping divided communities to prepare for disasters would at least reduce the risk that those disasters are followed by killing and wounding people. Since the poorest are least likely to make up for their losses from disasters linked to El Nino, reducing their losses needs to be the priority.
1. What can we learn about El Nino in Paragraph 1?| A．It is named after a South American fisherman. |
| B．It takes place almost every year all over the world. |
| C．It forces fishermen to stop catching fish around Christmas. |
| D．It sees the changes of water flow direction in the ocean. |
| A．more investment should go to risk reduction |
| B．governments of poor countries need more aid |
| C．victims of El Nino deserve more compensation |
| D．recovery and reconstruction should come first |
| A．To introduce El Nino and its origin. |
| B．To explain the consequences of El Nino. |
| C．To show ways of fighting against El Nino. |
| D．To urge people to prepare for El Nino. |
