1 . Microplastics, as the name implies, are tiny plastic particles found in the environment. Any plastic particle that has a diameter of less than 5 mm is considered to be microplastic. For a long time, a majority of people were unaware of the presence of microplastics and their effects on the environment. However, these particles have become a significant topic of debate in recent times after researchers noted their presence in almost every corner of the globe. from Mount Everest to the Mariana Trench.
There are two categories of microplastics: primary and secondary. Primary microplastics are tiny particles meant for external commercial use such as cosmetics, as well as microfibers to make other textiles, such as fishing nets. Secondary microplastics are particles that result from the breakdown of larger plastic items, such as water bottles.
There are various sources of microplastics. Wastewater treatment plants and sewage treatment plants are the major sources of primary microplastics, most of which are residues (残留物) of cosmetics, paint, household and industrial waste. Single-use plastics plastic items meant to be used just once and then discarded, such as a straw — are the main source of secondary plastics in the environment.
The problem with microplastics is that like plastic items of any size they do not readily break down into harmless molecules. Plastics can take hundreds or thousands of years to decompose (降解). That means once produced, we cannot get rid of them. Microplastics exist on beaches and deeper waters, and have been detected in marine organisms from plankton to whales, in commercial seafood, and even in drinking water. They are mistaken for food by marine animals and some plastics are so tiny that they end up in the animal tissues. They are passed across the food chain, and some find their way to humans.
Scientists are still unsure whether consumed microplastics are harmful to human or animal health and if so, what specific dangers they may pose. Even so, many countries are taking action to reduce microplastics in the environment. The best approaches to controlling microplastics include proper handling of plastics and thorough treatment of wastewater.
1. According to the first two paragraphs, microplastics are_________| A．common in our daily life |
| B．used to make glass bottles |
| C．found in all the uninhabited areas |
| D．tiny plastic particles with a diameter of 5mm |
| A．The use of straws should be forbidden. |
| B．Household waste contains microplastics. |
| C．Industrial waste is a source of secondary plastics |
| D．Wastewater and sewage treatment plants are useless. |
| A．Because they’re consumed as food. |
| B．Because they exist on the beaches. |
| C．Because they easily break down. |
| D．Because they’re left out in the food chain. |
| A．To analyze the sources of microplastics. |
| B．To warn people of the danger of microplastics. |
| C．To give an overall introduction to microplastics. |
| D．To persuade people to give up the use of microplastics. |
2 . Many guests have had the pleasure of observing the magnificent cheetahs (猎豹) that find shelter on the Tswalu Private Reserve, but they might not be aware of the work to make these wild cats feel comfortable in the presence of humans. As a conservation photographer, I spent a day with conservator Clement Motau to understand what it takes to habituate cheetahs.
Habituating wildlife is an on-going process —slowly getting wild animals used to the presence of vehicles and people. Animals like cheetahs receive regular visits from the wildlife conservation team. That way they learn that in this privately protected area, humans pose no threat to.
Clement, now 29 years old, spent his early childhood in Middelburg, but he would go to the rural area every chance he got, including most school holidays. “I enjoyed climbing mountains and being outdoors. I always knew I wanted to work with wild animals.” He decided to study nature conservation rather than become a tour guide because “dealing with people all the time is not my strongest point.” After three years of studies, he came to Tswalu in 2016 and was offered a position on the conservation team. Though one day rarely looks the same as another, with tasks ranging from collaring wild dogs to mending fences, the chance to spend time with cheetahs is an experience he particularly enjoys.
An hour after we first spotted Artemis, Clement's favorite cheetah, she is still on the move, clearly looking for a meal. She is a beautiful animal, and I am in no hurry to leave. Though she seems unbothered by our presence, we don't want to negatively impact her chances of feeding. Wildlife tourism is an essential conservation tool, both to raise awareness and to pay for all the costs. But the wellbeing of the animals always comes first. “She is very obliging with us today,” he says. “So relaxed. The guides and our guests will love her. She'll be a future star.”
1. What do we know about habituating wild animals?| A．It's a process to get wild animals used to humans. |
| B．It's done by paying random visits to wild animals. |
| C．Wild animals will benefit from this practice. |
| D．Such practice is limited to private reserves. |
| A．Because he liked a job with various tasks... |
| B．Because being a tour guide was not his dream. |
| C．Because he enjoyed spending time with wild animals. |
| D．Because working with animals was his strongest point. |
| A．Artemis is responding to our request. |
| B．Artemis is warning us to keep a distance. |
| C．Artemis is inviting us to enter her territory. |
| D．Artemis is feeling comfortable with our presence. |
| A．A remarkable cheetah conservator. | B．A reserve for cheetahs. |
| C．A cheetah conservation program. | D．A tour with a cheetah conservator. |
3 . It was the day before Thanksgiving and Kaleb Benham was wandering around outside his home in Noring California. His 90-pound pit bull (斗牛犬), Buddy, was playing around nearby, doing what dogs do: getting into trouble. And this time, Buddy was getting into a whole lot of trouble.
The unmistakable sound that no one wants to hear alone in the woods caught Benham’s attention. It was the deep, strange roar of a black bear. Benham wheeled around to see the beast, which Benham figured weighed around 350 pounds, some 100 feet away. In an instant, the bear fastened on to Buddy’s head and started dragging him away.
Benham, a thin, fit, 24-year-old, took off after them. “Honestly,” he told CBS13, “the only thing I could think of was ‘save my baby’.” He lowered his shoulder and ran quickly towards the bear. But it only seized Buddy tightly. Benham grabbed the bear by the throat. Nothing. He tried getting its mouth open but the jaw was locked tight. Benham resorted to street fighting —punching the bear over and over around its mouth and nose. It worked. The bear dropped the dog and ran off into the woods.
Buddy was in bad shape. His face was bloodied. He had a bite mark clear through his lip and one that barely missed an eye.
“My first thought was that I was going to lose him,” Benham said. He picked up Buddy, put him into his car, and sped off to a nearby veterinarian. Buddy’s surgery took nearly four hours. Benham watched the procedure through a window, waiting for a miracle.
This was the second time Benham had rescued Buddy, says CBS13. The first was from a shelter a few years ago. “If it was your kid, what would you do?” he asked. Nodding toward Buddy, he added, “That’s my kid.”
1. What is the text mainly about?| A．A brave rescue. | B．A regular routine. |
| C．A fearless pet dog. | D．A demanding surgery. |
| A．To prove the excitement of Benham. |
| B．To describe the fear in Buddy’s heart. |
| C．To indicate the difficulty of the rescue. |
| D．To show the bear’s starvation and fierceness. |
| A．Benham defeated the beast by grabbing its throat. |
| B．Benham ra n towards the beast with dropped shoulder. |
| C．Benham punched the beast’s mouth and nose repeatedly. |
| D．Benham forced open the beast’s mouth by unlocking its jaw. |
| A．Buddy once saved Benham. |
| B．They used to share a shelter. |
| C．Benham had no kid but Buddy. |
| D．They had very close relationship. |
4 . A new report released Tuesday by Pethadoop, a platform specializing in China’s pet industry, said cats accounted for 59.5% of all the pets among the 30,000 respondents surveyed for the research. As of last year, there were some 58 million pet cats in China’s urban households, compared with some 54 million pet dogs.
It also shows that China has seen an increase in pet ownership over the years, with people increasingly choosing cats. Globally, though dogs were still more common pets, including the United States and the United Kingdom, cats have emerged as the most popular pet in the European Union lately.
Cats have also turned into a social phenomenon in China and elsewhere, becoming the subject of viral memes (模因；迷因) and videos. Many cat lovers online also identify themselves as “cat slaves” and “cat sniffers,” publicly professing their pet preference.
Researchers attributed (归因) the fast growth of cat pets to the lifestyle in Chinese cities, with some experts also suggesting the feline’s popularity with the young generation’s pursuit of individuality:
Liu Yi, the report’s chief editor, said that many citizens have busy lives and relatively smaller accommodations, thus making cats their ideal companions-it’s easy to raise cats, unlike dogs that require more attention and outdoor activities.
“Our research shows that the majority of the pet owners are people born after 1990 and 1995,” he said. “Young people are looking for freedom and spontaneity (自然；随意) in their lives. and the habits of cats are more suited to their needs.”
Cai, a 27-year-old who works in Beijing, said she recently adopted a cat named Nanako. She added that cats were the perfect pet for “da gong ren”, which means “laborer” or “hard working people.” “I wanted a dog at first, but since I’m quite busy, I wouldn’t have given them enough time,” she said. “Cats are more independent compared with dogs. Nanako has kept me company through my loneliness, which someone like me who works in a big city faces.”
1. What is the current situation of pet industry in China?| A．Cats account for 59.5% of the whole pet population. |
| B．The dog population in China is 4 million short of that of cats. |
| C．An increasing number of people turn to keeping cats as their pets. |
| D．There’re about 58 million pet cats in China’s suburban households. |
| A．Loyalty. | B．Independence. | C．Diligence. | D．Playfulness. |
| A．The addiction of the cat slaves. |
| B．The present situation of urban lifestyle. |
| C．The individualism of the Chinese people. |
| D．The independence of the young generation. |
| A．Positive. | B．Disapproving. | C．Indifferent. | D．Neutral. |
5 . Some ants have figured out how to avoid getting lost: build taller anthills, according to a recent study.
Desert ants living in the hot, flat salt pans of Tunisia spend their days looking for food and reach as far as 1.1 kilometers from their nests. To find their way home, desert ants use a navigation system, relying on the sun’s position and counting their steps to track their location relative to their nest.
But this system becomes increasingly unreliable as the distance from the nest increases. “We realized that, whenever the ants in salt pans came closer to their nest, they suddenly pinpointed the nest hill from several meters distance,” says Markus Knaden, a researcher at Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. “This made us think that the hill serves as a nest-defining landmark.”
So Knaden and colleagues captured ants from nests in the middle of salt pans and from along their shorelines. Only salt-pan nests had distinct hills, up to 40 centimeters tall, whereas the hills on shoreline nests were lower or barely noticeable. Next, the team removed any hills and placed the captured insects some distance away from their nests. Salt-pan ants struggled more than shore ants to find homes. Shore ants relied on the shoreline for guidance and weren’t affected by the hill removal, the researchers concluded.
The team further conducted another study to see if desert ants were deliberately building a taller hill when their surroundings lacked any visible landmarks. So, the researchers removed the hills of 16 salt-pan nests and installed (安装) two 50-centimeter-tall blocks near eight of them. The other eight nests were left without any artificial visual aid. After three days, the researchers found that seven ants from the unaided nests had rebuilt their hills. But only two ants from the nests with man-made blocks nearby had bothered to rebuild.
“It implies that ants regularly assess the complexity of their environment and change their decisions based on their conclusion,” says ecologist Judith Bronstein of the University of Arizona.
1. What aspect of ants is the recent study mainly about?| A．Challenges of survival. | B．Landmarks of habitats. |
| C．Intelligence of navigation. | D．Comparison of varieties. |
| A．Explored. | B．Recognized. | C．Climbed. | D．Crossed. |
| A．To observe different ants’ reactions. | B．To prove impacts of various habitats. |
| C．To disturb desert ants’ navigation system. | D．To test anthills’ functions and significance. |
| A．Evaluate and make changes. | B．Visual aid is a must. |
| C．Cooperation brings victory. | D．No man-made blocks are used. |
6 . Like humans, dogs have tear ducts (泪腺) that well up with tears to keep their eyes clean and healthy. But tears in dogs, which tend not to fall as they do when humans cry, hadn’t been linked with emotion before.
Takefumi Kikusui, a professor at Azabu University in Japan, decided to study dog tears after watching his poodle (鬟毛狗) when she had puppies six years ago. He noticed that her eyes got teary as she nursed her puppies. So Kikusui and his team measured tear production among 18 dogs with a standard test known as the Schirmer Tear Test (STT). It involved a paper strip placed inside the eyelids (眼睑) of the dogs for a minute before and after they were reunited with their owners following five to seven hours of separation.
“Tear production was evaluated by the length of the wet part on the STT. The baseline was about 22 mm, and the reunion with the owner increased the length by 10%,” Kikusui explained. With the help of 20 dogs, researchers then compared tear production before and after reunions with their owners and people with whom the animals were familiar. Only the reunion with the owner increased tear production.
Researchers also tested if oxytocin, a hormone thought to be connected to emotional bonding in humans and dogs, could be causing the tear production. They found that dropping oxytocin in dogs’ eyes really increased tear production, while a control solution did not.
The findings suggest “dogs’ tears are associated with positive emotions, such as a reunion with the owner,” according to Takefumi Kikusui. Still, some scientists think it’s a stretch to say that dogs cry tears of joy. “It would take a lot to let me accept the evidence of this research,” said Clive Wynne, an animal behavioral specialist at Arizona State University.
1. What inspired Kikusui to carry out the research?| A．The cry of his poodle’s babies. |
| B．The problem with his poodle’s eyes. |
| C．The changes in his poodle’s eyes while nursing. |
| D．His poodle’s reaction to the reunion with him. |
| A．They can be a sign of dogs’ happiness. |
| B．They can show dogs’ negative feelings. |
| C．They can keep dogs’ eyes healthy and clean. |
| D．They can rarely be seen in young dogs’ eyes. |
| A．Applying oxytocin to dogs’ eyes. |
| B．Placing a paper strip in dogs’ eyelids. |
| C．Keeping dogs away from their owners. |
| D．Increasing the length of the STT’s wet part. |
| A．Dog’s positive and negative emotions can result in tears in their eyes. |
| B．There is a powerful emotional bond between humans and dogs. |
| C．Dog’s eyes are watering due to tear ducts. |
| D．Dogs cry tears of joy when they reunited with their owners. |
7 . A pair of best friends from Texas are proving that adventure doesn’t have an age limit — even when you’re 81.
Ellie Hamby, a photographer, and Sandy Hazelip, a physician, toured the world in 80 days, adventuring from the beaches of Bali to the deserts of Egypt.
Their first stop was Antarctica. “The beauty of the Antarctic is just unbelievable,” Hamby recalled. Since then, the pair have visited 18 countries across all seven continents.
And despite the challenges international travel presents, the best friends say they finished their trip without any arguments.
“We’re both independent, very stubborn. But we seem to allow each other to give space,” said Hamby. “We just understand each other and we know this is a good thing we’re doing and we kind of respect each other’s feelings.”
For Hamby, the most interesting aspect of the trip was the people they met along the way.
“We love all the sights that we saw, but the things that we remember the most are the people that we met,” she said. “We met some of the most wonderful, kindest, friendliest people in the world. We just have friends now all over the world that we love dearly.”
And they shared an important piece of advice for any travelers worried about the language barrier on their own adventures.
“You know, people ask us often about the language, how we manage it,” said Hamby. “We say with Sandy and Ellie, there’s one language and that’s a smile. And we found that worked wonders because we were often aware that there was not English spoken. But a smile covers all languages.”
1. Why did they finish the trip without arguments?| A．They had different personalities. |
| B．They prepared presents for each other. |
| C．They understand and respect each other. |
| D．They allowed each other to voice their ideas. |
| A．The beautiful sights. | B．The wonderful people. |
| C．The interesting activities. | D．The cultural experiences. |
| A．Rely on the smile. | B．Be more adventurous. |
| C．Hear English spoken more. | D．Learn more languages. |
| A．Language Struggles: Testing Friendship |
| B．Travel Troubles: Friendship Tested Abroad |
| C．Talking Struggles: Adventures Lost in Translation |
| D．Limitless Adventure: Two Friends Break Age Barriers |
8 . My photographs are the items I would definitely take or guard in case of an emergency. But what else? This was the question I asked myself as a
Unlike some friends and
Because when you hear the roar of the winds, or when something
As
Months and years after the hurricane, I often told people that there are two parts to
But we will do it,
| A．flood | B．drought | C．wildfire | D．hurricane |
| A．hosts | B．partners | C．relatives | D．architects |
| A．applying | B．packing | C．exchanging | D．delivering |
| A．sign | B．gap | C．clue | D．summary |
| A．kit | B．gym | C．space | D．greenhouse |
| A．rests | B．erupts | C．carves | D．cracks |
| A．cheap | B．expensive | C．graceful | D．economic |
| A．destruction | B．appreciation | C．challenge | D．determination |
| A．as usual | B．as follows | C．as scheduled | D．as promised |
| A．annoyed | B．amazed | C．confused | D．frightened |
| A．escaped | B．protested | C．identified | D．processed |
| A．causing | B．preventing | C．surviving | D．suffering |
| A．cutting out | B．putting back | C．giving up | D．working out |
| A．devotedly | B．creatively | C．individually | D．dependently |
| A．in favor of | B．in times of | C．in need of | D．in search of |
| A．Their daily routine. | B．Their dormitory. | C．The weather. |
10 . An environmental group in Colombia is leading a project to save wild areas in the San Lucas Mountains with the help of coffee growers.
Since 2016, San Lucas areas have been threatened by mining and coca (古柯) planting Gold miners and coca growers make more money than coffee farms. Now the group WebConserva helps link coffee farmers with coffee processors from around the country in order that they can earn more. At the same time coffee farms can serve as boarders around the forests to protect the biodiversity within.
To date, the project includes 10 families who farm 400 hectares of coffee plants. WebConserva said it hopes, in time, 200 families will be included. At that level. 20,000 hectares of untouched forest could be protected. The families promise not to cut down trees to expand their crops or to hunt wild animals. In return, they receive $300 for 125 kilograms of coffee.
Arcadio Barajas is among those taking part. His coffee farm sets up a barrier between cattle farms and forests where wild animals live, thus reducing the possibility of conflict between cattle farmers and wild animals. “Cutting down the forest to plant coca and killing wildlife were against my faith, and now I feel that growing coffee lets me be a good guard of the land,” he said.
Amnobis Romero is a former coca grower and miner. “Many families depended on illegal activities to support their children years ago. Now, we feel it a duty to look after this biodiversity and leave it for future generations,” he said. Activists want San Lucas to be protected as a national park, but the process has been slow. Carlos Valderrama, director of Webconserva, hopes the project can build production system that will last far into the future. “It protects forests, biodiversity and ecosystems at the same time as improving coffee growers’ quality of life,” he said.
1. What does the underlined word “they” in Paragraph 2 refer to?| A．Coffee farmers. |
| B．WebConserva members. |
| C．Gold miners. |
| D．Coca growers. |
| A．By increasing cattle farms. |
| B．By setting up a barrier. |
| C．Ry developing gold mining. |
| D．By encouraging coffee farming. |
| A．Families have enough money for their kids. |
| B．Coffee planting will last for several generations. |
| C．Coffee farming changed the former coca growers’ lives. |
| D．The project benefit the forests more than the local farmers. |
| A．Families protecting wildlife will get very rich. |
| B．WebConserva benefits ecosystems and local people’s life. |
| C．Gold mining and coca farming have been replaced rapidly. |
| D．San Lucas will develop into a national park in the near future. |
