1 . A hero sheep dog became the guiding light of hope for three trapped sheep as it swam across dangerous flooded fields to
Llyr Derwydd, a 44-year-old farmer coming from the area of Ruthin,
Considering the dangerous conditions that the flood caused, the
Mr. Derwydd talked about the sad experience, stating, “We realized we needed to act
In order to rescue the sheep, he made a
It was a moment filled with
Mr. Derwydd shared his
| A．force | B．carry | C．guide | D．attract |
| A．hid | B．found | C．imagined | D．reminded |
| A．checking | B．describing | C．comparing | D．selling |
| A．snow | B．water | C．fire | D．smoke |
| A．lecture | B．recovery | C．rescue | D．experiment |
| A．equally | B．suddenly | C．luckily | D．obviously |
| A．in return | B．in time | C．in person | D．in secret |
| A．reducing | B．improving | C．rising | D．sliding |
| A．call | B．promise | C．decision | D．comment |
| A．wish | B．order | C．warning | D．suggestion |
| A．danger | B．regret | C．hope | D．fun |
| A．goals | B．curiosity | C．ways | D．ability |
| A．catch | B．feed | C．reach | D．stop |
| A．responsibility | B．amazement | C．confidence | D．awkwardness |
| A．risk | B．time | C．lead | D．place |
1. What does the man plan to do for a few days?
| A．Help the woman walk a dog. | B．Visit the woman. | C．Go on a business trip. |
| A．At around 6:00 a.m. | B．At around 8:00 a.m. | C．At around 8:00 p.m. |
| A．Go for a walk. | B．Make dinner. | C．Play with her friends. |
1. Where are the two speakers?
| A．On the street. | B．In a park. | C．At a square. |
| A．Golden retriever. | B．Chihuahua. | C．Samoyed. |
| A．He’s cute. | B．He’s shy. | C．He’s dangerous. |
| A．A large-sized dog. | B．A brave dog. | C．A smart dog. |
4 . A lot of people find it difficult to do exercise regularly, even though they know it’s good for their physical and mental (身心上的) health. Yet keeping on a workout routine doesn’t necessarily go to the gym or run around your neighborhood. Gardening is a great example of a popular hobby that can be used as a workout.
Nashville resident Tom Adkinson, 72, is on board with the idea of gardening to stay fit. He has three gardens, which he uses primarily to grow tomatoes, sweet banana peppers and okra. Like traditional exercise, Adkinson does a lot of preparation before gardening, and then he spends hours watering and weeding (除草) all three gardens, involving bending and stretching, which he compares to performing garden yoga.
“It is wise of Adkinson to do so. Even though gardening may not appear difficult, using the body in new ways can make you hurt if you don’t warm up beforehand,” said Zeller, who teaches at the Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Cape May County in New Jersey.
Working in your garden just two hours a week could improve your mood. And the communal gardening, which is done by a number of people as a group in communities and schools, provides social benefits that can reduce stress and help fight against loneliness and even dementia according to studies.
“With all these benefits, gardening for fitness will be a trend (趋势) in the coming year,” announced Mandal, CEO of the fitness coaching app Future, “Our users at Future have already been asking their coaches to add gardening and landscaping activities into their routines because it’s easy to get and fit into their lifestyle.”
1. What do the underlined words “on board with” mean in paragraph 2?| A．In support of. | B．At the risk of. |
| C．Under the control of. | D．In opposition to. |
| A．Having a good rest. |
| B．Getting enough water ready. |
| C．Doing warm-up exercise. |
| D．Preparing tools for weeding. |
| A．Tips for gardening. |
| B．The benefits of gardening. |
| C．The process of garden management. |
| D．The difference between personal and group gardening. |
| A．Running. | B．Yoga. | C．Gardening. | D．Walking. |
5 . Finding a California condor in the wild would be the most unusual treat. perhaps even more unusual than finding a wolf in Yellowstone National Park. In fact, the wolf was what opened my eyes to the fact that humans could bring an animal back to the place where it had disappeared.
In 1987, there were only 27 California condors left, none of which were in the wild, only in captive breeding programs, It was those breeding programs that contributed to their population rise, enough that by 1991 some of them could be freed into the wild.
Still, the hope of seeing a California condor, which remains an endangered species, is very low, let alone getting a photo of one. California condor population dropped mostly due to human factors, such as poaching and living areas destruction-these are challenges California condors still face today.
Although this is just a bird’s-eye view of the challenges California condors face and there are many others, it is part of why the opportunity to work with the US Fish and Wildlife Service team and their partners helping their recovery is so special to me as a photographer. I am not only able to photograph the birds in their wild living areas, but also understand and record how difficult the work is of those people on the front lines of the protection.
I am grateful for the work of the team, and my hope is that California condor population will continue to rise allowing future generations an opportunity I never had when I first got here-to look to the sky and see one flying around.
1. What helped the increase of the California condor population in 1987?| A．Rules for hunters. | B．Captive breeding programs. |
| C．The improved natural environment. | D．The enlargement of wild living areas. |
| A．It is difficult. | B．It is easy. | C．It is boring. | D．It is dangerous. |
| A．He guided ways for them. | B．He made records by photos. |
| C．He helped the birds to recover. | D．He rebuilt the birds’ living areas. |
| A．New Way, New Hope | B．Wolves and California Condors |
| C．A Photo of a California Condor | D．The California Condor’s Coming Back |
6 . For long, Preifer Fall Trail (路线) was a most popular attraction in Big Sur. Annually, thousands of people hiked the trail. Unfortunately, the trail, along with stairs, signs, railings, an observation station and wooden bridges, was destroyed in the 2008 Basin Complex Fire. But now a new trail has risen from the burned land.
With its amazing rocky coastline and mountains, Big Sur, the writer Henry Miller once said, is “the face of the earth as the creator intended it to look.” But the landscape always suffers natural disasters. There have been three major wildfires in Big Sur in the past years. “You can still see the impacts there,” said John Hiles, a state parks repair team leader, pointing to black marks 30 feet up a huge redwood.
Parks planners designed a new track, moving the trail out of the river to reduce its impact on the environment. People from the California protection group, state parks department and the nonprofit organization put in 66,000 hours of work over the past four years. They built 160 redwood stairs and dragged hundreds of 16-foot-long redwood sticks by hand to build railings. They removed 4,150 square feet of old building stuff, enough to cover a basketball court. They used iron cables and pulleys (缆线和滑轮) to build a 70-foot long wooden bridge over the hills. “Nature is probably the best place to learn,” Hiles said. “More than any college or school, you learn so many life lessons out here.”
However, the huge Soberanes Fire s wept through the area in 2016, putting a stop to the work. When they began again in 2017, great river storms flooded the area and damaged part of Highway 1. Everybody gathered around this project. They saw the loss. They missed it. They wanted it to come back. They kept combining efforts. It’s been a long journey, but worth the wait.
1. What can we learn about Preifer Fall Trail?| A．It is an attraction rebuilt in 2008. | B．It met with many natural disasters. |
| C．It features man-made landscape. | D．It is an addition to a previous track. |
| A．By moving the trail off watercourse. | B．By using huge redwood sticks. |
| C．By recycling the old building stuff. | D．By applying iron cables and pulleys. |
| A．Limiting and typical. | B．Adventurous but smooth. |
| C．Mysterious and attractive. | D．Tough but rewarding. |
| A．The rise and fall of a hiking trail. | B．California protection projects. |
| C．The recovery of a lost attraction. | D．Journeys into wilderness. |
7 . Researchers and environmentalists have been pushing for clean energy, as well, contending with the rising threat of climate change. An increasingly researched renewable resource is called Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), in which the sea’s temperature variations are used to produce power. On the surface of the ocean, the temperatures are much warmer compared to the seafloor. It gets considerably colder the deeper you go because the sunlight cannot reach the bottom. These temperature differences are most noticeable in the summer when the sun is present for a majority of the hours of the day. To put it simply, OTEC uses a series of pipes that take the cooler water out in the depths of the ocean. The warm water on the ocean’s surface helps heat the cool water, which then vaporizes (蒸发) a fluid, and as a result, turns a turbine (涡轮机) to produce electricity.
Three types of ocean heat renewable energy systems are being developed and researched. An OTEC closed-cycle is perhaps the most common and well-researched, consisting of a condenser (冷凝器), evaporator, pumps, turbine and generator. There are also open systems and hybrid systems.
Systems work by pumping the warmer surface water through an evaporator containing a working fluid with a low boiling point, such as ammonia. Once the fluid vaporizes, it is used to drive a turbine and generator. From there, the vaporized fluid turns back into a liquid through a condenser, cooled by the cold, deep ocean water that pumps up from the depths. The OTEC systems that use seawater can use condensation to make water without salt.
OTEC systems need to place technology about 1 kilometer below the surface of the water. The cold water intake pipe is in the deepest area, and the piping where warm water enters is above sea level. The pumps are needed to move warm water into the system, and a heat exchanger is required to evaporate the fluid. Condensers condense the steam produced in the system, and a marker keeps the entire system afloat.
Energy is essential for almost all human activities. If the world wants to avoid an energy crisis, people need to begin relying on renewable energy. Fortunately, the three types of OTEC can provide energy for large populations.
1. What does OTEC technology depend mainly on to generate renewable power?| A．The depths of the ocean. | B．The vast surface of the ocean. |
| C．Seawater’s temperature differences. | D．The hot temperature in the summer. |
| A．The principle of OTEC technology. |
| B．The progress of OTEC technology. |
| C．The importance of the renewable energy systems. |
| D．The differences among the renewable energy systems. |
| A．The heat exchanger can produce power. |
| B．The cold water pipe is in the depths of the sea. |
| C．The deeper in the ocean, the better the technology is. |
| D．The warm water needs evaporating in a condenser. |
| A．The energy crisis in the future. |
| B．The bad influence of human activities. |
| C．The benefits of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion. |
| D．The popularity of other renewable energy sources. |
8 . Roosters act differently when faced with another chicken versus just their own reflection. This may mean that the roosters can recognise themselves in a mirror, a key test of self-awareness in animals. The way researchers tailored this mirror test to roosters may open up new methods of determining self-recognition in a diversity of animal species. In the traditional mirror self-recognition test, developed in 1970, researchers place a mark on an animal’s body in a spot that it could only see reflected in a mirror. They note if the animal inspects or touches the mark while examining its reflection, suggesting it understands the reflection represents its own body.
Results from this test are often highly variable. Sonja Hillemacher at the University of Bonn in Germany and her colleagues wondered if this has less to do with the animals not recognising themselves, and more to do with the fact that there is little natural motivation for many animals to investigate the marks.
So the team turned to roosters, which loudly alarm other chickens to the presence of nearby predators, but generally stay quiet when alone. In the lab, the researchers tested 68 roosters one by one in a closed area divided down the middle by a wire net. They placed a rooster on one side, and either left the other side empty or put another rooster in it. Then they added a mirror to the divider for some tests. To mimic a threat, they projected the silhouette (轮廓) of an eagle on the ceiling above the area. The researchers found that when a rooster was paired with another rooster, it raised the alarm far more often than when it was alone in the area, regardless of whether it could see its own reflection.
Since the roosters acted similarly when alone and with a reflection, they may realise their reflection is of themselves, the researchers say. This would point to self-recognition possibly being more widespread across the animal kingdom than previously thought, says Hillemacher.
Nathan Emery at Queen Mary University of London thinks it’s premature to say chickens definitely recognise themselves in their reflections. It’s possible the strange behaviour of a reflection.
1. Where did the researchers mark the spot in the traditional test?| A．On the mirror where the animals can see. |
| B．On their body where the animals can touch. |
| C．On the mirror where the researchers can inspect. |
| D．On their body where the animals can only see in the mirror. |
| A．Face. | B．End. | C．Imitate. | D．Test. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Doubtful. | C．Careless. | D．Objective. |
| A．Rooster Attacks His Own Reflection |
| B．Roosters Have Passed the Self-recognition Test |
| C．Roosters May Be Able to Recognise a Mark in a Mirror |
| D．Roosters May Recognize Their Reflections in Mirrors |
9 . Suzanne Simard, a professor of forest ecology who called herself a “forest detective”, was raised in mountains in Canada. Few scientists make much impact with their PhD thesis, but, in 1997, she did just that. Her research on the “wood wide web” made the cover of Nature and transformed our understanding of forests. What was then a challenge to traditional ideas is today widely accepted.
A mushroom is the part of a fungus (真菌) that sticks up above the ground. Thin, white threads grow from its stem deep into the soil. These threads are called hyphae (菌丝). Hyphae connect themselves to tree roots. They also stretch from root system to root system, like an underground network. This network may go for miles. Hyphae pick up nutrients and water from soil. The fungus threads that connect to tree roots share their nutrients and water with the trees. In return, they sip a bit of the sugar the trees make. Sharing helps both trees and mushrooms live. It’s also how trees communicate.
When a tree is being eaten by bugs, it makes chemicals to shoo them away, sort of like bug repellent (驱虫剂). The chemicals travel through the tree, down its roots, and into the hyphae network. Other trees connected to the network taste the chemicals. That tells them a nearby tree is under attack, so they start to make their own bug repellent. Trees do more than share warnings through the hyphae. They also help each other. In the fall, paper birch trees drop their leaves and can no longer make sugar. So, a fir tree that stays green all winter uses the network to send extra sugar to the birch until spring comes again. This system of sharing information and nutrients through the hyphae is sometimes called the “wood wide web”, because it works a bit like the Internet.
Local climate sets the stage for the wood wide web, researchers say. In cool temperature and boreal forests, where wood and organic matter decay slowly, network-building EM fungi rule. By contrast, in the warmer tropics where wood and organic matter decay quickly, AM fungi dominate. These fungi form smaller webs and do less intertree swapping, meaning the tropical wood wide web is likely more localized.
Ecologist Thomas Crowther’s results suggest that as the planet warms, about 10% of EM-associated trees could be replaced by AM-associated trees. Microbes in forests dominated by AM fungi deal with carbon-containing organic matter faster, so they could liberate lots of heat-trapping carbon dioxide quickly, potentially accelerating a climate change process that is already happening at a frightening pace.
1. What do we know about Suzanne Simard?| A．She was a professor and a forest detective. |
| B．Growing up in the countryside, she made the cover of Nature. |
| C．Like many other scientists, she made big influence on her PhD thesis. |
| D．Her idea of the “wood wide web” used to challenge people’s thoughts. |
| A．They facilitate tree communication. | B．They form an underground network. |
| C．They produce sugar and share it with trees. | D．They share nutrients and water with the trees. |
| A．They release warning signals through leaves. |
| B．They produce real bug repellent to kill insects. |
| C．They make use of hyphae to produce chemicals. |
| D．They send chemical signals through the network. |
| A．It might slow down carbon release. | B．It would break down organic matter. |
| C．It might speed up climate change. | D．It might lead to faster tree growth. |
10 . Inside a fishbowl, the goldfish — a species of carp native to East Asia, bred for aesthetic delight and traditionally believed to bring good fortune — is among the easiest of pets to keep. But released into the wild, the seemingly humble goldfish, freed from glass boundaries, can grow to large proportions. They can even kill off native marine wildlife and help destroy fragile and economically valuable ecosystems.
“They can eat anything and everything,” said Christine Boston, an aquatic research biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Over the past several years, Ms. Boston and her colleagues have been tracking invasive goldfish in Hamilton Harbour, which is on the western tip of Lake Ontario (安大略湖), about 35 miles southwest of Toronto.
Their study, published last month in the Journal of Great Lakes Research, could help pinpoint goldfish populations for culling, said Ms. Boston, who is the lead author. “We found out where they are before they start spawning (产卵),” she said. “That’s a good opportunity to get rid of them.”
The fast-growing female goldfish, Ms. Boston noted, can also reproduce several times in one season. “They have the resources,” she added, “and they can take advantage of them.” Their football-shaped bodies can swell to a size that makes them too large a meal for predators (捕食者) — up to about 16 inches long. The feral goldfish are also destructive, uprooting and consuming plants that are home to native species.
Nicholas Mandrak, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Toronto Scarborough, studies in the “dramatically increase” of the wild population in the past two decades. Their spawning explosion, he said, resulted partly from people in densely-populated areas releasing pets in urban ponds. He added, environmental managers tend to forget the goldfish. “They just assume, ‘It’s been there for 150 years — there’s nothing we can do about it.’”
The problem is not unique to Canada. In Australia, a handful of unwanted pet goldfish and their offspring took over a river in the country’s southwest. And the discovery of football-size creatures in a lake in 2021 even led British officials to beg their citizens: “Please don’t release your pet goldfish into ponds and lakes!”
People wrongly believe that because goldfish are “small and cute” they won’t pose a problem when released into the wild, said Anthony Ricciardi, a professor of invasion ecology at McGill University in Montreal.
Goldfish, he added, are just a small part of a vast invasion of non-native species whose outcomes can be unpredictable, and in some cases, are worsened by climate change.
“Under human influence, beasts are moving faster farther in greater numbers, reaching parts of the planet they could never reach before,” he said. “We’re talking about the redistribution of life on Earth.”
1. Which of the statements about the goldfish is correct?| A．Their place of origin is Canada. | B．They are capable of reproducing. |
| C．They will grow well over 16 inches. | D．They only invade Lake Ontario. |
| A．Killing | B．Controlling | C．Catching | D．Observing |
| A．Citizens wrongly set free the fish. | B．Climate change has a negative impact. |
| C．The environmental management is absent. | D．The food increases in habitats. |
| A．Now goldfish are turning into wild monsters. |
| B．Now goldfish are on the way to become a global issue. |
| C．Now goldfish are attracting scientists to study in. |
| D．Now goldfish are threatening the Great Lakes. |
