1 . There are many reasons why some cats are bad-tempered. It’s commonly believed that their temperament can be influenced by the way they are born or raised.
Changes in a cat’s behaviour can often be explained by a health problem. Pain can cause cats to behave differently. It’s easy to mistake a problem as behavioural, which in fact is medical. Should you observe a significant change in your cat’s behaviour, then a visit to the vet is the best place to start.
It pays to remember that cats don’t like to share or queue. Sharing of ‘resources’ such as litter trays and foodbowls can cause stress and anxiety for many cats. It’s always a good idea to provide each cat with their own litter box, food, water bowls and bed. A lack of space to hide from or avoid other cats, competition for territory and lack of individual attention can also add to household friction.
Moving to a new house, the arrival of a new baby, new pets and other types of change can seriously impact cat behaviour. Cats are creatures of habit and tend to be territorial.
| A．Some cats simply do not like being touched and handled. |
| B．Watch out for changes in eating, drinking or litter-box habits. |
| C．When your cat seems lonely, you can hold it gently in your arms. |
| D．If so, offering the cat a high place to sit, such as a climbing tree, can be helpful. |
| E．So a change in routine may cause them to react, including withdrawal or aggression. |
| F．Don’t forget their incredible sense of smell, which is a useful tool of communication. |
| G．In fact, even the sweetest cats can suddenly become bad-tempered and behave out of character. |
Last summer, I had a life-changing experience when I decided to join a group of volunteers in rescuing homeless dogs. It all started when I read a post on social media about a group of abandoned dogs in desperate need of help. Without hesitation, 1 reached out to the organization leading the rescue mission.
Early one Saturday morning, our team gathered at a local animal shelter, armed with determination and a strong sense of purpose. We loaded the necessary supplies into our van, including food, water, blankets and leashes. As we set off, a mix of excitement and nervousness filled the air.
Our destination was a run-down area on the outskirts of town. The deserted streets were home to numerous homeless dogs, which had become victims of neglect. These innocent creatures, once someone’s beloved pets, were now struggling to survive on their own. Upon arriving, our-hearts sank at the sight of many poor dogs searching for food among the piles of garbage. It was a heartbreaking scene. We immediately sprang into action, spreading out to cover every corner of the neighborhood.
Approaching the dogs cautiously, we soon discovered that gaining their trust was not an easy task. Many had learned to fear humans after lasting unthinkable hardships It took patience, gentle words and gestures to approach them without causing distress. With’ each successful rescue, our spirits were uplifted. Some dogs willingly followed us, desperate to escape their miserable lives. Others required a bit more comfort, but eventually, we managed to lead them to safety. They received medical attention and were provided with much-needed love.
As the days went by, our team experienced both moments of joy and heartache. Some dogs were fortunate enough to find loving homes, while others faced challenges due to their extremely unpleasant pasts. But through it all, we persisted, knowing that saving every life made a difference.
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Out efforts began to produce positive results.
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Looking back on the summer I am filled with a sense of pride and contentment.
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3 . After taking a few steps back, Hadj Benhalima rushed toward the building, pushed himself upward with his foot against the wall and stretched out his arm. At the peak of his jump, he flipped off a light switch, and the bright lights of a nearby barbershop went off immediately.
This is what Hadj and his friends have been doing for the past two years: swinging around Paris and switching off wasteful shop signs at night, in an effort to fight against light pollution and save energy. And they are all enthusiastic about Parkour — a sport that consists of running and jumping over urban obstacles.
While climbing other people’s property to turn off their lights may strike some as a form of trespassing (非法入侵), the Parkour athletes insist their activities are only about enforcing seldom-respected rules.
More than a decade ago, Paris City Hall issued orders requiring stores to turn off all signs and window displays from 1 am to 6 am, but they are widely ignored with little consequence. “for 10 years there has been no follow-up, no control, no punishment,” said Anne-Marie Ducroux, the head of the National Association for the Protection of the Sky and the Night Environment.
That is why Hadj and his friends have taken matters into their own hands. The group often gathers in the so-called Golden Triangle neighborhood, in western Paris, which is the center of French luxury.
Enforcing the orders in place of the authorities certainly enters a legal grey area. But the Parkour athletes say all the police officers they have met during their rounds have allowed their action — as long as it causes no damage.
And it seems that their efforts have produced the desired result, because Hadj says he has noticed that in recent months, several shops have stopped leaving their lights on after his group targeted them. He hopes others will follow suit. “At least, I’ll sleep better,” he said.
1. What are Hadj Benhalima and his friends trying to do at night?| A．To practice their Parkour skills. |
| B．To remove possible urban obstacles. |
| C．To turn off unnecessary store lights. |
| D．To ensure the safety of their neighborhood. |
| A．They are too strict to follow. |
| B．They have achieved the desired effect. |
| C．They put great pressure on stores. |
| D．They are not carried out effectively. |
| A．Worried. | B．Supportive. | C．Doubtful. | D．Unconcerned. |
| A．Why Parkour is so popular among young people in Paris. |
| B．Why it is difficult to fight against light pollution in Paris. |
| C．How the lighting of shop signs affects the night view of Paris. |
| D．How young people in Paris help save energy through Parkour. |
4 . In 2014, an art student from university went to Beijing Zoo. Little did he know that a chance encounter with corals (珊瑚) there would start a lifelong passion. Until today, Xu Yitang, a Beijing native, has settled in Hainan province, where he serves as a coral conservationist. For Xu, who had been studying Peking Opera since childhood, becoming a coral conservationist was an unexpected turn of events.
After he first saw corals at the zoo, he began to frequent the local market to learn about coral farming from sellers of coral products. He also learned diving and underwater photography to get a closer look at corals for research purposes. Each day, he spends several hours diving deep under the waves to observe and document the growth and development of the creatures and shares photos and videos of corals on social media platforms. His goal was to raise awareness and knowledge about corals, so that people can learn how to protect them effectively.
As he studied deeper into the creature, he learned that corals are known as “underwater gardens” of the ocean, providing a home for a quarter of all ocean life. Unfortunately, with the strengthening of the greenhouse effect, rising sea temperatures have led to coral bleaching (白化). Xu felt an increasing sense of urgency and responsibility to protect them.
While pursuing his passion to protect corals, he met his life partner, Liu Xiwen, through their shared hobby of diving in Hainan. “Unlike many young people who care about their dress and appearance, he is simply focused on protecting corals,” says Liu about Xu.“Despite his skin injury from spending long hours in the seawater, his attitude is different from what I’ve seen in most young people in Beijing, and it’s attractive to me.”
1. What can we learn about Xu Yitang from the first paragraph?| A．He majored in coral protection. |
| B．He was born in Hainan province. |
| C．He worked in Beijing as a coral expert. |
| D．He found his love for corals by chance. |
| A．To record his exploring process. |
| B．To spread knowledge about corals. |
| C．To introduce his diving experience. |
| D．To show off his photography ability. |
| A．The pollution of ocean environment. |
| B．The development of ocean farming. |
| C．The damage to underwater gardens. |
| D．The increase in ocean temperatures. |
| A．Emotional. | B．Devoted. |
| C．Public-spirited. | D．Curiosity-driven. |
Climate protection strategy is fascinating the globe during the 19th Asian Games, not just athletic talent .
Avoiding fireworks during the opening ceremony promotes environmental awareness. Traditional fireworks displays are fun
The Games Village gave residents a “Low Carbon Account” as part of the green measures. Carbon points
6 . Plastic, which is now common, contains endocrine-disrupting chemicals, or EDCs (内分泌干扰物), that has been linked to increased risk of many chronic diseases. Parental exposure to EDCs, for example, has been shown to cause metabolic (新陈代谢的) disorders, including obesity and diabetes, in the later generations.
Led by Changcheng Zhou, a professor of biomedical sciences in the School of Medicine at the University of California, the researchers investigated the impact of fathers’ exposure to a phthalate called dicyclohexyl phthalate, or DCHP (邻苯二甲酸二环己酯), on the metabolic health of first generation (F1) and second generation (F2) in mice. Phthalates are chemicals used to make plastic more durable.
The researchers found that fathers’ DCHP exposure for four weeks led to high insulin (胰岛素) resistance and impaired insulin signaling in F1. The same effect, but weaker, was seen in F2 .
“We found fathers’ exposure to EDCs may have intergenerational and transgenerational detrimental effects on the metabolic health of their later generations, ”Zhou said. “To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to demonstrate this.”
In the case of fathers’ exposure in the study, intergenerational effects are changes that occur due to direct exposure to a stressor, such as exposure to DCHP of fathers (F0 generation) and his F1 generation. Transgenerational effects are changes passed down to later generations that are not directly exposed to the stressor (for example, F2 generation).
“This suggests that fathers’ DCHP exposure can lead to sex-specific transgenerational effects on the metabolic health of their later generations,” Zhou said.
Zhou stressed that the impact of exposure to DCHP on human health is not well understood, even though DCHP is widely used in a variety of plastic products and has been detected in food, water, and indoor particulate matter.
“It’s best to minimize our use of plastic products,” Zhou said. “This can also help reduce plastic pollution, one of our most pressing environmental issues.”
1. Why are phthalates added to plastic?| A．To beautify it. | B．To make it long-lasting. |
| C．To reduce its cost. | D．To increase its weight. |
| A．Negative. | B．External. | C．Distinct. | D．Adventurous. |
| A．Bury plastic waste. | B．Watch out for the food they eat. |
| C．Use fewest plastic products. | D．Never produce plastic products. |
| A．Plastic contains endocrine disrupting chemicals |
| B．Plastic pollution is a pressing environmental issue |
| C．DCHP is widely used in a variety of plastic products |
| D．Chemicals in plastic may impact two generations’ health |
7 . A recent study, led by Professor Andrew Barron, Dr. HaDi MaBouDi, and Professor James Marshall, illustrates how evolution has fine-tuned honey bees to make quick judgments while minimizing danger.
“Animal lives are full of decisions,” says Professor Barron. “A honey bee has a brain smaller than a sesame (芝麻) seed. And yet it can make decisions faster and more accurately than’ we can. A robot programmed to do a bee’s job would need the backup of a supercomputer.”
Bees need to work quickly and efficiently. They need to make decisions. Which flower will have a sweet liquid? While they’re flying, they face threats from the air. While landing, they’re vulnerable to potential hunter, some of which pretend to look like flowers.
Researchers trained 20 bees to associate each of the five different colored “flower disks” with their visit history of reward and punishment. Blue flowers always had sugar juice. Green flowers always had a type of liquid with a bitter taste for bees. Other colors sometimes had glucose (葡萄糖). “Then we introduced each bee to a ‘garden’ with artificial ‘flowers’. We filmed each bee and timed their decision-making process,” says Dr. MaBouDi. “If the bees were confident that a flower would have food, they quickly decided to land on it, taking an average of 0.6 seconds. If they were confident that a flower wouldn’t have food, they made a decision just as quickly. If unsure, they took on average 1.4 seconds, and the time reflected the probability that a flower had food.”
The team then built a computer model mirroring the bees’ decision-making process. They found the structure of the model looked very similar to the physical layout of a bee brain. “AI researchers can learn much from bees and other ‘simple’ animals. Millions of years of evolution has led to incredibly efficient brains with very low power requirements,” says Professor Marshall who co-founded a company that uses insect brain patterns to enable machines to move autonomously, like nature.
1. Why does Professor Andrew Barron mention “a supercomputer”?| A．To illustrate how a honey bee’s brain resemble each other. |
| B．To explain how animals arrive at informed decisions fast. |
| C．To demonstrate how a robot could finish a honey bee’s job. |
| D．To emphasize how honey bees make decisions remarkably. |
| A．Easily harmed by. | B．Highly sensitive to. |
| C．Deeply critical to. | D．Closely followed by. |
| A．Their judgments about reward and punishment. |
| B．Their preference for the colors of flower disks. |
| C．Their confirmation of food’s presence and absence. |
| D．Their ability to tell real flowers from artificial ones. |
| A．The power of bee brains is underestimated. | B．Biology can inspire future AI. |
| C．Autonomous machines are changing nature. | D．AI should be far more efficient. |
1. What did NASA call the area?
| A．The Light of Venezuela. |
| B．The Lightning Capital of the World. |
| C．The Never-ending Storm of Catatumbo. |
| A．The warm ocean current. |
| B．The strong mountain winds. |
| C．The special geographical location. |
| A．About 12%. | B．About 30%. | C．About 70%. |
| A．The man is afraid of lightening very much. |
| B．The locals are surprisingly fearless of lighting. |
| C．About 12,000 American people get hit in their lifetime. |
9 . Meet Retro, a cloned rhesus monkey born on July 16, 2020. He is now more than 3 years old and is “doing well and growing strong,” according to Falong Lu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who published a study in the journal Nature Communications that describes how Retro came to be.
Retro is only the second species of primate (灵长类动物) that scientists have been able to clone successfully. The same team of researchers announced in 2018 that they had made two cloned cynomolgus monkeys, which are still alive today. “We have achieved the first live and healthy cloned rhesus monkey, which is a big step forward, although the efficiency is very low compared to fertilized embryos (受精胚胎),” said Lu. “Currently, we haven’t had the second live birth yet.”
The first animal to be cloned — Dolly the sheep — was created in 1996 using a technique called SCNT, where scientists essentially reconstruct an unfertilized egg by joining a somatic cell nucleus (体细胞核) with an egg in which the nucleus has been removed. The Chinese team improved the technique further to clone the rhesus monkey.
During hundreds of failed cloning attempts, they realized that, in the early cloned embryos, the outer part did not develop properly. To address this problem, they performed a process called inner cell mass transplantation, which involved putting cloned inner cells into a non-cloned embryo, and that allowed the clone to develop normally. “We think that there might be additional… abnormalities to be fixed. Strategies to further enhance the success rate of SCNT in primates remains … our main focus in the future,” Lu said.
The researchers said that being able to successfully clone monkeys might help accelerate biomedical research given that there are limitations on what scientists can learn from lab mice. Research on nonhuman primates, which are closer to humans, has been crucial for lifesaving medical advances, including the creation of medicines against Covid-19, according to a report by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
1. What can be learned about Retro?| A．It is the second live cloned rhesus monkey. | B．It represents a major scientific breakthrough. |
| C．It is a cloned monkey from a fertilized embryo. | D．It has outlived the cloned cynomolgus monkeys. |
| A．The purpose. | B．The process. | C．The difficulty. | D．The method. |
| A．Give the clone space to grow. | B．Fix additional abnormalities. |
| C．Change a non-cloned embryo. | D．Help inner cells develop properly. |
| A．To present the recent progress in cloning. | B．To reveal challenges in cloning monkeys. |
| C．To call for research on nonhuman primates. | D．To stress the importance of medical advances. |
As I stepped out of the cat and onto the unfamiliar driveway of my father’s home in Ontario, Canada. I couldn’t help but feel upset. My mother had just passed away in a car accident and now I was being forced to live with a father I barely knew.
My father was a metal sculpture artist, and I was not sure if I would ever fit into his world. Soon, I found comfort in exploring the nearby wilderness. Yet I couldn’t ignore the sadness and anger that welled up inside me when I saw a construction crew destroying a small wilderness area nearby. That’s when I came across a nest of geese eggs, abandoned and fragile.
Without hesitation, I brought them home. When the first crack appeared and a tiny head poked through, my heart swelled with purpose and affection. As they grew, the baby geese followed me everywhere. Father smiled and remarked that they surely thought me their mother.
My geese grew steadily but time was not. Father realized without a real mother’s guidance, the geese would never learn how to migrate south for the winter and winter’s arrival could be tough. That’s when my father came up with a daring plan. He was an amateur pilot, and he would teach me how to fly an aircraft. Together, we would lead the geese on their migratory journey. It was a risky plan, but I was willing to do anything to help my feathered friends.
Each day of flight training with Father, I felt myself gaining confidence m the skies. Yet with the journey approaching, more and more fear filled me. Crossing the border into the US and flying hundreds of miles to the reservation in North Carolina seemed a mission impossible.
Father gave me a supportive smile, his face reflecting a mix of determination and concern. “We’ve trained for this, and we’re a team. Just like you and your geese,” he said, placing a hand on my shoulder.
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。
Flying south, we started the migration, followed by my geese.
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I said goodbye to Father in the hospital and continued the flight.
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