1 . Sea levels along coastlines in the United States will rise about one foot by 2050, with larger increases on the East and Gulf coasts, according to a comprehensive new report by climate scientists.

Oceans have already risen about one foot in the last century, as climate change melts glaciers (冰川) and ice caps around the world. But the pace is ______ scientists warn, and the next 30 years will see the same amount of sea level rise as the previous 100.

The report gives the most concrete and certain sea level ______ ever published for the U.S. And advances in computer models and real-world information about rising seas make it possible to see the future more ______ than ever.

Sea level rise ______ dramatically for different parts of the U.S. coast. The ocean is not like a bucket of water that rises at the same time as more liquid is ______. Ocean ______ push more water into some areas than others. Ice in different regions melts at different rates. In many parts of the world, sea level rise is ______ because coastal land is sinking.

The new report adds up all those factors to give ______ estimates for different parts of the U.S. The authors predict about a foot and a half of sea level rise for the Gulf Coast by 2050, with particular hot spots from Texas to Mississippi, where exploitation of underground oil, gas and drinking water is causing the land to rapidly _____ into the rising ocean water. There are ______ hot spots in the Mid-Atlantic region, including Annapolis, Md. and Norfolk, Va. Overall, the East Coast is ______ to experience a little more than a foot of sea level rise in the next 30 years.

Sea level rise is happening more ______ on the West Coast, including much of southern and western Alaska, the report finds. The authors predict about six inches of sea level rise by 2050.

William Sweet, a sea level rise expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and one of the authors of the new report, says cities that are not yet flooded should ______ now. Quickening sea level rise may require that humans ______ where and how we build homes, offices, roads and anything else that is better dry than wet. Right now, development in flood-prone (易发洪水的) areas is increasing, despite climate change.

Beyond 2050, the report makes clear that humans have a ______: reduce greenhouse gas emissions and control sea level rise, or keep burning fossil fuels and face oceans that are two, three or even 10 feet higher than today.

2 . Brazil’s election offers hope for the rainforest

A presidential election in 2022 will offer a chance for Brazil’s government to reverse policies that have________to global climate change. The country is home to 60% of the Amazon rainforest, which has historically been an important carbon________. But a worrying study published in 2021 in Nature found that over the past decade it has________become a carbon source. The culprits: forest fires and deforestation, which has soared by more than 40% since President Jair Bolsonaro________in 2019.

On his watch, environmental enforcement and fines dropped to record lows. Activists say this has encouraged________logging, mining, and land-grabbing. In June the environment minister, Ricardo Salles, resigned after federal police began investigating him for alleged________in timber trafficking.

A greener president would try to crack down on such crimes. Polls________that Mr Bolsonaro is likely to lose the election. His successor could convince Germany and Norway to unfreeze the Amazon Fund, a pot of money for enforcement and________development that was withdrawn in 2019 amid concerns about Mr Bolsonaro’s policies. A new president could also revive talks with President Joe Biden, who has offered to________a $20bn fund for the rainforest once Brazil starts showing results.

But even an enlightened president will have to battle a________Congress, which is considering a number of laws that threaten the rainforest and its inhabitants. These include a land-regularisation bill nicknamed the “land-grabbing law” and a bill that would________wildcat mining on indigenous territories. In August thousands of indigenous people camped out in the capital as the supreme court debated a case that would restrict their territories to land that was________when a new constitution was passed in 1988. The court postponed its________, but Congress is considering a law that would have the________effect.

Better leadership in Brazil could jump-start regional efforts to boost enforcement and find sustainable________to deforestation for the rainforest’s inhabitants. But if Mr Bolsonaro wins again, his determination to fill the forest with roads, dams and mines could cause destruction far beyond the borders of Brazil.

3 . The part of the environmental movement that draws my firm’s attention is the design of buildings. Today, thousands of people come to ________ building conferences, and the idea that buildings can be good for people and the environment will be increasingly ________ in years to come. Back in 1984 we discovered that most manufactured products for decoration weren’t designed for ________ use. The “energy-efficient” sealed commercial buildings constructed after the 1970s energy crisis ________ indoor air quality problems caused by materials such as paint, wall covering and carpet. So for 20 years, we’ve been looking for ways to make these materials ________   for people and the planet.

Home builders can now use materials, such as green paints, that release significantly ________   amounts of chemical compounds, which people believe don’t ________ the quality of the air.   ________, our basic design strategy is focused not simply on being “less bad” but on creating ________ healthful materials that can be either safely returned to the soil or ________ by industry again and again. For example, the world’s largest carpet manufacturer has already ________ a carpet that is fully and safely recyclable.

Look at it this way: no one ________ to create a building that destroy the planet. But our current industrial systems are basically causing these conditions, whether we like it or not. So   ________ of simply trying to reduce the damage, we are ________ a positive approach. We’re giving people high-quality, healthful products and an opportunity to make choices that have a ________   effect on the world. It is not just the building industry, either. Entire cities are taking these environmentally positive approaches to design, planning and building.

4 . Many people learn at an early age to associate the color red with danger. So might it make sense to print medication   ________ in red ink? And since the color blue is known to call to mind the freedom of open skies, might it help artists to   ________ in a studio painted in that color? According to new research into how the brain reacts to ________ , the answer to both of these questions is yes. The study revealed that the color red seems to improve a subject’s attention to ________ , while blue appears to stimulate creativity—all without the subject realizing that his or her brain is being influenced.

“People are not ________ this effect at all,” marveled the study’s lead researcher Juliet Zhu, who studies the effects of environmental cues on behavior. To study the brain’s response to specific colors, Zhu’s team administered a series of   ________ tests to college students. For most of the tests, the students were placed in front of a computer screen that was colored either red or blue.

The researchers found that when the screen was red, subjects performed better on detail-oriented tasks. In one test,   ________ , students were asked to memorize a list of words. Zhu found that students who studied the list displayed on a red screen were able to recall more words than students who studied the list on a ________ screen.

In other tests, creative abilities seemed to be ________ by looking at the color blue. For instance, the students were asked to brainstorm potential uses for bricks. Students sitting in front of blue screens tended to come up with ideas that were   ________ , such as “make a paperweight” and “build a pet scratching post.” Students sitting in front of a red screen, on the other hand, were more likely to list ________ uses for bricks, such as “build a house.”

Researchers concluded from the tests that seeing red causes people to take the extra time to think ________ when performing detail-oriented tasks, such as ________ , proofreading— and, of course, reading those all-important warning labels. ________ most people learn early in their development that red signifies potential danger, Zhu said, seeing red perhaps helps people to slow down in order to perform at their best in a potentially risky situation. Seeing blue, on the other hand, produces images of the sky, freedom and peace. Perhaps these images, researchers supposed, ________ feelings. “It’s really this learned association with these colors that drives these different motivations,” Zhu said.

5 . AI-based Conservation Efforts

When an endangered seabird hits a power line, it makes a sound “very much like the laser sound from Star Wars,” says conservation (野生动物保护) biologist Marc Travers. He should _________ as his team from the Endangered Seabird Recovery Project recorded thousands of hours of audio to determine if power lines affected local seabirds. Travers was trying to help establish how _________ birds were killed by power lines on the island of Kauai in Hawaii in 2011.

His team recorded 600 hours of audio and sent the recordings to Conservation Metrics, a company that assists conservation efforts with AI resources. Conservation Metrics used a program to “listen” to the recordings and _________ the sounds that signified bird electrocutions (触电身亡) . The result was _________, as the number of bird electrocutions was in the thousands. Armed with _________ that power lines were killing a significant number of birds, the team worked with the local utility service to reduce bird deaths.

_________, humans have been poor guardians of the planet. Humans have altered as much as 97 percent of land ecosystems. Key populations of _________ animals have dropped as much as 68 percent since 1970. The _________ in biodiversity around the world has created a depressing situation. Conservation efforts _________ key resources they need to have real impacts.

__________, humans now have AI-based tools that can help. AI can quickly and accurately __________ large amounts of data created by observations in the field. Then other programs such as PAWS (Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security) can help analyze the data and suggest the most __________ ways to focus conservation efforts.

In large national parks and wildlife reserves, poachers (偷猎者) are a danger for animals both big and small. Some animals are worth a lot of money on the black market. Park guards are left with an impossible task because there is too much land to __________. But the PAWS program allows guards to focus their efforts. PAWS has even predicted the __________ of traps in areas not yet patrolled (巡逻) by rangers!

We still face many challenges to __________ the loss of wildlife, but AI-powered programs promise to be a powerful conservation tool.

6 . With billions of stars in our galaxy (银河系), many circled by planets, the chances are there should be advanced life capable of reaching out to us. Yet after decades of looking and listening, we have found ___________.

This apparent conflict is known as Fermi’s paradox- Some have used it to argue that the search for extraterrestrial(外星球的)intelligence (SETI) is sure to ___________ .

But a mathematical analysis of SETI searches done so far claims that the usual explanation for the paradox— that there is nobody out there—is ___________. Instead, it suggests the best explanation is simply that we have barely scratched the surface in our ___________ for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Jason Wright at Pennsylvania State University and his colleagues analysed the many variables involved in SETI, which involves searching for radio signals from other ___________ . These include what to look for, where to look, how often and for how long. They then devised an equation that computes the ___________ of the galaxy checked so far. The team says that the volume of the galaxy that has been checked by SETI so far is roughly___________ to just a single bathtub of water in the world’s oceans.

“You don’t have to do a calculation to say we’ve only just ___________ ,” says Duncan Forgan at the University of St Andrews, UK, who is a member of the UK SETI research network. ”But they’ve done a nice job of showing the huge scale of the problem___________.“

As well as putting SETI in context, the equation can help researchers see which search techniques have been used less than others. ____________ , we only developed the technology to listen for higher radio frequencies quite recently. ”But we’re getting better at that, so that variable will now shrink,“ says Forgan.

However, advances in ____________ will only take us so far. Certain variables, such as how often a message from space might be repeated, cannot be____________. A signal sent once a year can only be listened out for once a year. ”There are things we can do better and things we can’t,” says Forgan. “We just have to ____________ and wait for the universe to do its thing.”

Forgan has a book coming out that discusses 66 potential ____________ for Fermi’s paradox. They include the possibility that Earth is somehow unusual in its ability to harbour intelligent life or that technological civilisations are rare. Or perhaps they are ____________ but short-lived. “Genetic or nuclear disasters might wipe you out,” says Forgan.

7 . Global surface temperatures last month were 2.25 degrees warmer than the 20th century average of 60.1 degrees, breaking previous records, from August 2016, by more than half a degree, according to NOAA researchers. “That to me is a really huge _______ from one record to the next,” said Ellen Bartow, a physical scientist with NOAA’S National Centers for Environmental Information.

The report _______ what millions of people have experienced in recent months, including record-breaking heatwaves that have touched almost every corner of the globe. Asia, Africa, North America and South America had their warmest August on record, as did the Arctic, Europe and Oceania — a region that _______ Australia - had their second-warmest August on record, the report said.

It wasn’t just the land that _______ : August set a record for the highest monthly sea surface temperature abnormally—1.85 degrees above average. The warming oceans _______experiencing its fourth continuous month with the _______ shrinking sea ice, with Antarctica sea ice extent on record. Globally, sea ice extent in August was about 550,000 square miles less than the previous record low, set in August 2019.

“We’ve seen unheard-of warmth in the global ocean, and that’s definitely alarming because its effects _______ beyond just the scope of the ocean,” Bartow-Gillies said. “Not only are you _______ marine habitats, but you’re affecting storm creation, you’re creating more instability in some areas, and you’re creating flooding events in other areas. There’s a whole host of _______ that come along with these warmer ocean surface temperatures that we’re seeing.”

In fact, the report comes after a series of severe natural ________ that span the globe. This week, a Mediterranean storm caused serious flooding in Libya, killing more than 11,000 people. In Canada, wildfires burned through more than 42 million acres of forests this summer, and several are still burning. ________ global warming was not the singular cause of any of these disasters, heating of the Earth continues to ________ the likelihood of extreme weather events and wildfire worldwide.

“The scientific evidence is ________ —we will continue to see more climate records and more intense and frequent extreme weather events impacting society and ecosystems, until we stop ________ greenhouse gases,” read a statement from Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, which also ________ that this summer was the hottest on record.

9 . In an ideal world, people would not perform experiments on animals. For the people, they are expensive. For the animals, they are stressful and often painful. That ideal world, ______, is still some way away. People need new drugs and vaccines. They want ______ from the toxicity（毒性） of chemicals. The search for basic scientific answers goes on. ______, the European Commission is moving ahead with proposals that will ______ the number of animal experiments carried out in the European Union, by requiring toxicity tests on every chemical ______ for use within the union’s borders in the past 25 years.

Already, the commission has ______ 140,000 chemicals that have not yet been tested. It wants 30,000 of these to be examined right away, and plans to spend between $4 billion — $8 billion doing so. The number of animals used for toxicity testing in Europe will thus, experts reckon, quintuple (翻五倍) from just over l million a year to about 5, unless they are saved by some dramatic ______ in non-animal testing technology. Animal experimentation will therefore be around for some time yet. But the search for substitutes continues.

A good place to start finding ______ for toxicity tests is the liver--the organ responsible for breaking toxic chemicals down into safer molecules that can then be eliminated from body. Two firms, one large and one small, told the meeting how they were using human liver cells removed incidentally during surgery to test various substances for long-term toxic effects.

PrimeCyte, the small firm, grows its cells in cultures（士音养基） over a few weeks and doses them regularly with the substance under ______. The characteristics of the cells are carefully ______, to look for changes in their microanatomy（组织学）. Pfizer, the big firm, also doses its cultures regularly, but rather than studying ______ cells in detail, it counts cell numbers. If the number of cells in a culture changes after a sample is added, that suggests the chemical ______ is bad for the liver.

Other tissues, too, can be tested ______ of animals. Epithelix, a small firm in Geneva, has developed an ______ version of the lining of the lungs. According to Huang Song, one of Epithelix’s researchers, the firm’s cultured cells have similar microanatomy to those found in natural lung linings, and ______ in the same way to various chemical messengers. Dr. Huang says that they could be used in long-term toxicity tests of airborne chemicals and could also help identify treatments for lung diseases.

All this suggests that though there is still some way to go before drugs, vaccines and other substances can be tested routinely on cells rather than live animals, useful progress is being made.