1 . What did we do to deserve cats and dogs? Not only are they super cute and make us smile on a daily basis, scientists from Washington State University have now proved that touching our favorite _______ friends gently for just ten minutes is an effective way to reduce stress levels.

In findings published in AERA Open—an open access journal published by the American Educational Research Association — last month, scientists showed that the general _______ of students improves quickly, with even those who are highly stressed showing “significant” reduction in cortisol (皮质醇) levels — a chemical produced by our bodies in times of stress.

Many universities have adopted “Pet Your Stress Away” programs where students can _______ cats or dogs and it appears to be showing both psychological and physiological benefits now.

The research, conducted by Washington State University (WSU), shows that pets improve students’ moods, and their _______ has stress-relieving physiological benefits. “Just 10 minutes can have a significant _______,” said Patricia Pendry, an associate professor in WSU’s Department of Human Development.

This is the first study that has demonstrated reductions in students’ cortisol levels during a _______ intervention (介入).

The team chose 249 college students and put them into tour random groups and compared the effects of different _______ to animals. The first group were provided 10 minutes of actual interaction with dogs and cats. The second group waited in line while _______ others petting the animals. The third group watched a slide-show of the same animals, while the fourth group had to _______ and was told they would be allowed to see the animals after 10 minutes.

Salivary (唾液的) cortisol ________ were collected from each participant starting from the moment they woke up in the morning. There was significantly less cortisol in the saliva of students who had ________ interaction with the pets.

Many universities have started these ________ where students can interact with cats or dogs to help ________ the pressures of higher education. “We already knew that students enjoy interacting with animals, and that it helps them experience more ________ emotions,” Dr Pendry said. “What we wanted to learn was whether this exposure would help students reduce their stress in a less subjective way. And it did, which is ________ because the reduction of stress chemicals may, over time, have significant benefits for physical and mental health.”

2 . The East African country of Kenya has been at the forefront of the global war on plastic since 2017, when officials banned plastic bags. In June 2020, the government intensified the efforts with a ban on single-use plastics in protected areas. Unfortunately, the measures have _________ made any impact. Hundreds of tons of industrial and consumer polymer (聚合物) waste continue to get _________ into landfills daily. However, if 29-year-old Nzambi Matee has her way, the unpleasant plastic heaps will soon be transformed into colourful bricks.

The material engineer’s search to find a(n) _________ solution to control plastic pollution began in 2017. She quit her job as a data analyst at a local chemical factory and set up a small lab in her mother’s backyard. It took her nine months to produce the first brick and even longer to _________ a partner to help build the machinery to make them. But the determined eco-entrepreneur was confident in her idea and did not give up.

She says, “I wanted to use my education in applied physics and material engineering to do something about the problem of plastic waste pollution. But I was very _________ that the solution had to be practical, sustainable, and affordable. The best way to do this was by _________ the waste into the construction and finding the most efficient and affordable material to build homes.”

Her company, Gjenge Makers, now hires 112 people and produces over 1,500 bricks a day. The pavers (铺路材料) are made using a mix of plastic products that cannot be reprocessed or recycled. The polymer is obtained _________ from factories or picked by hired locals from Nairobi’s largest landfill, Dandora.

The collected plastic is _________ with sand, heated at very high temperatures, and compressed into bricks that vary in colour and thickness. The resulting product is stronger, lighter, and about 30 percent cheaper than concrete bricks.

Matee, who was recently recognized as one of the Young Champions of the Earth 2020 — the United Nations’ highest environmental _________ — is far from done. Her dream is to reduce the mountain of trash in Dandora to just a hill by increasing production and expanding her offerings. She says, “The more we recycle the plastic, the more we produce affordable housing, and the more we create __________ for the youth.”

4 . When Anika Puri visited India with her family years ago, she was surprised to come across a market in Bombay filled with rows of ivory jewelry (象牙饰品) and statues. _________, ivory trade has been illegal for more than 30 years, and elephant hunting has been___________India since the 1970s.

“I was quite ___________ ,” the 17-year-old recalls. “Because poaching (偷猎) is illegal, how come it is still such a big issue? ”

Curious, Puri did some research and discovered a shocking___________: Africa’s forest elephant population had ___________by about 62 percent between 2002 and 2011. Years later, the numbers continued to drop. Puri, a wildlife lover, wanted to do something to help protect the species and others still___________by poaching.

Over the course of two years, Puri___________EISa, a low-cost product of a machine learning-driven software that___________movement patterns in thermal infrared (热红外) videos of humans and___________. The software is four times more____________than the existing most advanced uses a $250 FLIRONE Pro thermal camera with 206 *resolution (分辨率) that plugs into an off-the-shelf iPhone 6. The camera and iPhone are then____________to a drone (无人机), and the system____________real-time inferences as it flies over parks as to whether____________below are humans or elephants.

Its potential impact on society earned her the Peggy Scripps Award for Science Communication. “____________isn’t a straight line,” Puri says. “It makes me resourceful. It helps me____________a more creative thinker.”

6 . Damon Carson calls himself a matchmaker (媒人) of the never-ending waste of American society, trying not to pair people with people, but things with people.

In the late 1990s, Carson was on break from business school in Vail, Colorado, when he ______ the vast world of waste. He began ______ creating a secondhand store that would sell old ______ and keep them out of being ______. As a result, in 2010, his company, Repurposed Materials ______.

For nearly ten years, his company, Repurposed Materials, has not been looking to ______ the waste he gets—breaking it down to make something new —but rather finding new homes for thrown-away goods in their original ______.

Carson, a husband and father of three adult children, is far from ______. Frugal (节俭) is how he describes himself. The clothes he’s wearing all came from a(n)______ shop; his truck was bought with 290, 000 kilometers driven.

“Why break something down, why melt something down, if it still has ______?” he asks. An old oil-field pipe might be melted down and turned into a car bumper, but it still takes an amount of ______ to finish the complete change. Why not leave it as a steel pipe? Why not turn it into a ______ post (杆、柱) on a farm? The only cost is ______.

American industrial facilities create and ______ about 7.6 billion tons of unwanted industrial materials every year. For the moment, Carson’s unique business finds new ______ for millions of kilograms of industrial waste every year.

8 . Borneo is home to some of the most extraordinary wildlife. Several years ago, I decided to go there for a visit. A local person offered to be my guide, which was a great bonus for me. One day, my guide turned off the smooth road and took me across a _________ hillside instead. We picked our way carefully when _________ a charming flower popped into my view among those stones. Oh, dear! More than _________, I bent down and put my nose practically inside the flower’s core.

_________, to my surprise, it was only one of the _________ during the trip. As I _________ the end of my trip, there was still something I had yet to see. We planned to _________ most feared creature there, the saltwater crocodile, which can grow to a _________ of 6 meters or more. When we shone a flashlight towards the muddy shore, little sounds _________ in the darkness as if something unseen underwater had broken the __________. Taking a second look, we spotted two greedy __________ just above the water line. As we drew near, it __________ and we saw clearly it was a crocodile. With great caution, we neared it and finally could __________ its true dimensions. It was a baby — no more than 0.6 meter long. Aha, whatever, I could now report to the __________ back home, who had never been to Borneo, that I had __________ a hungry crocodile in the wild and lived to tell the tale.

10 . A baby giraffe born with a leg abnormality has been fitted with special leg braces (支架) to help her walk.

The giraffe is named Msituni. She _________ from a condition called carpal hypertension (腕骨高血压). It affected the young animal’s front legs, which was especially _________ to a giraffe. The abnormality was putting a lot of _________ on her joints and bones. Zoo workers _________ that she could die if they did not quickly correct the _________. This is because it could _________ the giraffe from getting food and from being able to walk around.

Zoo officials called in experts to treat the giraffe. The medical team had a lot of _________ fitting people with braces to correct leg problems. But they had _________ treated an animal before. Ara Mirzaian was a member of the medical team. He found the situation strange and _________ went online to start learning as much as possible about giraffes.

The team __________ models of the giraffe’s legs. It took the team about a week to produce the braces, which were made of a material called carbon graphite (碳石墨). After 10 days in the special brace, the problem was __________ . In total, Msituni was in braces for 39 days from the day she was born. She __________ in the animal hospital the whole time.

Mirzaian said he planned to __________ a picture in his office of the baby giraffe wearing her special brace so that the children he treats might be __________ to wear their own braces. “It was the coolest thing to see an animal like that walk in a brace,” he said. “It feels __________ to know we saved a giraffe’s life.”