1 . There are a lot of chemicals that can cause indoor air pollution. A recent project conducted has found over 900 different substances in our home are related to it. Many researchers have already examined the causes of indoor air pollution.
It has been proved that different kinds of chemicals can be released by building materials and new furniture. Everything from painting and decorating products, bathroom cleaners and beauty products can contain these chemicals.
As a research from Denmark has highlighted, cooking, particularly roasting can damage our body. Roast dinners contain many potentially harmful pollutants.
As far as cooking emissions are concerned, no one is suggesting switching to takeaways.
| A．In the long run, these changes lead to cancer. |
| B．They might also arise from cooking at home. |
| C．A wide range of sources are under investigation. |
| D．Therefore, what results from indoor air pollution? |
| E．However, most of us have ignored their bad effects. |
| F．So, what are the main contributors to poor air quality? |
| G．But we can change how we cook to deal with the emissions. |
2 . The song of the Florida grasshopper sparrow is unusual and surprisingly insect-like. But it almost fell silent forever. In 2012, Joel Sartore, the founder of National Geographic Explorer and Photo Ark received a call from the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service: The songbird, an important ecological link in Florida’s dry grassland, was on the edge of extinction. With only a few dozen males showing up in counts, it was among North America’s most endangered bird species.
Sartore flew to Florida to photograph the bird and work with conservationists to raise awareness of the species’ difficult situation. The story appeared in outlets, such as newspapers, magazines and even the Internet, helping boost government funding for a breeding program. Thanks to these steps, there are now as many as 180 adults in the wild and researchers are working hard to bring the species back from the brink of extinction.
Like other examples of species survival, the push to save the sparrow is “a remarkable story of belief and cooperation,” says Sartore. It also shows what it takes to protect an endangered species: research, narratives, partnerships, resources and time. This journey shows the society’s mission to illustrate and protect the wonder of the world. Over the past 136 years, we’ve developed a unique Explorer-led model, combining science, exploration, education, and storytelling to drive impact. We support Explorer in more than 140 countries, including Sartore and others whose work appears in this issue: biologist André Green II, photographer Lynsey Addario and education advocate Ara Kusuma.
Sartore has been creating an “ark” of animal photos for 17 years. Portraits of more than 15, 000 species invite audiences to connect and care. With the society’s support, the images have appeared on landmarks and U. S. postage stamps, prompting on—the—ground conservation efforts such as an initiative of National Geographic Explorer and Photo Ark.
As Sartore says, “The sounds of birds are the sounds of a healthy planet. When we save a bird or another species, we’re actually saving ourselves.”
1. How does the author introduce the topic?| A．By clarifying a concept. | B．By offering an example. |
| C．By giving an explanation. | D．By quoting a remark. |
| A．Stores. | B．Media. | C．Exits. | D．Books |
| A．A funding program from the government. |
| B．An ark of animal photos in the magazine. |
| C．A unique initiative for species protection. |
| D．A joint effort from different professionals. |
| A．The urgency of species’ protection. |
| B．The promotion of cooperative methods. |
| C．The importance of coexistence. |
| D．The situation of human survival. |
3 . Relatives of starfish, brittle stars (海蛇尾) spend most of their time hiding under rocks in the ocean or digging in the sand. These shy marine creatures have no brain to speak of—just nerve cords running down each of their five wiggly arms, which join to form a nerve ring near their mouth.
“There’s no processing center. Each of the nerve cords can act independently. Instead of a boss, it’s like a committee. That seems to be enough to learn by association,” said lead author Julia Notar. This type of leaning involves associating different stimuli via a process called classical conditioning (条件反射).
Classical conditioning has been demonstrated in a handful of previous studies in starfish. But brittle stars and similarly brainless starfish have not been tested.
To find out if brittle stars have the ability of learning, the researchers put 16 black brittle stars in individual water tanks and used a video camera to record their behavior. Half the brittle stars were trained by dimming the lights for 30 minutes whenever the animals were fed. Every time the lights went out, the researchers would put a bit of shrimp in the tanks, placed just out of reach. The other half got just as much shrimp and also experienced a 30-minute dark period, but never at the same time—the animals were fed under lit conditions.
Whether it was light or dark, the animals spent most of their time hiding behind the filters in their tanks, only coming out at mealtime. But only the trained brittle stars learned to associate darkness with food. They didn’t need to smell or taste the shrimp to react.
Notar said the results are exciting because classical conditioning hasn’t really been shown definitively in this group of animals before. “Knowing that brittle stars can learn means they’re not just robotic scavengers (清道夫) cleaning up the ocean floor,” Notar said. “They’re potentially able to expect and avoid predators (捕食者) or expect food because they’re learning about their environment.”
1. What is paragraph 1 about?| A．The living habits of brittle stars. | B．The features of a brainless creature. |
| C．The characteristics of the starfish. | D．The definition of classical conditioning. |
| A．The hiding time in tanks. | B．The change of feeding location. |
| C．The amount of the shrimp. | D．Light conditions at mealtime. |
| A．Brittle stars can be trained to make a connection. |
| B．Brittle stars can clean up the ocean floor. |
| C．Brittle stars’ nerve cords can act independently. |
| D．Brittle stars have a sharp sense of smell. |
| A．Brainless brittle stars can act like robots. |
| B．Brittle stars might keep away from catchers. |
| C．Brittle stars are the only ocean floor cleaners. |
| D．Brittle stars are adaptable to new environment. |
4 . Most people don’t know much about electric eels (鳗鱼), except that they produce electricity. Although not endangered, electric eels only live in one small region of the world and are hard to keep in captivity (圈养), so most people have never seen one.
The most important fact to know about electric eels is that they are not actually eels. Although it has a long body like an eel, the electric eel is actually a type of knifefish. Scientists have been confused about it for many years. The electric eel was first described by Linnaeus in 1766. At present, the electric eel is the only species in its family. It is only found in muddy, shallow waters surrounding the Amazon and Orinoco rivers in South America.
An electric eel living in water, needs to rise to the surface and breathe about once every ten minutes. In the wild, electric eels live about 15 years. In captivity by human being, they may live 22 years.
An electric eel has three organs in its belly that produce electricity. Together, the organs make up four-fifths of an eel’s body, allowing it to deliver low voltage or high voltage or use electricity for electrolocation. In other words, only 20 percent of an eel is devoted to its vital organs.
A shock from an electric eel is like the brief and sudden hit from an electric stick. Normally, the shock can’t kill a person. However, the eels can cause heart or respiratory failure from multiple shocks or in persons with underlying heart disease. More often, deaths from electric eels shocks occur when the sudden hit knocks a person in the water and they drown. Eel bodies are insulated, so they don’t normally shock themselves. However, if an eel is injured, the wound can make the eel vulnerable to electricity.
1. What can we learn about electric eels according to the passage?| A．They are close to getting extinct. | B．They are used to living in clear rivers. |
| C．They can breathe once every ten minutes. | D．They can possibly be raised in captivity. |
| A．The living area. | B．The origin of the name. |
| C．The shape of their body. | D．The reason for producing electricity. |
| A．High voltage can shock an electric eel itself to death. |
| B．Three organs in an electric eel’s belly produce electricity. |
| C．Three organs in the belly can produce different voltages separately. |
| D．Shocks from an electric eel may be a contributing cause of a person’s death. |
| A．A website about biology. | B．A paper about endangered species. |
| C．A science fiction about animals. | D．An engineering course about electricity. |
5 . This summer we witnessed interview teams at the North Pole wearing short sleeve shirts due to the warm weather. A study published on Aug 29 revealed more concerning issues in the supposedly coldest area of the world. Zombie ice from a massive Greenland ice sheet was confirmed to be melting, which would eventually raise global sea levels by at least 10 inches (27 centimeters) on its own, reported Associated Press (AP).
Zombie ice is the kind of ice that is still attached to thicker areas of ice but is no longer getting fed by larger glaciers. Since glaciers are getting less snow to make up for the amount of ice melted, once the zombie ice is melted, it cannot be re-formed.
Scientists decided to look at the balance of the ice. In perfect equilibrium (平衡), snow in the mountains of Greenland flows down and thickens the sides of glaciers, balancing out what’s melting on the edges, according to AP. But in the last few decades, there is less refill and more melting, creating an imbalance.
Study co-author William Colgan at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland told AP that 3.3 percent of Greenland’s total ice volume will melt eventually. “Starying would be a good phrase” for what’s happening to the ice, Colgan added.
With a great number of natural resources buried under the earth, areas of melted ice revealed treasures that attracted the world’s richest men. According to CNN, in early August, there was a “treasure hunt” in Greenland. Billionaires, including Bill Gates and others, financially backed KoBold Metals, a US-based mineral exploration company, to explore the rare metals under the glaciers in Greenland. The company told CNN that since there were enough minerals to power hundreds of millions of electric vehicles, the critical resource is capable of powering the green energy transition.
While investors are taking advantage of global warming, experts express their concerns that the mineral exploration is likely to worsen the local environment, running out of the world’s resources at a faster rate.
1. What do we know about zombie ice?| A．It’s made up by nearby glaciers. | B．It’s independent from large glaciers. |
| C．It will melt away from the ice cap. | D．It has increased sea levels by 10 inches. |
| A．Why more zombie ice can’t be created. | B．How zombie ice was formed in the past. |
| C．What the melting of zombie ice can lead to. | D．How zombie ice functions in the ecosystem. |
| A．The ice has brought about starvation. | B．The ice is refilled more than before. |
| C．The ice is becoming gradually thinner. | D．The ice has been good to skate on. |
| A．To explain a natural phenomenon. | B．To comment on the “treasure hunt”. |
| C．To call for environmental protection | D．To report on the melting zombie ice. |
6 . Human and their inventions, such as cars or plastic, have caused most environmental pollution on Earth. Today car emissions (排放物) are a major source of air pollution leading to climate change. In the meanwhile, plastics fill our ocean, creating a significant health issue to marine (海洋的) animals.
And what about the electric light, which is thought to be one of the greatest human inventions of all time? Electric light can be a beautiful thing, guiding us home when the sun goes down, keeping us safe and making our homes bright. However, like CO2 emissions and plastic, too much of a good thing has started to influence the environment. Light pollution, the wrong use of outdoor light, is affecting human health, wildlife behavior and our ability to observe stars.
Light pollution is a global issue. This became obvious when the World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness, a computer-created map based on thousands of satellite photos, was published in 2016, which can be viewed online. The map shows how and where our globe is lit up at night. Vast areas of North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia are glowing (发光) with light, while only the most distant regions on Earth (Greenland, Central African Republic and Niue) are in total darkness. Some of the most light-polluted countries in the world are Singapore, Qatar, and Kuwait.
Sky glow is the brightening of the night sky, mostly over cities, due to the electric lights of cars, streetlamps, offices, factories, outdoor advertising, and buildings, turning night into day for people who work and play long after sunset.
People living in cities with high levels of sky glow have a hard time seeing more than a handful of stars at night. Astronomers (宇航员) are particularly concerned with sky glow pollution as it reduces their ability to view stars.
Mostly over 80 percent of the world's population, and 99 percent of Americans and Europeans live under sky glow.
1. What can we learn from paragraph 2?| A．Electric light should be not be used outdoors. | B．Electric light is the main factor to keep us safe. |
| C．Electric light has both advantages and disadvantages. | D．Electric light is the greatest human invention. |
| A．Niue. | B．Singapore. | C．Kuwait. | D．Qatar. |
| A．Keeping the streetlamps on. | B．Littering plastics about. |
| C．Driving cars around. | D．Overfishing marine animals. |
| A．Uncaring. | B．Unclear. | C．Worried. | D．Satisfied. |
7 . If you have ever found yourself concluding that intelligence is in short supply in the modern world, perhaps you are looking in the wrong place. There are still plenty of smarts to be found elsewhere.
You will be familiar with the cleverness of dolphins and chimpanzees. But what about wasps (黄蜂)? They can recognize human faces. Or mosquitoes? They can learn to avoid being killed by chemicals after a single taste.
Such an astonishing group of talent is rather unsettling, which raises fundamental questions like what actually is intelligence, how did it develop and how do the abilities of various organisms (生物) compare? Evaluating intelligence in nature is tricky, particularly in life forms that are very different from us. Now a group of neuroscientists, AI researchers and philosophers want to create a periodic table of intelligence similar to the one used to categorize the chemical elements. The chemical version sorts elements by their atomic (原子的) number or atomic mass. For intelligence, researchers are still looking for a criterion that is equally straightforward. But where to begin?
It certainly isn’t brain size, as was long thought. Behavior might be a better way to categorize cleverness. But testing for intelligence through behavior is difficult. Recognizing oneself in a mirror is seen as a sign of advanced cognition (认知). Dolphins and bats can do it — but dogs typically can’t. Does this reflect a lack of intelligence in dogs or perhaps something else, such as their reliance more on smell than vision. Likewise, many organisms live in environments that are obviously different from ours and so might use senses that we don’t even possess.
Nevertheless, the researchers behind the initiative think intelligence might become clearer through a combination of behavioral and neuroanatomical (神经解剖学的) features. “We’re going to ask, are there kinds of intelligence, and can we identify structural features that are organizational of those kinds of intelligence?” says Andrew Barron at Macquarie University. “If we can, then we are starting to identify things that can be thought of as possible dimensions of intelligence.”
1. Why are wasps and mosquitoes mentioned in paragraph 2?| A．To make comparisons between them. |
| B．To prove smarts are in short supply. |
| C．To show there are other forms of intelligence. |
| D．To illustrate their similarities with humans. |
| A．It is upsetting to see different talents in natural settings. |
| B．It is hard to compare the abilities of different species. |
| C．Life forms in the natural world are different from humans. |
| D．It requires us to answer some basic questions about intelligence. |
| A．Factors like brain size matter more. |
| B．Other features need to be considered. |
| C．Some organisms possess similar senses. |
| D．All animals show signs of advanced cognition. |
| A．Different Minds | B．Surprising Behaviors |
| C．Unique Senses | D．Diverse Species |
8 . By flying in silence, the owl (猫头鹰) holds a deadly advantage over its prey (猎物), which is thought to have no idea of its hunter’s approach until its final moments.
Researchers have spent more than 80 years trying to solve the mystery of how owls, unique among birds, slice through the air creating just a whisper of audible (听觉的) disturbance. They hope to make use of the findings to reduce the noise generated by aircraft wings, fans and wind turbine blades (涡轮机叶片).
Extensive progress has been made, including developing innovations that have reduced noise from a wind turbine by as much as ten decibels (分贝), the difference between passing car and a passing truck, according to the authors of the study, Justin Jaworski and Nigel Peake.
However, in the study, published in the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, they conclude that “the primary barrier to the design of owl-inspired technologies remains the lack of understanding of the essential physics of silent owl flight”. The slight swoosh (嗖) made by an incoming barn owl is below the reach of human hearing until the bird is just under one metre away, laboratory measurements have shown.
In 1934, Robert Rule Graham, a British bird enthusiast and pilot, noted three structural aspects of owl wings that may help to explain their quiet approach: an unusual “comb” structure projecting from the wing’s leading edge, a soft layer of downy feathers that covers most of the wing and a ragged fringe (外围) of feathers that line the trailing wing edge. His theory is widely cited (引用).
Some researchers found that many larger owl species, such as the barn owl, can continuously track their prey in flight by hearing alone, meaning that any aerodynamic noise does not interfere with their tracking ability. When an aeroplane lands, much of the noise comes not from its engines but from the flow of air rushing around it. The ragged, feathered fringes of the owl’s wings may help to reduce the noise.
1. What is the purpose of the researchers’ study on owls?| A．To understand the flying techniques of owls. |
| B．To increase the flying speed of aircraft. |
| C．To help hunters catch their preys with ease. |
| D．To put the secret of owls’ quiet flight to use. |
| A．compare the noise of cars with that of trucks |
| B．illustrate the great achievements of the research |
| C．show the striking difference between trucks and cars |
| D．explain there is still a long way to go in reducing noise |
| A．Lacking the source of inspiration. |
| B．Limited sense of hearing of human beings. |
| C．Failing to understand how owls fly silently. |
| D．Blindness to the structure of owls’ wings. |
| A．Owls don’t move their wings when hunting for their prey. |
| B．The flying barn owl can follow their prey just by hearing. |
| C．Much of the plane’s noise comes from its engines when landing. |
| D．The feathered fringes of the owl’s wings generate the flow of air. |
9 . Visitors won’t find many straight rows in the organic garden at Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley, California. Sometimes the beds look like hearts, eyes, question marks or a rainbow. And then there’s the lovely drainage ditch (水沟), called the “Middle River,” which laughing, muddy students carved right down the center of their one-acre land.
As he looks around, Kelsey Siegel, the young teacher in charge of the garden, can’t help but smile. “So many of the youth we work with have grown up in front of TV and video games; they haven’t really had this experience of playing in the mud and water,” he notes. The schoolyard farm “fills in something that’s missing in their lives.”
Before they planted their garden five years ago with the help of highly-praised chef Alice Waters, few of the students at this multicultural Northern California school had even tasted vine-ripened (藤熟的) tomatoes, let alone raised them seedlings. Teachers worried that some children weren’t eating enough fresh fruits and vegetables at home, and the school wasn’t much help either: Like many state campuses, King replaced its hot-meal cafeteria years ago with a more cost-effective outdoor “snack-shack (小吃棚).”
For Waters, the founder of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse restaurant, the thought of children having to rely on such reheated junk — right in her own backyard — was too much to stomach. The small, visionary (有远见卓识的) woman is widely regarded as the Julia Child of organic cuisine in America, the person who’s taught millions the joy of cooking simple dishes with locally grown, chemical-free produce. Waters remembers poking (戳) at mystery food in her school cafeteria as a kid. But today, she says, the spread of vending machines and fast food in America’s schools has become downright evil. “What is it, one in three kids is overweight now? It’s just horrifying,” she sighs, drinking mineral water at a quiet table downstairs in her hugely popular restaurant, about a mile from the King campus “I don’t know what has to happen before we wake up.”
1. What does paragraph 1 highlight?| A．Students’ creativity in farming the schoolyard. |
| B．Students’ knowledge of building the schoolyard. |
| C．The strange look of the organic garden. |
| D．The nice environment of the organic garden. |
| A．unnoticeable | B．predictable | C．modest | D．far-reaching |
| A．Waters preferred fast-food to her school’s mystery food. |
| B．Waters is indifferent to what is happening to children. |
| C．Waters has taught people to grow organic plants. |
| D．Waters is deeply concerned about students’ diet and health. |
| A．Field of dreams | B．Garden of pleasure |
| C．Junk-free restaurant | D．Cost-effective campus |
10 . Around 40 million tonnes of electronic waste, known as e-waste, is produced every year. This includes electrical or electronic equipment that has been discarded. But where does it all go? In the US alone, 100 million mobile phones, 41 million computers and over 20 million televisions are thrown into landfills in a year. Even for standard waste this is a big headache, because any materials that are buried in the ground can’t be easily recovered and recycled. Recycling electronics can save energy and means that less of Earth’s natural resources need to be mined.
Failing to recycle e-waste is extremely damaging the environment due to the nature of the materials used in modern devices. While heavy metals and chemicals improve a device’s safety and user experience, these components become poisonous if they’re not dealt with properly. Your old phones, Gameboys, kettles, microwaves and more can end up in landfills, leaking their harmful contents into the soil, water and air. Not only does this kill wildlife and destroy ecosystems, but the accumulation of poison can impact human health too. As heavy metals and chemicals flow into lakes and rivers, drinking water becomes polluted. These poisons spread through the soil, impacting the health of crops and animals that people also rely on.
In some western countries, e-waste isn’t hidden out of sight in landfills but is burnt in giant, open junkyards. They even ship waste electronics to other countries to deal with, and this often ends up in dumps across Africa and Asia. Workers in these places are exposed to polluted lands and chemical gas.
It is urgent that we should reduce the damaging and unsustainable side of e-waste production. Rare earth metals, some plastics and chemicals can be fed into the next generation of electronics. The steps to proper recycling of e-waste are extensive and need large investment, but more and more countries around the world are turning to e-waste recycling.
1. What does the underlined word “discarded” in Paragraph 1 mean?| A．Repaired. | B．Protected. | C．Used. | D．Abandoned. |
| A．E-waste has a permanent effect on the environment. |
| B．E-waste may do harm to both ecosystems and humans. |
| C．Heavy metals and chemicals are poisonous to the users. |
| D．Burying e-waste into landfills is an effective way to recycle. |
| A．supportive | B．objective | C．concerned | D．uncertain |
| A．Solutions to destroying e-waste. | B．Ways to recycle e-waste properly. |
| C．Applications of recycled materials. | D．Investments in restoring ecosystems. |
