1 . There is a myth that people can see glass, but birds can’t.
Many people are injured every year. They collide with unmarked doors and windows; embarrassment is the usual result.
Birds can learn to avoid glass. For example, birds in zoo exhibits learn to avoid exhibit walls if the glass is marked for the first few days of their residence.
Birds hit glass because it presents a triple threat. One is that reflections of vegetation or landscape attract birds to collide with glass.
As researchers have begun to understand collisions, they are creating better approaches to reduce impacts on birds. For example, some have documented mortality(死亡) patterns and how they are influenced by lighting, the amount of glass present, the distribution of nearby vegetation, and other variables.
This science has come along way, but many questions remain unanswered. Our efforts on the testing of bird-friendly materials are helping to expand understanding of how birds sec and respond to their environment, and will lead to more effective solutions.
| A．In fact, neither birds nor people can see glass. |
| B．Wild birds can learn about specific pieces of glass. |
| C．Each year up to one billion birds hit glass in the U. S. alone. |
| D．Therefore glass can be the invisible killer of birds in particular. |
| E．So architects and other professionals can design innovative bird-watching buildings. |
| F．Others have looked at the type of structure to identify which poses the most risk. |
| G．Green habitat inside buildings with see-through glass can also trick birds to their death. |
2 . From picture-perfect beaches to mountains, wildlife and iconic structures, New South Wales, Australia, offers plenty to enjoy. This beautiful state is located on Australia's breathtaking eastern coast. Sydney, the capital of New South Wales and Australia's most populated city, accommodates more than 5million people.
No trip to Sydney would be complete without a visit to Australia's most famous landmark, the Sydney Opera House. Its unique appearance was designed to resemble a ship's sails and its historic importance is recognized by people all over the world. The Opera House welcomes more than 8 million visitors each year, making it the country's most popular tourist spot. It is also one of the world's busiest performing arts centers, featuring more than 2,000 performances annually.
The Opera House is open 363 days a year, and admission is free. Tours are available throughout the day in seven different languages. For those who arrive hungry, Opera House restaurants offer everything from snacks to fine dining.
“Stunning natural beauty” describes the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. This wilderness area, also on the World Heritage list, is a large, mountainous region that covers 1.03 million hectares. It is home to a vast number of Australia's birds and other forms of wildlife. One of the most visited sites is the Three Sisters, named for its unique rock formations.
Off the coast of New South Wales lies a remote island called Lord Howe Island. Created by a volcano, the island is surrounded by beautiful reefs. Two mountains tower over a bay with sandy, white beaches. Visitors can enjoy beach walks, mountain hikes, water activities (above and below the water), exceptional bird watching and more. About 380 people live on it, and a maximum of 400visitors can visit at one time.
New South Wales offers its visitors an abundance of experiences to choose from and many memories that will last a lifetime.
1. How is the importance of Sydney Opera House expressed?| A．By offering supportive views. | B．By stating personal experiences. |
| C．By listing facts and numbers. | D．By describing its unique appearance. |
| A．It's highly recommended to bring your own food. |
| B．Language probably won't be a barrier during tours. |
| C．The admission fee is acceptable for most people. |
| D．It is open all year round on account of its popularity. |
| A．New South Wales. | B．Lord Howe Island. | C．Blue Mountains. | D．Three Sisters. |
| A．Unforgettable 'Tour in the Opera House. | B．Charming Places to Visit in Sydney. |
| C．Unique Geographical Features of Australia. | D．Striking Beauty of New South Wales. |
3 . Verkhoyansk, a town in northeastern Siberia, about 6 miles within the Arctic Circle, recorded a temperature of 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) on June 20. 2020, likely setting a new record for the hottest temperature recorded that far north.
The new record comes as Siberia—and the Asian continent as a whole—have experienced unusually warm conditions since the start of this year. The whole region has been off-the-charts warm lately. And while it’s difficult to know the impact of climate change on individual records or temperatures in any given season, experts say the developments are part of a broader warming trend that has been documented across the globe.
The sudden movement of heat is being caused by high-pressure ridge (脊)of air—sometimes called “heat dome (穹)” that is blanketing the area. When this happens, air gets squeezed into one location and sinks, pushing warm temperatures down to the surface.
The high-pressure ridge also prevents clouds from forming, so sunshine comes through without being weakened by clouds. North of the Arctic Circle when that temperature was observed, they had 24 hours of daylight, so they were receiving solar energy for those entire 24 hours.
The town of Verkhoyansk is known for having the biggest extremes between winter and summer than any other city in the world, with their average high temperature minus 47 degrees Fahrenheit in winter In June and July, their average temperature is close to 70 degrees. In their climate history, they’ve been above 90 degrees over 150 times, and above 95 degrees at least dozen times.
“Since the start of the year, we’ve been noticing that Asia— particularly northern Asia, like Russia—has been extremely warm,” —said Ahira Sanchez-Lugo, a climatologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information. Forecasts suggest that this part of Siberia could see at least another week of above-average temperatures before things stabilize. But conditions in Asia have been warmer than usual for most of 2020.
1. What does the underlined part “off-the-charts” in Paragraph 2 refer to?| A．Entirely. | B．Seriously. | C．Extremely. | D．Slightly. |
| A．It is a blanket covering a town. |
| B．It prevents the sun from heating the surface. |
| C．It moves fast and carries heat away. |
| D．It presses heat down and keeps solar energy down on the earth. |
| A．Verkhoyansk is the hottest town in the world. |
| B．The largest extremes in Verkhoyansk are more than 95 degrees. |
| C．Northern Asia takes the lead in global warming. |
| D．The average high temperature in Verkhoyansk is minus 47 degrees Fahrenheit. |
| A．Verkhoyansk is a special town in Russia. |
| B．Verkhoyansk hit its highest temperature in history. |
| C．Verkhoyansk experienced the worst weather conditions. |
| D．Verkhoyansk witnessed the highest temperature in the world. |
4 . As people are becoming more socially conscious about where their food comes from and how it impacts the planet, they are choosing animal-free plant-based options. Cow-free meat has been around for quite some time and the popularity of brands like Beyond Meat and cultivated meat from Aleph Farms and other are soaring. While there are a large number of plant-based milk substitutes, none of have the same taste of cow’ milk. Now, an Israeli food-tech startup Remilk created real dairy products without harming a single cow or the planet.
The company stresses that their product Remilk is not a milk substitute but rather is the real deal. Made from a special process called microbial fermentation, milk is manufactured in a lab instead of in a cow. And the end product is very healthy. “In a very simple way, we take the gene that encodes for the milk protein,” said Aviv Wolf, CEO of Remilk. “The gene function as an instruction book for the production of the protein it encodes. And so, we insert the gene into a microbe that we’ve developed and it instructs our microbe to produce the specific protein in a very efficient way.”
The company says that the lab-produced milk tastes identical to the real thing and they hope to eventually replace cows by creating every dairy product sold. They expect to roll out plant-based cheese and yogurt in addition to milk. “Remilk was founded with the mission to stop using animal to produce our food because, as dairy lovers, we realize that giving up on milk is not an option,” Wolff said. “But today’s milk comes with an unreasonable price tag. The dairy industry is destructive to our planet, our health, and our animals, and is simply not sustainable any more.”
The environmental price tag of dairy farming is way too high. According to the World Wildlife Fund, dairy cows add a huge amount of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere and contribute to global warming and climate change as well as foul the air around them. Dairy operation consume large amounts of water and run-off of manure and fertilizers from there farms get into local waterways. The production of Remilk uses only 5 percent of the resources and produces only 1 percent of the waste of producing cow’s milk according to company. And they accomplish this by being 100 percent cruelty-free dairy farms.
1. What distinguishes Remilk from other milk substitutes?| A．It enjoys broad popularity. | B．It has the highest output. |
| C．It comes in various flavours. | D．It tastes the same as cow’s milk. |
| A．The production of Remilk. | B．The nutritional value of Remilk. |
| C．The role of gene in making protein. | D．The process of microbial fermentation. |
| A．Remilk was set up for animal protection. | B．Dairy industries should be shut down. |
| C．Remilk aims to produce animal-free food. | D．Price of cow’s milk are soaring there days. |
| A．Clean. | B．Heat. | C．Pollute. | D．Consume. |
5 . Despite being the highest point on Earth, Mount Everest can’t escape the effects of climate change. According to two new studies published in iScience and One Earth, the air pressure near Everest’s top is rising, and the rate of glacier melt (冰川融化) is faster.
Last year, Aurora Elmore, a climate scientist at the National Geographic Society, helped send 34 scientists to Mount Everest to install (安装) the highest weather stations in the world. The exploration provided valuable data for both of the new studies, each of which Elmore co-authored.
In a study published in iScience, Elmore and a team of scientists set out to document how the atmospheric pressure on Everest has fluctuated since the 1970s. As climate change is causing the air to slowly thicken, which means more oxygen is available at higher altitudes. When temperature rises, molecules (分子) move faster. And when these molecules start to collide (碰撞) with each other, pressure increases.
To analyze the changes in the atmosphere, lead author Tom Matthews and his team collected data using those weather stations installed in 2019. They used the climate data to build models, which suggest that if global temperatures increase by 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the maximum rate of oxygen consumption on Everest will increase by 5%.
The other study is published in One Earth. Owen King, from the University of St Andrews in the UK? and his team studied 79 glaciers and found that between 2009 and 2018, glaciers thinned at nearly twice the rate they did in the 1960s.
The results are concerning. Besides the 18 local communities living in the Himalayas, nearly two billion people depend on the mountain range for a source of fresh water. “Although faster melting might mean more water, it’s only a good thing for a little bit of time,” Elmore says. Worse still, if water melts too fast, it arrives in the form of floods, which people in the area are already experiencing.
1. Why did the scientists install the weather stations on Everest?| A．To test their collected data on the mountain. |
| B．To make it easier to predict natural disasters. |
| C．To collect glaciological and atmospheric data. |
| D．To leave impressive marks on their exploration. |
| A．Changed. | B．Formed. | C．Improved. | D．Decreased. |
| A．Unconcerned. | B．Worried. | C．Unclear. | D．Supportive. |
| A．Why temperatures on Everest vary. | B．Natural disasters on Mount Everest. |
| C．Great concerns over Mount Everest. | D．How climate change affects Everest. |
6 . In the small village of Goss in Austria, a century-old brewery tradition had a novel transformation towards Sustainability (可持续性), Göss in home to the Gösser Brewery, the world’s first large scale zero-carbon brewery.
Owned and operated by the Heineken Group, the world's third-largest beer maker, the Gösser Brewery was relaunched as a zero-carbon facility in June. The brewery produces 1.4 million bottles of beer every day using a mix of entirely renewable energy sources, including hydropower, biogas and waste heat. This has brought its carbon emissions (排放) down from 3, 000 tons a year to zero.
Andreas Werner, brew master at Gösser Brewery said, “Our Cöss brewery may be in a small town but our goal was to make a big influence. I am proud of what we have achieved for the Heineken Group and want to help our other breweries and the wider brewing industry makes renewable energy part of their energy mix, just as we have done.”
The brewery is helping Heineken achieve its commitment to a 40 percent reduction in CO2 emissions from production by 2022, which is kept in the company’s Brewing a Better World stability strategy.
To power its production, the Gösser Brewery uses 100 percent hydropower sources for eletnicity-35 percent from biomass for heating, 10 percent from biogas from waste water, 3-5 percent from a solar plant, and 50 percent from biogas generated from the spent grain fermentation (发酵) tank.
For this creative move towards sustainability, the brewery won the EU Sustainable Energy Award and Citizens Choice Award in June. The awards cognize creative projects in energy efficiency and renewability in Europe. “The Goss brewery is the stand-out example of this work and our commitment to sustainability,” Roland Verstappen, Heineken’s director for public and movement affairs said.
1. What is special about the Gösser Brewery?| A．It’s the world’s third largest zero-carbon brewery. |
| B．No carbon will be given off during its production. |
| C．It can produce 1.4 million bottles of beer annually. |
| D．The Heineken group newly opened it to produce more beer. |
| A．The resources of making beer. |
| B．The production of beer bottles. |
| C．The examples of sustainable energy. |
| D．The composition of hydropower sources. |
| A．It has won two international awards for its creativity. |
| B．It has helped more industries turn to renewable energy. |
| C．It has led to the draft of Heineken’s Brewing a Belter World strategy. |
| D．It has played an important role in Heineken’s achieving its goal of CO2 reduction. |
| A．A brewery’s creative move to achieve sustainability. |
| B．Profits gained from the transformation of an old brewery. |
| C．The brewery industry’s responsibility for protecting the environment. |
| D．A small business making a big difference by mixing various sources. |
7 . On 19 March 2018, you were born. I knew absolutely nothing of you and hadn’t even considered adding another member to our family.
You see, at that time I was becoming increasingly concerned about our teenage daughter. She had been spending more and more time away from the family, bad tempered and unsociable. She seemed unhappy most of the time. She had talked of wanting a dog for a long while, so I thought: if I do this for her, it will boost her mood, get her out more and give her a new focus.
To my surprise, our daughter’s reaction was not what I expected when I introduced the two of you-had 1 made a mistake?
I soon began to understand that you were not going to bring her out of her sadness. Yet you still needed taking care of, so, naturally, most of the duties of your care fell upon me.
Then, in July, our daughter was diagnosed with anorexia (厌食症). Our lives were turned upside down, as she faced the biggest challenges of her life. My husband and I had different ideas about what would be the best course of action to take; the illness sent the whole family into chaos. Without you, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity, to find clarity. On our walks together, you gave me the freedom to think clearly and rationally (理性地). I found a calmness that I never would have, had I been at home with Google.
In September, we kept our daughter off school and I looked after her, putting everything else on hold. During that time I bonded with her and she bonded with you. She rejoined school in the middle of September, and was slowly but surely on the road to recovery.
Thank you for your constant love and playfulness, and for showing me the simple pleasures of life. But most of all, thank you for being my light in the dark.
1. Who does the author write the letter to?| A．Her daughter. | B．Her dog. | C．Her husband. | D．Herself. |
| A．She needed a lifelong friend. |
| B．She would like to know more about dogs. |
| C．She wanted a dog 1o ease the tension in the family. |
| D．She hoped u dog could relieve her daughter of bad mood. |
| A．It cured her daughter of her disease. |
| B．It made her husband stay elear-minded. |
| C．It helped her belter deal with the difficult situation in her life. |
| D．It strengthened the relationship between her daughter and her. |
| A．She had anorexia. | B．She was a devoted mother. |
| C．She felt guilty to her dog. | D．She recovered from her sadness. |
8 . Bird expert Stephen Kress remembers the first time he encountered puffins (角嘴海雀). “I was totally amazed from the moment I saw them,” he says. Two years after his first encounter, while teaching at a nature camp in Maine, Kress learned that the state's puffin colonies were all but destroyed by hunters in the late 1800s. The puffins were killed for their eggs, meat and feathers.
Kress decided to learn more about these “special birds.” His fascination grew into Project Puffin, a decades-long effort to bring the puffins back to Maine. Kress ran the project while working for the National Audubon Society, a major bird conservation nonprofit in the US.
Project Puffin’s origins lie on an uninhabited seven-acre island, six miles off the coast of Maine, called Easter Egg Rock. The tiny island, accessible only by rowboat, is free from predators (捕食者) and edged with rocks under which the puffins nest.
Starting in 1973, Kress’s team collected chicks from Greet Island, off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, which had a healthy puffin population. The team hand -raised puffins in artificial holes, feeding them vitamin-enriched fish twice a day. “They would come out when they were six weeks old and they would work their way to the edge of the island and swim off,” says Kress.
For four years, however, none of the birds returned to the island to breed (繁殖). The project’s supporters began to question whether they would ever succeed. “That's when I began trying to think like a puffin,” Kress says.“Puffins nest in colonies because they like being with others of their kind and large groups provide protection from predators.” He thought that the young puffins did remember the island but were not brave to come ashore. Kress’s new idea was to place wooden puffins around the island, to help the birds feel safe. It worked.
Thanks to his pioneering method, Project Puffin says there are now around 1,300 pairs of puffins nesting on islands in the Gulf of Maine. What's more, the techniques Kress developed to save puffins are now used by seabird conservationists around the world.
1. What happened to Maine’s puffins in the late 19th century?| A．They were well protected. | B．They were a tourist attraction. |
| C．They were nearly going extinct. | D．They were raised for their meat. |
| A．It is inaccessible to hunters. |
| B．It seems an ideal Puffin habitat. |
| C．It is near the National Audubon Society. |
| D．It seems a perfect place for bird-watching. |
| A．Finding proper food for puffins. |
| B．Digging artificial holes for puffins. |
| C．Moving puffin chicks from Great Island. |
| D．Getting adult puffins to breed at Eastern Egg Rock. |
| A．A New Way to Save Seabirds | B．A Bird Conservation Nonprofit |
| C．A Bird Species to Be Hand-raised | D．A Great Seabird Migration Project |
9 . I experienced an earthquake with my friend and colleague Dawa Chhiri Sherpa last Saturday.
It was quite a usual morning at first. That morning, Dawa and I had breakfast out with his son Sonam.
We managed to slowly make our way to open ground and struggled to even stand at times. There was a moment when I felt the hotel and all the buildings would come down, but they didn't.
Sadly, just walking in that area was a challenge. The street was blocked.
| A．I called the hotel for help. |
| B．It was a horrible experience. |
| C．Life after the earthquake was terrible. |
| D．There was no sign of Dawa or Sonam. |
| E．We really had a terrible night that day. |
| F．After breakfast, Dawa took me back to my hotel. |
| G．After the first shock I became worried about Dawa and his son. |
