Throughout the past century humanity did everything in its power to control nature. We dammed earth's rivers, chopped down the forests and exhausted the soils. Burning up fuels, we pumped a great deal of greenhouse gases into the air, altering the chemistry of the atmosphere and warming the planet in just a few decades. And as our population began in the year 2000 to be above the billion mark, still spreading across the continents, dozens of animal and plant species were dying out every day, including the first primate(灵长类)to disappear in more than100 years.
At the start of the 21st century there were unmistakable signs that nature was beginning to take its revenge(报复). Melting ice in both poles of the earth suggested that the climate was changing rapidly. Weather was even more changeable than usual, giving some places too little rain and others too much. Fires raced across the dried American West last summer, and recent storms spread damages from Britain to China. No specific event could be directly blamed on global warming. Floods and drought will be more frequent and severe. Other sad signs from an overburdened planet include falling grain and fish harvests and fierce competition for scarce water supplies.
But there were also signs of great awareness. Connected by the Internet, hundreds of millions of people gathered for the anniversary of Earth Day. Governments from Washington to Lima took steps to protect the large wild areas from development. Progress was made toward using more renewable energy from the wind and the sun, and new cars that used both gasoline and electricity spotted fuel-economy statistics.
The goal for the new century is “sustainable development”. Is that possible? It depends on how well we understand that humanity is part of nature, not lord or master.
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一家服装店的橱窗外，两只狐狸在对话：
——爸爸快看，妈妈在对我笑呐！
——走吧儿子，有人过来了。
请简要描述这幅图片，并就其传达的信息和意义谈谈你的看法。
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Hibernation is a time when animals “sleep” through cold weather. With true hibernation, the animal can be moved around or touched without knowing it. Some animals only go into a temporary sleep time and can get up quickly like bears. We are going to use the word “sleep” sometimes, but hibernation is different from regular sleep. With normal sleep, the animal moves a little, has an active brain, and can wake up very quickly while with true hibernation, the animal appears as if dead.
During the fall, hibernating animals eat more food than usual. Their bodies will live off their body fat as they “sleep” through winter. The animal will use up the body fat it stores and not lose any muscle. This causes the animal to come out of hibernation thinner but still as strong as it was in the fall. The animals get their winter nests, and dens ready. Different kinds of animals hibernate in different kinds of safe spots. When they go into hibernation and their bodies slow down, enemies can get them more easily. They try to pick the safest place to spend the winter away from these enemies.
Hibernation is the way that animals adapt to the climate and land around them. Animals must be able to live through extreme cold or die. Animals hibernate-or go into a deep sleep-to escape that cold. They also do this because it is really hard to find food during the winter.
When an animal begins to hibernate, its body temperature drops to a very low degree so that it almost matches the temperature outside. The animal's heartbeat and breathing rate slow down, too. This is when that stored fat that the animal packed on in the fall comes in handy. This stored fat lasts long because their bodies are slowed down so much that they don't need much energy.
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One aim of this guide is to cultivate an appreciation of the extraordinary variety of plants and animals on Earth. Wherever you live, you are just one of many different living things. Scientists have already identified about 1.5 million species. They estimate that between 2 and 100 million species are yet to be discovered.
Living things are found in many different types of habitats(栖息地). A habitat provides all the resources a living thing needs in order to survive and develop. Animals. and plants are adapted to certain habitats. A habitat can be large or small. We usually think of oceans, forest, and deserts as habitats, but a single tree or even a decaying log can function as a habitat, too.
The plants and animals that live in any habitat are linked together by a complex web of interactions. Monarch butterflies, for example, lay their eggs on milkweed, a type of flowering plant. When worms come out of the eggs, they feed on the leaves of the milkweed. Later, the adult butterfly may drink nectar(花蜜)from the milkweed flower and in the process pollinate(授粉)the plant, leading to the development of seeds and, eventually, more milkweed plants.
Complex relationships also exist among different animals. For example, birds feed on the insects some large animals stir up as they eat. In turn, the birds help control the insect population. In the wild, the birds also provide an early alert system and warn the larger animals of potential danger.
The web of relationships between plants and animals, among animals, and even among plants is called ''interdependence''. The interdependence among living things and the natural resources in the environment(e.g. soil, air, and water)is a complex system.
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Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.
A remarkable variety of insects live in this planet. More species of insects exist than all other animal species together. Insects have survived on earth for more than 300 million years, and may possess the ability to survive for millions more. Insects can be found almost everywhere -- on the highest mountains and on the bottom of rushing streams, in the cold South Pole and in bubbling hot springs. They dig through the ground, jump and sing in the trees, and run and dance in the air. They come in many different colours and various shapes.
There are many reasons why insects are so successful at surviving. Their amazing ability to adapt permits them to live in extreme ranges of temperatures and environments. The one place where they have not yet been found to any major extent is in the open oceans. Insects can survive on a wide range of natural and artificial foods -- paint, pepper, glue, books, grain, cotton, other insects, plants and animals. Because they are small they can hide in tiny spaces.
Also, insects have an enormous reproductive capacity: An African ant queen can lay as many as 43,000 eggs a day.
Another reason for their success is the strategy of protective colour. An insect may be right before our eyes, but nearly invisible because it is cleverly disguised(伪装) like a green leaf, lump of brown soil, gray lichen(青苔), a seed or some other natural object. Some insects use bright, bold colours to send warning signals that they taste bad, sting or are poison. Others have wing patterns that look like the eyes of a huge predator, bitter-tasting insects; hungry enemies are fooled into avoiding them.
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Desertification
Desertification is one of the world’s most alarming processes of environmental degradation(退化). The issue is often unclear, however, by a common misperception: that it’s a “natural” problem of advancing deserts in faraway developing countries. In fact, desertification is about land degradation: the loss of the land’s biological productivity, caused by man-made factors and climate change.
Each year, desertification and drought cause an estimated $42 billion in lost agricultural production. The risks of desertification are sufficient and clear. It contributes to food insecurity, hunger and poverty, and can give rise to social, economic and political tensions that can cause conflicts, further poverty and land degradation. The great urgency of this challenge led the United Nations General Assembly to state 2006 to be the International Year of Deserts and Desertification (IYDD). It is a strong reminder of the urgent need to address the far-reaching implications of this problem. United Nations General Secretary recently summarizes in this way: “I look forward to working with Governments, civil society, the private section, international organizations and others to focus attention on this crucial issue, and to reverse the trend of desertification and set the world on a safer, more sustainable path of development.”
The IYDD also presents a golden opportunity to get the message across strongly and effectively that desertification is a global problem which we ignore at our risk. It is important to recognize that dry-lands are home to some of the most magnificent ecosystems of this world. These unique natural habitats have been home to some of the world’s oldest civilizations. They stand like open-air museums, bearing witness to bygone eras. The Year will therefore also celebrate the delicate beauty and unique inheritance of the world’s deserts.
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7 . A remarkable variety of insects live in this planet. More species of insects exist than all other animal species together. Insects have survived on earth for more than 300 million years, and may possess the ability to survive for millions more. Insects can be found almost everywhere -- on the highest mountains and on the bottom of rushing streams, in the cold South Pole and in bubbling hot springs. They dig through the ground, jump and sing in the trees, and run and dance in the air. They come in many different colours and various shapes.
There are many reasons why insects are so successful at surviving. Their amazing ability to adapt permits them to live in extreme ranges of temperatures and environments. The one place where they have not yet been found to any major extent is in the open oceans. Insects can survive on a wide range of natural and artificial foods -- paint, pepper, glue, books, grain, cotton, other insects, plants and animals. Because they are small they can hide in tiny spaces.
Also, insects have an enormous reproductive capacity: An African ant queen can lay as many as 43,000 eggs a day.
Another reason for their success is the strategy of protective colour. An insect may be right before our eyes, but nearly invisible because it is cleverly disguised(伪装) like a green leaf, lump of brown soil, gray lichen(青苔), a seed or some other natural object. Some insects use bright, bold colours to send warning signals that they taste bad, sting or are poison. Others have wing patterns that look like the eyes of a huge predator, bitter-tasting insects; hungry enemies are fooled into avoiding them.
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Light the Cities of the Future
A previously unlit cycle path in the Netherlands has recently drawn our attention. It has been resurfaced with a material that consists of thousands of shining stones in order to create a well-lit route. The Van Gogh Path, so called after the artist who lived in the town of Nuenen in 1883, combines the traditional with the contemporary in a gesture that acknowledge ledges Van Gingh’ masterpiece The Starry Night, but also shows the way ahead for city lighting. The Van Gogh Path is not a single case; it is not difficult to foresee a time when natural materials could help light the cities of the future.
Why should we care about city lighting? What’s wrong with current electrical city lighting anyway? Well, the problem that it causes is two-fold. First, of course, electrical lighting in most cities comes from non-renewable resources. According to the International Energy Agency, almost 20% of global electricity is consumed for lighting, which is responsible for high levels of carbon emissions. But there’s also the belief that electrical light itself is a form of pollution by destroying our view of the night sky.
From the above reasons, then, it seems wise to investigate other approaches. The city of Glasgow is attempting to use intelligent street lighting to monitor how citizens interact with the urban landscape and minimize electrical consumption and thus emissions. This “Smart City approach” is seen by many as the way of the future, but some designers aren’t convinced. They are pioneering the altogether more original approach of using materials from the natural world in order to replace electrical light entirely. They believe that this new “technology” can one day completely replace microchips and digital systems as we find better ways of making use of the light-producing mechanisms (制) that already exist in the natural world.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________What We Should Know about Honey
The process that produces honey may have helped form humans too. Scientists believe that wild hives full of honey provided the calories that early humans such as Homo erectus (直立人), walking in Africa , needed to develop their brains into those of modern humans. That puts honey in a class with fire, tool use, and hunting as a key ingredient in the evolution of human beings.
With time, those evolved brains learned to domesticate bees to produce honey in a farmed setting. Today’s beekeepers support large-scale industrial farms, which would be unable to grow their crops without hiring traveling groups of bees to come pollinate (授粉) their vast, single-species fields. The bees will endlessly fill the towers of combs put onto their hives by the beekeeper, who then collects the extra honey for human consumption while still leaving the bees all they need to eat.
Today, the average American consumes nearly a pound and a half of honey every year, in tea, on toast, and beyond. Honey is a timeless treasure. Literally—it never goes bad. Samples nearly 3,000 years old found in the Egyptian pyramids are as eatable as the day they were entombed. Its anti-microbial nature also makes honey an excellent cure for wounds, keeping infection out while holding in the moisture that skin needs to heal.
However, bees’ good health is not guaranteed. U.S. beekeepers lose about 40 percent of their hives annually to colony collapse disorder. The problem lies in the growth of industrial agriculture and pesticide use, as well as changes in weather patterns, all of which reduce the number of flowers bees have to visit. If bees continue to die, apples and peaches (along with any crop that relies on their pollination) will become scarcer and pricier. As will honey.
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