1 . 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.
There are many reasons why some cats are bad-tempered; their temperament can be influenced by their upbringing or they are simply born that way. However, even the sweetest, most affectionate cats can suddenly become bad-tempered and behave out of character. According to veterinarian Dr Katrina Warren, the problem can generally be solved, but you’ll need to look for underlying issues.
Changes in a cat’s behaviour can often be explained by a health problem. Pain can cause cats to behave very differently, and it’s easy to mistake a problem as behavioural, when in fact it is medical. Should you observe a significant change in your cat’s behaviour, then a visit to the vet is the best place to start? Watch out for changes in eating, drinking or litter-box habits. Also hiding and avoiding being touched. Be sure to report all changes to your vet. There are many cat health problems that can be readily treated to ease symptoms and pain for your cat.
It pays to remember that cats don’t like to share or queue. Sharing of ‘resources’ such as litter trays and foodbowls can cause stress and anxiety for many cats. It’s always a good idea to provide each cat with their own litter box, food, water bowls and bed as a minimum. One litter box for each cat plus a spare is even better, as are multiple sleeping spots and extra scratching posts. A lack of space to hide from or avoid other cats, competition for territory and lack of individual attention can also add to household friction. If your cat is feeling anxious, offering it an elevated place to sit, such as a climbing tree, can be helpful.
Moving to a new house, the arrival of a new baby, new pets and other types of change can seriously impact cat behaviour. Cats are creatures of habit and tend to be territorial, so a change in routine may cause them to react in a number of ways, including withdrawal or aggression. Try to keep your cat’s environment as calm as possible and make sure there are places where they feel safe. Sometimes confining them to a single room with a litter box, bedding and home comforts can help them to settle.
Some cats simply do not like being touched and handled. These are often cats that received limited socialisation with humans when they were kittens. These cats do best in a quiet household without children and need understanding and patience to help build their confidence.
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1．基本情况；
2．景点特色；
3．你的印象和感受。
注意：1．词数80左右；
2．请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
A Beautiful Tourist Spot in Handan
There are many places of interest in my hometown Handan.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________3 . Directions: Read the following three passages. 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.
IKEA, known around the world as a supplier of furniture and other home goods, is taking steps to protect the environment. By 2030 IKEA plans to be a circular business, one whose products can all be reused or recycled rather than thrown away. To achieve this goal, the company is redesigning all of its products. How can it design products that will last longer and be easier to fix and that people can recycle when they are finished with them? By answering these questions, IKEA hopes to improve the sustainability of its business model.
IKEA wants people to be able to repair its products rather than throw them away when something goes wrong. To accomplish that goal, the company is standardizing the parts, materials and colors that it uses. This means that if a part needs to be replaced, it will be easy to find. In the past IKEA has only offered spare parts for some products; now it is greatly expanding the number of spare parts customers can purchase. This makes it feasible for customers to repair their own furniture. IKEA is also redesigning the parts of its products that are most likely to wear out quickly.
To extend the life of its products, IKEA is trying to make their maintenance easier. It is also making its products easier to take apart and transport, so the furniture is less likely to break when being moved or changing hands.
Sometimes people replace their furniture not because there is something wrong with it, but because their needs have changed. So IKEA is also trying to help people keep furniture for a longer time by making it easy to modify. Some pieces can be expanded or reduced in size as family members and guests come and go. Others have covers that can be exchanged for different look.
But even with all these efforts, it is likely that certain products will eventually no longer be usable. At that point they can be remanufactured — the pieces reassembled (重新组装) into something new-or recycled. And IKEA is designing products to make these processes easier. The company is also working to reduce waste in other areas, such as packaging and food waste from restaurants inside its stores.
These efforts to reduce the number of IKEA products that are abandoned and thrown in landfills will help create a more environmentally friendly economy.
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Are Oceans Silent?
Most sea creatures, from whales and dolphins to fish, sharks and shrimps, respond to sound, and many can produce it. They use it to hunt and to hide, find mates and food, send messages and give warnings, establish territories, warn off competitors, confuse their targets, deceive enemies, and sense changes in water and conditions. Marine animals click bones, grind teeth and belch gases (磨牙打嗝); use special organs to make various noises. Far from the ‘silent deep’, the oceans are so noisy.
Into this age-long confused noise, in the blink of an evolutionary eye, has entered a new thunder: the trembling sound of mighty engines as 46,220 large ships passed the world’s shipping courses. Scientists say that background noise in the ocean has increased roughly by 15 decibels (分贝) in the past 50 years. It may not sound like much in overall terms, but it is enough, according to many marine biologists, to mask the normal sounds of ocean life going about its business. At its most intense, some even say noise causes whales to become disoriented, dolphins to suffer from ‘the bends’, fish to go deaf, leave their breeding grounds or fail to form groups—enough to disorganize the basic biology of two thirds of the planet.
“Undersea noise pollution is like the death of a thousand cuts”, says Sylvia Earie, chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Each sound in itself may not be a matter of critical concern, but taken all together, the noise from shipping, earthquake-related surveys, and military activity is creating a totally different environment than existed even 50 years ago. That high level of noise is bound to have a hard, sweeping impact on life in the sea.
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Nowadays, leaders the world over are busy mapping out blueprints for a new age with environmental protection high on their agenda. Sustainable development hits headlines almost every day. It is of utmost importance to restore the harmonious balance between man and nature, given the damage we’ve already done to it.
First of all, we must realize that man and nature are interactive. To begin with, we derive everything from nature. Among other things, I’m sure you’ve all tasted natural produce that is otherwise known as green food. And you must have noticed that nearly all beautifying products boast of being natural creams, natural lotions or natural gels. For man, nature has an irresistible appeal.
But on the other hand we must also realize that nature can be unruly. Nature is indeed like a riddle, some areas of which are beyond the reach of science and technology, at least in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, the advancement of science and technology will still characterize the next millennium. The coming new age will provide many opportunities, but it will be likewise run of challenges. For instance, United Nations’ demographers predict that global population could soar from its current 5.9 billion to as many as 11.2 billion by 2050. This will worsen the current scarcity of natural resources caused by environmental degradation. More conflicts over this scarcity may occur with the ghost of nuclear wars always hiding in the background. To prevent this nightmare from coming true, governments need to work closely with each other and back up their verbal commitment by actions. However, it is not enough only to ask what governments can do to achieve the harmony between man and nature. We must ask ourselves what we as individuals can do.
Can we all be economical with food, water, electricity or other resources? Can we, or rather, some greedy ones among us, stop making rare plants and animals into delicious dishes? Can we stop using the unrecyclable style of lunch boxes? If not, one day they may bury us in an ocean of white rubbish. After all, the earth is not a dustbin; it’s our common home.
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Plan for Domino Effects on Sustainability Goals
Climate change is causing ever-more-extreme events, from storms and droughts to floods and violent windstorms, and these risks interact across many environmental and social systems. A heatwave can spark forest fires, which lead to air pollution. Drought-wrecked harvests can result in food-price unpredictability.
Yet these domino effects are barely considered in most countries’ strategies for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Many countries that are working hard to reach these goals insufficiently consider the impact of extreme weather. Take Germany as an example. Its 2018 strategy on sustainable development runs to 60 pages yet the word ‘disaster’ appears only once. There is no analysis of the consequences of an increase in such events.
Although many people are now aware that climate change is making fires, floods, heatwaves and storms more frequent, more severe or both, this knowledge isn’t changing policy or research enough. Part of the problem is perception. Future disasters feel unreal to decision-makers, as we’ve experienced with so many governments’ lack of pandemic preparedness, despite years of warning that something similar to COVID-19 was a case of when, not if. Other obstacles are inadequate national and international governance, and communication challenges. The research community has not yet provided effective guidance.
As a consequence, many efforts to achieve the SDGs will, like a house of cards, fall at the first shaking. Our global efforts need to be much more vigorous to the changing and interconnected nature of risk in a warming world.
What now? Researchers must create models that are more understandable and useful to policymakers. When possible, SDG targets and indicators should be redesigned to capture weakness to heatwaves, fires, droughts, floods, hurricanes, mudslides and more. And politicians need to be convinced to invest in precautionary measures and adaptation.
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There’s a longstanding debate on how to reduce emissions in the trucking industry. Germany is testing out a new system — eHighways, which feed electricity to trucks while they drive.
Figuring out how to reduce emissions in the commercial trucking industry is key to the fight against climate change. Because long-haul diesel(柴油机) trucks spend so much time on the road, they disproportionately produce pollutants, greenhouse gases, and contribute to dirty air.
Germany is at the forefront of this fight against truck emissions.
Using wires strung above the highway and a pantograph (current collector) mounted to the top of a truck, Germany’s e Highways use technology similar to that of an electric city bus. The system delivers power directly from the electrical line straight to the truck’s motor.
Adapting the same equipment that is used for driving trains and urban street cars, Siemens, the German electricity company, provided the equipment for the test route — stringing miles of high-voltage electrical cable above the Autobahn.
The eHighway system saves truckers weight and money compared to outfitting trucks with electric batteries — which could be both heavy and expensive. Using overhead wires on the freeway, a truck would only need a big enough battery to drive the short distance from the offramp to its destination. Not to mention, the money trucking companies would save on fuel, their largest cost.
While this system saves money in the long term, stringing thousands of miles of electrical cable above freeways would be costly to German taxpayers. Is it feasible? For now, Germany is just testing it out. The eHighway system has also been tested in Sweden and a 1-mile stretch near Long Beach, California.
It would take 2,500 miles of electrical wiring to accommodate about 60% of German truck traffic. So far, only a couple 3-mile-stretches of highway outside Frankfurt, Schleswig-Holstein, and Baden-Württemberg are equipped with overhead electrical cables. By the end of the year, more than 20 trucks carrying real loads will be using the system. The companies funding the project want to see how the eHighway stretch performs in everyday use.
Building the overhead cables would cost the German government about $5 million dollars per mile. Germany’s Ministry of Environment will compare the results of this project with studies of trucks using electric batteries and hydrogen fuel cells. Based on the data, the ministry plans to decide in three to four years which eco-friendly technology to invest in and support.
“Numerous studies have come to the conclusion that overhead cable trucks, despite the high infrastructure costs, are the most cost-effective option,” the Ministry of Environment said to The New York Times.
No matter which option the ministry chooses, the goal is to create a more environment-friendly future for the commercial trucking industry.
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Why bees are finally getting a break
While people have been confined to their homes this spring, wildlife has faced less human disturbance, traffic and polluting fumes. One animal that could see a much-needed revival is the wild bee.
One of the biggest environmental impacts of the global shut down has been the significant reduction in air pollution. Less fumes from cars on the road makes it easier for bees to find food, as air pollution substantially reduced the strength and longevity of floral scents, making it harder for bees to detect food. This means they often end up flying further to find food and bring it back to their nests. In contrast, shorter and more profitable “shopping trips” help them rear more young.
And as governments are tightening their purse strings due to the pandemic, many have stopped maintaining road verges (绿化带) which have turned into lush habitats as a result. “This unexpected quantity of flowers may well be another benefit for bees, with the unexpected food they provide boosting bee populations,” says Mark Brown, a professor of revolutionary ecology.
But a break for wild bees doesn’t mean it’s a good time for honey. Commercial beekeepers depend heavily on importing queen bees from around the world to replenish (补充) their colonies. Usually the bees are transported by plane, but since flights have been grounded they are being driven across the continent.
This could have serious knock-on effects for farmers, as commercial traveling hive are often relied upon for crop pollination. Take the Californian almond. Almond trees flower in February and March, and by April the visiting commercial hived have usually been moved to other parts of the country to poll in ate different crops. This re location has taken longer this year as some drivers have been told to self-quarantine for 14 days when crossing state borders.
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根据以上现象，思考自己认同哪一方？以“Getting a Pet：From Breeders or Shelters？”为题，写一篇120-150字的文章。
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下面的图表和漫画反映了世界上野生动物种类的变化情况和原因，请根据你对图表和漫画的理解，用英语写一篇短文。写作要点：
1.描述野生动物种类的变化趋势；
2.分析导致野生动物种类变化的原因；
3.谈谈你对保护野生动物的看法和建议。
注意：
1.可参照图表、漫画及下面文章开头所给的提示进行必要的发挥；
2.词数100左右。开头已经写好，不计入总词数。
Many animals are in danger of dying out.
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In my opinion, it is high time that we should take action to protect them and give wild animals a good living environment. In addition, the government should pass more laws to forbid killing wild animals. Only in this way can we live in harmony with wild animals.
