3 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. virtual     B. survival   C. specifically D. restoring E. transboundary F. excursions G. nesting   H. properly   I. routes   J. facing   K. connection

World Migratory Bird Day is an annual awareness-raising campaign highlighting the need for the conservation of migratory birds and their habitats. It has a global outreach and is an effective tool to help raise global awareness of the threats     1     migratory birds, their ecological importance, and the need for international cooperation to conserve them.

Every year people around the world take action and organize public events such as bird festivals, education programmes, exhibitions and bird-watching     2     to celebrate.

The theme of this year’s World Migratory Bird Day is “Birds Connect Our World”, which highlights the importance of conserving and     3     the ecological connectivity and integrity of ecosystems that support the natural movements of migratory birds and that are essential for their     4     and well-being.

Migratory birds need a network of undamaged habitats along their entire migration     5     to survive. Increased global action through multilateral (多边的) environment treaties, such as the Convention on Migratory Species and the African-Eurasian Waterbird Agreement, is essential to protect migratory birds on their international journeys. Creating     6     habitat corridors would be of great benefit to migratory birds and other migratory wildlife,     7     at the landscape scale (景观尺度).

In addition, networks of critical sites key to migration need to be safeguarded and managed     8    . Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs), as described by BirdLife International, provide migratory birds with the necessary feeding, breeding,     9     and sheltering grounds that are needed during their long flights.

A wave of online interactions and     10     events are expected to take place in countries around the world in celebration of World Migratory Bird Day, with educational programmes being offered online by many organizations including schools, parks, zoos, forests, wildlife refuges, wetlands centres, museums and libraries.

4 . Directions: After reading the passage and the sentences below, fill in each blank with a proper word given in the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one more word than you need.

A. accurate       B. alteration       C. average     D. calculates       E. conceal       F. enormously    G. initial        H. intervals     I. merely        J. multiply       K. prediction

Beyond two or three days, the world’s best weather forecasts are doubtful, and beyond six or seven they are worthless.

The Butterfly Effect is the reason. For small pieces of weather—to a global forecaster, small can mean thunder—storms and blizzards—any     1    becomes worse rapidly. Errors and uncertainties     2    , gathering upward through a chain of unable features, from dust devils(尘旋风) and storms up to continent-size eddies(旋涡)    3    satellites can see.

The modern weather models work with net-like points sixty miles apart, and even so, some     4    data have to be guessed, since ground stations and satellites cannot see everywhere. But suppose the earth could be covered with sensors placed one foot apart, rising at one-foot     5     all the way to the top of the atmosphere. Suppose every sensor gives perfectly     6    readings of temperature, pressure, humidity(温度), and any other data a weatherman would want. Exactly at noon a(n)     7     powerful computer takes all the data and     8    what will happen at each point at 12.01, then 12.02, then 12.03…

The computer will still be unable to predict whether Princeton will have sun or rain one month away. At noon the spaces between the sensors will     9    alterations that the computer will not know about, tiny variations from the     10    . By 12.01, those fluctuations will already have created small errors one foot away. Soon the errors will have added to the ten-foot scale，and so on up to the size of the globe.

5 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box.Each word can only be used once.Note that there is one word more than you need.

A.reliance B.sought C.process D.contributing E.scalable F.delivered G.feasible H.efficient I.positioned J.occurring K.significant

New Path to Plastics

A crucial component could come from existing carbon sources.Ethylene (乙烯)is the world's most popular industrial chemical.Consumers and industry demand 150 million tons every year, and most of it goes into countless plastic products, from electronics to textiles.To get ethylene, energy companies crack hydrocarbons (碳氢化合物)from natural gas in a process that requires a lot of heat and energy,    1     to climate change - causing emissions.

Scientists recently made ethylene by combining carbon dioxide gas, water and organic molecules (分子)on the surface of a copper catalyst (催化剂)inside an electrolyzer - a device that uses electricity to drive a chemical reaction.The    2    , described last November online in Nature, could point the way toward using carbon dioxide as feed-stock for chemicals and potentially fuels, helping to reduce     3    on fossil fuels and to put a dent in industrial carbon emission.

The discovery grows out of work published last year by University of Toronto engineer Ted Sargent, describing a similar process that used more electricity and was less     4    overall.So Sargent says he     5    out researchers at the California Institute of Technology who are "black belts in molecular design and synthesis."

Caltech chemists Jonas Peters and Theodor Agapie and their colleagues experimented with organic molecules to add to the copper catalyst.An arylpyridinum salt turned out to be the Goldilocks molecule, Sargent says it formed a water-insoluble (不溶于水的)film (薄膜)on the copper that     6    the carbon dioxide so its molecules reacted most efficiently with one another, without slowing down the reaction.The result was more ethylene, with fewer by-products such as methane (甲烷)and hydrogen.

Still, the process must become even more efficient before it can be commercially     7    and use carbon scrubbed or captured from facilities such as coal-or gas -burning power plants.Lower energy costs, already    8     with renewable energy sources such as wind, could also help make it more     9    .

"This is a(n)     10    breakthrough," says Randy Cortright, a senior research advisesr at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., who was not involved in the study.This result, he says, is "something that a lot of people are going to pay attention to, and they're going to be able to build on."

6 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

Change Behavior to Prevent Infection

During flu season, frequent hand-washing is a must, as is avoiding co-workers or friends who are sick. But we humans are not the only animals that change behavior to keep diseases at    1    , and so do ants.

Nathalie of the University of Lausanne and her colleagues observed ants to see their    2    to the presence of a pathogen(病原体). “With the nurses staying inside and taking care of the young, the worker ants are all outside of the nest to collect food and defend the territory.” Worker ants are at greater risk of getting    3    to diseases because they leave the safety of the nest. So the researchers    4    a common fungus (真菌) on a small group of worker ants and then followed their movements to see the way other ants reacted. “We marked all ants in the colony with individual labels, which is    5    detected and recorded using a tracking system.”

After the infection, the nurse and worker ants stayed within their small group and    6    less outside of their work group. The researchers also saw that worker ants spent more time outside of the nest. “They increase that amount by 15 percent so by quite a long large amount.” The researchers measured the amount of fungus on each ant and saw that it was almost completely    7    to the worker group. Some nurse ants and the Queen only had trace amounts of fungus’ spores (孢子) on them. The study indicated that the group behavior effectively stopped the    8    of the fungus. Something that’s quite interesting in these ants is that the very small amount of the spores can     9    their natural defenses and protect them against later exposure to the same pathogen.

It seems that in their ability to avoid infecting other members of the community, ants may be more    10    than we are.

7 . Hunting to Farming Is Not Necessarily Good

A. support          B. effectiveness             C. expanding       D. escape             E. reached          F. questioning          G. switched                 H. control             I. recording        J. allowed        K. inferring

Shifting from hunting to farming made life 50 percent more difficult for humans, a study by Cambridge University suggests. Although farming     1    previously wandering communities to stay put and grow, it came at a huge cost. Researcher Dr. Mark Dyble, lived with 10 Agta groups and found that those who still hunted and searched for their food spent around 20 hours working in the week to live, but those who had    2     to farming needed to work 30 hours for the same amount of food.

“For a long time, the shift from hunting to farming was assumed to represent progress, allowing people to    3    a laborious and uncertain way of life,” said Dr. Dyble, “But as soon as researchers started working with hunter-gatherers they began     4     this narrative, finding that hunters actually enjoy quite a lot of leisure time. Our data provides some of the clearest     5    for this idea yet.” The researchers followed 359 people from the Agta community     6     how much time they spent on leisure, childcare, domestic chores and out-of-camp work. As well as the overall difference in hours worked, the study also found that women living in the communities most involved in farming had half as much leisure time as those in communities which only hunted. Co-author, Dr. Abigail Page added: “We have to be really careful when     7     from contemporary hunter-gatherers to different societies in pre-history.” But if the first farmers really did work harder than hunters then this begs an important question-why did humans adopt agriculture?

Previous studies suggested the adoption of farming grew up to help cope with    8    societies, although other experts claimed that it was agriculture itself that allowed sedentary (定栖的) communities to expand, and once they    9     a certain size, it would have been impossible for groups to return to a hunter-gathering lifestyle, even if they had wanted to. Dr. Page says: “The amount of leisure time that Agta enjoy is evidence to the    10    of the hunter-gatherer way of life. This leisure time also helps to explain how these communities manage to share so many skills and so much knowledge within lifetimes and across generations."

8 . 用方框中所给单词的适当形式填空，使短文通顺，正确、连贯（每个单词限用一次）。

We can’t stop an earthquake(地震), but we can do things to make sure they don’t destroy(毁坏) whole cities. First, it is not a     1     idea to build houses along lines where    2     of the earth’s plates(板块) join together. Second, if you think there     3     be an earthquake, it is better to build houses on rocks, not on     4    . Third, you must make the houses as     5     as possible. Weak buildings will fall down in an earthquake, but strong ones may     6    .

Scientists are     7     that one day an even bigger earthquake will hit the part around San Francisco(旧金山). They call it “the Big One”. However, people today are still building more     8    . The population in and around San Francisco is     9     ten times more than it was in 1906. This means that     10     there is another earthquake, a great many houses and buildings will be destroyed.

9 . Directions:Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

Botany, the study of plants, occupies a(n)     1     position in the history of human knowledge. We don’t know what our Stone Age ancestors knew about plants, but from what we can observe of pre-industrial societies that still exist, a detailed learning of plants and their properties must be extremely ancient. This is     2    . Plants are the basis of the food     3     for all living things, even for other plants. They have always been enormously important to the welfare of people, not only for food, but also for clothing, weapons, tools, dyes, medicines, shelter, and many other purposes. Tribes living today in the jungle of the Amazon recognize hundreds of plants and know many     4     of each. To them botany has no name and is probably not even recognized as a special branch of “knowledge” at all.

Unfortunately, the more industrialized we become, the farther away we move from direct contact with plants and the less     5     our knowledge of botany grows. Yet everyone comes     6     on an amazing amount of botanical knowledge, and few people will fail to recognize a rose, an apple, or an orchid. When our Neolithic ancestors, living in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago, discovered that certain grasses could be harvested and their seeds planted for richer     7     the next season, the first great step in a new association of plants and humans was taken. Grains were discovered and from them     8     the marvel of agriculture: cultivated crops. From then on, humans would increasingly take their living from the     9     production of a few plants, rather than getting a little here and a little there from many varieties that grew wild and the     10     knowledge of tens of thousands of years of experience and intimacy with plants in the wild would begin to fade away.

10 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

Bhutan is the country of a stunning and wide variety of flora and fauna, amazing architecture, ancient traditions, remarkably friendly people and unique colorful culture. It is     1     the worlds’ happiest country and also one of the greenest, for the Himalayan kingdom is not only carbon neutral, but carbon     2    .

What is also noteworthy is that this is happening despite increasing tourism. One of the ways foreigners can contribute to the country’s conservation efforts is to visit the miraculous land. As a travel destination, Bhutan remains unique,     3     between its industrialized neighbors China and India. The isolated nation only opened up to foreign visits in 1974 and allowed TVs in 1999.

Bhutan has built sustainability into its national     4    . “Our enlightened monarchs (君王) have worked tirelessly to develop our country,     5     economic growth carefully with social development, environmental sustainability, and cultural preservation, all within the framework of good governance,” Tshering Tobgay, Bhutan’s Prime Minister said at a 2016 TED Talk. One of the ways Bhutan has achieved this is controlled, low     6     tourism.

Unless you’re from India, Bangladesh, or the Maldives, you’ll need a visa to explore this wonderland—there is no independent travel. Aside from the visa ($40), tourists must pay an additional $200 to $250 “Minimum Daily Package Fee” and book through an officially     7     tour operator. The fee can confuse or put off potential visitors, so it’s worth clarifying what it is. It covers lodging in three-star accommodations, all meals, a(n)     8     guide, camping and hiking equipment, domestic travel (excluding flights), and taxes and fees. A daily sustainable development fee of $65 is also included in the package. This goes towards     9     education, healthcare, and poverty alleviation, along with the building of infrastructure to     10     growing tourism.