1. What’s the weather like in the morning of May and June in Costa Rica?
| A．Cloudy and warm. | B．Rainy and cold. | C．Dry and hot. |
| A．There are more interesting things. |
| B．The weather is better. |
| C．The prices are lower. |
| A．In January. | B．In May. | C．In December. |
| A．From February to April. | B．From May to June. | C．From July to August. |
2 . Urban agriculture, the practice of farming within the restrictions of a city, is becoming increasingly popular and is viewed as a sustainable alternative to big industrial farms. By some estimates, between 20% and 30% of the global urban population engages in some form of urban agriculture. But until recently, its carbon footprint remains understudied.
Using data from 73 low-tech city farms, community gardens and personal plots of land, Newell and his team compared the average carbon emissions of food produced at low-tech urban agriculture sites to those of conventionally grown crops. The team found that because of urban gardens’ relatively low yields, along with the energy used in constructing the planting beds, big-city spuds (马铃薯) were significantly more carbon-intensive than commercially grown ones. This held true even when the researchers factored in emissions from transporting commercially grown produce to often distant grocery stores. That doesn’t mean that growing vegetables in big cities is totally bad, however. “Urban farming is great, ” if imperfect, says Carola Grebitus, a food choice expert. It can be a powerful tool for job creation and education, she says, and a good way to introduce fresh produce to urban “food deserts” where healthy fruits and vegetables are hard to come by. Community gardens can also provide a place to connect with nature, and the added green space can reduce the risks of heat and flooding.
Conscious of these benefits, Newell’s team highlighted several ways to make urban agriculture more sustainable. One option is to be selective about what crops are grown. For instance, tomatoes grown in the soil of open-air urban plots had a lower carbon intensity than tomatoes grown in conventional greenhouses. Another strategy is to rely on existing constructions. Include old structures into a new garden’s design instead of taking down old buildings. Finally, take the local climate, water quality and soil into account. Growing plants that are ill-suited to an area requires more water, energy and pesticides (杀虫剂), all of which affect the environment.
1. What can we know about urban agriculture from paragraph 1?| A．It is thoroughly researched. | B．It is welcomed by city people. |
| C．It is environmentally friendly. | D．It is limited to industrial farms. |
| A．By making a comparison. | B．By telling a story. |
| C．By giving a definition. | D．By using a quote. |
| A．It adds variety to urban people’s diet. | B．It provides recreational opportunities. |
| C．It strengthens the bonds of community. | D．It helps to contain drought and flooding. |
| A．Reconstructing gardens. | B．Developing greenhouse crops. |
| C．Selecting pesticide-free vegetables. | D．Growing plants suited to local conditions. |
3 . Supermarkets, conservationists and farming groups have shown their concerns about pollution of the Wye, one of the UK’s longest rivers. “The pollution pressures upon the Wye are unacceptable and there was strong enthusiasm for cooperative action to resolve the problem.” said Craig Bennett, head of the Wildlife Trusts.
The pollution referred largely to runoff of the nutrient-rich waste matter produced by the 20 million-plus chickens near the river.
Bennett said: “We discussed how, if the Wye were a school or a hospital, we would be calling for it to be placed into ‘special measures’. We agreed the same level of urgency must be applied.”
Increasing concern led the local government to hold a discussion in May, when they promised to publish a plan for the Wye by the autumn. However, the local government’s push on the river was marred in June when the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs published a Wye video showing sea otters (海獺) rather than the river’s local European otters. The pollution of the Wye was not mentioned at all.
In July Bennett hosted a Wye round table in Powys, Wales, bringing together local groups, the Environment Agency, the chicken produce Avara Foodsr, regional branches of the National Farmers Union and local authorities. They agreed on a plan that included cutting the nutrient pollution “through a reduction in animal numbers” and other measures.
Bennett also wrote to Julie James, the Welsh Climate Change Minister, who said, “I share your concern for the health of the River Wye and other Welsh rivers.”
A supermarket chain said they are committed to protecting the river and engaging with their chicken suppliers to tackle water pollution. They have detailed management plans to make sure their suppliers are farming with care for the environment. A government spokesman said: “We are offering a wide range of support to farmers to speed up their transition to more sustainable practices and help protect this important site.”
1. Why does Bennett compare the Wye with a school or a hospital?| A．To call for urgent measures. | B．To stress the impacts of the river. |
| C．To show the importance of the river. | D．To urge people to protect the environment. |
| A．Destroyed. | B．Boosted | C．Perfected. | D．Emphasized. |
| A．Making a careful plan. | B．Reducing animal numbers. |
| C．Arousing people’s awareness. | D．Asking the government for money. |
| A．Sea Otters Are under Attack for Possible Pollution |
| B．Cooperated Efforts Are Made to Protect the Wye |
| C．People Are Having More Environmental Awareness |
| D．More Measures Should Be Taken to Prevent Air Pollution |
4 . Four reasons to adopt a dog
If you haven’t already experienced the unbelievable joy of adopting (收养) a dog, this year is a great time to feel the love.
Even your closest friends and family members trouble and are troubled by you occasionally.
Each year, 2.7 million dogs die in shelters because there just aren’t enough people to adopt them. When you adopt from a shelter or rescue group, not only are you saving that dog, but you’re clearing up space for another animal that might need it.
You’ll never be lonelyThere are all sorts of studies that show links between dog ownership and health benefits from lowering the risk of heart diseases to living longer lives.
| A．You’ll save a life |
| B．Do you need some reasons |
| C．But your dog wouldn’t trouble you |
| D．Would you like to go to walk a dog |
| E．Other studies show that dogs help relieve stress |
| F．Unlike cats that often are quite happy doing their own thing |
| G．Your friends are tired of seeing your face from social media |
1. What is the aim of the magazine according to the woman?
| A．To help with children’s school careers. |
| B．To encourage people to save animals. |
| C．To broaden children’s scientific and natural knowledge. |
| A．They’re color-blind. |
| B．They have a longer history than dinosaurs. |
| C．They can normally live for nearly 90 years. |
| A．Annoyed. | B．Surprised. | C．Uninterested. |
6 . Established earthquake warning systems provide at best just a minute or two of notice, leaving little time for preparedness. Decades of searching for a better warning sign-changes in the geochemistry of groundwater, electromagnetic effects in the upper atmosphere, and even changes in animal behavior-have failed. Many question whether such a precursor (先兆) even exists. This situation may change soon, as recent research is providing a glimmer of hope for improved earthquake prediction.
Researchers Quentin Bletery and Jean-Mathieu Nocquet from Cote d’Azur University in France collected data from over 90 earthquakes with magnitudes larger than 7 that had occurred in the past two decades.They focused on GPS station records near these quakes, which accurately captured land movement every 5 minutes with millimeter precision. They analyzed more than 3,000 time series of motion in the 48 hours leading up to the main ruptures (断裂).
They noticed that, in the first 46 hours, the records showed no significant features. However, during the 2 hours before the earthquake, they noticed signs of increasing movement along the fault zones (断层带). Essentially, there’s a slip between plates causing the land above them to move in a measurable, horizontal direction.
Could this be just a coincidence? The probability of this increase happening just before the quake and being unrelated is extremely low, and the researchers confirmed this by analyzing 100,000 random time windows in non-earthquake GPS data. The pattern occurred only 0.03% of the time in non-earthquake data.
While this precursor signal won’t be used for warnings anytime soon, officials from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) admit that this new study provides valuable insights into how to improve their warning systems-GPS data can grease the wheels of early earthquake warnings.
The researchers admit they're still a number of steps away from putting this precursor signal into use, particularly since detecting subtle signals at individual faults requires more GPS stations. But the biggest problem is that many of the world’s earthquake regions have no instrumentation. “We can’t realize the detection at the scale of one earthquake, so we cannot make predictions,” Bletery said.
1. What remains a tough problem for scientists?| A．Determining the magnitude of an earthquake. |
| B．Finding a way to detect earthquakes in early stages. |
| C．Measuring atmospheric changes during earthquakes. |
| D．Identifying animals’ possible responses to earthquakes. |
| A．The chance of main ruptures occurring in fault zones. |
| B．The accuracy of GPS in recording land movement. |
| C．The existence of a two-hour precursory phase. |
| D．The horizontal slip within the first 46 hours. |
| A．Distinguish | B．Contradict | C．Overmatch | D．Facilitate |
| A．The inaccessibility of precursor signals. |
| B．The complexity of updating GPS equipment. |
| C．The challenge of identifying earthquake regions. |
| D．The inconsistent slip patterns of different earthquakes. |
7 . Safe Haven for Donkeys (驴) is providing sanctuary for rescued working donkeys in the El Saf region of Egypt.
First established in 2000 to help thousands of working donkeys in Israel, the charity Safe Haven for Donkeys has begun working with an Egyptian partner organization, the Bridge Foundation, to provide care to the donkeys in the El Saf region of Egypt.
Thousands of donkeys work in the brick kilns (窑) in Egypt, carrying 1.4 to 1.6 tonnes of bricks and moving at an intense pace to prevent unfired bricks from cracking in the heat. Due to lacking expert veterinary (兽医的) care, many of these animals are suffering intense pain from harness wounds, beatings, hoof issues and parasitic diseases spread by flies.
Now the cooperation between UK charity Safe Haven for Donkeys and Egyptian community development charity the Bridge Foundation is providing much-needed relief to these animals. The project includes a mobile veterinary clinic which treats common injuries and infections and trains the owners in how to best look after their donkeys.
In a press release, Andy Foxcroft, CEO of Safe Haven for Donkeys, said, “Through our work in Israel, we came to know of millions of working animals in Egypt without critical veterinary care. They were suffering a host of preventable and treatable painful conditions. Currently. no other animal welfare charity provides veterinary interventions in these particular kilns. So the skills of this charity are needed to treat sick and injured animals and provide training for owners and local professionals (vets and farriers). The first year is vital as we hope to make a lasting impact by reducing the unnecessary suffering of working animals. which sadly, is all too common a feature in the brick kilns.”
Safe Haven for Donkeys’ work, which helps about 10,000 animals a year, is made possible by charitable donations that fund the treatment and training they offer. You can make a donation on its website.
1. What does the underlined word “sanctuary” in paragraph 1 mean?| A．Training. | B．Shelter. | C．Information. | D．Food. |
| A．The donkeys’ tough situations. | B．The donkeys’ competitive life. |
| C．The popularity of the donkeys. | D．The contributions of the donkeys. |
| A．The charity has made a lasting impact on Egypt. |
| B．The owners of the brick kilns need more support |
| C．The charity’s involvement in the affair is essential. |
| D．The workers in the brick kilns lack enough training. |
| A．To raise more funds. | B．To set up more charities. |
| C．To focus on donkeys’ work. | D．To explain animals’ treatment. |
8 . Common water plant could provide a green energy source. Scientists have figured out how to get large amounts of oil from duckweed, one of nature’s fastest-growing water plants. Transferring such plant oil into biodiesel (生物柴油) for transportation and heating could be a big part of a more sustainable future.
For a new study, researchers genetically engineered duckweed plants to produce seven times more oil per acre than soybeans. John Shanklin, a biochemist says further research could double the engineered duckweed’s oil output in the next few years.
Unlike fossil fuels, which form underground, biofuels can be refreshed faster than they are used. Fuels made from new and used vegetable oils, animal fat and seaweed can have a lower carbon footprint than fossil fuels do, but there has been a recent negative view against them. This is partly because so many crops now go into energy production rather than food; biofuels take up more than 100 million acres of the world’s agricultural land.
Duckweed, common on every continent but Antarctica, is among the world’s most productive plants, and the researchers suggest it could be a game-changing renewable energy source for three key reasons. First, it grows readily in water, so it wouldn’t compete with food crops for agricultural land. Second, duckweed can grow fast in agricultural pollution released into the water. Third, Shanklin and his team found a way to avoid a major biotechnological barrier: For the new study, Shanklin says, the researchers added an oil-producing gene, “turning it on like a light switch”by introducing a particular molecule (分子) only when the plant had finished growing. Shanklin says, “If it replicates (复制) in other species-and there’s no reason to think that it would not — this can solve one of our biggest issues, which is how we can make more oil in more plants without negatively affecting growth.”
To expand production to industrial levels, scientists will need to design and produce large-scale bases for growing engineered plants and obtaining oil — a challenge, Shanklin says, because duckweed is a non-mainstream crop without much existing infrastructure (基础设施).
1. What can people get from duckweed firsthand?| A．Plant oil. | B．Stable biodiesel. |
| C．Sustainable water. | D．Natural heat. |
| A．Options for renewable energy. |
| B．Reasons for engineering genes. |
| C．The potential of revolutionary energy source. |
| D．The approach to avoiding agricultural pollution. |
| A．Industrial levels. | B．Unique design. |
| C．Academic research. | D．Basic facilities. |
| A．Duckweed Power | B．Duckweed Production |
| C．Genetic Engineering | D．Genetic Testing |
On March 31, the Eiffel Tower celebrated its 130th anniversary since it opened.
The tower was created by the French engineer Gustave Eiffel and was first intended as the main entrance
Visitors today can choose to climb 1,665 steps or take one of the original elevator cars
Today, the Eiffel Tower is a symbol of France, representing a feeling of pride and thankfulness. It is a global icon that can bring together people from different
10 . A kitchen garden produces vegetables for delicious, healthy meals. It doesn’t have to be right outside the kitchen door, but the closer it is, the better.
Planting a garden: where, when and how. Make a garden plan of what will be planted, where, when and how.
When and how much to water your garden. Vegetables are made mostly of water.
Garden maintenance: keep an eye on it. Sun and rain willing, fast growers such as radishes (萝卜) and salad greens will begin to produce crops as early as 20 to 30 days after planting. Check on them regularly so you get to harvest them before someone else does.
| A．Choosing garden crops |
| B．Getting ready for garden site |
| C．The easier it is for you to get into the garden |
| D．So you need to ensure your plants have enough water |
| E．You show an interest in how to produce multiple harvests |
| F．To do this, you need to get familiar with all kinds of crops |
| G．Besides, protective barriers and organic products can prevent pests and diseases |
