It was one of the hardest weeks in Michelle Burleson’s life. Her beloved 13-year-old dog, Budgie Lou, just died. There seemed to be nothing in the world that could reduce her pain until she heard a faint (微弱的) knocking on her door.
“When I heard the knock, I opened my back door, but saw nothing until I looked down to see a skinny little squirrel looking up at me”, Burleson told The Dodo.
“I noticed the squirrel was thin, so I found a handful of nuts and threw them on the patio (露台).”
She assumed that would be the end of it, but that same evening the squirrel returned. The frightened animal ran away when Burleson tried to approach her. But it didn’t take long for the two to establish a routine(常规).
“She showed up the next morning at sunrise and again at sundown, like clockwork every day,” Burleson said. “Her daily visits gave me something to look forward to.” Burleson named the squirrel Stymie. “We slowly started trusting each other more and more,” Burleson said. “At first, I was scared she might bite me or something, but she was always very gentle.”
Stymie began treating Burleson’s home as if it were her own, drinking out of Burleson’s old dog bowl and sleeping in the dog bed. “I lived at the beach so I would often leave the door open, but when I didn’t, she’d climb up to knock on the window outside my bedroom,” Burleson said. “There’s no way I would’ve felt better without Stymie showing up one day and putting a little joy back in my life.”
The little squirrel probably has no idea that she changed someone’s life forever. “She was a really great friend at one of the lowest points of my life,” Burleson said. “All I know is that animals are the best.”
1. How did Burleson feel the week before the squirrel came to her life?| A．Painful. | B．Shocked. | C．Relaxed. | D．Hopeful. |
| A．Michelle. | B．Budgie. | C．Dodo. | D．Stymie. |
| A．Come for a second time. | B．Knock on the window. |
| C．Sleep on the patio. | D．Eat the dog food. |
| A．Squirrels are the best choice of pets. | B．Names mean a lot to squirrels. |
| C．People find animals difficult to deal with. | D．Animals can change people’s life. |
Looking for a fun Earth Day activity? You may want to try plogging------picking up litter while jogging. Strange as it may sound, the new “sport” is becoming popular with runners worldwide, many of whom are posting photos of images holding bags of trash on social media.
Derived from（起源于）the word jogging and “plocka upp”, the Swedish phrase for pick up, plogging is the idea of Erik Alstrom. In 2016, after moving to Stockholm from northern Sweden, Alstrom was shocked by the amount of rubbish there, so he began incorporating（将…包括在内）picking up rubbish into his daily runs.
Other joggers soon joined Alstrom, and by the end of 2016, plogging had appeared all across Sweden. As plogging became popular on social media, the new “sport” began to spread beyond Sweden, first to other European countries and then worldwide.
The official online “Plogga” group now includes members from over 40 countries. Many school running clubs are also getting in on the action, posting photographs of themselves after going plogging together, or staging competitions that reward the runners with the heaviest trash bags.
As it turns out, plogging is not only good for the environment but also for people’s health. According to Swedish fitness app Lifesun, an average person burns about 288 calories while plogging for half an hour. This is about 50 calories more than he/she would burn when just jogging. Additionally, lowering the body to pick up litter increases the plogger’s flexibility, while carrying around the increasingly heavy garbage bags helps strengthen his/her arm muscles.
This Earth Day, be sure to put on your running shoes, take a trash bag or two, and go plogging. Or better still, start a plogging team at school, or around your neighborhood, and make every day Earth Day!
1. What is plogging?(不多于5个单词)2. Why did Alstrom have the idea of plogging after moving to Stockholm?（不多于10个单词）
3. When had plogging appeared all across Sweden?（不多于5个单词）
4. What is plogging good for?（不多于5个单词）
3 . The pupils of Grange town High have been busy getting to know their newest and tallest classmate, a 7-meter-tall giraffe outside their school
The giraffe is a huge sculpture made by a local artist. The school's headmaster noticed the sculpture in the artist's garden as he drove past one day. He thought it would be perfect for his school. “I knew everyone would love it,” he said, “because our basketball team is known as Grange town giraffes, and they wear giraffes on their shirts. So I asked them to write a letter to the artist, asking how much it would cost to buy the giraffe. He was very kind and got it ready to deliver in six weeks - all for nothing. It was expected to arrive on Sunday morning so that the pupils would see it when they got to school on Monday - at that time they had no idea that we were getting it.
The artist, Tom Bennett, was a university professor of chemistry before he left that job in 2006 and only took up metalwork a couple of years ago. “I've always drawn pictures,” he said, “I can even remember doing it on my first day at school - I drew a horse. I wanted it to be the best horse picture ever, but I don't think I succeeded.” Tom's first metalwork was a bicycle for two that he and his wife could go cycling on together. “It was a most uncomfortable bike ever created,” he said, “So I gave up making bicycles and went into sculpture instead.”
Meanwhile, the pupils at Grange town High are very happy with their new classmate. “We are going to hold a competition to give it a proper name.” said one girl. “Everyone likes the expression on his face, so perhaps that will give us some ideas.”
1. According to the text, the giraffe _______________.| A．was as tall as a basketball player | B．was given to Grange town High for free |
| C．was sent to Grange town High on Monday | D．was specially made for a basketball team |
| A．excited | B．nervous | C．worried | D．confident |
| A．He learned a lot about sculpture at university. | B．He visited Grange town High |
| C．He was good at drawing, especially horses. | D．He showed interest in art at an early age. |
| A．It was a difficult job to name a giraffe. |
| B．Tom Bennett is well-known as a sculptor. |
| C．A metal giraffe arrived at Grange town High. |
| D．The Grange town Giraffe is a strong basketball team. |
4 . Composite image of Europe and North Africa at night, 2016. Credit： NASA Earth NPP Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Suomi VIIRS data from Miguel Roman, is oftenNASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Artificial light seen as a sign of progress: the march of civilization shines a light in the dark； it takes back the night； it illuminates. But a chorus of scientists and advocates argues that unnaturally bright nights are bad not just for astronomers but also for nocturnal (夜间活动的)animals and even for human health.
Now research shows the night is getting even brighter. From 2012 to 2016 the earth's artificially lit area expanded by an estimated 2. 2 percent a year (map), according to a study published last November in Science Advances. Even that increase may understate the problem, however. The measurement excludes light from most of the energy-efficient LED lamps that have been replacing sodium-vapor technology in cities all over the world, says lead study author Christopher Kyba, a postdoctoral researcher at the German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam.
The new data came from a NASA satellite instrument called the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). It can measure long-wavelengths of light, such as those produced by traditional yellow-and-orange sodium-vapor street lamps. But VIIRS cannot see the shortwavelength blue light produced by white LEDs. This light has been shown to disrupt human sleep cycles and nocturnal animals, behavior.
Credit: Mapping Specialists ； Source: Artificially Lit Surface of Earth at Night Increasing in Radiance and Extent," by Christopher C. M. Kyba et al. , in Science Advances, Vol. 3, No. 11, Article No. E1701528 ； November 22, 2017.
The team believes the ongoing switch to LEDs caused already bright countries such as Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the U. S. to register as having stable levels of illumination in the VIIRS data. In contrast, most nations in South America, Africa and Asia brightened, suggesting increases in the use of traditional lighting. Australia actually appeared to lose lit area一but the researchers say that is because wildfires skewed the data.
"The fact that VIIRS finds an increase (in many countries) , despite its blindness in the part of the spectrum that increased more, is very sad," says FabioFalchi, a researcher at Italy's Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute, who did not participate in the study. In 2016 Falchi, along with Kyba and several other members of his research team, published a global atlas of artificial lighting that showed one third of the world's population currently lives under skies too bright to see the Milky Way at night.
The data also cast doubt on the idea that the LED lighting revolution will lead to energy cost savings. Between 2012 and 2016 the median nation pumped out 15 percent more long- wavelength light as its GDP increased by 13 percent. And overall, countries, total light production correlated with their GDP. In other words, Kyba says, "we buy as much light as we are willing to spend money on."
1. Which is not true about the spread of lit areas?| A．Lit area expanded by an estimated 2. 2 percent a year. |
| B．Artificial light is often seen as a sign of progress. |
| C．The increase in GDP is due to the increase in light. |
| D．It is bad for noctumal animals and even for human health. |
| A．It is a kind of NASA satellite device. |
| B．It can record and analyzed long-wavelength light. |
| C．The blue light generated by white LEDs can disrupt human sleep cycles. |
| D．VIIRS has found an increase of traditional lighting in lots of nations. |
| A．Artificial LED lights at nights are harmful to people's health. |
| B．It is a sign of civilization in modern society. |
| C．The blue light disrupts human and animals" life cycles. |
| D．Artificially lit surface of Earth increasing because of LEDs. |
| A．show the VIIRS data from NASA |
| B．demonstrate the significance of VIIRS for its measurement of wavelengths |
| C．reveal the relationship between wavelength light and GDP |
| D．arouse peoples awareness of light pollution |
Millions of Baby Olive Ridley Turtles Emerge in Orissa
Nature is full of wonders. In
Orissa is the home to three mass nesting sites of the Oliver turtles, a species
The female turtles drag
The baby turtles emerge from the eggs after 45— 0 days, then the babies grow without their mother, which is a rare phenomenon in nature. Interestingly, it is on the same beach where they were born
In the recent years, sea erosion has led to many turtles' nest
6 . A 14-year-old killer whale named Wilkie has learned how to “speak” to humans. Wilkie, who lives at a whale aquarium（水族馆）in France, is able to imitate（模仿）a human saying “hello”, “bye-bye” and “one, two” after working with a team of researchers from the UK, Spain, Chile and Germany.
“Killer whales use their blowholes to make noises, almost like speaking out of your nose, so we were not expecting it to be perfect,” Jose Abramson, the lead author, told The Independent. “But we were surprised by how close it was.”
This isn’t the first time animals have learned how to imitate human sounds. Scientists have already made a record of animals like elephants，parrots，dolphins and beluga whales all imitating our words and noises, but it marks a first for killer whales.
Wilkie had already been trained to imitate the actions of a fellow killer whale. Once the scientists made her again learn how to mimic an action; they had her repeat four familiar sounds made by her 2-year-old calf（幼鲸），Moana. Next, they had her make five killer whale sounds she had never heard before, like a noise of opening the door. Then the researchers had Wilkie imitate the sounds made by a human and，finally，words like “ah ha” and her trainer’s name, “Amy”.
Wilkie was quickly able to imitate all the sounds and words, and she was even able to imitate some on the first try. Researchers said they had the first evidence that killer whales might be learning sounds by imitation, but they had no evidence that the killer whales understood what their “hello” stood for.
1. What is the main idea of the text?| A．Killer whales are the first to imitate humans. |
| B．Killer whale Wilkie has been used to test other animals. |
| C．Killer whales are able to imitate the sounds of their children. |
| D．Killer whale Wilkie has learned to imitate some human sounds. |
| A．Wilkie enjoyed human sounds. |
| B．Wilkie lived so close to humans. |
| C．Wilkie made sounds different from human voices. |
| D．Wilkie made sounds quite close to those of humans. |
| A．Change. | B．Copy. |
| C．Arrange. | D．Compare. |
| A．Quick. | B．Kind. |
| C．Honest. | D．Brave. |
| A．whether Wilkie can make human sounds |
| B．whether killer whales can tell voices from noises |
| C．whether Wilkie can understand the words like “hello” |
| D．whether other killer whales can do the same as Wilkie |
7 . Bears can exactly make another bear’s facial expressions. Sun bears open their mouths to match their playmates (伙伴) when they are doing things with others face to face. Researchers believe that such facial mimicry (模仿) has not been seen outside humans and gorillas (大猩猩). In the behavioral study, they found that bears were able to use facial expressions to communicate with others in a similar way to humans and gorillas.
The researchers studied 22 sun bears in the wild for more than two years. In total, 21 matched the open-mouthed expressions of their playmates during face-to-face communications. When they were facing each other, 13 bears made expressions within one second of observing a similar expression from their playmates.
The bears, aged 2-12, were housed in a natural center in Malaysia in which the areas were large enough to allow bears to choose whether to communicate or not. Although they prefer to live alone in the wild, the bears in this study took part in hundreds of games. Among them there were more gentle plays than rough ones.
The research was done by Doctor Ross in the University of Portsmouth. She believes that copying other bears’ facial expressions plays a great part in sun bears’ daily life.
1. How do sun bears respond to others in face to face communication?| A．Touching. | B．Smiling. | C．Opening their mouths. | D．Kissing on the face. |
| A．2. | B．12. | C．21. | D．22. |
| A．Quiet. | B．Violent. | C．Soft. | D．Fair. |
| A．Important. | B．Interesting. | C．Simple. | D．Joyful. |
| A．Most bears can live up to twelve years. |
| B．Most bears prefer to live a social life in the forest. |
| C．Sun bears can copy other bears’ facial expressions to communicate. |
| D．Sun bears are among the animals acting out expressions of human beings. |
8 . Max’s Best Friend
Max wasn’t feeling well one morning after a snow. So when it was time to walk his three year old dog named Cal, he
But then Max found himself short of
For about an hour Max lay face-down in the snow, taking a quick deep breath for
“She was jumping back and forth (来回) at me,” Mike says, “going one way,
The dog wouldn’t stop barking. Looking around, Mike could see
“Without the
| A．swam | B．drove | C．walked | D．rode |
| A．minds | B．hands | C．breath | D．warmth |
| A．treating | B．watching | C．suffering | D．preventing |
| A．fell down | B．broke up | C．sat down | D．looked up |
| A．wind | B．air | C．stop | D．rest |
| A．weight | B．shape | C．temperature | D．size |
| A．fond | B．afraid | C．proud | D．aware |
| A．around | B．above | C．below | D．with |
| A．Recently | B．Generally | C．Actually | D．Finally |
| A．snow | B．earth | C．wood | D．rubbish |
| A．climbed | B．traveled | C．ran | D．stepped |
| A．skating | B．flying | C．turning | D．arriving |
| A．thinking | B．doing | C．throwing | D．catching |
| A．everything | B．anything | C．nothing | D．something |
| A．lay | B．stood | C．sat | D．waited |
| A．money | B．help | C．water | D．food |
| A．raised | B．covered | C．carried | D．pushed |
| A．cinema | B．hotel | C．café | D．clinic |
| A．retired | B．replied | C．moved | D．recovered |
| A．dog | B．car | C．telephone | D．blanket |
Right now， most people's attention is on the COVID﹣19 pandemic. In
World Earth Day， the international movement aiming
That said， the occasion will still continue in a digital way. "
While the event may not reach its originally
An island off the coast of Cape Cod is open to the public for the first time in 300 years. Sipson island
It is really important for us to be able to communicate the
The 24-acre island, which opens on Saturday ,
Now it is
