On a hot September afternoon, Peter and his friend Isabel were on their way to the library. When they passed by Tubman park, Isabel suggested cutting through it to get to the library. As they entered the park, the sight of the swings (秋千) and the merry-go-round brought back a flood of memories of their childhood spent there. But now everything looked so old, sad, and dirty. Litter lay on the ground next to an overflowing trash bin. There were still young schoolchildren playing there but they had to avoid the trash that littered the playground. A little boy told them that the city took the other trash cans away and the remaining one never got emptied often.
As they headed toward the library, the two high school students wrinkled their forehead. In the library, they encountered Mrs. Evans, their kind-hearted fifth-grade teacher, retired yet still passionate. Mrs. Evans listened as Isabel and Peter eagerly explained what they’d seen. Finally, she recommended them to go to the City Hall to voice their concerns.
The next day, Isabel and Peter went into the building of the City Hall but were met with an impatient officer. They were informed that the city couldn’t help with their problem due to a tight budget. Discouraged, they left and turned to Mrs. Evans for help.
Under her guidance, they decided to ask Go Green, a non-profit organization whose goal is to protect the environment, for help. “This group is good at raising money for projects just like yours, ” said Mrs. Evans. She promised to arrange them to present their ideas to Go Green. Hearing this, their face lit up.
Two main tasks remained ahead: researching ways to clean up the park and preparing a convincing presentation. As Isabel was good at researching while Peter always had a talent for speaking, they cooperated quite well. Isabel learned from a science magazine that a new type of trash bin can squeeze the trash down without being emptied often, which saves time, money, and energy. Based on this, Peter practiced his presentation over and over again.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
A week later, Peter stood nervously at the back of the hall where Go Green was meeting.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________After the meeting, Isabel excitedly told Peter the good news.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________2 . Several years ago, Jason Box, a scientist from Ohio, flew 31 giant rolls of white plastic to a glacier (冰川) in Greenland. He and his team spread them across 10,000 feet of ice, then left. His idea was that the white blanket would reflect back the rays of the sun, keeping the ice cool below. When he came back to check the results, he found it worked. Exposed ice had melted faster than covered ice. He had not only saved two feet of glacier in a short time. No coal plants were shut down, no jobs were lost, and nobody was taxed or fired. Just the sort of fix we’re looking for.
“Thank you, but no thank you.” says Ralph King, a climate scientist. He told Grey Childs. author and commentator, that people think technology can save the planet, “but there are other things we need to deal with, like consumption. They burned $50,000 just for the helicopter” to bring the plastic to the glacier. This experiment, quote-unquote, gives people false hope that climate change can be fixed without changing human behavior. It can’t. Technology won’t give us a free ride.
Individuals respond to climate change differently. Climatologist Kelly Smith is hardly alone in her prediction that someday soon we won’t be climate victims, we will be climate Choosers. More scientists agree with her that if the human race survives. The engineers will get smarter, the tools will get better, and one day we will control the climate. but that then? “Just the mention of us controlling the climate sent a small shiver down my back, Grey writes.” “Something sounded wrong about stopping ice by our own will,” he says.
Me? I like it better when the earth takes care of itself, I guess one day we will have to run the place, but for the moment, sitting at my desk, looking out at the trees bending wildly and the wind howling, I’m happy not to be in charge.
1. Why does the author mention Jason Box’s experiment in the first paragraph?| A．To introduce a possible solution to climate change. |
| B．To describe a misleading attempt to fix the climate. |
| C．To report on a successful experiment on saving the glacier. |
| D．To arouse people’s attention to the problem of global warming. |
| A．The fight against climate change will not succeed. |
| B．Technology is not the final solution, let alone its high cost. |
| C．It’s best to deal with climate change without changing our behavior. |
| D．Jason’s experiment plays a significant role in fixing climate change. |
| A．Favorable | B．Tolerant | C．Doubtful. | D．Unclear. |
| A．But should we fix the climate? |
| B．Is climate change a real problem? |
| C．How can we take care of the earth? |
| D．What if all the glaciers disappeared? |
3 . In a fascinating paper published last year in Science, a team led by Andreas Nieder of the University of Tubingen in Germany showed that crows —already known to be among the most intelligent of animals —are even more impressive than we knew. In fact, the evidence suggests that they are self-aware and, in an important sense, conscious (有意识的).
Crows had been observed previously to use tools to solve certain problems. Nieder’s experiment showed that the birds were actively evaluating how to solve a particular problem; in effect, they were thinking it over. This ability to consciously assess a problem was associated with the cerebral cortex (大脑皮层) in the brains of humans, which birds don’t have.
Other studies support the idea that the bird brain can, in principle, support the development of higher intelligence. It had been dismissed in the past due to the small size of birds’ brains. But recent research has shown that in birds, the neurons (神经元) are smaller and more lightly-packed, which makes sense to reduce weight and makes it easier lo fly. The total number of brain cell in crows (about 1.5 billion) is about the same as that in some monkey species. But because they are more tightly-packed, the communication between the neurons seems to be better, and the overall intelligence of crows may be closer to that of gorillas (猩猩).
This research has important consequences for our understanding of the evolution of higher intelligence. First, a cerebral cortex is not needed, and there are other means to achieve the same outcome. Second, either the evolution of consciousness is very ancient tracing back to the last common ancestor of mammals and birds about 320 million years ago, or, equally interesting, consciousness arose at least twice later on, independently in mammals and birds. Both options raise the possibility that higher intelligence on the planet may not necessarily be mammal or human-like, but could very well be birdlike.
1. What did Andreas Nieder’s team find out about crows?| A．They are more intelligent than other animals. |
| B．They have left people a very good impression. |
| C．They are much cleverer than previously thought. |
| D．They can use tools to solve certain problems. |
| A．The idea. | B．The bird brain. |
| C．The development. | D．Higher intelligence. |
| A．They have more tightly-packed brains. |
| B．They have a small number of brain cells. |
| C．Their brain neurons could communicate well. |
| D．Their brain cells are the same with the monkeys. |
| A．Cerebral cortexes are necessary for the evolution of higher intelligence. |
| B．Both mammals and birds got their intelligence from common ancestors. |
| C．Higher intelligence has already developed separately in different species. |
| D．Higher intelligence on the planet might be different from what we imagine. |
4 . British sculptor Jason Taylor has made it his mission to use his talent to conserve our ecosystems by creating underwater museums. Over the years, the environmentalist has put over 850 massive artworks underwater worldwide. On February 1, 2021, Taylor launched his latest work---The Underwater Museum of Cannes.
“The main goal was to bring attention to the fact that our oceans need our help,” Taylor told Dezeen. “Ocean ecologies have been destroyed by human activity in the Mediterranean over the past few decades, and it is not obvious what is taking place when observing the sea from afar.”
The Underwater Museum of Cannes contains 6 sculptures featuring local residents of various ages. They range from Maurice, an 80-year-old fisherman, to Anouk, a 9-year-old student. Towering over 6-feet-tall and weighing 10 tons, the faces are sectioned into two parts, with the outer part like a mask. The mask indicates that the world’s oceans appear powerful and unbeatable from the surface but house an ecosystem that is extremely fragile to careless human activities.
Though the waters surrounding the sculptures now appear a pristine blue, the seabed was filled with old boat engines, pipes, and other human-made trash when the project began about four years ago. Besides removing the trash, Taylor also restored the area’s seagrass. Just one square meter of the seagrass can generate up to 10 liters of oxygen daily. The seagrass also helps prevent coastal erosion and provides habitats for many ocean creatures.
“The idea of creating an underwater museum was to draw more people underwater and develop a sense of care and protection,” Taylor told Dezeen. “If we threw unwanted waste near a forest, there would be a public outcry. But this is happening every day in our surrounding waters and it largely goes unnoticed.”
1. What are the underwater museums intended to do?| A．To make huge profits. | B．To raise awareness of protecting the ocean. |
| C．To show Jason Taylor’s talent. | D．To draw attention to endangered sea animals. |
| A．To popularize the features of the locals. |
| B．To remind people to protect themselves. |
| C．To reflect people’s protection of the ocean. |
| D．To stress the sensitiveness of the ecosystem. |
| A．How the project was started. | B．How the seagrass was restored. |
| C．What recovery effort the project made. | D．Why the surroundings were improved. |
| A．The situation of the ocean is easily ignored. |
| B．The destruction caused to the ocean is noticeable. |
| C．Forests play a more important role in ecosystems. |
| D．People have zero tolerance to damage done to nature. |
Even before I reached the tent, I knew there would be trouble. My little brother Andy was following me, with a sleeping bag, a flashlight, and his stuffed bear. My friends Wade and Bred think Andy would ruin everything. He would get scared in the middle of the night and have to be taken back to the house. They complained so much you'd think they were hospital patients instead of kids I'd invited for an outdoor sleepover.
Andy promised that he wouldn't ruin anything. He wormed his way into the tent and settled in the far corner. Night was settling in, too, with the woods around us fading toward black. The house, with its porch light, seemed a long way from us.
“Time for ghost stories!” Brad announced as soon as I'd closed the tent. He told a story about vampires （吸血鬼）, but it only made us fall over laughing. When it was Wade's turn, he told a story of three guys who were camping in a tent. He described our situation exactly-except for Andy. When he was describing a terrifying creature, somewhere outside, a branch snapped （发出咔嚓声）。The hairs on my arms shot straight up. “These guys were crawling into their sleeping bags, right?” Wade continued. “When out of the darkness rang this terrible cry.” And out of the woods behind us there was a cry! High-pitched, frightening, and strange. The hairs on my head shot straight up!
“What was that?” Bred asked as the cry came again. We all looked at each other in horror, speechless. Wade suggested someone should go out to check, but no one dared. “What if it's something trapped or hurt?” Andy said anxiously. We focused our flashlights on Andy, whom we'd forgotten, sitting in the corner with his arms around his bear. Andy would adopt every lost or hurt animal in the world if Mom would let him.
注意：1.续写的词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答
“I'm going to see.” Andy ran out of the tent and disappeared in the darkness.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Andy said it was a baby monkey caught between branches, and it was crying for its mama.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________6 . A 2020 study in the journal Science concluded that marine heat waves have increased more than 20-fold as a result of climate warming. The authors found that in the first decade after satellites began recording ocean temperatures (i.e., after 1981), there were 27 large marine heat waves, with an average duration of 32 days and an average peak temperature anomaly of 8.5°F; in the 2010s, there were 172, which lasted 48 days on average with an average peak temperature almost 10°F above normal.
Much remains unclear about marine heat waves. For example, explains Nicholas Bond, research scientist at the University of Washington and Washington’s state climatologist, there is the question of why so many persist for weeks or months. “There must be something else going on that helps maintain them,” he says. He notes that one explanation is that as the ocean surface warms, it radiates heat into the atmosphere that prevents cloud cover from forming, exposing the seawater to increased sunlight and further warming.
However, enough is known about marine heat waves for scientists to be gravely concerned about their potential impacts. Of special note is the fact that those impacts can last long after the heat waves have disappeared. After three years of the Blob, the waters of the northeastern Pacific began to cool in 2016; but years later, scientists are still determining the extent to which the region’s ecosystem is likely to return fully to its pre-Blob status. Similarly, notes Scannell, who is a data scientist with Jupiter Intelligence, Inc., following the 2010-11 Western Australia event, “lots of kelp(巨藻) forests died, and it takes literally decades for those ecosystems to bounce back”.
Eric Oliver, a scientist from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, expressed his own opinion about the potential impact of the heat waves in tropical waters. “I think that’s really a tough issue,” he says. Life in the tropics, he notes, is adapted to “quite a narrow range of temperatures. So that’s where things can get really messy. We can have complete shifts in tropical systems.”
1. What can we infer from the figures listed in para. 1?| A．The problem of marine heat waves is becoming worse. |
| B．The satellites enable scientists to record ocean temperature precisely. |
| C．Climate change is the main cause of the marine heat waves. |
| D．Marine heat waves have been found by scientists for about 30 years. |
| A．Various factors that lead to marine heat waves. |
| B．The possible impacts of a warm ocean surface. |
| C．The possible reason why marine heat waves last long. |
| D．Scientists’ efforts in exploring the causes of heat waves. |
| A．The impact will disappear shortly after the sea water cools. |
| B．It takes long before the ecosystem makes a complete recovery. |
| C．Scientists have known enough to restore the impact. |
| D．The northeastern Pacific and Western Australia are the worst cases. |
| A．Concerned. | B．Indifferent. | C．Doubtful. | D．Optimistic. |
Higher density (密度) neighborhoods can lead to benefits for the environment and public health, argues Dr. Tom Logan,
Dr. Logan says the government should be aiming
Accessible cities are also safer and more
However, Dr. Logan says many people are opposed to higher density housing.
“Density, when it’s done right,
“Creating that is one of our big
8 . There is hot, and then there is hot! Extreme heat is a period of high heat and humidity with temperatures above 90 degrees Fahrenheit for at least two to three days. Extreme heat is responsible for the highest number of annual deaths among all weather-related hazards (危害).
It’s not your imagination. Summers have been getting hotter and hotter with extreme heatwaves occurring earlier and more frequently. But why is this happening and can we better predict heatwaves in advance to give people time to prepare?
“Climate change is here and it’s already been changing human behavior and causing significant influence in the society. As global temperatures rise, historically excessive (过高的) temperatures are more likely to occur.” says Craig Ramseyer, an assistant professor who studies climate modeling in the department of geography at Virginia Tech.
Ramseyer says heatwaves are the most concerning because of the lack of attention they normally receive. “Hurricanes, tornadoes, and flash floods drive more media attention because of the natural attraction with the visual impact of those types of hazards. However, heat does not tend to be as attractive and it becomes very difficult to communicate the danger to the public,” said Ramseyer. “Around the world, more deaths occur due to extreme heat than from hurricanes, flooding, and drought combined. It impacts the most helpless of our citizens who do not have enough access to air conditioning, water, and other important resources.”
Since the Earth is running warmer than it used to, Ramseyer says that when these heatwave-related weather patterns take place, it results in higher extreme temperatures than we used to experience 30 years ago.
“As a global community, we need to decrease carbon emissions as soon as possible. We have rapidly developing technologies that are going to help advance the process, but the faster the better, there is no time to waste.”
1. What can we learn from the article?| A．Extreme heat is a No.1 death cause. |
| B．People are suffering more extreme heat. |
| C．A 100-degree heat is an extreme heat. |
| D．Extreme heat is getting better over the years. |
| A．Climate change will soon affect human behaviors. |
| B．High temperatures happened frequently in history. |
| C．Air conditioning and water can stop the extreme heat. |
| D．Garbage sorting can less advance the climate change. |
| A．Extreme heat can be stopped by technology. |
| B．People have enough time to solve the climate problems. |
| C．The danger of extreme heat is not easily transferred to the public. |
| D．Heatwave-related weather patterns will decrease in the future. |
| A．Complaints about extreme heat. | B．Prevention of extreme heat. |
| C．Characters of extreme heat. | D．Technologies behind extreme heat. |
9 . Elephants are often seen comforting upset individual elephants with a gentle touch of their trunks reportedly. It’s one thing to witness something that looks like comforting behavior, but another thing to prove that this is what elephants are doing. Now, scientists have shown that Asian elephants do indeed get upset when they see others in trouble, and they reach out to comfort them. Elephants, thus, join the list of other animals, including dogs, wolves and some birds, which have been shown to do so.
Elephants’ responses to stress are difficult to explore because one has to wait for opportunities for these arising naturally in the wild. However, Joshua Plotnik, a scientist at Mahidol University in Thailand got around this problem. He compared Asian elephants’ behaviors during times of stress to those during periods when little upsets them. For 1 to 2 weeks every month for nearly a year, Plotnik spent 30 to 180 minutes daily watching and recording the behavior of 26 Asian elephants living in Elephant Natural Park in northern Thailand.
Other researchers have previously shown that when upset, an elephant moves its ears and raises its tail; it may also make a low sound to show its stress. “When elephants in the park see an elephant behaving in this manner, they typically respond by feeling the same emotion,” Plotnik said, “just as we do when watching a scary movie together. If an actor is frightened, our hearts race and we reach for each other’s hands — a reaction known as ‘emotional contagion’ .”
“But more studies are needed, preferably in wild populations,” Plotnik said. “What is unclear is whether these responses primarily benefit the upset animals, or the res-ponders,” Shermin de Silva, a behavioral ecologist, said. However, the study “provides a very interesting first exploration into the behavior of elephants suffering from stress,” said Graeme Shannon, a scientist at Colorado State University.
1. What does the underlined phrase “got around” in paragraph 2 mean?| A．Overcame. | B．Faced. | C．Found. | D．Raised. |
| A．To explain a rule. | B．To present a fact. |
| C．To clarify a concept. | D．To support a conclusion. |
| A．It has some limitations. | B．It confirms a prediction. |
| C．It benefits future studies. | D．It is thought worthless. |
| A．Elephants copy comforting behavior | B．Elephants ask for comfort when in trouble |
| C．Elephants are easily in low spirits | D．Elephants understand their companions’ feelings |
10 . If you’re traveling to South America in summer, you should have Patagonia (at the southern end of South America) high up on your list of things to do. With this list, I show you the best places to visit in Patagonia. The climate down there is pretty rough, especially in the very south - if you plan to do hiking or camping, the best time for a trip is between the end of November and the beginning of March.
1. Bariloche, Argentina
The fact that Bariloche is well connected (airport, direct bus to and from Buenos Aires) makes it the perfect starting point of a round trip through Patagonia. But more than that: the combination of mountains, lakes and green forests results in its beautiful scenery.
2. Futaleufú, Chile
Further down south and a bit harder to access is the small Chilean village Futaleufú which is located at the border to Argentina. The reason which makes it worth it: the Futaleufú River is often referred to as one of the best white water spots for rafting in the world. The landscape along the river is unique and, due to its location, still pretty much untouched.
3. Puerto Rio Tranquilo, Chile
If you want to get there quickly, you should travel through Argentina and cross over to Chile Chico as this place is also very remote. The reason to do so: the marble caves in the General Carrera lake.
4. Torres del Paine, Chile
Personally the national park Torres del Paine is my number 1 attraction in Patagonia - you should take some time and do a multi-day trek to experience as much of it as possible: glaciers, forests, impressive mountain ranges, lagoons and rivers.
1. What is the best time for hiking in Patagonia?| A．October 1—November 1 | B．December 25—January 15 |
| C．March 5—April 1 | D．November 5—June 7 |
| A．It lies in an easily accessible village. | B．It is ignored due to rafting sports. |
| C．It is the best rafting river in the world. | D．It still has untouched landscapes. |
| A．Bariloche. | B．Futaleufú. |
| C．Puerto Rio Tranquilo. | D．Torres del Paine. |
