1 . As the effects of climate change set in, coastal cites such as the Italian city of Venice and the American city of New Orlean are slowly sinking. So is Bangkok. Officials in the city and scientists say they do not know how long people will be able to continue living in the Thai capital.
Thailand’s military rulers are considering action. The National Reform Council wants the government to form a committee to deal with the warnings that Bangkok could be permanently underwater many years from now.
The Saen canal was built in Bangkok in the late 1830s. In a neighborhood near the waterway, walkways are breaking up. Walls on homes, small businesses and an Islamic center appear to be bending. The area is sinking about two centimeters a year, which is two times the average rate for the rest of Bangkok.
“I don’t know what to do.” says Vijitri Puangsiri who has lived in the neighborhood for 44 years. Her home needs to be repaired every year because of the sinking ground. The walkway in front of her century-old house where she operates a small restaurant must also be repeatedly repaired.
“If you travel on the canal boats, you can see how this is all hollow,” Somsak Kongeeng says, “The buildings to see him are sinking because they were not built on solid foundations,” He joked that if we come back to see him again in 20 years, the water level will be almost as high as his head. But he is also partly serious. That might be only a small overstatement in a city that is, on average, just two meters above sea level.
Observers say two reasons for the sinking are a rising sea level and too much pumping of groundwater. Another reason, they say, is the decision by developers to build so many high-rises because they earn quantities of money by doing so. This kind of development worries those who are concerned with the rising water level.
1. What do we know from the passage?| A．Vijitri Puangsiri’s home needs repairing owing to the broken walkway. |
| B．The Saen canal was a supporting evidence of the sinking ground. |
| C．Somsak Kongeeng simply treats the sinking as a joke. |
| D．Bangkok is not suitable for people to live in any more. |
| A．replacing the loose soil with concrete | B．controlling pumping groundwater |
| C．forbidding the construction of high-rises | D．stopping the rising of sea level |
| A．To appeal to protect the city of Bangkok. | B．To explain the reasons for the sinking |
| C．To stress the significance of Bangkok. | D．To inform us of the situation of Bangkok. |
| A．The Saen Canal — Cause of the Sinking | B．A Warning from Bangkok |
| C．Bangkok — a Coastal City at Risk | D．Reasons for Sinking Building |
2 . A species of iguana (鬣蜥) that went extinct nearly 200 years ago on one of the Galápagos Islands appears to be making a comeback, with some help from a team of conservationists. The last person to spot a Galápagos land iguana on Santiago Island in Ecuador was Charles Darwin in 1835. When an expedition team from California arrived in 1906, the iguanas were nowhere to be found. And though this kind of iguana can still be found on the other Galápagos Islands, it’s believed to have been extinct on Santiago for the past 187 years—until now.
A team of scientists and park guardians discovered new lizards (蜥蜴) of various ages while walking the island in late July, which suggests the species has been successfully reintroduced. And according to Jorge Carrión, director of conservation of the Galápagos Conservancy, the ecosystem is thriving as a result. The evidence is in the details, he explained. Seeing lizards of different ages and coming across unmarked specimens means the iguanas are breeding (繁殖) in their natural environment.
Before joining the Galápagos Conservancy, Carrión worked for the Galápagos National Park Directorate, the caretakers of the islands’ ecosystems and resources. The GNPD is also the authority spearheading the iguana reintroduction project, with funding and assistance coming from the Conservancy. He said the collaborative has released more than 3,000 land iguanas on the island since January 2019.
Conservationists decided to reintroduce the land iguana after carefully considering how a return of the species would affect the ecosystem. These lizards are what’s known as an engineering species, like the Galápagos giant tortoise, in that they play a key role in keeping a healthy balance in an ecosystem.
“This kind of species are key for ecosystem in general,” Carrión said. “In this case it was the justification for the reintroduction of land iguanas, to return the natural dynamic to Santiago Island. When engineer species are not present, many imbalances occur in the ecosystem.”
1. What does the author want to tell us about iguanas in Paragraph 1?| A．They get help from an expedition team. |
| B．They have returned to Santiago Island. |
| C．They have disappeared for a few years. |
| D．They were found on Santiago in 1906. |
| A．Growing strong. | B．Becoming active. |
| C．Working perfectly. | D．Breaking down. |
| A．They can live on Santiago Island. |
| B．They can help engineering species. |
| C．They can keep the balance of nature. |
| D．They play a role in Galápagos National Park. |
| A．To show his concern about iguanas. |
| B．To introduce the present situation of iguanas. |
| C．To call on people to protect iguanas. |
| D．To explain the reasons for iguanas extinction. |
3 . Artificial light should be treated like other forms of pollution, research says. Human illumination (照明) of the planet is growing in range and intensity by about 2% a year, creating a problem that can be compared to climate change, according to a team of biologists from the University of Exeter. Hormone levels, breeding cycles, activity patterns and vulnerability to predators are being affected across a broad range of species, they write in a paper published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
From reduced pollination (授粉) by insects and trees budding earlier in spring, to seabirds flying into lighthouses and sea turtles mistakenly wandering inland to bright hotels in search of the dawn sun, their study brings together 126 previous papers to assess the extent of the impact.
In all the species examined, they found reduced levels of melatonin — a hormone that regulates sleep cycles — as a result of artificial light at night. Rodents (啮齿动物), which mostly search for food at night, were active for a shorter duration, while birds started singing and searching for worms earlier in the day. However, the outcomes were not purely negative. Owing to night-time light, some plants grew faster and some types of bats thrived. But the overall effect was disruptive, particularly to the insects drawn to hot bulbs or fast-moving car lamps.
“What stands out is how ubiquitous the effects are. The effects are found on microbes, invertebrates (无脊柱动物), animals and plants,” said the lead author, Kevin Gaston, a professor at the university's Environment and Sustainability Institute. “We need to start thinking about lighting in the way we think of other big systemic pressures like climate change.”
According to Gaston, there has been an increase in studies in the past five to ten years as the amount of lighting in the world has increased and the effects have become more evident. Satellite images of the Earth at night show how rapidly the problem is expanding geographically, and lights are also becoming more intense as expensive bulbs with yellow light are replaced by greater numbers of cheap bright white LEDs. This is biologically problematic because the white light has a wider spectrum, like sunlight.
Gaston urged governments, companies and individuals to be more discriminating. “At the moment, we just take lighting for granted. But we need to think in terms of using it only when we need it, where we need it and how we need it,” he said. “It is another pollutant.”
Unlike the climate crisis, however, he said solving the lighting problem would save rather than cost money. If people use fewer lights, it would mean lower costs, less electricity and lower emissions.
“At the heart of this is a deep-rooted human need to light up the night. We are still in a sense afraid of the dark,” he said. “But the ability to turn the night-time into something like the daytime is something we have pursued for beyond the necessity of doing so.”
1. Why is artificial light a pollutant according to the biologists?| A．It has a serious impact on nature. |
| B．It shortens the growing time of plants. |
| C．It contributes to other forms of pollution. |
| D．It threatens the existence of human beings. |
| A．It can be used to act as the dawn sun. |
| B．It can regulate the sleep cycles of animals. |
| C．It can prevent all species developing properly. |
| D．It can disturb behavior patterns in some species. |
| A．Normal. | B．Common |
| C．Powerful. | D．Special. |
| A．It is worth the cost. | B．It is time-consuming. |
| C．It requires a change of attitude. | D．It needs to be discussed globally. |
It's never too hard to throw your garbage in Indonesia. What Indonesians commonly do is put their trash in their personal garbage area which is usually located at the front of their houses, right at the side of the street. Put trash there, and the garbage collectors with their big garbage trucks will pick it up.
Things aren't quite different if you live in the apartment complex in Indonesia. Collect trash, wrap it in a tight plastic bag if you wish, and then put it outside your room or in a special corner in your floor hallway.
Germany
The country has a quite detailed way of sorting its waste — down to the color of the glass waste and the type of paper that can be put inside the garbage bin. There are some common public garbage bins available in the German apartment/housing area:
1. Blue bin — for paper and cardboard. Greasy (油腻的) pizza box goes to the gray bin! 2. Green and white bin — for glass, different bins for different glass colors, not available for Christmas ornaments and light bulbs! 3. Yellow/orange bin — for plastic and metals. 4. Brown bin — for biodegradable goods. 5. Gray/black bin — everything else that can't be recycled such as used diaper, kitty litter, animal waste and ashes. |
Some items don't belong in your apartment/housing area's public garbage bins. Items like used batteries, electronics, unused paints, light bulbs and appliances must be returned to special locations so they can be recycled. Other items such as clothes, shoes, oversized trash and furniture are advised to be sold or donated.
South Korea
Here are the types of garbage bin provided in South Korea:
Food Waste, anything that could be eaten by animals Recyclable Waste Oversized Waste, mostly electronics and furniture General Waste, anything that doesn't belong to the other types. |
It might sound much simpler but don't be too careless, because South Korea has a pretty strict rule and many exceptions about what items should be considered as what waste and so on.
For instance, because the food waste bin is reserved for anything that can be eaten by animals, eggshells, crustacean shells and bones are fairly prohibited from it. You are going to have to separate the bones from your meat waste, put the meat waste in the food waste bin and put the rest of the bones in the general waste bin.
1. How do Indonesians usually deal with their trash?| A．Pay someone to throw it, |
| B．Throw it into a public garbage bin. |
| C．Put it in a specific area to be collected. |
| D．Wrap it in a plastic bag and throw it away. |
| A．Donate them to others. | B．Put them in the black bin. |
| C．Return them to special locations. | D．Put them in the green and white bin. |
| A．Eggshells. | B．Chicken sandwiches. |
| C．Cardboard. | D．Second-hand furniture. |
At the Shenshuping base in the Giant Panda National Park, there were 24 new panda babies born in 2021. Zhenzhen, a mother panda, saw her first baby, she
The giant pandas are
After giving birth to the babies, a panda can only nurse one baby, and others are artificially bred. In the nursery of the center, the nursery staff become “daddies”
6 . When Joseph Cook first landed on the Greenland ice sheet in 2010, he was expecting to see a primitive white environment. What he found was "colorful mix"-from blacks and grays to greens, purples and browns, with blue streams cutting through the ice. the rainbow colors Cook encountered are created by a collection of tiny life forms that reproduce on the surface of the ice sheet. Biodiversity is usually considered a good thing, but in this case the abundance of tiny life is speeding up ice melt, and likely causing global sea levels to rise faster than scientists have predicted
Cook says the tiny life forms he studies are contributing to the problem. One of these organisms is an algae(海藻) that grows in the thin layer of water on the surface of the ice. it produces purple-brown- pigment(色素) which acts “like a natural sunscreen, "says Cook, protecting the algae from the full force of the Arctic sunlight. The pigment also causes the ice to heat up and melt.
“If you go out on a hot day wearing a black T-shirt, you get warmer than if you go out on a hot day wearing a white T-shirt. The same thing happens on the ice," says Cook. "These algae, like the black T-shirt for the glacier, are causing it to warm up in the sun and melt faster.”
Cook’s research on a part of the Greenland ice sheet covering 3, 900 square miles revealed that algae is responsible for up to 13% of the ice melt. In some localized areas, the algae boosted melting by up to 26%.
Glacier algae are not a new phenomenon-there are records of them in the diaries of polar explorers from the 1870s, says Cook. What's becoming clear is that ice sheets are surprisingly dynamic and complex environments. "There are so many questions to answer, "says Cook. "It's kind of like a theme park for a scientist because there's just so much to do.
1. What is quickening the ice melt?| A．The algae. | B．Human activities. |
| C．Global warming. | D．Blue melt streams. |
| A．To clarify a rule. | B．To explain the phenomenon. |
| C．To add humour. | D．To make a conclusion. |
| A．Scientists will avoid exploring polar regions. |
| B．Cook feels proud of the current results. |
| C．A theme park will be built on ice sheets. |
| D．There's a long way for research into ice sheets. |
| A．A news review. | B．A travel brochure. |
| C．A geography textbook. | D．A science magazine |
The Xi’an City Wall is the most complete city wall that has survived China’s long history. It
We accessed the wall through the South Gate. The wall is 12 meters high and from here you can see streams of people moving inside and outside the City Wall.
After
We
