1. What do we learn from the speaker?
| A．More can be done to reduce the damage of earthquakes. |
| B．Earthquakes always cause serious damage. |
| C．Nothing can be done to reduce the damage of earthquakes. |
| A．75,000. | B．Nearly 310,000. | C．More than 6,000. |
| A．Engineers do not have the knowledge. |
| B．Protection is too costly at present. |
| C．No one takes earthquakes seriously. |
| A．5. | B．3. | C．4. |
2 . From tiny hummingbirds (蜂鸟) to giant whooping cranes, roughly half of the world’s more than 10,000 bird species migrate (迁徙). Longer wings and powerful flying muscles often help these birds cross vast expanses of air. But a study of nearly all bird species suggests many migrators share another unexpected flight aid: lighter-colored feathers.
Being a bit more lightly colored than non-migrating birds may help these long-distance fliers stay cool as they work hard under the hot sun to fly, researchers report December 6 in Current Biology.
It’s known that color can help birds hide from predators (捕食者) by blending in, or attract mates by standing out. But color has subtle effects too, including regulating temperature by absorbing or reflecting light, says Kaspar Delhey, an expert at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany. For example, bird eggs laid in colder climates tend to be darker, which may help keep them warm.
Migrating birds push their bodies to the physiological limit, which creates much heat. Some species cope by rising to cooler air during daytime. “If overheating is a problem in migratory birds, another way of dealing with that would be to evolve lighter colors that absorb less heat,” Delhey says.
Delhey and his colleagues analyzed over 20,000 illustrations of 10,618 bird species, ranking feather lightness for each species and comparing that with how far the birds fly. On average, lightness slightly increased with migratory distance, the team found. The longest-distance migrators were about 4 percent lighter than non-migrators, an effect that wasn’t explained by size, climate or habitat type for different species.
“It’s not a big difference,” Delhey says, noting that many migrators are darkly colored, perhaps for reasons unrelated to flight. But the trend was remarkably consistent.“Very different groups with very different biologies show this pattern,” Delhey says.“That surprised us.”
1. Which of the following ignored previously help migratory birds fly?| A．Longer wings. | B．Vast expanses of air. |
| C．Lighter-colored feathers. | D．Powerful flying muscles. |
| A．Smart. | B．Terrible. | C．Ambiguous. | D．Tender. |
| A．By evolving lighter colors. | B．By reaching bodies’ limit. |
| C．By flying higher to the sky. | D．By absorbing more lights. |
| A．10,618 bird species fly over a long distance altogether. |
| B．Species of migrating birds’ feathers vary significantly. |
| C．Migrators with dark feathers are clearly related to flight. |
| D．Migratory distance can be judged by feathers’ lightness. |
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
