1 . Every year millions of breeding monarch butterflies in the U.S. and southern Canada search for milkweed plants on which to lay their eggs. Concern over shrinking habitat （居住地）has urged conservationists to create monarch-friendly spaces along roadsides, which are more than enough within the butterflies range and usually publicly owned. But traffic noise stresses monarch caterpillars out, a new study finds. They eventually do become desensitized to it—but that might cause trouble to them later on, too.

Noise pollution is known to affect the lives of birds, whales and other creatures. But until recently, scientists had never tested whether it leads to a stress response in insects. When Andy Davis, a conservation physiologist at the University of Georgia, noticed online videos of roadside monarch caterpillars apparently trembling as cars came by, he wondered how the constant noise might affect them. Davis built a custom caterpillar heart monitor, fitting a small sensor into a microscope to precisely measure monarch caterpillars’ heart rates as they listened to recordings of traffic sounds in the laboratory.

The hearts of caterpillars exposed to highway noise for two hours beat 17 percent faster than those of caterpillars in a silent room. But the heart rates of the noise-exposed group returned to baseline levels after hearing the traffic sounds nonstop for their entire 12-day development period, Davis and his colleagues reported in May in Biology Letters.

This desensitization could be problematic when the caterpillars become adults, Davis says. A rapid stress response is vital for monarch butterflies on their two-month journey to spend winters in Mexico, as they narrowly escape predators（捕食者）and fight wind currents.

Whether a noisy developmental period reduces monarchs’ survival rates remains unknown, notes Ryan Norris, an ecologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, who was not involved in the study. But in any case, he believes roadside habitat almost certainly drive up the butterflies’ death rates as a result of crashes with cars. ”There is so much potential road habitat for monarchs and other insects一it would be such a nice thing to capitalize on,” Norris says. ‌“But you just can’t get around the traffic.” Davis adds: ”I think roads and monarchs just don’t mix.”

1. By ‌“They eventually do become desensitized to it”, the writer means that.

A．monarch caterpillars react less strongly to noise

B．monarch caterpillars are stressed out by road noise

C．conservationists are worried about butterflies habitat

D．conservationists no longer create monarch-friendly spaces

2. What inspired Andy Davis to explore the effect of noise on monarch caterpillars?

A．There had been little research on monarch caterpillars.

B．Videos showed cars crashed into monarch caterpillars.

C．There was no such record of monarch caterpillars’ heart rates.

D．He found that monarch caterpillars shook with cars moving by.

3. According to Andy Davis, how will exposure to noise influence monarch butterflies?

A．They are likely to need more time to develop.

B．They are likely to lose their way on their journey.

C．They are more likely to be killed in their migration.

D．They are more likely to die before they become adults.

4. What is Ryan Norris most likely to agree with?

A．Monarchs5 survival rates are decreasing each year.

B．It is not recommended that roadside habitat be built for insects.

C．More capital is needed to study monarchs? developmental period.

D．Butterflies’ rising death rates have nothing to do with moving cars.

2 . Peter and Minke van Wingerden have created something wild: a herd of cows floating on the sea. The Dutch husband-and-wife team’s experiment on sustainable agriculture, called Floating Farm, can be found in the port of Rotterdam. The modernist structure houses 40 cows, who collectively produce some 200 gallons of milk a day. In addition to helping nourish (滋养) the local community, the waterborne farm is playing a part in the global conversation about how the climate crisis is pushing farmers to reconsider how—and where—they produce food.

Floods, extreme heating, droughts and even rising night temperatures have sent the food system off balance. The race to outsmart the constant attack of extreme weather has made the world of farming unrecognizable from what it was only decades ago. A team of scientists in Mexico is developing wheat types that can adapt themselves to different climates, while Jack’s Solar Garden in Longmont, Colorado, is a testbed for the emerging method of solar farming.

Rotterdam has already established itself as one of the most climate-adaptive places in the world. Everything from office buildings to entire neighborhoods are built on water in the city, which is 90% below sea level. The Wingerdens’ Floating Farm was a new but necessary attempt. Should a weather crisis arise, a waterborne farm isn’t necessarily stuck in place. A former property developer with a background in engineering, Peter found his inspiration for the Floating Farm in a climate disaster in New York City, where Hurricane Sandy prevented the delivery of fresh food to millions.

The Wingerdens’ model is ripe for reproduction—which is exactly what the Floating Farm’s team of 14 are working on now. Plans are under way for a floating vegetable farm to move into the space next to the current Floating Farm. Permit applications are also out for similar structures in Dubai, Singapore and the Dutch cities of Haarlem and Arnhem.

The new projects will apply lessons learned from Floating Farm. “You need to build a house in order to know how to build a house,” Peter says. The biggest obstacles he sees ahead, however, are not financial or physical, but rather political and administrative. “One of the biggest challenges we come across worldwide is regulations. Cities need to have disruptive thinking, cities need to have disruptive departments, and cities need to have areas where you can say: OK, this is the experimental zone.” Because what Peter and his team are pulling off is of a different order than the typical sustainability measures. “We are not innovative,” he says. “We are disruptive.”

1. Which of the following is TRUE about the Floating Farm?

A．It is the first modern farming attempt to fight climate change.

B．It is a model of new agriculture in the age of climate crisis.

C．It has outsmarted other forms of farming like solar farming.

D．It copies a similar structure in Dubai ready for reproduction.

2. It can be inferred from the passage that ___________.

A．90% of the population in Rotterdam live below the sea level

B．The New York City is working hard to fight climate change

C．The local community will not be fed without new farming

D．Waterborne facilities are necessary to the future of Rotterdam

3. The phrase “disruptive thinking” in the last paragraph means “thinking __________”.

A．in a daring and unusual way	B．in a focused and logical way
C．in a careful and detailed way	D．in a rude and unpleasant way

4. Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?

A．Is Rotterdam Built on Water?

B．Can Floating Farming Survive?

C．Are Cows at Sea the Future of Farming?

D．Is Extreme Weather Affecting Agriculture?

3 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. technical     B. attributed     C. confined     D. observations     E. sensation     F. totaling     G. anticipatory H. consistent     I. precisely     J. suspicious     K. attached

For centuries, people have described unusual animal behavior just ahead of seismic (地震的) events: dogs barking endlessly, cows halting their milk, toads leaping from ponds. A few researchers have tried to prove a link, but most such attempts have relied largely on anecdotes and single     1    .

Now researchers at the University of Konstanz, along with a multinational team of colleagues, say they have managed to     2     measure increased activity in a group of farm animals prior to seismic activity. During separate periods     3     about four months in 2016 and 2017, the researchers     4     these highly sensitive biologgers and GPS sensors, which can record accelerated movements in any direction, to six cows, five sheep and two dogs living on a farm in an earthquake-prone area of northern Italy to keep track of the activities and the nervousness of animals. “Only now can we do continuous biologging,” says study co-author Martin Wikelski. “Because the     5     possibilities are finally there.”

The paper’s statistical analysis showed animals’ activity significantly increased before magnitude 3.8 or greater earthquakes when they were housed together in a stable — but not when they were out to pasture (吃草). Wikelski says this difference could be linked to the increased stress some animals feel in     6     spaces. Analyzing the increased movements as a whole, the researchers claim, showed a clear signal of     7     behavior hours ahead of tremors.

Besides, it showed that the farm animals appeared to anticipate quakes anywhere from one to 20 hours ahead, reacting earlier when they were closer to the origin and later when they were farther away. This finding is     8     with a hypothesis that animals somehow sense a signal that spreads outward. It holds that in the days before an earthquake, shifting tectonic plates (地壳板块) squeeze rocks along a fault line, causing the rocks to release minerals that force ions into the air, and then the animals react to this novel     9    .

Not involved with the new study, Wendy Bohon, a geologist from Washington, D.C., is     10     of the air ionization idea. Heiko Woith, a geologist at GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences, says the time frame was still too short and points out that limited data collection in many studies makes it impossible to determine whether a measured signal was related to a quake or was simply noise.

4 . Telescope Searching for Space Treasure Unearths Giant Planet

A giant planet shrouded(遮盖)in clouds, in orbit(轨道)around a star 385 light years from our sun, has been captured by the James Webb Space Telescope in images described as a “_________ moment for astronomy.”

In observations led by a British astronomer, the pioneering telescope focused on a “gas giant” planet called HIP65426b. It captured images in infrared light(红外光), which allows astronomers to more _________ calculate the mass and temperature of “exoplanets”—the _________ for planets in orbit around other stars. It should ultimately allow them to detect clouds moving across their surface, _________ alien weather patterns on worlds hundreds of light years from our solar system. The images show the planet as “blobs(斑点) of light” in blue, purple, yellow and   red hues under various infrared wavelengths.

The planet is up to 12 times bigger than Jupiter and orbits about 100 times farther from its host star compared with the Earth’s distance from the sun, making it _________ for astronomers to separate the planet from its star when attempting to capture images of it. The planet is only 15 to 20 million years old, a fraction of the _________ of the Earth, which is 4.5 billion years old. Like Jupiter and Saturn, it has “no rocky surface and could not be _________,” NASA said.

The _________ of an exoplanet is usually detected when the light from a distant star appears to become less _________ at regular intervals, suggesting that a planet is passing across its face once per orbit like a tiny partial eclipse(日偏食). It is extremely difficult to capture a direct image of an exoplanet __________ they are thousands of times fainter than the stars they orbit.

James Webb used an instrument called a coronagraph to __________ light from HiP65426b’ s host star, which lies in the Centaurus constellation(半人马座), “Obtaining this image felt like __________ space treasure,” said Aarynn Carter, a researcher at the University of California. “At first, all I could see was light from the star, but with careful image processing, I was able to remove that light and uncover the planet.”

Analysis suggests that the planet has a red hue and a temperature of 1,300℃. The images could give a clue as to how Jupiter and Saturn looked in their __________ more than four billion years ago.

NASA said, “Webb’s view, at longer infrared wavelengths, shows new details that ground—based telescopes would not be able to detect __________ the intrinsic(本身的)infrared glow of Earth’s atmosphere.”

The telescope has already been used to analyze the __________ make—up of the atmosphere on another exoplanet, WASP—39b, detecting carbon dioxide by analyzing the spectrum(光谱) of light passing through its clouds.

1.

A．difficult

B．awful

C．dramatic

D．transformative

2.

A．carefully

B．precisely

C．positively

D．quickly

3.

A．term

B．reason

C．explanation

D．material

4.

A．reporting

B．forecasting

C．changing

D．revealing

5.

A．clear

B．impossible

C．easier

D．harder

6.

A．time

B．age

C．history

D．distance

7.

A．renewable

B．habitable

C．detectable

D．feasible

8.

A．form

B．component

C．existence

D．orbit

9.

A．gentle

B．natural

C．warm

D．bright

10.

A．because

B．although

C．unless

D．as if

11.

A．look out

B．find out

C．block out

D．make out

12.

A．digging for

B．hiding from

C．bringing out

D．mixing into

13.

A．infancy

B．childhood

C．youth

D．peak

14.

A．in case of

B．in the way of

C．regardless of

D．owing to

15.

A．chemical

B．physical

C．psychological

D．medical

5 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

The Real Cost of Travel

Mass tourism is a relatively recent phenomenon. The tourism industry     1     (take) off in the middle of the last century and it’s been growing ever since. In the last ten years especially, more and more people have been traveling to places     2     we had previously only read about or seen on television. But what kind of impact does tourism have on the planet?

A voyage to the end of the earth?

A large cruise ship (邮轮) can carry as many as 6,000 passengers and there are upwards of 50 such ships currently     3    (sail) the seas. Cruise ships dump about 90,000 tons of waste into the oceans every year. Any harmful effects of this are made even worse by the fact     4     cruises tend to visit the same places over and over again, thus concentrating the waste in specific places.

Trash on top of the world

From remote ocean habitats to the world’s highest mountain, our trash is everywhere. Though far fewer people go climbing the Himalayas than on a cruise, their impact     5    (still feel). Tourism is vital to the economy of Nepal,     6     it is to many non-industrial countries. But for decades, climbers have been abandoning their unwanted equipment on Everest. For the last few years, clean-up teams of local and international climbers have been organizing hiking trips just     7    (pick) up the waste. One group has brought over eight tons of waste down from the mountain!

When more is not better

Tourism of a different kind is causing problems in Europe. Construction on the Mediterranean coast has been     8     control for years. Beach resorts form an almost unbroken line from Gibraltar to Greece, and natural habitats have disappeared under miles of concrete. And so we pollute the sea, the land, and the air. Low-cost air travel is booming, in spite of (or perhaps     9     (help) by) economic problems. For many Europeans, low-cost flights allow them to take several short vacations a year. Yet curiously, short flights actually have a much bigger effect on climate change than long flights. So, are there    10     (damaging) ways of seeing the world? Traveling by train, for example, is a much greener way of getting around.

6 . When I step out onto the deck, I definitely feel the Arctic chill. That’s not surprising. I’m a good hundred miles inside the Arctic Circle; in fact, you can’t get much farther north and still be in Sweden. This is Abisko Mountain Station, perhaps the crown jewel of the Swedish mountain lodges (小屋). I’m back for a second time to this remote, scenic spot.

Last Autumn, a heavy snowstorm trapped me in my tent for days and eventually forced me to go to the station, a comfortable place. I discovered a different side to Abisko. People come here for many reasons – some to hike, some to climb, some to cross-country ski. But there’s yet another entirely different attraction here. Looking out from the deck of the train station, above a huge lake, in the upper sky of the North Pole, the Aurora, as we often refer to the northern light, mixed with green and red, was giving off ghostly light, rolling across the dark night sky.

The Aurora may be old hat to those who live this far north, but for the rest of us it is an unforgettable experience. The lights here were so appealing to us we quickly forgot the discomfort of the cold.

One of the attractions in Abisko is the Tornetrask. It’s a huge lake, which extends more than 70 kilometres long just north of the station, creates an unusual weather phenomenon that keeps the skies above the station clear even when fog or clouds blanket most of northern Sweden. The sky in this area is mostly clear all year around.

Abisko has a lot to offer to make it an ideal place to view the Aurora. It is far from any city lights. The station operates a ski lift to the top of Nuolja Peak, more than 3,000 feet high. For the first time this year, a cafe at the top of the mountain has been turned into a viewing platform for the Northern Lights, called the Aurora Sky Station. Also, the station posts forecasts each night of expected Aurora activity, collected from scientific observations arriving via computer, so visitors may choose the best viewing time.

1. What was the reason for the author’s first visit to the lodge?

A．He went there in search of the Aurora.	B．He needed equipment to keep him warm.
C．He was forced there by the weather.	D．He had to make his food supply there.

2. The phrase “old hat” in 3rd paragraph probably mean “________”.

A．severe and struggling	B．familiar and unexciting
C．strange and shocking	D．mysterious and adventurous

3. According to the last paragraph, which of the following is NOT a factor that makes Abisko an ideal place to view the Aurora?

A．There is a mountain viewing platform.	B．Weather forecasts are available.
C．There are no city lights nearby.	D．There is a café shop there.

4. The author’s overall opinion of Abisko is that ________.

A．despite the severe weather, it’s an impressive place

B．people have overestimated its popularity

C．it’s not as popular as it deserves to be

D．the cold weather worsens the Aurora viewing experience there

7 . It’s 2076 and the skies are looking decidedly milky. On windy plains and in parts of the seas that have been turned over to wind farms, a different kind of tower has been built alongside the turbines (涡轮). They take in CO₂ out of the atmosphere. Vast parcels of land have been given over to forest. Trees are grown, harvested and burned for energy in power plants that don’t let CO₂ escape to the atmosphere. Instead, emissions are captured and driven underground. Powdered minerals are put into the water to absorb CO₂ and reduce ocean acidification.

All these technologies are a desperate action to reverse more than two centuries of greenhouse gas emissions. But they are not entirely up to the task and, anyway, we are still releasing greenhouse gases. “I think it’s very likely that in 60 years we’ll be using both technologies,” says John Shepherd of the University of Southampton, UK. He is referring to the two flavors of geoengineering: absorbing CO₂ out of the air and using a sunshade to reflect some of the sun’s rays back out into space.

There is no denying that climate talks are going too slowly and not so smoothly. Even if industrial emissions were to drop rapidly — a big if — some sections pose an intractable problem. We have no real replacement for aeroplane fuel and feeding people demands intensive agriculture, which accounts for a quarter of global emissions.

Computer models suggest there will be winners and losers. While a sunshade could lower global average temperatures to pre-industrial levels, there would be regional differences. Northern Europe, Canada, Siberia and the poles would remain warmer than they were, and temperatures over the oceans would be cooler. Global warming is predicted to make wet regions wetter and dry ones drier. Models suggest a sunshade would correct this, but, again, not in a uniform way.

Shepherd fears all this will feed into international arguments. He imagines some kind of global council where governments seek a climate that meets their needs. Some might prefer a slightly warmer temperature, for tourism or agriculture. But nations whose coral reefs (珊瑚礁) draw in visitors will probably want more CO₂ absorbing technologies.

In spite of all these concerns, most scientists hold that revolutionary technology and people’s awakening can shine a light on solutions in ways that are impossible now. There is undoubtedly a long way to go when we address problems facing mankind, but we can always anticipate something.

1. What is described in the first paragraph?

A．Future scenery and farming methods.

B．The development of transport technology.

C．The serious pollution problem in the very near future.

D．Future technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

2. The word “intractable” in paragraph 4 most probably means “______”.

A．solvable	B．untypical
C．tricky	D．existing

3. It can be inferred from the passage that ______.

A．climate talks haven’t achieved the expected results

B．industrial emissions will decrease greatly in 60 years

C．technologies to reduce CO2 emission aren’t used properly for now

D．sunshades outshine intensive agriculture at capturing CO2 emissions

4. What is the main idea of the passage?

A．Effective CO2 absorbing technologies have come into wide use.

B．With greenhouse gas reduced, global warming can be addressed.

C．Future climate will improve with human efforts but threats still remain.

D．Future climate will restore to a normal state with advanced technology.

8 . An interesting study found capuchin monkeys (僧帽猴), like humans, are guided by social emotions. Try paying one monkey with grapes and another with cucumbers for the _______ amount of work and you may be surprised at the results! The monkey who got the cucumbers will probably _______ working for you. He may even throw out the cucumbers, even though monkeys are usually _______ to receive them, says Sarah Brosnan, a psychology professor at Georgia State University.

That experiment by Brosnan and Frans de Wall published in 2003 in Nature was one of the first to show that animals may have an assessment for _______ — a moral sense that many researchers previously thought only humans possessed. Since then, many results have suggested that animals — particularly those that depend on _______ for their survival may have an inborn sense of justice.

Social animals, which are interdependent for a living, will _______ share rewards with others who worked toward the same goal. “The built-in sense didn’t develop first in humans. It’s possibly something that began in social species, and _______ to us.” Brosnan said in an interview.

One study _______ that some animals particularly the ones that hunt together divide up the rewards. Another study even finds that animals will occasionally deliver a better reward to a partner than they themselves _______. In research by Brosnan and her colleagues published in American Journal of Primatology, two capuchin monkeys had to work together to pull a plate of food to their cages. But before they began pulling, the monkeys had to decide which one would get a grape and which one would get an apple slice. ________ fighting over the grape or always letting the leading monkey eat it, the animals generally vary roles on the way, so they both earned some grapes and some apple slices, Brosnan found. In cases where the ________ monkey always got the good food, the other monkey were likely to give up participating. More often than not, it preferred to ________ a reward than be paid unfairly.

According to Brosnan, that tendency to share rewards fairly probably developed as a result of the way capuchins work together to hunt. “If we are hunting and I am not giving you much of the kill, you would be better off finding another ________,” she says.

However, interpreting animal behavior through human eyes can be ________, observes Marc Hauser, a Harvard psychology professor and evolutionary biologist. In the cucumber-grape study, for example, the monkeys could have ________ the cucumbers simply because they were annoyed that they didn’t get a grape once they saw it.

1.

A．various

B．enormous

C．equal

D．superb

2.

A．risk

B．restart

C．quit

D．fancy

3.

A．mature

B．content

C．passive

D．shocked

4.

A．stability

B．reputation

C．endurance

D．fairness

5.

A．necessities

B．rewards

C．emotion

D．cooperation

6.

A．naturally

B．barely

C．surprisingly

D．occasionally

7.

A．evolved

B．communicated

C．delivered

D．referred

8.

A．denies

B．predicts

C．indicates

D．suspects

9.

A．discover

B．receive

C．expect

D．present

10.

A．Instead of

B．Thanks to

C．Regardless of

D．Prior to

11.

A．diligent

B．dominant

C．generous

D．outgoing

12.

A．save

B．admire

C．share

D．refuse

13.

A．partner

B．role

C．hunt

D．task

14.

A．critical

B．pessimistic

C．problematic

D．marvellous

15.

A．set aside

B．thrown away

C．held onto

D．aimed at

10 . The term “seal” is often used to refer to both seals and sea lions, but there are several characteristics that set seals and sea lions apart.

Seals and sea lions are both in the order Carnivora and suborder Pinnipedia, thus they are called “pinnipeds.” Pinnipeds are mammals that are well-adapted for swimming. They usually have a streamlined barrel shape (桶形) and four flippers at the end of each limb (四肢). They also give birth to live young and nurse their young. Pinnipeds are protected by a thick layer of fat under their skin and fur to keep them warm in water. There are three families of pinnipeds: the Phocidae, the earless or true seals; the Otariidae, the eared seals, and the Odobenidae, the walruses.

Characteristics of Phocidae (Earless or True Seals)

Earless seals have no visible ear flaps, although they still have ears, which may be visible as a dark spot or small hole on the side of their head. 

“True” seals:

 Have no external ear flaps.

 Swim with their hind flippers. Their hind flippers always face backward and are furred.

 Have front flippers that are short, furry and thick in appearance.

 Can be found in both marine and freshwater environments.

Characteristics of Otariidae (Eared Seals, Including Fur Seals and Sea Lions)

One of the most noticeable features of eared seals is their ears, but they also move around differently than true seals.

Eared seals:

 Have external ear flaps.

 Are only found in marine environments. 

 Swim with their front flippers. Unlike earless seals, their hind flippers can turn forward, and they are able to walk, and even run, on their flippers. The “seals” you may see performing at marine parks are often sea lions.

 May gather in larger groups than true seals. Sea lions are much more vocal than true seals, and make a variety of loud, barking noises.

Characteristics of Walruses

Wondering about walruses, and how they differ from seals and sea lions? Walruses are pinnipeds, but they are in the family, Odobenidae. One obvious difference between walruses, seals and sea lions is that walruses are the only pinnipeds with tusks—a pair of long pointed teeth. These tusks are present in both males and females.

Other than tusks, walruses have some similarities to both seals and sea lions. Like true seals, walruses don’t have visible ear flaps. But, like eared seals, walruses can walk on their flippers by rotating their hind flippers under their body.

1. According to the passage, which of the following statements about pinnipeds is true?

A．Pinnipeds are good swimmers.

B．Pinnipeds are afraid of cold weather.

C．Pinnipeds are of the Phocidae family.

D．Seals and sea lions are pinnipeds, while walruses are not.

2. One way to distinguish a sea lion and a true seal is that ________.

A．the sea lion cannot play ball	B．the true seal cannot hear well
C．the sea lion doesn’t have ear flaps	D．the true seal can’t walk with hind flippers

3. Which of the following picture best illustrates a walrus?

A．	B．
C．	D．