Have you ever been to London? Which famous sites did you visit? Or, if it is the first time that you
2 . Working Together to Save the Sea Turtles
Florida has some of the best beaches in the world. Thousands of people visit the state to enjoy the sand. But these beaches are also home to five species of sea turtles. A major problem is facing these interesting creatures.
Some volunteers and researchers in Florida take direct action to help the turtles. They look closely at the sand to find the fin (鳍) marks the mother sea turtles left there.
These are not the only Floridians taking action to help protect these creatures. Florida’s government has passed laws to save the turtles. One of these laws is “Florida’s Marine Turtle Protection Act”. This law prohibits anyone from disturbing or destroying marine turtles, nests, or eggs.
Another way Floridians work together to save these creatures is through organizations like the Sea Turtle Conservancy. The Sea Turtle Conservancy helps people take steps that will help reduce the threats that put sea turtles in danger. For instance, bright lights on buildings near the beach can negatively impact sea turtles. Baby sea turtles usually hatch on the sandy beach and head to the ocean. When there are bright lights coming from the other side of the shore far from the ocean, the baby turtles get confused.
| A．Many of them do not make it to the ocean and die. |
| B．Some of these turtle species are in danger of going extinct. |
| C．This helps them to locate where the sea turtles laid their eggs. |
| D．It also helps make sure that sea turtles’ natural habitats are protected. |
| E．Female sea turtles come from the ocean and onto these beaches at night. |
| F．They use their fins to move back across the beach and return to the ocean. |
| G．Every Floridian can do their part to protect sea turtles and their environment. |
3 . Anuar Abdullah has always had a special feeling for the ocean. In the 1980s, he settled in Perhentian as a diving instructor and fell in love with corals. Twice daily, he went out to sea, staying underwater for as long as his oxygen supply allowed. He learned the shapes and textures (纹理) of coral reefs long before he knew their Latin names. He studied the living conditions—the water temperature, the sunshine, the diversity(多样性) of ocean life—and saw how just one of those factors could bring about large-scale death.
Abdullah spent two decades experimenting with how to grow coral reefs in the ocean. He didn’t have a degree in marine (海洋的) biology or a research lab, but he had his own ways. Almost all the materials he used to grow corals came directly from the ocean. He didn’t use steel pipes or bricks—which he couldn’t afford—instead, he gathered rocks from the seafloor, piling them so they wouldn’t be knocked down by tidal waves. While others might depend on a lab to break live coral into pieces that were in turn used for growing, he searched for broken pieces of coral in existing reefs and fixed them to the rocks using animal-friendly glue. When he needed other materials, he started by searching the beach for waste.
Every day, the locals saw him on his knees examining corals in the ocean. Sometimes, he picked up a rock to which he had fixed a piece of coral several weeks earlier, and said very quietly, “My little acropora (鹿角大珊瑚), how are you doing today?” The locals whispered about how he’d spent days in the water speaking to corals as if they were people. “Everyone thought I was stupid,” said Abdullah, “But I knew I was doing the most important thing in the world.”
Actually, Abdullah was right. Now, in a world rapidly losing its coral reefs to climate change and environmental damage, he has become an increasingly influential expert on how to bring them back to life. Thousands have traveled from around the world to learn from Abdullah how to grow corals, with some eventually leaving their jobs to join his projects full time. With his 700 active volunteers, he has already saved about 125 acres of coral reefs.
1. Abdullah went out to sea twice daily to ________.| A．study coral reefs | B．have diving training |
| C．check his oxygen supply | D．share his feelings for the sea |
| A．eco-friendly and practical | B．traditional and indirect |
| C．high-tech and affordable | D．scientific and expensive |
| A．searched for waste to make a living | B．received a degree in marine biology |
| C．talked to everyone about coral reefs | D．became an expert on coral protection |
| A．Anyone with a dream is amazing. | B．Achievement provides true pleasure. |
| C．An individual can make a difference. | D．The strong man is strongest when alone. |
4 . Episodic memory (情景记忆) allows humans to revisit past personal experiences in their minds, and it was once thought to be a special skill of humans. Although there are still arguments about the extent of this type of memory in non-human animals, scientists have proved that creatures like rats and dogs can pass tests that are developed to assess episodic memory over the past two decades. “Curiously, there is a lack of research investigating dolphins’ episodic memory,” University of Cambridge cognitive (认知的) scientist James Davies says. Therefore, this surprising fact encourages him to fill this gap.
The team used “where” and “who” questions in their research, each on a different test. Each dolphin was first trained to retrieve a ball from the water, and then trained to get a ball by approaching a person holding it in front of them while ignoring an empty-handed person standing at a different spot. During this training, the locations were randomized (使随机化) and the person holding the ball differed each time, so that those details were irrelevant to learning the retrieving behavior. Then, for the tests, the dolphins were asked to retrieve the ball as they had learned to do, but after 10 minutes, something changed-this time, the ball couldn’t be seen, as it was now behind one of the two people’s backs. In the “where” tests, the ball was hidden in the same spot as in the training, but both people had been changed, while in the “who” tests, the locations of the people changed but the ball remained with the person who’d had it previously.
Eight dolphins went through each of the two tests, separated by at least 48 hours. All the dolphins got it right in choosing the correct spot on the “where” experiments, and seven achieved success on the “who” experiments.
Kelly Jaakkola, a psychologist, says that based on their cognitive skills, dolphins are a good candidate for having episodic-like memory, and this study goes really far in showing that. She also says, “The more we look for such capabilities in non-human animals, the more species we’ll likely find them in.” She adds, “An exciting question is therefore ‘Where do we draw that line? Which animals do have it, which animals don’t, and what sort of cognitive or neurological or social characteristics do those animals share? ’ That’s going to be the fun part of the game.”
1. What does the underlined word “retrieve” in Paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Fetch. | B．Move. | C．Throw. | D．Play. |
| A．The locations of the people involved in the tests. |
| B．The memory tasks that dolphins need to perform. |
| C．The ability of dolphins to communicate with humans. |
| D．The dolphins’ characteristics related to their memory processing. |
| A．Dolphins pass the tests as a result of training. |
| B．It is very likely that dolphins are affected by people during the tests. |
| C．Scientists will probably find episodic memory in all non-human animals. |
| D．The influence of dolphins’ familiarity with a location or a person is avoided. |
| A．Dolphins Are the Most Intelligent Animals |
| B．Dolphins May Remember Personal Experiences |
| C．Episodic Memory Is Important for Humans and Animals |
| D．A Scientific Method Is Used to Study Dolphins’ Memory |
5 . Laughing together is an important way for people to connect and bond. And though the causes of laughter can vary widely across individuals and groups, the sound of a laugh is usually recognizable between people belonging to different cultures.
But what about animals? Do they “laugh”? And are the causes of animal and human laughter alike? In humans, people may laugh when they hear a joke, or when they see something that they think is funny, though it’s unknown if animals’ intelligence includes what humans would call a sense of humor.
However, many animals produce sounds during play that are unique to that pleasant social interaction. Researchers consider such vocalizations to be similar to human laughter. Recently, scientists investigated play vocalization to see how common it was among animals. The team identified 65 species that “laughed” while playing — most were mammals (哺乳动物), but a few bird species demonstrated playful laughter too. Reports of playful laughter were notably absent in studies describing fish, perhaps because there is some question as to whether or not play exists at all in that animal group. This new study could help scientists to analyze the origins of human laughter.
But how can we identify play? Unlike fighting, play is usually repetitive and happens independently of other social behaviors, said lead study author Sasha Winkler, a doctor of biological anthropology at the University of California. When it comes to identifying it, “you know it when you see it,” Winkler told Live Science. One sign is that primates — our closest relatives — have a “play face” that is similar to the expressions of humans who are playing.
When Winkler previously worked with rhesus macaques, she had noticed that the monkeys panted (喘气) quietly while playing. Many other primates are also known to vocalize during play, she said, so a hypothesis (laughter in humans is thought to have originated during play) supported by the play-related panting laughter of many primate species was put forward.
People now still laugh during play, but we also integrate laughter into language and non-play behaviors, using laughter in diverse ways to express a range of emotions that may be positive or negative. Human laughter notably differs from other animals’ laughter in another important way: its volume. People broadcast their laughter loudly, often as a way of establishing inclusion. By comparison, when most animals laugh, the sound is very quiet — just loud enough to be heard by the laugher’s partner.
“It’s really fascinating that so many animals have a similar function of vocalization during play,” Winkler told Live Science. “But we do have these unique parts of human laughter that are also an important area for future study."
1. What is the main purpose of the passage?| A．To explain causes of animal and human laughter. |
| B．To assess complexities regarding animal laughter. |
| C．To present findings on the existence of animal laughter. |
| D．To analyze differences between animal and human laughter. |
| A．Animal laughter is even noticeable in fish. |
| B．Animal laughter is hard to recognize during play. |
| C．People have learned to combine play with laughter. |
| D．People laugh loudly because they want to involve others. |
| A．Distinctive features of human laughter. |
| B．Different functions of animal laughter. |
| C．The origin and development of human laughter. |
| D．The relationship between animal laughter and intelligence. |
6 . They’re tough breeds and they have complicated names to match. But free-spirited Aussie dogs Tank the Rottweiler-cross and Muck the Staffie-cross instinctively (本能地) knew when a small child was in danger, and their protective
One December afternoon, Georgie Hillier thought her two-year-old son Max was playing in the back garden of their home. But when she went to check, there was no
Then she found Tank with the neighbor’s dog Muck. They were both running around the dams, barking furiously and
“I just panicked. I was running around, checking the sides of the dams,“ Georgie told Sara Hicks.
There was no one there to
For saving the toddler’s life, the daring two dogs received the RSPCA’s Purple Cross award for bravery- plus two very large bones.
1.| A．measures | B．natures | C．skills | D．effects |
| A．response | B．exhibition | C．shadow | D．sign |
| A．approach | B．search | C．guard | D．discover |
| A．stuck | B．covered | C．hidden | D．trapped |
| A．After | B．Though | C．Unless | D．While |
| A．untouched | B．unwrapped | C．unknown | D．unharmed |
| A．prove | B．witness | C．indicate | D．explain |
| A．edge | B．island | C．scene | D．beach |
| A．apparent | B．essential | C．pleasant | D．pitiful |
| A．separated | B．discouraged | C．freed | D．rescued |
7 . Millions of migratory(迁徙的)birds occupy seasonally favorable breeding(繁殖)grounds in the Arctic, but scientists know little about the formation, maintenance and future of the migration routes of Arctic birds and the genetic determinants of migratory distance. In a new study, a multinational team of researchers under the leadership of Dr. ZHAN Xiangjiang from the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences integrated two state-of-the-art techniques-satellite tracking and whole genome sequencing(基因排序)-and established a continental-scale migration system of peregrine falcons in Eurasian Arctic.
The researchers tracked 56 peregrine falcons from six Eurasian Arctic breeding populations and sequenced 35 genomes from four of these populations to study the migration of this species. They found that the birds used five migration routes across Eurasia, probably established between the last Ice Age 22, 000 years ago and the middle-Holocene 6, 000 years ago. “Peregrine falcons initiated their autumn migration mainly in September, and arrived at their wintering areas mainly in October, " said Professor Mike Bruford, an ecologist at Cardiff University. “Peregrine falcons that depart from different breeding grounds use different routes, and winter at widely distributed sites across four distinct regions. Individual birds that were tracked for more than one year exhibited strong path repeatability during migration, complete loyalty to wintering locations and limited breeding dispersal(扩散). ”
The researchers quantified the migration strategies and found that migration distance is the most significant differentiation. They used whole genome sequencing and found a gene-ADCY8, which is known to be involved in long-term memory in other animals in previous research- associated with differences in migratory distance. They found ADCY8 had a variant at high frequency in long-distance migrant populations of peregrine falcons, indicating this variant is being favorably selected because it may increase powers of long-term memory thought to be essential for long-distance migration.
“Previous studies have identified several candidate genomic regions that may regulate migration-but our work is the strongest demonstration of a specific gene associated with migratory behavior yet identified, ”Professor Bruford said. The researchers further looked at models of likely future migration behavior to predict the impact of global warming. If the climate warms at the same rate as it has in recent decades, they predict peregrine populations in western Eurasia have the highest probability of population decline and may stop migrating altogether.
“Our work is the first to begin to understand the way ecological factors may interact in migratory birds, ” said Dr. ZHAN Xiangjiang. “We hope it will serve as a cornerstone to help conserve migratory species in the world. ”
1. What can we learn from the first two paragraphs?| A．Five birds’ historical migration routes were rebuilt. |
| B．Peregrine falcons stick to the areas where they winter. |
| C．Two novel research methods of migration were invented. |
| D．Peregrine falcons leave for Arctic regions in September. |
| A．It is a newly-discovered gene in the new study. |
| B．It serves as a fundamental part of long-distance migration. |
| C．It could be strengthened by the power of long-term memory. |
| D．It turned out to be more favored by birds than the other animals. |
| A．It has discovered a new genomic region of birds. |
| B．It has predicted the rate at which the climate warms. |
| C．It analyses the reasons for the decrease of peregrine falcons. |
| D．It encourages attention to environmental effects on migratory birds. |
| A．Researchers Help Conserve Migratory Species |
| B．Biologists Find Evidence of Migration Gene in Birds |
| C．How Long-term Memory Helps Long-distance Migration |
| D．How Ecological Factors Affect Birds’ Migratory Distances |
Beijing residents woke up to yellow sky on Sunday morning as northern China
Air pollution readings rose to the upper limit of 500 at 8 a.m., according to data from the city's environmental monitory center, as visibility was reduced to
The city's weather bureau advised residents to stay indoors as much as possible, while experts are working to find out
