1 . Common water plant could provide a green energy source. Scientists have figured out how to get large amounts of oil from duckweed, one of nature’s fastest-growing water plants. Transferring such plant oil into biodiesel (生物柴油) for transportation and heating could be a big part of a more sustainable future.
For a new study, researchers genetically engineered duckweed plants to produce seven times more oil per acre than soybeans. John Shanklin, a biochemist says further research could double the engineered duckweed’s oil output in the next few years.
Unlike fossil fuels, which form underground, biofuels can be refreshed faster than they are used. Fuels made from new and used vegetable oils, animal fat and seaweed can have a lower carbon footprint than fossil fuels do, but there has been a recent negative view against them. This is partly because so many crops now go into energy production rather than food; biofuels take up more than 100 million acres of the world’s agricultural land.
Duckweed, common on every continent but Antarctica, is among the world’s most productive plants, and the researchers suggest it could be a game-changing renewable energy source for three key reasons. First, it grows readily in water, so it wouldn’t compete with food crops for agricultural land. Second, duckweed can grow fast in agricultural pollution released into the water. Third, Shanklin and his team found a way to avoid a major biotechnological barrier: For the new study, Shanklin says, the researchers added an oil-producing gene, “turning it on like a light switch”by introducing a particular molecule (分子) only when the plant had finished growing. Shanklin says, “If it replicates (复制) in other species-and there’s no reason to think that it would not — this can solve one of our biggest issues, which is how we can make more oil in more plants without negatively affecting growth.”
To expand production to industrial levels, scientists will need to design and produce large-scale bases for growing engineered plants and obtaining oil — a challenge, Shanklin says, because duckweed is a non-mainstream crop without much existing infrastructure (基础设施).
1. What can people get from duckweed firsthand?A.Plant oil. | B.Stable biodiesel. |
C.Sustainable water. | D.Natural heat. |
A.Options for renewable energy. |
B.Reasons for engineering genes. |
C.The potential of revolutionary energy source. |
D.The approach to avoiding agricultural pollution. |
A.Industrial levels. | B.Unique design. |
C.Academic research. | D.Basic facilities. |
A.Duckweed Power | B.Duckweed Production |
C.Genetic Engineering | D.Genetic Testing |
2 . When John Todd was a child, he loved to explore the woods around his house, observing how nature solved problems. A dirty stream, for example, often became clear after flowing through plants and along rocks where tiny creatures lived. When he got older, John started to wonder if this process could be used to clean up the messes people were making.
After studying agriculture, medicine, and fisheries in college, John went back to observing nature and asking questions. Why can certain plants trap harmful bacteria (细菌)? Which kinds of fish can eat cancer-causing chemicals? With the right combination of animals and plants, he figured, maybe he could clean up waste the way nature did. He decided to build what he would later call an eco-machine.
The task John set for himself was to remove harmful substances from some sludge (污泥). First he constructed a series of clear fiberglass tanks connected to each other. Then he went around to local ponds and streams and brought back some plants and animals. He placed them in the tanks and waited. Little by little, these different kinds of life got used to one another and formed their own ecosystem. After a few weeks, John added the sludge.
He was amazed at the results. The plants and animals in the eco-machine took the sludge as food and began to eat it! Within weeks, it had all been digested, and all that was left was pure water.
Over the years, John has taken on many big jobs. He developed a greenhouse — like facility that treated sewage (污水) from 1,600 homes in South Burlington. He also designed an eco-machine to clean canal water in Fuzhou, a city in southeast China.
“Ecological design” is the name John gives to what he does. “Life on Earth is kind of a box of spare parts for the inventor,” he says. “You put organisms in new relationships and observe what’s happening. Then you let these new systems develop their own ways to self-repair.”
1. What can we learn about John from the first two paragraphs?A.He was fond of traveling. | B.He enjoyed being alone. |
C.He had an inquiring mind. | D.He longed to be a doctor. |
A.To feed the animals. | B.To build an ecosystem. |
C.To protect the plants. | D.To test the eco-machine. |
A.Nature can repair itself. | B.Organisms need water to survive. |
C.Life on Earth is diverse. | D.Most tiny creatures live in groups. |
Some countries have a large number of earthquakes. Japan is one of them, while others do not have so many. For example, there are few earthquakes in Britain. But they are
There is often a great noise during
4 . Supermarkets, conservationists and farming groups have shown their concerns about pollution of the Wye, one of the UK’s longest rivers. “The pollution pressures upon the Wye are unacceptable and there was strong enthusiasm for cooperative action to resolve the problem.” said Craig Bennett, head of the Wildlife Trusts.
The pollution referred largely to runoff of the nutrient-rich waste matter produced by the 20 million-plus chickens near the river.
Bennett said: “We discussed how, if the Wye were a school or a hospital, we would be calling for it to be placed into ‘special measures’. We agreed the same level of urgency must be applied.”
Increasing concern led the local government to hold a discussion in May, when they promised to publish a plan for the Wye by the autumn. However, the local government’s push on the river was marred in June when the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs published a Wye video showing sea otters (海獺) rather than the river’s local European otters. The pollution of the Wye was not mentioned at all.
In July Bennett hosted a Wye round table in Powys, Wales, bringing together local groups, the Environment Agency, the chicken produce Avara Foodsr, regional branches of the National Farmers Union and local authorities. They agreed on a plan that included cutting the nutrient pollution “through a reduction in animal numbers” and other measures.
Bennett also wrote to Julie James, the Welsh Climate Change Minister, who said, “I share your concern for the health of the River Wye and other Welsh rivers.”
A supermarket chain said they are committed to protecting the river and engaging with their chicken suppliers to tackle water pollution. They have detailed management plans to make sure their suppliers are farming with care for the environment. A government spokesman said: “We are offering a wide range of support to farmers to speed up their transition to more sustainable practices and help protect this important site.”
1. Why does Bennett compare the Wye with a school or a hospital?A.To call for urgent measures. | B.To stress the impacts of the river. |
C.To show the importance of the river. | D.To urge people to protect the environment. |
A.Destroyed. | B.Boosted | C.Perfected. | D.Emphasized. |
A.Making a careful plan. | B.Reducing animal numbers. |
C.Arousing people’s awareness. | D.Asking the government for money. |
A.Sea Otters Are under Attack for Possible Pollution |
B.Cooperated Efforts Are Made to Protect the Wye |
C.People Are Having More Environmental Awareness |
D.More Measures Should Be Taken to Prevent Air Pollution |
5 . Not much trash and almost no plastic actually gets recycled. About a third of U.S. garbage gets recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s most recent estimate. The rest goes to landfills, which release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and pollute their surroundings.
To make recycling easier, many U.S. cities don’t ask Americans to separate paper, glass, metal and plastic. ‘They just ask people to put anything recyclable into one bin and let waste plants do the sorting. But waste plants don’t catch everything. AI is now an essential tool for the world’s waste management leaders. Greyparrot, a tech company has already installed more than l00 AI trash spotters in about 50 sorting facilities.
Greyparrot’s device is, basically, a set of visual and infrared (红外线的) cameras hooked up to a computer, which monitors trash as it passes by on a conveyor belt and labels it under 70 categories, from loose bottle caps to books to aluminum cans. Waste plants could connect these AI systems to sorting robots to help them separate trash from recyclables more accurately. They could also use the AI as a quality control system to measure how well they’re sorting trash from recyclables. That could help plant managers adjust their production lines to cover more recyclables, or cheek that a bundle of recyclables is free of pollutants, which would allow them to sell at a higher price.
In the next few years, some recycling companies plan to retrofit (改良) thousands of material- recovery facilities with Al trash - spotting tools. Of these companies, Bollegraaf has built thousands of these facilities, including 340 in North America, accounting for a majority of the recovery plants in the world.
The trash-spotting computers could one day help regulators punish companies that produce tsunamis of non - recyclable packaging because the AI systems are so accurate that they can identify the brands on individual items. Putting the AI tools in thousands of waste plants can raise recycling percentage. If the needle can be moved by even 5 to 10 percent, that would be a phenomenal outcome for greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impact.
1. What does the author want to show in paragraph 1?A.People pay little attention to environmental protection. |
B.Greenhouse gas is a major contributor to air pollution. |
C.Americans show little enthusiasm for recycling. |
D.All trash has not been recycled in the US. |
A.By working with sorting robots. |
B.By adjusting the production line. |
C.By monitoring the conveyor belt. |
D.By controlling cameras in a computer. |
A.They are well received. |
B.They are highly profitable. |
C.They have unpredictable prospect. |
D.They present a challenge for regulators. |
A.The Use of the Useless |
B.AI Assistants in Recycling |
C.A Pressing Trash Issue in US |
D.AI Tools with Great Potential |
1.不文明出游的现象;
2.对文明出游发出倡议。
注意:1.可以增加细节,以使行文连贯;
2.词数80词左右;
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7 . Djukic is a biology and chemistry student at John Carroll University. She never thought that one day she would be in a classroom where an English teacher asked her to play a board game in order to learn about climate change.
Debra Rosenthal is the professor of the class. At first, Djukic said she was uncertain about Rosenthal’s board game idea. “I was just like: ‘this is interesting, but how much are we actually going to take away from it?”
Rosenthal thought her students would gain a greater understanding about how their own ideas and experiences affect climate change. Students do not compete against each other. They work together to choose the best plan of action. The game is different from board games such as Monopoly, where the goal is to win. Rosenthal said she hoped the games would give students a chance to talk about climate change in a new way.
“By playing the games, it’s a way to be social, to engage in conversation. There has to be a lot of energy around the table. It’s very collaborative. And in the game that I chose to play, they really were able to work together and try to come up with a solution so that the planet was not destroyed.”
During the class, she said, students laughed, disagreed and had to call for votes as a way to decide how to move forward in the game. Djukic said it was a “way to have fun...while also learning about such a serious subject.”
The games are global, Djukic said. That is because she and her classmates said they were able to see how one player’s decision about agriculture affected another player on the other side of the world.
She said the games showed her that “in the game of climate change and the climate crisis, no individual wins.” “It’s either we all suffer from this, or we all somehow collaborate to work our way out of this and turn the clock back on climate change.”
1. What is the purpose of Rosenthal’s class arrangement?A.To inspire the competition among students. |
B.To entertain the students with the board game. |
C.To stress the damage caused by climate change. |
D.To encourage student’s viewpoints about climate change. |
A.Cooperative | B.Competitive | C.Creative | D.Exclusive |
A.Agriculture is of vital importance to the world. |
B.The world is a community of shared future. |
C.Man with strong will can conquer nature. |
D.Climate change is a tough problem to solve. |
A.Climate change calls for teamwork. |
B.Climate change leads to global impact. |
C.A board game helps students understand climate issues. |
D.A good teacher gives students lifelong benefits. |
1.活动目的;
2.活动安排。
注意:1.词数100左右;
2.开头和结尾已给出,不计入总词数。
提示词:全国防灾减灾日—National Disaster Prevention and Reduction Day
Dear Jim,
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Yours,
Li Hua
9 . The streets and roofs of cities all absorb heat, making some urban areas hotter than rural ones. These “urban heat islands” can also develop underground as city heat spreads downward, and subway tracks and other subsurface infrastructure(基础设施) also constantly radiate warmth into the surrounding earth.
A new study of downtown Chicago shows underground hotspots may threaten the very same structures that give off the heat in the first place. “Without anyone realizing it, the city of Chicago’s downtown was deforming,” says study author Rotta Loria, an environmental engineer.
Humans aren’t the only potentially affected. “For a lot of things in the subsurface, it’s kind of ‘out of sight, out of mind’,” says Grant Ferguson, a geologist. But the underground world is full of creatures that have adapted to subsurface existence such as insects and snails. As the temperature rises because of climate change and underground urban development, scientists are keeping eyes on the potential implications for underground ecosystems.
But the question of how underground hotspots could affect infrastructure has gone largely unstudied. Because materials expand and contract with temperature change, Rotta suspected that heat coming from underground could be contributing to wear and tear on various structures. To understand how underground temperature difference has affected the ground’s physical properties, he used a computer model to simulate(模拟) the underground environment from the 1950s to now—and then to 2050. He found that by the middle of this century, some areas may lift upward by as much as 0.50 inch or settle by as much as 0.32 inch, depending on the soil makeup of the area involved. Though these may sound like small displacements, Rotta says they could cause cracks in the foundations of some buildings, causing buildings to fall.
Kathrin Menberg, a geoscientist in Germany, says these displacement predictions are far beyond her guesses and could be linked to the soft, clay-heavy soils. “Clay material is particularly sensitive,” she says, “It would be a big issue in all cities worldwide that are built on such material.”
Like climate change above the surface, underground changes occur gradually. “These effects took decades to develop,” Ferguson says, adding that increased underground temperatures would likewise take a long time to dissipate on their own. “We could basically turn everything off, and it’s going to remain there, the temperature signal, for quite a while.”
But Ferguson says this wasted heat energy could also be reused, presenting an opportunity to both cool the subsurface and save on energy costs. Still, this assumption could fail as aboveground climate change continues to boost underground warming. However slowly, this heat will gather beneath our feet. “It’s like climate change,” Rotta Loria says. “Maybe we don’t see it always, but it’s happening.”
1. The author quotes Rotta Loria in Paragraph 2 mainly to _______.A.make a prediction | B.highlight a finding |
C.draw a conclusion | D.raise an assumption |
A.“Urban heat islands” extend underground to spare ecosystems. |
B.Surface climate change contributes to the reuse of underground heat. |
C.Underground temperatures mirror the ground’s physical characteristics. |
D.Buildings may collapse as a potential consequence of underground heat. |
A.Show. | B.Stay. | C.Develop. | D.Disappear. |
A.Underground climate change is a silent danger. |
B.Humans fail to notice the dramatic climate change. |
C.Cooling the subsurface helps control urban heat rises. |
D.Researching underground heat helps save on energy costs. |
10 . Every order of takeout comes with a side of single-use plastics and each plastic fork. knife, spoon and straw-whether or not you wanted it or used it-ends up in the trash.
New research found that 139 million metric tons of single-use plastic waste was generated in 2021-six million metric tons more single-use plastics compared to 2019. A hunger for takeout meals during the pandemic contributed to the surge.
An estimated 60% of Americans order takeout or delivery at least once a week and online ordering is growing 300% faster than in-house dining; that means millions of single-use plastic utensils (餐具) are going out with every order.
New laws aim to address the problem. Some of the recent bills are thanks to The National Reuse Network, part of the environmental nonprofit Upstream, which launched a national Skip the Stuff campaign to work out policies that require restaurants to include single-use plastic utensils, straws, and napkins only when customers request them.
The bills also require meal delivery and online apps like Uber Eats, GrubHub and Door Dash to add single-use extras to their menus; customers can choose the items and quantities to have them included in the order. Customers that don’t order the single-use plastics won’t receive them. The goal of the bills is to reduce the 40 billion plastic utensils sent to the landfill (垃圾填埋场) every year.
“Most of the time, people are taking food home or to their offices where there are reusable utensils so these utensils wind up in a drawer or get thrown out,” says Alexis Goldsmith, national organizing director for a nationwide project Beyond Plastics. “Some people do need utensils, but for the most part, they’re not needed.”
To date, Skip the Stuff bills have been passed in several cities, including Denver, Washington, D.C. and Chicago, California and Washington state passed statewide bills that make single-use plastic “accessories” available with takeout orders only upon request.
Organizations like Upstream, Beyond plastics and NRDC have created toolkits to help additional communities launch their own Skip the Stuff campaigns.
1. What does the underlined word “surge” in paragraph 2 probably mean?A.Great desire. | B.Sharp decline. | C.Rapid increase. | D.Obvious panic. |
A.Choosing green products. | B.Adding single-use napkins. |
C.Recycling and reusing utensils. | D.Providing utensils only on request. |
A.To reduce plastic waste. | B.To stop bad eating habits. |
C.To encourage people to eat out. | D.To better the dining environment. |
A.Unimportant. | B.Damaging. | C.Much-needed. | D.Well-known. |