1 . Getting rid of(丢弃) old tyres(轮胎) has long been a problem. Every year many tyres are thrown. Some of the ways might be better than getting rid of them, but they are not especially green.
Energy recovery(回收利用) is one common way. This includes burning tyres to produce electricity, or as a way to provide heat for other industrial processes. But that produces planet-warming pollution. Tyres can be whole or broken in construction projects, such as repairing roads. There are, however, worries about chemicals from the tyres coming out and polluting the ground.
So some companies have begun exploring another pleasing idea. Since tyres are mostly made from hydrocarbons(碳氢化合物), it should be possible in principle to turn old tyres into environmentally friendly materials which can be used to run some cars they came from. One of the most thoughtful companies is based in Oslo, Norway. Later this year the company will start building a huge tyre-reused factory in Sunderland in northeastern England. In a couple of years, when the factory is fully operational, it will be able to turn 8 million old tyres into new products.
The process works by dividing a tyre into its three main parts. One is steel, which is used to support the structure of a tyre and which can be easily reused. The second is powder used to improve the continuous use of the tyre. The third is rubber. Some of that will be natural rubber from the rubber trees. The carbon black can be reused to make new tyres. That is of interest to tyre makers because it helps efforts to become carbon neutral(碳中和).
1. What is the disadvantage of energy recovery of tyres mentioned in the text?| A．It is unpractical. | B．It produces pollution. |
| C．It costs a lot. | D．It produces less electricity. |
| A．By giving an example. | B．By making questions. |
| C．By following time order. | D．By comparing differences. |
| A．Costly. | B．Useful. | C．Dangerous. | D．Short-lived. |
| A．Tyres can be divided into three parts |
| B．A company built a tyre-reused factory |
| C．Energy recovery can deal with old tyres |
| D．Old tyres can become environmentally friendly materials |
2 . Super Typhoon Rai (known as “Odette” in the Philippines) made landfall on Siargao Island in southeastern Philippines at 1:30 pm local time on Thursday, December 16. The typhoon was the 15th storm to hit the country in 2021 and was the strongest storm of 2021. Almost 16 million Filipinos were facing threats including strong winds, heavy rains, flooding, landslides, displacement and risking loss of life, home, livelihood and agriculture. Around 700,000 of them were children.
UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund) expressed deep concern for children and families at risk and announced its commitment to providing support to the Philippine government. Reyn Ambag was one of the children who were rescued during the typhoon.
12-year-old Reyn Ambag is a grade 7 student living on the island of Siargao. He goes to school in San Isidro National High School which is located in the Municipality of San Isidro. With Values Education as his favorite subject in school, Reyn is always ready to help others.
Reyn is raised by his mother who is a single parent and runs a retail store alone. Aside from his mother, his cousin has also been living with them to help out in the absence of Reyn’s father. Reyn’s mother provides for all three of them. She is able to support their daily needs and Reyn’s schooling by the income she gets from the small retail store.
During Typhoon Odette, Reyn’s family stayed inside the comfort room of the school where they were evacuated (疏散) to. There, he witnessed through the window how the strong winds of the typhoon destroyed the area. They stayed there until the storm subsided and it was safe for them to go out. Upon returning to their home, they were astonished to find that their house was damaged due to the fallen trees.
After observing the delays in restoring the electricity in their community, Reyn wanted to pursue a related job in the future. “I want to be an electrician someday so that if a power cut would happen because of a typhoon, I would be able to help in restoring it for free,” said Reyn.
1. What is the first paragraph mainly about?| A．Different types of natural disasters. |
| B．The introduction of a typhoon and its threats. |
| C．Historical data of the strongest typhoons. |
| D．The government’s reaction to Super Typhoon Rai. |
| A．His father. | B．His cousin. | C．His family store. | D．His part-time job. |
| A．Broke into. | B．Fell apart. | C．Went over. | D．Died down. |
| A．To make money to support his family. |
| B．To reward the community with his work. |
| C．To restore power in time after typhoons. |
| D．To meet his mother’s expectations of him. |
Aubrey, a mom of three, was breastfeeding her 10-month-old daughter in her Maui home last week when alarms started going off and she saw her entire neighborhood was covered in black smoke.
Aubrey and her husband Alex rushed out of the home and into their car, escaping with their 10-month-old daughter as well as their 6-year-old twin daughters. They didn’t take any necessities. In fact, they had never thought the wildfires would ever get to where they lived. After all, they were very far.
While Aubrey and her family eventually made it to safety, a relative’s home, they later learned their own home was burned to the ground.
They were left with no possessions, so Alex had to go to the neighborhood surrounding his relative’s home searching for supplies for his baby daughter Blue. He went door-to-door, asking if anyone had a baby and if there was a bottle or a diaper (尿布) and some extra milk.
One neighbor just had a baby so he gave Alex two bottles. And some neighbors gave Alex two diapers and some gave her three. Alex later said. “They were holding onto their own diapers too, which I understand.”
The disaster turned into a crisis for countless parents like Aubrey and Alex, who had to escape quickly and now needed basic supplies to keep their children alive and safe.
The wildfires claimed the lives of over 100 people, while many more remained missing. Officials on Maui warned that their supplies were running out.
Aubrey and Alex decided to travel to another island, Oahu, where they could stay in the home of Alex’s brother’s. There, they had more access to supplies like diapers and milk. Then they managed to contact with volunteers and left in a lifeboat for Oahu. Thinking those helpless people, they cried in pain.
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Now on Maui, situations were becoming worse.
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Together with other volunteers, Alex and his brother collected large quantities of supplies on Oahu.
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1.海洋的重要性；
2.保护海洋的倡议；
注意：1.写作词数应为100词左右；
2.短文题目和首句已为你写好。
Our Oceans, Our Responsibility
June 8th was officially named by the UN in 2009 as World Oceans Day.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Yours,
Li Hua
5 . New research links outdoor air pollution — even at levels considered safe — to an increased risk of diabetes (糖尿病) globally, according to a study from the VA St. Louis Health Care System. The findings raise the possibility that reducing pollution may lead to a drop in diabetes cases in heavily polluted countries such as India and less polluted ones such as the United States.
Diabetes is one of the fastest growing diseases, affecting more than 500 million people worldwide. The main drivers of diabetes include eating an unhealthy diet, having a sedentary lifestyle and obesity, but the new research indicates the extent to which outdoor air pollution plays a role.
“Our research shows a significant link between air pollution and diabetes globally,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. “We found an increased risk, even at low levels of air pollution currently considered safe by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO). This is important because many industry lobbying (游说) groups argue that current levels are too stringent and should be relaxed. Evidence shows that current levels are still not sufficiently safe and need to be tightened.”
While growing evidence has suggested a link between air pollution and diabetes, researchers have not attempted to quantify that burden until now. “Over the past two decades, there have been bits of research about diabetes and pollution,” said Al-Aly. “We wanted to thread together the pieces for a broader, more solid understanding.”
The researchers also found that the overall risk of pollution-related diabetes tilted (倾斜) more toward lower-income countries such as India that lack the resources for environmental mitigation systems and clean-air policies. For instance, poverty-stricken countries facing a higher diabetes-pollution risk include Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea and Guyana, while richer countries such as France, Finland and Iceland experience a lower risk. The US experiences a medium risk of pollution-related diabetes.
1. What does the underlined word “stringent” in paragraph 3 mean?| A．Strict. | B．Slight. |
| C．Bright. | D．Ordinary. |
| A．To identify the causes of diabetes. |
| B．To make better air pollution control policies. |
| C．To lead the study of diabetes and air pollution. |
| D．To figure out the link between pollution and diabetes. |
| A．India. | B．Finland. |
| C．The US. | D．Guyana. |
| A．Current pollution control levels need to be tightened |
| B．Diabetes is one of the fastest growing diseases globally |
| C．Air pollution contributes significantly to diabetes globally |
| D．Poverty-stricken countries face a higher diabetes-pollution risk |
6 . Every year the start of the Atlantic hurricane season is another reminder for Margarite August that she still doesn’t have a roof.
The 70-year-old retired teacher’s home on the small Caribbean island nation of Dominica was mostly wiped out by hurricane Maria six years ago.
Six years after hurricane Maria, Dominicans like Margarite August still haven’t been able to rehabilitate their homes.
August is not alone. Since Maria, the government of Dominica has built 7,000 new homes—about a quarter of its housing stock-with materials to fight another Category 5 hurricane. They’ve also relocated two communities. But an untold number of the island’s 70,000 or so residents are like August, rebuilding their homes in any way they can afford.
Hurricane Maria is often referred to as a once-in-a-lifetime disaster. Scientists put much of the blame on warming ocean temperatures that could make frequent (频繁的) storms like it.
Maria damaged a terrible 95% of Dominica’s housing stock and 226% of the nation’s GDP. Before the storm, the country’s economy had long struggled since its independence from Great Britain in 1978. Unlike its more famous touristy neighbors along the chain of eastern Caribbean islands it lies on, Dominica is more known for its rugged mountains and jungles (丛林) than white sandy beaches.
The jungle mountains that crash down to the coast are beautiful but disasters visit easily. “I don’t think anybody ever got over Maria,” says Christine John of the Dominica Red Cross. “There are a lot of persons today—if it just starts to rain outside, they get anxious.”
1. What does the underlined word “rehabilitate” in paragraph 3 mean?| A．Rebuild. | B．Leave. | C．Decorate. | D．Buy. |
| A．Over-farming. | B．Loss of the land. |
| C．The disappearance of the forests. | D．Climate change. |
| A．Its good economy. | B．Its architecture. |
| C．Its mountains and jungles. | D．Its sandy beaches. |
| A．They have to stay bored at home. | B．Their houses are easy to take in water. |
| C．They don’t know how to make umbrellas. | D．They are afraid of another disaster like Maria. |
7 . Raising livestock (牲畜) is a big part of the carbon emission from agriculture. But it is hard to change people’s habits and get them to give up their hamburgers, especially since more than one-third of Americans eat fast food every day. We previously called for carbon labels on everything from buildings to burgers. Now, a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that labels on fast food affected people’s choices.
The study said shifting current dietary patterns to more sustainable diets with less red meat could reduce food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 55% and have health benefits.
The 5,000 participants in the study were shown fake menus. One group got menus with high climate impact labels on red meat items and another had low climate impact labels on fish or plant-based burgers. Both menus were effective in reducing the orders for red meat. But interestingly, the high-impact labels were far more effective, with 23% of the participants choosing a more environmentally sustainable selection, while menus listing low-impact choices encouraged only 10% participants to change.
“We found that labeling red meat items with high-climate impact labels was more effective in increasing sustainable selections than labeling non-red meat items with low-climate impact labels,” wrote the authors of the study.
Lead author, Julia Wolfson, said, “These results suggest that menu labeling, particularly labels warning that an item has high climate impact, can be an effective strategy for encouraging more sustainable food choices in a fast food setting.”
The study points out negative labels might be unpopular: “It is unlikely that the industry would voluntarily adopt a negative label approach; such an approach needs to be carried out via law. However, high climate impact labels may easily be adopted in settings like universities and hospitals.”
They have a point that this label is aggressively negative, more like a cigarette warning than a food label. In the study, the authors note that future research should test more label designs using qualitative and quantitative research on how people understand different climate impact labels.
1. What is paragraph 1 mainly about?| A．The background of the new study. |
| B．The influence of the carbon emission. |
| C．The request of giving up carbon labels. |
| D．The difficulty in changing people’s habits. |
| A．They liked them very much. |
| B．They stuck to their preferences. |
| C．Some of them stopped eating fast food. |
| D．Some of them changed their food choices. |
| A．It will be banned by law. | B．It will produce bad results. |
| C．It will face some resistance. | D．It will be accepted by all industries. |
| A．Fast food has a negative effect on climate. |
| B．Raising livestock surely causes carbon emission. |
| C．Researchers care too much about climate impact. |
| D．Labels on fast food can help protect the environment. |
8 . Endangered polar bears are breeding with grizzly bears, creating “pizzly” bears, which is being driven by climate change, scientists say.
As the world warms and Arctic sea ice thins, starving polar bears are being forced ever further south, where they meet grizzlies, whose ranges are expanding northwards. And with that growing contact between the two come increasing hybrids (杂交种), “pizzly” bears.
With features that could give the hybrids an advantage in warming northern habitats, some scientists guess that they could be here to stay. “Usually, the hybrids,“pizzly” bears aren’t better suited to their environments than their parents, but these hybrids are able to search for a wider range of food sources, ” Larisa DeSantis, an associate professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University, told Live Science.
The rise of “pizzly” bears appears with polar bears’ decrease: their number is estimated to go down by more than 30% in the next 30 years. This sudden fall is related partly to “pizzly” bears taking up polar bears’ ranges, but also to polar bears’ highly specialized diets.
“Polar bears mainly consumed soft foods even during the Medieval Warm Period, a previous period of rapid warming,” DeSantis said, referring to fat meals such as seals. “Although all of these starving polar bears are trying to find alternative food sources like seabird eggs.” Actually, the calories they gain from these sources do not balance out(抵消) those they burn from searching for them. This could result in a habitat ready for the hybrids to move in and take over, leading to a loss in biodiversity if polar bears are replaced.
“We’re having massive impacts with climate change on species,” DeSantis said. “The polar bear is telling us how bad things are. In some sense, “pizzly” bears could be a sad but necessary compromise(妥协) given current warming trends.”
1. Why do polar bears move further south?| A．To create hybrids. | B．To expand territory. |
| C．To deal with hunger. | D．To contact grizzlies. |
| A．Wider habitats. | B．More food choices. |
| C．Climate preference. | D．Improved breeding ability. |
| A．Polar bears are increasing. | B．Polar bears like soft foods. |
| C．Polar bears hate fat meals such as seals. | D．Climate change can benefit polar bears. |
| A．Polar bears are changing diets for climate change. |
| B．Polar bears have already adjusted to climate change. |
| C．“Pizzly” bears are on the rise because of global warming. |
| D．“Pizzly” bears have replaced polar bears for global warming. |
9 . Dandelion (蒲公英) seeds are some of the best flyers in nature, catching the wind and spreading as far as 100 kilometers. Each dandelion seed is tied by a thin tube to around 100 hairs, which form the parachute-like (类似降落伞的) structure. When seeds break free from the flower head, these hairs catch the wind and carry their seeds. This hairy parachute closes when the air is humid (潮湿的), which often means the wind is weak. In drier and windier conditions, dandelions widen their parachutes to better catch the wind so the seeds can fly freely.
However, in the past, nobody knew how they sense and respond to their environment so effectively.
Now researchers have uncovered the secret “thinking” behind dandelions’ spreading seeds. Their work, published in Nature Communications, found the seed-carrying parachutes open and close using something like actuators — devices that change signals into movement — without using active input of energy. The center of the parachutes senses the humidity of their immediate environment by absorbing water molecules (分子) from the air. Responding to these humidity signals, they either open their parachutes and fly away, or close their parachutes and stay put.
Study author Dr. Naomi Nakayama of the Department of Bioengineering who led the work said that their findings reveal how the dandelion ensures the survival of its species by making perhaps the most important decision in a plant’s life — to stay or go to seek a better habitat.
“Understanding how dandelions work is fascinating because the dandelion is the foundation of ecosystems. It feeds insects and birds,” Nakayama says. “So, the environmental sensitivity of their flight is an important topic for us to understand how nature will change in future climates.”
1. What can be learned from paragraph 1?| A．Dandelion seeds have a tube-like design. |
| B．A dandelion flower consists of 100 hairs. |
| C．Dandelion seeds begin to grow in dry weather. |
| D．The dandelion parachute closes on wet mornings. |
| A．Its hairs catch the wind easily. |
| B．Its actuator needs extra energy to function. |
| C．The middle of its parachute measures humidity. |
| D．The shape of its actuator was changed by the wind. |
| A．To feed more insects and birds. | B．To better learn about climate change. |
| C．To change dandelions’ living environment. | D．To further explain their role in ecosystems. |
| A．Why dandelion seeds “prefer” the wind. |
| B．How dandelions “tell” us their destinations. |
| C．How dandelions “decide” to spread their seeds. |
| D．Why dandelion seeds “create” parachute-like structures. |
1. What is the conversation mainly about?
| A．Fighting fires. | B．Detecting fires. | C．Using fires. |
| A．Around 50. | B．About 400. | C．Over 8600. |
| A．Size of a car. | B．Size of a plane. | C．Size of a sports field. |
| A．Saving animals. | B．Saving the trees. | C．Saving humans. |
