1 . 阅读下面短文,在空白处填入一个适当的词或使用括号中词语的正确形式填空。

With the tourism    1    (develop), people are becoming increasingly concerned    2    the environment. Here in our city, there is a heated discussion about whether a hotel should    3    (build) at White Beach. The owner of the company thinks the hotel would attract more tourists,     4    will help the local economy.    5    , the local people worry that constructing the hotel is not eco-friendly,     6    (particular) the turtles. Admitting the various    7    (benefit) from the hotel, they still have many concerns about the surroundings     8     they have been living for many years. It is    9    unavoidable problem that increased tourist numbers will consume more natural resources, at the same time, more waste and pollution    10    ( release).

2 . As awareness of climate change grows, so does the desire to do something about it. But the scale of the problems it causes—from wildfires to melting glaciers to droughts—can seem utterly overwhelming. It can be hard to make a connection between our everyday lives and the survival of polar bears, let alone how we as individuals can help turn the situation around.

One way to gain a quantifiable understanding of the impacts of our actions, for good and bad, is through what is known as a carbon footprint. But while the concept is gaining traction, it is not always fully understood. According to Mike Berners-Lee, a professor at Lancaster University in the UK and author of The Carbon Footprint of Everything, it is “the sum total of all the greenhouse gas emissions that had to take place in order for a product to be produced or for an activity to take place.”

What steps a person can take to reduce their personal footprint the most of course depends on the kind of lifestyle they presently live, and the same actions are not equally effective for everyone. Berners-Lee notes that, “for some people, flying may be 10 percent of their footprint, for some people it’s zero, and for some it’s such a huge number that it should be the only thing they should be thinking about.”

It isn’t easy to calculate a carbon footprint and it has been claimed that the earliest such calculator appeared in 2004 as part of the “Beyond Petroleum” campaign of oil giant BP—a fact that causes some observers to criticize the pressure to reduce personal carbon footprints as a “sham” to “promote the slant that climate change is not the fault of an oil giant, but that of individuals.”

“I would say personal carbon footprint calculators are a useful tool to assess the impact of your immediate actions.” Berners-Lee says. “But what’s much more important than your personal carbon footprint is your climate shadow, which aims to paint a picture of the full sum of one’s choices and the impact they have on the planet. For example, how you vote, where you work, how you invest your money, and how much you talk about climate change.

1. What does the underlined word “traction” in paragraph 2 probably mean?

A．attention

B．insight

C．control

D．power

2. How does Berners-Lee explain his opinion according to paragraph 3?

A．By presenting a fact	B．By making a comparison
C．By clarifying a concept	D．By giving suggestions

3. What is the observers’ attitude to the “Beyond Petroleum” campaign of oil giant BP?

A．unclear

B．favorable

C．indifferent

D．disapproving

4. What can we infer from the last paragraph?

A．Tools are more important than choices.	B．Only individuals are responsible for climate change.
C．Climate shadow covers a broad range of actions.	D．Calculating carbon footprint is the most effective.

4 . People have come to understand the enormous impacts-beneficial as well as harmful- plastics have on human lives and the environment. As polymer (聚合物) scientists committed to inventing sustainable solutions for real-world problems, we set out to tackle the issue of plastic waste by rethinking the way polymers are designed so we could make plastics with recyclability built right in.

Everyday items including milk jug, grocery bags, and takeout containers are made from a class of polymers called polyolefins. These plastics are really durable (耐用的) because the chemical bonds in those polymers are extremely stable. In a world set up for disposable (一次性的) items, durability is no longer a design feature but rather a design drawback. Imagine if half the plastics used today were recyclable through twice as many processes as they are now. Also conventional recycling requires careful sorting of all the collected materials, which can be challenging with so many different plastics. For example, separating paper from metal doesn’t require complex technology, but sorting a container from a milk jug of a different polyolefin is difficult to do without the occasional mistake.

In a study published in Science in October 2023, we described a series of polymers with only two building blocks-one soft polymer and one hard polymer-that behave like polyolefins but could be chemically recycled. Connecting two different polymers multiple times until they form a single, long molecule (分子) creates what’s called a multiblock polymer. By changing how much of each polymer type goes into the multiblock polymer, our team produced a wide range of materials with properties that covered all polyolefin types.

Using the same strategy but by adding hydrogen, we could disconnect the polymers back into their building blocks and easily separate them to use again. When we made new polymers out of these recycled plastics, they performed just as well as the original materials even after several rounds of chemical recycling. So we were able to create materials with similar properties of the plastics the world relies on. We believe this work is a step toward more sustainable plastics.

1. What is paragraph 2 mainly about concerning plastics?

A．Their multiple uses.	B．Their chemical properties.
C．Their recycling challenges.	D．Their classification criteria.

2. A key factor of producing diverse multiblock polymers is ______.

A．mixing building blocks with long molecules

B．integrating chemicals into the two polymers

C．combining two different multiblock polymers

D．adjusting the percentage of the two polymers

3. Which is a feature of multiblock polymers?

A．They are made from sustainable materials.

B．They can be recycled by adding hydrogen.

C．Their reliability outperforms traditional plastics.

D．Their properties change with rounds of recycling.

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

A．Designing for Recycling	B．Classifying Plastic Waste
C．Replace Plastics with Polymers	D．Technology Creates the Future

5 . After taking a few steps back, Hadj Benhalima rushed toward the building, pushed himself upward with his foot against the wall and stretched out his arm. At the peak of his jump, he flipped off a light switch, and the bright lights of a nearby barbershop went off immediately.

This is what Hadj and his friends have been doing for the past two years: swinging around Paris and switching off wasteful shop signs at night, in an effort to fight against light pollution and save energy. And they are all enthusiastic about Parkour — a sport that consists of running and jumping over urban obstacles.

While climbing other people’s property to turn off their lights may strike some as a form of trespassing (非法入侵), the Parkour athletes insist their activities are only about enforcing seldom-respected rules.

More than a decade ago, Paris City Hall issued orders requiring stores to turn off all signs and window displays from 1 am to 6 am, but they are widely ignored with little consequence. “for 10 years there has been no follow-up, no control, no punishment,” said Anne-Marie Ducroux, the head of the National Association for the Protection of the Sky and the Night Environment.

That is why Hadj and his friends have taken matters into their own hands. The group often gathers in the so-called Golden Triangle neighborhood, in western Paris, which is the center of French luxury.

Enforcing the orders in place of the authorities certainly enters a legal grey area. But the Parkour athletes say all the police officers they have met during their rounds have allowed their action — as long as it causes no damage.

And it seems that their efforts have produced the desired result, because Hadj says he has noticed that in recent months, several shops have stopped leaving their lights on after his group targeted them. He hopes others will follow suit. “At least, I’ll sleep better,” he said.

1. What are Hadj Benhalima and his friends trying to do at night?

A．To practice their Parkour skills.

B．To remove possible urban obstacles.

C．To turn off unnecessary store lights.

D．To ensure the safety of their neighborhood.

2. What can we learn about the rules set by the government?

A．They are too strict to follow.

B．They have achieved the desired effect.

C．They put great pressure on stores.

D．They are not carried out effectively.

3. What is the government’s attitude towards the Parkour athletes’ act?

A．Worried.

B．Supportive.

C．Doubtful.

D．Unconcerned.

4. What does the text mainly talk about?

A．Why Parkour is so popular among young people in Paris.

B．Why it is difficult to fight against light pollution in Paris.

C．How the lighting of shop signs affects the night view of Paris.

D．How young people in Paris help save energy through Parkour.

6 . Researchers in Australia have identified enzymes (酶) in the body of certain beetle larvae (甲虫幼虫) that can degrade or break down plastic. In a study published in Microbial Genomics, they write that these “superworms” could help reduce plastic waste in the future.

“Superworms are like mini recycling plants, cutting up the polysyrene (聚苯乙烯) with their mouths and then feeding it to the bacteria in their stomach,” said Chris Rinke from the University of Queensland in Australia. “The breakdown products from this reaction can then be used by other microbes to create high-value chemicals.”

In the study, scientists divided beetle larvae into three groups, feeding one group wheat bran, one polystyrene and one nothing. Over three weeks, they monitored their growth. “We found that superworms fed a diet of just polystyrene not only survived, but even had marginal weight gains,” said Rinke. “This suggests the worms can get energy from the polystyrene, most likely with the help of their stomach bacteria.”

On the other hand, the plastic-fed worms gained much less weight and were overall much less healthy than the bran-fed ones, though better off than the starvation group. After three weeks, some larvae were also set aside to grow into beetles, according to the study. About 93% of the bran-fed larvae formed adult worms, while about 67% of the plastic-fed larvae and 10% of the starved larvae formed adult worms.

The researchers investigated the superworm’s stomach bacteria to find the specific enzymes linked to plastic degradation, writes Fionna M. D. Samuels for Scientific American. The enzyme that degrades the polystyrene appears to live with the stomach bacteria, not the worm itself.

Polystyrene is one of the most common plastics used today. But it’s not very chemically reactive, and breaking it down with industrial recycling methods takes high heat. So, researchers have been looking for plastic-degrading enzymes and bacteria for years.

Further research will still need to be done to figure out how to employ these worms, bacteria and enzymes in recycling facilities.

1. What does Chris Rinke compare superworms to?

A．Small plants.

B．Beetle larvae.

C．Stomach bacteria.

D．High-value chemicals.

2. What does the underlined word “marginal” mean in Paragraph 3?

A．Few.

B．Tiny.

C．Obvious.

D．Normal.

3. What is the sixth paragraph intended to show?

A．The damage of plastic to life.

B．Possible causes of plastic pollution.

C．Researchers’ efforts over the years to recycle plastic.

D．The necessity of finding out a way to degrade plastic.

4. What is the purpose of the text?

A．To report a new way to recycle plastic.	B．To call on people to reduce plastic waste.
C．To explain how larvae can degrade plastic.	D．To introduce the findings of a new research.

10 . For years, scientists have debated whether humans or the climate have caused the population of large mammals to decline dramatically over the past several thousand years. A new study from Aarhus University confirms that climate cannot be the explanation.

About 100,000 years ago, the first modern humans migrated out of Africa in large numbers. They were very good at adapting to new habitats, and they settled in almost every kind of landscape — from deserts to jungles to the icy taiga in the far north.

Part of the success was human’s ability to hunt large animals. With clever hunting techniques and specially built weapons, they perfected the art of killing even the most dangerous mammals.

But unfortunately, the great success of our ancestors came at the expense of the other large mammals.

It is well-known that numerous large species went extinct during the time of worldwide colonization by modern humans. Now, new research from Aarhus University reveals that those large mammals that survived also experienced a dramatic decline.

By studying the DNA of 139 living species of large mammals, scientists have been able to show that the abundances of almost all species fell dramatically about 50,000 years ago. This is according to Jens-Christian Svenning, a professor and head of the Danish National Research Foundation’s Center for Ecological Dynamics in a Novel Biosphere (ECONOVO) at Aarhus University and the initiator of the study.

“We’ve studied the evolution of large mammalian populations over the past 750,000 years. For the first 700,000 years, the populations were fairly stable. But 50,000 years ago, the populations fell dramatically and never recovered,” he says, and continues: “For the past 800,000 years, the globe has fluctuated (波动) between ice ages and interglacial periods about every 100,000 years. If the climate was the cause, we should see greater fluctuations when the climate changed 50,000 years earlier.But we don’t. Humans are, therefore, the most likely explanation.”

1. What do the underlined words “the success” mean in Paragraph 3?

A．The evolution of large mammals.

B．The prosperity of various habitats.

C．The achievement of human migration.

D．The progress in hunting techniques.

2. According to Svenning, what happened 50,000 years ago?

A．Populations of large mammals significantly dropped.

B．Living conditions of large mammals remained stable.

C．Global climate dramatically changed.

D．A large number of glaciers suddenly melt.

3. What’s used as a clue of the research according to the last two paragraphs?

A．Species.

B．Place.

C．Time.

D．Climate.

4. Which can be a suitable title for the text?

A．Climate Impact on Animals

B．Changes of Prehistoric Environment

C．Evolution of Large Mammal Populations

D．Human Influence on Giant Mammals