1 . 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 |
2 . 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. |
3 . 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. |
4 . 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. |
Located in Ordos, North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Kubuqi Desert (库布齐沙漠) is the closest desert to China’s capital Beijing. It was once known as the “sea of death”. However, in the past 30 years, the government, social organizations and local farmers
Historically, Kubuqi was a rich city filled with water and grass. But due
The 102,000 residents in the desert have enjoyed the benefits of managing with desertification. Meng Keda,
6 . Off the coast of Formentera, an island, lives seagrass that stretches 15 kilometres. The seagrass, covering several hectares, is made up of a single organism. The grass is also long-lived, for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Along with two other kinds of coastal ecosystems — mangrove swamps (红树沼泽) and tidal marshes, seagrass meadows are particularly good at taking carbon dioxide from the air.
This role was highlighted in a report, which was published on March 2nd by UNESCO, on blue carbon — the carbon taken in by Earth’s oceanic and coastal ecosystems. In total around 33 billion tons of carbon dioxide, about three quarters of the world’s emissions in 2019, are locked away in the planet’s blue carbon sinks. Research by Carlos Duarte, the report’s author and a marine (海洋的) ecologist, has shown that one hectare of seagrass can take in as much carbon dioxide each year as 15 hectares of rainforest.
One reason that blue-carbon ecosystems make such effective sinks is that underwater forests are thicker than the land-based woods. They can also trap (收集) floating pieces and organic matter, which settles on the sea floor and can double the amount of carbon stored away. They have another advantage, too. Climate change is leading to more wildfires around the world. As forests burn, their carbon stocks are released back into the atmosphere. Unlike forests on land, blue-carbon ecosystems do not burn.
Blue-carbon ecosystems may not be fired, but they remain affected to other sorts of disasters. In May 2020 hurricane Amphan destroyed 1,200 square kilometres of mangrove forest. A marine heatwave in Australian waters in 2010 and 2011 damaged around one third of the world’s largest seagrass meadow in Shark Bay. “Mangrove forests can weaken or control waves and provide natural barriers to storm surges. Protecting and expanding them, then, appears to be a must,” said a marine biologist.
1. What does the second paragraph mainly talk about?A.The detailed explanation of blue carbon. |
B.The special features of the seagrass. |
C.The doubt about the blue-carbon ecosystems. |
D.The capacity of the blue-carbon ecosystems to store carbon. |
A.There are more underwater animals. |
B.Their carbon stocks are released back. |
C.They have great ability to absorb carbon. |
D.They aren’t influenced by natural disasters |
A.Humans should preserve blue-carbon ecosystens. |
B.Mangrove forests can strengthen waves. |
C.Mangrove forests are too strong to be broken. |
D.Blue-carbon ecosystems can be fired. |
A.Blue-Carbon Ecosystem Are Expanding Much Faster |
B.The Grasses Can Store More Carbon Than Your Expectation |
C.Mangrove Forests Can Control Waves Efficiently |
D.Plants in the Ocean Are Better at Storing Carbon |
7 . Are you sure you know how to protect the environment? Many of us believe that we lead lives that respect nature but our consumption habits give us away.
Eating too much meat and fruit
These foods are essential for our diet, although they are not very healthy for the natural environment. In a 2018 report, Greenpeace warned that 14.5% of all greenhouse gas (GHG ) emissions come from industrial stock farming. The meat industry, for example, negatively affects land use as between 75 and 80% of the world’s agricultural land is used for stock breeding. But if the same land was used for growing vegetables, there could be food for 4 billion people more.
Using paper bags
We think that because they are made of paper they are not as harmful as the plastic bags that we use around the world, according to the UN.
Drinking bottled water
Plastic bottles are a clear example of environmental pollution.
A.Many little practices that seem to be sustainable are in fact polluting |
B.According to Greenpeace, they take about 500 years to break down |
C.What’s more, you can be a responsible fruit consumer by choosing seasonal varieties |
D.A good replacement for them are long-lasting, washable and reusable cotton ones |
E.There is only one Earth and everything that we do for it counts, and you can eat less by controlling yourself |
F.But the reality is very different: they are rarely reused and tend to end up in the organic waste bin |
G.By reducing bottled water consumption we save more than 600 million euros every year |
Thailand’s long-lasting image of a nation
In order to preserve Thailand’s natural wonders, the nation is considering a plan to cut the waste
9 . Coral reefs (礁) are filled with a diverse range of marine lives. Some fish are more beautiful to humans than others, and their outward appearance could be influencing how we decide which species to protect. The fish humans find the ugliest are the most ecologically and evolutionarily (进化上) distinct. But perhaps more importantly, the uglier species are also more likely to be threatened, according to a new paper published in the journal PLOS Biology.
Researchers showed 481 photographs of ray-finned reef fishes to 13,000 members of the public. With that data, they then trained a computer model to generate subsequent (紧随其后的) predictions for an additional 4,400 photographs of 2,417 of the most common reef fish species. They next compared the aesthetic (审美的) rating of each species with other characteristics, including evolutionary history, distinctiveness from other fish, conservation position and importance to fisheries.
After analyzing the numbers, researchers found that the fish humans rated as the most beautiful tended to be less ecologically and evolutionarily distinct. Prettier fish were also more likely to be listed as species of “least concern” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.
On the contrary, the fish that humans found to be the least attractive were the most ecologically and evolutionarily distinct, and they were more likely to be listed as “threatened” on the IUCN Red List. Unattractive species also tended to be more important to money-focused fisheries, which puts them at higher risk of overfishing.
When conservation funding and energy is limited, uglier fish are likely to be overshadowed by more beautiful fish. It’s not surprising that humans are easily attracted by beautiful wildlife, but the findings point to important mismatches between potential public support for conservation and the species most in need of this support.
“To minimize the impact of aesthetic biases (偏见), scientists, conservation groups and policymakers may need to change how they communicate about wildlife,” the researchers write in the paper. “Making people more aware of the roles uglier fish play in reef ecosystems could help them gain more support. In other words, never judge a fish by its look.”
1. What is the second paragraph mainly about?A.The focus of the study. | B.The process of the study. |
C.The purpose of the study. | D.The background of the study |
A.They are much easier to hunt. | B.They are financially valuable. |
C.They are ecologically distinct. | D.They are rare and look special. |
A.Building natural reserves worldwide for uglier fish. |
B.Attempting to raise people’s environmental awareness. |
C.Enriching the understanding of uglier fish’s appearance. |
D.Educating people on uglier fish’s ecological importance. |
A.Ugly fish need love, too | B.Ugly fish matter, actually |
C.Reef ecosystems need care | D.Coral reefs rely on various fish |
10 . The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report. It stated that the world is quickly running out of time to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the level widely agreed to be the conservative, safety-first goal to prevent serious climate harm. To get there, the world would have to cut current emissions (排放物) by 45 percent by 2030. That sounds absurdly unlikely.
But before we give in to despair, we should remember that the technology to address climate change is going along at high speed. The largest source of US carbon emissions is transportation, and a Green New Deal program for motor vehicles would be quite straightforward.
The reason is simple: With some subsidies (补贴), electric cars and buses are cost- competitive with fossil-fuel vehicles. Electric buses have gone into the market at the greatest speed, because they are a logical choice for electrification. At the end of 2018, electric vehicles were displacing about 280,000 barrels of oil demand per day. That’s more than the whole consumption of Greece.
And the electric car market is also reaching maturity, with appealing designs, longer range, and a quickly-expanding rapid charging network in many countries. It’s worth emphasizing that most of the basic systems necessary to recharge electric vehicles already exist. People often tend to assume that we would need to replace every gas station, but virtually all homes and businesses already have an electrical connection which can be easily improved for fast charging. All that is needed to go fully electric is enough battery capacity and fast charging stations to deal with long trips.
Now America would have to repair its electricity production, rails, shipping, and so on to fully decarbonize (脱碳) the transportation sector. It will be considerably more difficult than simply rooting out fossil fuel vehicles from the market.
But greening America’s vehicles would be straightforward, relatively cheap, and a huge step forward on climate. The politics of climate change are so fearful that despair can seem logical, but the first step in achieving a tough goal is the firm belief that it can be done. And this particular step wouldn’t even be that tough.
1. What can we infer from the IPCC’s report?A.The world is suffering serious climate harm. |
B.Global warming is growing out of our control. |
C.We are too conservative to deal with global warming. |
D.Cutting emissions is the easiest way to stop climate change. |
A.By running at the greatest speed. |
B.By changing the way of transportation. |
C.By making consumers have logical choices. |
D.By getting financial support from governments. |
A.They aren’t so efficient in reducing emissions. |
B.There’s still much room for designing new ones. |
C.There aren’t enough fast charging stations for them. |
D.Home electrical connection can be used for charging them. |
A.Doubtful. | B.Critical. | C.Positive. | D.Uncaring. |