1. Why does the woman plan to wear a mask tomorrow?
| A．Because of the smog. |
| B．Because of her illness. |
| C．Because of the cold weather. |
| A．The heavy traffic. |
| B．The air pollution. |
| C．The large population. |
| A．Change their ways to go to work. |
| B．Ask the government to do something. |
| C．Call on people to protect the environment. |
| A．He always uses the public transport. |
| B．He seldom listens to the weather report. |
| C．He is waiting for the weather to improve soon. |
2 . The world is going through a basic transformation,which is changing the way we live, work and think. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is bringing dramatic change and giving rise to a future filled with exciting opportunities and new challenges. Together, governments and businesses must find solutions to society's most pressing needs—from creating a carbon-free economy to tackling population growth and urbanization.
In any period of rapid change there is a trend to look for a simple method,to greet the new things and replace the old way of doing things. But a closer look at the facts tells a different story. Complex problems require many solutions working in harmony to enable positive change.
The challenge for scientists and engineers is to provide solutions in fact, data and today's realities. And while technologies offer new tools to help uncover solutions, the process also requires hard work, imagination and lots of improvement.
Success rests on performing practical, realistic, long- term solutions that make the world cleaner, safer and more sustainable(可持续的).
The environment is a case in point. Much of the public debate has centered on the central role of renewable power sources in realizing a low-carbon energy future. While the industry is fully behind developing renewables, today we understand that a low or zero-carbon future depends on adopting a multifaceted approach.
We cannot control sunshine levels or decide when the wind blows, which means solar power and wind power generators will produce too much or too little energy at times. The transition to renewables needs to take account of serious considerations.
Batteries have been much discussed as a means of storing extra energy, but there are other choices. Power-to- X technologies enable spare energy created by renewables to be stored and redistributed when and where it is needed.
1. Which of the following best explains the underlined word“tackling" in Paragraph 1?| A．Caring about. | B．Dealing with. |
| C．Going through. | D．Suffering from. |
| A．Offer new tools to help uncover solutions. |
| B．Look for a simple method to face the future. |
| C．Find out ways to solve the problem. |
| D．Realize a low-carbon energy future. |
| A．Powerful. |
| B．Safe. |
| C．Clean. |
| D．Unsteady. |
| A．They can adjust power supply. |
| B．They take the place of batteries. |
| C．They help make more electricity. |
| D．They can create power from wind and sun. |
3 . Nashville-based helicopter pilot Joel Boyers had just finished his job on Saturday morning and was heading home when he received a call for help from a woman in Pennsylvania. Her brother Johnson’s home in Waverly, Tennessee, was underwater and he was trapped on a roof with his daughters. Could Boyers help?“I thought how I would feel if I told her I was not even going to try?” he said in a Thursday interview. “She just so happened to call the right person, because I’m the only person crazy enough to even try to do that.”
The weather was terrible and Boyers had to deal with hills and power lines on the way to Waverly, a small city about 60 miles west of Nashville. Just before reaching the town, he found the Internet was down, making it impossible to locate the house he was looking for. He flew on anyway.
“When I arrived, it was nothing but raging water below me,” he said. A few people were out in boats, rescuing the trapped. Boyers was alone in the sky. He started flying up and down the flooded area, grabbing anyone he could.
Boyers said he ended up rescuing 17 people that day. He was proud of that, but said he was the one who should be thanking them. “I literally prayed just days before this that I would be given some meaning in my life, and then I end up getting this call,” he said. He had flown over disasters before including floods, but “The police are usually there, and my hands are tied. This time there isn’t any,” he said.
To perform the rescues, Boyers had to carefully avoid power lines, balance his skids (打滑) on sloped rooftops, and fly over flood waters. It took all the skills learned over 16 years of flying, including for a television news station, for documentaries and for country music stars. “I don’t want to lie,” he said. “It was almost a little fun for me.”
1. Why did Boyers fly to Waverly？| A．Because he had to do his routine tasks. |
| B．Because his brother was caught in the flood. |
| C．Because he was going to have an interview. |
| D．Because he received an emergency call. |
| A．A long distance. | B．The Internet failure. |
| C．High mountains. | D．Fallen power lines. |
| A．Caring and courageous. | B．Ambitious and demanding. |
| C．Modest and creative. | D．Humorous and cooperative. |
| A．Surviving a Crisis | B．Performing a Task |
| C．Braving a Flood | D．Testing Flight Skills |
As that heat rises, some of it is
Several gases in the atmosphere
Now a group of students at Glen Hills Middle School in Glendale, Wisconsin, are working to reduce their ecological footprint.
Glen Hills is
Due to the pandemic (疫情), the Green Team now conducts their Tuesday and Thursday meetings online. At
“We volunteer in the community for river cleanup and compost (堆肥) efforts with Kompost Kids,” Clark says. The Green Team is invited to help sort and recycle waste with Kompost Kids, a local nonprofit organization run
Kompost Kids
China’s research icebreaker Xuelong,
Snow Eagle 601, China’s first fixedwing aircraft for polar flight, on Thursday night also departed from the Antarctic after
Xuelong,
Sixteen members of the Kunlun team
The Zhongshan team completed tasks including installation of and tests for LiDAR, drilling of ice bedrock, atmospheric sounding
As the summer expedition team at Zhongshan left, 19 members would stay for winter expeditions.
Also
7 . Rainforests are home to a rich variety of medicinal plants, food, birds and animals. Can you believe that a single bush(灌木丛)in the Amazon may have more species of ants than the whole of Britain! About 480 varieties of trees may be found in just one hectare of rainforest.
Rainforests are the lungs of the planet-storing vast quantities of carbon dioxide and producing a significant amount of the world’s oxygen. Rainforests have their own perfect system for ensuring their own survival; the tall trees make a canopy(树冠层)of branches and leaves which protect themselves, smaller plants, and the forest animals from heavy rain, intense dry heat from the sun and strong winds.
Amazingly, the trees grow in such a way that their leaves and branches, although close together, never actually touch those of another tree. Scientists think this is the plants’ way to prevent the spread of any tree diseases and make life more difficult for leaf-eating insects like caterpillars. To survive in the forest, animals must climb, jump or fly across the gaps. The ground floor of the forest is not all tangled leaves and bushes, like in films, but is actually fairly clear. It is where dead leaves turn into food for the trees and other forest life.
They are not called rainforests for nothing! Rainforests can generate 75%of their own rain. At least 80 inches of rain a year is normal-and in some areas there may be as much as 430 inches of rain annually. This is real rain-your umbrella may protect you in a shower, but it won’t keep you dry if there is a full rainstorm. In just two hours, streams can rise ten to twenty feet. The humidity(湿气)of large rainforests contributes to the formation of rainclouds that may travel to other countries in need of rain.
1. What can we learn about rainforests from the first paragraph?| A．They produce oxygen. | B．They cover a vast area. |
| C．They are well managed. | D．They are rich in wildlife. |
| A．Heavy rains | B．Big trees. |
| C．Small plants. | D．Forest animals. |
| A．Life-Giving Rainforests | B．The Law of the Jungle |
| C．Animals in the Amazon | D．Weather in Rainforests |
8 . “How many of us as children have stared up at a church-like top of a giant tree and climbed it in wonder, which is a rally special part of our lives?” asks Bill Laurance, a tropical ecologist at James Cook University. “The leaves of big trees in forests are spreading out in all directions. We’re faced with organisms that have evolved for long periods of ecological stability.”
“There’s a lot to discuss on the issue,” says David Lindenmayer, a conservation ecologist at the Australian National University. “Climate change will mean that, in some forests, big trees won’t reach the same sizes they used to.” The effects of climate change, including long droughts, more invasive species and so on increase the simple physical challenges that big trees face in pulling water from their roots to their leaves and withstanding windstorms.
Lindenmayer and Laurance define “large, old trees” as the largest five percent mature trees within a species. The flexible definition means that in some forests, the large, old trees might be only 20 meters tall and 100 years old.
These large, old trees control the surrounding plant communities, affect water and nutrient distribution, and provide food and shelter for wildlife. “They’re really the breadbaskets of the forest,” says Laurance. “This is a very environmentally and ecologically important group of organisms, and they need special care and handling.” Determining the distribution and habitat requirements for large, old trees in the landscape is the first step towards ensuring their survival, “We have to ensure that what we’re thinking is long-term, to match the way these trees have existed for hundreds or even thousands of years,” says Laurance. “It’s going to be a real challenge to keep some places where there is still wildlife and the big church-like trees that we all really care about.”
1. How does the author lead in the topic of the text?| A．By definition. | B．By comparison. |
| C．By quoting someone’s words. | D．By drawing some conclusions. |
| A．They are affected by various factors. |
| B．They have become shorter but thicker. |
| C．They easily pull water from their roots. |
| D．They grow taller because of climate change. |
| A．The plants around control trees’ survival. |
| B．It is necessary to take good care of big trees. |
| C．Big trees mainly depend on wildlife for survival. |
| D．Planting big trees is the first step in forest protection. |
| A．Protect Forest Giants |
| B．Keep Ecological Stability |
| C．Deal with Forest Organisms |
| D．Fight Against Climate Change |
9 . Plastic is nearly everywhere — in shoes, clothes, refrigerators and construction materials. But this highly useful material can have a major defect. Made from oil and slow to break down, conventional plastic is not environmentally friendly. Today, researchers discuss inventing what they say should be a safer, biodegradable (可生物降解的) alternative made from fish waste— heads, bones and skin— that would otherwise likely be thrown out.
If developed successfully, fish-oil-based plastic could help meet the considerable need for more sustainable plastic, says Francesca Kerton, the project’s investigator. Previously, others have developed new plastic using plant-based oils. However, this too comes with a disadvantage: the crops that produce these oils require land that could otherwise be used to grow food.
Leftover fish struck Kerton as a promising alternative. Salmon (鲑鱼) farming is a major industry for coastal Newfoundland, where her university is located. After the fish are processed, leftover parts are often thrown away. Kerton and her colleagues developed a process for turning this fish oil into a plastic-like material. But does the plastic smell fishy? “When we start the process with the fish oil a slight kind of fish smell, but as we go through the steps, that smell disappears,” Kerton says.
In other experiments, they have begun examining how quickly the new material would likely break down once its useful life is over. Kerton put pieces of it in water, and to speed up the degradation for some pieces, she added a chemical capable of breaking down fats like those in the fish oil. Under a microscope, she later saw microbial (微生物的）growth on all of the samples, even those that had been in plain water, an encouraging sign that the new material might biodegrade quickly, Kerton says.
Kerton now intends to study the material’s physical properties to see how it might in real-world applications, such as in packaging or fibers for clothing.
1. What does the underlined word “defect” in paragraph 1 mean?| A．Mistake. | B．Burden. | C．Difficulty. | D．Disadvantage. |
| A．It causes damage to the soil. | B．It needs a large amount of land. |
| C．It produces an unpleasant smell. | D．It increases the price of cooking oils. |
| A．It can break down easily. | B．It has a very short useful life. |
| C．It is hard to mix with plain water. | D．It proved a good packaging material. |
| A．A living trend. | B．A fishing method. |
| C．A scientific project. | D．A biological phenomenon. |
10 . A handful of old mobile phones lay in a grey bucket. These outdated devices, which are about to be chopped into thousands of pieces, will be given a second life as recycled e-waste. But many phones won't.
According to the latest estimates, the world gets rid of approximately 50 million tonnes of waste annually. E-waste is full of dangerous materials that can cause damage to human health and the environment if not managed properly. But only 20 percent of global e-waste is recycled.The rest ends up in landfill, or burned—or is not recycled at all.
And yet,Switzerland is a good example of how to deal with the growing environmental issue. The country collects and recycles roughly 7S percent of this discarded material. This is thanks to a strong voluntary take-back system, where consumers can take e-waste to a reclining collection point or any electronic shop retailer（零售商）. A recycling station can be found within at most 300 meters from any residential area. Everyone gets involved. Switzerland's e-waste system is unique and can't be easily copied-due to a strong recycling culture within the country.
However, Switzerland faces the same global challenges as every nation.The built-in lithium batteries（锂电池）aren't easy to take out. The only way to remove these potentially dangerous components is with a bar and hammer. This poses a significant risk to those handling the goods. As such, producers need to be more transparent(信息透明的) and show more clearly where the harmful substances are, and how they can be removed.
Once the battery is removed, e-waste is sorted into different component parts—-metals, plastics and other materials. Roughly 70 percent of the device can be recycled. The material that cannot be recycled is used for other purposes like construction material or is burned to generate energy. Mobile phones—from a material perspective (角度), from a value perspective，and also from an environmental impact perspective -are very important.
For the past 15 years, Switzerland has been actively encouraging and supporting electrical waste disposal practices. They are happy to share their knowledge, experience, lessons learned, and they are happy if other people pick up on it.
1. What can we know about the global e-waste?| A．Only 20% of the e-waste is useful. |
| B．It is becoming an environmental problem. |
| C．Most of it has been given a second life. |
| D．It has been the major cause of pollution. |
| A．It is unique and easy to copy. |
| B．It features many devoted volunteers. |
| C．It gains great support and understanding. |
| D．It is complicated and not easily accessible. |
| A．Remove harmful substances. |
| B．Use less dangerous components. |
| C．Offer customers free bars and hammers. |
| D．Help make the removal easier and safer. |
| A．How to fight against e-waste. |
| B．Why E-waste gets out of control. |
| C．How to be champion of recycling. |
| D．How to lead an Eco-friendly lifestyle. |
