BEIJING — A strong earthquake hit a remote part of western China overnight killing at least 118 people and injuring more than 200, the state news agency Xinhua reported Tuesday.
The tremblor hit Jishishan County, in the southwestern part of Gansu province near the border with Qinghai province —
Xinhua said the earthquake had a magnitude of 6.2.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a magnitude of 5.9,
About 10 hours later,
This year, August 15th marked China’s first National Ecology Day,
The establishment of National Ecology Day will enhance ecological understanding among the public and help the nation
The move
China’s laws and administrative regulations
3 . Researcher Ruijia Hu said wildlife habitat in crowded places like south went Ohio is becoming increasingly fragmented (分散) as forests give way to new construction. Eventually, this could make trouble to an animal with specific habitat needs like Ohio’s pileated (红冠) woodpecker.
Pileated woodpeckers have the nickname carpenter birds for their never-ending natural woodworking. They peck out holes in trees for their nests every year, creating lots of valuable homes for animals like fox squirrels and owls. “They make new nests every year. They won’t reuse old ones,” Hu said. “Other animals depend on them.”
Pileated woodpeckers are private birds that are more often heard than seen. Studying them can be especially difficult. So Hu turned to citizen science for help. To identify where woodpeckers have been seen, she used eight years of sightings collected by birders and logged into the website eBird, a free online tool and app that anyone can use to record their observations and locations. She overlaid these sightings with remote sensing data and found that corridors along rivers and creeks with abundant mature trees and deadwood helped the birds adjust to their increasingly fragmented urban landscape.
“With fragmented forests, many habitats that were once suitable for wildlife are broken up,” Hu sa id. “Wildlife is unable to find habitat big enough to meet their survival needs. And even if there are suitable habitats, the distance between them can be too great. Wildlife corridors link up these habitat patches. Since wildlife can travel and migrate from one patch to another, the probability of finding food and shelter is higher.”
“There are so many species in urban areas that we don’t pay attention to, especially when they’re not considered vulnerable,” Hu said. “With development chipping away at more forest in this crowded county, the tipping point (临界点) could come quickly and unexpectedly. You can’t fix it overnight. It’s not just about planting more trees. The birds need mature forest, so it could take 30 to 50 years to replace their habitat. At least we can protect these riverside forest corridors and see that existing trees reach maturity.”
1. What can we infer from the second paragraph?A.The magpie’s nest is occupied by the dove. |
B.Birds abandon the old for the new easily. |
C.Friendship really exists among animals. |
D.One’s trash is another treasure. |
A.The effect of Hu’s study on birds. |
B.The process of Hu’s research. |
C.The difficulty Hu had in his study. |
D.The application of technology. |
A.Helping them survive in the fragmented landscape. |
B.Making them adjust to deadwood quickly. |
C.Providing them with enough food for survival. |
D.Ensuring them a stable and safe habitat. |
A.One tree doesn’t make a forest. |
B.Be wise after the event. |
C.Prepare for a rainy day. |
D.Take things as they come. |
4 . The rechargeable lithium-ion (锂离子) battery market is worth more than $50 billion. Lithium-ion batteries, whose demand continues to go up day by day, are used in a wide range of electronic devices. They are made of four main components, and cathode (阴极) is one of them. The cathode’s active material type is what determines the capacity of a battery.
A recent study, led by Wang Yan, a material scientist of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, finds that lithium-ion batteries made with recycled cathodes work better than those with new cathodes.
“The battery industry is expected to grow sharply in the next decade. This high demand has led companies to go to extremes, like increasing deep-sea mining, to gain access to the minerals used in lithium-ion batteries,” Wang said. “Mining minerals will have environmental impacts. Recycling spent lithium-ion batteries offers a way out.”
But until now, the prospect of using recycled materials in lithium-ion batteries has some manufacturers (制造商) worrying that it could impact performance. Thus, lithium-ion batteries are still not widely recycled. Aware of decreasing resources and environmental impact, Wang and other researchers set out to find a way to make recycling lithium-ion batteries economically practical. Through experiments, they could recover more than 90% of the key metals from spent batteries. These recovered metals became the basis of the new recycled battery’s cathode’s active material.
In tests between Wang’s team’s recycled batteries and brand-new batteries of the same composition, the recycled batteries outperform the new ones in their ability to maintain capacity. It took 11,600 charge cycles for recycled cathode batteries to lose 30 percent of their original capacity. That was about 50 percent better than the 7,600 observed cycles for new cathode batteries, the team reported. Those thousands of extra cycles could translate into years of better battery performance, even after repeated use and recharging.
1. What can we learn about lithium-ion batteries from the first paragraph?A.They are high in price. |
B.They are in great demand. |
C.They are limited in use. |
D.They are simple in composition. |
A.The target users of recycled batteries. |
B.The ways to get minerals for batteries. |
C.The major reasons for recycling batteries. |
D.The complex process of recycling batteries. |
A.Declining mineral resources. |
B.Difficult recycling techniques. |
C.Serious environmental problems. |
D.Inefficient battery performance. |
A.The battery industry is going to develop dramatically. |
B.Recycling batteries reduces impact on the environment. |
C.Scientists can recover key materials from spent batteries. |
D.Recycled batteries outperform new ones in charging circles. |
内容包括:1.时间及地点;2.展览内容和学生收获;3.活动反响。
注意:1.写作词数应为80左右;2.可适当增加细节,以使行文连贯。
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6 . The UN this week launched a report urging companies to stop issuing false net-zero targets that amount to greenwashing.
Greenwashing is a term used to describe situations where companies mislead consumers by claiming to be eco-friendly or sustainable as a marketing plan rather than as a core principle of their business model. Often, these industries spend more money making themselves appear sustainable than they do taking actual sustainable measures into their company.
Cities, financial institutions, and scores of companies have announced plans to reduce their emissions to zero, which, in principle, should help the fight against climate change.
“The problem is that the criteria for these net-zero commitments have varying levels of precision and loopholes (漏洞),” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres during the launch of the report.
Many net-zero plans contain far-away or unclear targets and often call for the use of unproved technologies like carbon capture and tree planting, which effectively allow companies to continue polluting the atmosphere. Studies show that most of these net-zero plans will do little to stop temperatures from rising. For example, many oil majors have announced plans to reduce emissions from their operations to zero by 2050 that do not take into account the carbon emitted by the fossil fuels they sell, which would allow them to increase production. Far from decreasing, fossil fuel production is going strong.
To close these net-zero loopholes, the UN this week released a report that includes 10 recommendations to ensure that companies, cities, regions, and other non-state actors issue credible and accountable net zero commitments. “Their plans cannot rely on cheap carbon credits instead of immediately cutting their own emissions,” Guterres said.
Financial institutions need to cut down emissions from all their investments and businesses need to bring down the carbon footprint of their supply chain, the report said. The report’s lead author, Catherine McKenna, urged companies to release new net-zero targets within a year. The updated targets must contain concrete actionable details.
1. What does “greenwashing” refer to?A.A green technology. | B.A misleading statement. |
C.A business model. | D.A spending target. |
A.To prove oil majors are really responsible. |
B.To set some good examples for other companies. |
C.To show some net- zero commitments make no sense. |
D.To indicate the benefit of net zero plans to climate change. |
A.Dissatisfied. | B.Guilty. | C.Shocked. | D.Confused. |
A.Plant more trees. | B.Share more supply chains. |
C.Depend on cheap carbon credits. | D.Make concrete actionable targets. |
7 . Plastic fishing nets, the so-called ghost nets, abandoned yearly in the sea—about 1 million tons—are more than just rubbish; they’re a killer. Fish, sea birds, and turtles get caught in the netting and die, with more species at risk.
Much shocked at this, Pranveer Singh Rathore, a materials-science engineer and materials R&D manager at Samsung, and his team set themselves the task of giving new life to the deadly nets. Last month, Samsung revealed a new line of Galaxy products made in part from recycled plastic fishing nets for the first time. The company estimates this year alone it can recycle over 50 tons of ocean-bound plastic into the key components that will go into its smartphones, tablets, and computers, thus taking a bite out of the global ghost nets problem.
It’s no small task to give waste fishing nets a second act. The nets are typically made of a substance called nylon which tends to dramatically degrade (降解) the longer it sits in the ocean and is exposed to the sun. “This makes it nearly impossible to use abandoned fishing nets directly,” Rathore explains. Besides, high-performance smartphone, tablet, or PC has to be waterproof and can survive severe weather. The nylon in the fishing nets falls far short of that level of durability (耐用).
To deal with that problem, Samsung last summer teamed up with two partners: one to collect and transform the nets into tiny nylon pellets (颗粒) while the other to strengthen their toughness and durability. The end result: The partners hit upon an eco-friendly and high-performance plastic material that’s being used to build the component parts for its latest line of products. For example, two parts of the Galaxy S22 mobile phone—the key bracket and the inner cover—are made of these fishing-net plastic materials. Samsung aims to use even more upcycled materials in future product lines.
“That’s the hope for the globe and our mission,” Rathore smiles.
1. What does the underlined word “this” in paragraph 2 refer to?A.Rubbish in the sea. | B.Recycling the deadly nets. |
C.Ocean species’ extinction. | D.Ghost nets’ threat to sea life. |
A.The low level of durability of nylon. | B.The second act of waste fishing nets. |
C.The great difficulty in reusing ghost nets. | D.The positive comment on Samsung’s products. |
A.They are made from tiny nylon pellets. | B.They put an end to the problem of fishing nets. |
C.They can stand up to water and severe weather. | D.They contain materials recycled from ghost nets. |
A.It makes plastic easier to break down. | B.It marks the shift of Samsung’s mission. |
C.It protects the planet from choking on plastic. | D.It raises public awareness of ocean exploration. |
8 . In recent years, lots of American companies have gotten behind a potential climate solution called carbon capture and storage, and the government has backed it with billions of dollars in tax preferences and direct investments. The idea is to trap planet-heating carbon dioxide from the smokestacks of factories and power plants and ship it to sites via thousands of miles of new pipelines. Communities nationwide are pushing back against these pipeline construction and underground sites, arguing they don’t want the pollution running through their land.
Now the U. S. Forest Service is proposing to change a rule to allow storing this carbon dioxide pollution under the country’s national forests and grasslands. “Authorizing carbon capture and storage on National Forest System (NFS) lands would support the Administration’s goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent below the 2005 levels by 2030,” the proposed rule change says.
Some experts, like June Sekera, a research fellow with Boston University, question the timing of the proposed rule change, given community pushback across the country to pipelines planned on private land. Yet she says the Forest Service proposal to open up national parks for CO2 storage is “an end run around local towns and counties. And it’s a much simpler and way less expensive route.”
In an email, Scott Owen, press officer for the Forest Service, writes that the proposed rule change would allow the Forest Service to consider proposals for carbon capture and storage projects. He writes that any proposals must still pass through a secondary screening, adding, “The Forest Service has been ‘screening’ proposals for use of NFS lands for over 20 years as a means to be increasingly consistent in our processes and also be able to reject those uses that are inconsistent with the management of the public’s land. ” He notes the Forest Service currently does not have any carbon capture project proposals under consideration. The Forest Service has opened public comments on the proposed rule change until Jan. 2, 2024.
1. What does the Forest Service intend to do by changing a rule?A.Answer the appeals of communities. | B.Provide legal space for carbon storage. |
C.Enlarge national pipeline storage capacity. | D.Loosen tax burden on American companies. |
A.An eventful act. | B.A desperate try. |
C.An alternative way. | D.A breathtaking race. |
A.It is still up in the air. | B.It is dead in the water. |
C.It is widely recognized. | D.It is far from satisfactory. |
A.A fruitful research. | B.A timely rule change. |
C.An authorized project. | D.A controversial proposal. |
9 . From airplanes to apartments, most spaces are now designed with sound-absorbing materials that help decrease various sounds of everyday life. But most of the sound-absorbing materials that can cancel out human voices, traffic noise and music are made from plastic foams (泡沫) that aren’t easily recycled or degraded. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering have created a biodegradable film (薄膜) obtained from seaweed, which effectively absorbs sounds in this range.
Controlling and optimizing the way sound moves throughout a room is the key to creating functional spaces. Foam sound-absorbing panels are a common solution, and they come in a variety of materials and thicknesses tailored to specific sound requirements. Most of these foams, however, are made from a type of plastic material and other chemical substances that are obtained from natural oil or petrol. To avoid petrochemicals, researchers have explored more renewable sources and biodegradable sound-absorbing alternatives. But many current options are made from plant fibers that don’t effectively decrease noises in the most useful range of sound frequencies, or they are too thick or difficult to produce. So, Chindam’s team wanted to develop a biodegradable material from a plant, which would be simple to produce and could absorb a range of sounds.
The team created films of agar (琼脂), a material that comes from seaweed, along with other additives developed from plants and varied the thickness of the films. After running the materials through a battery of tests, the researchers measured how well the films reduced sound across a range of frequencies. To do this, the team created a sound tube in which a speaker is placed at one end, and the test film is fitted over the other end. Microphones in the middle of the tube measured the amount of sound sent by the speaker and the amount of sound reflected off the film. These experiments showed that the films with many small holes made with the highest concentrations of agar had the greatest sound-absorbing qualities and performed similarly to traditional sound-absorbing foams. The researchers plan to explore ways to change the agar films to give them other desirable properties, such as flame resistance, and will explore other biologically obtained film materials.
1. What is the disadvantage of plastic foams?A.They take up, too much space. | B.They cannot absorb sounds effectively. |
C.They cannot meet specific sound requirements. | D.They have difficulty achieving sustainable use. |
A.One obtained easily and effectively. | B.One produced toughly and tiredly. |
C.One developed from petrochemicals. | D.One made from plant fibers. |
A.The purpose of film research. | B.A series of tests on the new material. |
C.A tool of measuring the film thickness. | D.The difficulty of searching the new material. |
A.An Eco-friendly Sound-absorbing Material from Seaweed |
B.Plastic Foams: the Worst Choice of Absorbing Sounds |
C.A Tube for Measuring the Amount of Underwater Sounds |
D.Seaweed: a Better Sound-absorbing Underwater Plant |
10 . Many animals move from one place to another at certain times of the year. This
Every autumn, millions of these beautiful insects with fine black and orange wings
A team of scientists led by Professor Eli Shlizerman at the University of Washington has now found the answer. They have found out that the monarch is able to
The
The
A.symbolic | B.former | C.occasional | D.annual |
A.live long | B.return to the wild | C.protect themselves | D.seek a partner |
A.positive | B.wonderful | C.professional | D.frightening |
A.begin | B.break | C.continue | D.end |
A.heard | B.worried | C.knew | D.ignored |
A.notice | B.tell | C.guess | D.illustrate |
A.height | B.driection | C.brightness | D.position |
A.news | B.advice | C.information | D.evidence |
A.determine | B.consider | C.acquire | D.approach |
A.Eventually | B.Currently | C.Obviously | D.Originally |
A.solution | B.reaction | C.preference | D.response |
A.increased | B.exploded | C.changed | D.crashed |
A.history | B.belief | C.activity | D.experience |
A.improving | B.destroying | C.decorating | D.monitoring |
A.take away | B.cut down | C.pickup | D.put together |
A.comment | B.research | C.effect | D.discussion |
A.creature | B.experiment | C.opinion | D.function |
A.recognise | B.design | C.record | D.remember |
A.look at | B.play with | C.feed on | D.focus on |
A.stay | B.suffer | C.exist | D.survive |