1 . In an area that’s surrounded by Scotland’s coal mining past and its industrial present, there’s a transformation happening beneath our feet. Just three years ago this area was re-engineered to bring the coastal wetland back to its natural state.
Allison Leonard, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, “We tear down the coastal defenses and let the water back in. But within a year or two we were seeing saltmarsh plants reappear. And we’re now three years down the line and you know, it’s all saltmarsh. And at that point we kind of just stepped back and let nature do its thing, and we’re really seeing the wildlife respond. So birds are using it at high tide and we see lots of deer, hares in the spring.”
As well as a diverse wetland habitat, this marsh has become a natural tool in our fight to reduce emissions of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Marshland plants absorb one of those key planet-warming gases, carbon dioxide, which then becomes buried in the mud. Lucy Miller, Research technician, University of St Andrews, said “This is some of the most organic-rich soils we find in the UK, compared to agricultural land, forest, forestry land. So we’ll wrap this up in cling film and then just to keep it, hold its shape and then we take it back to the University of St Andrews. We have a laboratory there. We will just perform a couple of experiments using a couple of different machines to measure the different layers, different levels of carbon within the layers of the core here.”
Allowing the sea to reclaim this stretch of land has provided a glimpse of how we can help nature to help us deal with the climate crisis.
1. What do the underlined words “a transformation” refer to?| A．The reappearance of saltmarsh. | B．The recovery of the coastal wetland. |
| C．The bigger emissions of greenhouse gas. | D．The fiercer climate crisis. |
| A．Marshland plants take in harmful gases. | B．Researchers have handled water pollution. |
| C．The air quality will be improved. | D．The marsh makes a pollution-free environment. |
| A．To measure levels of carbon in each layer. | B．To get the data of different levels of soils. |
| C．To check the quality of different soils. | D．To compare different soils. |
| A．The industrial transformation. | B．The solution to the climate crisis. |
| C．The coastal wetland back to its natural state. | D．The fight to reduce emissions of greenhouse gas. |
1.创建目的；
2.创建方式；
3.号召创建。
注意：（1）词数100左右；
（2）可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen!
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3 . To address the plastic pollution troubling the world’s seas and waterways, Cornell University chemists have developed a new polymer (聚合物) that can degrade (降解) plastic when exposed to ultraviolet radiation, according to the research published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
“We have created a new plastic that has the mechanical properties required by commercial fishing gear. If it eventually gets lost in the water environment, this material can degrade on a realistic time scale,” said lead researcher Bryce Lipinski, professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell University. “This material could effectively reduce persistent plastic accumulation in the environment.”
Commercial fishing contributes to about half of all floating plastic waste that ends up in the oceans. Fishing nets and ropes are primarily made from three kinds of polymers, none of which easily degrade. “While research of degradable plastics has received much attention in recent years,” Lipinski said, “obtaining a material with a mechanical strength comparable to commercial plastic remains a difficult challenge.”
Coates and his research team have spent the past 15 years developing the new plastic called isotactic polypropylene oxide, or iPPO. While its original discovery was in 1949, the mechanical strength of this material was unknown before this recent work. The high isotacticity and polymer chain length of their material makes it different from previous plastics and provides its mechanical strength.
Lipinski and other scientists want no race of the polymer to be left in the environment. He notes there is precedent (先例) for the biodegradation of small chains of iPPO which could effectively make it disappear and ongoing efforts aim to prove this.
1. What is the feature about the new polymer?| A．It can solve the problem of plastic consumption. |
| B．It can degrade plastic waste in the sea water. |
| C．It has been developed to solve plastic pollution. |
| D．It has been developed to lower fishing costs. |
| A．It requires great effort to invent the new plastic. |
| B．Fishing should be forbidden in the sea. |
| C．Fishing nets and ropes are not the major pollution source. |
| D．Degradable plastics were not paid attention to until recent years. |
| A．Its original discovery. | B．Its mechanical properties. |
| C．Its complex structure. | D．Its mechanical strength. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Promising. |
| C．Unconcerned. | D．Disapproval. |
