1 . Scientists have reported that the sea ice in Antarctica (南极) is at a record low level. Antarctica is a great, icy land, surrounded (围绕) by the huge Southern Ocean. The ice in Antarctica doesn’t just cover the land. There’s also a large area of sea ice on the ocean’s surface.
Every year, the sea ice at the South Pole goes through a cycle. In the summer, the huge sea ice melts (融化) to its smallest point. Over the colder winter months, the sea ice grows and grows until it covers a wide area. Usually, the sea ice covers the greatest area around September 23, as winter ends at the South Pole.
Scientists have been measuring the area of the sea ice in Antarctica since 1979. For most of this time, Antarctica has seemed to be almost unaffected by the changing weather conditions experienced in other parts of the globe. That began to change around 2016. Now, for several years, the area of Antartica’s sea ice has been shrinking.
This year, the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) reported that Antartica’s sea ice covered its greatest area on September 10 — almost two weeks earlier than normal. And the sea ice was at a new record low-not just by a little bit, but by a lot.
The last time Antartica’s low sea ice set a record at the end of winter was in 1986. And this year, there’s about 398, 000 square miles less sea ice than in 1986.
Scientists are still trying to understand what is driving the change in Antarctica. One likely direct cause for the change is the rising temperatures of the world’s oceans. Ted Scambos, a research scientist at the University of Colorado, says Antarctica’s ice levels have always changed some, but the sharp loss this year is “pointing towards warmer ocean conditions around the continent.”
The new low record has concerned the scientists. Scientists are working hard to better understand Antarctica. They don’t know yet if this is just a short-term problem, or part of a long-term shift (转变) towards less sea ice in Antarctica.
1. What does the underlined word “shrinking” mean in Paragraph 3?A.Getting smaller. | B.Being flat. | C.Observed. | D.Measured. |
A.To give an example. | B.To make a comparison. |
C.To make a summary. | D.To offer an argument. |
A.The changing weather conditions. | B.Human activities in Antarctica. |
C.Increased volcanic activities in the area. | D.The increasing temperatures of the global oceans. |
A.Worried. | B.Annoyed. | C.Excited. | D.Satisfied. |
2 . Flash floods can strike without warning. They can hit when you’re hiking in a river valley, walking through a canyon, or even simply driving to a remote destination. You can minimize your risk by knowing how to prepare for the worst and how to escape when a flood begins.
Before heading out, check the weather report, look at any flood warnings and take them seriously.
Be careful of any visual signs of danger and your surroundings while walking or hiking in a tight space.
What if, despite your preparations, you find yourself stuck in a dangerous place when flooding begins? Move to higher ground immediately, away from rivers and streams. If the situation is urgent, leave behind your possessions.
A.Avoid walking through moving water. |
B.No bag or equipment is worth your life. |
C.It takes hours for the flood waters to move away. |
D.Hundreds of people die due to drowning inside their vehicles. |
E.Be careful not to let your excitement drive you to take any chances. |
F.Keep these tips in mind the next time you head out for an outdoor adventure. |
G.The sudden arrival of dark clouds during a perfectly sunny day is one obvious sign. |
3 . Cows produce much methane (甲烷) the world’s second worst greenhouse gas, as they break down the grass. They are a large source of the greenhouse gases that are driving climate change. Now scientists have shown the pollution from cows can be reduced by adding a little seaweed (海藻) to their food.
Recently, the researchers from the University of California studied 21 cows on a farm for about five months. They taught the cows to get their food from inside a special hood, which allowed the scientists to know the amount of the methane the cows were giving off. They added a small amount of seaweed to the cows’ food.
The consequences were surprisingly good. In some cases, the cows produced 82% less methane. The improvement depended on the kind of food the cows were given. Even the worst-polluting cows produced 33% less methane. Over the five months, the scientists didn’t see any signs that the cows’ stomachs were getting used to the seaweed and starting to produce more methane again. What’s more, the cows that were fed seaweed gained just as much weight as the other cows.
But there are still some big problems with the idea of feeding cows seaweed. For one thing, there’s not enough seaweed to feed all of the cows in the world. So farmers would have to figure out a way to grow lots of seaweed. A bigger problem is that for most of their lives, cows live in the fields, where they eat grass. That means there’s no chance to feed them seaweed every day.
Still, as the study shows, something as simple as feeding cows seaweed can help reduce some of the pollution causing the climate crisis.
1. Why did the researchers carry out the study?A.To test the effects of the seaweed. |
B.To discover healthier grass for cows. |
C.To improve the cows’ living conditions. |
D.To measure the amount of methane in the world. |
A.The background of the subject. | B.The results of the study. |
C.The content of the experiment. | D.The process of the research. |
A.Seaweed is not as tasty as grass. |
B.Seaweed is dying out in the world. |
C.Cows fed with seaweed gained weight easily. |
D.Cows can hardly have daily access to seaweed. |
A.Positive. | B.Doubtful. | C.Unclear. | D.Negative. |
4 . In a world-record effort to help save a valuable sea creature, Australian scientists have released hundreds of baby seahorses into the wild. The tiny seahorses are endangered, and the scientists hope the new seahorses will help their numbers grow.
Seahorses get their name because they look a bit like horses. They aren’t great swimmers, even though they’re fish. They often use their tails to hold onto something in the water. They mostly live in warm, shallow waters around the world. They are often found in coral reefs, in beds of seagrass, and areas where rivers empty into the sea. Seahorses form an important part of the ocean’s food chain. They eat tiny sea creatures and are eaten by bigger sea animals.
Many kinds of seahorses are often threatened by the human actions. Sometimes they’re caught and sold as pets. They are also caught by accident when people are trying to catch other fish.
To begin the project, scientists collected three pregnant seahorses in January. Those seahorses were brought back to the aquarium (水族馆) in Sydney. After the babies were born, the scientists kept them there for five months, feeding the baby seahorses shrimps (小虾) to help them grow strong. Scientist Mitchell Brennan says, “They don’t have a stomach, so they have to eat constantly.”
About a month before the young seahorses were released, the scientists created eight underwater “hotels” for them. The hotels look like cages, providing a safe place for the seahorses to develop. Putting the hotels into the sea early allowed the cages to be covered with small sea life that can help provide food for the seahorses.
This is the fifth time the scientists have released seahorses into the area, and this time was a record. Around 380 seahorses were released. The researchers put tiny tags (标记) under the skin of many of the seahorses to help track them in the future.
1. What can be learned about seahorses from paragraph 2?A.They look exactly like horses. | B.They have a gift for swimming. |
C.They mostly live in the deep sea. | D.They feed on small sea creatures. |
A.The types of the seahorses. | B.Living conditions the seahorses need. |
C.Areas the seahorses live in. | D.Dangers the seahorses face. |
A.To differ the project from the former ones. |
B.To avoid danger the seahorses may face. |
C.To offer food to the seahorses. |
D.To help track the seahorses in the future. |
A.A New Study on Endangered Seahorses |
B.Underwater “Hotels” for Baby Seahorses |
C.A Record Number of Baby Seahorses Were Released |
D.New Methods of Finding Endangered Seahorses |
5 . Electric car are dirty. In fact, not only are they dirty, they might even be dirtier than their gasoline (汽油) powered cousins.
People in California love to talk about “zero-emissions (无污染的) vehicles,” but people in California seem to be clueless about where electricity comes from. Power plants mostly use fire to make it. Aside from the new folks who have their roofs covered with solar cells, we get our electricity from generators. Generators are fueled by something—usually coal, oil, but also by heat generated in nuclear power plants. There are a few wind farms and geothermal (地热的) plants as well, but by far we get electricity mainly by burning something.
In other words, those “zero-emissions” cars are likely coal-burning cars. It’s just because the coal is burned somewhere else that it looks clean. It is not. It is as if the California Green are covering their eyes—“If I can’t see it, it’s not happening”. Gasoline is an unbelievably efficient way to power a vehicle, a gallon of gas has a lot of energy in it. But when you take that gas (or another fuel) and first use it to make electricity, you waste a nice part of that energy, mostly in the form of wasted heat-at the generator, through the transmission (传送) lines, etc.
A gallon of gas may drive your car 25 miles. But the electricity you get from that gallon of gas won’t get you nearly as far-so electric cars burn more fuel than gas-powered ones. If our electricity came mostly from nukes(核能)or geothermal, or gyro, or solar, or wind, then an electric car truly would be clean. But for political, technical, and economic reasons, we don’t use much of those energy sources.
In addition, electric cars’ batteries which are poisonous for a long time will eventually end up in a landfill. And finally, when car are the polluters, the pollution is spread across all the roads. When it is a power plant, though, all the junk is in one place. Nature is very good at cleaning up, but it takes a lot longer when all the garbage is in one spot.
1. What is the main idea of the text?A.Electric cars are not clean at all |
B.Electric cars are better than gasoline—powered ones |
C.People have doubts about electric cars’ batteries |
D.Gasoline is an effective way to power a vehicle |
A.know nothing | B.have confidence | C.feel excited | D.be pleased |
A.not less than 25 miles | B.as far as 50 miles |
C.as far as 25 miles | D.not more than 25 miles |
A.are more environmentally friendly |
B.burn more fuel than gas-powered ones |
C.are very good at cleaning up |
D.are poisonous for a long time |
6 . “Is there going to be a flood?” asked Daniel. He looked nervously at his dad and mom. They both looked worried. Dad was completely wet and dirty. He and some other men in town had spent the morning piling bags of sand on top of the levee (防洪堤) along the river. For years the levee had kept the Mississippi from flooding its banks. After three straight days of rain, though, the water grew higher and higher. If the levee broke, Daniel’s neighborhood would be flooded for sure.
“We’ll be fine,” Dad placed a reassuring hand on Daniel’s shoulder. Outside, lightning flashed, followed by distant thunder. “Just in case,” said Dad. “I think we should start moving some things to Uncle Mike’s house.” Uncle Mike lived farther away from the river on higher ground. “And we’ll take everything we need to cook and eat upstairs,” he said, “like camping out in our own house.”
By nightfall, everything the family needed had been moved upstairs. Dad had taken their new couch and TV to Uncle Mike’s. Daniel helped his dad tie a fishing boat to the front (门廊). “Just in case,” said Dad.
Lying in bed that night, Daniel tossed and turned. He could hear the heavy rain beating on the roof. “Everything will be all right,” he said to himself just before falling asleep.
Several hours later, the sound of sirens (警报器) woke Daniel from a sound sleep. He sat straight up in bed, his heart pounding. In rushed Mom ,“Get dressed, Daniel! The levee just broke! We’ re leaving. We have no other choice.”
A few minutes later they all got into the fishing boat, leaving behind just about everything they owned. Daniel asked, “We’re going to lose everything, aren’t we?”
“No, not everything”, said Mom, pulling him close. We’ll always have each other.”
“That’s right,” said Dad. “We may lose the house, but we can always rebuild it. We can’t ever lose our home, though, because home is us.”
1. What caused the levee to break?A.Bad construction. | B.High water levels. |
C.Lack of sandbags. | D.People’s carelessness. |
A.shaking | B.disturbing | C.disappointing | D.comforting |
A.By taking a fishing boat. | B.By being saved by the police, |
C.With the help of Uncle Mike. | D.By camping out on higher ground. |
A.life isn’t a bed of roses | B.east or west,home is best |
C.home is where the family is | D.a man’s house is his castle |
7 . The area in front of Janet and Jeffrey Crouch’s house in Columbia, Maryland, does not look usual for their neighbourhood. That is because the Crouches do not have a grass lawn(草坪). Instead, they have some small trees and many native plants.
In recent years, support for replacing lawns with native plants has been increasing in the US. It can be costly to keep a lawn looking good and green. But the Crouches had to spend much more money for the right not to have one.
People living in a house next to them complained to their homeowner’s association, or HOA. HOAs can make rules about the plants that homeowners in a neighbourhood are permitted to grow. Many HOAs require grass lawns. The HOA ordered the Crouches to pull out their native plants and put in grass. However, they refused. “We knew we were doing things that were beneficial for the environment, ” said Janet Crouch.
Lawns are called environmental dead zones in part because they provide no food or shelter for wildlife. They also do not support pollinators like birds, bees, and butterflies. Bee populations have been getting smaller in North America and may be getting smaller around the world.
There are other reasons that lawns are bad for the environment. They require a lot of water and chemicals. Large amounts of water can remove nutrients from the soil. After the water removes the nutrients, people buy even more chemicals to put on their lawns. Scientists say some of these chemicals might cause cancer and other health problems. There are over 16million hectares of grass lawns in the US. That means lawns use more water than any other irrigated(灌溉)crop in the country.
The Crouches’ battle against their HOA took three years. They say they spent $60, 000 fighting to keep their natural garden. They won. Because of their efforts, the state of Maryland passed a law that lets people grow native plants instead of grass, no matter what their HOA wants.
1. Which is one of HOA’s responsibilities?A.Developing and interpreting all relevant laws. |
B.Protecting the balance of nature in the community. |
C.Maintaining a unified greenery within the community. |
D.Dealing with all the requirements of residents. |
A.To attract people’s attention. |
B.To improve the neighbourhood relations. |
C.To save on the cost of lawn maintenance. |
D.To better improve the ecological environment. |
A.Lawns are suitable for bee reproduction. |
B.Local plants are environmentally friendly. |
C.Local plants can prevent soil and water pollution. |
D.Lawns are beneficial for soil and water conservation. |
A.Determined. | B.Humorous. | C.Brave. | D.Careful. |
8 . It's just past 7 a.m.on a February morning in Maya Bay, several weeks after authorities reopened what is one of Thailand's most popular tourist attractions to the world for the first time since June 2018 following a massive restoration program.
In the hours to follow, a slow but steady flow of tourists becomes in great numbers as dozens of tourists make their way to the white﹣sand beach, phones at the ready as they take photos. Swimming is not allowed, though visitors can take a few steps in. It's disappointing, but a huge improvement over what visitors once experienced here.
Maya Bay is located in a Thailand's national park.The destination was made famous by the 2000 film The Beach,starring Leonardo DiCaprio.As the film's popularity grew,so did tourists' desire to visit the location where much of it was shot —Maya Bay.
"Around 40 years ago, Maya Bay was already a tourism destination, but mainly for Thai tourists because you didn't have speedboats at that time, " says Thon, a marine biologist and professor who requested authorities to close the bay four years ago. Over the years, the number of tourists rose from less than 1, 000 to as many as 7, 000 or 8, 000 visitors a day at its peak. On average, around 5, 000 people entered the bay each day.
In 2018, the Thai government closed the bay and began to restore the damaged ecosystem.
Since then, Thon and a team of fellow marine experts and volunteers have replanted over 30, 000 pieces of coral, much of it grown off the coast of a nearby island. Meanwhile, the wildlife also returned and has been growing. "Only three months after we closed the bay, the blacktip sharks came back and gave birth…so there are a lot of things happening in Maya Bay."
1. What do the first two paragraphs mainly tell us about Maya Bay?A.Its business hours. |
B.Its massive restoration |
C.Its huge improvement. |
D.Its reopening. |
A.Maya Bay. |
B.The 2000 film The Beach. |
C.Leonardo DiCaprio. |
D.A Thailand's national park. |
A.The benefit from tourism. |
B.The long history of Maya Bay. |
C.The rapid growth in tourists. |
D.The reason for the film's popularity. |
A.the protection efforts for Maya Bay was a little late. |
B.the protection efforts for Maya Bay has no support from the government. |
C.the protection efforts for Maya Bay remains to be seen whether it's useful. |
D.the protection efforts for Maya Bay has been effective. |
9 . Jeremi Swietochowski was doing his homework when he heard a thump (重击声). A bird had flown into the window and fallen onto the balcony (阳台) Swietochowski rushed to check on it. “Just when I was about to open the door. it flew away,” he said.
Not all birds are so lucky. According to a study, between 365 million and a billion birds are killed each year in the United States by flying into glass.
“Birds, of course, don’t mean to fly into buildings. It’s the reflectivity (反射性) of the windows that tricks (欺骗) them,” says Christine Sheppard. director of the glass-collisions (玻璃碰撞) program at the American Bird Conservancy. “When birds see reflections of trees-to them, they are just more trees that they can fly into.”
Sheppard and others, including environmentalists and building designers. work to make buildings bird-friendly to lower the number of bird collisions.
One method is to use less glass. Another is to cover a glass building with some kind of screen. The Orange Cube, in Lyon, France, is a good example of this method. The screen can be seen by birds, but it doesn’t block natural light. A third method is to use special glass. This was done in New York City. on a huge glass building called the Javits Center. It used to be one of the city’s deadliest buildings for birds.
Officials agreed to use patterned glass to take the place of some glass in2009. Building designer Daniel Piselli worked on the project. “We need to consider what humans need and what birds need” Piselli says. He notes that with glass. “the main thing is to put something on it that birds can see so they are not tricked by reflections and people can still enjoy daylight through the glass.”
Work on the Javits Center project was completed in 2014. “We ended up bringing down collisions by more than 90%,” Piselli says.
1. Why did the author think the bird was lucky?A.It wasn’t hurt by an enemy. | B.It could fly freely in the sky. |
C.It received good care from its owner. | D.It wasn’t killed after hitting the window. |
A.They need to stop to have a rest. | B.They want to play tricks on humans. |
C.They’re trying to get inside the buildings. | D.They’re confused by reflections in the windows. |
A.Reasons for making friends with birds. | B.Ways to make buildings safer for birds. |
C.The disadvantages of glass windows. | D.Great examples of new high buildings. |
A.It was very successful. | B.It was unacceptable to bird lovers. |
C.It took longer to complete than expected. | D.It played a big role in stopping air pollution. |
10 . Used electronics are piing up fast: they are filling up landfills with dangerous pieces of waste. Some e-waste is relatively large, such as air conditioners; other e-waste is more unnoticed, such as smart labels that contain disposable batteries and other equipment.
“It’s these small batteries that are big problems,” says University of California, Irvine, public health scientist Dele Ogunseitan, who is a green technology researcher and adviser for major tech companies and was not involved in developing the battery. “Nobody really pays attention to where they end up.” Researchers at the Cellulose & Wood Materials Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology are working to address this problem. Their new paper describes a water-activated paper battery developed from environmentally friendly materials that could eventually present a sustainable alternative to the more harmful batteries common in low-power devices.
The paper battery has the same key components as standard batteries but packages them differently. Like a typical chemical battery, it has a positively charged side and a negatively charged side. A traditional battery’s components are covered in plastic and metal; in the new battery, however, the positively and negatively charged sides are inks printed onto the front and back of a piece of paper. That paper is filled with salt, which dissolves (溶解) when the paper becomes wet. When the paper is dry, the battery is shelf-stable. Once the paper is wet, the battery starts working within 20 seconds. The new battery’s operating performance declines as the paper dries. When the scientists rewet the paper during testing, the battery regained function and lasted an hour before beginning to dry out again.
That future may not be so far off. It is hard to predict a time line for manufacturing such items at scale, but the head of the study says he is in contact with potential industry partners and believes these batteries could make their way into products within the next two to five years.
1. Why is e-waste mentioned in paragraph 1?A.To introduce the topic. | B.To give people warning. |
C.To show the seriousness of it. | D.To call on people to take action. |
A.Objective. | B.Carefree. | C.Indifferent. | D.Concerned. |
A.The difference between the paper battery and the traditional battery. |
B.The working principle of the paper battery. |
C.The problem of the paper battery. |
D.The advantage of the paper battery. |
A.Paper battery: Is it far off? |
B.Paper can work wonders. |
C.Paper battery: A creative way to reduce e-waste. |
D.Let’s work together to fight e-waste. |