1 . Foott was in college when she discovered dark sky work. “So many environmental issues are super politicized and depressing. Light pollution is a unifying issue,” says Foot. “It is the easiest type of pollution to fix.”
Utah leads the country in dark skies advocacy. It has 27 certified dark sky places, the most of any state. Foott says efforts in the state focus on the economic impact of dark sky tourism, a shared heritage (遗产) of the night skies, and the state’s primary rural character. When the state passed a resolution to preserve night skies, she was invited to attend the session. She noted, “All of the rural senators (参议员) started arguing about who had the darkest skies. They had an inborn pride in it.”
Advocate Joyce Harman is working to build the movement across the country, in Rappahannock, Virginia. This little slice of rural landscape, with light cutting in from three sides, still retains a view of the Milky Way. It is another traditionally conservative area of the country, but Harman used her skill as a photographer to develop grassroots support.
Harman received a permit to photograph the night sky at people’s homes or tourism businesses, often featuring the Milky Way behind iconic (标志性的) structures in the county. The owners got a free picture to show neighbors and family. “People just fell in love with it,” says Harman. At popular night sky viewing events, Harman reached more people with the technology to take lunar pictures on their cell phones. “The first time, we had people lined up for two hours,” she says.
Thanks to the mounting public interest generated by Harman and other advocates, the Rappahannock County Park achieved IDA Dark Sky Park status in 2019, one of the smallest ever certified at 7.3 acres.
1. Why does Foott think it easy to fight light pollution?| A．It meets no technical problems. | B．It is advocated by the politicians. |
| C．It has got wide support from people. | D．It needs less financial aids in rural areas. |
| A．Night skies are greatly valued in Utah. |
| B．Natural heritage is well protected in Utah. |
| C．Advocacy is the key to preserving night skies. |
| D．The senators are usually divided on fighting pollution. |
| A．Lacks. | B．Deserves. | C．Reflects. | D．Maintains. |
| A．They are mostly pictures of their houses. | B．They are family pictures of the home owners. |
| C．They have symbols of the tourism businesses. | D．They have the Milky Way in the background. |
2 . In a small town, there was a young man named Tom. Although he was just a(n)
Tom, decided to do something. He spent a lot of time, working day and night to find possible solutions. He
He
With the efforts of the whole community, a new water
| A．famous | B．criminal | C．ordinary | D．specific |
| A．duty | B．patriotic | C．working | D．playing |
| A．government | B．country | C．town | D．residents |
| A．experienced | B．contacted | C．associated | D．participated |
| A．timeless | B．meaningful | C．useless | D．illegal |
| A．got together | B．got along with | C．pieced together | D．got back |
| A．meeting | B．campaign | C．business | D．lecture |
| A．complain | B．persuade | C．explain | D．argue |
| A．corners | B．sorts | C．positions | D．salaries |
| A．shocked | B．overwhelmed | C．succeeded | D．inspired |
| A．location | B．transportation | C．activation | D．purification |
| A．safe | B．warm | C．dirty | D．tidy |
| A．took | B．showed | C．posed | D．wondered |
| A．life | B．water | C．society | D．rural |
| A．bankrupted | B．scheduled | C．determined | D．kind-minded |
The Chinese Dragon Boat Festival was celebrated with a dragon boat race on Saturday in Cape Town, South Africa.
Also known
This year’s dragon boat race was the second event of
Igsaan Salie, chairperson of the Cape Town Dragon Boat Association, said that the dragon boat race
4 . A mom named Mimi Wallace discovered her daughter Olive’s handwritten composition. She was naturally
This call for musicians of all kinds to try playing it with their instruments of
Olive, who
Though she has so far received lots of responses, Wallace still wonders what the
| A．careful | B．curious | C．angry | D．anxious |
| A．play | B．sing | C．copy | D．follow |
| A．profit | B．sense | C．mistake | D．progress |
| A．asked | B．called | C．invited | D．watched |
| A．honor | B．power | C．choice | D．history |
| A．records | B．expectations | C．memories | D．interpretations |
| A．barely | B．currently | C．exactly | D．generally |
| A．admitting | B．minding | C．enjoying | D．remembering |
| A．life | B．movie | C．light | D．theatre |
| A．mixed up | B．left out | C．turned off | D．blown away |
| A．odd | B．funny | C．tiring | D．amazing |
| A．drop | B．pour | C．pursue | D．check |
| A．reaches | B．shakes | C．unites | D．shapes |
| A．truth | B．piece | C．drama | D．point |
| A．ideas | B．plans | C．talents | D．stories |
5 . Patricia Cowell, a professor at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, stresses that though left-handedness is referred to as “atypical” from time to time, there’s no need for concern.
“It’s not anything negative as such. It’s just different from the majority,” Cowell said. “I think the thing that’s really important is that it is a very constant biological variation within normal development.”
Cowel studies handednes and brain lateralization (偏侧性): how different abilities like language or visual processing are organized within the brain. “If someone is left-handed, their brain organization is going to be different than someone who is right-handed,” Cowell said.
Before the age of the laptop-filed lecture hall, Cowell would sit at the front of the room and count the number of lefties in her classes while students completed five-minute thought experiments. Although the small sample size caused some variation from class to class, around 1 in 10 students were left-handed. This distribution is present in the general population as well — it is thought that around 10% of people around the world are left-handed. “It is pretty fixed,” Cowell said. “You can always find a few in a big group.”
And there’s some evidence that the distribution of handedness has lasted for thousands of years, with right-handers in the strong majority and left-handers comprising a mere part. To study examples of handedness in history, French researchers examined Western European cave artwork dating back 10,000 to 30,000 years. Ancient artists would hold their non-dominant hands against a rock wall and use their dominant hand to blow colored dust onto it using a blowing tube, creating a negative image of their hand on the rock. The distribution of handedness found in cave art is consistent with what we see today.
Roel Willems is a senior researcher at the Donders Institute for Brain Cognition and Behaviour in the Netherlands. “Other animals also tend to have a handedness preference,” Willems said. “But there is no other species (other than humans) that seems at the population level to be so strongly biased (偏见的) .”
1. What’s Patricia Cowell’s view on left-handedness?| A．It is physically unacceptable. | B．It is only natural and normal. |
| C．It is an issue of great importance. | D．It may bring negative consequences. |
| A．By counting the lefties in class. | B．By conducting experiments in the lab. |
| C．By interviewing students online. | D．By doing the sampling with a laptop. |
| A．The number of right-handers. | B．The increasing population. |
| C．The percentage of left-handers. | D．The sample size in a group. |
| A．To show the advantages of right-handers. |
| B．To prove the existence of left-handedness. |
| C．To find other animals’ handedness preferences. |
| D．To learn about the distribution of handedness in history. |
6 . Loud traffic doesn’t stop big animals like moose and bears from crossing highways — nor does it keep smaller creatures from being run over by car tires. In just two years along one stretch of highway in Utah, a total of 106 big animals were killed in car collisions (碰撞). People are also hurt — about 200 die every year in the more than one million car collisions in the US.
And the number of these deadly accidents is growing. “Over the most recently reported 15-year period, wildlife-vehicle collisions have increased by 50 percent, with an estimated one to two million large animals killed by motorists every year,” says Rob Ament, the road ecology program manager from the Western Transportation Institute (WTI).
There’s one solution, however, which’s been remarkably effective around the world in decreasing collisions between cars and animals crossing the road: wildlife under- and overpasses. Studies that looked at a cross-section of native species’ deaths on highways in Florida, Australia, and Mexico all show that wildlife crossings save lives, both humans’ and animals’. “You can get reductions of 85 to 95 percent with crossings that guide animals under or over highways,” Ament says.
That’s why these traffic-spanning bridges and tunnels — which have been popular in Europe since the 1950s when the first was built in France — are showing up worldwide. Usually looking much like a regular overpass for cars, but decorated with native plants, they aren’t particularly noticeable unless you know what you’re looking for.
And under crossings, which pass beneath highways to assist smaller animals, may be invisible to drivers. But they’re helping countless species, from gold monkeys and pumas in Brazil to water voles (水鼠) in London. Ament is even working on wildlife crossings for highways that haven’t been built yet in developing nations like Bhutan, which need safe places for Asian elephants to cross their territories. As he points out, it’s a lot easier — and cheaper — to build them during road construction than it is to retrofit (翻新), as has been done in the US and Canada.
1. What are the figures in paragraph 1 meant to indicate?| A．The causes of traffic accidents. | B．The frequency of car-animal collisions. |
| C．The richness of animal diversity. | D．The consequences of loud traffic. |
| A．Satisfied. | B．Doubtful. | C．Anxious. | D．Disappointed. |
| A．They look pretty and modern. | B．They are very complex in structure. |
| C．They are too small for vehicles. | D．They fit in well with their surroundings. |
| A．They are not safe enough for animals. | B．They were not well planned in advance. |
| C．They have not been properly maintained. | D．They have impacted road traffic negatively. |
7 . In China, the temperature with the daily temperature reaching 35 ℃ is generally called high temperature, and the high-temperature weather process for several consecutive (连续的) days is called high-temperature heat wave.
The heat wave at night, that is, the temperature at night is continuously high. Although it appears at night, the “force value” and “damage value” cannot be ignored. It is good at confusing (欺骗) people with the darkness of the night, making people take it lightly, and then release a lot of heat. “The physical mechanism that causes high temperature during the day and at night is related to land air interaction and meteorological (气象的) conditions.” Meteorological experts say that we usually think that the temperature will naturally drop after sunset, but the energy accumulated during the day actually begins to slowly release at night. The heat accumulated in the atmospheric boundary layer during the day can be stored until the night, so the high temperature in the day can last until the night.
There are two main reasons for the form of night heat waves: on the one hand, urbanization (城市化) leads to the reduction of evaporation (蒸发) and the weakening of wind power, which strengthens the heat island effect. On the other hand, in addition to reducing evaporation and wind, the lower reflect of dark roads in cities than green plants in rural areas increases the heat storage during the day and enhances the long wave heat release at night.
In general, the contribution of urbanization at different levels of development to the night heat wave is different. The higher the degree of development of the city, the more roads are extended on the fundamental surface, and the worse the water seepage (渗透) capacity, the larger the water impermeable surface area, the less the surface evaporation but the more the heat absorption, and finally the city is constantly heated up.
1. Which of the following temperatures is called high temperature in China?| A．41℃ | B．34℃ | C．28℃ | D．21℃ |
| A．High temperature at night due to continuous daytime high temperature. |
| B．Continuous high temperature at night. |
| C．Results of urban heat island effect. |
| D．High temperature weather reaching 35 ℃. |
| A．The degree of urban development has nothing to do with the temperature. |
| B．Rural areas are more likely to have heat waves at night. |
| C．The more developed the city, the higher the temperature. |
| D．Only if the city makes more contributions can it avoid the heat wave at night. |
| A．Why is there a heat wave when there is no sun at night |
| B．The influence of high temperature weather on China |
| C．Defense (防御的) measures against heat wave at night |
| D．How to cool the city quickly |
8 . Welcome to the ancient city—Dingzhou, it is a city full of beautiful scenery and historical travelling spots, here are some of its introductions:
Dingzhou Tower
Located in the northwest part of Dingzhou, the tower is one of the most ancient tower in China and now is a famous spots for many tourists around Hebei province to come and visit. The price of this spot is 30 yuan and students/disabled/elderly/Under 18 years old people will get a discount at about 15 yuan.
Chongwen Street
It is an ancient style street built in 2015 and it’s next to the Dingzhou Tower, you can see many people buy and sell things there at night. It has became the most popular spots in Dingzhou since 10 years ago and it’s absolutely free of charge.
Dingzhou Museum
Dingzhou Museum was famous as the biggest museum in Baoding area. It has many palaces of interests and was honored (授予) the title of “National Museum” at 2023. If you want to visit the museum, you should make an appointment at the Wechat app and enter it by ID card.
The Ancient City Wall
Located in the north of Dingzhou, it has a history of over 600 years. The city wall is 12 meters high and the city tower is 8 meters high, and the city wall is 22 meters wide. Alongside the wall is our city moat (护城河). Besides this, the wall area now is rebuilt to a tourist attraction and will be opened to the public again at 2025.
1. If Patryk wants to go out and buy something at night, he most probably goes to ________.| A．Dingzhou Tower | B．Chongwen Street |
| C．Dingzhou Museum | D．The Ancient City Wall |
| A．105 yuan | B．90 yuan | C．120 yuan | D．60 yuan |
| A．It is 22 meters high. | B．It is 8 meters wide. |
| C．It has been rebuilt. | D．It has a river in it. |
9 . Did you like reading at school? Well, according to recent research, reading fiction at a young age could give us a more complex view of the world and allow as to better understand other people’s lives.
This is particularly true for literary fiction, which focuses on people’s lives and the social issues that may affect them.
The researchers based their conclusions on four surveys of adults in the country.
In all four studies, participants were asked about the type of reading they do, as well as abouta different aspect of the way in which they see the world and see themselves.
The first study found that among more than 350 people, increased reading of literary fiction when growing up was connected with greater “psychological richness.” This might mean having an open mind and trying to gain wisdom in life.
In the second study, the researchers said that among around 2,200 university students, those who read literary fiction were less likely to simply accept authority.
The third study found that reading any fiction as a young person gave people a sense of perspective and empathy (共情). Around 1,500 participants were involved in this one.
Finally, based on results from the fourth study — of around 1,000 people — the researchers concluded that people who read literary fiction early in life were more likely to have a complex worldview.
Whether or not participants reported that they were currently reading literary fiction did not affect how complex their worldview was. This suggests that reading as a young person has more of an impact.
The authors said that fiction is a useful tool for understanding that the world is a complex place, full of differences.
They believe it could even provide us with skills to live in societies that include all sorts of different people.
1. What s the best explanation for “psychological richness” in the passage?| A．Skills to live. | B．Mode of thinking. |
| C．The world full of differences. | D．Open-mindedness and life wisdom. |
| A．not easily accept authority. | B．probably accept authority. |
| C．certainly not accept authority. | D．Simply accept authority. |
| A．Participants were greatly affected by their current reading. |
| B．Our worldview tends to be simpler if we read literary fiction in our adult life. |
| C．Participants were slightly influenced by their current reading. |
| D．Our worldview tends to be more affected if we read literary fiction at a young age. |
10 . A recent study from the American College of Cardiology found that stress and depression in young and middle-aged women significantly increase the risk of cardiovascular (心血管的) disease compared to men.
Researchers are unsure why there’s a direct link between mental health and cardiovascular disease in women. However, what is evident is that women with long- term anxiety, depression, indigestion (消化不良) or a range of these symptoms are often diagnosed with cardiovascular disease or heart failure.
Researchers followed more than 70,000 people for a decade and found that those with a history of depression and anxiety before the study were about 55% more likely to develop high blood pressure. high cholesterol (胆固醇) and diabetes. Additionally, women under 50 with mental issues were nearly twice as likely to develop these cardiovascular risk factors.
According to the research, bottling up your feelings is one of the worst things people can do, especially for women. In a study of more than 3,600 men and women from a Massachusetts town over10 years, those who kept their feelings bottled up during marital (婚姻的) issues were four times more likely to die during the study than those who said how they felt. Importantly, this effect didn’t apply to men. Regardless of a woman’s marital happiness, what mattered was whether she expressed her feelings.
Additionally, women are also likely to suffer from a condition known as broken heart syndrome. According to the Mayo Clinic, broken heart syndrome is a heart condition that’s often brought on by stressful situations and extreme emotions.
To maintain heart health, it’s recommended that women stop ignoring warning signs and listen to their bodies. Seeking therapy, joining support groups, practicing meditation, yoga and breathing exercises can also contribute to overall heart health. Researchers also suggest preventative medicine, recommending that physicians start testing female patients with anxiety and depression for heart disease risk factors.
1. How does the author mainly organize paragraph 3?| A．By giving a definition. | B．By making comparisons. |
| C．By listing numbers. | D．By adding some backgrounds. |
| A．The study was conducted in several states. |
| B．The study’s findings were only applicable to women. |
| C．The researchers followed a specific age group of women. |
| D．The study showed that all participants were at equal risk. |
| A．Trying new diets. | B．Taking good care of their families. |
| C．Focusing on their figures. | D．Expressing their feelings. |
| A．Mental Health and Women’s Heart Disease Risk |
| B．Women’s Unique Risk Factors for Heart Disease |
| C．Stress and Depression: The Main Threat to Women’s Life |
| D．Women’s Heart Health: Prevention and Treatment Advice |
