Score and Ability

Last week, I took a small boat and rowed miles along a little river in the middle of New York’s Adirondack Mountains     1    (escape) the maddening noise in the city.

One of the rewards for this remote trip was the total peace in the mountains. Here, I was completely alone. There was not another soul     2     sight. No cars, no signals to draw me toward my phone.

I rowed through little ponds     3     (surround) by grass and red berries on the shores. To go deeper into the wild, I made my way through a chain of rocky rapids (急流). As I rowed along I saw a yellow maple leaf pressed against a rock by the current.

When it was impossible for     4    (I) to row my boat, I tied it to my waist and pulled it behind me, w with my pants rolled to my     5    (knee). To my delight, I found that the water still held some of the warmth summer.

Soon after I reached a stretch of rapids    6     were too violent to get through, I was forced to carry my little boat on my shoulders.    7    (walk) along a trail in the shadowy forest, I saw    8    (variety) plants that have started to turn reddish. When the river slowed down again, I put down my boat and rowed on. On     9     (arrive) at the end of the little river, I was extremely tired     10     I felt really happy and complete relaxed.

6 . Climate science has been rapidly advancing in recent years, but the foundations were laid hundreds of years ago.

In the 1820s, French scientist Joseph Fourier theorized that Earth must have some way of keeping heat and that the atmosphere may play some role. In 1850, American scientist Eunice Newton Foote put thermometers(温度计)in glass bottles and experimented with placing them in sunlight. Inside the bottles, Foote compared dry air, wet air, N₂, O₂ and CO, and found that the bottle containing humid air warmed up more and stayed hotter longer than the bottle containing dry air,and that it was followed by the bottle containing CO₂. In 1859, Irish scientist John Tyndall began measuring how much heat different gases in the atmosphere absorb. And in 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius concluded that more CO₂ in the atmosphere would cause the planet to heat up: These findings planted some of the earliest seeds of climate science.

The first critical breakthrough happened in 1967 when Syukuro Manabe and Richard Wetherald connected energy absorbed by the atmosphere to the air movement vertically over Earth.They built a model which first included all the main physical processes related to climate changes. The predictions and the explanations based on their model still hold true in the real world almost half a century later.

The model was improved in the 1980s by Klaus Hasselmann who connected short-term weather patterns with long-term climate changes. Hasselmann found that even random weather data could yield insight into broader patterns.

“ The greatest uncertainty in the model remains what human beings will do. Figuring it out is 1,000 times harder than understanding the physics behind climate changes,” Manabe said.“ There are many things we can do to prevent climate change. The whole question is whether people will realize that something which will happen in20 or 30 years is something you have to respond to now.”

So, it’s up to us to solve the problem that these pioneers helped the world understand.

7 . On October 12,2021,China officially announced its first five national parks, which are homes to endangered species ranging from the Siberian tigers on the Russian border to the world’s last 30 Hainan black crested gibbons(黑冠长臂猿)in southern China’s tropical rainforest.

By uniting hundreds of protected areas managed by various provinces, the new national park system’s goal is to strengthen conservation under the central authority of the new National Forestry and Grassland Administration(NFGA)

These five parks cover an area two-third the size of the US national park system. The largest, Sanjiangyuan National Park in Qinghai Province, is almost the size of Mississippi.

With such an ambitious plan, there are bound to be challenges. For one the government has to balance the need for the livelihoods of the locals with wildlife conservation. It has not announced a plan to create a permitting system that would regulate how people enjoy nature. What’s more,ecotourism-which is defined as tourism that benefits both locals and their environment-only exists in a fifth of China’s nature reserves.

But there’s hope that the existing ecotourism projects in such nature reserves as Sanjiangyuan National Park and Wolong Nature Reserve will inspire efforts elsewhere in the new park system. Since 2018, Sanjiangyuan National Park has run a community-led tourism program that benefits both locals and snow leopards(豹), the park’s main tourist draw. For $43 a day, visitors can stay with local families, who act as guides to spot these rare “cats” in the wild.

“The community has made all the major decisions, and 100 percent of the income stays in the community. It’s been incredibly successful,” says Marc Brody, who has worked in China since 1994.

NFGA agrees that well-designed ecotourism can improve local ecosystems. It says that a core mission(核心使命)of China’s national parks is to promote eco-civilizationa mission that can be advanced by involving visitors Written into China’s constitution(宪法)in 2012, eco-civilization means scientifically balancing the economic development and the environmental protection.

8 . Anne Lacaton and Jean-Phippe Vassal, this year’s Pritzker Prize winners, were as surprised as anyone else when the most famous award in architecture was made public yesterday.

“Of course it’s very pleasant, and we are very pleased,”Lacaton said at a conference with her partner, both smiling broadly from their black eyeglasses.

Putting aside their eyeglasses, Lacaton and Vassal could not be more different from an earlier generation of Pritzker winners, known for their easily recognizable styles and grand work. Instead, the two apply their simple guideline to their work on old urban buildings for low-income families: Never destroy, never remove or replace, always add, transform, and reuse!

When Lacaton and Vassal were asked to redesign a particularly large and over-crowded public housing block in Bordeaux in 2017, the residents (居民) told them they could not afford to move, even temporarily, but they wanted bigger units. Their solution was to replace the folding wooden front door with sliding glass door to each unit and painted the ugly walls with something bright. Suddenly, everyone had roomy outdoor space, some of which could be used during the winter as “winter gardens.”

“So, people can not only get sun and light and spend time with family, but it’s also open to neighbors,” Columbia University architecture professor Mabel Wilson.“I would love to live in one of the apartments t they’ve redesigned.”

Their approach of cheap and creative re-adaption could be a model for urban planning in the US, Wilson adds, where destruction has been seen as a solution to old public housing in such cities as Chicago and St. Louis.

There’s a lot of violence in architecture and urbanism. We try to be precise. We try to work with kindness,” Lacaton once explained.“Buildings are beautiful when people feel well in them, when the light inside is beautiful and the air is pleasant, when the exchange with the outside seems easy and gentle, and when uses and sensations are unexpected,”

Lacaton and Vassal started their firm in Paris in 1987. Together, they worked primarily in France.

9 . Talking to someone on a train, bus, or subway can be risky yet exciting, as you never know when they’re going to get off. Starting a connection can be fun as the costs are fairly low and you can easily start and stop a conversation, or get off if things become awkward.     1    

Make eye contact. Making brief eye contact can show the persons that you’re interested and help you judge whether they are interested in you. Glance at the persons and try to hold your gaze (注视) for just a second or two.    2    If they meet your gaze, it’s likely positive. If they look away quickly or appear disinterested, it’s probably best not to approach.

Smile at the persons. If you’ve successfully met their gaze, smile at them.

    3    If they smile back, you’re likely in luck in getting them to talk to you.

If you want to start a conversation with the persons, smiling is a great way to get somebody’s attention.

    4    Make a point to appear open, comfortable and available. Do this by keeping your arms uncrossed. Stand or sit up straight and show good posture (姿势). Don’t cross your body or turn away from the persons, as these gestures can make you appear closed off or disinterested.

Approach the persons to start talking to them.     5    If you’re far away, move closer. You should be a comfortable distance where you can hear each other yet not feel awkward if the conversation doesn’t work out.