1 . Every year, about 15 billion trees are cut down to make way for agriculture, mining, logging. and urban expansion. Such mass deforestation has accelerated global warming and endangered the survival of millions of species. Though many nations, organizations, and even individuals have tried, no one could plant enough trees to make up for that loss — but some innovative entrepreneurs are working on a high-tech solution.
BioCarbon Engineering (BCE), a U.K.-based start-up, has developed a technique that could plant one billion trees per year. The method? Drones (无人机). Current tree-planting programs "are just not fast enough," said Irina Fedorenko, a co-founder of the company. "But our technology is automated, so we can scale up quite realistically and quite quickly."
First, a drone scans the land and develops a 3-D map of the area. Then, using the data from this "smart map", the team develops an algorithm (算法) for a unique planting pattern. A drone uses the algorithm to carry out the planting strategy. The drone flies about six feet above the ground, firing growing seeds at a speed that will get them under the soil. The species planted by drone has a better survival rate than helicopter spreading that's more commonly used. Some species even have survival rates nearly identical to hand planting.
With GPS and imaging technologies, experts agree that drones have become useful for accurately mapping large areas of land and measuring tree growth. But some scientists are more skeptical about their success as a planting technology to tackle deforestation on a large scale. After all, they only have so much range and battery life.
"Drones are good for measuring secondary growth and looking at where the forest is coming back, but you fight deforestation at a socioeconomic level," says Arturo Sanchez, director of the University of Alberta's Center for Earth Observation and Sciences. "The issue of climate change is not forest restoration, the issue is energy. It is controlling coal plants, power plants, automobile emissions. Planting trees is very important, but when you look at the distribution of CO₂ emissions, deforestation accounts for 10 to 15 percent. The rest is energy. That's what needs to be controlled."
1. What is the author's purpose in mentioning many trees are cut down?| A．To appeal to us to stop cutting down trees. |
| B．To demonstrate the widespread use of trees. |
| C．To show the urgency of planting sufficient trees. |
| D．To illustrate the effect of economic development on forests. |
| A．Drones can't grow trees faster than current programs. |
| B．Drones accurately map the land prior to planting. |
| C．Drones grow seeds six feet beneath the ground. |
| D．Drones make seeds survive better than hand planting. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Optimistic. | C．Carefree. | D．Intolerant. |
| A．Restoring forest is key to tackling climate change. |
| B．More coal plants are needed to generate abundant energy. |
| C．A major part of CO₂ emissions results from deforestation. |
| D．Coal plants and cars emissions should be restricted. |
2 . Late one evening, I noticed that Lazarus, my beloved German Shepherd, was not acting like himself. He began walking around and just couldn’t
Examinations were taken, and he appeared to be
Luckily, Lazarus stood up and recovered! No one, especially the doctor, expected him to make such a(n)
| A．put down | B．settle down | C．watch over | D．get over |
| A．trip | B．call | C．pill | D．test |
| A．stable | B．serious | C．sleepy | D．thrilled |
| A．attack | B．discomfort | C．damage | D．surgery |
| A．reused | B．overcome | C．acknowledged | D．needed |
| A．forced | B．ordered | C．recommended | D．requested |
| A．clinic | B．yard | C．shelter | D．box |
| A．most dangerous | B．strangest | C．longest | D．most expensive |
| A．abuse | B．strike | C．cry | D．pray |
| A．hardly | B．willingly | C．relatively | D．absolutely |
| A．pull through | B．take care | C．come along | D．break out |
| A．hurt | B．sank | C．recovered | D．melted |
| A．responses | B．values | C．chances | D．desires |
| A．raised | B．trembled | C．changed | D．broke |
| A．deal | B．wish | C．improvement | D．difference |
3 . If you want to become a professional artist, this guide is a good place to start. We’re digging into how to become an artist so you can pursue a career with the craft you love.
Establish a routine to practice your skills
Learning how to become a better artist takes time and requires a lot of practice. The difference between amateur and professional artists is often the time spent on their craft. Professionals take their craft seriously.
Seek advice from professionals
If you’re an amateur artist, it’s helpful to develop your skills by working with other professional, more established artists.
Define what purpose you want your art to serve. There isn’t one answer to the “how to become a good artist” question, especially since there are countless different types of artistic styles and techniques that you can explore. You don’t have to ask anybody’s permission to do anything. Try to create something as if no one will limit what you’re doing.
Create your portfolio (作品集)
If you want to become a better artist, you need to be comfortable sharing your work with the world. An artistic portfolio is a gallery featuring your best works.
Market yourself and your work
| A．Explore your style. |
| B．Imitate a master’s style. |
| C．It’s an excellent marketing tool. |
| D．They work with a strict schedule to improve techniques. |
| E．You may be inspired to try new skills if you see more galleries. |
| F．They’ll give you constructive criticism and even insightful art tips. |
| G．An online presence can help you promote your art to grow your reputation. |
4 . In a heartwarming display of community spirit, six student lacrosse (长曲棍球) players from Roslyn High School in New York have come together to make sports more accessible for people with disabilities. The initiative, dubbed" Lacrosse My Heart," was started by a group of teenagers who were inspired to create a more inclusive environment for their peers with disabilities.
The program focuses on adapting lacrosse, a popular sport in the area, to meet the needs of individuals with physical and cognitive disabilities. The students have designed specialized equipment and rules to ensure that everyone can participate, regardless of their abilities. For example, they have created larger goals and lighter balls to make scoring easier, and have implemented modifications such as allowing players to use their hands to catch and throw the ball. These adaptations have made the sport more accessible and enjoyable for all participants.
The program has gained significant support from the local community, with many schools and organizations donating resources and volunteering their time. The students have also received guidance from experts in adapted physical education, ensuring that the program is safe and enjoyable for all participants. This collaboration has helped to create a program that is both inclusive and beneficial for everyone involved.
One of the key aspects of Lacrosse My Heart is its emphasis on building relationships between able-bodied students and those with disabilities. The founders wanted to create an environment where kids with disabilities could feel included and build friendships with their peers. This approach has been successful, with participants reporting increased confidence and social skills.
Lacrosse My Heart is not only providing opportunities for individuals with disabilities to participate in sports but also promoting understanding and acceptance among young people. By creating a welcoming environment and adapting sports to meet individual needs, these high school students are breaking down barriers and fostering a sense of community that goes beyond the playing field. Their efforts are not only changing lives but also inspiring others to create more inclusive spaces for individuals with disabilities.
1. What is the mission of Lacrosse My Heart?| A．Making sports inclusive for the disabled. |
| B．Promoting a type of sport in the community. |
| C．Raising funds to support people with disabilities. |
| D．Building accesses to public areas for the disabled. |
| A．By getting rid of rules. |
| B．By reducing the weight of balls. |
| C．By making it tough to score. |
| D．By prohibiting the use of hands. |
| A．Engaging disabled people in supporting the community. |
| B．Donating resources to many schools and organizations. |
| C．Designing safe programs for experts in physical education. |
| D．Building bonds between disabled students and non-disabled peers. |
| A．Ambitious and persevering. |
| B．Confident and adventurous. |
| C．Caring and socially responsible. |
| D．Independent and courageous. |
5 . CitySprouts is a non-profit school garden program that works with public schools to build capacity to integrate the school garden into teaching curriculum and the school culture. CitySprouts Summer Program is based in Cambridge and provides 100 youth (ages 11-14) with hands-on learning through growing, harvesting, preparing and eating healthy food in an urban garden. With an emphasis on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), the summer program fosters a strong connection to their natural urban environment through working and learning in the garden.
CitySprouts is seeking energetic, diverse, and outgoing college students to provide essential support to the Summer Program. We expect to accept 8-10 students as CitySprouts Summer Fellows for nine weeks during the summer. CitySprouts Summer Fellows can expect a significant learning opportunity as well as opportunities for career exploration.
Summer Fellow Responsibilities:
·Participate in weekly staff meetings
·Maintain safety during youth meal preparation
·Complete special garden maintenance and construction projects with garden crew
·Engage in daily lesson and activity planning in STEM-SL curriculum, gardening skills and cooking
·Assist the Garden Coordinator in teaching a team of summer middle school interns about growing food, garden care, healthy cooking, science of the garden, and the natural environment
Important Notes:
Fellows are central to our summer staffing and the success of our summer youth program, so we ask for a commitment to the full-nine week time period. The CitySprouts Summer Fellowship is an unpaid position. We ask all Fellows to either secure funding through their schools service learning & career center or receive internship credits from their college or university.
Please click here to include two references that can speak to your work or school experience. Please send one page application resumetomiddleschoolprogram@citysprouts.org .
1. What can we know about CitySprouts Summer Program?| A．It makes students learn gardening merely from textbooks. |
| B．It takes students to rural areas to learn gardening in summer. |
| C．It helps students develop a bond with natural urban environment. |
| D．It teaches 8 to 10 middle school students skills linked to gardening. |
| A．Ensure security during youth meal preparation. |
| B．Accomplish garden maintenance by themselves. |
| C．Design relevant events and courses once a week. |
| D．Teach the garden coordinator gardening skills. |
| A．To encourage schools to add gardening to curriculum. |
| B．To illustrate the significance of learning STEM courses. |
| C．To persuade schools to provide funds for a program. |
| D．To recruit university students to assist with a program. |
1. 推荐话题；
2. 说明理由。
注意：
1. 写作词数应为80左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Dear Stephen,
I’m Li Hua, a student from Class 1.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours,
Li Hua
37-year-old Casey Ryan felt very comfortable in the mountains of the Willamette National Forest in Eugene, Oregon. He knew its roads and hiking trails well from his time as a volunteer in a roadside clean-up crew. These days, he was often there photographing wildlife, and he almost always had his lightweight drone (无人机)with him. It was one of his favorite cameras.
Though weather conditions weren’t great that morning, Ryan decided to go on a short hike with his friend. Snow was common and Ryan felt he knew the area well enough. Still, as they drove along, the roads became icy. Ryan thought he might turn back, but after a truck passed them coming from the opposite direction, he felt safe enough to keep going. The roads must still be passable in that direction, he reasoned.
But it wasn’t long before the two men came across a woman who was stranded(滞留) along the mountain road. Ryan and his friend stopped to help her. Ryan tried to line up his truck’s rope to pull the woman’s car out —and ended up stuck in the same place.
The three tried for hours to dig the cars out, but the sun was setting fast. The temperature was dropping and the snow was turning to ice blocks around the tires. It was impossible to dig out.
Thirty miles from the closest town, their phones had no signal in such a low-lying(低洼的)area. Their car radio and walkie-talkies couldn’t transmit any signal far enough. The three travelers prepared to spend the night in their cars. The hikers had survival gear(装备) and food to share, so they weren’t terribly worried.
It was Ryan’s friend who, jokingly perhaps, brought up a news report he had seen about a man using a drone to send roses to his girlfriend living on the 10th floor to make a proposal (求婚).
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右：
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Looking at his drone, Ryan suddenly came up with an idea.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Ryan’s wife received his phone message and contacted a rescue team.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Every year, hundreds of international students travel thousands of miles to study in China,
The letter-home activity has become
“At first, this activity was operated in a few classes. But when other students saw the letters on display, they took the initiative
As the letters started coming in, the teachers were impressed and touched by the students’ efforts to express emotions across
“We realized that these letters offered a special window into the students’ experiences and
9 . Fly on a lamp on a summer evening and, within minutes, insects will begin to gather near the lamp. This behavior has given rise to a popular simile (比喻) that describes attraction: “like a moth (蛾) to a flame.” Though insects have been “drawn” toward bright light sources for a long time, scientists never truly understood why. Now, they may finally have an answer.
Insects aren’t attracted to artificial lights, according to a new paper published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. Rather, the glow (光) might be interfering with their natural sense of direction. The insects you see circling street lights, in other words, are likely lost.
The new finding depends on a theory about navigation. When insects fly, they can experience whole body acceleration up to five times greater than the acceleration caused by gravity. As such, it can be difficult for them to know which way is up and which way is down as they fly through the air.
The study authors suspect insects rely on the glow coming from stars, planets and the moon to reorient (定方向) themselves. For most of Earth’s history, the sky was the brightest source of light at night, so flying insects turned their bodies to make their backs face skyward. But then, artificial light entered the picture.
To reach these conclusions, scientists used high-resolution cameras to film insects flying around artificial lights in Costa Rica. They also attached tiny sensors to dragonflies and moths, then filmed motion-capture videos of them in flight. Together, these methods allowed researchers to slow down the insects’ normally fast pace and study their movements in greater detail. The footage showed insects turning their backs toward sources of artificial light — even at the price of crashing.
If the light’s above them, they might start orbiting it. When they fly directly over a light, they fly themselves upside down and that can lead to crashes. It really suggests that the moth is confused as to which way is up. After running some experiments, researchers determined that light shining straight down provided the least disruption to insects’ flight. Lights that pointed straight up, on the other hand, caused the most difficulties.
1. What does the underlined word “interfering” in Paragraph 2 most probably mean?| A．Disturbing. | B．Boosting. | C．Restoring. | D．Balancing. |
| A．Body acceleration weakens for them in flight. |
| B．Light from stars is harmful to their navigation. |
| C．They often fly at a very slow speed. |
| D．They fly with their backs facing light. |
| A．Light pointing upward. | B．Light pointing backward. |
| C．Light shining downward. | D．Light shining forward. |
| A．Is It Good to Be Like a Moth to a Flame? |
| B．Why do Flying Insects Gather near Light? |
| C．How Fast Can Insects Fly at Night? |
| D．How does Insect Flight Evolve? |
10 . Autonomously copying other people’s thoughts or options or simply going with the crowd is often referred to as “herd (群体) behaviour”. Herding can appear to make a lot of sense. In an earlier article, I discussed the so-called “wisdom of crowds”, which suggests that average judgments of large groups of people often outperform individual choices.
Psychology research has attempted to model herd behaviour and suggests that the phenomenon relies on the existence of social connections or patterns between individuals as well as specific mechanisms of passing on information. A key condition is the human ability to “mentalize”, which means being able to read and interpret someone else’s mental state and using the information to explain their options. This action of mentalizing is responsible for people’s tendency to attach meaning to options by the herd, even if many behaviours may have come about at random.
Herd behaviours, while common and easy to explain, hold significant dangers. Contrary to the so-called “wisdom of crowds”, which emerges when the judgments of individual group members are independently collected to produce an average opinion, herd behaviours typically rely on so-called “information cascades”, where people take on others’ beliefs or copy their options without critically evaluating the underlying reasons. This frequently leads to the mirroring of unreasonable or stupid behaviours.
Blindly following the herd can be dangerous. So how can we resist the tendency of following the crowd? The sad news is that psychology research suggests that it’s surprisingly difficult to withstand the influences of the herd. In an experiment, researchers found that warning messages about the potential errors of the crowd were surprisingly ineffective in helping subjects make better choices. It appears there is no quick and easy fix. Instead, long-term attitude changes may be necessary, which could involve individuals adopting more critical approaches towards their peers’ opinion, and questioning others’ behaviours as opposed to blindly following them.
1. Why does the author mention “wisdom of crowd” in Paragraph 1?| A．To introduce the definition of herd behaviour. |
| B．To contradict the judgments of large groups. |
| C．To attract readers to his previous discussion. |
| D．To justify the behaviour of following others. |
| A．Heavy reliance on social activities. |
| B．Ineffective mechanism of information exchange. |
| C．Attaching meaning to crowd’s random choices. |
| D．Analyzing individuals’ mental state. |
| A．By defining. | B．By quoting. |
| C．By making a comparison. | D．By giving an example. |
| A．Following your heart. | B．Thinking twice before action. |
| C．Working out a quick fix. | D．Taking peers’ opinion seriously. |
