2 . Many of the world’s islands were previously unexplored places, but over time, people have come to these places with far-reaching effects, including deforestation, over-hunting and the introduction of invasive species. _______, most of the bird species disappeared.

While the death of many birds since the 1500s has been _______, our knowledge of the fate of species before this relies on fossils (化石), and these records are limited because birds’ lightweight bones are _______ over time. This conceals the true _______ of global extinctions.

Researchers now believe 1,430 bird species — almost 12 per cent — have died out over modern human history since around 130,000 years ago, with the vast majority of them becoming extinct directly or indirectly _______ human activity.

The study, led by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) and published in Nature Communications, used statistical modelling to _______ the undiscovered bird extinctions.

Lead author Dr Rob Cooke, an ecological modeler at UKCEH, says:“Our study demonstrates there has been a far higher _______ impact on diversity than previously recognized. Humans quickly destroyed bird populations through habitat loss, over-exploitation, and the introduction of rats, pigs, and dogs, which attacked the birds’ nests, and _______ with birds for food. We show that many species became extinct before written records and left no _______, lost from history.”

Dr Søren Faurby of the University of Gothenburg, a co-author of the study, adds: “These historic extinctions have had a major impact on the current biodiversity crisis. The world may not only have lost many fascinating birds but also their varied ________ roles, which are likely to have included key functions such as pollination (授粉). This will have had knock-on effects on ecosystems, so, ________ bird extinctions, we will have lost a lot of plants and animals that ________ these species for survival.”

Observations and fossils show 640 bird species have been driven extinct — 90 per cent of these on islands ________ by people. These ________ from the iconic (标志性的) Dodo of Mauritius to the Great Auk of the North Atlantic to the lesser-known Saint Helena Giant Hoopoe. But the researchers estimate there have been further 790 unknown extinctions, meaning a total of 1,430 lost species — leaving just under 11,000 today. Therefore, from the perspective of protecting species ________, the protection of birds is an urgent issue for mankind.

4 . Global surface temperatures last month were 2.25 degrees warmer than the 20th century average of 60.1 degrees, breaking previous records, from August 2016, by more than half a degree, according to NOAA researchers. “That to me is a really huge _______ from one record to the next,” said Ellen Bartow, a physical scientist with NOAA’S National Centers for Environmental Information.

The report _______ what millions of people have experienced in recent months, including record-breaking heatwaves that have touched almost every corner of the globe. Asia, Africa, North America and South America had their warmest August on record, as did the Arctic, Europe and Oceania — a region that _______ Australia - had their second-warmest August on record, the report said.

It wasn’t just the land that _______ : August set a record for the highest monthly sea surface temperature abnormally—1.85 degrees above average. The warming oceans _______experiencing its fourth continuous month with the _______ shrinking sea ice, with Antarctica sea ice extent on record. Globally, sea ice extent in August was about 550,000 square miles less than the previous record low, set in August 2019.

“We’ve seen unheard-of warmth in the global ocean, and that’s definitely alarming because its effects _______ beyond just the scope of the ocean,” Bartow-Gillies said. “Not only are you _______ marine habitats, but you’re affecting storm creation, you’re creating more instability in some areas, and you’re creating flooding events in other areas. There’s a whole host of _______ that come along with these warmer ocean surface temperatures that we’re seeing.”

In fact, the report comes after a series of severe natural ________ that span the globe. This week, a Mediterranean storm caused serious flooding in Libya, killing more than 11,000 people. In Canada, wildfires burned through more than 42 million acres of forests this summer, and several are still burning. ________ global warming was not the singular cause of any of these disasters, heating of the Earth continues to ________ the likelihood of extreme weather events and wildfire worldwide.

“The scientific evidence is ________ —we will continue to see more climate records and more intense and frequent extreme weather events impacting society and ecosystems, until we stop ________ greenhouse gases,” read a statement from Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, which also ________ that this summer was the hottest on record.

5 . “Challenge-based learning is often focused on the challenges that have global impact. The students, who ___________the challenge, often don’t know what the solution will be. The facilitator is keeping them from ___________a solution too early, and encourages to analyze the challenge from multiple points of view, and from different scientific perspectives,” says Vilma Sukacke, a researcher at Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), Lithuania.

Such a learning approach is very fitting to sustainability education, which, according to various scholars,___________a contextual, problem-oriented, reflective, interdisciplinary (跨学科), collaborative, participatory and empowered learning environment. In other words, educators have to ___________from more traditional teacher-centred education to becoming instructional designers of student-centred education.

Aiming to evaluate the ___________of such approaches, a group of researchers from Lithuanian, Danish, German, Portuguese and Spanish universities conducted a systematic literature review,___________the three active learning methods, i.e.. project, problem and challenge-based learning according to the ADDIE (analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation) framework.

__________the educators agree that problem-based learning (PBL), project-based learning (PJBL) and, more recently, challenge-based learning (CBL) are efficient in teaching the students to ___________technology in real-life situations and improving their transversal (横向) skills, such as teamwork, communication and conflict resolution, the application of these methods in the classroom may be challenging for both sides.

“In my practice, I have noticed that sometimes students are ___________innovative learning methods and are considering them as a sort of a game. As these classes often take place in a play full environment, full of different pencils, colorful notes and building blocks, it’s difficult for the students to take them ___________. Therefore, it’s very important to___________the methods and the goals to the learners very clearly,” says Professor Saule Petroniene from KTU Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, a co-author of the study.

According to her, to successfully apply unconventional teaching methods is a challenge for a beginning teacher. However, this effort ___________, especially when students continue their activities outside school and focus on solving ___________social problems.

Rescarchers believe that the ___________of CBL, PJBL, and PBL requires a paradigm (范式) shift, where organization, staff and students change their view to education and learning. In this process, both teachers and students need to apply new skills and ___________roles that they might not have needed before.

6 . Many people learn at an early age to associate the color red with danger. So might it make sense to print medication   ________ in red ink? And since the color blue is known to call to mind the freedom of open skies, might it help artists to   ________ in a studio painted in that color? According to new research into how the brain reacts to ________ , the answer to both of these questions is yes. The study revealed that the color red seems to improve a subject’s attention to ________ , while blue appears to stimulate creativity—all without the subject realizing that his or her brain is being influenced.

“People are not ________ this effect at all,” marveled the study’s lead researcher Juliet Zhu, who studies the effects of environmental cues on behavior. To study the brain’s response to specific colors, Zhu’s team administered a series of   ________ tests to college students. For most of the tests, the students were placed in front of a computer screen that was colored either red or blue.

The researchers found that when the screen was red, subjects performed better on detail-oriented tasks. In one test,   ________ , students were asked to memorize a list of words. Zhu found that students who studied the list displayed on a red screen were able to recall more words than students who studied the list on a ________ screen.

In other tests, creative abilities seemed to be ________ by looking at the color blue. For instance, the students were asked to brainstorm potential uses for bricks. Students sitting in front of blue screens tended to come up with ideas that were   ________ , such as “make a paperweight” and “build a pet scratching post.” Students sitting in front of a red screen, on the other hand, were more likely to list ________ uses for bricks, such as “build a house.”

Researchers concluded from the tests that seeing red causes people to take the extra time to think ________ when performing detail-oriented tasks, such as ________ , proofreading— and, of course, reading those all-important warning labels. ________ most people learn early in their development that red signifies potential danger, Zhu said, seeing red perhaps helps people to slow down in order to perform at their best in a potentially risky situation. Seeing blue, on the other hand, produces images of the sky, freedom and peace. Perhaps these images, researchers supposed, ________ feelings. “It’s really this learned association with these colors that drives these different motivations,” Zhu said.

7 . What do you know about fashion? The fashion industry, which has become one of the most _________ to the planet, is having a moment of punishment. But which changes make a difference, and which ones just _________ in the wash? In fact, the fashion industry is second only to the oil industry, the most environmentally unfriendly industry.

A friend of mine _________ an antique clothes store in the north of London. Business has been good for many years, which makes her acquire a large fortune. Every few weeks, she visits a vast storehouse on the edge of the city to go through piles of clothing. Most of it is _________, but if you know what you are looking for, there are raw diamonds. The storehouse has a long history. It was once a clearing house for the low-quality wool scraps(碎料) that were used to make cheap clothing for the _________ in Victorian Britain. A century on, _________ has changed. Nowadays, it is full of modern-day inferior products, all _________ cheap clothing made for the masses around the world. Except that this stuff is going to be burned or buried, not being reused.

The items are the products of an industry that, in the past 30 years, has become one of the most successful and also most _________ on the planet. Known as fast fashion, it has filled our wardrobes(衣柜) with cheap and cheerful clothes. But after three decades of continuous growth, the model is in _________ with fundamental environmental limits and there is widespread agreement – even from within the industry – that it is time to ____________. Otherwise, “Fast fashion” creates a mountain of unsellable, cheap clothing that ends up in a terrible place.

“The fashion industry represents a key environmental ____________,” says Kirsi Niinimäki at Aalto University in Espoo, Finland. “Eventually, the long-term stability of the fashion industry ____________ the total abandonment of the fast-fashion model.” Like fast food, fast fashion is all about instant ____________ on the cheap.

One wonders: What can we do about it? Don’t you have any clothes on? It’s not that ____________. More importantly, don’t waste, learn to control your desires and ____________ falling into this “Fast fashion” lifestyle. As the guardian columnist Lucy Seagal once said, the “Fast fashion” industry is profit-driven, but consumers who have experienced “over-consumption” will naturally grow tired of it, and the market will have its choice.

8 . Self-control may be the secret to success, according to a persuasive new study that followed 1,000 children from birth to age 32. Children who showed early signs of self-control were not only less likely to have developed addictions or to have committed a crime by adulthood, but were also healthier and _________ than their more impulsive peers.

For the new study, called the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, researchers led by Duke University psychologist Terrie Moffitt followed 1,000 children in New Zealand for more than three decades.

In previous research, researchers found that _________ and out-of-control behavior were more common in children who had experienced loss or violence. If children have bad experiences, the _________ may affect the proper development of the frontal cortex (前额叶) in children’s brains, which is responsible for self-control. If children have lower self-control, they will have a(n) _________ time in school. They won’t learn as efficiently and they are more likely to act out because of their frustrations, which means the potential for more _________ problems and, in later life, the potential for legal problems.

Although Moffitt’s study found some “concentration of low self-control children in homes with low income,” the author says, “The link was _________. There were plenty of well-to-do children with very low self-control.” _________, poor children who scored best on measures of self-control were more likely than others to become wealthy in later life. “One _________ of the findings is that children with high self-control who began life in low-income homes ended up as adults with higher incomes,” says Moffitt.

_________, the period of time in which many of the mistakes in self-discipline would potentially lead to the worst life outcomes occurred during the teenage years. Teens who had scored lowest in measures of __________ in early childhood were the most likely to make mistakes in the first place. And even those low self-control teens who managed to __________ smoking, alcohol or other drug-related problems, and who stayed in school, still did worse later in life than their more disciplined peers. This suggests that there might be a better __________ on investment from early childhood interventions.

“Trial and error is a __________ part of teenage life”，says Moffitt, “But teens with good self-control __________ trial and error more strategically, and they understand the difference between a useful learning experiment and real danger. I am convinced that teenagers can be taught to recognize this __________.”

9 . Why HS2 should go ahead

For the country that invented railways, Britain has shown remarkably little interest in them lately. New networks have been built around Europe in the past few decades, but the only significant stretch of ________ laid in Britain in a century is the 67-mile HS1 railway that links London to the Channel Tunnel. ________ , the country has half as much track as it had in 1963.Yet while Britain has an almost American ________ to invest in railways, its commuting(通勤) patterns are European: l0% of journeys are by rail, compared with 9% in Germany and less than 1% in America.

Britain's big ________ is that, because it has built no new high-speed lines, it runs fast intercity trains on the same track as slow commuter ones. Long ________ have to be left between slow and express trains. The need to make way for high-speed trains thus ________ the number of commuter services,and vice versa. Eight years ago,the government decided to change this by building a new 345-mile railway from London to the north of England. Though branded as High Speed 2, its principal job was to improve capacity(运输量) rather than ________ .

Rail is an increasingly significant part of the transport mix. Climate change is making carbon-efficiency even more important. At the same time, passenger numbers have gone beyond ________ . The government had expected passenger volumes to increase by 17-21% in the decade from 2011; actually, they were up by 24% within just seven years and are expected to go on ________ at a similar rate.

The benefit-to-cost ratio(效益成本比率) calculated for HS2, at around one, is hardly acknowledged. But just as the costs of big transport projects are often ________ , so are their long-term benefits. The extension to London's Jubilee tube line, ________ ,was approved with a BCR of less than one, but recent analysis suggests that it has been more like 1.75. And that includes only the profits that go directly to the railway, not the ________ consequences of the recovery of London's Docklands area, which the tube line made possible.

The main point of HS2, similarly, is its impact on the cities and towns along its ________ and beyond. Boris Johnson, the prime minister, is on a mission to promote growth in northern and western areas ________ by the country's London-centered pattern of growth. On its own HS2 won't make that happen, but doing so without a new railway would be ________ . The success of the "Northern Powerhouse" rail scheme, to link the north's big towns, depends on it.

10 . Imagine sitting inside a windowless train that's shooting through a tube at twice the speed of an airplane. Your train has no wheels, produces no _________ , makes its own electricity, and isn't affected by bad weather. This is the hyperloop, a new vision for the world's _________ , safest, and greenest form of transportation. Many have _________ this new technology, but others say the hyperloop vision is just a bunch of hot air.

Hyperloop developers plan to use the properties of magnets to float, stabilize, and drive the capsules or pods for hundreds of miles through _________ tubes. Without air or ground to slow down the vehicles, what was once a five-hour journey would become a half-hour excursion, engineers promise.

Supporters of the technology promote additional _________ of transporting passengers and cargo by hyperloop. For example, they firmly state that unlike other city-to-city transport that's _________ , such as planes or trains, hyperloop vehicles would leave as needed, like Ubers and taxis. While the _________ would hold only 28 to 50 passengers each, developers plan for them to depart stations in groups every minute or so which they say could amount to shuttling 50,000 people an hour. That's more than twice the passenger _________ of the world's fastest trains.

Developers also say that hyperloop tubes would be _________ so they wouldn't interfere with other traffic or threaten wildlife. And tubes would be covered with solar panels to power the hyperloop's systems. ____________ , advocates regard the hyperloop as the transportation choice for the future.

But not everyone is on board. Engineers have calculated that the high-speed vehicles will need to make much wider turns than currently envisioned, and otherwise they won't be ____________ for passengers. This would add several miles to the proposed tube tracks, Engineers also say planners haven't included enough time for vehicles to safely brake and take off at stations. Some engineers believe it will take much longer than claimed to pump the ____________ out of the tubes before each vehicle's departure. Critics thus say hyperloops can't go as fast or serve as many passengers per hour as advertised, making them ____________ existing high-speed transportation options.

Hyperloop companies say they're ____________ these concerns. They claim that they can safely maintain high speeds by having the vehicles bank around the turns as a plane does. And their hyperloops will rely on the split-second reaction times of a computer to ____________ vehicles quickly, frequently, and safely.