1 . If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars, we would go in darkness happily, the midnight world as visible to us as it is to the vast number of nocturnal (夜间活动的) species on this planet. Instead, we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in the sun’s light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even though most of us don’t think of ourselves as diurnal beings. Yet it’s the only way to explain what we’ve done to the night: We’ve engineered it to receive us by filling it with light.
The benefits of this kind of engineering come with consequence called light pollution whose effects scientists are only now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design, which allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into the sky. Ill-designed lighting washes out the darkness of night and completely changes the light levels and light rhythms to which many forms of life, including ourselves, have adapted. Wherever human light spills into the natural world, some aspect of life is affected.
In most cities the sky looks as though it has been emptied of stars, leaving behind a vacant haze (霾) that mirrors our fear of the dark. We’ve grown so used to this orange haze that the original glory of an unlit night—dark enough for the planet Venus to throw shadow on Earth—is wholly beyond our experience, beyond memory almost.
We’ve lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country, when nothing could be further from the truth. Among mammals alone, the number of nocturnal species is astonishing. Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet. The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being “captured” by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms. Migrating at night, birds tend to collide with brightly lit tall buildings.
Frogs living near brightly lit highways suffer nocturnal light levels that are as much as a million times brighter than normal, throwing nearly every aspect of their behavior out of joint, including their nighttime breeding choruses. Humans are no less trapped by light pollution than the frogs. Like most other creatures, we do need darkness. Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as light itself.
Living in a glare of our making, we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural heritage—the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night. In a very real sense light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way—the edge of our galaxy—arching overhead.
1. According to the passage, human being ________.A.are used to living in the daylight | B.prefer to live in the darkness |
C.were curious about the midnight world | D.had to stay at home with the light of the moon |
A.show how light pollution affects animals |
B.provide examples of animal protection |
C.compare the living habits of both species |
D.explain why the number of certain species has declined |
A.human beings are curious about the outer space |
B.human beings should reflect on their position in the universe |
C.light pollution does harm to the eyesight of animals |
D.light pollution has destroyed some of the world heritages |
A.The Magic Light | B.The Orange Haze |
C.The Disappearing Night | D.The Rhythms of Nature |
2 . In some islands north of Scotland, head lice, which live on the hair or skin of people or animals, were a part of life. If the lice left their host, he became sick and feverish. Therefore, sick people had lice put in their hair intentionally. There was a method to their madness: As soon as the lice had settled in again, the patient improved. The story explains the confusion of cause and effect. If the lice leave the sick, it is because he has a fever and they simply get hot feet. When the fever breaks, they return. We may laugh at this story, but false causality misleads us practically every day.
Consider the headline: “Fact: Women Who Use Shampoo XYZ Every Day Have Stronger Hair.” This statement says very little — least of all, that the shampoo makes your hair stronger. It might simply be the other way round: Women with strong hair tend to use Shampoo XYZ — and perhaps that’s because it says “especially for thick hair” on the bottle.
A further example: Scientists found that long periods in the hospital did harm to patients. This was music to health insurers’ ears, who, of course, are keen to make stays as brief as possible. But, clearly, patients who are dismissed immediately are healthier than those who must stay on for treatment.
Recently I read that students get better grades at school if their homes contain a lot of books. This study was surely a shot in the arm for booksellers, but it is also an example of false causality. This simple truth is that educated parents tend to value their children’s education more than uneducated ones do. Plus, educated parents often have more books at home. In short, a dust-covered copy of War and Peace alone isn’t going to influence anyone’s grades; what counts is parents’ education levels, as well as their genes.
Another example of false causality was the supposed relationship between the birth rate and the numbers of stork (鹳) pairs in Germany. Both were in decline, and if you plot them on a graph, the two lines of development from 1965 to 1987 appeared almost the same. Does this mean the stork actually does bring babies? Obviously not, since this was a purely accidental connection.
In conclusion: Connection is not causality. Take a closer look at linked events: Sometimes what is presented as the cause turns out to be the effect, or just the other way around. And sometimes there is no link at all — just like with the storks and babies.
1. Which is an example of false causality?A.Women with strong hair tend to use a certain shampoo. |
B.Birth rate and the stork population are connected. |
C.Longer periods in the hospital benefit patients. |
D.Lice can make a person sick and feverish. |
A.pain | B.defeat | C.guidance | D.encouragement |
A.their homes are full of books | B.they have read War and Peace |
C.their educated parents value education | D.their parents are successful booksellers |
A.connections are pure accidents | B.cause and effect are interdependent |
C.connections are mostly cause and effect | D.linked events may turn out to be unrelated |
3 . Waste not, Want not
Today, I live in Manhattan with my husband, Alex. I’m an IT specialist and Alex is a lawyer. Life’s good, but sometimes I look at the way we live it and think of Ellie, my grandmother. Her favorite saying was “Waste not, want not.”
Such economy seems strange, even ridiculous, in our modern throwaway society, where everything is sold in boxes.
A.Packaging is not only used to protect goods |
B.My grandparents threw almost nothing away |
C.In one week alone, we threw away five old magazines |
D.We didn’t often go shopping and then cook meals at home |
E.As young Manhattan professionals, we buy a lot of “convenience food” |
F.But we pay a high financial and ecological price for our lovely packaging |
G.If you placed all the cans used in the United States, in one year end to end |
4 . The Life Cycle of a T-shirt
We all probably have a lot of T-shirts, but do you ever stop and think about the influence of a T-shirt on the planet? You’d probably be surprised to learn what’s involved in the life cycle of just one T-shirt.
There are 5 major stages: material, production, shipping, use and disposal. The material stage involves farming, irrigating, fertilizing, harvesting and ginning. While cotton is a natural fiber and not as harmful to the environment as man-made fibers, it still takes a toll in the material and production stages. Commercial cotton farming uses a large amount of water, and the use of pesticides (杀虫剂) is widespread across the globe, especially in cotton farming. Studies have shown that farmers spend around $4.1 billion on pesticides annually, of which 25% was spent on cotton crops in the US.
Once the cotton is grown and harvested, so begins the production stage: spinning, knitting, bleaching, dyeing, cutting, sewing, etc. — these processes also use a great deal of water and energy. Commercial dyes and bleaches are harmful pollutants and can eventually pollute groundwater.
After the T-shirt is produced, it enters the transportation stage. This often involves overseas shipping. Take a look in your closet. Chances are that most of your cotton garments (衣服) are made in China or India. Garments can be shipped via plane, ship or truck..., all of which spill CO2, into the atmosphere. Calculations show that CO2 emissions from light trucks alone amount to 1.15 pounds per mile.
Once the T-shirt reaches the retail market, it is purchased. This stage may seem like the least environmentally damaging part. But consider the number of times you’ve washed and dried your favorite T-shirt. Washing machines are certainly becoming more efficient. However, the average American household does 400 loads of laundry per year, using about 40 gallons of water per load. Such excessive water use is combined with the large amount of energy used by dryers.
The final stage of life is disposal. This releases harmful emissions, or involves a landfill where cotton takes years to break down. Current US records show that an estimated 15% of clothes and shoes are recycled, which means that consumers send a shocking 85% of these materials to landfill.
We all need new clothes every once in a while, but let’s all try to keep in mind what goes into the production of clothing. It has a real impact on the planet.
There are a lot of things you can do to help reduce your impact. Reuse and recycle clothes. If they’re too worn out to wear, cut them up and use them as cleaning rags. Donate them to charity or another organization that recycles textiles. When possible, make an effort to buy organic cotton. Turn down the thermostat on your washer, and line dry your clothes when the weather will allow it.
1. The underlined phrase “takes a toll” probably means .A.wastes water | B.has a bad effect |
C.consumes energy | D.takes a lot of time |
A.pesticides in cotton farming cost over 4 billion dollars every year |
B.CO2 emissions of land transport amount to 1.15 pounds per mile |
C.about 16, 000 gallons of water is used annually by an average family on laundry |
D.about 15% of the clothes and shoes are made of materials that are recycled |
A.The production process may affect water safety. |
B.The clothing cost is relatively low in China and India. |
C.Cotton clothes are buried because they are hard to break down. |
D.The use stage is the least environmentally harmful of the five stages. |
A.To introduce the five stages in the life cycle of clothing. |
B.To encourage people to donate clothes to charity. |
C.To persuade people to purchase more organic cotton. |
D.To promote eco-friendly actions related to clothes. |
5 . Would you rather be an impressive employee in an ordinary firm, or land a role at the most well-known company in your industry?
The answer to that question might seem highly personal, based on factors like whether or not you are a competitive person and how much you enjoy a challenge. In fact, there’s another strong factor at play: People from different cultures react very differently to that question. The psychologists from the University of Michigan asked people theoretical questions about the decisions they take. Specifically, the researchers compared people with East Asian backgrounds and European American backgrounds. They found that Americans are much more likely to favor being a big fish in a small pond. East Asians, and specifically Chinese people, are much more likely than Americans to lean towards being a smaller fish in a bigger pond.
Researchers first asked 270 students at a large American university whether they would rather be a “big fish in a small pond” or the opposite. Of the students with East Asian American backgrounds, three quarters said they’d rather be a small fish, compared with just under 60% of students with European American backgrounds who said the same.
The researchers then compared American and Chinese adults. They asked the participants whether they would rather attend a top university but perform below average, and whether they would rather work for a top global company but do less well in comparison to their peers. Over half the Chinese adults chose the famous university, compared with just a third of Americans. In the case of the firms, well over half of people from both groups chose to do better at a less well-known firm, but Chinese people were still more likely to choose being a “small fish” than were Americans.
The final experiment sought to discover how American and Chinese people made judgments about whether they were succeeding. They found that Chinese people were more likely to compare their performance to the performance of people in other groups. Americans, meanwhile, were more likely to compare themselves to people within the same group, to judge whether or not they were doing well.
In East Asian cultures, it’s “not enough that you know you’re doing well in your school,” said Kaidi Wu, a PhD student in psychology who led the research. “It is much more important that other people — an outsider, a family relative, a future employer who has five seconds to glance through your resume — also recognize your academic excellence.”
America is the opposite: “Think about how many times themes like ‘You are your own person’ or ‘Stop worrying about what other people think’ course through song lyrics and self-help books,” Wu said, concluding: “The choices we make are the products of our culture.”
1. The psychologists from the University of Michigan find that ______.A.Americans tend to achieve success in a big company |
B.Chinese are likely to perform better in a big company |
C.Americans prefer to shine in a relatively small company |
D.Chinese are comfortable with working in a small company |
A.compare different attitudes towards competition | B.find different views about personal success |
C.judge performances of different groups | D.confirm which culture is better |
A.his neighbors | B.his classmates | C.his teachers | D.his parents |
A.plays a key role in people’s choice making | B.shows who we grow up to be in the future |
C.is the most important factor behind success | D.determines students’ academic performance |
6 . What’s the first thing you remember doing? It could be playing with your friends at school, or going to a birthday party and eating amazing cake.
It’s a strange concept to grasp, but according to research, about four out of ten of us invent our first childhood memory. Rather than having experienced something, we could have fabricated a fake memory from videos or photos we’ve seen. We could have been influenced by a story recounted to us that spurs our minds on to adopt someone else’s memory as our own.
So why do we create fake memories? Some experts believe that there is a clear desire for a sense of self and having a cohesive (连贯的) story of our existence.
So, the next time someone says they have a clear memory from when they were one or even before just remember that while it could be true, there’s a chance they just invented it at some point in their lives.
A.But why don’t we have clear memories from that age? |
B.It happens to everyone no matter how educated he or she is. |
C.This is possibly due to the rapid creation of brain cells in our early years. |
D.We often talk about these memories with our families as if it were what happened yesterday. |
E.Creating memories can fill in the gaps giving us a more complete structure for our early lives. |
F.Most of us have a treasured early memory of our childhood, but can we really believe those vivid memories? |
G.What it means is that memories of our younger years, especially before the age of two, may be inaccurate, or entirely false. |
7 . Beauty and Well-being Benefits of Handed Massage Guns
What are they?Originally beloved by athletes, massage guns are gaining popularity as a stress or pain-relieving tool. A quick and convenient alternative to a traditional deep-tissue massage, many offer detachable heads to target calves, ankles or the top s of shoulders, available in a range of sizes and speeds.
What are the supposed benefits?If you often find yourself aching after the gym or a long day of work, a massage gun may well be your new best friend. Sending pulses at a steady frequency that is difficult to achieve manually, they allow you to target a specific area of tightness, loosening lactic acid buildup muscle and allowing for greater mobility and muscle flexibility. Even if you’re not so physically active, a couple of minutes of regular massaging can do wonders for your complexion.
Through vibration frequency, the movement of a massage gun will encourage blood and lymphatic (淋巴的) circulation, giving a new vibrancy and comfort to skin as toxins (毒素) drain out and oxygen flows through. If you’ve been feeling heavy or struggling to unwind, massage guns are also thought to be a useful tool in the rehabilitation (康复) of depression, anxiety, digestive disorders and stress-related insomnia.
Do they actually work?Once you get used to the quiet humming noise, the swift, targeted relief a gun can offer more than justifies the initial spend. Leading the market is the Lola, a lightweight handheld gun in a sleek matte finish with four speeds that tucks easily into the pocket of an overnight bag. The key is to operate within your own comfort-be sure to fit the adjustable heads firmly and work through the speed functions slowly, building up to higher pressures only if necessary. While concerns about suitability for specific conditions or injuries should always be discussed with a doctor, the massage gun is certainly proof that both internal and external beauty can be achieved by listening that little bit closer to our bodies.
1. What is not the supposed benefits of handed massage guns?A.To target a specific area of tightness. |
B.To allow for greater mobility and muscle flexibility. |
C.To encourage blood and lymphatic circulation. |
D.To help lactic acid build up in muscles. |
A.Many offer fixed heads to target diverse muscles. |
B.The initial spend is too high to be justified by their functions. |
C.They can help rehabilitate people with depression and anxiety. |
D.Their suitability for specific conditions and injuries is certain. |
A.To show the beauty and well-being benefits of handed massage guns. |
B.To inform us the availability of different sizes of handed massage guns. |
C.To share with us the popularity of handed massage guns among athletes. |
D.To compare handed massage guns with doctors on suitability for injuries. |
8 . The Day Lisa Lost
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about the many professional athletes of today who have developed a me-first attitude. I am talking about high school sports, where lessons of life are still being learned. Here, athletes still compete for the love of the game and their teammates. Lisa Kincaid is one of them.
I first met Lisa on the volleyball court. If anyone had a right to be cocky (自大的) or proud of herself, it was Lisa. Besides being one of the best volleyball players in the USA, she became a track legend (传奇人物) . She went sixty-four national games without losing any event.
However, she felt uncomfortable talking about her achievements and would usually change the conversation to others’ performances. She often lent her shoes to someone who’d forgotten her own, or sincerely sent best wishes to competitors from different teams.
Soon after, Lisa’s impossible failure in one game impressed me a lot. Lisa’s coach told her he needed her to run the mile. She had never done so, but agreed to do what was best for the team. Lisa easily outdistanced the competition, but on the last lap she seemed to grow tired. Jane, Lisa’s teammate, passed her. Lisa managed to stay just behind Jane and followed her across the finish line. Lisa lost an event for the first time in her track career.
Athletes in Lisa’s track program needed to earn a set amount of points to gain a varsity letter (校队标志微章). Lisa knew that Jane needed to finish first to earn a letter for the first time. Without Lisa, Jane would make it. Lisa remembered all this as she lined up for the start of that race. It suddenly struck me why she wore a slight smile on her face after having “lost” for the first time ever. Jane finally received her first varsity letter. And Lisa? On that day, the day she lost, she earned my respect and admiration.
1. From the passage, we can learn that Lisa_________.A.valued the importance of respect | B.intended to prove herself in the race |
C.won every race she had ever entered | D.cared less about what she had achieved |
A.Because she did a deal with Jane. | B.Because she lent her shoes to others. |
C.Because she carried out her secret plan. | D.Because she already earned her varsity letter. |
A.Generous. | B.Brave. | C.Patient. | D.Independent. |
Balancing Trees and CO2
Tree planting used to be regarded as an effective means of reducing climate change. Perhaps it’s time for us to rethink this practice. Trees pull CO2 from the air. This effectively removes CO2 from the atmosphere. But trees only hold onto CO2 as long as they’re alive. Once they die, trees decay (腐烂) and release that CO2 back into the atmosphere.
Recent studies have found that trees around the world are growing faster than ever. The rise of CO2, mainly due to burning fossil fuels, is probably driving that rapid growth, said Roel Brienen, a forest ecologist at the University of Leeds, UK. High levels of CO2 are increasing temperatures, which in turn speeds tree growth in those areas, he added.
The faster trees grow, the faster they store carbon. It seems like good news. However, it is known that fast-growing tree species, in general, live shorter lives than their slow-growing relatives.
In order to see whether the growth-lifespan trade-off (生长与寿命之间的权衡) is a universal phenomenon, Brienen and his colleagues analyzed over 210,000 individual tree ring records of 110 tree species from more than 79,000 sites worldwide. They found that, in almost all habitats and all sites, faster-growing tree species died younger than slow-growing species, and even within a species, the trade-off between growth and life span held strong.
The team also created a computer program that modeled a forest and tweaked (微量调整) the growth of the trees in this model. Early on, it showed that “the forest could hold more carbon as the trees grew faster”, Brienen reported. But after 20 years, these trees started dying and losing this extra carbon again. “We must understand that the only solution to bringing down CO2 levels is to stop emitting (排放) it into the atmosphere,” said Brienen.
1. What does “this practice” in Para.1 refer to?2. Why are trees around the world growing faster than ever?
3. Read the following statement, underline the false part of it and explain the reason. The team has found that the faster trees grow, the faster they store CO2, and the longer lives they live.
4. Please briefly present what you can do in daily life to reduce the emission of CO2.(about 40 words)
ROSS TOWNSHIP, OHIO—Some Ohio high school students are regional winners in a national contest after inventing a mobile device app that helps needy families find local food pantries (食品储藏室).
And someday the teens, who are students at Ross High School in Ross Township, may be selling the app to food pantries and food banks across America.
Their “Smart-Pantry” app has won the local U. S. Congressional App Challenge, which spans 47 states and territories, for the 8th Congressional District that includes their Butler County school system of Ross Schools.
Created as part of computer science class coordinated by Butler Tech career school system at the high school—three students, Jacob Kahmann, Gunner Nonnamber and Kyle Inderhees, recently were visited by Congressman Warren Davidson, R-Troy. Davidson issued a statement praising the teens for creating “this app to set the standard for efficient food collection and distribution.”
Butler Tech IT Instructor Tom O’Neill said the students’ app includes features that help users locate the nearest food pantry, improve food collection procedures and allows pantries to better monitor for fraud (欺骗) by users, and the national challenge provides a real-life learning opportunity for his students.
“The Congressional App Challenge provides my students with an opportunity to develop solutions to real-world problems. This app helps people locate food pantries and is designed to increase efficiency at food pantries and food banks,” said O’Neill.
The students are continuing to add features to the app and are working on turning it into a commercial product, said O’Neill, who in recent years helped numerous Ross High School teens win national honors for their computer-science-based inventions.
Brian Martin, principal of Ross High School, said it’s “extremely exciting” to watch students excel on the state, national and international stages.
“The staff and students in the Ross school district continue to amaze me with their future-thinking and innovation,” said Brian Martin. “Our students are not only thinking about carecrs, they are thinking about problems and issues they want to change, solve or improve. The app that was created is very unique and will make serving a population in need more efficient.”
The three inventors will be invited in the spring to a Congressional App Challenge hosted by Congress in the nation’s capital.
1. According to Davidson, what can the app be used to do? (不多于10个单词)2. How did Brain Martin feel about what the staff and students did? (不多于5个单词)
3. What is the main idea of the passage? (不多于9个单词)
4. What kind of app would you like to design to solve a real-world problem? (单词数不限)