1 . Warming seas across the globe are endangering coral reefs, a key ecosystem that supports marine life to live and thrive. As a possible way to save them from extinction, scientists have recently frozen and revived groups of adult corals for the first time, according to a recent study.
Freezing biological materials, or “cryopreserving” them, refers to keeping them in a deep freeze for long periods without affecting the cells viability (活性), according to the Science Times website.
This method usually cools them to very low temperatures, commonly to-196℃. Since cells would normally die at such a low temperature due to the formation of ice inside, scientists need to monitor the freezing rate and choose the freezing medium carefully.
Researchers in the US experimented with freezing pea-sized pieces of a common coral in Hawaii. After removing the microbes on the corals, they sealed the corals in metal containers filled with a chemical solution that partially dehydrated (脱水) them and helped control ice growth.
When the corals reached a temperature of around -200 ℃, the remaining water in the corals solidified into a glassy form. The corals were still alive, with their life-driving functions becoming extremely slow. After being cryopreserved for a few minutes, the researchers pulled the corals out and placed them in warm water. In two minutes, they started consuming oxygen — a sign of them staying alive.
Previously, researchers had already successfully cryopreserved coral larvae (幼虫), according to a study in 2018. However, the larvae can only be collected when corals spawn (产卵), which happens just a few nights each year. “That’s putting a lot of eggs in one basket,” US marine scientist Liza Roger told Science News.
This breakthrough offers more hope to the worlds corals, said Roger. However, there’s more work to be done. A few days after thawing (解冻), the corals became “stressed out” from the process and were killed by the bacteria they normally live in harmony with. The researchers are working on using antibiotics to help them survive for a longer period of time.
1. What happened to the corals when they were cryopreserved?| A．They died temporarily. |
| B．Their life functions slowed down. |
| C．They remained alive and unchanged. |
| D．They fed on microbes in the containers. |
| A．It is not a reliable solution. |
| B．It needs a large number of eggs. |
| C．It holds promise for restoring corals. |
| D．It requires overly expensive technology. |
| A．Finding a suitable freezing medium. |
| B．Identifying the bacteria on the corals. |
| C．Expanding the collection of coral larvae. |
| D．Maintaining the corals health after thawing. |
| A．Bringing dead corals back to life. | B．Freeze and revive coral larvae. |
| C．Find a way to preserve corals. | D．Study the conditions of coral growth. |
2 . A recent global study, which surveyed 10,000 young people from 10 countries, showed that nearly 60 percent of them were extremely worried about the future state of the planet. The report also showed that nearly half of the respondents (受访者) said that such distress affected them daily, and three-quarters agreed with the statement that “the future is frightening.” This, and many other studies, show clearly that climate change is not just a threat to the environment. It also poses a very real threat to our mental health.
Psychologists have classified these feelings of sadness, distress, and worry about the current climate emergency as eco-anxiety. According to the Climate Psychology Alliance, eco-anxiety is defined as the “intense physical and mental discomfort in response to dangerous changes in the climate system.”
Eco-anxiety doesn’t just affect young people. It also affects researchers who work in climate and ecological science, burdened by the reality discovered in their findings, and it affects the poor people across the globe, who hopelessly bear the harmful impacts of climate breakdown.
In recent years, we’ve seen wildfires tear through Canada and Greece, and summer floods destroy regions in Pakistan that are home to nearly 33 million people. Studies have shown that those impacted by air pollution and rising temperatures are more likely to experience mental distress.
The cause of this mental distress is absolutely external. According to Caroline Hickman, a researcher on eco-anxiety from the University of Bath, anyone experiencing these emotions is displaying entirely natural and rational reactions to the climate crisis. Her suggestion? Take eco-anxiety as a tool for good-as an emotion that can urge people to act in protection of our planet.
This is why, in 2024, we will also see more people around the world join the fight for climate justice and apply for jobs that seek sustainable development. Eco-anxiety is not something we will defeat with therapy—we will solve it by taking action.
1. What does the underlined word “distress” in paragraph 1 mean?| A．Shock. | B．Anxiety. | C．Happiness. | D．Anger. |
| A．It is a strong reaction to the natural disasters. |
| B．It is a kind of mental disease for the young people. |
| C．It is a physical and mental discomfort when we meet difficulties. |
| D．It is a strong physical and mental discomfort for the dangerous climate changes. |
| A．The process of eco-anxiety. | B．The impact of eco-anxiety. |
| C．The causes of eco-anxiety. | D．The benefits of eco-anxiety. |
| A．Defeat it with a therapy. | B．Just wait for a good solution. |
| C．Join the fight for climate justice. | D．Use it to urge people to protect our earth. |
3 . Several art projects are on show to warn people of the climate change happening around us.
Video on the walls
Photographer Camille Seaman has traveled to both the North Pole and the South Pole, where she has captured the disappearing ice in photographs and video. Camille Seaman made a video with some of her most powerful photos of melting ice for people in four coastal cities to display on their buildings. The video ends with a prediction that sea level will rise by 2050 without relative action.
Mural (壁画)changing color
Temperatures in Austin, Texas, are on the rise, and climate change will put the city at higher risk of extended drought, wildfires, intense rain and flooding. Artist Lope Gutiérrez-Ruiz designed a unique mural that changes color as it gets hotter. This art work calls for people to change the world and change climate change, underlining the importance of individual actions to the collective future.
Public billboard (广告牌)
Artist Christine Sun Kim released a public billboard on the 710 Freeway called The Sound of Temperature Rising. It points to the reality of climate disaster that has become all too clear on the West Coast and the need for significant change now. The illustration features a graph (图表) of music notes that get progressively longer and redder.
Anti-Extinction Library
Globally, species are disappearing at an unheard-of rate. In response, architect Mitchell Joachim created The Anti-Extinction Library in New York. The sculptural piece is not only beautiful but also functional. Their unique egg-shaped library has a special freezer storing test tubes with the frozen cells and DNA of rare animals and plants. It’s important for people to realize we must quickly work to protect the rights of different species in our area.
1. What is the key feature of the mural?| A．It lights up at night. |
| B．It moves with the wind. |
| C．It plays music when it rains. |
| D．It changes color with temperature. |
| A．Camille Seaman’s. | B．Lope Gutiérrez-Ruiz’s. |
| C．Christine Sun Kim's. | D．Mitchel l Joachim’s. |
| A．To praise artists’ participation. |
| B．To call for people to take action. |
| C．To show the severe result of climate change. |
| D．To facilitate the combination of art and climate. |
4 . Trees in tropical (热带的) forests grow more slowly in years when the nights are warmer than average or dry-season days are unusually hot, according to a 21-year study. This suggests such forests will grow less as the world warms due to climate change -potentially taking in less carbon dioxide from the air and worsening global warming.
“For the first time, we have a window on what a whole tropical forest is doing, ”says Deborah Clark at the University of Missouri-St Louis. “It is very scary. ”
Tropical forests contain a large amount of carbon, because the trees take in CO₂ from the air and use it to grow. Droughts, which are becoming more serious due to climate change, may harm the forests and re- lease (释放) some of the stored carbon.
For over two decades, Clark and her husband David Clark, also at the University of Missouri-St Louis, lived at La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica. From1997 to 2018, they took detailed measurements of the surrounding tropical forest, tracking the wood production as well as the amount of litter that fell from the trees.
The pair, with Steven Oberbauer at Florida International University, discovered that wood production fell in years with warmer nights -something studies had already suggested before. The team also found that the trees produced less wood in years when temperatures in the dry season rose more than 28°C.
While this hadn’t been shown before, Deborah Clark says it was expected because photosynthesis (光合作用) slows above this temperature.
The study adds to growing proof of climate effects on tropical forests, says lain Hartley at the University of Exeter in the UK. “It looks like, as you warm the climate, you put pressure on the plants, leading to reduced productivity. Coupled with droughts, tropical forests may have less ability to help us in the fight against climate change in the future.”
1. What causes the forests to grow less according to paragraph 1?| A．Warmer temperature. | B．More carbon dioxide. |
| C．Less daylight | D．Worse air condition. |
| A．By gathering wood. | B．By giving example. |
| C．By collecting data. | D．By tracking former study. |
| A．The trees took in more CO, in the drought season. |
| B．The wood production decreased in the warmer days. |
| C．Droughts help increase the carbon storage. |
| D．Tropical forests grow faster at warmer nights. |
| A．Helpful. | B．Negative. | C．Unclear. | D．Necessary. |
5 . Summer is a time to look forward to because there is no school to get you down.
●Read if you feel bored
Subscribe to a magazine or comic if you don’t like books. Choose whatever age-appropriate book that interests you and start reading. You can read anywhere. In your backyard or on your balcony, on your bed, or out by the lake.
●Get caught up on schoolwork.
Not all of us are straight “A” students. Take this time to go to the library and review material for the next year in advance.
●Travel.
●
If summers are hot where you live, you can go to the beach with your family or friends. Also, some water parks have great discounts at times during the summer. But be careful, if there’s a heat wave outside, you’d better stay out of the sum, or even go indoors.
| A．Beat the heat. |
| B．Reading doesn`t have to be boring |
| C．Spend a lot of time outside. |
| D．If you usually go on vacation in the summer |
| E．Since it’s summer, you can do this at your own pace |
| F．To have a good summer, you don’t have to do anything expensive. |
| G．If you don`t have much time. |
6 . Over the last two days in December last year, nearly 30 tornadoes caused great damage across six states——from Arkansas in the south to Illinois in the Midwest. More than 100 tornado warnings were issued——the most ever for a day. The tornado in Kentucky caused at least 50 people’s deaths, which was described as the worst in this state’s history.
As one of the largest countries in the world, the United States is also one of the most geographically various countries-from deserts to forests to miles of coast line. While this comes with many advantages, it unfortunately leaves the country easily damaged by all kinds of natural disasters.
Different parts of the United States face different types of natural disasters. The west coast is at risk of wildfires, earthquakes, and even volcanic eruptions. The southern part of the country is frequently hit by tornadoes, and the east coast faces the threat of serious hurricanes every year. Midwestern areas near rivers are often flooded by huge floods, and these are the worst floods in American history.
The governments reviewed the weather event in each state’s history that caused the highest number of deaths to determine the worst natural disaster in every state. Thanks to their location and geographic research, some states could prepare ahead of time to avoid mass-casualty(重大伤亡的)weather events.
However, many other parts of the country have been less fortunate, experiencing massive storms and floods. Many such events, like the 1900 hurricane that hit Galveston of Texas, killed so many people that it was impossible to get an exact number of final deaths, especially during that time.
American weather continues to become more changeable. In 2018, there were 14 weather events that caused over $1 billion in damage. And in many parts of the country, these weather events could become even more destructive(毁灭性的)because of global warming.
1. What do we know from the figures in paragraph 1?| A．Less and less natural disasters hit America. |
| B．Tornadoes were the least threat to Americans. |
| C．The tornado in Kentucky was the worst in the world. |
| D．America suffered from serious natural disasters. |
| A．The worst floods in American history. |
| B．The earthquakes in the west coast of US. |
| C．The natural disasters in different parts of US. |
| D．The hurricanes along the east coast of US. |
| A．Controllable. | B．Worrying. | C．Unchangeable. | D．Pleasant. |
| A．Common Natural Disasters in the US |
| B．A Weather Report from the US |
| C．Tornadoes Causing Great Damage |
| D．A Serious Tornado in Kentucky |
7 . A new United Nations scientific report says that human-caused climate change is greatly reducing land quality worldwide. It warns that the way humans use land is causing the earth's atmosphere to warm faster and could harm food production. The effects of climate change are already making food more costly and less nutritious (有营养的) and are worsening food shortages (缺乏).
The scientists write that if humans change the way they eat, grow food and manage forests, it could help slow world temperature rises.
About 30 percent of the earth's surface is land. But the report says that the land is warming two times faster than the planet as a whole. While heat-trapping (吸热的) gases are causing problems in the atmosphere, land has been less talked about as a part of climate change.
“The change could be worse,” the report says. Agriculture and forestry together account for about 23 percent of the heat-trapping gases that are warming the earth. That does not include energy costs, food transportation and packaging. With those activities added, the amount grows to 37 percent.
But land can absorb heat trapping gases out of the air. From 2009 to 2018, for example, agriculture and forestry each year put 5.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air. But the land pulled 11.2 billion metric tons out of it. Carbon dioxide is a main heat trapping gas.
Scientists have long believed that one of the few good things about higher levels of carbon dioxide is that plants grow well in such conditions. But many studies show that the high levels of carbon dioxide can reduce protein (蛋白质) and nutrients in many crops.
The report also suggests ways that carbon emissions could be reduced further. This could be done if humans reduce the amount of red meat they eat and instead eat more fruit, vegetables and seeds. That would also make people healthier.
1. What has not been paid much attention to in the study of climate change?| A．Greenhouse gases. | B．Land. | C．The earth's surface. | D．People's lifestyles. |
| A．It takes in a lot of carbon dioxide. | B．It produces grains less nutritious. |
| C．It causes the majority of heat-trapping gases. | D．It sends off more carbon dioxide than it removes. |
| A．Growing plants to absorb carbon dioxide. | B．Planting high quality crops. |
| C．Limiting red meat intake. | D．Producing enough food. |
| A．Humans should live a healthy life. |
| B．Global warming is more and more serious. |
| C．There will be a food shortage in the future. |
| D．Climate change affects land quality and food production. |
8 . The climate we live in affects many areas of our lives.
Climate researchers predict that the world climate will become warmer. High temperatures in summer is becoming more frequent and very cold winters more rare. With winters becoming warmer, there are likely to be up to 20, 000 fewer cold-related deaths. However, there is a danger that bacteria would no longer die off seasonally during the cold period.
More heat waves may increase the number of hot-weather related deaths by up to 2, 800. They could cause an extra 5,000 deaths a year from skin cancer and may cause an increase of up to 2,000 cases of eye diseases.
Higher average global temperatures mean that diseases, or their carriers, may be able to move to areas that were too cold for them to survive at an earlier time. It's possible that a warm type of malaria (疟疾) will appear in some parts of the world and be a seasonal danger for up to four months each year.
| A．It means that diseases may spread more widely. |
| B．Therefore, climate changes for the same period. |
| C．It's no secret that human activity is changing the climate. |
| D．Climate change is likely to have different effects on the world population. |
| E．Globally, there are likely to be more floods, more droughts, and more storms. |
| F．Warmer summers may cause up to 10,000 extra cases of food poisoning (中毒) each year. |
| G．The food we eat, the water we drink, and our homes are all dependent upon our climate and weather. |
9 . Weather forecasts help us prepare for the future. Not only do they warn us of potentially dangerous weather headed our way, but they also give us an idea of what to expect in terms of temperature and chance of precipitation(降雨量), so we can dress and equip ourselves appropriately.
Today, meteorologists use complicated mathematical models to predict the weather with the help of powerful supercomputers and tons of observational data from land, sea, and air weather stations around the world. Where does all this data come from?
Technologically advanced weather stations are established by meteorologists all over the world.
To get data from the seas and the upper atmosphere, data-collection tools and instruments may be tied to ships, airplanes, and even buoys (浮标) in the middle of the ocean.
All these tools around the world produce millions of pieces of weather-related observational data every single day.
| A．Sometimes it comes from common people like you. |
| B．However, weather forecasting is not a perfect science. |
| C．They collect and share data to help improve forecasts. |
| D．Supercomputers process that data to produce forecasts. |
| E．Weather balloons and weather satellites also provide observational data. |
| F．Forecasts about temperature and precipitation are important to agriculture. |
| G．Data from weather satellites are used in areas where traditional data sources are not available. |
10 . Most of the new diseases we humans have faced in the past several decades have come from animals. The more we come into contact with wild animals, the more we risk a so-called disease “spillover” from animals to humans.
“As people move and wildlife move in response to a changing environment, humans and wildlife and animals will come in contact more regularly,” said Jeanne Fair from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Fair argues that by shifting animal habitats, climate change will also make the opportunities for disease spillover more frequent. “Everything is sort of shifting and will shift into the future as the environment changes through climate change,” Fair said.
Scientists, including climatologists and epidemiologists (流行病学家) on Fair’s team at Los Alamos, are beginning to model how changes to the climate will impact the spread of infectious diseases. It’s early days for this kind of research, but previous studies suggest that extreme weather has already played a role in at least one outbreak. Scientists say drought and deforestation have combined to force bats out of rain forests and into orchards (果园) in Malaysia to find food. Those bats, a common disease reservoir, then passed the Nipah virus through pigs to humans for the first time in the late 1990s.
“We’re going by the past data to really predict what’s going to happen in the future,” Fair said, “And so, anytime you increase that wildlife-human interface, that’s sort of an emerging disease hot spot. And so, that’s just increasing as we go forward.”
Jeffrey Shaman, head of the climate and health program at Columbia University’s public health school, argues we don’t yet know whether climate change will cause a net increase in infectious disease rates globally. For example, mosquitoes carry disease that affects millions of people across the world every year. As their habitats expand in some parts of the world, they might contract diseases elsewhere. Shaman says what we know for certain about climate change is that it will make it harder to predict where disease outbreaks will pop up.
1. How does climate change affect the spread of disease according to Fair?| A．By breaking animals’habits. | B．By increasing animals’varieties. |
| C．By promoting animals’breeding. | D．By changing animals’living environment. |
| A．Explaining the influence of Nipah virus. |
| B．Proving the harm of bats to human beings. |
| C．Showing the effects of climate change on disease. |
| D．Presenting scientists’early study about the cause of disease. |
| A．Humans should give up studying animals. |
| B．Frequent contact with animals can cause disease outbreaks. |
| C．Disease hot spots will disappear if animals die out. |
| D．Past data can solve the problems in the future. |
| A．Climate Change and Disease Spillover |
| B．Animals’Interaction with Humans |
| C．Early Studies about Extreme Weather |
| D．Scientists’Prediction for Disease Outbreaks |
