While both solar panels and plant leaves harvest energy from the sun, a team at Princeton University took biomimicry (仿生学) in solar panels a step further by adding folds to solar cells. The folds look like the natural wrinkles found in leaves, channeling more light into the cell. The researchers claimed in 2015 that the leaf-like cells generated 47 percent more electricity than those without folds.

The surface of the lotus (莲) plant’s leaves gets rid of dirt and water so well that this self-cleaning quality was named the “lotus effect” in 1977. In 1999, the German building company Sto released an outdoor paint called Lotusan. When dried, the paint’s surface is similar to that of the lotus leaf to shed water and dirt off immediately.

The Shinkansen Bullet Train in Japan is known for its aerodynamic shape that decreases the amount of sound the train makes while entering and exiting tunnels at speeds of 150 to 200 mph. The trains were modeled on a bird that hunts fish by diving into bodies of water. The shape of the train also allows it to travel 10 percent faster with about 15 percent less electricity.

Unlike whales, beavers (河狸) don’t have layers of fat to keep them warm when they dive into icy water. Instead, their thick fur traps air among the individual hairs, keeping the mammals warm and dry. In 2016,a team of engineers at MIT sought to copy this quality in a wetsuit covered with rubber “hairs”, specifically designed for watersports athletes like surfers. Just like beavers, the athletes would be kept warm by hair trapped on the outside of the suit.

7 . While doing some cleaning in my kitchen, I noticed a tiny black pellet(小球)on the shelf. Gecko(壁虎)dropping, I _______. There must be a baby gecko here.

There are lots of geckos here in the Desert Southwest. I’d _______ the habit of checking the oven and dishwasher before I turned them on. I didn’t want one of the little guys to get _______.

Nevertheless, the oven or the dishwasher wasn’t the biggest _______ for a gecko inside a home. It was _______. A gecko trapped in a house wouldn’t find enough bugs to eat. I didn’t want that to happen to my current visitor. But to save him, I had to find him first. And that would be _______.

I searched everywhere in the _______, but useless. Suddenly, a picture flashed in my mind: a pile of _______. “Yes, I know where that is!”I have a basket that holds my collection of oddly shaped or uniquely coloured stones, which caught my eye. Ever so carefully, I _______ one stone, then another—until I ________ a tiny yellow tail!

I brought the whole basket outside and left it on the ground, where I ________ the baby gecko could find his way home. When I ________ a few hours later, the little gecko was gone.

Now I ________ peek(窥视)inside the dishwasher and the oven before turning them on. ________, I know I am not the only one looking out for geckos. No ________ is too small for us to love.

8 . When we first started researching ecotourism in Spain, we were surprised to see how many amazing opportunities it offered for outdoor recreation.

Sierra Nevada National Park

Being the largest national park in Spain, it offers a lot more than the skiing for which it is best known. With 20+ peaks over 3,000 meters tall, the park has spectacular scenery, as well as numerous natural mineral springs and more than 50 mountain lakes. The park’s diverse ecosystems are home to 2,100 plant species (60 of which are unique to the area).

Somiedo Natural Park

Somiedo Natural Park is the only place where you can see Cantabrian Brown Bears in the wild. They are known as “the littlest grizzly (灰熊)”. Spain ’s Brown Bear Foundation has been a leading force in preserving the troubled population. Thankfully, their numbers have risen in recent years to around 150 bears.

Cantabrian Coast

Cantabrian coast has 17 caves full of Palaeolithic Cave Art dating back to 35,000 — 9.000 BA. The most famous of these is Altamira Cave, which is known as the “Sistine Chapel of Quaternary Art”. The art there includes hundreds of animals that were created some 14,000 years ago. The number of visitors is limited to 9,000 per year.

Cabrera National Park

This 100 square km park is about as remote a destination as any nature lover could hope to visit. Due to its isolation, the coastal landscape of these 19 islands has remained relatively unchanged. The area is perfect for watching wildlife, scuba diving, and simply surrounding yourself in the beauty of nature. Access to the park is limited to just 200 people a day to minimize environmental impact.

Animals do have their own languages just as humans do. Scientists who study the evolution of language say wild chimpanzees(黑猩猩) have a more complex communication system     1     past research has shown. The researchers say the animals use over ten kinds of calls     2    can be combined into hundreds of different orders.

The study team made 4,800 recordings of calls produced by members of three groups of chimpanzees    3    (live) in Ivory Coast’s National Park. It’s one of the last important     4     (area) of old-growth tropical forest in West Africa and home to a variety of plants and animals, Chimpanzees stay the closest to humans. They are    5    (intelligence) and sociable. Chimpanzees make and use tools and can    6     (teach) a small amount of human sign language.

Scientists    7    (know) that chimpanzees use different calls in    8    wild since a long time ago. But the new study helped people    9    (far)understand the animals’ communication. Cedric was the lead writer of the study. He spoke of the chimpanzee calls, “It is not a language but it is among the most complex forms of communication    10    (describe) in a nonhuman world.” It can be seen that the secrets of nature are still waiting for human beings to explore.

10 . In Rachel Carson’s classic best-seller about ecological threats, Silent Spring, the author asked us to imagine what it would be like to awaken in the morning in which no birds sang. She wrote with grace, and she made us feel the loss. But how well have we acted on Carson’s warnings?

We haven’t been very successful, and neither have birds. A 2019 study led by Cornell University scientist Kenneth V. Rosenberg, which analyzed decades of data on North American birds, showed that the continent’s bird populations had dwindled since 1970. Grasslands were the hardest hit, with a documented loss of more than 700 million breeding individuals — a decline of more than 50 percent. The net loss amounted to nearly three billion individual birds, a figure that sparked a campaign with tips on what people can do to save them.

Given these data, it is tempting to conclude that despite the brilliance of her writing, Carson did not succeed in protecting birds. However, the 2019 bird study also suggests that protecting biodiversity is not a lost cause (败局已定的事). One important exception in the dark picture the scientists painted is wetlands and the waterfowl (水禽) that inhabit them. There bird abundance increased 13 percent. What distinguishes wetlands from other ecological areas? One answer is that wetlands have been especially shielded (保护) from excessive industrial activities for a long time. They are under the protection of the local and federal government.

The other encouraging exception in the bird study was raptors, a group that includes the majestic bald eagle. Bald eagles were on the verge of extinction at the time when Carson wrote, but they recovered in large part as a result of the ban on DDT, a substance used for killing insects.

A news story published by the Audubon Society notes that the numbers show that taking steps like wildlife management, habitat restoration and political action can be effective in saving species. Scientists have documented the current threat to biodiversity. Their data also show that if we act on this information, maybe we can change the outcome.