1 . The air conditioner is nearly 100 years old, but the technology is essentially the same as it used to be. Although it has made our lives easier and more comfortable, this all comes at a cost. The cooling of our air is responsible for 10% of the planet’s electricity consumption. And as the world heats, demand for air conditioners will continue to grow. This, in turn, will increase the influence that cooling machines have on the climate, thus warming the Earth further and creating a vicious cycle.
The current technology is unsustainable. That’s why a group led by RMI, a nonprofit environmental research organization, has launched the Global Cooling Prize, a $1-million competition to design of the next generation of air cooling systems. The proposed designs employ a wide range of technologies. Barocal, a Cambridge University startup, uses solid-state cooling technologies instead of traditional liquid refrigerants (制冷剂) that may leak out over time. Meanwhile, a proposal from Kraton, a Texan chemical engineering company, simply uses water, completely doing away with the main mechanical component of air conditioners, the compressor, to make the design more affordable. Others focus on the limitations of current air conditioning units, such as the lack of control over both temperature and humidity (湿度) at the same time. The design proposed by US startup M2 Thermal Solutions allows users to set both a specific temperature and the level of humidity in a room.
It’s difficult to tell what these proposed new machines will look like before the actual machines are built, but it’s arguable that they will create something new, as most of the shortlisted designs are based on fundamentally different technology compared to traditional devices.
The overall winner, announced in November 2021, will be awarded $1 million in prize money. This is when the real challenge begins: convincing the world that traditional air conditioners need replacing. “The current industry is worth more than $100 billion and has a well-established value chain from manufacturing (生产) to distribution to after-sales support,” said Vijay Mhetar, Kraton’s senior vice president. “Any new design will need to have minimum barriers for customer adoption and have a similar supply chain established.”
1. What does the underlined word “vicious” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．Slow. | B．Negative. |
| C．Natural. | D．Efficient. |
| A．Water instead of a compressor. |
| B．Solid-state cooling technologies. |
| C．Recycled liquid refrigerants. |
| D．Control over humidity. |
| A．It must be multifunctional. |
| B．It must be cheap and energy-saving. |
| C．It should have an entire service system. |
| D．It should offer more choices to customers. |
| A．To talk about the history of air conditioning. |
| B．To ask people to reduce air conditioning use. |
| C．To show the disadvantages of air conditioners. |
| D．To introduce a contest for new air conditioners. |
2 . After being lost for three decades, this tiny deer-like species has finally been rediscovered in the forests of Vietnam. The silver-backed chevrotain — also known as the Vietnamese mouse deer — is about the size of a large rabbit. They are shy, enjoy being alone, appear to walk on the hips of their hooves (蹄) and have two sharp teeth. Chevrotains typically weigh less than 5 kilograms.
Its last recorded sighting was in 1990, when a team of Vietnamese and Russian researchers obtained a dead chevrotain from a hunter. “Then nothing. So little known about it that the species was one big question mark. For so long, it has seemingly only existed as part of our imagination,” said Vietnamese biologist Any Nguyen.
One of the biggest challenges was deciding where to start the search. After several interviews with local villagers who reported seeing a grey mouse deer, a field team set three camera traps for five months. “We had these two areas separated by quite some distance — one in the southern part of Vietnam and the other much further north,” said Andrew Tilker, Asian Species Officer at the Global Wildlife Conservation. This resulted in 275 photographs of the species. The team then set up another 29 cameras in the same area, this time recording 1,881 photographs of the animal.
Tilker also warned that just because this species was found relatively easily, it doesn’t mean it’s not under threat. “This might represent the last population or one of a handful populations, in which case we need to take action immediately to put conservation measures in place to ensure its survival.”
The team is now setting out to determine how large and stable this population of chevrotains is, assess the wider distribution of the species, and explore the threats to its survival. As part of the first-ever comprehensive survey on the species, the team began camera trap surveys in October in two additional areas. They will use all of the information that they gather to set up a project that strengthens the conservation of the species across its range.
1. What can be learned about chevrotains?| A．They usually live in small groups. |
| B．They are a rare rabbit-sized species. |
| C．They weigh as much as an adult deer. |
| D．They’ve lived in Vietnam for 30 years. |
| A．Chevrotains became a mystery. |
| B．Chevrotains didn’t exist at all. |
| C．It was fun to hunt for chevrotains. |
| D．It was too late to protect chevrotains. |
| A．By interviewing some hunters. |
| B．By analyzing previous studies. |
| C．By taking pictures of chevrotains. |
| D．By employing villagers as guides. |
| A．The threats to chevrotains. |
| B．The team’s main challenges. |
| C．The team’s new discoveries. |
| D．The protection of chevrotains. |
3 . When Don Lyons, director of a seabird restoration program, visited a small valley in Japan, he found a local variety of rice called “cormorant rice”. The grain actually got its name from the seabirds that nested in the trees around the ponds used to supply water to the rice fields. Their droppings (粪), rich in nitrogen (氮) and phosphorus (磷), were washed into the water and eventually went to the rice fields.
The phenomenon that Lyons encountered is not a new one. What is new is that scientists have now calculated an exact value for seabird droppings. Given that 30 percent of the species of seabirds are endangered, researchers published a study that estimates the annual value of seabirds. “I see that people just care about something when it brings benefits and when they can see the benefits,” says Daniel Plazas-Jiménez, a seabird researcher.
To show the benefits seabirds provide, scientists set out to put a price tag on the animals’ droppings. The estimated value of seabird droppings as an organic fertilizer (肥料) against the cost of replacing it with human-made chemical fertilizers was around $474 million. The scientists then estimated that 10% of the profits coming from coral reefs depend on seabird nutrients. According to the United Nations, the annual economic returns of commercial fisheries on coral reefs are about $6.5 billion. So, 10% of this value is around $650 million per year.
The richness of seabird droppings in South America, particularly on the Chincha Islands has been documented for centuries. People there were the first to recognize seabirds’ agricultural benefits. At one point, an estimated 60 million birds built 150-foot-high mounds (堆) of droppings. However, only an estimated 4 million seabirds now live on the Chincha Islands. This loss is part of a global trend.
By the early 1840s, seabird droppings became a full-blown industry; they were commercially mined, transported and sold. The industry crashed around 1880 and reappeared in the early 20th century. Today, interest in seabird droppings is resurgent as consumer demand for organic agriculture and food processing has risen. However, the decline of seabird populations caused by human activities and global warming is absolutely a terrible shock to some areas’ economy.
1. What was the probable reason for people’s naming their rice variety after seabirds?| A．Because seabirds fed on this variety of rice. |
| B．Because seabirds nested around the rice fields. |
| C．Because seabirds contributed a lot to the rice’s growth. |
| D．Because seabirds and the rice depended on the same ponds. |
| A．To discover the phenomena related to seabirds. |
| B．To measure seabirds’ production of droppings. |
| C．To identify the endangered seabird species. |
| D．To promote efforts to protect seabirds. |
| A．Around $474 million |
| B．Around $600 million |
| C．Around $1.1 billion |
| D．Around $6 billion |
| A．People invest more in the industry related to seabird droppings. |
| B．People’s enthusiasm for seabird droppings grows stronger. |
| C．The interest rates of buying seabird droppings are higher. |
| D．The production of seabird droppings becomes lower. |
