1 . Common water plant could provide a green energy source. Scientists have figured out how to get large amounts of oil from duckweed, one of nature’s fastest-growing water plants. Transferring such plant oil into biodiesel (生物柴油) for transportation and heating could be a big part of a more sustainable future.
For a new study, researchers genetically engineered duckweed plants to produce seven times more oil per acre than soybeans. John Shanklin, a biochemist says further research could double the engineered duckweed’s oil output in the next few years.
Unlike fossil fuels, which form underground, biofuels can be refreshed faster than they are used. Fuels made from new and used vegetable oils, animal fat and seaweed can have a lower carbon footprint than fossil fuels do, but there has been a recent negative view against them. This is partly because so many crops now go into energy production rather than food; biofuels take up more than 100 million acres of the world’s agricultural land.
Duckweed, common on every continent but Antarctica, is among the world’s most productive plants, and the researchers suggest it could be a game-changing renewable energy source for three key reasons. First, it grows readily in water, so it wouldn’t compete with food crops for agricultural land. Second, duckweed can grow fast in agricultural pollution released into the water. Third, Shanklin and his team found a way to avoid a major biotechnological barrier: For the new study, Shanklin says, the researchers added an oil-producing gene, “turning it on like a light switch”by introducing a particular molecule (分子) only when the plant had finished growing. Shanklin says, “If it replicates (复制) in other species-and there’s no reason to think that it would not — this can solve one of our biggest issues, which is how we can make more oil in more plants without negatively affecting growth.”
To expand production to industrial levels, scientists will need to design and produce large-scale bases for growing engineered plants and obtaining oil — a challenge, Shanklin says, because duckweed is a non-mainstream crop without much existing infrastructure (基础设施).
1. What can people get from duckweed firsthand?| A．Plant oil. | B．Stable biodiesel. |
| C．Sustainable water. | D．Natural heat. |
| A．Options for renewable energy. |
| B．Reasons for engineering genes. |
| C．The potential of revolutionary energy source. |
| D．The approach to avoiding agricultural pollution. |
| A．Industrial levels. | B．Unique design. |
| C．Academic research. | D．Basic facilities. |
| A．Duckweed Power | B．Duckweed Production |
| C．Genetic Engineering | D．Genetic Testing |
2 . When John Todd was a child, he loved to explore the woods around his house, observing how nature solved problems. A dirty stream, for example, often became clear after flowing through plants and along rocks where tiny creatures lived. When he got older, John started to wonder if this process could be used to clean up the messes people were making.
After studying agriculture, medicine, and fisheries in college, John went back to observing nature and asking questions. Why can certain plants trap harmful bacteria (细菌)? Which kinds of fish can eat cancer-causing chemicals? With the right combination of animals and plants, he figured, maybe he could clean up waste the way nature did. He decided to build what he would later call an eco-machine.
The task John set for himself was to remove harmful substances from some sludge (污泥). First he constructed a series of clear fiberglass tanks connected to each other. Then he went around to local ponds and streams and brought back some plants and animals. He placed them in the tanks and waited. Little by little, these different kinds of life got used to one another and formed their own ecosystem. After a few weeks, John added the sludge.
He was amazed at the results. The plants and animals in the eco-machine took the sludge as food and began to eat it! Within weeks, it had all been digested, and all that was left was pure water.
Over the years, John has taken on many big jobs. He developed a greenhouse — like facility that treated sewage (污水) from 1,600 homes in South Burlington. He also designed an eco-machine to clean canal water in Fuzhou, a city in southeast China.
“Ecological design” is the name John gives to what he does. “Life on Earth is kind of a box of spare parts for the inventor,” he says. “You put organisms in new relationships and observe what’s happening. Then you let these new systems develop their own ways to self-repair.”
1. What can we learn about John from the first two paragraphs?| A．He was fond of traveling. | B．He enjoyed being alone. |
| C．He had an inquiring mind. | D．He longed to be a doctor. |
| A．To feed the animals. | B．To build an ecosystem. |
| C．To protect the plants. | D．To test the eco-machine. |
| A．Nature can repair itself. | B．Organisms need water to survive. |
| C．Life on Earth is diverse. | D．Most tiny creatures live in groups. |
3 . Not much trash and almost no plastic actually gets recycled. About a third of U.S. garbage gets recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s most recent estimate. The rest goes to landfills, which release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and pollute their surroundings.
To make recycling easier, many U.S. cities don’t ask Americans to separate paper, glass, metal and plastic. ‘They just ask people to put anything recyclable into one bin and let waste plants do the sorting. But waste plants don’t catch everything. AI is now an essential tool for the world’s waste management leaders. Greyparrot, a tech company has already installed more than l00 AI trash spotters in about 50 sorting facilities.
Greyparrot’s device is, basically, a set of visual and infrared (红外线的) cameras hooked up to a computer, which monitors trash as it passes by on a conveyor belt and labels it under 70 categories, from loose bottle caps to books to aluminum cans. Waste plants could connect these AI systems to sorting robots to help them separate trash from recyclables more accurately. They could also use the AI as a quality control system to measure how well they’re sorting trash from recyclables. That could help plant managers adjust their production lines to cover more recyclables, or cheek that a bundle of recyclables is free of pollutants, which would allow them to sell at a higher price.
In the next few years, some recycling companies plan to retrofit (改良) thousands of material- recovery facilities with Al trash - spotting tools. Of these companies, Bollegraaf has built thousands of these facilities, including 340 in North America, accounting for a majority of the recovery plants in the world.
The trash-spotting computers could one day help regulators punish companies that produce tsunamis of non - recyclable packaging because the AI systems are so accurate that they can identify the brands on individual items. Putting the AI tools in thousands of waste plants can raise recycling percentage. If the needle can be moved by even 5 to 10 percent, that would be a phenomenal outcome for greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impact.
1. What does the author want to show in paragraph 1?| A．People pay little attention to environmental protection. |
| B．Greenhouse gas is a major contributor to air pollution. |
| C．Americans show little enthusiasm for recycling. |
| D．All trash has not been recycled in the US. |
| A．By working with sorting robots. |
| B．By adjusting the production line. |
| C．By monitoring the conveyor belt. |
| D．By controlling cameras in a computer. |
| A．They are well received. |
| B．They are highly profitable. |
| C．They have unpredictable prospect. |
| D．They present a challenge for regulators. |
| A．The Use of the Useless |
| B．AI Assistants in Recycling |
| C．A Pressing Trash Issue in US |
| D．AI Tools with Great Potential |
1.不文明出游的现象;
2.对文明出游发出倡议。
注意：1.可以增加细节，以使行文连贯;
2.词数80词左右;
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5 . Djukic is a biology and chemistry student at John Carroll University. She never thought that one day she would be in a classroom where an English teacher asked her to play a board game in order to learn about climate change.
Debra Rosenthal is the professor of the class. At first, Djukic said she was uncertain about Rosenthal’s board game idea. “I was just like: ‘this is interesting, but how much are we actually going to take away from it?”
Rosenthal thought her students would gain a greater understanding about how their own ideas and experiences affect climate change. Students do not compete against each other. They work together to choose the best plan of action. The game is different from board games such as Monopoly, where the goal is to win. Rosenthal said she hoped the games would give students a chance to talk about climate change in a new way.
“By playing the games, it’s a way to be social, to engage in conversation. There has to be a lot of energy around the table. It’s very collaborative. And in the game that I chose to play, they really were able to work together and try to come up with a solution so that the planet was not destroyed.”
During the class, she said, students laughed, disagreed and had to call for votes as a way to decide how to move forward in the game. Djukic said it was a “way to have fun...while also learning about such a serious subject.”
The games are global, Djukic said. That is because she and her classmates said they were able to see how one player’s decision about agriculture affected another player on the other side of the world.
She said the games showed her that “in the game of climate change and the climate crisis, no individual wins.” “It’s either we all suffer from this, or we all somehow collaborate to work our way out of this and turn the clock back on climate change.”
1. What is the purpose of Rosenthal’s class arrangement?| A．To inspire the competition among students. |
| B．To entertain the students with the board game. |
| C．To stress the damage caused by climate change. |
| D．To encourage student’s viewpoints about climate change. |
| A．Cooperative | B．Competitive | C．Creative | D．Exclusive |
| A．Agriculture is of vital importance to the world. |
| B．The world is a community of shared future. |
| C．Man with strong will can conquer nature. |
| D．Climate change is a tough problem to solve. |
| A．Climate change calls for teamwork. |
| B．Climate change leads to global impact. |
| C．A board game helps students understand climate issues. |
| D．A good teacher gives students lifelong benefits. |
6 . Every order of takeout comes with a side of single-use plastics and each plastic fork. knife, spoon and straw-whether or not you wanted it or used it-ends up in the trash.
New research found that 139 million metric tons of single-use plastic waste was generated in 2021-six million metric tons more single-use plastics compared to 2019. A hunger for takeout meals during the pandemic contributed to the surge.
An estimated 60% of Americans order takeout or delivery at least once a week and online ordering is growing 300% faster than in-house dining; that means millions of single-use plastic utensils (餐具) are going out with every order.
New laws aim to address the problem. Some of the recent bills are thanks to The National Reuse Network, part of the environmental nonprofit Upstream, which launched a national Skip the Stuff campaign to work out policies that require restaurants to include single-use plastic utensils, straws, and napkins only when customers request them.
The bills also require meal delivery and online apps like Uber Eats, GrubHub and Door Dash to add single-use extras to their menus; customers can choose the items and quantities to have them included in the order. Customers that don’t order the single-use plastics won’t receive them. The goal of the bills is to reduce the 40 billion plastic utensils sent to the landfill (垃圾填埋场) every year.
“Most of the time, people are taking food home or to their offices where there are reusable utensils so these utensils wind up in a drawer or get thrown out,” says Alexis Goldsmith, national organizing director for a nationwide project Beyond Plastics. “Some people do need utensils, but for the most part, they’re not needed.”
To date, Skip the Stuff bills have been passed in several cities, including Denver, Washington, D.C. and Chicago, California and Washington state passed statewide bills that make single-use plastic “accessories” available with takeout orders only upon request.
Organizations like Upstream, Beyond plastics and NRDC have created toolkits to help additional communities launch their own Skip the Stuff campaigns.
1. What does the underlined word “surge” in paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Great desire. | B．Sharp decline. | C．Rapid increase. | D．Obvious panic. |
| A．Choosing green products. | B．Adding single-use napkins. |
| C．Recycling and reusing utensils. | D．Providing utensils only on request. |
| A．To reduce plastic waste. | B．To stop bad eating habits. |
| C．To encourage people to eat out. | D．To better the dining environment. |
| A．Unimportant. | B．Damaging. | C．Much-needed. | D．Well-known. |
7 . Michele Gentile, an Italian bookseller, is offering free books to children in exchange for plastic bottles to recycle. Gentile owns Ex Libris Café in Polla, a small town in southern Italy. He said he thought of the recycling program, because he wanted to inspire children in the small town to read and pay attention to the environment.
“My goal is to spread the passion and love for books among those people in Italy who do not usually read while helping the environment,” Gentile explained.
The idea for the initiative came after Gentile cooperated with a nearby middle school on an aluminum recycling project. Working together, the schoolchildren and Gentile collected enough cans to buy books for an entire class. His new program took off from there and has already spread into northern Italy. Gentile hopes his work will continue to make the headlines and become a worldwide initiative.
The free books come from the customers in Gentile’s shop who have donated money to buy a “suspended” book. The idea comes from a World War Ⅱ practice in which customers would buy two coffees; one for themselves and the other for the next person in line. Gentile has been using the extra books as part of his recycling initiative. While Gentile’s program is a great way to recycle waste and get kids to read, it also brings attention to the growing problem of plastic waste. Single-use plastics make up around 26 percent of all the plastics in the world, only 14 percent of which are recycled. Plastics that end up in landfills take around 500 years to decompose (分解), which is a major concern for environmentalists.
Cutting down on plastic waste is important if we want to better the environment for future generations, and recycling programs like Gentile’s book giveaway are a great way to meet that goal.
1. What is the purpose of Gentile’s program?| A．To sell more books. | B．To attract more customers. |
| C．To encourage reading and recycling. | D．To collect money for a new project. |
| A．By donating books to a local school. |
| B．By seeing school kids dislike reading. |
| C．By working with a school to recycle cans. |
| D．By buying a “suspended” book for a child. |
| A．Some environmentalists. | B．Gentile himself. |
| C．The government. | D．His customers. |
| A．An Italian’s reading initiative. |
| B．A recycling program for kids. |
| C．Gentile’s way of doing business. |
| D．A new way to deal with plastic waste. |
8 . On Tuesday, Virgin Atlantic flew a large passenger jet from London to New York using 100% “Sustainable Aviation（航空） Fuel（SAF）”. The flight was meant to show that it’s possible to fly using cleaner fuels.
The fuel used on the flight was mainly made from used cooking oils and animal fats. A small part of the fuel was made from corn waste. Virgin Atlantic says that using SAF cuts the flight’s pollution by 70%. SAF still pollutes when it’s burned, just like regular jet fuel. However, the difference is in how the fuels are made.
SAF is made from plants （and related animal products） that once absorbed carbon dioxide （CO2） from the air. When SAF burns, it just releases this same CO2 again. That’s different from jet fuel, which is made from oil exploited from underground, releasing CO2 that was deeply buried.
SAF may sound great, but it still has many problems. For one thing, SAF costs five times as much as regular jet fuel. That helps explain why only one-tenth of 1% of the fuel airlines currently use is SAF. Virgin Atlantic is hoping that its flight will encourage more companies to produce SAF and that this will bring the price down.
But even if the price of SAF drops, critics say there are still big problems with it. They say it’s easy to make small amounts of SAF out of plant waste. But to make as much SAF as the airlines really need would require farmers to grow plants for fuel instead of for eating. This could also lead to more forests being cut down for farmland.
Airlines like SAF because it can be used now in existing planes with no changes. They hope it will help quickly reduce airplane pollution until non-polluting fuels are developed.
Governments seem to agree that SAF is a step in the right direction. Both the United States and the European Union have set targets that will sharply increase the use of SAF in coming years.
1. What makes SAF superior to regular jet fuels?| A．Its production method. | B．Being pollution-free. |
| C．Its storage technology. | D．Being easy to burn. |
| A．Destroyed. | B．Replaced. | C．Drawn. | D．Checked. |
| A．SAF is heavy. | B．SAF is expensive. |
| C．SAF needs new equipment. | D．SAF may cause safety issues. |
| A．Unclear. | B．Negative. | C．Doubtful. | D．Approving. |
9 . We’re often told to follow our dreams, and one person in Canada has done just that after building a wonderland for animals. In his own backyard, the eight water features which Robert Perkins dug into the ground are now a shelter for birds, frogs, beavers (河狸) and other animals in the middle of suburban development. But for Perkins, creating habitat for wildlife is not only about doing his part to help the environment. It’s a labor of love for a woman he met when he was 16 years old.
Perkins met Rhonda in 1974 and the two of them hit it off. They both loved animals, and she always wished to have a place where they could live in harmony with the land. Rhonda, whom Perkins stayed with all his life, passed away in 2006. Perkins resolved to build a wonderland where her spirit could stay in peace.
Ignoring planning departments and neighbors alike, Perkins began digging large holes for water to flow. Over the course of nine years his property went from being a neighborly headache to a perfect home for wildlife.
Perkins says he won’t take all the credit for the wetland he built. When Perkins started creating the wildlife habitat in the early 2000s, a family of beavers got wind of it soon and claimed the land. “When we built our subdivisions, we cleared all the trees, dried the hills, drove all the water down to the lakes... In turn, the beavers helped dam (筑坝) and purify the water.”
Wetland habitats not only attract wildlife, but probably offer the most complete package of ecosystem services, including preventing pollution, enriching the soil, and promoting the well-being of wildlife species.
Perkins says he doesn’t need to wonder what Rhonda might think of the place; he feels her presence whenever he walks alone among the trees, the grass, and the ponds, looking at birds or beavers, and listening to the songbirds and frogs. Perkins hopes his project will one day become an educational place that local people can visit to learn about the importance of wetlands.
1. Why did Perkins build the water features?| A．To fulfill his childhood dream. | B．To show his love for his wife. |
| C．To preserve endangered wildlife. | D．To adapt to suburban development. |
| A．Effortless but creative. | B．Discouraging but efficient. |
| C．Painful but influential. | D．Demanding but rewarding. |
| A．Perkins had a strategic plan for it. | B．Human’s role in it was overvalued. |
| C．Nature itself also played a part in it. | D．Beavers were invited to help with it. |
| A．To help spread his story. | B．To be a recreational spot. |
| C．To bring economic value. | D．To serve as an inspiration. |
10 . The California sea otter (海獭), once hunted to the edge of extinction, has staged a thrilling comeback in the last century. Now, scientists have discovered that the otters’ success story has led to something just as remarkable: the restoration of their declining coastal marsh (沼泽) habitat.
Elkhorn Slough, a coastal marsh within Monterey Bay, had been experiencing severe damage. The root cause was a growing population of shore crabs, which fed heavily on the marsh plants, weakening the structural integrity of the habitat. Coastal marshes like these are not only natural defenses against storm waves but also serve as important carbon storage areas and water-cleaning systems.
The conservation-driven comeback of the sea otter has been crucial. California’s coastlines were once alive with sea otters. Sadly, they were nearly wiped out at the hands of fur traders. In the 1980s, conservation efforts aided these otters in re-occupying large areas of their former range. Now, Elkhorn Slough has the highest concentration of sea otters in California, with a population of about 100. By naturally feasting on crabs, the otters have helped a significant regrowth of plant life. Brent Hughes, a scientist working alongside Angelini, led a three-year study. Their findings were clear: in areas with sea otters, crab numbers fell markedly. This led to a resurgence in plant growth, which in turn stabilized the soil and lowered the rate of soil washing away.
As the sea otter population continues to restore, their positive impact on coastal ecosystems is likely to increase. It not only showcases the sea otter as a central species—a species that has a significant effect on its natural environment—but also highlights the essential nature of top predators (捕食者) in preserving ecological harmony. “My honest reaction was—this could become a classic in the literature,” says scientist Lekelia Jenkins. She reveals marsh restoration also helps people by reducing flooding. “Suddenly, sea otters go from just cute things we like to something that can protect our livelihoods and our properties.”
1. What change did the disappearance of sea otters bring about?| A．Fewer predatory crabs. | B．More coastal plant life. |
| C．Better water-cleaning effect. | D．Worse coastal ecological balance. |
| A．Barrier. | B．Advancement. | C．Expansion. | D．Revival. |
| A．To highlight the importance of coastal marshes. |
| B．To introduce a new research study on sea otters. |
| C．To demonstrate the practical benefits of sea otters. |
| D．To emphasize the need for increased conservation efforts. |
| A．The necessity for controlled hunting. |
| B．The interconnectedness of the ecosystem. |
| C．The drawbacks of wildlife reintroduction. |
| D．The need for human intervention in nature. |
