1 . The amount of plastic pollution in the oceans is rapidly increasing. This is problematic, as at least 700 kinds of ocean animals—including sharks, whales, seabirds and turtles—can become caught in the stuff or mistake it for a tasty snack.
While we know that some ocean animals seem to catch plastic because it looks like jellyfish or some other food sources, less research has been carried out into what plastic smells like to ocean animals. But now, a study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has found the coating (涂层) that naturally builds up on ocean plastics causes the rubbish to give off the smell of food.
The researchers took 15 turtles, each around five months old, and placed them in a lab aquarium. They then piped in smells of clean water, clean plastic, turtle food, and plastic that had been soaking in the ocean environment for five weeks. The turtles showed no reaction to the smells of clean water or clean plastic. But when facing ocean soaked plastic or turtle food, they stuck their noses out of the water and showed increased activity.
“This finding is important because it’s the first proof that the smell of ocean plastics causes animals to eat them,” said Dr Kenneth J Lohmann, who took part in the study. It’s common to find a turtle with its stomach full of plastic materials. There are also increasing reports of sea turtles that have become ill and stuck on the beach due to their taking in plastic.”
According to the researchers, areas of the ocean with much plastic may trick turtles and other animals into thinking that there are plenty of food sources, when the opposite is true. “Once these plastics are in the ocean, we don’t have a good way to remove them or prevent them from smelling like food,” said Lohmann. “The best thing we can do is to keep plastic from getting into the ocean at all.”
1. Why is plastic pollution posing a threat to ocean animals?| A．It may mislead them as food. | B．It may eat up all jellyfish. |
| C．It may kill them with its smell. | D．It may trap 700 species of sea animals. |
| A．Sea water. | B．Clean water. |
| C．Glean plastic. | D．Ocean-soaked plastic. |
| A．Turtles seem to eat plastic because it looks like food. |
| B．Turtles have died out due to their taking in plastic. |
| C．Turtles eat plastic because it gives off the smell of food. |
| D．Turtles with their stomachs full of plastic were studied. |
| A．Keep away from the polluted ocean. | B．Maintain a plastic-free ocean. |
| C．Remove plastic from the ocean. | D．Stop people feeding turtles plastic. |
2 . Wildfires lit by humans have been found to be sending huge amounts of carbon into our oceans via rivers every year.
When trees and other vegetation are incompletely burned, they release black carbon into the air, which can last for centuries on land and even longer in oceans. Now we have the best global picture of how much of the stuff is making its way to the sea: around a third of all the black carbon produced by fires.
Unlike the two-thirds that stays on the land, the carbon ending up in the oceans will stay there much longer, says Matthew Jones at the University of East Anglia in the UK. “Once it reaches the oceans, it has potential for storage over tens of thousands of years. That’s why we care about it. It’s almost locked up for the distant future,” he says.
Jones and his colleagues looked at 409 measurements of black carbon dissolved in the waters of 34 major rivers globally, plus many smaller rivers, including far more data from the tropics. They then modeled how it would travel to the oceans. “It’s quite breathtaking how long-lived this material is and how much ends up in the environment,” says Jones.
The team found that the amount of black carbon being carried by rivers varies generally around the world, with the rivers in the tropics carrying twice what those in cooler regions do.
When compared with emissions from humanity’s fossil fuel use, the actual amount reaching the oceans is relatively small. However, says Jones, understanding how black carbon is being moved around is important for building better climate models and for our understanding of the global carbon cycle.
The amount being produced by fires has been relatively stable for the past two decades, with forest fires being offset by Savannah being turned into farmland, which reduces the amount of vegetation available to burn. But Jones points out that more fires are expected as the world warms, which will deliver more black carbon into the oceans.
1. What happens to the black carbon produced by forest fires?| A．One third will turn into fires. | B．It will disappear in few years. |
| C．The ocean covers two-thirds of its total. | D．It has more lasting storage underwater. |
| A．The research deals with 409 rivers in all. |
| B．Black carbon finally ends up in the ocean by rivers. |
| C．The research focuses on different varieties of black carbon. |
| D．The rivers in the tropics have less black carbon due to temperature. |
| A．Better climate models will be built soon. |
| B．The carbon produced by humans is small. |
| C．The amount of carbon produced by forest fire is falling. |
| D．The amount of carbon reaching the ocean won’t be reduced. |
| A．Environment. | B．Science. | C．Entertainment. | D．Health. |
3 . Pets are like our family members and their good health is very important to all pet owners. Just as the pollutants in the air affect our health, they can affect our pets too.
Air purifiers (净化器) have been brought into use in recent years. They work to remove harmful chemicals from the air.
Whether the air purifier improves or damages the health of our animals is also something we have to consider. The air purifiers are safe for pets, but only if they do not produce any ozone byproduct (臭氧副产品) .
Picking the wrong air purifier type can quickly make things worse for our pets. On the other hand, picking the correct air purifier can lead to a big increase in the quality of life for them.
| A．At present many homes are equipped with these useful devices. |
| B．Before buying an air purifier, we should keep two aspects in mind. |
| C．Pet owners always pay close attention to the physical health of their pets. |
| D．Even the smallest pets shouldn’t be able to access the insides of air purifiers. |
| E．This greatly depends on the type of air purifier and air cleaning technology used. |
| F．So always check the product specifications and try to find a model that does not produce any carbon monoxide. |
| G．A 2008 study published in Brain and Cognition showed that dogs’ brains were negatively affected by the heavy pollution levels. |
Climate change has caused a rise in sea levels. This has increased the amount of salt in fresh water
However, Mare Van Rijsselberghe, a farmer in the Netherlands is now using a
He teamed up with scientists from the Free University of Amsterdam and divided a farm
The water levels and the levels of salinity were controlled by computerised measuring devices called “sensors”. Mr. Van Rijsselberghe said he was able to harvest vegetables from most of the eight test areas. He said the vegetables were smaller than
He found that potatoes grew better than the other vegetables in the combination of sea and fresh water. Mr. Van Rijsselberghe said four kinds of these potatoes would be sent to Pakistan
Ocean pollution
Pollution in the oceans severely
Ocean pollution
Some people may argue that ocean pollution is not serious, believing that the oceans are so vast that they can absorb all kinds of pollution. However, the many examples of ocean creatures killed by pollution prove them wrong.
In
6 . With roaring ships, hammering oil drill, industrial fishing and coastal construction, humans have strongly influenced the underwater soundscape (声音景观) over the past couple of hundred years — in some cases posting a threat to whales, dolphins and other ocean creatures. Until recently, underwater sound pollution had not attracted the same attention. Now, a new paper published in the journal Science lays out the impacts, demonstrating that noise pollution can be just as harmful to the ocean environment as other kinds of pollution.
Even the cracking of glaciers and any drop of rain falling on the water’s surface can be heard deep under the sea. Sea life uses sound to study their habitat, and to keep in communication with each other. They also use sound by listening to know something about their environment.
“It’s a long-lasting problem that certainly weakens the animals all the way from individuals to populations,” says lead author Carlos M. Duarte, distinguished professor at Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), “We are hoping that this report will not only reveal elements of how humans impact the ocean through sound pollution, but that it will also bring the topic to the attention of policymakers who will be able to act based upon the very real solutions.”
Marine (海洋) ecologist Kirsten Thompson of the United Kingdom’s University of Exeter, who was not involved in the study, said the report could not have come at a better time. “It summarizes the fact that we are in this new phase of human-caused noise in our oceans that is having a dramatic impact on different species.” What matters most, she notes, is the fact that the paper “doesn’t just point at the problem, it shows how to solve it.”
Unlike plastic pollution or fertilizer runoff, noise pollution will not take years to fix. The moment we switch our noise off the impact disappears, Duarte says, pointing to marine life surveys conducted around April 5, 2020. Having the world use more renewable energy would lessen the need to drill for oil and gas. The international team of researchers also called for a global regulatory framework for measuring and managing ocean noise.
1. Which of the following threatens ocean creatures?| A．Travel industry. | B．Human activities. |
| C．Construction companies. | D．Sailing off the coast. |
| A．Ocean animals can’t fall asleep. | B．It causes the cracking of glaciers. |
| C．It’s a signal to the lower sea level. | D．It disrupts the behavior of sea life. |
| A．She is one of the paper’s co-authors. |
| B．The report does not come at the right time. |
| C．The solutions are already available. |
| D．The report has raised great attention from seamen. |
| A．Technical advances and regulation. |
| B．A policy to measure the depth of ocean. |
| C．A global ban on drilling for oil and gas. |
| D．Noise standards for cars and trucks. |
1. Where does the conversation probably take place?
| A．In a shop. | B．In a classroom. | C．In a canteen. |
| A．The woman hasn’t used plastic plates and cups before. |
| B．Paper plates and cups have replaced plastic ones in the U.S. |
| C．The man is not interested in plastic materials. |
内容包括：①空气污染的害处
②治理空气污染的方法
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9 . The effects of noise can reach organisms (生物体) without ears. Because of the way living things rely on each other, noise pollution may actually stop some forests from growing, a new study suggests. In a New Mexico woodland of pine trees, researchers found far fewer tree seedlings (小苗) in noisy sites than they did in quiet ones.
The study area is dotted with gas wells, some of which are quiet and some of which have compressors (压缩机) that create a constant noise. This allowed Jennifer Phillips, a behavioral ecologist at Texas A&M University-San Antonio and her colleagues to compare sites that were similar except for noise level. In areas that had been noisy for at least 15 years, the researchers found only about 13 pine seedlings, compared with 55 pine seedlings per hectare (公顷) in quiet areas.
The differences in plant growth were probably caused by changes in animal behavior, said Phillips. For example, noise might drive away certain pollinators (传粉昆虫) such as bees, bats and moths. In the case of pine trees, the problem was likely a lack of animals to disperse seeds. Pines depend on birds to carry their seeds away from the parent tree, and birds are known to avoid noise. The differences between the sites aren’t yet obvious to someone walking through them, said Sarah Termondt, a botanist (植物学家) with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who helped conduct the study. That’s probably because pines are slow-growing, with most of the mature trees in such woodlands being over a century old.
The study raises questions about the future of the area. “If the noise stays there long term, are we going to lose this important ecosystem of the pine which supports so much wildlife?” said Phillips. The study was published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society.
1. What does the new study focus on?| A．The influence of noise pollution on plants. |
| B．The way the organisms receive noise. |
| C．The harm of noise pollution to insects. |
| D．The effects of noise pollution on humans . |
| A．Gas wells dotted in the area provide favorable conditions for the study. |
| B．The study sites are different in many ways including their noise level. |
| C．It is difficult for plants to live without noise and animals. |
| D．People can easily find the difference between the noisy and the quiet sites. |
| A．Seedling. | B．Thin. |
| C．Grown-up. | D．Tall. |
| A．Noise pollution is obviously a trouble that can be avoided. |
| B．Noise pollution could be a threat with the power to change ecosystems. |
| C．The pine forest is important because it supports so much wildlife. |
| D．Wildlife should be well protected for the future of this area. |
10 . The world has a plastic problem—and it is increasing.
1. Quit using plastic bags. Instead, take your own reusable shopping bag to the store. People use a trillion plastic bags worldwide every year. About 10 percent are used in the United States alone. That’s almost one bag per American per day.
2. Skip the straw. Today, around 8.3 billion plastic straws pollute the world’s beaches.
3. Don’t use plastic bottles. Buy a reusable bottle and fill it with any type of beverage you like.
4. Avoid plastic packaging. Buy bar soap instead of liquid soap in plastic containers. Don’t buy fruit or vegetables in plastic packaging. In the United Kingdom, leaders are calling for supermarkets to have plastic-free areas. They also want to tax plastic take-out containers.
5. Recycle. We can’t recycle all plastic items, but it is possible to recycle most bottles and milk or juice cartons. Today, Norway recycles 97 percent of its plastic bottle.
| A．Likewise, the average Dane uses four plastic bags per day. |
| B．In contrast, the average Dane used four single-use bags per year. |
| C．So when you order a drink, say no to the straw, or bring your own reusable one. |
| D．However, there are still loads of people ignoring the seriousness of it. |
| E．Scientists are working to find a long-term solution by making plastic more biodegradable (可降解的). |
| F．Some cities, like Bundanoon in Australia and San Francisco in the U.S. have completely or partially banned bottled water. |
| G．How? Machines at most supermarkets take the bottles and give a refund (退款) of up to 2.5 kroner (32 cents) per bottle. |
