1 . If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars, we would go in darkness happily, the midnight world as visible to us as it is to the vast number of nocturnal (夜间活动的) species on this planet. Instead, we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in the sun’s light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even though most of us don’t think of ourselves as diurnal beings. Yet it’s the only way to explain what we’ve done to the night: We’ve engineered it to receive us by filling it with light.
The benefits of this kind of engineering come with consequence called light pollution whose effects scientists are only now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design, which allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into the sky. Ill-designed lighting washes out the darkness of night and completely changes the light levels and light rhythms to which many forms of life, including ourselves, have adapted. Wherever human light spills into the natural world, some aspect of life is affected.
In most cities the sky looks as though it has been emptied of stars, leaving behind a vacant haze (霾) that mirrors our fear of the dark. We’ve grown so used to this orange haze that the original glory of an unlit night—dark enough for the planet Venus to throw shadow on Earth—is wholly beyond our experience, beyond memory almost.
We’ve lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country, when nothing could be further from the truth. Among mammals alone, the number of nocturnal species is astonishing. Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet. The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being “captured” by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms. Migrating at night, birds tend to collide with brightly lit tall buildings.
Frogs living near brightly lit highways suffer nocturnal light levels that are as much as a million times brighter than normal, throwing nearly every aspect of their behavior out of joint, including their nighttime breeding choruses. Humans are no less trapped by light pollution than the frogs. Like most other creatures, we do need darkness. Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as light itself.
Living in a glare of our making, we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural heritage—the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night. In a very real sense light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way—the edge of our galaxy—arching overhead.
1. According to the passage, human being ________.| A．are used to living in the daylight | B．prefer to live in the darkness |
| C．were curious about the midnight world | D．had to stay at home with the light of the moon |
| A．show how light pollution affects animals |
| B．provide examples of animal protection |
| C．compare the living habits of both species |
| D．explain why the number of certain species has declined |
| A．human beings are curious about the outer space |
| B．human beings should reflect on their position in the universe |
| C．light pollution does harm to the eyesight of animals |
| D．light pollution has destroyed some of the world heritages |
| A．The Magic Light | B．The Orange Haze |
| C．The Disappearing Night | D．The Rhythms of Nature |
2 . Humankind has tried to improve its standard of living since the very beginning of civilization (文明). Back then, and today, providing food was the basic task for a person.
The traditional energy sources, which are commonly used nowadays, are considered to be the greatest polluters to the environment. There also exist so-called eco-friendly sources of energy.
In order to produce practical energy, a transformation of the natural site is often inevitable (不可避免的).
| A．There are certain aspects of economic growth which affect the environment. |
| B．Clean energy has always been on the priority list for a better environment. |
| C．For these reasons, bringing about economic growth without any resulting environmental damage is impossible. |
| D．However, nowadays the range of required goods has expanded significantly. |
| E．So humankind began to make exploration to satisfy themselves economically and mentally. |
| F．They are sometimes preferred but replacing the traditional sources with them also requires time. |
| G．This is expensive and, has harmful effects on the environment. |
3 . The oil and gas industry may be emitting about three-times the amount of climate-warming methane than government estimates show, according to a new study from Stanford University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and other organizations in Nature. Methane (甲烷) is the main component of natural gas and among the greenhouse gases heating the planet, which is produced when extracting crude oil.
Specific measurements varied from a low of less than 1%, or about what the Environmental Protection Agency estimates, at a site in Pennsylvania to a high of nearly 10% in New Mexico. Researchers found the higher percentages of methane released generally had something in common. “These are places where production is mostly focusing on oil,” says Evan Sherwin, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who conducted the research as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University. But oil and gas often come out of the ground together, and if there wasn’t a way to transport the less-valuable gas to where it could be sold, leaks were higher.
In Pennsylvania, by contrast, drillers are focused on producing natural gas, and there, very little of the methane was wasted. That complicates an argument many in the industry have made, generally in opposition to tighter government regulations on methane. They say drillers have the incentive to capture gas leaks so they can sell the fossil fuel. But that’s not always possible, if industry hasn’t built the pipelines and other infrastructure to get the gas to consumers. In this study, researchers estimate the industry releases about 6.2 million tons of methane a year, valued at $1.08 billion.
“Emissions of methane from fossil fuel operations remain unacceptably high,” said Tim Gould, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, during a Tuesday call with reporters. The organization’s Global Methane Tracker shows methane from the energy sector was near the record high level in 2023.
Despite that, the IEA concludes that if countries fully implement existing pledges on methane reductions, that would make significant progress toward achieving global climate goals. “2024 could mark a turning point and policies are starting to be put into place. Greater transparency is coming. Awareness is spreading and we have enhanced ability to track large leaks and act quickly to shut them down,” Gould said. Gould said he hopes to have good news to share, about a reduction in methane emissions, next year.
1. What can we infer from paragraph 2?| A．Various measures are taken to restrict the release of methane. |
| B．The low value of the gas in part leads to the high leak of the methane. |
| C．The more focused on the production of the gas, the higher the methane release |
| D．The percentage of methane in developing countries is higher than in developed countries |
| A．Equipment. | B．Productivity. | C．Drive. | D．Assessment. |
| A．Caution: Methane emission gives rise to serious global warming. |
| B．Methane emissions: Oil and gas industry’s hidden impact. |
| C．Measures taken to cut back on methane emissions. |
| D．Methane is to blame for the climate change. |
| A．Critical. | B．Dismissive. | C．Doubtful. | D．Optimistic. |
4 . Sleeping in a noisy room isn’t only distracting (使人分心的), and it can also harm your health. Although researchers have known for decades that longterm loud noises can harm us, it’s only recently become recognized as a widespread problem.
In a new review of previously published studies, researchers from Germany and Denmark took a look at the ways in which noises, such as an airplane passing by or jackhammer digging in the ground, can affect our hearts. Perhaps the most obvious impact of a loud sound while you are sleeping is that it can wake you up. But, even if you don't remember hearing the noise or you don’t physically get out of bed, it can disrupt you in ways you may not realize.
“Noise is not just causing annoyance, but it actually makes us sick,” said Dr. Thomas Münzel, a professor at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. “Regardless of where the sound is coming from, if it gets louder than 60 decibels (分贝),it can increase the risk of heart disease.”
When our body hears these noises, it reacts with a stress reaction. In this case, these sudden and unexpected noises cause hormones(荷尔蒙) to speed up and eventually damage the heart. Although the chance that a single noise will affect you is unlikely, it’s the continuous exposure (接触) to the sound that can finally affect you.
“But our heart health isn’t the only cause for concern. Long-term noise may also raise the risk of type 2 diabetes (糖尿病), depression, and anxiety disorders,” he warns. In the future, Münzel plans to examine how noises from cars, planes, and other vehicles affect the brain. But despite the amount or the depth of research he conducts, it’ll take the help of politicians to improve the effect of noise on our health.
“Politicians have to take into account, in particular, the new findings,” Münzel said, “As for aircraft noise and airports, it is important to make new laws and set new lower noise limits that protect people living close by the airport instead of the owners of the airport.”
1. What do researchers from Germany and Denmark find?| A．Noise does little harm to people who are asleep. |
| B．Noise can cause people’s memory to get worse sharply. |
| C．Noise has been a widespread concern for a long time. |
| D．Noise louder than 60 decibels may cause heart disease. |
| A．Defeat. | B．Harm. | C．Attract. | D．Discourage. |
| A．Politicians should take action to handle noise pollution. |
| B．Münzel will continue other studies on brain diseases. |
| C．Benefits of airport owners are more important than health. |
| D．Attention should be paid to heart health and other diseases. |
| A．Who Is to Blame for Noise Pollution | B．What Should Be Done to Stop Noise |
| C．How Münzel Carried Out His Research | D．How Noise Pollution Harms Our Body |
5 . The world’s largest garbage dump doesn’t sit on some barren field outside urban centre. It resides thousands of miles from any land—in the Pacific Ocean.
The dump, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, stretches for hundreds of miles across the North Pacific Ocean.
But how did so much garbage get there?
| A．Plastic makes up 90 percent of all trash floating in the world’s oceans. |
| B．The environmental risks caused by the patch are serious. |
| C．The patch contains about 3. 5 million tons of garbage. |
| D．The patches are connected by a thin 6,000-mile-long current called the Subtropical Convergence Zone. |
| E．Roughly the size of Texas, the patch is sometimes referred to as the “eighth continents”. |
| F．The garbage patch formed and continues to exist because of ocean currents. |
6 . As plastic waste increases rapidly around the world, an essential question remains unanswered: What harm, if any, does it cause to human health?
A few years ago, as microplastics began turning up in the organs of fish and shellfish, the concern was focused on the safety of seafood. Shellfish were a particular worry, because in their case, unlike fish, we eat the entire animal — stomach, microplastics and all. In 2017, Belgian scientists announced that seafood lovers could consume up to 11,000 plastic particles (粒子) a year by eating mussels (贻贝), a favorite dish in that country.
By then, however, scientists already understood that plastics continuously fragment small pieces in the environment, tearing over time into fibers even smaller than a strand of human hair — particles are so small that they easily fly in the air. A team at the U.K.’s University of Plymouth decided to compare the threat from eating polluted wild mussels in Scotland to that of breathing air in a typical home. Their conclusion: People will take in more plastic by breathing in or taking tiny, invisible plastic fibers floating in the air around them—fibers from their own clothes, carpets, and soft covering on furniture — than they will by eating the mussels.
So, it wasn’t much of a surprise when, in 2022, scientists from the Netherlands and the U.K, announced they had found tiny plastic particles in living humans, in two places where they hadn’t been seen before: deep inside the lungs of surgical patients, and in the blood of unknown donors. Neither of the two studies answered the question of possible harm. But together they signaled a shift in the focus of concern about plastics toward the cloud of dust particles in the air, some of them are so small that they can get into deep inside the body and even inside cells, in ways that larger microplastics can’t.
Dick Vethaak, a professor of ecotoxicology (生态毒理学), doesn’t consider the results alarming, exactly—“but, yes, we should be concerned. Plastics should not be in your blood.” “We live in a multi-particle world,” he adds, referring to the dust, pollen (花粉), and smog that humans also breathe in every day. “The trick is to figure out how much plastics contribute to that particle burden and what does that mean.”
1. What does the word “fragment” in para. 3 probably mean?| A．break into | B．take in | C．pick out | D．make up |
| A．microplastics from things in our daily life ant more poisonous |
| B．people eating polluted mussels are more likely to get diseases |
| C．invisible plastic fibers are more harmful to the environment |
| D．the influence of microplastics in mussels is less than thought |
| A．microplastics in polluted wild mussels can cause serious diseases |
| B．there’s no need to worry about the plastics found in human blood |
| C．we can avoid breathing particles by figuring out particle burden |
| D．more attention should be paid to the dust particles than plastics |
| A．Are Microplastics Harmful to Us? |
| B．Should Microplastics be in Our Blood? |
| C．Can Microplastics Get into Our Bodies? |
| D．Do We Know Anything about Microplastics? |
7 . If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars, we would go in darkness happily, the midnight world as visible to us as it is to the vast number of nocturnal (夜间活动的) species on this planet. Instead, we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in the sun’s light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even though most of us don’t think of ourselves as diurnal beings. Yet it’s the only way to explain what we’ve done to the night: We’ve engineered it to receive us by filling it with light.
The benefits of this kind of engineering come with consequences — called light pollution — whose effects scientists are only now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design, which allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into the sky. Ill-designed lighting washes out the darkness of night and completely changes the light levels — and light rhythms — to which many forms of life, including, ourselves, have adapted. Wherever human light spills into the natural world, some aspect or life is affected.
In most cities the sky looks as though it has been emptied of stars, leaving behind a vacant haze (霾) that mirrors our fear of the dark. We’ve grown so used to this orange haze that the original glory of an unlit night — dark enough for the planet Venus to throw shadow on Earth — is wholly beyond our experience, beyond memory almost.
We’ve lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country, when nothing could be further from the truth. Among mammals alone, the number of nocturnal species is astonishing. Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet (磁铁). The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being “captured” by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms. Migrating at night, birds tend to collide with brightly lit tall buildings.
Frogs living near brightly lit highways suffer nocturnal light levels that are as much as a million times brighter than normal, throwing nearly every aspect of their behavior out of joint, including their nighttime breeding choruses. Humans are less trapped by light pollution than the frogs. Like most other creatures, we do need darkness. Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as light itself.
Living in a glare of our own making, we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural heritage — the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night. In a very real sense light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way — the edge of our galaxy — arching overhead.
1. According to the passage, human beings__________.| A．prefer to live in the darkness |
| B．are used to living in the day light |
| C．were curious about the midnight world |
| D．had to stay at home with the light of the moon |
| A．The night. | B．The moon. | C．The sky. | D．The planet. |
| A．provide examples of animal protection |
| B．show how light pollution affects animals |
| C．compare the living habits of both species |
| D．explain why the number of certain species has declined |
| A．light pollution dose harm to the eyesight of animals |
| B．light pollution has destroyed some of the world heritages |
| C．human beings cannot go to the outer space |
| D．human beings should reflect on their position in the universe |
| A．The Magic Light | B．The Orange Haze |
| C．The Disappearing Night | D．The Rhythms of Nature |
8 . A strong sense of smell is a key component of a healthy and enjoyable life. Yet our sense of smell is in decline as a result of an unnoticed threat to our health: air pollution.
Scientists are finding that anosmia, a loss of the sense of smell, is becoming a widespread problem among people of all ages exposed to PM2. 5 pollutants constantly, which are tiny particles (微粒) that can enter our bodies with every breath we take.
The reason, they suggest, is that the olfactory bulbs (嗅球), which are located in our noses and packed with nerve endings, are affected by exposure to air pollution. The tiny particles cause illness either in the bulbs themselves or in the brain, impacting our sense of smell over time, “Our data show the risk of developing anosmia with constant particulate pollution is 1.6 to 1.7 times higher,” says Ramanathan, a doctor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, America.
Ramanathan is an author of a recent study of nearly 2,700 patients, a fifth of whom had anosmia despite many of them being non- smokers.’ When he and his colleagues looked into the backgrounds of the affected patients, they found most of them lived in neighborhoods with significantly higher levels of air pollution.
The findings prove other studies with similar findings. One of these studies, conducted in a town in Italy, found that more than 200 teenagers and young adults between the ages of 15 and 25 suffered olfactory damage as a result of exposure to NO2, a common component in traf-fic emissions. “This is alarming as olfactory loss affects patient safety, well-being, and it is a predictor of poor health,” says Ramanathan.
Yet the loss of a sense of smell is a condition that is often overlooked though it can bring about numerous health problems. A sense of smell is linked to memory as well and life is a lot less fun without it. “People don’t remember what the pastry that they ate in childhood looked like, but they remember what the shop smelled like,” says Ramanathan.
1. How air pollution negatively influences our sense of smell!?| A．It blocks the inside transport of information. |
| B．It prevents the nerve system functioning normally. |
| C．It leads to the brain requiring more time to respond. |
| D．It results in diseases in the olfactory bulbs or the brain, |
| A．Air pollution can rob us of our sense of smell. |
| B．Smokers are more likely to suffer from anosmia. |
| C．Traffic emissions contribute a lot to air pollution. |
| D．Exposure to PM2.5 pollutants occasionally is harmless. |
| A．Confusing and astonishing. | B．Complicated but treatable. |
| C．Critical and concerning. | D．Disturbing but temporary. |
| A．A travel brochure. | B．A science website. |
| C．A biology textbook. | D．An art magazine. |
9 . Blue whales eat up to 10 million pieces of microplastic every day, research estimated Tuesday, suggesting that the pollution causes a bigger danger to the world’s largest animal than previously thought.
A US-led research team put tags on 191 blue whales that live off the coast of California to observe their movements. “It’s basically like an Apple Watch, just on the back of a whale,” said Shirel Kahane-Rapport, a researcher at California State University, Fullerton, and the study’s first author.
The whales mostly fed at depths of between 50 to 250 meters, which is home to the “greatest concentration of microplastics in the sea,” Kahane-Rapport said. The researchers then estimated the size and number of mouthfuls the whales had daily, modeling three different situations. Under the most likely situation, the blue whales ate up to 10 million microplastic pieces a day. Over the 90 to 120 days’ annual feeding season, which represents more than a billion pieces a year.
The largest animal ever to live on Earth is also likely the biggest microplastic consumer, eating up to 43.6 kilograms a day, the study said. While it is easy to imagine whales sucking (吞没) in vast amounts of microplastics as they ate, the researchers found that was not the case.
Instead, 99 percent of the microplastics entered the whales because they were already inside their prey (猎物). “That’s concerning for us,” Kahane-Rapport said, because humans eat that prey. “We also eat sardines,” she said, adding that “krill (磷虾) is the basis of the food web.” “Previous research has shown that if krill is in a tank with microplastic, they will eat it,” Kahane-Rapport said.
Now that the researchers know how much microplastic is being consumed by whales, next they aim to determine how much harm it could be doing. “The quantity defines the poison,” Kahane-Rapport said.
1. Why is a tag placed on the back of the whales?| A．It can treat the illness of whales. | B．It can track the living of whales. |
| C．It can ensure the safety of whales. | D．It can record the danger of whales. |
| A．By providing data. | B．By giving examples. | C．By explaining the reason. | D．By expressing their guess. |
| A．The research process was very complicated. | B．The whales live in the area free from pollution. |
| C．Most microplastics entered the whales directly. | D．Humans may eat microplastics through their diet. |
| A．It will be highly profitable. | B．It will be further conducted. |
| C．It will involve food poison. | D．It will help whales avoid risk. |
10 . According to US national park researchers, microplastic particles (微粒) equal to as many as 300 million plastic water bottles are raining down on the Grand Canyon.
In a survey of 11 remote western places, also including the Great Basin and Craters of the Moon national parks, researchers discovered more than 1000 tons of microplastic particles that had traveled through the atmosphere via rain or water particles.
Most microplastics are from larger pieces of plastic. Since plastics don’t degrade (降解), plastics that end up in waste piles or landfills break down into microparticles and make their way through the Earth’s atmosphere, soil and water systemics.
Janice Brahney, lead researcher at Utah State University, said, “Plastics could be deposited (沉降), readmitted to the atmosphere again, transported for some time…who knows how many times, and who knows how far they’ve traveled?”
Brahney’s team found that so-called wet microplastics, named for the way they are transported, are most likely disturbed by a storm and swept up into the atmosphere, having originated in larger urban areas. By comparison, the spreading patterns of dry microplastics is the same as dust and can travel long distances, often across continents.
Brahney warned that new findings show an urgent need to reduce plastic pollution. Although their full effects on the human body are still unknown, scientists are starting to raise public health concerns over microplastic particles: They’re small enough to stay in lung tissue, causing damage and, in some cases of routine exposure, can lead to asthma and cancer.
Scientists have also found that microplastic particles affect the temperature adjustment function of the soil, leading to losses in plant life.
Brahney believes that her research is just the beginning of understanding how microplastics move through ecosystems.
“Learning about plastics and how they don’t degrade seems like, ‘Oh my God, we should have been expecting this: they’ re just made into these tiny sizes, they could certainly be carried by the wind,” Brahney said.
“We’ve just been missing it,” she added.
1. The direct cause of the microplastic rain is that_________.| A．small pieces from plastics become degradable |
| B．microplastic particles travel into the atmosphere |
| C．plastic particles end up in waste piles or landfills |
| D．plastic water bottles are transported to the water systems |
| A．The structure of microplastic particles. |
| B．The distance that microplastics can travel. |
| C．The way that microplastics are transported. |
| D．The different types of microplastic particles. |
| A．Microplastics have affected the ecosystem. |
| B．Plastic particles have serious effects on human health. |
| C．Methods to degrade plastics could be developed soon. |
| D．Researchers have missed the best time to study plastics. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Uncaring. |
| C．Doubtful. | D．Worried. |
