1 . Living downstream from a waste-treatment plant can leave fish tired, a new study finds, led by Graham Scott, a biologist in Canada. “Wastewater treatment plants are pretty good at taking out the waste and treating it before it gets into our waterways,” he said. “But not everything can be taken out,” he added.
For example, some plants beside the stream were not designed to remove remains of drugs. So when some medicines are left over after people use them, they can be released into the environment. These include the drugs used to treat depression and high blood pressure.
Life-sustaining chemical reactions in an animal’s body (including ours) allow it to grow, move and reproduce. These reactions, taken together, are known as the creature’s metabolism (新陈代谢). Some studies have shown that even just one drug can change the metabolism of fish, making their metabolism slow down. Then that will impair their bodies.
That creates a problem for the animals — using the extra energy to rid their bodies of the pollutants which can damage their cells and tissues. “That’s energy they burn just to stay alive,” explained Scott. That is also the energy no longer available to avoid predators (天敌), to find food and to mate.
And they report that fish exposed to a mix of chemicals can use up some of their energy just to deal with those pollutants. Therefore, they will have less energy to eat and avoid being eaten, says Paul Craig, a biologist in Ontario.
“It is up to us to help reduce the types of pollutants in. wastewater,” Craig says. “That includes not throwing leftover medicines down the toilet.” he recommends.
1. What do Scott’s words mean in paragraph 1?| A．There are still some pollutants in the treated water. |
| B．Wastewater treatment plants don’t work well. |
| C．Things in waterways are difficult to deal with. |
| D．Canadians tend to throw waste down the toilet. |
| A．Form. | B．Harm. | C．Benefit. | D．Examine. |
| A．They will stop growing. |
| B．They will avoid their mates. |
| C．They will have to rid their bodies of the polluted cells. |
| D．They will consume extra energy to survive. |
| A．To explain how pollutants affect animals. |
| B．To show ways of fighting against pollution. |
| C．To advise people to stop buying polluted fish. |
| D．To urge people to reduce pollutants in wastewater. |
2 . The fertile land of the Nile delta is being eroded (侵蚀) along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast at an astonishing rate, in some parts estimated at 100 metres per year. In the past, land washed away from the coastline by the currents of the Mediterranean Sea used to be replaced by sediment (沉淀物) brought down to the delta by the River Nile, but this is no longer happening.
Up to now, people have blamed this loss of delta land on the two large Aswan dams in the south of Egypt, which hold back almost all of the sediment that used to flow down the river. Before the dams were built, the Nile flowed freely carrying huge quantities of sediment. But when the Aswan dams were constructed to provide electricity and irrigation, and to protect the huge population centre of Cairo from annual flooding and drought, most of the sediment with its natural fertilizer accumulated up above the dam in the southern upstream half of Lake Nasser, instead of passing down to the della.
Now, however, there turns out to be more to the story. It appears that the sediment-free water picks up sand as it erodes the river bed and banks on the 800-kilometre trip to Cairo. Daniel Jean Stanley of the Smithsonian Institute noticed that water samples taken in Cairo indicated that the river sometimes carries more than 850 grams of sediment per cubic metre of water — almost half of what it carried before the dams were built.
International environmental organizations are beginning to pay closer attention to the region, partly because of the problems of erosion and pollution of the Nile delta, but mainly because they fear the impact this situation could have on the whole Mediterranean coastal ecosystem.
But there are no easy solutions. In the immediate future, Stanley believes that one solution would be to make artificial floods to flush out the delta waterways, in the same way that natural floods did before the construction of the dams. He says, however, that in the long term an alternative process such as desalination (脱盐) may have to be used to increase the amount of water available.
1. What stopped the sediment coming down to the delta?| A．The Mediterranean Sea. | B．The River Nile. |
| C．The Aswan dams. | D．Lake Nasser. |
| A．To flush out the river beds. |
| B．To offer electricity and protection. |
| C．To make the water in the River Nile clean. |
| D．To keep the soil in the region nearby nutrient-rich. |
| A．There is no need to worry about the delta. |
| B．The methods of measurement need improving. |
| C．Whether the situation is good or not remains to be seen. |
| D．The dams’ consequences are beyond people’s expectation. |
| A．Difficulties to be settled. |
| B．Rewards for the challenge. |
| C．Severe influence of the situation. |
| D．Possible solutions to the problem. |
3 . Microplastics, those lasting relics of modern times, have occupied seemingly every part of the planet today, including the most distant reaches.
The Arctic is far from clean, though it's remote and rarely stepped in by visitors. Melanie Bergmann, a marine ecologist with the Alfred Wegener Institute, and her colleagues had been studying plastics on the Arctic seafloor since 2002. Large amounts turned up everywhere they looked. In deep sea, they found about 6,000 particles（颗粒）in every 2.2 pounds of mud. Sea ice was even more loaded—as much as 12,000 pieces per 34 ounces of melted ice.
Scientists measured microplastics in snow from this distant location and found levels they conclude could only have caught rides on the wind. The study raises concerns about how much microplastics pollute the atmosphere, bringing a potential health risk to people and animals that breathe them in. But they are less worried about the threat that breathed-in pollutants have to wildlife than about polluted snow leaving its load into water. “From an ecosystem angle, our biggest concern is what happens when that snow melts as the climate warms up,” Bergmann says.
The science on the health effects of microplastics is still going on. “For human health, we currently know very little,” says microplastics researcher Chelsea Rochman. "There is a lot of concern because we know we are exposed…. For wildlife, we know that microplastics may go into every level of the food chain.” Laboratory studies find some physical and chemical effects from microplastics exposure, but the findings vary by the plastic type, shape and size. “There's much more we need to do to clearly understand the effects," he says. "And further experiments will be carried out soon with application for equipment and financial support approved.”
Even worse is the threat from airborne nanoplastics in the area—too small to be noticed and may actually enter cells. Research on that also has been conducted and it could be a bigger problem, according to Rochman.
1. What is the data in paragraph 2 used to show?| A．Visitors rarely step into the Arctic. | B．Sea ice is more polluted than deep sea. |
| C．Microplastics are everywhere in the world. | D．The Arctic suffers serious microplastics pollution. |
| A．Microplastics' entering the water ecosystem. | B．Human beings' breathing microplastics in. |
| C．Wildlife's being threatened by micropollutants. | D．Microplastics pollution's worsening global warming. |
| A．Their experiments lack financial support. | B．Effects of microplastics exposure are unknown. |
| C．Animals are in a more risky situation than man. | D．Microplastics' effects on health require more study. |
| A．Damage of microplastics to health. | B．Appeals for environmental protection. |
| C．Findings about nanoplastics in the Arctic. | D．Measures to solve microplastics pollution. |
4 . Composite image of Europe and North Africa at night, 2016. Credit： NASA Earth NPP Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Suomi VIIRS data from Miguel Roman, is oftenNASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Artificial light seen as a sign of progress: the march of civilization shines a light in the dark； it takes back the night； it illuminates. But a chorus of scientists and advocates argues that unnaturally bright nights are bad not just for astronomers but also for nocturnal (夜间活动的)animals and even for human health.
Now research shows the night is getting even brighter. From 2012 to 2016 the earth's artificially lit area expanded by an estimated 2. 2 percent a year (map), according to a study published last November in Science Advances. Even that increase may understate the problem, however. The measurement excludes light from most of the energy-efficient LED lamps that have been replacing sodium-vapor technology in cities all over the world, says lead study author Christopher Kyba, a postdoctoral researcher at the German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam.
The new data came from a NASA satellite instrument called the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). It can measure long-wavelengths of light, such as those produced by traditional yellow-and-orange sodium-vapor street lamps. But VIIRS cannot see the shortwavelength blue light produced by white LEDs. This light has been shown to disrupt human sleep cycles and nocturnal animals, behavior.
Credit: Mapping Specialists ； Source: Artificially Lit Surface of Earth at Night Increasing in Radiance and Extent," by Christopher C. M. Kyba et al. , in Science Advances, Vol. 3, No. 11, Article No. E1701528 ； November 22, 2017.
The team believes the ongoing switch to LEDs caused already bright countries such as Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the U. S. to register as having stable levels of illumination in the VIIRS data. In contrast, most nations in South America, Africa and Asia brightened, suggesting increases in the use of traditional lighting. Australia actually appeared to lose lit area一but the researchers say that is because wildfires skewed the data.
"The fact that VIIRS finds an increase (in many countries) , despite its blindness in the part of the spectrum that increased more, is very sad," says FabioFalchi, a researcher at Italy's Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute, who did not participate in the study. In 2016 Falchi, along with Kyba and several other members of his research team, published a global atlas of artificial lighting that showed one third of the world's population currently lives under skies too bright to see the Milky Way at night.
The data also cast doubt on the idea that the LED lighting revolution will lead to energy cost savings. Between 2012 and 2016 the median nation pumped out 15 percent more long- wavelength light as its GDP increased by 13 percent. And overall, countries, total light production correlated with their GDP. In other words, Kyba says, "we buy as much light as we are willing to spend money on."
1. Which is not true about the spread of lit areas?| A．Lit area expanded by an estimated 2. 2 percent a year. |
| B．Artificial light is often seen as a sign of progress. |
| C．The increase in GDP is due to the increase in light. |
| D．It is bad for noctumal animals and even for human health. |
| A．It is a kind of NASA satellite device. |
| B．It can record and analyzed long-wavelength light. |
| C．The blue light generated by white LEDs can disrupt human sleep cycles. |
| D．VIIRS has found an increase of traditional lighting in lots of nations. |
| A．Artificial LED lights at nights are harmful to people's health. |
| B．It is a sign of civilization in modern society. |
| C．The blue light disrupts human and animals" life cycles. |
| D．Artificially lit surface of Earth increasing because of LEDs. |
| A．show the VIIRS data from NASA |
| B．demonstrate the significance of VIIRS for its measurement of wavelengths |
| C．reveal the relationship between wavelength light and GDP |
| D．arouse peoples awareness of light pollution |
5 . Organic produce has become increasingly popular in recent years. However, "organic" does not mean "pesticide-free"（无农药的）or "chemical-free". In fact, organic farmers are allowed to use a wide variety of chemical sprays and powders on their crops.
Many people believe organic produce is healthier and safer. Nobody bothered to look at whether natural chemicals are harmful.
| A．And the land being planted cannot have been-treated with synthetic materials for that period either. |
| B．Thus, we should be more cautious in our acceptance of "natural" as being harmless. |
| C．There are many choices and decisions that we, as consumers, are asked to make. |
| D．It should be noted that we don't know which system is more harmful. |
| E．This is a case where everyone made the same dangerous mistake. |
| F．That was because it was assumed that they posed little risk. |
| G．So what does organic mean? |
6 . Hardware in general, and smartphones in particular, have become a huge environmental and health problem in the Global South' s landfill sites(垃圾填埋场).
Electronic waste(e-waste) currently takes up 5 percent of all global waste, and it is set to increase rapidly as more of us own more than one smartphone, laptop and power bank. They end up in places like Agbogbloshie on the outskirts of Ghana's capital, Accra.It is the biggest e-waste dump in the world, where 10,000 informal workers walk through tons of abandoned goods as part of an informal recycling process.They risk their health searching for the precious metals that are found in abandoned smartphones.
But Agbogbloshie should not exist. The Basel Convention, a 1989 treaty aims to prevent developed nations from unauthorized dumping of e-waste in less developed countries. The E-waste industry, however, circumvents the regulations by exporting e-waste labelled as “secondhand goods” to poor countries like Ghana, knowing full well that it is heading for a landfill site.
A recent report found Agbogbloshie contained some of the most dangerous chemicals.This is not surprising: smartphones contain chemicals like mercury(水银), lead and even arsenic (砷 ) Reportedly, one egg from a free-range chicken in Agbogbloshie contained a certain chemical which can cause cancer and damage the immune system at a level that's about 220 times greater than a limit set by the European Food Safety Authority(EFSA), Most worryingly, these poisonous chemicals are free to pollute the broader soil and water system. This should concern us all, since some of Ghana's top exports are cocoa and nuts.
Some governments have started to take responsibility for their consumers' waste.For example, Germany has started a project that includes a sustainable recycling system at Agbogbloshie, along with a health clinic for workers.However, governments cannot solve the problem alone, as there is am almost limitless consumer demand for hardware, especially when governments’ green policies are focused on issues like climate change.
Only the manufacturers can fix this.A more economically sustainable and politically possible solution is through encouraging hardware manufacturers to make the repair, reuse and recycling of hardware profitable, or at least cost-neutral.
1. What can we infer from paragraph2?| A．Electronic products need improving urgently. |
| B．Electronic waste is too complex to get fully recycled. |
| C．Electronic waste requires more landfill sites across Ghana. |
| D．Electronic pollution is a burning question in Agbogbloshie. |
| A．Tightens |
| B．Abolishes |
| C．Avoids |
| D．Follows |
| A．The violation of EFSA’s standard |
| B．The lack of diversity in Ghana s exports. |
| C．The damage to chickens immune system |
| D．The threat of polluted food around the world |
| A．Manufacturers' developing a sustainable hardware economy. |
| B．Governments' adjusting their green policies about e-waste. |
| C．Reducing customers' demands for electronic products. |
| D．Letting governments take on the main responsibility. |
7 . James Sulikowski, from the Shark and Fish Conservation Lab at the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences at Arizona State University, was one of the scientists who captured the seven foot porbeagle (鼠鲨) shark in the Atlantic.
In a Facebook post, the lab said the shark had been growing for years with a plastic strap around its gills. “Photos ... show the female shark’s head was slowly being sliced off by the unyielding strap,” it said. “The piece of circular plastic had become lodged around her neck when she was younger. As she grew, it began to cut through her skin into her muscle, if we had not removed it, she surely would have died.”
In a message to Newsweek, Sulikowski said the strap was probably one that would normally go around a bait box. “The box went overboard, and the porbeagle shark, when younger, ate the fish in the box,” he said. “While doing so, [the] strap got wrapped around the sharks head. As the shark grew, the strap dug into the shark’s flesh. If we didn’t remove it, the shark would have surely died.”
The photos of the shark being strangled follow the discovery of a dead minke whale that had been killed by a piece of fishing line. The male minke whale was found on a beach in Dennis, Massachusetts. The fishing line had become “wrapped around its head and through its mouth, creating a bridle,” the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) said in a Facebook post.
The IFAW said the initial autopsy (验尸) suggests the whale died from injuries caused by the entanglement. It also said there were signs of possible infection. “The entanglement likely contributed to the cause of death, though additional lab results are pending.”
The problem of plastic pollution in the ocean is getting worse. It is thought there is currently over 150 million metric tons of plastic in the world’s oceans, and more and more is entering every year. A report published earlier this year estimated the amount of plastic entering the ocean every year will have doubled by 2040, amounting to 600 million metric tons.
More than one million seabirds and 100,000 marine animals are killed every year by plastic waste. “Plastic in all forms are an issue,” Sulikowski said. “We need more research to understand the extent of the long term effects of this type of pollution.”
1. What do you know about the shark?| A．Her head was sliced off. |
| B．The strap cut through her skin when she was younger. |
| C．She was in more danger as she grew. |
| D．Scientists had not removed the strap. |
| A．the entanglement. | B．a piece of fishing line. |
| C．infection. | D．not decided. |
| A．The present amount of plastic in the ocean is about 300 million tons. |
| B．The next 20 years will see an increase of 450 million tons of plastic in the ocean. |
| C．More than 150 million metric tons of plastic is going into ocean every year. |
| D．About 300 million tons of plastic is going into ocean every year. |
| A．Scientists saved a shark whose head was being sliced off. |
| B．The death of a whale and a shark worried IFAW. |
| C．Plastic pollution is threatening certain animals’ lives. |
| D．Plastic pollution is getting worse and worse. |
8 . Terribly hot weather. Pouring downpours. Scientists have long suspected that global warming can cause extreme weather events. Now experts have numbers to support that idea.
The burning of fossil fuels has been leading to a build-up of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere. This CO2 is a greenhouse gas. That means it can trap heat in the air. As a result, our planet's temperature has been rising. And this global warming will account for a growing share of ever more frequent extreme weather events.
Many governments hope to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius （摄氏度）above temperatures that were typical before the Industrial Revolution. It will be hard for nations to achieve that. But even if they do, global warming still will be responsible for nearly all heat extremes. Global warming also will be to blame for about 2 out of every 5 extreme rains and snowfalls. "This is a considerable fraction of major weather events,” says climate scientist Peter Stott.
Erich Fischer and Reto Knutti analyzed 25 different computer models of global climate. These analyses looked at different climate periods from preindustrial times to the present. The analyses also predicted what weather events were likely to be like in the future. This period was predicted to be warmer by 2 and 3 degrees Celsius.
The computer looked at when extreme heat and precipitation（冰雹） occurred during each climate period. It focused on events of unusual heal or heavy precipitation. Before the Industrial Revolution, such extremes typically would have occurred only once in every 1,000 days.
“But since the globe has been warming, such extremes are no longer nearly as rare. These new findings provide a global statement", Fischer says. "You can still get the biggest heat that you have over seen without any human changes.”
1. The second paragraph is mainly about?| A．what a greenhouse gas refers to |
| B．how the global warming came into being |
| C．where the global warming is becoming serious |
| D．why fossil fuels have to be forbidden |
| A．it is impassible for climate change to happen |
| B．there is no serious effect of the global warming now |
| C．the influence of the global warming is great |
| D．the extreme weather happens in small numbers |
| A．will happen more often than before |
| B．happens once in every 1,000 days now |
| C．happens every region without differences |
| D．has become a rare situation around the world |
9 . Coffee chains create a lot of waste, from disposable take-away cups to the used grounds that are sent to landfills. Starbucks has started to try recyclable alternatives to the disposable cups. But the used coffee is often unnoted.
The world drinks around 2 billion cups of coffee a day, producing 6 million tons of used grounds every year. When they go to landfills, the grounds release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.
UK Bio-bean has found a way to turn that waste into a valuable resource. At Bio-bean, used coffee grounds are processed to remove paper cups or plastic bags, and then passed through a dryer and a further screening process. They are finally processed into the fuel. Coffee Log.
"Coffee is highly calorific and lends itself to being a really fantastic fuel," says May. director of Bio-bean. "They burn about 20% hotter and 20% longer than wood logs do."
While these fuels release greenhouse gases when burned, if they replace other carbon-based fuels. Bio-bean estimates that the recycling process reduces emissions （排放）by 80% compared with sending the grounds to landfills.
Founded in 2013 Bio-bean grew rapidly, launching coffee collection services across the UK and building the world's first coffee recycling factory only two years later. In 2016 they launched their first product, Coffee Log, and are now ready to launch their first natural flavouring ingredient into the food and drink industry.
“We've really managed to succeed with our innovation because we've managed to get to scale. What started as a good idea is today the UK's largest recycler of coffee grounds. We are turning 7,000 tons of those grounds per year into the fuel," says George May. "Despite being delayed by the COVID-19, we plan to expand our operation into northwestern Europe within the next five years."
1. What do the first two paragraphs suggest?| A．It’s necessary to limit coffee consumption. |
| B．Drinking coffee is popular around the world. |
| C．Measures should be taken to recycle coffee waste. |
| D．Coffee grounds are the main cause of global warming. |
| A．A solid fuel. | B．A natural food. |
| C．A cup of hot coffee. | D．A tree trunk. |
| A．It is a high-tech company with a long history. |
| B．It is a promising recycler of coffee grounds. |
| C．It is started to produce coffee and fuels. |
| D．It's developing faster than Starbucks. |
| A．Give accurate measurement. | B．Cover a wide range. |
| C．Do mass production. | D．Classify different grades. |
10 . 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(白天活动的) creatures, which explains 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—light pollution. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design, which washes out the darkness of night and completely changes the light levels and 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.
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.
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. What is probably the best title of the article?| A．Powerful light. | B．Orange Haze. |
| C．Calls of Nature. | D．Disappearing Night. |
| A．The sky. | B．The planet. | C．The world. | D．The night. |
| A．show how light pollution influences animals |
| B．compare the living habits of both species |
| C．explain why certain species has died out |
| D．provide examples of animal protection |
| A．human beings mustn't explore the night |
| B．light pollution harms the world’s eyesight |
| C．man should rethink its position in the universe |
| D．light pollution has destroyed some world heritages |
