1 . Why do farmers grow crops outside in fields when we can arrange them vertically (垂直地)? The idea of vertical farming was first proposed in 1999. It was seen as a way to save space, reduce air miles and transform old and abandoned buildings, like warehouses. In 2021, Fortune Business Insights valued the global vertical farming market at 3.47 billion dollars. Now, however, this industry is under threat, partly due to rising energy costs.
According to the magazine Science Focus, vertical farming gives ten times the yield (产量) of conventional outdoor farming. However, in order for crops to grow using this method, plants are placed in a controlled environment, grown not under the Sun, but under LED lights and watered with recycled water pumped on a closed-loop system (闭环系统).
Unfortunately, energy prices have risen across the globe. Therefore, this reliance on electricity has meant the last few years have not been easy for the industry. Cindy van Rijswick, from the Dutch research firm RaboResearch, has estimated that operational costs for a vertical farm are around 15% higher now compared to 18 months ago. Infarm, Europe’s largest vertical farming company, made around500 employees redundant (被裁员的) in November 2022 because they needed to downsize. They blamed higher operating costs due to energy increases as one reason for the layoffs.
Another issue related to the cost-of -living crisis and affecting vertical farming is the type of produce grown. This includes herbs such as basil, as well as salad leaves and leafy greens. Compared to traditionally farmed plants, like onions and carrots, these products tend to be more expensive, which could lead to reduced demand as consumers become more cautious about their spending.
So, it seems that a future with food grown under LED lights is looking less and less bright.
1. What is the feature of vertical farming?A.Saving urban land and achieving zero emissions. |
B.Demanding highly technical and complex control. |
C.High energy consumption and low output value. |
D.Making full use of sunlight and water resources. |
A.By making assumptions. |
B.By criticizing a typical behaviour. |
C.By listing specific data and facts. |
D.By referring to a social phenomenon. |
A.Vertical farming avoids climate and disaster impacts. |
B.Vertical farming costs jumped due to higher energy prices. |
C.Vertical farming grows high-value, cost-effective produce. |
D.High yield protects vertical farming from market competition. |
A.Is This the End of Vertical Farming? | B.Is Vertical Farming Highly Efficient? |
C.Challenges Industrial Agriculture Faces | D.New Trends in Vertical Agriculture |
2 . Hawaii lawmakers are considering legislation (立法) that would require visitors to pay for a year-long license or pass to visit state parks. Josh Green is the state’s governor. He said, “We get between 9 and 10 million visitors a year, but we only have 1.4 million people living here.” He added, “Those 10 million travellers should be helping us sustain our environment.” Lawmakers still debating how much they would charge.
The governor campaigned in 2022 on the idea of having all tourists pay a $50 fee to enter the state. Legislators think this would violate US constitutional protections for free travel. They instead think visitors should pay to enter parks and trails. Either policy would be a first of its kind for any US state. Hawaii’s leaders are following the example of other popular tourist areas with similar fees or taxes. They include Venice, Italy, and Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands.
Hawaii State Representative Sean Quinlan is the leader of the House Tourism Committee. He said changes in the activities of travellers are part of Hawaii’s push. He said golf rounds per visitor per day have dropped 30 percent over the past 10 years while hiking has increased50 percent. People are also seeking out isolated places they have seen on social media. The state does not have the money to oversee and protect all these places, he said.
Most state parks and trails are currently free. Some of the most popular ones already charge, like Diamond Head State Monument. That trail leads hikers from the floor of a 300,000-year-old volcano up to the top. It gets 1 million visitors each year and costs $5for each traveller.
A bill currently before the legislature would require visitors over the age of 15to buy a yearly pass to visit forests, parks, trails or “other natural area on state land”. People who live in Hawaii would not need to pay.
1. What does the underlined word “violate” mean in Paragraph 2?A.Break. | B.Establish. | C.Uphold. | D.Perfect. |
A.The decreasing number of tourists to Hawaii. |
B.Advantages of Hawaii’s tourism resources. |
C.The increasing financial burden of Hawaii. |
D.One reason for wanting to charge tourists. |
A.None of the attractions in Hawaii charge fees currently. |
B.The goal to charge fees is to limit the number of tourists. |
C.Lawmakers are arguing about whether charging fees is legal. |
D.Charging fees is beneficial for Hawaii’s natural environment. |
A.A news report. | B.A travel guide. |
C.A law textbook. | D.A promotional brochure. |
3 . As people are becoming more socially conscious about where their food comes from and how it impacts the planet, they are choosing animal-free plant-based options. Cow-free meat has been around for quite some time and the popularity of the cultivated (培育的) meat from Aleph Farms and others are soaring. While there are a large number of plant-based milk substitutes (替代品), none of them have the same taste of cow’s milk. Now, an Israeli food-tech startup Remilk created real dairy products without harming a single cow or the planet.
The company stresses that their product Remilk is not a milk substitute but rather is the real deal. And the end product is very healthy. The company also says that the lab-produced milk tastes identical to the real thing and they hope to eventually replace cows by creating every dairy product sold. They expect to roll out plant-based cheese and yogurt in addition to milk. “Remil k was founded with the mission to stop using animals to produce our food because, as dairy lovers, we realize that giving up on milk is not an option,” said Aviv Wolff, CEO of Remilk. “But today’s milk comes with an unreasonable price tag. The dairy industry is destructive to our planet, our health, and our animals, and is simply not sustainable anymore.”
The environmental price tag of dairy farming is way too high. According to the World Wildlife Fund, dairy cows add a huge amount of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and contribute to global warming and climate change as well as foul the air around them. Dairy operations consume large amounts of water and run-off of manure (粪肥) and fertilizers from these farms get into local waterways. The production of Remilk uses only 5percent of the resources and produces only 1 percent of the waste of producing cow’s milk according to the company. And they accomplish this by being 100 percent cruelty-free unlike dairy farms.
1. What does the underlined word soaring in Para. 1 mean?A.Recovering. | B.Disappearing. | C.Declining. | D.Increasing. |
A.Supportive. | B.Doubtful. | C.Opposed. | D.Unconcerned. |
A.By giving a definition. | B.By presenting the process. |
C.By making comparison. | D.By giving examples. |
A.Healthier Milk, Rising Popularity | B.Saving Endangered Animals |
C.Fresher Milk, Better Taste | D.Making Milk Without Cows |
4 . Would you take a trip if you couldn’t use your cellphone? A new tour company called Off the Grid is asking travellers to put their cellphones away and not even use them for photos. The company founder, Zach Beattie, is developing his business, using money he saved from a tech job at a mapping company. He’s hired guides for every trip but will help lead the first few himself.
The first trip is to Lisbon, Portugal, in July. It takes 7 to 10 days, with small groups of up to 16 people. Prices range from $1,500 to $1,650, including accommodations, meals and ground transportation. The plan includes at least three excursions (远足) and two social events, with an emphasis on unique experiences over bucket-list sightseeing. The tour also includes surfing lessons, yoga on the beach, a day of sailing and dinner with a local family.
“When you’re somewhere new, there’s a lot to see and a lot of cool and interesting people to meet,” Beattie said. “Your phone can distract (使分心) you.” The phone ban won’t be enforced quite as strictly as it seems at first glance. “We want it to be voluntary,” he said. “We’re not collecting phones and throwing them in a locked trunk. It’s held by you, but put in your pocket, and you state your intentions for the week, whether that’s checking your social media once or twice a day or a total blackout.”
Tour-goers also get a “dumbphone” without Internet access that’s loaded with numbers for group leaders and other participants, both for emergencies and to promote socializing. Participants may bring regular cameras, but Beattie is hiring a photographer for each tour so there will be plenty of photos to remember the trip. Once the trip is over, participants will have access to those photos for use in social media posts.
1. What can be learned about Zach Beattie?A.He set up his business at his own expense. |
B.He is always guiding every trip personally. |
C.He forbids tourists to take along cellphones. |
D.He used to earn his living in a tour company. |
A.The trip features sightseeing. |
B.Participants live in homestays. |
C.Air ticket is covered in the cost. |
D.Tourists experience water sports. |
A.Lock their phones in a trunk. |
B.Post their photos on social media. |
C.Free themselves from their phones. |
D.Shift their focus onto dumbphones. |
A.Take photos. | B.Access the Internet. |
C.Record the trip. | D.Contact group members. |
Everywhere we look, we see advertisements that urge us to buy. Most people only buy
Shopaholics often spend hours and hours
There are several reasons for shopping addiction. For some people, it is a way of relieving stress. For
6 . What prevents certain individuals from acknowledging their mistakes, regardless of the situation? Why do they struggle to apologize, even when it’s clear they’re at fault? For them, the act of admitting wrongdoing and apologizing poses a significant psychological threat.
People who cannot apologize often have deep feelings of. low self-worth. When their delicate ego (自我) cannot absorb the blow of admitting they were wrong,
Unfortunately, many of us mistakenly interpret these people's defensiveness as a sign of psychological strength.
The mistake we often make when faced with someone who’s habitually incapable of apologizing is to become angry and try to win our argument with them.
A.their defense mechanisms kick in |
B.But the sad reality is that we can never win |
C.There can be various obstacles in our way of doing what is right |
D.taking responsibility for their mistakes can actually be seen as a sign of strength |
E.That's because outwardly they appear to be tough individuals who refuse to back down |
F.Admitting that we’re wrong is emotionally uncomfortable and painful to our sense of self |
G.It means acknowledging they've hurt someone, potentially triggering feelings of shame after all |
1. 节约用电的意义;
2. 日常节电的措施。
注意:
1.词数80左右。
2.开头结尾已给出, 不记入词数。可适当增加细节, 以使行文连贯。
Dear friends,
I’m LiHua,
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Thank you!
8 . Romantic attachment is one of the best predictors of happiness that social scientists have identified. For example, my review of the General Social Survey finds that although 27 percent of married Americans said they were “very happy” with their lives, only 11 percent of those respondents who were never married, divorced, separated, or widowed answered this way. And research in the Journal of Research in Personality has shown that marriage can protect happiness in adulthood.
These findings may help explain the well-documented decline in American happiness, especially among young adults. The percentage of adults who are currently married has fallen from almost 70 in 1960 to about 50 today. The solution to the happiness deficit (赤字) — for the nation as well as among individuals — is simply to encourage more people to pair off. However, a closer look at the singles trend suggests that the problem is not a lack of available partners, but that young adults may unintentionally be avoiding romantic attachment.
Psychologists commonly measure the health of attachment through two dimensions: anxiety and avoidance the latter meaning a resistance to intimacy (亲密). To score lower on each dimension is better. An insecure bond can involve someone being anxious but not avoidant, avoidant but not anxious, or both, while secure attachment is on the other hand. Unfortunately, insecure attachment is becoming more and more common. Over the past two decades, successive groups of studied college students have shown an increasing likelihood of experiencing one of the insecure styles. One particular insecure style-avoidance-is associated with a greater preference for singlehood. That tells us that the underlying problem is chiefly one of greater avoidance.
The popularity of avoidant attachment is a more reasonable explanation for the increase in unhappiness among young adults than their simply being uncoupled. After all, we also know that singlehood can make some people happier, and that a bad romantic partnership is clearly worse than no relationship at all. But in contrast to that mixed picture, many studies show that avoidant attachment is associated with lower satisfaction with life.
So what is causing this mass romantic avoidance? Two psychologists provided clues in a paper published in 2022 that was based on surveys of university students in Cyprus, including what led them to prefer being single. Strongly predictive of singledom, the researchers found, was not only a preoccupation with work and career but also the wide spread of so-called Dark Triad(narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy). In other words, people may avoid romantic commitment if they are especially self-centered or work-focused.
1. What does the author think of the solution to happiness decline?A.It hits the target. | B.It barks up the wrong tree. |
C.It cuts to the chase. | D.It gets to the bottom. |
A.It is anxious but not intimate. | B.It is both intimate and anxious. |
C.It is neither anxious nor avoidant. | D.It is neither anxious nor intimate. |
A.The benefits of romantic partnership. |
B.The popularity of insecure attachment. |
C.The explanation for avoidant attachment. |
D.The cause for declining happiness among young adults. |
A.pressure of job hunting | B.level of education |
C.different occupations | D.personal characteristics |
9 . Technology seems to discourage slow, immersive reading. Reading on a screen tires your eyes and makes it harder for you to keep your place. Online writing tends to be more skimmable and list-like than print. The cognitive neuroscientist Mary Walt argued recently that this “new norm” of skim reading is producing “an invisible, game -changing transformation” in how readers process words. The neuronal circuit that sustains the brain’s capacity to read now favors the rapid absorption of information.
We shouldn’t overplay this danger. All readers skim. From about the age of nine, our eyes start to bounce around the page, reading only about a quarter of the words properly, and filling in the gaps by inference. Nor is there anything new in these fears about declining attention spans. So far, the anxieties have proved to be false alarms. “Quite a few critics have been worried about attention spans lately and see very short stories as signs of cultural decline,” the American author Selvin Brown wrote. “No one ever said that poems were evidence of short attention spans.”
And yet the Internet has certainly changed the way we read. For a start, it means that there is more to read, because more people than ever are writing. And digital writing is meant for rapid release and response. This mode of writing and reading can be interactive and fun. But often it treats other people’s words as something to be quickly harvested as fodder (素材) to say something else. Everyone talks over the top of everyone else, desperate to be heard.
Perhaps we should slow down. Reading is constantly promoted as a social good and source of personal achievement. But this advocacy often emphasizes “enthusiastic” “passionate” or “eager” reading, none of which adjectives suggest slow, quiet absorption. To a slow reader, a piece of writing can only be fully understood by immersing oneself in the words and their slow comprehension of a line of thought.
The human need for this kind of deep reading is too tenacious for any new technology to destroy. We often assume that technological change can’t be stopped and happens in one direction, so that older media like “dead-tree” books are kicked out by newer, more virtual forms. In practice, older technologies can coexist with new ones. The Kindle has not killed off the printed book any more than the car killed off the bicycle. We still want to enjoy slowly. formed ideas and carefully-chosen words. Even in a fast-moving age, there is time for slow reading.
1. Selvin Brown would probably agree that ________.A.poetry reading is vital to attention spans |
B.the gravity of cultural decline is urgent |
C.fears of attention spans are unnecessary |
D.online writing harms immersive reading |
A.It demands writers to abandon traditional writing modes. |
B.It leads to too much talking and not enough deep reflection. |
C.It depends heavily on frequent interaction with the readers. |
D.It paves the way for enthusiastic, passionate or eager reading. |
A.Deep-rooted. |
B.Fast-advanced. |
C.Slowly-changed. |
D.Rarely-noticed. |
A.The Wonder of Deep Reading |
B.Slow Reading is Here to Stay |
C.The Internet is Changing the Way We Read |
D.Digital vs Print: A Life-and-Death Struggle |
1. What's the meaning of FMCG?
A.Offline sales of fast-moving consumer goods. |
B.Offline sales of slow-moving consumer goods. |
C.Online sales of fast-moving consumer goods. |
A.It's more convenient. | B.Things are cheaper. | C.They have more choices. |
A.Cinema tickets and pet food. |
B.International travel and pollution. |
C.Traffic jams and long working hours. |