Pigeons in London have a bad reputation. Some people call them flying rats. And many blame them for causing pollution with their droppings. But now the birds are being used to fight another kind of pollution in this city of 8.5 million.
“The problem for air pollution is that it’s been largely ignored as an issue for a long time,” says Andrea Lee, who works for the London-based environmental organization Client Earth. “People don’t realize how bad it is, and how it actually affects their health.” London’s poor air quality is linked to nearly 10,000 early deaths a year. Lee says, citing(引用)a report released by the city manager last year. If people were better informed about the pollution they’ re breathing, she says, they could pressure the government to do something about it.
Nearby, on a windy hill in London’s Regent’s Park, an experiment is underway that could help—the first week of flights by the Pigeon Air Patrol. It all began when Pierre Duquesnoy, the director for DigitasLBi, a marketing firm, won a London Design Festival contest last year to show how a world problem could be solved using Twitter. Duquesnoy, from France, chose the problem of air pollution.
“Basically, I realized how important the problem was,” he says. “But also I realized that most of the people around me didn’t know anything about it.” Duquesnoy says he wants to better measure pollution, while at the same time making the results accessible to the public through Twitter.
“So”, he wondered, “how could we go across the city quickly collecting as much data as possible?” Drones were his first thought. But it’s illegal to fly them over London. “But pigeons can fly above London, right?” he says. “They live—actually, they are Londoners as well. So, yeah, I thought about using pigeons equipped with mobile apps. And we can use not just street pigeons, but racing pigeons, because they fly pretty quickly and pretty low.”
So it might be time for Londoners to have more respect for their pigeons. The birds may just be helping to improve the quality of the city’s air.
1.What can we infer about London’s air quality from Paragraph 2?
A. Londoners are very satisfied with it.
B. The government is trying to improve it.
C. Londoners should pay more attention to it.
D. The government has done a lot to improve it.
2.Duquesnoy attended the London Design Festival to _________.
A. entertain Londoners. B. solve a world problem.
C. design a product for sale. D. protect animals like pigeons.
3.Why did Duquesnoy give up using drones to fly across London?
A. Because they are too expensive. B. Because they fly too quickly.
C. Because they are forbidden. D. Because they fly too high.
4.Which can be the best title for the text?
A. Clean air in London. B. London’s dirty secret.
C. London’s new pollution fighter. D. Causes of air pollution in London.
Squirrels aren’t natural city dwellers(居民). In 1986 the sight of one in a tree near New York’s city hall so surprised passers-by that a newspaper published a report about the “unusual visitor”.
Around that time, the tree-dwelling animals were being set free in America’s urban areas to “create pockets of peace and calm like the countryside,” says University of Pennsylvania historian Etienne Benson, who studied our relationship to squirrels over the course of five years.
First, they were introduced to Philadelphia, then to New Haven, Boston, and New York City. Park visitors were encouraged to feed them, and security guards ensured their safety. In the 1910s a leader of the Boy Scouts of America(an organization teaching boys practical skills)said that teaching children to feed squirrels could show the rewards of treating a weaker creature with sympathy, says Benson.
By the early 20th century, though, America began to regret the friendliness it had shown squirrels. Cities had once been filled with animals—from horses pulling goods to dairy cows. By the 1950s those working animals had been moved to the countryside. Pets and wild animals such as birds and squirrels were all that remained of the urban animal kingdom.
Before long, people’s enthusiasm for squirrels wore off, and they started to see them as annoyances. By the 1970s many parks banned feeding the creatures. Today, it is rare to find kids with their parents offering food to squirrels under a tree. And, unfortunately, with more and more buildings being constructed in the city, fewer inhabitable(适宜栖息的)areas are left for the little tree-dwelling animals.
What would be lost if the last of these city dwellers were forced to leave? “I think there’s something constructive to have other living creatures in the city that are not humans and not pets but share the land with us,” says Benson. “It’s a good thing to live in a landscape where you see other creatures going around making lunch. It’s good for the soul.”
1.What’s the purpose of introducing squirrels to Philadelphia?
A. To entertain park visitors. B. To keep the natural balance.
C. To encourage kids to protect animals. D. To make the urban life more peaceful.
2.What was the Boy Scouts leader’s attitude towards feeding squirrels?
A. Disagreeable. B. Doubtful. C. Supportive. D. Uncaring.
3.What might have happened to squirrels in cities around the 1960s?
A. They might have inhabited more homes.
B. They might have begun to go out of favor.
C. They might have been introduced to more cities.
D. They might have been moved to the countryside.
4.What does Benson suggest in the last paragraph?
A. Squirrels living in cities are annoying.
B. Feeding squirrels should be discouraged.
C. Squirrels should be allowed to live in cities.
D. It is possible for people to keep squirrels as pets.
I thought we all knew why independent school students do better than those in the state sector(公立学校). They have more money, more funding and better resources and they don’t have the more challenging students we get in the state sector.
That was before I became a teacher-researcher in a two-year project led by my college, aiming to find the best way to support high-ability students. With funding from the London Schools Excellence Fund, we teamed up with some of the country’s top private schools, like Eton and St Paul’s, as well as a number of state schools, to find out how to bring the knowledge-rich learning that characterizes independent schools into the state sector.
Before the project, I hadn’t had much contact with people who had been educated there. But the first thing I found when I visited was that teachers are the same. In the independent sector, they have challenges too—just different ones.
After two years, our research project has produced a huge set of findings.
One of the most useful findings was the importance of independent learning habits outside the classroom. I realized that although I was always telling students that they needed to do four to five hours of private study a week, they didn’t have a clear idea of what this could look like beyond making notes. So I set them different activities including reading articles, doing activities and completing examination questions.
I started to put much more emphasis on activities outside the classroom, like researching topics beyond the syllabus(教学大纲) or discussing things in the news. And I praised anyone who asked questions in class, so we created a culture where students were proud to ask a question rather than seeing it as a way of flagging up the fact that they hadn’t understood something.
My research is beginning to have a real influence. My students now come to class and tell me what they want to know about. But they no longer expect me to do the research—they want to find out for themselves. At the end of the year I gave students a questionnaire on independent learning. One wrote, “Independent learning would limit the help I got from other students. It helps you to think for yourself.”
1.What did the author say about independent school students before her research?
A. They were troublemakers.
B. They enjoyed excellent learning conditions.
C. They performed worse than state school students.
D. They faced the same challenges as state school students.
2.Why did the author join the project?
A. To introduce good learning methods to state schools.
B. To exchange teaching ideas with other teachers.
C. To partner with other schools in education.
D. To find enough funds for state schools.
3.What changes did the author make in her classes?
A. She focused on group learning. B. She worked out a different syllabus.
C. She encouraged independent learning. D. She carried out various activities in class.
4.How is the author’s research going?
A. It has made a big difference. B. It has failed to make progress.
C. It is questioned by her students. D. It involves many more students.
Leila’ s Hair Museum
Before the invention of photography, people kept memories of loved ones by creating mementos(纪念物)using human hair. In 1986, Leila Cohoon opened a museum in Independence, Missouri, to show her collection of more than 2, 000 pieces of hair-based art collected over 30 years. Billed as the only hair museum in the world, it includes more than 400 braided hair wreaths(花环)and 2,000 pieces of jewellery dating back to the mid-1600s. “My museum is filled with other people’s families,” Leila says. “It tells a story. ”
International UFO Museum and Research Center
On July 7, 1947, a farmer discovered mysterious metallic debris(金属碎片)in his farm outside Roswell, New Mexico. Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF)originally said it recovered a flying disc. The next day, RAAF changed its words: The object was a weather balloon. Stories of a UFO and a government cover-up spread. Each year, 180,000 people check out the dirt from the UFO crash site, photos, and reports about the Roswell incident.
Museum of Bad Art
Not all art is created equal. After finding an oil painting in the rubbish in 1993—the now classic Lucy in the Field with Flowers—Scott Wilson started collecting bad art. Before long, he showed his finds at the Somerville movie theater. The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) gives the public a firsthand look at some of the world’s worst “disaster-pieces”. Popular paintings include Mana Lisa, Hollywood Lips, and Drilling for Eggs. “MOBA is always on the lookout for the best of the worst,” said co-founder Marie Jackson. “But what an artist considers to be bad doesn’t always meet our low standards. ”
Mutter Museum
Welcome to the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—home to more than 5,000 brains, bones, and dead bodies! In 1858, Dr. Thomas Dent Mutter gave his collection of preserved body parts, and bones to the College Of Physicians to improve medical education, which led to the museum’s creation in 1863. Today, Mutter is the most famous medical museum in America, housing a wall of bones, and pieces of Albert Einstein’ s brain.
1.What is special about Leila’s Hair Museum?
A. It is full of family stories.
B. It houses the world’s greatest photos.
C. It holds collections from around the globe.
D. It was opened to remember Leila’s loved ones.
2.What can you find in the Mutter Museum?
A. Photos about the Roswell incident. B. Some of Albert Einstein’s brain.
C. 2,000 pieces of jewellery. D. Mana Lisa.
3.What do the four museums have in common?
A. They are newly-founded museums. B. They are art-centered.
C. They are unpopular among visitors. D. They are quite unusual.
听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。
1.How long did the speaker spend in making the desk?
A. One week. B. Two months. C. Eighteen months.
2.Where did the speaker originally plan to put the desk?
A. In the sitting room. B. In the hall. C. In the bedroom.
3.What advice does the speaker give to beginners?
A. Use electric tools. B. Develop skills fairly quickly.
C. Start with small and simple things.
4.What will the class do next?
A. Make a list. B. Choose tools. C. Put up a shelf.
听下面一段较长对话，回答以下小题。
1.What subject is Toward the World related to?
A. Geography. B. Politics. C. History.
2.Where is Toward the World?
A. In the study room. B. In the reading room. C. In the reserve room.
3.What do we know about Toward the World?
A. It can only be used in the library.
B. It must be returned in a few days.
C. It can only be borrowed by teachers.
4.What will the woman probably do next?
A. Take a lift. B. Walk upstairs. C. Leave the library.
