2026年真题17

Listen to a talk in a biology class (woman) Imagine a chilly mountain forest. It’s early spring. The snow’s just melting and it’s still very cold. Now, picture a small, bright yellow flower blooming at the edge of the snow. Hard to imagine any flower surviving in those conditions, right? Yet the snow butterfly cup thrives. How can this be? Well, the snow buttercup’s anatomy has a few things going for it. First, a fuzzy stem, like a tiny winter coat that protects it from extreme cold and wind. Plus, a deep root system. The roots keep it anchored in unstable soil on mountains and can reach water that’s up to thirty centimeters deep. Now, the snow buttercup needs to protect its cells from ice crystals. To do this, it produces antifreeze proteins. Researchers are studying these proteins, hoping to develop ways to protect other plants, like maybe developing frost-resistant crops for farmers to grow. OK, so these adaptations allow the snow buttercup to bloom earlier while most other plants are still dormant for winter. This means, uh, exclusive visits from beneficial pollinators like bumblebees and butterflies. The pollinators get food, nectar, from the snow buttercup, while also helping the plant reproduce by spreading its reproductive material, the pollen. The adaptation I find most fascinating is called heliotropic movement. When the flower is open, heliotropic movement means it turns to fact the sun throughout the day, staying warm as the sun moves along the sky, increasing its temperature even a few degrees this way is beneficial.

Listen to a talk on a science podcast. Nanoparticles are particles, whose size is less than one ten-thousandth of a millimeter, super tiny. Nanoparticles have numerous applications. My family had a picnic last Saturday, we used sunscreen to avoid sunburn. Our sunscreen contains titanium dioxide which has been used in sunscreen for decades. You used to end up with these horrible-looking white smears all over your skin while wearing it. But our new sunscreen’s titanium dioxide comes in nanoparticles. They block ultraviolet sunlight but are transparent. The sun block's completely invisible on your skin, not smeary white. Another example, the metal silver has antimicrobial properties. The problem is, you can't put regular metal on a wound. But an ointment with silver nanoparticles, we can actually apply that to stop bacterial growth. We did it when my son scraped his knee at the picnic. Humans have actually use nanoparticles for millennia. Take ancient Rome's tesserae. Tesserae are tiny bits of highly colorful glass that the Romans arranged to create various images. Many Roman tesserae, especially pink ones, contain gold Nano particles. The particles affect how light interacts with the glass and create the color. Did the Romans know what they were doing? Well, they probably didn't understand the physics of it. But some glass workshop could have realized that gold foil, beaten to an extremely thin layer, produces bright colors when heated between glass layers, and the technique was perfected and spread. All pink tesserae contain gold nanoparticles at between ten and thirty parts per million. That's so consistent. So it's definitely not an accident. The Romans knew exactly what they were doing to produce that color.

Listen to a talk in a chemistry class (man) You’ve probably heard of nanotechnology, but just what is it? In technical terms, it is the manipulation of matter at the atomic and molecular scale, typically below one-hundred nanometer. In more common parlance, it’s creating things that are really, really small. Nanotechnology has opened up new possibilities for innovations across various industries. One of its most promising applications is in medicine. In that industry, nanotechnology is being used to create more effective drug-delivery systems. These systems ensure that medications are released at the right place and time in the body. Another field benefiting from nanotechnology is electronics. There, the technology has led to the production of smaller, faster, and more efficient components of electronic devices. For example, nanomaterials are used to enhance the performance of batteries, making them last longer and charge faster. This feature has significant implications for consumer electronics, electric vehicles, and renewable energy storage. Nanotechnology also holds promise for environmental applications. Nanomaterials can be used to clean up pollutants in water and air more efficiently than traditional methods. This application of the technology can help address some of the most pressing environmental challenges we face today. I should point out, though, that there are potential negative aspects of nanotechnology. Some medical professionals harbor concerns about the potential health and environmental risks associated with nanoparticles. Because they are so small, nanoparticles can easily enter biological systems and their long-term effects are not yet fully understood. This particular aspect of nanotechnology will certainly require much more research moving forward.

Listen to a talk in an ecology class (man) An invasive species is a plant, animal, or other organism that is introduced into an ecosystem, usually by humans. An invasive species can cause harm to its new environment. An example is when humans introduced goats to the Galapagos Islands. The Galapagos are a chain of islands roughly one-thousand kilometers off the coast of Ecuador. Throughout the 1800s, people, usually whalers and explorers, stopped at the Islands during long ocean voyages. At that time, long ocean voyages made it hard to keep fresh meat on ships. So, sailors released goats on some islands as the living food supply they could hunt later when passing through. They most likely didn’t know how much their actions were going to damage the islands. Goats are very adaptable and can survive in harsh environments like the Galapagos. They definitely are not picky eaters. They consume everything from tough shrubs to grasses, so they didn’t run out of food easily. With no natural predators, their population exploded. As time went on, the goats’ eating habits caused native plants, like one species of cactus, to mostly disappear, and that was a huge problem for native animals like giant tortoises. These tortoises rely on plants like this cactus for food and shade. Without them, many tortoise populations collapsed. So, how can we address this problem? Well, in the early 2000s, conservation efforts began to reintroduce tortoises to islands where they had gone extinct. Let’s take a look at these efforts and determine how effective they’ve been.