New environmentally friendly glass

陜西 呂 品

主題語境：環境保護 篇幅：322詞 建議用時：6分鐘

1A lot of manufactured glass today made from sand and sodium carbonate（碳酸鈉）can be reused or melted down and recycled into new items, but it isn't broken down in the environment and will sit in landfills for thousands of years. A team of Chinese scientists aimed to deal with this environmental concern by developing an eco-conscious alternative.

2In a study published in the journalScience Advances, a team at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Process Engineering describes how they engineered biodegradable (可生物降解的) glass made from amino acids (氨基酸). That glass would have a smaller impact on the environment and can be broken down in a few weeks or in several months.

3In a test, glass beads (玻璃珠) made from amino acids were placed under the skin of mice, and the breakdown of the beads and the skin healing process were observed for 30 days. A diagram of the study shows how the mice's bodies broke down the beads. In that month, the glass implant degraded beneath the skin, the wound site healed, and fur grew back. “Throughout the experimental period, no mice exhibited any pain-related behavior that may have been caused by the glass implantation, and none of them experienced obvious weight loss,” the researchers wrote in their paper.

4Although amino acids do degrade over time in the environment, this biodegradable glass is not as durable as traditional glass, because amino acids can be broken down quickly in heat.In order to overcome this hurdle, the researchers chemically modified the amino acids using the heating-cooling procedure applied to glass manufacturing.This is when materials for the glass are heated to become soft and then rapidly cooled so as to make the glass tougher.

5“It's important to point out that this biodegradable glass is currently in the lab stage,and far from large-scale commercialization,” emphasized Yan Xuehai, a professor involved in the study, in a press release.

Reading

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Detail 1. What is an advantage of the new glass?

A. It can be recycled at a low cost.

B. It is produced without pollution.

C. It takes less time to be broken down.

D. It has a wide range of applications.

Inference 2. Why did researchers implant glass beads into mice?

A. To assess whether the glass is biologically harmless.

B. To investigate why amino acids are medically useful.

C. To explore how long it takes for the glass to degrade.

D. To observe if the glass can be melted down in mice's stomachs.

Vocabulary 3. What does the underlined word“ hurdle” in paragraph 4 refer to?

A. The instability of amino acids.

B. The difficulty of selecting materials for the glass.

C. Environmental problems caused by traditional glass.

D. The challenge of improving the heating-cooling procedure.

Language

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Ⅰ. Difficult sentence in the text

Although amino acids do degrade over time in the environment, this biodegradable glass is not as durable as traditional glass, because amino acids can be broken down quickly in heat. 雖然氨基酸會隨著時間的推移在環境中降解，但這種可生物降解的玻璃并不像傳統玻璃那樣耐用，因為氨基酸會在高溫下迅速分解。

【點石成金】本句中，Although 引導讓步狀語從句，主句是this biodegradable glass is not as durable as traditional glass，because引導原因狀語從句。

Ⅱ. Fill in the blanks with the word and phrases in the box in proper forms.

break down aim to apply to point out current melt down

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