California's Water Resources Control Board recently approved new regulations in a unanimous (一致同意的) vote—toilet or shower wastewater will be recycled and pumped into the public drinking water system.
In 2023, more than 97% of California has been in moderate to severe drought, while water suppliers are struggling to keep up. A 2022 water supply and demand report indicated that around 18% of water suppliers were at risk of facing potential shortages. "The reality is that anyone out there on Mississippi River and on Colorado River, and anyone out there taking drinking water downstream is already drinking ‘toilet to tap'," said Esquivel, a director of the Board.
Early in the 1990s, the state was struggling to overcome the distaste its residents had toward drinking recycled water. Their efforts fizzled out when the phrase "toilet to tap" caught on and met with fierce resistance. The idea became too unpopular to be implemented. Despite the negative name, the regulations are the key to ensuring the supply of drinking water.
California's new regulations would let water agencies to treat wastewater, and then put it back into the drinking water system. It has taken officials more than 10 years to develop these regulations, a process that included several studies by independent groups of scientists. To put the scheme into effect and build huge water recycling plants, however, water agencies say they will need to prove to people that recycled water is not only safe to drink but also under monitoring.
The new regulations require the wastewater be treated for all bacteria and viruses. In fact, the treatment is so intense that it removes all of the minerals that make fresh drinking water taste good. That means the minerals need to be added back at the end of the process. "What we have here are standards, science, and importantly monitoring that allow us to have safe pure water, and probably better in many instances," said Esquivel. He added that it takes time and money to build these treatment centers. So, they will only be available for bigger cities at first.
In the heart of the Indian state of Rajasthan lies a city that exudes（散发）a charm, （attract）visitors from around the world. With its warm hospitality（好客）, busy bazaars, and splendid （palace）, Jaipur is a treasure of history, culture, and architectural splendor. This fascinating city invites you on an unforgettable journey into the area of the Maharajas.
The Aravalli Range, one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world, adds an appealing backdrop to Jaipur's landscape. The city's strategic location within the range provides it a natural shield（屏障）, enhancing （it）historical and cultural significance.
These hills not only contribute to the city's picturesque charm but also offer opportunities for adventure and （explore）.
Above all, it is the special colour influencing so many aspects of this city and its people sets Jaipur apart and gives it a unique appeal. The association of Jaipur with colour pink dates back to 1876 when the city 63 （paint）in pink-considered the colour of hospitality—（celebrate）the visit of the Prince of Wales, Albert Edward, who would later become King Edward VI and Emperor of India. Since then, the colour （become）synonymous（同义）with Jaipur, earning it the nickname "The Pink City".
Liu Ziqing fell in love with ballet as a little boy. But he never really got the 1 to practise it himself. Growing up in a poor family in a village. his main focus was always on helping his family and putting 2 on the table. Dancing was a 3 he could not afford. He 4 becoming a farmer but also worked as a street cleaner to make ends meet. But he never got over his love for ballet, and at age 53, he 5 to become a ballet dancer.
Most people in their early 50s call themselves lucky if they can lightly jog a few times a week without 6 any pain, but ballet requires a degree of fitness and 7 that are almost impossible to 8 at a certain age without a lifetime of training. But Liu Ziqing wasn't going to let a small thing like age 9 between him and his dream.
"I had been 10 dancing all those years. One day, I saw a ballet basic training course on TV, which inspired the idea that I should try to learn to dance," Ziqing 11 .
Becoming a ballet dancer at age 53 wasn't a（n）12 thing, especially since most of his friends just didn't 13 why he put himself through this hard training at his age. But Liu Ziqing 14 them all with the help of his family, who have always been very 15 of his passion.
Four Best Books of 2023
The Berry Pickers
by Amanda Peters
After their youngest daughter, Ruthie, disappears during a summer of berry-picking in Maine, a Micmac family from Nova Scotia struggles to move forward. Indigenous Voices Award winner Amanda Peters delivers an un-put-down-able novel of identity, forgiveness, and insistent hope.
The House of Doors
by Tan Twan Eng
This atmospheric novel, set in 1920s Malaysia, tells of a famous author bent on uncovering secrets for storytelling materials. Tan Twan Eng weaves love, duty, betrayal and colonialism into the narrative.
The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748-1789
by Robert Darnton
This interesting history of the decades leading up to the French Revolution offers a populist account of a crazy political moment. Darnton goes beyond what everyday people thought and said to attract readers to what anxious Parisians read, wore, ate and sang on the way to toppling（推翻）the rule of Louis XVI.
The Soul of Civility
by Alexandra Hudson
What can the world's oldest book teach us about civility（礼 貌）today? Alexandra Hudson's thoughtful and fluent book on how to live well together draws on literature from The Teachings of Ptahhotep, written 4, 500 years ago in Egypt, to Martin Luther King Jr's Letter From Birmingham Jail.
The 7,400 or so languages in use today speak to the fact that our species is born to communicate. But while it is tempting to view language as merely a consequence of our extraordinary cognitive（认知的）powers, Caleb Everett thinks there may be more going on.
In A Myriad of Tongues: How languages reveal differences in how we think, he argues that language itself may shape our understanding of the world and our experience of time and space. To put it another way, the language we speak may influence the way we think.
Such a provocative（挑衅的）idea might have been controversial（有争议的）a few decades ago, says Everett, because language experts restricted themselves to analyzing languages of industrialized, higher-income countries. But we now know they fall short of representing the variety of languages spoken today-and the more we learn about understudied tongues, the more evidence we find for the complicated interplay between language and thinking.
Take Berinmo, a language of Papua New Guinea, as an example. Unlike English speakers, explains Everett, Berinmo speakers struggle to remember whether an object they were shown earlier was blue or green-perhaps because that language doesn't distinguish between these colours. But it does make a formal distinction between yellowish-greens and other greens, and Berinmo speakers typically find it easy to remember which of these colours an object they saw earlier was painted, while English speakers struggle to do this.
Language also influences how we think about objects. Yucatec Maya, spoken in Mexico, encourages its speakers to classify objects according to their material properties rather than their function. Where an English speaker might group a plastic comb and a wooden comb together and exclude a wooden stick, a Yucatec Maya speaker would usually group the wooden objects together. English-speaking people get the information they need by sight alone.
We live through a language extinction event predicted to see the loss of about 30 per cent of today's tongues by
2100. His book makes it clear this is more than just a tragedy（悲剧）for local communities. Given the insights that languages offer into the human mind, their disappearance is a loss for us all.
Anyone eager to view from high the cityscapes of Guangdong, a province in southern China, may soon be able to do so from the cabin of a flying taxi. On October 13th the Civil Aviation Administration of China（CAAC）awarded a"type certificate", a crucial piece of aviation paperwork, to the world's first electric vertical take-off and landing（eVTOL）taxi. And in case that does not sound futuristic enough, the small two-seater, called the EH216-s, was also cleared to fly without a pilot on board.
The EH216-S is made by EHang, a company based in Guangdong. It looks like a scaled-up consumer drone（无人机）with a passenger bubble mounted on top. Propulsion（动力）is provided by 16 small rotors（转子）, mounted on the tips of eight arms that fold away when the vehicle is not in use, allowing it to park in small spaces.
The CAAC gave its approval after EHang had conducted more than 40,000 test flights, including with volunteer passengers in 18 cities across China. It also subjected the EH216-S to structural analysis and crash tests, and checked its ability to keep flying if one of its rotors fails. Regulators also inspected the wireless network which EHang uses to link its flying taxis to a control centre on the ground. That allows backup pilots to land an aircraft by remote control if there is a problem.
EHang says its pilotless eVTOLs will be quieter than helicopters, their closest cousins, and much cheaper to operate, thanks in part to the ability to swap（交换）out an expensive pilot, for a second paying passenger. Performance, though, will be limited, at least at first. The EH216-S has a range of about 30 km, and a speed of up to 130 kph. The firm thinks that doing away with pilots will make things safer too. A computer's attention never wavers（动摇）. And flying is, in many ways, much easier to automate than driving, for there are fewer obstacles and unexpected situations to navigate.
EHang has ambitions beyond China, too. The firm's closest competitors are Volocopter, a German company, and a pair of Californian firms, Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation. All three are conducting test flights of piloted eVTOLs of various designs.
Paul Durietz is a 76-year-old social studies teacher from Illinois. On September 1, he set a Guinness World Record for the world's longest teaching career. Mr. Durietz has been teaching for 53 years—since he was 23 years old.
Mr. Durietz has known since he was young that he wanted to be a social studies teacher. Social studies is the study of history, and how people, countries, and cultures are connected. He became interested in history after hearing stories from his father, who fought in World War II. On his mother's side of the family, he had connections to a famous person from English history.
Mr. Durietz got his first teaching job at Woodland-Middle School in Gurnee, Illinois in
1970. Ever since then, he's been teaching social studies at the same school. He says he loves sharing his knowledge of history with students. "Teaching is never boring," he says. "Every day is different."
Things have changed a lot since he began all those years ago. When he started, the only way to make copies was with a "ditto machine", which used a stinky, purple ink. Mr. Durietz wrote on a blackboard with chalk, and the students used paper textbooks. These days, he and the students use computers and digital whiteboards.
Though technology has changed a lot since he began teaching, Mr. Durietz says the students are still pretty much the same— except that now they have cell phones.
With or without technology, Mr. Durietz has used creative activities to help his students learn. For example, he has organized virtual field trips, geography contests, and special days about the US Civil War. He has even organized fake（假的）elections at school to help his students learn about politics. He says these activities are some of the ones that he and his students enjoyed most.
Mr. Durietz says people who want to be teachers should make sure they are patient with their students. He also encourages them to choose subjects that they care deeply about.
1. 活动目的；
2. 倡议内容：清理活动，保护环境；
3. 活动意义。
注意：
1. 写作词数应为80左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
A Call for Assistance in Building "the Yellow River Cultural Belt"
Dear fellow students,
Yours faithfully,
The Student Union
The Paleozoological Museum of China, one of the largest natural museums in Asia, was opened in Baoding, North China's Hebei Province, in January, (serve) as a crucial component in the broader effort to relocate non-capital functions outside Beijing.
This newly (establish) museum, covering around 80, 000 square meters with a total construction area of around 73, 000 square meters, is thought of a national-level theme museum in the field of natural sciences.
The museum, themed around nature, life and humanity, provides a series of systematic (presentation) on paleontology and evolutionary biology. It tells the stories of natural history, and (set) to promote the natural concept that "humans and nature are a community of life".
The exhibits, numbering around 6,000 items, (primary) come from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. Among the displayed items (be) rare treasures, including one of the world's few well-preserved pterosaur (翼龙) eggs, the world's (early) known jawed fish species, as well as the longest and largest individual horse skull.
"The Paleozoological Museum of China will become one of landmark buildings in Baoding, is just in need of a cultural salon like this to showcase its cultural feature," noted Gao Tianwei, project manager of the museum.
On a freezing winter morning, 13-year-old Ethan Miller was preparing to go skiing with his father by car. As they were about to 1 the driveway, an urgent cry from his mother interrupted them-she had spotted a tiny cat that had sought 2 beneath their car for warmth. However, as the car began to move, it 3 ran over the cat's leg.
Ethan, filled with 4 and sympathy, immediately responded. He gently 5 the injured cat, offering first aid and 6 right there to provide it with a loving home. Ethan named it "Whiskers" and 7 it until it fully recovered.
This incident made Ethan 8 of the risk faced by countless other homeless cats in the biting cold. Fueled by a(n) 9 to create an impact, Ethan went on a mission. Using the 10 of social media, he shared his heartrending story, successfully 11 many like-minded individuals to work together. They launched a project called "Warm the Furry", which not only aimed at 12 donations but also constructing community cat shelters throughout their town.
Ethan's story demonstrated how even seemingly insignificant 13 can snowball into powerful movements, creating a more 14 society where all creatures, large or small, are enveloped with warmth and understanding. This story is a proof of the idea that one person's determination and kindness can indeed 15 significant change.
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