【药院不停学07】六级真题小练

A) An earthquake is one of the most terrifying phenomena that nature can dish up. We generally think of the ground we stand on as “rock-solid” and completely stable. An earthquake can shatter (粉碎)that perception instantly, and often with extreme violence.

B) Up until relatively recently, scientists only had unproven guesses as to what actually caused earthquakes. Even today there is still a certain amount of mystery surrounding them, but scientists have a much clearer understanding. There has been enormous progress in the past century. Scientists have identified the forces that cause earthquakes, and developed technology that can tell us an earthquake"s magnitude and origin. The next hurdle is to find a way of predicting earthquakes, so they don’t catch people by surprise. In this article, we’ll find out what causes earthquakes, and we’ll also find out why they can have such a devastating effect on us.

C) An earthquake is a vibration(震动)that travels through the earth’s crust. Technically, a large truck that rumbles down the street is causing a mini-earthquake, if you feel your house shaking as it goes by; but we tend to think of earthquakes as events that affect a fairly large area, such as an entire city. All kinds of things can cause earthquakes: volcanic eruptions, meteor(流星)impacts, underground explosions (an underground nuclear test, for example), collapsing structures (such as a collapsing mine). But the majority of naturally-occurring earthquakes are caused by movements of the earth’s plates.

D) We only hear about earthquakes in the news every once in a while, but they are actually an everyday occurrence on our planet. According to the United States Geological Survey, more than 3 million earthquakes occur every year. That’s about 8,000 a day, or one every 11 seconds! The vast majority of these 3 million quakes are extremely weak. The law of probability also causes a good number of stronger quakes to happen in uninhabited places where no one feels them. It is the big quakes that occur in highly populated areas that get our attention.

E) Earthquakes have caused a great deal of property damage over the years, and they have claimed many lives. In the last hundred years alone, there have been more than 1.5 million earthquake-related fatalities. Usually, it’s not the shaking ground itself that claims lives; it’s the associated destruction of man-made structures and other natural disasters it causes, such as tsunamis, avalanches (雪崩)and landslides.

F) The biggest scientific breakthrough in the history of seismology—the study of earthquakes—came in the middle of the 20th century, with the development of the theory of plate tectonics(筑造学).Scientists proposed the idea of plate tectonics to explain a number of peculiar phenomena on earth, such as the apparent movement of continents over time, the clustering of volcanic activity in certain areas and the presence of huge ridges at the bottom of the ocean.

G) The basic theory is that the surface layer of the earth—the lithosphere—is comprised of many plates that slide over the lubricating (润滑的) asthenosphere layer. At the boundaries between these huge plates of soil and rock, three different things can happen.

H) Plates can move apart. If two plates are moving apart from each other, hot, molten rock flows up from the layers of mantle below the lithosphere. This magma (岩浆) comes out on the surface (mostly at the bottom of the ocean), where it is called lava (熔岩).As the lava cools, it hardens to form new lithosphere material, filling in the gap. This is called a divergent plate boundary.

I) Plates can push together. If the two plates are moving toward each other, one plate typically pushes under the other one. This plate below sinks into the lower mantle layers, where it melts. At some boundaries where two plates meet, neither plate is in a position to push under the other, so they both push against each other to form mountains. The lines where plates push toward each other are called convergent plate boundaries.

J) Plates slide against each other. At other boundaries, plates simply slide by each other—one moves north and one moves south, for example. While the plates don’t drift directly into each other at these transform boundaries, they are pushed tightly together. A great deal of tension builds at the boundary.

K) We understand earthquakes a lot better than we did even 50 years ago, but we still can’t do much about them. They are caused by fundamental, powerful geological processes that are far beyond our control. These processes are also fairly unpredictable, so it’s not possible at this time to tell people exactly when an earthquake is going to occur. The first detected earthquake waves will tell us that more powerful vibrations are on their way, but this only gives us a few minutes’ warning, at most.

L) So what can we do about earthquakes? The major advances over the past 50 years have been in preparedness, particularly in the field of construction engineering. In 1973, the Uniform Building Code, an international set of standards for building construction, added specifications to strengthen buildings against the force of earthquake waves. This includes strengthening support material as well as designing buildings so they are flexible enough to absorb vibrations without falling or deteriorating. It’s very important to design structures that can undergo this sort of attack, particularly in earthquake -prone areas.

M) Another component of preparedness is educating the public. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) and other government agencies have produced several brochures explaining the processes involved in an earthquake and giving instructions on how to prepare your house for a possible earthquake, as well as what to do when a quake hits.

N) In the future, improvements in prediction and preparedness should further minimize the loss of life and property associated with earthquakes. But it will be a long time, if ever, before we’ll be ready for every substantial earthquake that might occur. Just like severe weather and disease, earthquakes are an unavoidable force generated by the powerful natural processes that shape our planet. All we can do is increase our understanding of the phenomenon and develop better ways to deal with it.

Many bankers may be worried about whether some fancy product dreamed up might yet lead to a visit from the police. Daniel Dantas, a financier, who has profited by operating at them ideal place where business and government meet in Brazil, has been opening the door to find the police outside for much of thepast decade. On December 2nd he was convicted of a less sophisticated crime: trying to bribe police officers. Mr. Dantas, who has acquired great notoriety in Brazil, was fined $ 5million and sentenced to ten years in prison. He has appealed against his conviction.

The charge stems from a police investigation into money-laundering (洗钱)known as Operation Satiagraha. It grew out of a previous investigation into Mr. Dantas' use of Kroll, a security consultancy, to watch over his business partners. During this investigation the police seized a computer from Opportunity, Mr. Dantas's investment bank, which contained data from the mid-1990s to 2004 and apparently showed suspicious movements of money.

The judge found that Mr. Dantas tried to pay bribes, via two go-betweens, to keep his name out of the Satiagraha investigation. A man fitted with a bugging device was offered $1million in cash, with another $ 4 million to follow, the police say. They claim that Mr. Dantas's trick involved money travelling to the Cayman Islands, then via the British Virgin Islands to an account in Ireland, on to Delaware, and then re-entering Brazil as foreign investment.

For Mr. Dantas his crime is a steep fall from grace. A man who sleeps little and socializes less, he is a vegetarian and self-made billionaire, a gifted financier who has serially fallen outwith his business partners. He once controlled a large telecoms firm, acting for investors who included Citigroup. He says he is the victim of a conspiracy mounted by the government.

It is Mr. Dantas' supposed influence in government circles that has added to his notoriety.During the1990s, when many state-owned businesses were privatized, Mr. Dantas positioned himself as the man with the needed expertise and contacts. He enjoyed easy access to the government of President Femando Henrique Cardoso, including meetings with the president himself. That influence carried through into the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula daSilva. Mr. Dantas is alleged to have been one of the funders of a cash-for-votes scheme in Brazil's 　Congress mounted by leaders of Lula's Workers' Party in 2003-2004. Many of those who have had dealings with Mr. Dantas insist that these have been legitimate and conducted in good faith. They include Luiz Eduardo Greenhalgh, a lawyer and PT politician, whom he hired as a consultant.