题目内容
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The New Madrid fault is______.
A) a horizontal fault
B) a vertical fault
C) a more serious fault than the San Andreas fault
D) responsible for forming the Mississippi River
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Text 3
Everyone has heard of the San Andreas fault, which constantly threatens California and the West Coast with earth- quakes. But how many people know about the equally serious New Madrid fault in Missouri.'？
Between December of 1811 and February of 1812, three major earthquakes occurred, all centered around the town of New Madrid, Missouri, on the Mississippi River. Property damage was severe.
Buildings in the area were almost dest oyed. Whole forests fell at once, and huge cracks opened in the ground, allowing smell of sulfur to filter upward.
The Mississippi River itself completely changed character, developing sudden rapids and whirlpools. Several times it changed its course, and once, according to some observers, it actually appeared to run backwards. Few people were killed in the New Madrid earthquakes, probably simply because few people lived in the area in 1811; but the severity of the earth- quakes are shown by the fact that the shock waves rang bells in church towers in Charleston, South Carolina, on the coast. Buildings shook in New York City, and clocks were stopped in Washington D.C. Scientists now know that America's two major faults are essentially different. The San Andreas is a horizontal boundary between two major land masses that are slowly moving in opposite directions. California earthquakes result when the movement of these two masses suddenly lurches forward.
The New Madrid fault, on the other hand, is a vertical fault; at some point, possibly hundreds of millions of years ago, rock was pushed up toward the surface, probably by volcanoes under the surface. Suddenly, the volcanoes cooled and the rock collapsed, leaving huge cracks. Even now', the rock continues to settle downwards, and sudden sinking motions trigger earthquakes in the region. The fault itself, a large crack in this layer of rock, with dozens of other cracks that split off from it, extends from northeast Arkansas through Missouri and into southern Illinois.
Scientists who have studied the New Madrid fault say there have been numerous smaller quakes in the area since 1811; these smaller quakes indicate that larger ones are probably coming, but rite scientists say they have no method of predicting when a large earthquake will occur.
31. This passage is mainly about ______.
A) the New Madrid fault in Missouri
B) the San Andreas and the New Madrid faults
C) the causes of faults
D) current scientific knowledge about faults
A ______, where two parts of the earth’s crust meet, runs the length of New Zealand.
A. fault line B. built area
C. dormant volcano D. geothermal area
We can conclude that accidents involving cars ______.
A. happened most often in New York City
B. do not happen as often as they did in the early days of the auto
C. have killed many more people since Mr Bliss was killed
D. were always the driver's fault
Passage Three
People enjoy talking about "firsts." They like to remember their first love or their first car. But not all firsts
are happy ones. Few people enjoy recalling the firsts that are bad.
One of history's bad but important firsts was the first car accident. Autos were still young when it happened. The crash took place in New York City. The year was 1896. The month was May. A man from Massachusetts was visiting the city in his new car. At the time, bicycle riders were still trying to get used to the new set of wheels on the road. No one is sure who was at fault. In any case, the bike and the car collided. The man on the bike was injured. The driver of the car had to stay in jail and wait for the hospital report on the bicycle rider. Luckily, the rider was not killed.
Three years later, another automobile first took place. The scene was again New York City, a real estate broker named Henry Bliss stepped off a streetcar. He was hit by a passing car. Once again, no one is sure just how it happened or whose fault it was. The driver of the car was put in jail. Poor Mr. Bliss became the first person to die in a car accident.
44. In each accident the driver was ______.
A. found guilty
B. set free
C. laughed at
D. put in jail for a while
That's because Shell hasn't been able to find nearly as much oil and gas as it's now pumping out of the ground. In fact, it hasn't even come close—replacing only 60% to 70% of what it produced in 2005 and only 19% in 2004. Shell has had reserve problems for years—a controversy over improperly booked assets forced it to reduce estimated reserves by roughly 30% and led to the resignation of its CEO, Phil Watts, in 2004. But what's troubling now is that Shell is falling way behind rivals like Exxon and BP despite spending billions more each year on exploring and drilling new wells. Last year Exxon replaced 112% of production; BP came up with 95%. "I have never seen anything like this," says Fadel Gheit, a veteran energy analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. "Shell used to represent the gold standard in this industry, but lately they can't get their act together."
To be sure, Shell still has huge assets—nearly 12 billion barrels. But in the oil and gas industry, reserve replacement is the best guide to whether a company will be able to maintain-or grow-production in the future. So not replacing what you pump, says longtime industry observer Matthew Simmons, "is like eating your seed corn. If you're not finding new oil, you're just liquidating what you've got." Indeed, Shell's daily production figures have been weak lately, falling 6.7 % in 2005, to 3.52 million barrels a day.
Privately, Shell execs say the company's decision to cut spending for exploration when oil prices bottomed out in the late 1990s is partly to blame for the anemic numbers now. Shell CEO Jeroen Vander Veer insists that projects like those on Sakhalin Island off Siberia and in Nigeria and the Gulf of Mexico will enable the company to start catching up with peers in the years ahead. It won't be easy. "If you're not adding to reserves, you have a problem," says Sanford Bernstein analyst Oswald Clint. "Shell will have to run twice as hard just to stay in place."
According to the passage, the decline of Shell
A．is a hidden process.
B．is caused by the profit last year.
C．is the estimation of Wall Street.
D．is the fault of the CEO.
The San Andreas fault is ______.
A) an active fault system
B) a place where earthquakes have been predicted accurately
C) a place where earthquakes have been controlled
D) the location of the Rocky Mountain
