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Earthquakes can rip apart entire cities and outlying districts, as the 1995 disaster in Kobe, Japan showed. SeismoLogists, scientists who study earthquakes and related phenomena, have records dating back to 1556, from the Chinese province of Shaanxi, which indicate that earthquakes have been devastating our world for centuries. The destructive forces which produce earthquakes usually begin deep below the ground, along a fault in weaker areas of the earth’s rocky outer shell, where sections of rock repeatedly slide past each other. As the fracture extends along the fault, blocks of rock on one side of the fault may drop down below the rock on the other side, move up and over the other side, or slide forward past the other. The violent shattering of rock releases energy that travels in waves, and these seismic waves move out from the focus of the earthquake in all directions. As the waves travel away from the focus, they grow gradually weaker, generally resulting in the ground shaking less as distances increase. Geological movements are not the only occurrences to trigger an earthquake. Human activity, most often the filling of reservoirs with extraordinarily large amounts of water, can also cause earthquakes. Similarly, massive explosions can wreak havoc, too. Earthquakes almost never kill people directly. Instead, many deaths and injuries result from falling objects and collapsing buildings, while fire resulting from broken gas or fallen power lines is another danger. The Kobe earthquake in January 1995 lasted only 20 seconds, yet resulted in a death toll of over 5,000 and injured approximately 26,000 people. Even though earthquake prone countries spend enormous human and financial resources on seismographic measurement, as a means of predicting earthquakes, there is a danger in paying too much heed to seemingly high risk zones and erecting less stable buildings solely because of their being in a low risk zone. Prior to the earthquake, Kobe was not regarded as at serious risk, but after the disaster, investigation of the damage revealed that nearly all deaths occurred in small buildings shattered rather than twisted when stressed. Coupled with the problem of soft soils, the buildings had little firm support and many crumbled. If countries wish to withstand the devastating forces of substantial earthquakes and reduce death, injury and property damage, it is important to design and construct buildings that are earthquake resistant, as well as monitor seismic forces. It is believed that
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Clara came to Jordan’s. Some of the older hands, Fanny among them, remembered her earlier rule, and cordially disliked the memory. Clara had always been "ikey", reserved, and superior. She had never mixed with the girls as one of themselves. If she had occasion to find fault, she did it coolly and with perfect politeness, which the defaulter felt to be a bigger insult than crossness. Towards Fanny, the poor, over-strung hunchback, Clara was unfailingly compassionate and gentle, as a result of which Fanny shed more bitter tears than ever the rough tongues of the other overseers had caused her. There was something in Clara that Paul disliked, and much that piqued him. If she were about, he always watched her strong throat or her neck, upon which the blond hair grew low and fluffy. There was a fine down, almost invisible, upon the skin of her face and arms, and once he had perceived it, he saw it always. When he was at his work, painting in the afternoon, she would come and stand near him, perfectly motionless. Then he felt her, though she neither spoke nor touched him. Although she stood a yard away he felt as if he were in contact with her. Then he could paint no more. He flung down the brushes, and turned to talk to her. Sometimes she praised his work; sometimes she was critical and cold. "You are affected in that piece," she would say; and, as there was an element of truth in her condemnation, his blood boiled with anger. Again: "What of this" he would ask enthusiastically. "H’m!" She made a small doubtful sound. "It doesn’t interest me much." "Because you don’t understand it," he retorted. "Because I thought you would understand." She would shrug her shoulders in scorn of his work. She maddened him. He was furious. Then he abused her, and went into passionate exposition of his stuff. This amused and stimulated her. But she never owned that she had been wrong. During the ten years that she had belonged to the women’s movement she had acquired a fair amount of education, and, having had some of Miriam’s passion to be instructed, had taught herself French, and could read in that language with a struggle. She considered herself as a woman apart, and particularly apart, from her class. The girls in the spiral department were all of good homes. It was a small, special industry, and had a certain distinction. There was an air of refinement in both rooms. But Clara was aloof also from her fellow-workers. None of these things, however, did she reveal to Paul. She was not the one to give herself away. There was a sense of mystery about her. She was so reserved, he felt she had much to reserve. Her history was open on the surface, but its inner meaning was hidden from everybody. It was exciting. And then sometimes he caught her looking at him from under her brows with an almost furtive, sullen scrutiny, which made him move quickly. Often she met his eyes. But then her own were, as it were, covered over, revealing nothing. She gave him a little, lenient smile. She was to him extraordinarily provocative, because of the knowledge she seemed to possess, and gathered fruit of experience he could not attain. Which of the following descriptions is NOT true of Paul’s feeling when he was with Clara
April Fools’ Special: History’s Hoaxes Happy April Fools’ Day. To mark the occasion, National Geographic News has compiled a list of some of the more memorable hoaxes in recent history. They are the lies, darned (可恨的) lies, and whoppers (弥天大谎) that have been perpetrated on the gullible(易受骗的) and unsuspecting to fulfill that age-old desire held by some to put the joke on others.Internet Hoaxes The Internet has given birth to a proliferation (增殖) of hoaxes. E-mail inboxes are bombarded on an almost daily basis with messages warning of terrible computer viruses that cause users to delete benign (良性) chunks of data from their hard drives, or of credit card seams that entice the naive to give all their personal information, including passwords and bank account details, to identity thieves. Other e-mails give rise to wry(歪曲的) chuckles, which is where this list begins.Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide (一氧化二氢) City officials in Aliso Viejo, California, were so concerned about the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide that they scheduled a vote last month on whether to ban foam (泡沫) cups from city-sponsored events after they learned the chemical was used in foam-cup production. Officials called off the vote after learning that dihydrogen monoxide is the scientific term for water. "It’s embarrassing," city manager David J. Norman told the Associated Press. "We had a paralegal(律师助手) who did bad research." Indeed, the paralegal had fallen victim to an official-looking Web site touting the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide. An e-mail originally authored in 1990 by Eric Lechner, then a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, claimed that dihydrogen monoxide "is used as an industrial solvent and coolant, and is used in the production of Styrofoam(聚苯乙烯泡沫塑料)." Other dangers pranksters (爱开玩笑的人) associated with the chemical included accelerated corrosion and rusting, severe burns, and death from inhalation. Versions of the e-mail continue to circulate today, and several Web sites, including that of the Coalition to Ban DHMO, warn, tongue-in-cheek, of water’s dangers.Alabama Changes Value of Pi The April 1998 newsletter put out by New Mexicans for Science and Reason contains an article titled "Alabama Legislature Lays Siege to Pi". It was penned by April Holiday of the Associmated Press (sic) and told the story of how the Alabama state legislature voted to change the Value of the mathematical constant Pi from 3.14159 to the round number of 3. The ersatz(假的) news story was written by Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist Mark Boslough to parody(滑稽地模仿) legislative and school board attacks on the teaching of evolution in New Mexico. At Boslough’s suggestion, Dave Thomas, the president of New Mexicans for Science and Reason, posted the article in its entirety to the Internet newsgroup Talk. Origins on April 1. (The newsgroup hosts a lively debate on creation vs. evolution. ) Later that evening Thomas posted a full confession to the hoax. He thought he had put all rumors to bed. But to Thomas’s surprise, however, several newsgroup readers forwarded the article to friends and posted it on other newsgroups. When Thomas checked in on the story a few weeks later, he was surprised to learn that it had spread like wildfire. The telltale signs of the article’s satirical intent, such as the April 1 date and misspelled "Associmated Press". dateline, had been replaced or deleted. Alabama legislators were bombarded with calls protesting the law. The legislators explained that the news was a hoax. There was not and never had been such a law.TV and Newspaper Hoaxes Before the advent of the Internet, and even today, traditional media outlets such as newspapers, radio, and television, have sometimes hoaxed their audiences. The deceptions run the gamut from purported natural disasters to wishful news.Swiss Spaghetti (意大利式细面条) Harvest Alex Boese, curator of the Museum of Hoaxes, a regularly updated Web site that also appeared in book form in November 2002, said one of his favorite hoaxes remains one perpetrated by the British Broadcasting Company. On April 1, 1957, the BBC aired a report on the television news show Panorama about the bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland. Viewers watched Swiss farmers pull pasta off spaghetti trees as the show’s anchor, Richard Dimbleby, attributed the bountiful harvest to the mild winter and the disappearance of the spaghetti weevil. The broadcaster detailed the ins and outs of the life of the spaghetti farmer and anticipated questions about how spaghetti grows on trees. Thousands of people believed the report and called the BBC to inquire about growing their own spaghetti trees, to which the BBC replied, "Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best." "It was a great satirical effect about British society," Boese said. "British society really was like that at that time. The British have a tendency to be a bit insulated(绝缘的) and do not know that much about the rest of Europe."Taco Liberty Bell On April 1, 1996, readers in five major U.S. cities opened their newspapers to learn from a full page announcement that the Taco Bell Corporation had purchased the Liberty Bell from the U.S. government. The announcement reported that the company was relocating the historic bell from Philadclphia, Pennsylvania, to Irvine, California. The move, the corporation said in the advertisement, was part of an "effort to help the national debt". Hundreds of other newspapers and television shows ran stories related to the press release on the matter put out by Taco Bell’s public relations firm, PainePR. Outraged citizens called the Liberty Bell National Historic Park in Philadelphia to express their disgust. A few hours later the public relations firm released another press announcement stating that the stunt was a hoax. White House press secretary Mike McCurry got into the act when he remarked that the government would also be "selling the Lincoln Memorial to Ford Motor Company and renaming it the Lincoln-Mercury Memorial".Crop Circles Strange, circular formations began to appear in the fields of southern England in the mid-1970s, bringing busloads of curious onlookers, media representatives, and believers in the paranormal out to the countryside for a look. A sometimes vitriolic (讽刺的) debate on their origins has since ensued (跟着发生), and the curious formations have spread around the world, becoming more and more elaborate as the years go by. Some people consider the crop formations to be the greatest works of modern art to emerge from the 20th century, while others are convinced they are signs of extraterrestrial communications or landing sites of UFOs The debate rages even today, although in 1991 Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, two elderly men from Wiltshire County, came forward and claimed responsibility for the crop circles that appeared there over the preceding 20 years. The pair made the circles by pushing down nearly ripe crops with a wooden plank suspended from a rope.Moon Landing-a Hoax Ever since NASA sent astronauts to the moon between 1969 and 1972, skeptics have questioned whether the Apollo missions were real or simply a ploy to one-up (领先)the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The debate resurfaced and reached crescendo levels in February 2001, when Fox television aired a program called Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon Guests on the show argued that NASA did not have the technology to land on the moon. Anxious to win the space race, NASA acted out the Apollo program in movie studios, they said. The conspiracy theorists pointed out that the pictures transmitted from the moon do not include stars and that the flag the Americans planted on the moon is waving, even though there is thought to be no breeze on the moon. NASA quickly refuted these claims in a series of press releases, stating that any photographer would know it is difficult to capture something very bright and very dim on the same piece of film. Since the photographers wanted to capture the astronauts striding across the lunar surface in their sunlit space suits, the background stars were too faint to see. As for the flag, NASA said that the astronauts were turning it back and forth to get in firmly planted in the lunar soil, which made it wave. The reason why the ersatz news that Alabama changed the value of Pi spread wildly was that ______ forwarded the article to friends and posted it on other newsgroups.
Most of the 20th century has been a development on the Industrial Revolution taken to an extreme; people now own more products than ever before; there are enough nuclear weapons to destroy the earth several times over; there is hardly any forest left and pollution has got to the point where we buy water. Within a few years I predict you will be able to buy air. (There once was a time when you didn’t need to buy food or shelter either, but it’s too late now.) Important developments in the last century are the breaking down of the class structures left over from the Industrial Revolution stage, bringing with it the empowennent of the "common man"; the working day is set by law to only 8 hours a day, everyone has the vote (even women!), the media has less obvious government control, people have landed on the moon, sent probes to mars and so on. Families have also shrunk drastically; the nuclear family came about, and especially in the last half of the 20th century, one-parent families are becoming more and more common. This shrinking in the size of the family shows the increased independence of people--once upon a time people had to live in large groups (tribes) to survive. As humans have "become the gods", they have realised their individuality and independence and taken their control of the world to an extreme. In many countries the land is almost completely utilised in the production of food and as living space, and they live in small clusters (cities) which are entirely human constructed, made from materials which are also entirely human constructed (concrete, bricks) with hardly any remnants of nature. Weeds are poisoned because they are messy; even parks have trees grown in tidy lines; grass is mowed to keep it short and so on. I think the massive drug "problem", afflicting people is a result of too much of this influence, humans needing to escape the stark world they have created by entering fantasy worlds. Over the last 100 years, the 20th century consciousness has spread throughout the world; most of Asia has been thoroughly "Westernized", and most of the third world is being overrun by western ways of doing and living. At the end of the passage, the author expresses
To an adolescent who dreams of dominating the basketball court, synthetic human growth hormone may look like a godsend. To biotechnology watchdog Jeremy Rifkin, it has a more sinister aspect. The 5-foot-7 activist doesn’t view short stature as a medical problem, and he’s appalled that the US government is sponsoring a 10-year study to see whether the treatment will make healthy children taller. In a new petition to the National Institute of Health, Rifkin and his Washington-based Foundation on Economic Trends charge that the study violates federal rules restricting medical experiments on children. No one expects the petition to shut down the study, but it has rekindled a long-simmering debate over what makes a difference a defect. Synthetic human growth hormone was approved in 1985 as a treatment for kids who don’t produce the substance naturally. The manufacturers would like to find a large clientele. The disputed NIH trial, now in its second year, is designed to see what effect the treatment will have on kids with normal hormone levels, but who fall at the lowest end of the height curve. Half of the 80 participants get injections of synthetic growth hormone three times a week. The others get dummy injections. To measure the effects of the treatment, researchers will monitor all the kids until they stop growing. Advocates of the drug’s wider use insist that while short stature is no disease, it can be a social handicap. They cite research showing that short people tend to lag in school, earn less money, and even lose elections. Twelve-year-old Marco Oriti has normal hormone levels but has always been small. After six years of treatment he’s still five inches behind some peers, but his mother credits the drug with narrowing the gap. Small risk: Someone else’s parents may find a smaller gap worrisome. Should any child with nervous parents receive years of costly medical treatment If the risks are minimal, and the public isn’t paying the bill, maybe there’s no harm (synthetic growth hormone isn’t known to cause serious side effects at standard doses.) But the implications are unsettling. If short stature is to be treated as a medical disorder, Rifkin asks, what other perceived handicap will follow Skin color Some researchers share those misgivings but defend the NIH study as an effort to identify the drug’s possibilities. At the moment, no one knows whether it will increase a normal child’s adult height or simply help him attain it faster. If synthetic growth hormone does not provide extra inches, says Dr Lynnette Nieman of NIH, the debate over treating healthy kids will be questionable. Maybe so. But if the drug works, science alone won’t tell us how to use it. Which of the following is NOT included in the disputed NIH trial
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