The ocean bottom (a region nearly 2.5 times greater than the total land area of the Earth) is a vast frontier that even today is largely unexplored and uncharted. Until about a century ago, the deep-ocean floor was completely inaccessible, hidden beneath waters averaging over 36,000 meters deep. Totally without light and subjected to intense pressures hundreds of times greater than at the Earth’s surface, the deep-ocean bottom is a hostile environment to humans, in some ways as forbid- ding and remote as the void of outer space.Although researchers have taken samples of deep-ocean rocks and sediments for over a century, the first detailed global investigation of the ocean bottom did not actually start until 1968, with the beginning of the National Science Foundation’s Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP). Using techniques first developed for the offshore oil and gas industry, the DSDP’s drill ship, the Glomar Challenger, was able to maintain a steady position on the ocean’s surface and drill in very deep waters, extracting samples of sediments and rocks from the ocean floor.The Glomar Challenger completed 96 voyages in a 15-year research program that ended in November 1983, During this time, the vessel logged 600,000 kilometers and took almost 20,000 core samples of seabed sediments and rocks at 624 drilling sites around the world. The Glomar Challenger’s core samples have allowed geologists to reconstruct what the planet looked like hundreds of millions of years ago and to calculate what it will probably look like millions of years in the future. Today, largely on the strength of evidence gathered during the Glomar Challenger’s voyages, nearly all earth scientists agree on the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift that explain many of the geological processes that shape the Earth.The cores of sediment drilled by the Glomar Challenger have also yielded information critical to understand the world’s past climates. Deep-ocean sediments provide a climatic record tracing back hundreds of millions of years, because they are largely isolated from the mechanical erosion and the intense chemical and biological activies that rapidly destroy much land-based evidence of past climates. This record has already provided insights into the patterns and causes of past climatic change information that may be used to predict future climates. Which of the following is true of the Glomar Challenger()
A. It is a type of submarine made especially for a project.
B. It is as ongoing project to explore the earth.
C. It provides such strong evidence that all earth scientists agree on the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift.
D. It makes great contribution to the understanding of the earth's structure.
MALAYSIA is agog with speculation. The government, which charged a sitting minister and a prominent businessman with corruption earlier this month, says it has a list of 18 other high-profile suspects due for similar treatment. Opposition politicians say that Rafidah Aziz, the minister of trade, should be among them. She denies any wrong-doing and says she will sue her critics for defamation—a threat they claim to welcome as a chance to prove their accusations in court. Is the pervasiveness of corruption, a problem common to most countries in South-East Asia, at last getting a proper airingThe region is certainly awash with celebrated corruption cases. Joseph Estrada, the deposed president of the Philippines, is currently on trial for "economic plunder". On February 12th, Indonesia’s supreme court finally ruled on a long-running embezzlement case against Akbar Tandjung, the speaker of parliament. In 2001, Thailand’s constitutional court heard charges that Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister, had concealed some assets during an earlier stint as minister.But there is less to this flurry of righteousness than meeting the eye. For starters, prosecutors have not had much success against grand defendants like Messrs Thaksin and Tandjung. Both persuaded higher courts in overturn earlier rulings against them. Mr. Estrada, too, managed to evade impeachment while in office, and prosecutors are making heavy weather of their current case againsthim. Even the convicted Mr. Rakkiat has not yet begun his prison term, since he jumped bail and went into hiding. What is more, all the countries in the region save Singapore and Malaysia still rank in the bottom half of the most recent "Corruption Perceptions Index" compiled by Transparency International, an anti-graft watchdog. Vietnam ranked 100 out of 133 countries, Indonesia 122 and Myanmar a dismal 129.This poor showing stems in part from a lack of laws, personnel and money to combat corruption. But the resource in shortest supply is political will to tackle the problem. All countries in South -East Asia have at least one anti-corruption agency. But the ones that work best, argues Jon Quah, a professor at the National University of Singapore, are centralized, independent agencies such as Thailand’s National Counter Corruption Commission. By contrast, Malaysia’s Anti-Corrnption Agency reports to the government, and so is subject to political control. The Philippines, meanwhile, has adopted no fewer than seven anti-corruption laws in the past 50 years, and created 13 anti-graft agencies, according to Mr. Quah’s count. Dramatic but disputed corruption allegations, such as the claim that the president’s husband is managing multiple slush funds, simply get lost in all this bureaucracy. By saying "this flurry of righteousness", the author points to().
A. the arrest of the corrupt.
B. the solving of all the corruption cases .
C. the appearance of the righteous people.
D. the disappearance of the justice.