Californians and New Englanders speak the same language and ______ by the same federal law

Californians are preparing for an earthquake by ______.

A．saving their property

B．building stronger houses and practicing techniques to handle emergencies

C．ignoring the San Andreas Fault

D．moving to another state

egulatory Commission to cap spot (现货的) market prices. The Californians claim it will rein in outrageous prices. Federal regulators have refused. The battle is on. Governor Gray Davis says, "I'm not happy with the Federal Regulatory Commission at all. They're living in an ivory tower. If their bills were going up like the people in San Diego, they would know that this is a real problem in the real world."

As part of deregulation, price caps were removed to allow for a free market. Timing is everything; natural gas prices had already skyrocketed. Demand was high from California's booming economy. No new power plants had been built here in ten years, and power producers had the right to hike prices along with demand. And hike them they did.

Loretta Lynch of the Public Utilities Commission says, "This commission and all of California was beating down the door of federal regulators to say, ' Help us impose reasonable price caps to help to keep our market stable. '"

Federal regulators did ask for longer-term contracts between power producers and the utilities to stabilize prices. The federal commission, unavailable for comment on this story, released a recent statement defending its position not to re-regulate.

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Dec. 15, 2000: "The commission's intention is to enable the markets to catch up the current supply and demand problems and not to reintroduce command and control regulation that has helped to produce the current crisis."

Some energy experts believe that, without temporary price caps, the crisis will continue.

Severin Borenstein of the U. C. Energy Institute says, "Some federal regulators have a blind commitment to making the market work and I think part of' the problem is they really don't understand what's going on."

Gary Ackerman of the Western Power Trading Forum says, "He's dead wrong about that. The federal regulators understand far better than any individual state that, though it might be painful and it certainly is painful in California, price caps don't work. They never work."

The battle between Californians and federal regulators is about ______.

A．control over the price of power

B．necessity of removing price caps

C．hiking the energy prices in California

D．a regulation concerning power supply

lain them in terms of a theory known as plate tectonics. Continents are floating apart from each other, this is referred to as the continental drift. About sixty miles below the surface of the sea, there is a semimolten bed of rock over which plates, or slabs, carry continents and sea floors at a rate of several inches a year. As the plates separate from each other, a new sea floor is formed by the molten matter that was formerly beneath. Volcanic islands and large mountain ranges are created by this type of movement. The collision of plates causes geological instability such as that in California called the San Andreas Fault, located between the Pacific and North American plates. The plates there are constantly pushing and pulling adjacent plates, thereby creating constant tremors and a potential for earthquakes in the area.

Geologists would like to be able to predict earthquakes accurately. Using laser beams, seismographs, gravity-measuring devices, and radio telescopes, they are presently studying the San Andreas Fault to determine the rate of strain and the amount of ground slippage. Calculations indicate that sometime within the next ten years, California will be struck by a major earthquake.

In spite of the geologists' theory of plate tectonics, there are still gaps in man's understanding and knowledge of the causes of earthquakes. Powerful earthquakes have occurred in places where plate boundaries are hundreds of miles away. In the 1800s, New Madrid, Missouri and Charleston, South Carolina, were shaken by earthquakes that no one had foreseen.

Certain areas of the world are quake prone. Italy, Yugoslavia, and Algeria have experienced many quakes. In November 1980, Naples was struck by an especially devastating quake. China and Japan have also been hit by horrendous quakes. In 1923, Tokyo and Yokohama were reduced to rubble by gigantic tremors that were followed by fires, tornadoes, and finally a thirty-four-foot tsunami, or tidal wave, which was caused by the earth's drop into the waters of Tokyo Bay. More than 150,000 people died in that earthquake.

What effects have geologists' predictions of earthquakes had？ The Chinese in Haicheng in 1974 were warned that an earthquake might occur within the next year or two. With the help of amateur seismologists' observations of animal behavior. and the rise and fall of water in wells and measurements of quantities of radioactive gas in water, professional geologists were able, in January 1975, to predict an earthquake within the next six months. On February 4, Haicheng was destroyed, but because its residents have been evacuated, very few people were killed. In California, where earthquake is an ever present menace, building codes now require quakeproof structures, and Civil Defense units have intensified their training in how to deal with disaster should it strike or, perhaps more accurately, when it strikes. Should predictions of a quake within the next ten years be accurate, many Californians may be able to save both their lives and their property.

Continental drift is the concept that ______.

A．continents are drawing nearer to each other

B．continents are separating

C．continents are 60 miles apart from each other

D．new continents are developing beneath the sea

A.A new cell phone

B.A new table

C.A new solar cooker

【C14】

A．was the new explosive

B．the new explosive was

C．was new explosive

D．new explosive was

A) A new bicycle. B) A new dictionary.

C) A new computer. D) A new cellphone.

A．Take a different bus.

B．Go shopping at the new store.

C．Find a new repair garage.

D．Buy a different car.

A．Leaving for New York.

B．Flying back to the office.

C．Visiting the new factory.

D．Attending the Sales Meeting.

New Year ______ on the 1st of January. (observe)

Who is the young man？

A．He is a new teacher.

B．He is a new student.

C．He is Mike.