2013年北京航空航天大学博士英语真题-阅读理解2
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Passage 3
The energy contained in rock within the earth's crust represents a nearly unlimited energy source, but until recently commercial retrieval has been limited to underground hot water and/or steam recovery systems. These systems have been developed in areas of recent volcanic activity, where high rates of heat flow cause visible eruption of water in the form of geysers and hot springs. In other areas, however, hot rock also exists near the surface but there is insufficient water present to produce eruptive phenomena. Thus a potent hot dry rock (HDR) reservoir exists whenever the amount of spontaneously product geothermal fluid has been judged inadequate for existing commercial systems.
As a result of recent energy crisis, new concepts for creating HDR recovery systems — which involve drilling holes and connecting them to artificial reservoirs place deep within the crust — are being developed. In all attempts to retrieve energy from HDR, artificial stimulation will be required to create either sufficient permeability or bounds flow paths to facilitate the removal of heat by circulation of a fluid over the surface of the rock.
The HDR resource base is generally defined to include crustal rock that is hotter than 150℃, is at depth of less than ten kilometers, and can be drilled with presently available equipment. Although wells deeper than ten kilometers are technically feasible, prevailing economic factors will obviously determine the commercial feasibility of wells at such depths. Rock temperatures as low as 100℃ may be useful for space heating; however, for producing electricity, temperatures greater than 200℃ are desirable.
The geothermal gradient, which specifically determines the depth of drilling, required to reach a desired temperature, is a major factor in the recoverability of geothermal resources. Temperature gradient maps generated from oil and gas well temperature-depth records kept by American Association of Petroleum Geologists suggest that tappable high-temperature gradients are distributed all across the United States. (There are many areas, however, for which no temperature gradient records exist.)
Indications are that the HDR resource base is very large. If an average geothermal temperature gradient of 22℃ per kilometer of depth is used, a staggering 13,000,000 quadrillion B.T.U.'s of total energy are calculated to be contained in crustal rock to a ten-kilometer depth in the United States. If we conservatively estimate that only about 0.2 percent is recoverable, we find a total of all the coal remaining in the United States. The remaining problem is to balance the economics of deeper, hotter, more costly wells and shallower, cooler, less expensive wells against the value of the final product — electricity and/or heat.
Questions 31 to 35 are based on the passage.
31. The primary purpose of the passage is to ________.
A. alert readers to the existence of HDRs as an available energy source
B. document the challenges that have been surmounted in the effort to recover energy from HDRs
C. warn the users of coal and oil that HDRs are not an economically feasible alternative
D. encourage the use of new techniques for the recovery of energy from underground hot water and steam
32. The passage would be most likely to appear in a ________.
A. petrologic research report focused on the history of temperature-depth records in the United States
B. congressional report urging the conservation of oil and natural gas reserves in the United States
C. technical journal article concerned with the recoverability of newly identified energy sources
D. consumer report describing the extent and accessibility of remaining coal resources
33. According the passage, an average geothermal gradient of 22℃ per kilometer of depth can be used to ________.
A. balance the economics of HDR energy retrieval against that of underground hot water or steam recovery systems
B. determine the amount of energy that will be used for space heating in the United States
C. provide comparisons between hot water and HDR energy sources in United States
D. estimate the total HDR resource base in the United States
34. It can be inferred from the passage that the availability of temperature-depth records for any specific area in the United States depends primarily on the ________.
A. possibility that HDRs may be found in that area
B. existence of previous attempts to obtain oil or gas in that area
C. history of successful hot water or steam recovery efforts in that area
D. failure of inhabitants to conserve oil gas reserves in that area
35. Which of the following would be the most appropriate title for the passage?
A. Energy from Water Sources: The Feasibility of Commercial Systems
B. Geothermal Energy Retrieval: Volcanic Activity and Hot Dry Rocks
C. Energy Underground: Geothermal Sources Give Way to Fossil Fuels
D. Tappable Energy for America's Future: Hot Dry Rocks
Passage 4
Picture-taking is a technique both for annexing the objective world and for expressing the singular self. Photographs depict objective realities that already exist, though only the camera can disclose them. And they depict an individual photographer's temperament, discovering itself through the camera’s cropping of reality. That is, photography has two antithetical ideals: in the first, photography is about the world and the photographer is a mere observer who counts for little; but in the second, photography is the instrument of intrepid, questing subjectivity and the photographer is all.
These conflicting ideals arise from a fundamental uneasiness on the part of both photographers and viewers of photographs toward the aggressive component in "taking" a picture. Accordingly, the ideal of a photographer as an observer is attractive because it implicitly denies that picture-taking is an aggressive act. The issue, of course, is not so clear-cut. What photographers do cannot be characterized as simply predatory or as simply, and essentially, benevolent. As a consequence, one ideal of picture-taking or the other is always being rediscovered and championed.
An important result of the coexistence of these two ideals is a recurrent ambivalence toward photography's means. Whatever the claims that photography might make to be a form of personal expression on a part with painting, its originality is inextricably linked to the powers of a machine. The steady growth of these powers has made possible the extraordinary informativeness and imaginative formal beauty of many photographs, like Harold Edgerton's high-speed photographs of a bullet hitting its target or of the swirls and eddies of a tennis stroke. But as cameras become more sophisticated, more automated, some photographers are tempted to disarm themselves or to suggest that they are not really armed, preferring to submit themselves to the limits imposed by pre-modern camera technology because a cruder, less high-powered machine is thought to give more interesting or emotive results, to leave more room for creative accident. For example, it has been virtually a point of honor for many photographers, including Walker Evans and Cartier-Bresson, to refuse to use modern equipment. These photographers have come to doubt the value of the camera as an instrument of "fast seeing". Cartier-Bresson, in fact, claims that the modem camera may see too fast.
This ambivalence toward photographic means determines trends in taste. The cult of the future (of faster and faster seeing) alternates over time with the wish to return to a purer past — when images had a handmade quality. This nostalgia for some pristine state of the photographic enterprise is currently widespread and underlies the present-day enthusiasm for daguerreotypes and the work of forgotten nineteenth-century provincial photographers. Photographers and viewers of photographs, it seems, need periodically to resist their own knowingness.
Questions 36 to 40 are based on the passage.
36. According to the passage, interest among photographers in each of photography's two ideals can be described as ________.
A. rapidly changing
B. cyclically recurring
C. steadily growing
D. unimportant to the viewers of photographs
37. The author is primarily concerned with ________.
A. establishing new technical standards for contemporary photography
B. analyzing the influence of photographic ideals on picture-taking
C. tracing the development of camera technology in the twentieth century
D. describing how photographers' individual temperaments are reflected in their work
38. The author mentions the work of Harold Edgerton in order to provide an example of ________.
A. how a controlled ambivalence toward photography's means can produce outstanding pictures
B. how the content of photographs has changed from the nineteenth century to the twentieth
C. the popularity of high-speed photography in the twentieth century
D. the relationship between photographic originality and technology
39. According to the passage, the two antithetical ideals of photography differ primarily in the ________.
A. value that each places on the beauty of the finished product
B. emphasis that each places on the emotional impact of the finished product
C. degree of technical knowledge that each required of the photographer
D. way in which each defines the role of the photographer.
40. Which of the following statements would be most likely to begin the paragraph immediately following the passage?
A. Photographers, as a result of their heightened awareness of tune, are constantly trying to capture events and actions that are fleeting.
B. Thus the cult of the future, the worship of machines and speed, is firmly established in spite of efforts to the contrary by some photographers.
C. The rejection of technical knowledge, however, can never be complete and photography cannot for any length of time pretend that it has no weapons.
D. The point of honor involved in rejecting complex equipment is, however, of no significance to the viewer of a photograph.