mining is the most common mining type.

mining？

The underlined word "arable" most nearly means "________ ".

A．thickly settled

B．suitable for farming

C．fit for mining

D．unable to be improved

bout ______.

A．the richness of the deposits

B．the effectiveness of the ROV

C．how much it lakes to mine the sea

D．how profitable mineral mining is

with a small pocket at the bottom.

demand for known and new data services,such as mobile internet access, social networking,location-based services/personal navigation and so on, and the data （） and storage capabilities of state-of-the-art terminals, such as smartphones and the most recent tablets.

A、lead B、creating C、caused D、composing A、processing B、calculatiaon C、mining D、display

e. Write the appropriate letter A-D in box 27 on your answer sheet. A Pollution control in coal mining B The greenhouse effect C The coal industry and the environment D Sustainable population growth

Section A

udes most of Alaska, Siberia, and Scandinavia—a region rich 40 forest and mining industries. Apart from a handful weather stations, within the same distance of the South Pole is not a single tree, industry or settlement.

ly about 10% of the labor force work in agriculture, 25% of the labor force work in factories. Today the factories make clothes and shoes and (11) other consumer goods. Most of the (12) machinery has to be imported. Mining is not (13) , but New Zealand has plenty of power. 85% of the electricity is produced by water. There is a lot of rain during the year, and there are many (14) and fast rivers in the mountains. Water power is cheaper than power from coal or oil. New Zealanders (15) have the cheapest electricity in the world.

What does the author say about the weather？

A．It is rare for Washington,D.C. to have such long rainy days.

B．It has been mining since Sept 26th for the most of the time.

C．It is favorable to the manufacturers to promote solar equipment.

D．It has helped see the disadvantages of solar energy.

kel and other metals rose to record levels, although they have since fallen a bit. Now three mining firms are proposing the most expensive merger in the industry's history. The $ 40 billion deal, in which an American company, Phelps Dodge, plans to take over two Canadian ones, Inco and Faleonbridge, would create the world's biggest producer of nickel, the number two in copper, and the fifth-ranked mining firm overall. The records may not stop there:two other mining firms, Xstrata and Teck Cominco, had previously bid for Falconbridge and Inco respectively, and could make further offers.

Soaring commodities prices have left mining firms flush with cash and keen to expand. One Way would be to search for more metal in the ground, instead of on the stockmarket. But organic growth is expensive at the moment; as firms rush to increase their output to take advantage of high prices, every conceivable input, from engineers to mining trucks' huge tyres, is in desperately short supply. Developing new mines is also slow. Mining executives worry that projects that get the go ahead when prices are high will not look so attractive when the next slump comes.

That could be true of the proposed merger too, of course. Phelps Dodge offered a premium of 23% over the price of Inco's shares and 12% over Falconbridge's. Those shares, in turn, have been rising for several years along with the firms' wares--nickel, for the most part, at Inco, and nickel and copper at Falconbridge.

The bosses of the firms insist that the mark-up is justified, for several reasons. For one thing, they reckon they can squeeze savings of $ 900m a year out of the combined entity by 2009, by sharing equipment and personnel among adjacent mines, for example, and pooling their marketing staff. More importantly, they argue that the size and diversity of the new company will make it less vulnerable to mining's painful cycles, and so more attractive to investors.

The biggest and most diversified mining companies, such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, do boast higher share valuations. They produce everything from aluminium to zircon, and so are less susceptible to flutuations in the price of any particular metal. By the same logic, the more mines a firm is running or developing, and the more countries it operates in, the less risk each individual project poses to profits.

The merged trio will certainly have a broader geographical spread, with mines in five continents. But its main projects, in stable places like the United States, Canada and Chile, never seemed that risky in the first place. Furthermore, despite having sidelines in cobalt and molybdenum, the new firm's fortunes will depend chiefly on the price of copper and nickel--two of most volatile metals of late.

Some analysts mutter that Phelps Dodge embarked on the merger chiefly to save itself from being taken over. Investors seem to share their doubts: Phelps Dodge's shares fell by 8% after it announced the deal, despite a simultaneous pledge to spend $ 5 billion on a share buy-back scheme once the merger is concluded.

On the other hand, the price of nickel and copper jumped on the news. Traders seem to have assumed that the companies would have contemplated such an expensive deal only if they thought that metals would remain in short supply for some time. The more money that mining firms spend buying one another, rather than exploring for and developing new mines, the likelier that is.

It can be inferred that some mining firms are keen to merge because

A．they want to monopolize the mining market.

B．they have greatly profited from skyrocketing prices of metals.

C．they are afraid of losing money on the stock market.

D．they want to defeat all the other competitors of mining industry.