阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项。

    If the crust (外壳) of the earth were not pretty solid (坚固的), it would be shaking about and moving up and down frequently. However, there are places in the rocks of the earth's crust where it isn't strongly held together—where faults exist. Along the faults, one rock might push against another with great force. The energy is changed to vibration in the rocks, so they begin to shake and we have an earthquake!

    The most famous one in North America was the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Seven hundred people died and property (财产) damage amounted to about $425,000,000.The greatest destruction came from the fires that followed the quake.

    One of the most famous earthquakes in Europe took place in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1755. The city was destroyed and at least thirty thousand people were killed. In 1908, in Calabria and Sicily, a quake killed about seventy­five thousand people. In 1915, in central Italy, hundreds of towns and villages were damaged and thirty thousand people were killed.

    Two great earthquakes that caused great damage in Asia took place in Tokyo, Japan, and in Gansu Province in China. The Tokyo quake of 1923 killed more than one hundred thousand people and destroyed the city and the city of Yokohama, too. The Chinese quake in 1920 covered more than three hundred square miles and killed about two hundred thousand people.

    When asked how technology might improve the lives of people with vision impairments (视力障碍), Joann Becker presented a misleadingly simple challenge. “Well,” the vision impairments tech specialist recalls saying. “I'd like to be able to find my bus slop through Be My Eyes”.

    Be My Eyes, which went live in 2015, establishes a direct video connection between visually impaired users and sighted volunteers. The assumption is simple: Many people who are blind don't need any actual assistance in completing their daily tasks, but merely need a little help.

    A sighted volunteer might be asked to help identify which of two cans contains tomatoes. In this case, the visually impaired user can cook a meal just fine on his/her own-all he/she needs is a quick confirmation that he/she has the correct can. The model appears to be working; more than 540,000 volunteers and nearly 40,000 people with low vision are registered on the app.

    “An elderly woman can now help a visually impaired technician set up his computer,” says founder Hans Wiberg, who has very low vision. “She doesn't need to know a thing about computers. She only needs to read what is presented on the screen. Then he can do the rest.”

    Early assistive technology centered on dedicated devices (专用设备), because of the niche market (缝隙市场), which sold for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. But the smartphone, multipurpose and near-universal, has completely changed the economy of scale.

    “There are larger market forces driving high-powered computation, high-quality engineering and high-quality battery management in the smartphone market than those in a specialty product,” says Aaron Steinfeld, a research professor at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

    “The reality is, most sighted people don't know somebody who is blind.” Becker says. “They think the solutions that a blind person needs arc far more expansive, it turns out, they need to be. I think these apps are enabling sighted people to see that blind people just need some simple clues to help them do any number of things in their lives.”

    When you're a junior in high school, three little letters quickly become larger than life: SAT.

    At the start of my junior year, I realized that the environment was packed with competition. Surprisingly, this pressure didn't come from adults. It came from the other students. Everyone in my grade had college on the brain. To get into the college of our choice, we all believed, we had to outcompete and outscore everyone else with less sleep, because time for sleeping was time you didn't spend studying for the SAT.

    I let myself get swept up in the pressure. My new motto was, if I wasn't in every single honor level class, I wasn't doing enough. I was bad-tempered and I couldn't focus. I stopped talking to my friends and my mom, and I couldn't figure out who I was. I didn't have the confidence to know that my own passions and unique skills were what would make me stand out to colleges.

That's when I realized: I am not my SAT score. Trying to stick to what I thought colleges wanted masked who I really am. I decided to rely on my strengths and get away from the crazy pressure I was putting on myself.

    Instead of forcing myself into higher levels of math, I took on an extra history class. I learned how to love what I was doing and not what I thought I was supposed to do. I learned to shine as an individual, not a faceless member of the crowd. And I found that not only was this better for my happiness, but it also made me more effective and efficient when I studied.

    To me, individuality means having the confidence to decide who I am and who I want to be, and a number on a page is never going to change that. I am more sure of myself, and more ready to apply for college, than ever.

    Chinese has overtaken French, Spanish and German to become one of the most promising foreign languages for job seekers in the UK. Research shows graduates in Chinese earn an average yearly salary of 31,000 pounds or more.

    Chinese students set themselves up for a different university experience from others who take traditional subjects. While an English student may have as little as six hours of a week, those studying Chinese are in class for most of the day. "I had a lot of friends on other courses who didn't do much in first or second year. You can't play at Chinese. You have to spend hours and hours writing characters," says Hannah, who graduated in Chinese Studies from Sheffield University. "The first year was really difficult. Most of my friends admitted at one point to crying because of the pressure. I was almost told at one point that I might want to reconsider and drop out. "

    So are the evenings in learning characters while your friends are at the student bar really worth its Despite the painful studying experience, most of the graduates think so. They use Chinese in their chosen careers, and would not have been in the jobs they do now without their knowledge of the language.

    Liberty now works for the civil service in Beijing. She earned a place on the Department for International Development graduate scheme with a salary of over 30, 000 pounds within two years. "The degree was absolutely worth it. Looking around at people I know who have studied French or Spanish at university, there's not such a chance to use it in the workplace."

    Hannah has set her apart in the workplace, but she warns ambitious students to think about whether they would really want to live in China in the future." Some people think they are going to learn Chinese and then be a big success, but I think it's important to be quite realistic about that. "

    One night I received a Facebook message from Laura, a former classmate. "Hey Steve," she said, "I know you've always been an animal lover. I've just had a baby and I can't keep my mini pig."

    Being fond of animals, I knew I wanted the pig. I just had to figure out how to make it happen. I lived in a two-bedroom single-level house in Georgetwon, Ontario. It's tough to bring a pig back to the house I share with two dogs, two cats, and my lifelong partner.

    But I was not letting that pig go. So I told Laura I'd take the animal. When I got home with the pig, I hid her in the bedroom, and began to prepare a dinner for Alisha—her favourite bacon cheeseburgers. It's better to make her happy before introducing the new member to her.

    When I led her to the bedroom and showed her the surprise, Alisha stood in the doorway like a statue. It took her a few seconds to know what I had done. She complained about my unreasonable action. She insisted there was no more room in the house.

    I knew I was wrong, but I hoped I could smooth things over. Soon enough, the lovely pig did the smoothing for me. Never had we felt such joy as she brought to us. We got her a name "Esther".

    Esther's arrival changed our lives. A few weeks later, we decided to stop eating bacon. We figured it was our turn to try to change the world for other animals. A few months later, we moved to a farm where we cared for abandoned animals—so far, six rabbits, six goats, two sheep, one horse, three cows and three chickens.

    "When someone is rude to you, it can put you in a bad mood. It may even lead you to be rude to someone else, creating a chain of rudeness. In fact, this troubling chain may even be caused by simply seeing someone be rude to another person. You don't even have to be the target of the had behavior," stated a researcher.

    The researchers worked with 81 persons, with occupations ranging from security to business to medicine, who were asked to complete online surveys over a 10-day period. Participants recorded their moods when they woke up; and in the evening, they described their experiences over the course of that day.

    Each morning the participants also viewed a short video, describing workplace interaction of some kind. Half of the mornings, the video included some kind of rudeness while the other half had some kind of warm interaction in the workplace. Rudeness was conveyed through various means, including a lack of eye contact or unpleasant language.

    Participants who watched the rudeness videos reported seeing or experiencing rudeness during the day, and they were also more likely to escape from fellow employees to avoid being the victims of rudeness themselves. They reported their overall work suffered that day as a result.

    Not all participants were affected by the rudeness videos, however. A few weeks before the study began, the participants completed an evaluation that measured their self-confidence and emotional stability among other things. The participants who scored higher on this evaluation were significantly less likely to be influenced by the rudeness.

    Consequently, one of the researchers recommended that companies hire managers who can limit exposure to rudeness, provide plenty of positive reinforcement (强化) and build a civil workplace environment. This, in turn, could help employees build their confidence levels and help them better handle workplace rudeness.