I. Прочитайте и переведите следующие тексты.
Text 1
Проанализируйте содержание текста, разделите его на смысловые фрагменты, выделите основную информацию и составьте аннотацию, используя клише.
That’s the way the droplets adhere
New technique developed by MIT researchers provides first direct views of how drops and bubbles adhere to surfaces — and how they let go.
Understanding exactly how droplets and bubbles stick to surfaces — everything from dew on blades of grass to the water droplets that form on condensing coils after steam drives a turbine in a power plant — is a “100-year-old problem” that has eluded experimental answers, says MIT’s Kripa Varanasi. Furthermore, it’s a question with implications for everything from how to improve power-plant efficiency to how to reduce fogging on windshields.
Now this longstanding problem has finally been licked, Varanasi says, in research he conducted with graduate student Adam Paxson that is described this week in the journal Nature Communications. They achieved the feat using a modified version of a scanning electron microscope in which the dynamic behavior of droplets on surfaces at any angle could be observed in action at high resolution.
Previous attempts to study droplet adhesion have been static — using drops of a polymer that are allowed to harden and then sliced in cross-section — or have been done only at very low resolution. The ability to observe the process in close-up detail and in full motion is an unprecedented feat, says Varanasi, the Doherty Associate Professor of Ocean Utilization.
Normally, scanning electron microscopes observe materials on a fixed horizontal stage and under a strong vacuum, which causes water to evaporate instantly. The MIT team was able to adapt the equipment to operate with a weaker vacuum, and with the ability to change the surface angle and to push and pull droplets across the surface with a tiny wire.
Paxson and Varanasi found that a key factor in determining whether a droplet sticks to the surface is the angle of the droplet’s leading and trailing edges relative to the surface. Nobody had been able to observe these angles dynamically at microscale before, while theorists had not predicted their importance.
The MIT researchers also found that on rough surfaces, surface texture is crucial to adhesion. Surprisingly, they found that too much roughness can make droplets stick more — contrary to the widely held belief that greater roughness always improves a surface’s ability to shed water. It all depends on the details of the texture, they found.
For many applications, it’s important that droplets fall away from a condensing surface as quickly as possible; for others, it’s best to “pin” them in place as long as possible so they can grow and spread. The new analysis, which led to a mathematical system for precisely predicting droplet behavior, can be used to optimize a surface in either way. (Bubbles, such as those on the bottom of a pan of boiling water, behave in essentially the same way).
“People have only been able to make sketches” of how droplet adhesion works, Paxson says. With the new high-resolution imagery, it is now clear that as a droplet peels away from a rough surface, the round droplet forms a series of tiny “necks” adhering to each of the high points on the surface; these necks (which the researchers call “capillary bridges”) then gradually stretch, thin and break. The more high spots on the surface, the more of these tiny necks form. “That’s where all the adhesion occurs,” Paxson says.
The MIT authors say the phenomenon is “self-similar,” like fractal structure: Each neck or capillary bridge can consist of several capillary bridges at finer length scales; it is the cumulative effect that dictates the overall adhesion. This self-similarity is exploited by some biological structures for lowering adhesion.
There had been two leading theories on how to calculate the adhesion of droplets: One held that the areas of contact and energy levels of the molecules were key; the other, that the length of the edge of a drop on a surface was critical. The evidence produced by this research strongly supports the second theory. “I think we have now closed a decades-old debate on this one,” Varanasi says.
In general, Paxson says, “complicated shapes tend to be more sticky,” because of their greater edge-length.
Droplets and bubbles are ubiquitous in many engineering applications. This work could be applied to engineering industrial surfaces with controlled adhesion in applications ranging from large desalination and power plants to consumer products such as fabrics, packaging and medical devices. While some applications, such as condensers, strive to shed droplets quickly from a surface, others — such as ink droplets sprayed onto paper in an inkjet printer — require the reverse. The new methodology might help in improving both functions, the researchers say.
Paxson and Varanasi’s formulas can also explain variability among natural textured surfaces — such as lotus leaves, which shed water efficiently, and rose petals, which do not. Finally, the new research could advance our understanding of certain biological processes — such as how water spiders, which make an air bubble to house themselves under the surface of a body of water, control the surface tension to penetrate the bubble.
Neelesh Patankar, a professor of mechanical engineering at Northwestern University who was not involved in the work, says, “Theoretical hypotheses … had been proposed, but they had not been directly tested using experiments. This work is remarkable in that it provides direct observation of the dynamic behavior. … The verdict on the de-pinning mechanism is now clear, thanks to this work.”
The work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the DuPont-MIT Alliance.
2. Составьте логический план текста.
3. Найдите в абзаце предложение, высказывание, которое может служить заголовком
4. Найдите и отметьте абзацы, содержащие основную информацию
5. Выделите ключевые слова в каждом отмеченном по степени информативности абзаце.
6. Найдите в каждом абзаце главную, дополнительную и разъяснительную информацию.
7. Напишите реферирование текста с использованием клишированных фраз.
Text 2
Проанализируйте содержание текста, разделите его на смысловые фрагменты, выделите основную информацию и составьте аннотацию, используя клише.
Wind power — even without the wind
Innovative
storage system could enable offshore wind farms to deliver power
whenever it’s needed.
Offshore wind could provide abundant electricity — but as with solar energy, this power supply can be intermittent and unpredictable. But a new approach from researchers at MIT could mitigate that problem, allowing the electricity generated by floating wind farms to be stored and then used, on demand, whenever it’s needed.
The key to this concept is the placement of huge concrete spheres on the seafloor under the wind turbines. These structures, weighing thousands of tons apiece, could serve both as anchors to moor the floating turbines and as a means of storing the energy they produce.
Whenever the wind turbines produce more power than is needed, that power would be diverted to drive a pump attached to the underwater structure, pumping seawater from a 30-meter-diameter hollow sphere. (For comparison, the tank’s diameter is about that of MIT’s Great Dome, or of the dome atop the U.S. Capitol.) Later, when power is needed, water would be allowed to flow back into the sphere through a turbine attached to a generator, and the resulting electricity sent back to shore.
One such 25-meter sphere in 400-meter-deep water could store up to 6 megawatt-hours of power, the MIT researchers have calculated; that means that 1,000 such spheres could supply as much power as a nuclear plant for several hours — enough to make them a reliable source of power. The 1,000 wind turbines that the spheres could anchor could, on average, replace a conventional on-shore coal or nuclear plant. What’s more, unlike nuclear or coal-fired plants, which take hours to ramp up, this energy source could be made available within minutes, and then taken offline just as quickly.
The system would be grid-connected, so the spheres could also be used to store energy from other sources, including solar arrays on shore, or from base-load power plants, which operate most efficiently at steady levels. This could potentially reduce reliance on peak-power plants, which typically operate less efficiently.
The concept is detailed in a paper published in IEEE Transactions and co-authored by Alexander Slocum, the Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT; Brian Hodder, a researcher at the MIT Energy Initiative; and three MIT alumni and a former high school student who worked on the project.
The weight of the concrete in the spheres’ 3-meter-thick walls would be sufficient to keep the structures on the seafloor even when empty, they say. The spheres could be cast on land and then towed out to sea on a specially built barge. (No existing vessel has the capacity to deploy such a large load.)
Preliminary estimates indicate that one such sphere could be built and deployed at a cost of about $12 million, Hodder says, with costs gradually coming down with experience. This could yield an estimated storage cost of about 6 cents per kilowatt-hour — a level considered viable by the utility industry. Hundreds of spheres could be deployed as part of a far-offshore installation of hundreds of floating wind turbines, the researchers say.
Such offshore floating wind turbines have been proposed by Paul Sclavounos, a professor of mechanical engineering and naval architecture at MIT, among others; this storage system would dovetail well with his concept, Hodder says.
In combination, floating turbines and undersea storage spheres could provide reliable, on-demand power, except during extended calm periods. Meanwhile, a siting many miles offshore would provide the benefit of stronger winds than most onshore sites, while also operating out of sight of the mainland. “It provides a lot of flexibility in siting,” Hodder says. The team calculated that the optimal depth for the spheres would be about 750 meters, though as costs are reduced over time they could become cost-effective in shallower water.
Jim Eyer, a senior analyst with energy consulting firm E & I Consulting of Oakland, Calif., who was not involved in this research, says the concept “addresses some important challenges associated with wind generation in general, especially the temporal mismatch between production and demand, and generation variability, especially rapid output variations that lead to excessive ‘ramping’ of dispatchable generation.” While he calls the idea “somewhat novel and potentially significant,” he adds, “Obviously we’ll need a proof-of-concept pilot to take the next development step.”
Slocum and some of his students built a 30-inch-diameter prototype in 2011, which functioned well through charging and discharging cycles, demonstrating the feasibility of the idea.
The team hopes to extend its testing to a 3-meter sphere, and then scale up to a 10-meter version to be tested in an undersea environment, if funding becomes available. MIT has filed for a patent on the system.
The researchers estimate that an offshore wind farm paired with such storage spheres would use an amount of concrete comparable to that used to build the Hoover Dam — but would also supply a comparable amount of power.
While cement production is a major source of carbon-dioxide emissions, the team calculated that the concrete for these spheres could be made, in part, using large quantities of fly ash from existing coal plants — material that would otherwise be a waste product — instead of cement. The researchers calculate that over the course of a decade of construction and deployment, the spheres could use much of the fly ash produced by U.S. coal plants, and create enough capacity to supply one-third of U.S. electricity needs.
The work was supported by a grant from the MIT Energy Initiative.
2. Составьте логический план текста.
3. Найдите в абзаце предложение, высказывание, которое может служить заголовком
4. Найдите и отметьте абзацы, содержащие основную информацию
5. Выделите ключевые слова в каждом отмеченном по степени информативности абзаце.
6. Найдите в каждом абзаце главную, дополнительную и разъяснительную информацию.
7. Напишите реферирование текста с использованием клишированных фраз.
Text 3
Проанализируйте содержание текста, разделите его на смысловые фрагменты, выделите основную информацию и составьте аннотацию, используя клише.
«But you’re not a teacher: bridging the divide between adult and teacher education»
Like many other adult educators, my journey to adult education was not a direct or planned one. After high school I enrolled in a three-year hospital-based nursing training program.1 We all lived in residence together and were on the wards from the beginning. In many respects, we grew up together and, as a result of such shared experiences, developed strong bonds of friendship. As Chairs, McDonald, Shroyer, Urbanski, and Vertin (2002) have noted, “A successful cohort is a group of people who work together, provide assistance to each other, find success in their efforts, and simultaneously develop each individual’s talents”.
After graduation I worked for several years as a hospital-based nurse. During and following my training I became increasingly uncomfortable with the knowledge hierarchies that organized health care: medical doctors’ knowledge was considered superior to nurses’ practical knowledge; nurses’ knowledge was considered superior to that of other health care workers; health care workers’ knowledge was thought of as better than patients’ and their families’ understandings; and so on. It made more sense to me that everyone involved with care should be included in a partnership model. I found an opportunity to bring this approach to my practice when, for several months, I took over the duties of the patient education nurse who was responsible, among other things, for helping patients with newly diagnosed chronic health conditions. In that job many of my daily encounters involved helping adults to learn. Experimenting with various approaches through trial and error, I found that one principle seemed central to effective teaching and learning – that is, meeting people where they are at and recognizing and building on their knowledge. Later on I would learn that this partnership model was a familiar orientation in adult education.
Enjoying the focus on learning and working with adults, I sought out other similar positions and learned that these jobs required an undergraduate degree. I applied and entered the third year of a four-year nursing degree program.2 I was part of a small group of returning registered nurses, and we formed a strong bond as we negotiated our way through the nursing program and the wider system of academia. Here again I found that the support of a cohort proved essential to my
survival in an education system that was a very different place of learning compared with hospital-based training. I came to appreciate that my nursing training was a three-year apprenticeship and continue to believe that the best support for adult learning is a combination of classroom-based and experiential learning (see Kolb, 1984). As a mature student I was both excited and frustrated by university. Here again I encountered powerful hierarchies. Within the nursing program, hospital training was regarded as an inferior form of education compared with university education; throughout all my courses, including electives in various social sciences, theoretical knowledge was considered superior to practical knowledge.
After completing my degree I worked for several years as a community health nurse. This was a fantastic, but very demanding, job in which my responsibilities extended from “birth to death.” My duties included providing immunizations, health screening, and health education, including sex education to three schools. Through those school connections, myappreciation for teachers grew. I also saw how schools were important places for building a sense of community. My community nursing also involved home visits to different individuals in my district: new mothers and their babies, families of children from the three schools where I worked, newly arrived immigrants and refugees from Vietnam who had moved into a housing complex, and the elderly who lived in a seniors’ home. I also ran a new mom’s drop-in at a local community centre and, in the evenings, taught prenatal classes.
Community health nursing has changed significantly since then, and community health nurses’ duties are no longer so widely dispersed. Through that work I began to develop a deeper appreciation of community-based practice, what contributed to a sense of community, and the role that lifelong and lifewide learning played in community development. After almost 15 years of working as a nurse in both hospital and community health settings, I began to consider a different career outside the health system. After doing some travelling, I returned to Canada and sought assistance from a women’s centre that provided life and career planning. Intrigued with this centre, I began to volunteer. While there I completed a peer-counselling diploma. I also designed and facilitated various health-related workshops for women. I felt I was getting closer to finding a new career that suited my passions (Betz & Fitzgerald, 1987).
The challenges faced by women who came to that centre were many, and my attention to hierarchies of power sharpened. Although peer counselling was rewarding, I found the most enjoyment in planning and running various workshops. Recognizing my skill and knowledge limitations in that area, I enrolled in an introductory adult education course. Here I found a name and a professional identity (Steiner, 2013) and a field that valued the diverse contexts of learning with which I had been involved: worksites, universities, schools, homes, housing complexes, community centres, and feminist activism.
2. Составьте логический план текста.
3. Найдите в абзаце предложение, высказывание, которое может служить заголовком
4. Найдите и отметьте абзацы, содержащие основную информацию
5. Выделите ключевые слова в каждом отмеченном по степени информативности абзаце.
6. Найдите в каждом абзаце главную, дополнительную и разъяснительную информацию.
7. Напишите реферирование текста с использованием клишированных фраз.
Text 4
Проанализируйте содержание текста, разделите его на смысловые фрагменты, выделите основную информацию и составьте аннотацию, используя клише.
Addicts, Mythmakers and Philosophers
Alan Brody explains Plato’s/Socrates’ understanding of habitually bad behavior.
Thad held up his right hand and asked “See this?” He showed me gnarled and maimed fingers. Thad told me that while he was flying his plane into Turkey, the Turkish air force forced him to land, having gotten wind that he was running drugs. They jailed him, and in an attempt to extract a confession, his jailers broke his fingers. He didn’t confess.
Thad bribed his way out of jail. Eventually he came to the drug treatment center where I was working, to get help with his drinking problem. (Thad and other patient names are pseudonyms.) After discussing addiction as involving compulsive behavior, we concluded that Thad was suffering from alcoholism. Knowing he would be better off not drinking, Thad committed himself to abstinence. He told me that he didn’t need to go to Alcoholics Anonymous for support, explaining that if he could resist caving in from torture he could certainly resist whatever discomfort he would experience from not drinking. Thad thought that being able to follow through with his resolve was simply a matter of having the ability to resist succumbing to how bad it would feel to not drink.
When Thad came in for his next appointment he looked pained, shocked and confused. He told me that in spite of his decision to remain abstinent, he drank. It happened at the airport while he was waiting for his friend to arrive. Thad couldn’t understand how he would do such a thing, given his ability to handle pain when sticking to a resolution. I explained how a compulsive condition such as alcoholism can change how one evaluates what to do, so that someone who previously decided not to drink can come to temporarily think it’s okay to do so. After I explained how this kind of change of thought could produce a motive for drinking, Thad saw how his ability to endure suffering couldn’t be counted on to guarantee abstinence.
2. Составьте логический план текста.
3. Найдите в абзаце предложение, высказывание, которое может служить заголовком
4. Найдите и отметьте абзацы, содержащие основную информацию
5. Выделите ключевые слова в каждом отмеченном по степени информативности абзаце.
6. Найдите в каждом абзаце главную, дополнительную и разъяснительную информацию.
7. Напишите реферирование текста с использованием клишированных фраз.
Text 5
Проанализируйте содержание текста, разделите его на смысловые фрагменты, выделите основную информацию и составьте аннотацию, используя клише.
Addicts as Willing Participants
Addiction busts up what matters: the condition is capable of creating urges and motivations which bring about highly significant losses to a person’s well-being in spite of the person’s standing preference not to live like that. It’s possible that an addict is able, at times, to control the urge to use; but the addict also might not be able to prevent an urge to use from spontaneously arising and motivating. Other conditions, for instance bipolar or obsessive-compulsive disorders, can also create self-regulatory failures, so that episodes of self-destructive behavior are willingly engaged in which contravene the person’s general preference not to behave like that. Furthermore an appearance, at times, of control – intentionally cutting down, or temporarily stopping – can mislead the addict and others into believing that the addiction really is under control. The ability of the addict to believe that he/she is addicted also typically becomes compromised.
Well, why not just hold that addicts abandon their resolve to be abstinent simply because they change their minds, and not through some sort of compulsion? It’s common to change one’s mind when faced with temptation. Sometimes the choice to go ahead with the temptation is the result of a cost-benefit evaluation – in other words, it seems worthwhile to do it. At other times a person might gratify their desire or urge without entertaining any qualms or even thoughts about it. So although an addict’s habitual behavior might be atypical, rather than seeing it as a result of a compulsion they’re not strong enough to fight against, why not see their addictive behavior as something done in a willing manner, because the person feels like doing it, and/or they regard it as worth doing?
This willingness model (my terminology) has its roots in the analysis of embracing temptation which is found in Plato’s dialogue Protagoras. Contemporary philosophers such as Herbert Fingarette in Heavy Drinking: The Myth Of Alcoholism As A Disease, and recently, Piers Benn in ‘Can Addicts Help It?’ in Philosophy Now Issue 80, have also argued in support of such a model. I believe that understanding addiction requires appreciating elements of that model, as well as conceiving of addiction as a disorder involving a compulsive process which undermines the ability to regulate one’s behavior.
2. Составьте логический план текста.
3. Найдите в абзаце предложение, высказывание, которое может служить заголовком
4. Найдите и отметьте абзацы, содержащие основную информацию
5. Выделите ключевые слова в каждом отмеченном по степени информативности абзаце.
6. Найдите в каждом абзаце главную, дополнительную и разъяснительную информацию.
7. Напишите реферирование текста с использованием клишированных фраз.
Text 6
Проанализируйте содержание текста, разделите его на смысловые фрагменты, выделите основную информацию и составьте аннотацию, используя клише.
Model Behavior
In the Protagoras, Socrates discusses the nature of, and challenges to, self-mastery (ie self-control). When faced with a choice, Socrates tells us, human nature means we want to do what we think is best. So, he argues, if we believe we know what the good (the best) thing to do is, and it is accessible to us, we will do the good. However, says Socrates, things which tempt us can have the power to alter our perception or understanding of their value, making them deceptively appear to be what is best. Consequently, we choose the temptation as the best thing to do. The experience of going along with temptation is not, Socrates argues, one in which the person protests or fights against its unreasonableness while being dragged along into gratifying it. For Socrates, ‘yielding to temptation’ is not being unwillingly overpowered, but is the experience of being a willing participant choosing what is at that moment wrongly thought to be best. This is also the essence of the willingness model of addictive behavior.
A good way to understand it is by looking at how Homer depicts Odysseus’s mental state after hearing the Sirens. In Homer’s Odyssey, the Sirens’ singing was said to be so beautiful that it would enchant sailors, who would then pilot their ships towards the deadly rocks from which the Sirens sang. Odysseus orders his men to tie him to the ship’s mast so that he can listen to their song while his men row past them with wax blocking their ears. Through the Sirens’ enchantment, Odysseus becomes hooked and orders his men to sail toward them, in spite of having been told of the doom it will bring. Luckily, they ignore the order (probably because they can’t hear it). In the Socratic/Platonic analysis of what we think of as ‘yielding to temptation’, temptation plays the same role as enchantment in the story, in the sense that temptation has a power to deceive someone into willingly choosing it as best thing to do.
Aristotle thought that by asserting that when we gratify our desires for what tempts we are still doing what we think best, Socrates was denying the existence of akrasia – ‘weakness of will’, or a failure of self-restraint. The denial of both compulsivity and of weakness of will in explaining addiction has resulted in a willingness model commonly referred to as the moral model of addiction. On this view, what the addict does can be explained in terms of Socrates’ willingness model and an addict’s immoral character: ie, they want to do it, and care more about satisfying their addiction than the consequences of doing so. The addict’s moral deficits reside in their motivations, as illustrated in the accusation: “If you cared more about peoples’ safety than drinking, you wouldn’t drink and drive.” Here, the individual is judged to be morally deficient for not prioritizing peoples’ safety over their own desire to drink.
Support for the moral and other willingness models has been garnered from the fact that some addicts have stopped or limited their drug use when they have had good enough reason for doing so – that is, when they regard doing so as important. For example, it is not unusual for women to stop smoking while pregnant in order to protect the fetus, but to resume smoking afterwards. Also, addicts will often limit when they engage in their addiction, for instance, not at work, or not around certain people. Addicts might also demonstrate an ability to limit their drug use, e.g., their drinking, just to prove that they can successfully control their habit. Some addicts may decide that their addiction no longer works for them, and stop using completely. Furthermore, it is often claimed, that even if there are genetic or biological factors causing an addict to have strong urges, control over them still depend on what the addict thinks it is worthwhile to do, even when the urges are intense. Urges “incline but do not necessitate,” to use an expression of Leibniz’s.
Simplicity Itself
The willingness model of addiction has been presented as a simple way to capture the nature of addiction, how it motivates, and how it manifests experientially and behaviorally. But is its simplicity a good reason to believe it?
In From A Logical Point Of View (1953), the philosopher W.V.O. Quine beautifully articulates the rationale involved when he states that “we adopt, at least insofar as we are reasonable, the simplest conceptual scheme into which the disordered fragments of raw experience can be fitted and arranged” (p.16). The simplicity of the willingness model, then, might appear to give it a big advantage over any analysis of addiction in terms of a compulsive condition or other disability (for example, as an illness or disease). But we are in danger of being seduced by a love of theoretical sparseness, misleading us into violating another important methodological maxim, attributed to Einstein, namely, that a theory should be ‘as simple as possible, but no simpler’. To avoid us being misled by over-simplification, then, I will show why we have good reason to make our explanation more complex, by viewing addiction as a condition arising from a compulsion which undermines the ability to self-regulate. To begin this explanation, let’s look more deeply into the Socratic understanding of self-mastery or self-control.
2. Составьте логический план текста.
3. Найдите в абзаце предложение, высказывание, которое может служить заголовком
4. Найдите и отметьте абзацы, содержащие основную информацию
5. Выделите ключевые слова в каждом отмеченном по степени информативности абзаце.
6. Найдите в каждом абзаце главную, дополнительную и разъяснительную информацию.
7. Напишите реферирование текста с использованием клишированных фраз.
Text 7
Проанализируйте содержание текста, разделите его на смысловые фрагменты, выделите основную информацию и составьте аннотацию, используя клише.
Corporate history Sinopec.
Royal Dutch Shell Royal Dutch Shell plc (LSE: RDSA, RDSB), commonly known as Shell, is an Anglo-Dutchmultinationaloil and gas company headquartered in the Netherlands and incorporated in the United Kingdom. It is one of the six oil and gas "supermajors" and the fifth-largest company in the world measured by 2015/16 revenues (and the largest based in Europe). Shell was first in the 2013 Fortune Global 500 list of the world's largest companies; in that year its revenues were equal to 84% of the Netherlands' $555.8 billion GDP. Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading. It also has renewable energy activities in the form of biofuels[ and wind. Shell has operations in over 90 countries, produces around 3.7 million barrels of oil equivalent per day and has 44,000 service stations worldwide. As of 31 December 2014 Shell had total proved reserves of 13.7 billion barrels (2.18×109 m3) of oil equivalent. Shell Oil Company, its subsidiary in the United States, is one of its largest businesses. Shell holds 50% of Raízen, a joint venture with Cosan, which is the third-largest Brazil-based energy company by revenues and a major producer of ethanol.
Shell was formed in 1907 through the amalgamation of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company of the Netherlands and the "Shell" Transport and Trading Company of the United Kingdom. Until its unification in 2005 the firm operated as a dual-listed company, whereby the British and Dutch companies maintained their legal existence but operated as a single-unit partnership for business purposes. Shell first entered the chemicals industry in 1929. In 1970 Shell acquired the mining company Billiton, which it subsequently sold in 1994 and now forms part of BHP Billiton. In recent decades gas exploration and production has become an increasingly important part of Shell's business.Shell acquired BG Group in 2016, making it the world's largest producer of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Shell has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It had a market capitalisation of £168.6 billion at the close of trading on 26 October 2016, by far the largest of any company listed on the London Stock Exchange and among the highest of any company in the world. As of February 2016, Shell was the world's second-largest oil company by market value. It has secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New York Stock Exchange. As of January 2013, Shell's largest shareholder was Capital Research Global Investors with 9.85% ahead of BlackRock in second with 6.89%. Shell's logo, known as the "pecten", is one of the most familiar commercial symbols in the world.
History
Origins
The Royal Dutch Shell Group was created in February 1907 through the amalgamation of two rival companies: the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company of the Netherlands and the "Shell" Transport and Trading Company Ltd of the United Kingdom. It was a move largely driven by the need to compete globally with Standard Oil. The Royal Dutch Petroleum Company was a Dutch company founded in 1890 to develop an oilfield in PangkalanBrandan, North Sumatra, and initially led by August Kessler, Hugo Loudon, and Henri Deterding. The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company (the quotation marks were part of the legal name) was a British company, founded in 1897 by Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount Bearsted, and his brother Samuel Samuel. Their father had owned an antique company in Houndsditch, London, which expanded in 1833 to import and sell sea-shells, after which the company "Shell" took its name. For various reasons, the new firm operated as a dual-listed company, whereby the merging companies maintained their legal existence, but operated as a single-unit partnership for business purposes. The terms of the merger gave 60 percent ownership of the new group to the Dutch arm and 40 percent to the British.
National patriotic sensibilities would not permit a full-scale merger or takeover of either of the two companies. The Dutch company, KoninklijkeNederlandsche Petroleum Maatschappij at The Hague, was in charge of production and manufacture. The British Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company was based in London, to direct the transport and storage of the products.
20th century
During the First World War, Shell was the main supplier of fuel to the British Expeditionary Force. It was also the sole supplier of aviation fuel and supplied 80 percent of the British Army's TNT. It also volunteered all of its shipping to the British Admiralty.
The German invasion of Romania in 1916 saw 17 percent of the group's worldwide production destroyed. In 1919, Shell took control of the Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company and in 1921 formed Shell-Mex Limited which marketed products under the "Shell" and "Eagle" brands in the United Kingdom. In 1929, Shell Chemicals was founded. By the end of the 1920s, Shell was the world's leading oil company, producing 11 percent of the world's crude oil supply and owning 10 percent of its tanker tonnage. Shell Mex House was completed in 1931, and was the head office for Shell's marketing activity worldwide. In 1932, partly in response to the difficult economic conditions of the times, Shell-Mex merged its UK marketing operations with those of British Petroleum to create Shell-Mex and BP, a company that traded until the brands separated in 1975. Royal Dutch Company ranked 79th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.
2. Составьте логический план текста.
3. Найдите в абзаце предложение, высказывание, которое может служить заголовком
4. Найдите и отметьте абзацы, содержащие основную информацию
5. Выделите ключевые слова в каждом отмеченном по степени информативности абзаце.
6. Найдите в каждом абзаце главную, дополнительную и разъяснительную информацию.
7. Напишите реферирование текста с использованием клишированных фраз.