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In what way is the village shoemaker a “formidable figure”？
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It may be the last book you'll ever buy. And certainly, from a practical standpoint, it will be the only book you'll ever need. No, it's not the Bible or some New Age tome promising enlightenment—although it would let you carry around both texts simultaneously. It's an electronic book—a single volume that could contain a library information or, if your tastes run toward what's current, every title on today's bestseller list. And when you're done with those, you could refill it with new titles.
Why an electronic book？ Computers can store a ton of data and their laptop companions make all that information portable. True enough. But laptops and similar portable information devices require a lot of power—and heavy batteries—to keep their LCD screens operating. And LCDs are not easy to read in the bright light of the sun.
Fact is, when it comes to portability, easy viewing, and low power requirements, it's hard to beat plain old paper. So let's make the ink electronic.
That's the deceptively simple premise behind a project currently coming to fruition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Some hurdles—mostly having to do with large-scale manufacturing—remain, so it will be a few years before you see an electronic book for sale in stores. But the basic technology already exists, developed at the Institute's Media Lab by a team led by physicist Joe Jacobson.
Simply put, each page in an electronic book is coated with millions of microscopic particles encased in tiny capsules. Each of these microcapsules can respond independently to an electrical charge: Particles within the capsule moving to the rear appear dark while those moving toward the front look white. The direction in which the particles move depends upon whether a negative (dark) or positive (white) charge is applied. Each microcapsule is about 40 microns in size (that's a little less than half the thickness of a human hair).
The number of microcapsules used on a given page is enormous. For instance, about 1,000 micor-capsules might be used to create the letter "A" on this page. "The smaller the size of the letter, the more microcapsules you use," says Jacobson, "thereby improving resolution." The target is to have a "paper display" with a resolution higher than that offered by today's computer screens. More than static letters are at stake: Theoretically, the microcapsules could be programmed to "flip" rapidly between dark and white states, providing, for example, a sense of motion in a diagram showing how a car works.
Thanks to electronic ink, the book essentially typesets itself, receiving instructions for each page via electronics housed in the spine. From a power standpoint, this process makes the electronic book very efficient. Unlike an LCD screen, which uses power all the time, energy is no longer needed to view the electronic book's pages once they are typeset. Only a small battery would be required, as opposed to the large ones needed to power laptop computers and their LCDs.
Convenience, though, is still the main attraction—and that means more than simple portability. Because the information is in electronic form, it can be easily manipulated. You could, for instance, make the type larger for easier reading. Or you could make notes in the margin with a stylus, your observations being stored on tiny, removable flash-memory cards in the spine.
lt's likely that electronic books will come preloaded with a selection of titles. New titles could be made available through flash-memory cards, for example. Jacobson, though, thinks the Internet will be the delivery method of choice. Imagine browsing through an online bookstore like www. amazon, com and downloading a novel into your electronic book via the modem in its spine. Transmitting Moby Dick would take about a minute. You could download a few titles, so you'll have a few good read to choose from while you're relaxing at the beach. If
Section B
Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.
Stone tools, animal bones and an incised mammoth tusk found in Russia's frigid far north have provided what archaeologists say is the first evidence that modern humans or Neanderthals lived in the Arctic more than 30,000 years ago, at least 15,000 years earlier than previously thought.
A team of Russian and Norwegian archaeologists, describing the discovery in today's issue of the journal Nature, said the campsite, at Mamontovaya Kurya, on the Ura River at the Arctic Circle, was the "oldest documented evidence for human presence at this high latitude. " Digging in the bed of an old river channel close to the Ural Mountains, the team uncovered 123 mammal bones, including horse, reindeer and wolf." The most important find," they said, was a four-foot mammoth tusk with grooves made by chopping with a sharp stone edge, "unequivocally the work of humans." The tusk was carbon-dated at about 36,600 years old. Plant remains found among the artifacts were dated at 30,000 to 31,000 years."
Other archaeologists said the analysis appeared to be sound. But they cautioned that it was difficult, when dealing with riverbed deposits, to be sure that artifacts had not become jumbled out of their true place, and thus time, in the geologic layers. They questioned whether the discoverers could reliably conclude that the stone tools were in fact contemporary with the bones. But in a commentary accompanying the article, Dr. John A. J. Gowlett of the University of Liverpool in England wrote, "Although there are questions to be answered, the artifacts illustrate both the capacity of early humans to do the unexpected, and the value of archaeologists' researching in unlikely areas."
The discoverers said they could not determine from the few stone artifacts whether the site was occupied by Neanderthals, hominids who by then had a long history as hunters in Europe and western Asia, or some of the first anatomically modern humans to reach Europe.
In any case, other archaeologists said, the findings could be significant.
If these toolmakers were Neanderthals, the findings suggested that these human relatives, who became extinct after 30,000 years ago, were more capable and adaptable than they are generally given credit for. Living in the Arctic climate presumably required higher levels of technology and social organization.
If they were modern humans, then the surprise is that they had penetrated so far north in such a short time. There has been no firm evidence for modern humans in Europe before about 35,000 years ago. It had generally been thought that the northernmost part of Eurasia was not occupied by humans until the final stage of the last ice age, some 13,000 to 14,000 years ago, when the world's climate began to moderate. Dr. Gowlett said the new findings indicated that the Arctic region of European Russia was extremely cold but relatively dry and ice-free more than 30,000 years ago.
What is the significance of the discovery？
听力原文：Woman: The president got what he wanted out of the television industry last week... a pledge to develop the rating system in America based on which the electronic V-chips could automatically block sex and violence from individual home screens... at least in the hours children are watching. Clearly the industry was responding to pressure from the government and a disgusted if somewhat hypocritical public. And even the president conceded that the rating/V-chip combo would not itself end the trashy tidal waves sweeping American society or American culture. It's only a panacea if you promise a panacea, but it will help. Newsweek television editor Rick Matin looked into the debate over TV ratings and the V-chip, and he's with us now. Rick. Thanks for being with us again. We hear the ratings won't cover news or sports, but what about raunchy news magazine's... talk shows？
Man: That's unclear. I think talk shows would fall under the category of entertainment. Ummm... I'm not sure whether a current affair, hard copy, the trashy news stories would be considered news or entertainment... since often they have neither news nor entertainment in them. Uh... the focus of it is... is just that bread-and-butter programming of television... the TV shows, the prime-time series, and also movies that TV picks up from Hollywood.
Woman: Will the ratings and V-chip combination block out whole shows, or just offensive parts？
Man: They'll block out the whole show. Umm... so you could presumably program your TV to just pick up shows that were either G or PG rated, and you could lock it and unlock it as you wanted... so when your kids are watching they couldn't see anything except wholesome stuff, and then when you're ready to sit down and watch all by yourself, you may flip a button and then you could watch NYPD Blue or whatever you want.
Woman: Some researchers last week reported that adult ratings actually attract young audiences, but isn't that exactly what the V-chip is supposed to counteract？
Man: Yeah, the problem is that the V-chip technology is going to take a while to penetrate the culture... If you buy a new set, you've got one; but if you stick with your old set for another ten years, you're not going to have one... so before you have the V-chip, you're going to have this rating system. And yes, studies have shown that, you know, as any of us who were kids remember, that if you put a forbidden fruit label on something, that just makes us want it even more. There was one study where some kid said the cooler the movie, the higher the rating.
Woman: But Canada is already experimenting with some form. of this. What are the results there so far？
Man: The Canadian results have been encouraging for people who want this kind of stuff. They did an experiment with 250 families in four cities in Canada, and all the families that tried it out loved it. It was a very elaborate system built into the cable boxes, and it was very successful. That said... we've got to remember that the Canadians are... have always loved violence less than Americans and regulation less than Americans. So who knows if it'll take here as well as it has there.
Question: What's the main function of electronic V-chip？
11.Which of the following programs will NOT be covered by the rating system？
12.What does the interviewee imply about TV shows such as NYPD Blue？
13.Why is the V-chip device continuing to be launched despite its counteraction？
14.What is the interviewee's attitude towards the future of the device in America？
(31)
At first glance, the image that flashed on the 19-inch computer screen looked like an ordinary road map. Then J. Richardson, acting manager of the Federal Aviation Administration's Central Flow Control Facility in Washington, began tapping at his keyboard. With one stroke he zoomed in to an aerial view of the New York Metropolitan area, divided not along town or county lines but along sectors of airspace. With another keystroke he eliminated hundreds of tiny black dots showing the location of low-flying aircraft and private jets. What remained on the screen were larger, winged symbols representing commercial airliners. With a few more key taps he color-coded the jetliners according to their airport destination: red for La Guardia, green for Newark, brown for John F. Kennedy.
To computer buffs at ease with the graphic virtuosity of Max Headroom, the FAA demonstration might seem primitive. But to air-traffic professionals gathered in the agency's sixth floor "war room", it represented a technological breakthrough. Prior to last week, FAA radar data showing the location of planes flying over the U. S. could be shown only piecemeal on computer screens at one or more of the aviation agency's 20 regional control centers. Now, all that information has been merged and displayed on a single cathod-ray screen, giving the nation's air traffic controllers an unprecedented view of overhead traffic patterns as they unfold from coast to coast. Exclaimed the FAA's Richardson, with pardonable pride: "It's unbelievable!"
Well, at least impressively intricate. The objective of the system is to provide centralized management of traffic problems as they may build up at any of the country's 12,500 airports. Cost of the new computer operation so far: about $2 million. The FAA's ultimate goal, though, is multi-billion-dollar air-traffic control system so highly automated that it can monitor flights and direct pilots with little or no human intervention.
Such a system is far in the future, but a new linkup may have arrived just in time. FAA officials say that with their new control system they will be able to meet those recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board without reducing the number of flights entering or leaving the critical choke points. Using the new computers, supervisors can monitor with greater precision specific sections of airspace that are becoming dangerously over-crowded. Traffic jams can then be alleviated or prevented by shifting the altitude of some flights or rerouting others so that they bypass congested areas. By this fall, when more complex computer programs should be in place, controllers hope to be able to predict at least two hours in advance when an airspace sector is about to become saturated, and thus prevent delays. Says Jack Ryan, director of the FAA's Air traffic Operations Service: "We will be ready to head off problems before they occur."
The FAA's glowing new capability is attracting curiosity from other federal agencies. The Defense Department, which must monitor the flow of aircraft into the U. S.'s air defense identification zone, is said to be fascinated by the new system. So is the Drug Enforcement Administration, which desperately seeks to know the identity of every aircraft entering U. S. airspace, especially those from the south. They are particularly impressed with an FAA feature that allows controllers to place an electronic cursor over an individual blip, press a key and see all the available aircraft data displayed on the screen. Any blip that fails to provide information has not registered a flight plan with the FAA and may be fair game for interception.
The first paragraph tells us that ______.
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