题目内容
Students who want to enter the University of Montreal's Athletic Complex need more than just a conventional ID card—their identities must be proved genuine by an electronic hand scanner. In some California housing estates, a key alone is insufficient to get someone in the door; his or her voiceprint must also be verified(确认). And soon customers at some Japanese banks will have to present their faces for scanning before they can enter the building and withdraw their moneys.
All of these are applications of biometrics, a fast-growing technology that involves the use of physical or biological characteristic to identify individuals. In use for more than a decade at some high security government institutions in the United States and Canada, biometrics is rapidly popping up in the everyday world.
Biometric security systems operate by storing a digitized record of some unique human feature. When a user wishes to enter or use the facility, the system scans the person's corresponding characteristics and attempts to match them against those on record. Systems using fingerprints, hands, voices, eyes, and faces are already on the market. Others using typing patterns and even body smells are in various stages of development.
Fingerprints scanners are currently the most widely used type of biometric application, thanks to their growing use over the last 20 years by law-enforcement agencies. Sixteen American states now use biometric fingerprint verification systems to check that people claiming welfare payments are genuine. Politicians in Toronto have voted to do the same, with a testing project beginning next year.
Not surprisingly, biometrics raises difficult questions about privacy and the potential for abuse. Some worry that governments and industry will be tempted to use the technology to monitor individual behavior. "If someone used your fingerprints to match your health-insurance records with credit-card record showing that you regularly bought lots of cigarettes and fatty foods", says one policy analyst, "you would see your insurance payments go through the roof". In Toronto, critics of the welfare fingerprint plan complained that it would force people to submit to a procedure widely identified with criminals.
Nevertheless, support for biometrics is growing in Toronto as it is in many other communities. In an increasingly crowded and complicated world, biometrics may well be a technology whose time has come.
According to the author, biometric technology is______.
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When I saw the notice "women film extras wanted" in a local newspaper, I jumped at the chance. Since childhood, I had dreamt of being a film star.
The casting interview went well, and two days later I was told that I had been chosen. I was to lose some of my enthusiasm for the idea, however. Extras are often left in the dark for some time as to which role they will play. Finally the nature of my role was revealed: I was asked to play a mental hospital patient.
Despite my disappointment, I agreed to participate. Then, barely a week later, the day of filming dawned. All 13 of us extras, mainly housewives, were driven to an old hospital. The coffee and tea they served us looked and tasted like cement. Then we were rushed off to make-up. My hair was pinned back and make-up was applied that give me a pale appearance. Then we just sat in a minibus for a few hours, as the cameras rolled elsewhere.
After the second hour had passed I was becoming bored, I bet stars are never treated like this, I thought. I had expected to be so busy that I hadn't come prepared for a long wait. Many of the others had brought a book or knitting.
Three hours had now passed. Then at last we were called to do our scenes. When the director came in, we were instructed where to stand and what to do. Along with a few others, I was told to sit at a table and weave baskets. This was not all easy task. The cane(藤条) we had to use was very long. On several occasions my basket fell apart in front of my very eye. On others I only succeeded In hitting a cameraman in the eye.
Life for the other extras was far from easy. Jean, who was barefoot, had to circle the floor. Poor Alice was asked to pretend to bang her head against the wall. Meanwhile Veronica swept the floor.
Thankfully, after just a few attempts, the scenes were done. And so my first taste of this "glorious" career was over. Although I found the experience quite interesting, my first screen role will almost certainly be my last.
The word "extras" used in this story means people who______.
According to the passage, which of the following about the instruction book is true？
Meanwhile world population is spiraling upward, and the most rapid increases are being made in just those regions where getting proper nourishment is the greatest problem. Today while the people of the "have" countries are well fed and are piling up surpluses of foodstuffs, in the "have-not" countries more millions than ever are going hungry every day.
In recent years, however, there has been a great "awakening of the common man." People who previously had little contact with the outside world have begun to rub shoulders with people from other, better-developed countries.
They have begun to realize, as an expert puts it, that "poverty is not a God-given state of life." Moreover, the "have" nations of the world have began to realize that no single nation, however prosperous, can exist for itself alone. The entire world is so bound together today by ties of trade and travel that poverty and famine anywhere threaten the richest of the nations along with the poorest. As a result, much thought and skilled effort are being devoted to improving food supplies in the underfed areas.
Many of the world's food problems are quite evident and can be attacked directly. Some farmers are still using tools and methods dating back to prehistoric times, you may say. Bring their methods up to date with modern tools and machines, teach them to fertilize and irrigate their soil, provide them with good seed and good animals to raise, and they soon will be producing plenty for themselves.
This approach is being followed; the agronomist in Greece, the farm expert in Afghanistan, and many others are doing all they can to improve agricultural techniques in countless widely scattered farm communities. But behind every problem that can be solved by machinery or a packet of seed or a sack of fertilizer looms a human problem having to do with what has long been known as social lag.
Whenever you try to revolutionize the ways of a people, you run into a maze(错综复杂的曲径) of intricate, interlocked problems. The behavior. of human beings is complex and cannot be controlled as simple as the behavior. of white mice in a laboratory. What seems an obvious solution may prove difficult, even impossible, to carry out.
The solution to the world's food problems depends on ______.
A．Reading.B．Sheffield.C．Manchester.D．Egypt.
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