Which are you more likely to have wath you at sny given mement—your cell phone or your wallet? Soon you may be able to throw your wallet away and pay for things with a quick wave of your smart phone over an electroue scannet.
In January, Starbucks announced that customers could start using their phones to buy coffee in 6,800 of its states. This is the first pay-by-phone practice in the U.S., but we’re likely to see more witeless payment alternatives as something called ucar field communcation(NFC)GETS IN TO America’s consumet electanies. Last Deccmbet some new smart phanes which cantain an NFC chip were introduced to the public.
Already in use in part of Asia and Europe, NFC allows shoppers to wave theie phones a few inchs above a payment terminal-a contact-free system build for speed and convenience.  plan a few incees live a payment tetminal a one a few ptaht need to be worked out, like who will get to collect the profitable trunsacian(交易)fees. Although some credit card providers have been experimenting with wave and pay systems that use NFC enabled credit cards, cellphone service providers truay try to mused their way into the point of sale (POS)market. Three big cell phone service providers have formed a joinf tenture(合資企業(yè))that will go into opention over the next 15 months. Its goal is“to lead the U.S. payments industry from cards to mobile phone.”
The other big NFC sue, apart from how paymeats will be processed, is security, For instance, what’s to stop a thief from digitally pickpocketing you? “We’re still not at the point where an attacker can just brush against yee in a crowd and steal all the money out of your phone,”says Jimmy Shah. A mobile security rescarcher, “Usera may also be able to set transaction timeits,requiring a password to be enteced for larger putchases.
Bussiness? Keep in mund you lost your smart phone, it can be located on a located on a map and remotely disabled. Plus, your phone can be password protected, Your wallet isn’t.
【小題1】What is predicted to happen in the U.S.?

October 31, 2009, California
Tsien Hsue-shen, PhD'39, one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, died on October 31, He was 98.
Tsien, born in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, graduated from the National Qinghua University in 1934 and in August of 1935 he left China to study at the Massachusetts Institute Technology. In 1936 he went to the California Institute of Technology to commence graduate studies .Tsien obtained his doctor degree in 1939 and would remain at Caltech for 20 years, becoming the Goddard Professor and establishing a reputation as one of the leading rocket scientists in the United States.
In 1943, Tsien and two others in the Caltech rocketry group drafted the first document to use the name Jet Propulsion Laboratory. During the Second World War, he was amongst the other scientists participated the "Manhattan Project" .After World War II he served as a consultant to the  United States Army Air Force. During this time, Conlonel Tsien worked on designing an intercontinental space plane. His work would inspire the X--20Dyna-Soar which would later be the inspiration for the Space Shuttle. In1945 Tsien Hsue--shen married Jiang Ying, the daughter of Jiang Baili--one of the Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai--shen's leading military strategists. But in 1950, the Chinese-born scientist was accused of harboring Communist sympathies and stripped of his security clearance.
In September 1955 he was permitted to leave for China, where Tsien resumed his research, founded the Institute of Mechanics, and went on to become the father of China's missile program, a trusted member of the government and Party's inner circle, and the nation's most honored scientist, Tsien retired in 1991 and has maintained a low public profile in Beijing, China. The PRC government launched its manned space program in 1992 and used Tsien's research as the basis for the Long March rocket which successfully launched the Shenzhou V mission in October of 2003.The elderly Tsien was able to watch China's first manned space mission on television from his hospital bed.
In his late years, since the 1980s, Tsien devoted himself to spirituality research, and advocated scientific investigation of traditional Chinese medicine, Qigong and "special human body functions".
【小題1】          The underlined word "commence" in this passage probably means ____

C
“The pen is more powerful than the sword.” There have been many writers who used their pens to fight things that were wrong. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe was one of them.
She was born in the U.S.A. in 1811.One of her books not only made her famous but has been described as one that excited the world，and was helpful in causing a civil war and freeing the enslaved race. The civil war was the American Civil War of 1861，in which the Northern States fought the Southern States and finally won.
This book that shook the world was called "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Begun as a serial for the Washington anti-slavery weekly, the National Era, it focused public interest on the problem of slavery, and was deeply controversial(爭議的). In writing the book, Stowe drew on her personal experience: she was familiar with slavery, the anti-slavery movement, and the underground railroad, because Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio, where Stowe had lived, was a slave state.
There was a time when every English-speaking man, woman, and child has read this novel that did so much to stop slavery. Not many people read it today, but it is still very interesting. The book has shown us how a warm-hearted writer can arouse（喚起）people's sympathies（同情）. The author herself had neither been to the Southern States nor been a slave. The Southern Americans were very angry at the book, which they said did not at all represent（描述）true state of affairs, but the Northern Americans were wildly excited over it, and were so inspired by it that they were ready to go to war to set the slaves free.
Following publication of the book, she became well- known, speaking against slavery both in America and Europe.
In 1862, when she visited President Lincoln, it was said that he greeted her as “the little lady who made this big war”: the war between the states.
49. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe was________when her world famous book was published.
A. about sixty years old                                B. around fifty years old
C. in her forties                                                D. around twenty years old
50. What do we learn about Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe from the text?
A. she had been living in a state where slaves were kept.
B. she herself encouraged the Northern Americans to go to war to set the slaves free.
C. she was better at writing than at swinging a sword.
D. she had once been a slave.
51. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book caused the civil war because________.
A. she wrote so well that Americans loved her very much.
B. she disclosed the terrible wrongs that had been done to the slaves in the Southern States.
C. the Southern Americans hated the book, while the Northern Americans liked it.
D. the book had been read by many Americans.
52. What can we learn from the text?
A. it isn’t necessary to use weapons to fight things that were wrong.
B. A writer is more helpful in a war than a soldier.
C. We must understand the importance of literature and art.
D. No war can be won without such a book as Uncle Tom's Cabin

★The regular use of text messages and e-mails can lower the IQ more than twice as much as smoking marijuana(大麻). Psychologists say that sending/receiving messages or looking through the many menu options your mobile phone has, lowers a person’s IQ by almost 10 points. British researchers have named this situation “infomania”. Instead of fixed on what they are doing, people’s minds are constantly focused on reacting to the technology surrounding them. This means they don’t pay full attention to the work they are paid to do. The report also added that the brain can not do so many things at once. If you try to do too many things, mistakes begin to occur. And while modern technology can have huge benefits, too much use can be damaging not only to a person’s mind, but to their social life.
★The more televisions 4-year-old children watch, the more likely they are to become bullies later on in school, a newest U.S. study said. At the same time, children whose parents read to them, take them on outings and just generally pay attention to them are less likely to become bullies, said the  report from the University of Washington. Researchers also found gaps in learning and understanding such things as social skills early in life makes it more difficult for children to relate with other children. Watching violence on television leads to aggressive behavior.
★You could soon be able to add your favorite perfume to your e-mails. UK net provider Telewest Broadband is testing a system to let people send e-mails over the Internet with sweet smell. It has developed a kind of hi-tech air freshener that plugs into a PC and sprays a smell linked to the message. Telewest says it could be used by supermarkets to attract people with the smell of fresh bread or by holiday companies seeking to stir up images of sun-kissed beachers.
【小題1】.
What does “infomania” refer to according to the first part of the text?

There are about fifteen hundred languages in the world. But  21  a few of them are very  22 . English is one of these. Many, many people use it, not only in England and the U.S.A., but in other parts of the world. About 200,000,000 speak it as their own language. It is difficult to say how many people are learning it as a   23  language. Many millions are   24  to do so.
Is it easy or difficult to learn English? Different people may have different   25  . Have you ever   26  ads of this kind in the newspapers or magazines? “Learn English in six weeks, or your   27 back.”.“Easy and funny! Our records and tapes   28   you master(掌握) your English in a month.  29  the first day your   30  will be excellent. Just send us ... ” Of course, it never  31  quite like this.
The only language that seems easy to learn is the mother tongue. We should   32  that we all learned our own language well when we were  33 . If we could learn English in the same way, it would not seem so difficult.   34   what a small child does. He listens to what people say. He tries what he hears. When he is using the language, talking in it,  35  in it all the time. Just imagine how much  36  that gets!
So it is  37  to say that learning English is easy, because a good command of English  38   upon a lot of practice. And practice needs great effort and   39   much time. Good teachers, records, tapes, books, and dictionaries will   40 . But they cannot do the student's work for him.