In a few years，you might be able to speak Chinese，Korean，Japanese，French，and English-and all at the same time. This sounds incredible，but Alex Waibel，a computer science professor at US's Car-negie Mellon University (CMU) and Germany's University of Karlsruhe，announced last week that it may soon be reality. He and his team have invented software and hardware that could make it far easier for people who speak different languages to understand each other.
One application，called Lecture Translation，can easily translate a speech from one language into an-other. Current translation technologies typically limit speakers to certain topics or a limited vocabulary. Us-ers also have to be trained how to use the programme.
Another machine can send translations of a speech to different listeners depending on what languagethey speak. “It is like having a simultaneous translator right next to you but without disturbing the person next to you，”Waibel said
Prefer to read? So- called Translation Glasses transcribe(转录) the translations on a tiny liquid-crystal display(LCD) screen.
Then there's the Muscle Translator. Electrodes capture the electrical signals from facial muscle movements made naturally when a person is mouthing words. The signals are then translated into speech.The electrodes could be replaced with wireless chips implanted in a person's face，according to research-ers.
During a demonstration held last Thursday in CMU's Pittsburgh campus，a Chinese student named Sang Jun had 11 tiny electrodes attached to the muscles of his cheeks，neck and throat. Then he mouthed-without speaking aloud- a few words in Mandarin(普通话) to the audience. A few seconds later，the phrase was displayed on a computer screen and spoken out by the computer in English and Spanish: “Let me introduce our new prototype.”
This particular instrument，when fully developed，might allow anyone to speak in any number of lan-guages or，as Waibel put it，“to switch your mouth to a foreign language”. “The idea behind the universi-ty's prototypes is to create'good enough' bridges for cross- cultural exchanges that are becoming more common in the world，”Waibel said.
With spontaneous(自发的) translators，foreign drivers in Germany  could listen to traffic warnings on the radio; tourists in China could read all the signs and talk with local people;leaders of different coun-tries could have secret talks without any interpreters there.
【小题1】What can't be learned from the text?

  All schoolchildren should have "happiness" lessons up to the age of 18 to combat(fight) growing levels of depression, according to a senior Government adviser.
Pupils should study subjects such as how to manage feelings, attitudes to work and money, channeling (引导) negative emotions and even how to take a critical view of the media, said Lord Layard, a professor of economics at the London School of Economics.
The proposal comes only days after the Government said that lessons in manners—including respect for the elderly and how to say "please" and "thank you" should be taught in secondary schools to combat bad behavior.
Lord Layard said, "Learning hard things takes an enormous amount of practice. To play the violin well takes10,000 hours of practice. How can we expect people to learn to be happy without massive amounts of practice and repetition?"
It is believed that at least two percent of British children under 12 now struggle with significant depression. Among teenagers, the figure rises to five percent. AUNICEF study involving 21 developed countries showed that British children were the least satisfied with their lives, while the World Health Organization predicts that childhood psychiatric (精神)disorders will rise by 50 percent by 2020.
In a speech at Cambridge University, Lord Layard said the Government's lessons in manners did not go far enough. "We need a commitment to producing a major specialism in this area, with a serious teacher training program," he said.
However, happiness lessons have been criticized by academics. Frank Furedi, a sociology professor at Kent University and author of Therapy Culture, said, "In pushing emotional literacy, what some teachers are really doing is abandoning teaching. They are giving up and talking about emotions instead, so that children value all this non-discipline-led activity more than math, English or science. What is amazing about this is that time and time again, research says that it does not work. "
【小题1】 Frank Furedi believes that ______.

A 33-year-old financial analyst in California recently quit his job to devote himself to an unpaid job teaching math on the Internet, and his lessons are reaching almost 100,000 people a month. Salman Khan’s voice is heard every day on the net --- by tens of thousands of students around the world who are hungry for help learning math. He has posted 1,200 lessons on YouTube ... lessons that appear on an electronic blackboard, which range from basic addition to advanced mathematics for science and finance. And they are free.
Khan lives in Silicon Valley, with his wife, a doctor, and their new baby. He got the idea for his “Khan Academy” four years ago, when he taught a young cousin how to convert kilograms to grams. With Khan’s help, the cousin got good at math, and Khan began a new career.
Now, Khan records his lessons himself, but he never goes on camera. “It feels like my voice in their head. You’re looking at it and it feels like someone’s over your shoulder talking in your ear, as opposed to someone at the blackboard, which is distant from you,” he said.
When Springfield High School in Palo Alto, California invited Khan to speak in person --- he immediately connected to the students there.
The idea of short lessons that can be played over and over again attracted high school senior Bridget Meaney. She says she had trouble with math in the seventh grade. “I think the teachers are good, but they can’t teach at a speed that’s perfect for everyone,” she said. “I like the idea of learning something in class but then going back and pressing pause or rewind and actually getting a deeper understanding of it.”
Originally, Khan kept his lessons short because of YouTube restrictions. Now, he thinks short is better. “Education researchers now tell me that 10 minutes is how long someone can have a high level of concentration. And anything beyond that and your brain switches off,” he said.
For Khan, teaching math, science, and finance is just the beginning. He says he’s ready to expand his YouTube site to include other subjects as well.
【小题1】What gave Khan the idea of teaching math online?

Edward Wilson is America’s, if not the world’s, leading naturalist. In The Future of Life, he takes us on a tour of the world’s natural resources. How are they used? What has been lost? What remains and is it able to continue with the present speed of use? Wilson also points out the need to understand fully the biodiversity(生物多样性)of our earth.
Wilson begins with an open letter to the pioneer in environment protection, Henry David Thoreau. He compares today’s Walden Pond with that of Thoreau’s day. Wilson will use such comparisons for the rest of the book. The problem is clear: man has done great damage to his home over the years. Can the earth, with human help, be made to return to biodiversity levels that will be able to support us in the future?
Biodiversity, Wilson argues, is the key to settling many problems the earth faces today. Even our agricultural crops can gain advantages from it. A mere hundred species are the basis of our food supply, of which but twenty carry the load. Wilson suggests changing this situation by looking into ten thousand species that could be made use of, which will be a way to reduce the clearing of the natural homes of plants and animals to enlarge farming areas.
At the end of the book, Wilson discusses the importance of human values in considering the environment. If you are to continue to live on the earth, you may well read and act on the ideas in this book.
【小题1】We learn form the text that Wilson cares most about ______.

A．Twenty.

B．Eighty.

C．One hundred.

D．Ten thousand.

Shopping for clothes is not the same experience for a man as it is for a woman. A man goes shopping because he needs something. His purpose is settled and decided in advance. He knows what he wants, and his objective is to find it and buy it; the price is a secondary consideration. All men simply walk into a shop and ask the assistant for what they want. If the shop has it in stock, the salesman promptly produces it, and the business of trying it on goes forward at once. All being well, the deal can be and often is completed in less than five minutes, with hardly any chat and to everyone's satisfaction. For a man, slight problems may begin when the shop does not have what he wants, or does not have exactly what he wants. In that case the salesman, as the name implies, tries to sell the customer something else, he offers the nearest he can to the article required. No good salesman brings out such a substitute without least consideration; he does so with skill and polish（完美）: “I know this jacket is not the style you want, sir, but would you like to try it for size. It happens to be the color you mentioned." Few men have patience with this treatment, and the usual response is: “This is the right color and may be the right size but I should be wasting my time and yours by trying it on.
Now how does a woman go about buying clothes? In almost every respect she does so in the opposite way. Her shopping is not often based on need. She has never fully made up her mind what she wants, and she is only “having a look round". She is always open to persuasion: indeed she sets great store by what the saleswoman tells her, even by what companions tell her. She will try on any number of things. Uppermost in her mind is the thought of finding something that everyone thinks suits her. Contrary to a lot of jokes, most women have an excellent sense of value when they buy clothes. They are always on the lookout for the unexpected bargain. Faced with a roomful of dresses, a woman may easily spend an hour going from one rail to another, to and fro often retracing her steps, before selecting the dresses she wants to try on. It is a tiresome process, but apparently an enjoyable one. Most dress shops provide chairs for the waiting husbands.
【小题1】According to the passage, a man’s shopping is based on _______.