The cordless phones and other wireless electronics in your home may interfere with your router’s wireless signals and cause the noise.（）

Could your smartphone prevent a car from hitting you? General Motors and other researchers think thats a possibility【C1】______an emerging wireless standard works its way into the latest smartphones and new cars. First seen in 2010, Wi-Fi Direct【C2】______ultrafast device-to-device connections over the same radio waves that smartphones, computers and other electronics currently use to connect to routers and home networks. The【C3】______here is that unlike your application-enabled television, Wi-Fi Direct doesnt【C4】______the Internet. Rather, its【C5】______connect local devices directly to each other【C6】______as little as a second, and unlike Bluetooth, the connection doesnt require special pass keys and works at more than double the【C7】______, at about 656 feet apart. GM says future cars could【C8】______pedestrians carrying Wi-Fi Direct smartphones, gather their【C9】______locations and warn the driver through existing active safety systems such as forward collision【C10】______and auto-braking. Wi-Fi Direct is one part of GMs research on vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure【C11】______in which both cars and roadways become【C12】______aware and adaptive to real-time information. More and more automakers, such as BMW and Hyundai, use a subscription-based 3G cell network to connect a cars information & entertainment system to the Web for things such as【C13】______searches. A few automakers, such as Ford and Audi,【C14】______wireless hotspots that allow full【C15】______to the Internet from any mobile device. By 2015, Ford said it【C16】______80 percent of the vehicles it sells in North America to have a Wi-Fi connection. Wi-Fi Direct currently allows file【C17】______between two electronic devices【C18】______having to pair them. If the technology becomes popular and【C19】______it could pull the market away from Bluetooth, the short-range wireless standard for in-car telephone calls and portable audio. With Bluetooth, there isnt one【C20】______way to connect a device—and many times, as weve often found, it still doesnt work. According to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, nearly 4,900 pedestrians and cyclists were killed by cars last year, for which data were available.

【C1】

A．whereas

B．as

C．though

D．so

To deal with the trade deficit with China, Europeans

A．will export more ear parts and other widgets.

B．disaccord over the responding measures.

C．challenge China on some political issues.

D．will call for more anti-dumping measures.

Which statement do you agree with after your reading?

A．When the power failure hit New York City, people only minded their own business.

B．Nobody needs all the machines we have made till now.

C．People used to pay each other with their building, raising, and so on.

D．People have difficulties in finding a good neighbor today.

WILL E-READERS REPLACE THE CONVENTIONAL PAPER BOOK?

Kindles, Nooks and other e-readers are threatening the future of printed books. But reading itself may get a boost from the devices. For example, a study found that the kids felt better about reading after a course in which they used Amazon Kindles. The research is in the _International Journal of Applied Science and Technology._

For two months, 199 middle-school students in a reading improvement class in Texas had 15 to 25 minutes every day when they were free to read on the Kindle. In general, the students felt the device improved their reading ability. And they tended to enjoy using an e-reader.

They noted the ease of carrying multiple books in one device, and the feeling that reading was suddenly a high-tech 21st-century activity rather than a boring waste of time. And some low-level readers who might otherwise be embarrassed to be seen with a simple book liked keeping their peers in the dark about what title they were reading. In the old days, one had to use a fake book-cover to achieve that level of secrecy.

1. Amazon Kindles is a kind of e-books. {T; F}

2. The research done in the _International Journal of Applied Science and Technology_ has lasted for two years. {T; F}

3. The students felt e-books could not improve their reading ability. {T; F}

4. Many students tended to enjoy using an e-reader. {T; F}

5. Some low-level readers used to use fake book-covers to keep their peers in the dark. {T; F}

Nine states and the District of Columbia are doing away with the sales tax on items such as clothes, shoes and even notebooks over the next few weeks, just in time for back-to- school shopping.

Most of the promotions last only a few days, so shoppers will have to act quickly to get a tax break. The tax holidays, which have already expired in two other states, apply to small and large items. For example, the tax break applies to any school supply that costs $15 or less in New Mexico. In Massachusetts, it covers most retail purchases of $2,500 or less. Stores may offer additional savings because these events "give retailers an opportunity to have a sale on top of what the state is doing," says Verenda Smith, government affairs associate at the Federation of Tax Administrators.

No industry-wide figures are available about how much consumers save annually from these tax breaks. But Texas estimates that shoppers will save $47.4 million in taxes this year, nearly a 3 percent increase from the previous year. Massachusetts says shoppers saved roughly $10 million in taxes during its 2005 event.

States that cast aside these promotions when a slow economy pinched state budgets are now reviving them in hopes of stimulating local economies. Some states also believe the gain in consumer goodwill helps balance out the loss in tax revenue.

In some cases, tax losses are minimal because serious shoppers don't stop at clothes and books. "While states give up sales tax, they usually break even on sales-tax collection," says J. Craig Shearman, a vice-president at the National Retail Federation.

Sophie Beckmann, a certified public accountant at A. G. Edwards in St. Louis, says she'll avoid that temptation by making a list of necessities. On the Missouri resident's shopping list: notebooks, pencils, glue and three or four outfits for her son, who is entering the fifth grade this month. She plans to pocket any tax savings. "When you start buying more and spending more just because of the savings, then you're not doing yourself a favor," Beckmann says.

The District of Columbia is most possibly the ______ .

A．capital of the nine states

B．tenth state in the examples

C．capital of the United States

D．regional name of these states