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UNIT 3

REVISION

1. Read the article below and choose the best sentence for each gap.

A Even when technology has proven to be useful in agriculture it often is extremely expensive.

B But the students quickly encountered challenges, both robotic and biologic. C "Agriculture contributes a lot of damage to the land, the soil, the water and the environment," Rus said.

D In the first semester, the students learned the basics of creating and using robots. E "The tomatoes, they come out of nowhere, or just in weird places," Liu said.

F Next to each pot is a gray docking station for the robots.

MIT students create robots that can tend to plants

A class of undergraduates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has created a set of robots that can water, harvest and fertilize cherry tomato plants. The small, $3,000 robots, which move through the garden on a base similar to a vacuum cleaner, are networked to the plants.

Last spring, Daniela Rus, a professor who runs the Distributed Robotics Lab at MIT, began a two-part course. 1……… By the fall, they were ready to have robots tackle a real-world problem. Rus challenged the students to create a "distributed robotic garden" by the end of the semester.

The 12 students broke into groups, each tasked with

solving a different problem, such as creating the mechanical arm needed to harvest the tomatoes or perfecting the network that let the plants and robots share information. By the end of the fall term, the "garden" inside Rus' lab was green and growing.

Now there are four cherry tomato plants nestled into a plywood base covered in fake grass. 2……….. Each plant and robot is connected to a computer network. When the plants indicate they need water, the robots can sprinkle them from a water pump. When the plants have a ripe tomato, the machines use their arms to pluck the fruit.

3……… Huan Liu, 21, a computer science major, said designing the robot to pick the delicate tomatoes was made more difficult because the fruit would grow in unreachable places, such as behind stems or above where the robot's arm could reach. 4………

There have been attempts to get robots to replace humans at farm tasks, from thinning apple trees to picking asparagus, but none of the machines "have sufficient

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capacity to compete with human beings," said Tony Grift, an associate professor at the University of Illinois. 5……..

Rus hopes to overcome those kinds of challenges and get robots to work in farms. 6……… "So if we can figure out a way of using robots and automation to deliver nutrients to plants - pesticides, fertilizers, water when it's needed - instead of sort of mass spreading them, then we hope we would have an impact on the environment."

(Adapted from the Daily Star http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_ID=10&article_ID=101021&categ_id=27# )

2. Replace the words in italics using suitable words from the box. Change the word if necessary.

shot fluctuate manufacture operate industry device challenge

1.Business in Europe has been badly affected by economic conditions in Asia.

2.He showed her several electronic gadgets, such as a watch that you can use as a phone.

3.The bus is designed to work in all weather conditions.

4.He works for a small company producing aluminium products.

5.Face the difficulties in life with a powerful positive attitude, faith, and strength!

6.The car industry's annual production changes between 5.1 million and 9.2 million vehicles.

7.I managed to get some good photographs of the carnival.

3.Complete the diagrams with the following words. Some words may be used twice.

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nanotechnology

4. Read the extract and put the linking words in the correct places in the text.

and but As a result for example In addition because also

In the past, technical drawings for industry and architecture were drawn by hand,

(1)……, people worked at drawing boards with drawing equipment. These handdrawn diagrams provided clear technical information (2)…… were slow and expensive to make. Nowadays, working drawings are done on computers (3)…… it is much quicker. Computers can (4)…… save, change and recycle the drawings. (5)…… they keep an electronic library of standard parts. (6)……, designers don’t waste time drawing things again and again (7)…… make few mistakes.

5.Tick the correct sentences. Correct the mistakes in the other sentences.

1.The president was given John an award.

2.German speaks in Austria.

3.The firefighters saved the women.

4.The report must be completed by next Friday.

5.All the students were understood the explanation.

6.The DVD recorder is repairing at the moment.

7.She is reading an e-mail.

8.Thomas and his brother was built that house.

9.Honda cars is produced in Japan.

10.Lots of houses destroyed by the earthquake.

11.Henry Ford invented the assembly line.

12.You should be open your workbooks.

13.This room has been painted blue.

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6. Find 16 nanotechnology words in the puzzle.

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MODULE 2

HOW TO SURVIVE IN INFORMATION AGE?

“As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Nowadays, many people tend to think of the Information Age in terms of cell phones, digital music, high definition television, digital

cameras, email on the Internet, the Web, computer games, and other relatively new products and services that have come into widespread use. The pace of change brought on by such technology has been very rapid.

•Do you live in the age of information?

•What is information age?

•Why is this age called the information age?

YOU ARE GOING TO READ, SPEAK AND WRITE ABOUT

•Computer Revolution

•Silicon Valley

•information overload

YOU WILL PRACTICE

•Present Perfect and Past Simple

•Modal Verbs

•building topical vocabulary

•listening and reading

•working in groups

•dealing with numbers

•making presentation

•using the Internet

YOU WILL KNOW HOW TO

• use search engines

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rooms. Few people had the opportunity even to see a computer and even fewer got to use one. But the Altair was a computer that people could put on their desks, and what they could do with it was limited only by their imagination — and the modest capabilities of Intel's 8080 microprocessor.

We knew that microprocessors would become cheaper and more powerful, making personal computers increasingly capable. We also knew those computers would need software to make them do useful things. So Paul and I founded a company we called Microsoft that we hoped would meet this need.

Our first product was a version of the BASIC programming language that could run on the Altair. Unlike many other languages available at the time, BASIC was relatively simple to use. After a few minutes of instruction, even a nontechnical person could start writing simple programs.

For its time the Altair was a huge success, and thousands of programmers used our software to make it do interesting and useful things. Since then the PC has evolved from a hobbyist's toy into a powerful tool that has transformed how we work, learn, play, and keep in touch. And it has created an industry that employs millions of people and plays a leading role in our global economy.

Computing has made many evolutionary leaps

over the decades - from the command line to the graphical user

interface, from stand-alone PCs to a globally connected Internet. But we're now seeing an even more fundamental change. We're in what I call the "digital decade," a time when computers are moving beyond being merely useful to becoming an essential part of our everyday lives. Today we use computers for discrete tasks—like doing e-mail and paying bills — but in the years ahead they'll play a key role in almost everything we do. We'll rely on them to run our lives and businesses. We'll want them to keep us informed and entertained. We'll expect them to be wherever we need them. It will be an era of truly personal computing.

Many of our early dreams for the PC have already come true. They can recognize speech and handwriting, create realistic animation, and enable people to collaborate, communicate, and find information around the world. But we've barely scratched the surface** of the PC's potential, and I'm incredibly excited about the amazing innovations that are just over the horizon.

_____________________________________

* soldering - joining two pieces of metal together by melting a small piece of soft metal ** scratch the surface - to deal with only a very small part of a subject or problem

(Adapted from http://www.greatachievements.org/)