Welcome to our new flat. Without t    1     any buttons, all the lights will be turned on as soon as you enter the flat. All the electrical appliances are c    2     to an AI computer. We can control(控制) them with our mobile phones. If you want to t    3     up the flat, a robot cleaner can help. With only two b    4     which give the robot enough energy, it can finish cleaning the flat in only a short m    5    . How amazing our new flat is!

4 . Nook’s arrival, Good or Bad?

Booklovers, most of them, will tell you what a pleasure it is to lend a favorite read to a friend—the novel you stayed up all night to get to the end of; the travel book that made you feel as if you yourself were on a train ride through India. For a while it seemed that e-book users were to be denied this pleasure of lending to friends. You could b    1     a book or magazine for your reading device, but you couldn’t lend it out.

But now, with the Nook, the US book chain Barnes and Noble’s response to Amazon’s Kindle, electronic readers will be able to have their l    2     literary enthusiasm pressed on their friends, just like readers of physical books can. You simply email the book from your Nook and your friend can read it for two weeks, using any device with the Barnes and Noble e-book reader software. It’s a big i    3     from previous e-book readers.

The Nook offers other features too. You read in black and white on the main screen, just like with Kindle. The difference is that on the lower part of the device there’s a c    4       touch screen, which allows you to browse through a book or magazine, but goes black when you’re not using it so that you s    5     power.

Another exciting thing about the Nook is that it offers Wi-Fi, arguably a big advance on previous e-book readers. Customers in the United States can use the Internet connection to read whole e-books at Barnes and Noble’s hundreds of bookstores for free. None of Barnes and Noble’s c    6     can come close to this.

But the Nook, ironically, has t    7     out to be a money-loser for Barnes and Noble, or at least a job-loser for Barnes and Noble’s employees. According to Marian Maneker at The Big Money Website, if the Nook is successful it might take sales from the company’s bookstores, eventually forcing their closure and the loss of thousands of jobs.

5 . Li Hong searched for information a    1     how to learn English     2     (good) on the Internet last night. She entered some key words into a s    3     engine. Then she     4     (find) much information. She felt very happy. She thought the Internet was very     5     (use).

Charles Babbage: Father of the Computer

Charles Babbage hoped to invent a calculator. But the technology of his time was too simple. Babbage could not make his dream come true.

All his life, Baggage was interested in n    1    . For example, he could find out how f    2     a pig’s heart beats or make a table to calculate how much wood a man could saw (锯) in 10 hours.

Baggage was also an inventor. Around 1830, he decided to d    3     and build a machine for doing simple mathematical calculations. He called this machine the Difference Engine.

Making the machine

The Difference Engine was very big and difficult to make. It was made of two tons of steel and gears (齿轮) . While he was building this h    4     machine, he had an idea for a new machine. This one would do all kinds of calculations. He called it the Analytical Engine. It was the start of the modern computer. But Babbage used up all his money b    5     he could complete either machine.

Re-inventing the Engine

In 1854, two Swedish inventors built a working mechanical calculator. It was b    6     on the Difference Engine. This machine was able to print out different kinds of forms and tables. It was very accurate.

Babbage was the first person to come up with the idea of computers. And he is more famous today than he w    7     in his day.

You may hear adults—especially your parents—ask you to spend less time in front of screens. But at a camp called iD Tech, computers are a necessary tool (工具) for learning about     1     (robot) and video games.

Logan Doyle, 12, spent last week at this camp     2     (learn) to write computer instructions for a video game he was creating. “I am trying to make the beginning     3     this game,” said Logan.

In the room, boys were playing a 3-D racing video game. When they were done, they talked about     4     they liked and didn’t like about the game. Then the camper who designed the game could make it     5     (good).

Their teacher, Will Whitney, said the kids were learning problem-solving. “Kids meet a problem and think of different ways to solve it,” said Whitney. Like a lot of the teachers at the camp, Whitney attended iD Tech camp while growing up. As a kid, he loved video games. He loved the camp so much that he had     6     (be) in it for seven years. “It was always the best time of my summer,” he said.

Like English and math, it is important to understand     7     /tek'nɒlədʒi/. It will be important for many jobs in the future. “Technology is     8     /evriweə(r)/ in our society,” said Jan Plane, a computer science professor at the University of Maryland. “Whatever field kids are going to go into, having some knowledge of technology is going to make     9     difference.”

Maybe the right kind of     10     /skri:n/ time is not such a bad idea after all.

Now the robots can help people do many things, such as babysitting (照看) kids, watering flowers and sweeping the floor. In the future, there     1     (be) many different types of robots. Here’s a kind of robots used in hotels in Japan.

    2     you prefer your vacations with a robot, you might try a hotel in Japan this summer. There are only 10 human     3     (work) in the hotel, but that doesn’t mean you won’t get good or fast service. Robots will be ready to help you with everything from reception (接待) to     4     (clean) and carrying your bags.

Developed at Osaka University, the robots look like young     5     (Japan) women. They can speak several languages and move their eyes     6     (communicate) with you.     7     the hotel, rooms will start at $60 a night. Robots don’t     8     (general) ask to be paid, and that will help reduce the     9     (hotel) cost. It is a “smart hotel” in the world.

“We will make     10     (powerful) and comfortable hotel in the world,” Hideo Sawada says. “In the future, we’d like to have more than 90% of hotel service operated by robots.”

9 . Ten years ago, I had a computer and it was much     1     (big) than this one that I have now. I only used it to chat     2     friends or do my homework. It     3     (be) a little difficult to operate. The screen was small, only 15     4     (inch). My life changed a lot because     5     it. It was the important part in my     6     (day) life. Now, I change this computer into a laptop. I use it to do many things like     7     (shop), watching films and playing computer games. I can type     8     a high speed and it is much     9     (easy) to control than the old one. And it is light enough for me     10     (carry) it everywhere.