Scientists Johan Feenstra and Rob Hayes think they"ve figured out how a process called electrowetting can make paper that can do anything a videoscreen does. So far, though, all they"ve got to show for their efforts is a tiny piece of e-paper one centimeter square—only 225 pixels, or picture elements. That won"t be nearly enough for headlines and news videos. The only hint of the technology"s potential is a laptop presentation the inventors have set up. It features Professor Shape, Harry Potter"s teacher, holding an electronic newspaper with an embedded video clip. "That"s what we want," says Hayes. They"re likely to get it. Late last month in Tokyo, Sony took an important leap in this direction by introducing Librie, an e-book reader. Although it"s available only in black and white, Librie has the most important characteristic of paper: it reflects natural light. That means it can be read on sunny days or viewed from any angle. You can even choose your own font size. Is this finally the beginning of the end of paper The answer is closer to "yes" than you may think. The holdup so far has been user-unfriendly screens, but now e-paper no longer relies on back-lit displays. A reflective display is easy on the eyes, with twice the contrast of computer screens and up to six times the brightness. It uses power only when changing the page, so a battery can last 300 hours. Several firms are competing for leader ship. The Philip"s display on Librie uses technology from Massachusetts-based E-Ink Corp. An electric charge moves either black or white capsules to the surface of the page in patterns that form images. Gyricon Media uses rotating balls with one black side and one white side for signs and bill boards. Other companies are focusing on improvements in liquid-crystal displays. The next challenge is to add color. One option for books would be a simple color filter, but that would block two thirds of the light. Guofu Zhou, who runs the E-Ink project for Philips, thinks products with colored ink can be ready for the market within seven years. He"s now focusing on e-paper that can display 16 or more gradations of gray, which would come in handy in medical imaging or to display black-and-white photographs at home. Labs around the world are also racing to design a robust yet flexible backing. Philips researchers are working on a technology for laminating E-Ink on a plastic layer instead of glass, which would then roll into a pen-sized tube. A flexible product for mobile phones and digital cameras can be ready in three to five years. What scientists Johan Feenstra and Rob Hayes did was that
A. they made an electronic newspaper.
B. they created a piece of videoscreen-like paper.
C. they made a tiny piece of primitive e-paper.
D. they invented the electrowetting technology.
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Misers everywhere: that Mediterranean cruise could be within reach at last. There"ll be no free ride to the port, and no free food or entertainment on board. The cabin will measure 30 meters square and housekeeping will be extra. But the fiberglass suite is easy to clean, and costs as little as £29 a night. Earlier this year, serial entrepreneur Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the man who gave Europe its first budget airline, cashed in £14 million of his easyJet shares to fund what he calls a "little shopping spree." Boldly expanding his no-frills model into new markets, Stelios (he insists on first-name in formality) plans to open the first easyHotel in London this year with prices from £ 5 a night, an easy Bus fleet and easy Cruise, ready to sail next summer. Also on the list: easy Pizzas and easy Tele com, a mobile-phone service. Can he make it work The soaring success of easyJet and its rivals was Europe"s great business story of the late 1990s, and yet more carriers are emerging to serve the 10 nations that joined the European Union last week. While copycatting the idea may look like a no-brainer, though, some experts doubt Stelios"s expansion plans have much of a future. "The no-frills model is very fragile." says Chris Voss of London Business School. "Stelios is applying it rather indiscriminately." The entrepreneur"s record is mixed. He launched easyJet in 1995, when he was 28, and it now has 70 planes and revenues of £932 million last year, up nearly 70 percent from 2002. But his first attempt to clone the no-frills model, a Europe-wide chain of Internet cafes launched at the height of the bubble, has since struggled to make money. His first easy Cinema-tickets for just 50 pence is suffering because big distributors, fearful of undercutting their other business, refuse to allow cheap screenings of new blockbusters. The larger problem: reducing prices is not enough to make no-frills work. Stelios, for example, likes to sell direct to the customer, preferably online, and avoids corporate accounts on the theory that only individuals care enough about price to be loyal no-kills customers. He chooses only sectors in which the volume of business will clearly rise as prices fall. There"s no point, say, in offering a cut-rate burial service. Says Stelios: "The demand for funerals isn"t going to go up—regardless of the price." Stelios expands his business following the key principle that
A. it is all about transportation.
B. it provides no first-class service.
C. it lowers the amount of expenditure.
D. it has many chain stores.
Are women really advancing In Africa, HIV/AIDS has set them back, while in India, pregnant women (1)_____ prefer boys they abort half a million females a year. And in Britain, which saw a (2)_____ female prime minister during the 1980s, a report by the nation"s Equal Opportunities Commission says gender equality in public life is "decades away". (3)_____ about 10% of senior positions in large companies and law enforcement are held by women, while the (4)_____ for women in Parliament is so slow that equality may (5)_____ a couple centuries. In Britain, as in America, there"s a (6)_____ that discrimination plays (7)_____ of a role in women"s progress in public life as more women stay in favor of motherhood (8)_____ careers in what"s called "choice feminism". These "choices", however, are often (9)_____.by the high cost of day care or its unavailability. In Japan, (10)_____ discrimination against women still remains strong, (11)_____ a 1985 law against it. But now that nation, with its low birth rate, faces a labor (12)_____ as it ages rapidly, and the government is (13)_____ new measures to encourage mothers to return to work after childbirth. The new measures (14)_____ more work flexibility for such returning workers, (15)_____ day care, and support women entrepreneurs. The Arab world has only recently begun to recognize the untapped potential of women as leaders. Iraq"s new Constitution required every (16)_____ candidate in the recent election to be a woman and that its parliament be 25 percent female. (17)_____ the charter also gives a (18)_____ role to Islam in writing new laws. (19)_____ many measures, from politics to poverty, women still have a long way to go toward equality and (20)_____.
A. spend
B. cost
C. take
D. consume
"My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas". Many American school children are taught this sentence to help them remember the order of the planets of the solar system. Soon though, this may change because, on July 29th, a team of astronomers announced the discovery of a very distant celestial body larger than Pluto. The researchers claim that the new body—which they are informally calling Xena—should be classified as a planet. The new body—temporarily named 2003UB313—orbits the Sun once every 560 years. It is currently over 14 billion kilometres away, about three times farther out than Pluto, making it the most distant object ever discovered in the solar system. The researchers think it is part of the Kuiper belt, a ring of rocky objects that extends beyond Neptune. Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology, Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory and David Rabino witz of Yale University discovered the object in data recorded at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego in October 2003, but its motion did not become apparent until they reanalysed the data in January 2005. The question of whether or not the new body should be considered a planet has rekindled the de bate over what exactly counts as a planet. A handful of objects of similar size to, but smaller than, Pluto have been discovered in the Kuiper belt over the past few years. These have not been considered planets, mainly because they were smaller than Pluto. But 2003UB313 is larger than Pluto. If Pluto is a planet, shouldn"t it be as well The case is not so clear cut. Many astronomers argue that Pluto should not be considered a plan et. It is more like a large asteroid, they hold. Meanwhile, Dr. Brown asserts that as Pluto has historically been considered a planet, anything larger should also be considered one. Ultimately, the International Astronomical Union, a group of professional astronomers, will end this existential anxiety. Dr. Brown expects the process to take months, and the team is not allowed to reveal its suggested name until then. Since most Greek and Roman names have already been used, he and his colleagues have previously drawn upon Native American and Inuit mythology for names. He will only hint that the new name comes from a different tradition altogether. Time will tell whether mother will be serving "nine polished xylophones", "nine pizzas" or just "noodles". The first sentence in Paragraph 1 is used by American school children because
A. it represents typical American culture.
B. it represents nine planets in the solar system.
C. it is often used in teaching astronomy.
D. it is a good example of mnemonics.
Misers everywhere: that Mediterranean cruise could be within reach at last. There"ll be no free ride to the port, and no free food or entertainment on board. The cabin will measure 30 meters square and housekeeping will be extra. But the fiberglass suite is easy to clean, and costs as little as £29 a night. Earlier this year, serial entrepreneur Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the man who gave Europe its first budget airline, cashed in £14 million of his easyJet shares to fund what he calls a "little shopping spree." Boldly expanding his no-frills model into new markets, Stelios (he insists on first-name in formality) plans to open the first easyHotel in London this year with prices from £ 5 a night, an easy Bus fleet and easy Cruise, ready to sail next summer. Also on the list: easy Pizzas and easy Tele com, a mobile-phone service. Can he make it work The soaring success of easyJet and its rivals was Europe"s great business story of the late 1990s, and yet more carriers are emerging to serve the 10 nations that joined the European Union last week. While copycatting the idea may look like a no-brainer, though, some experts doubt Stelios"s expansion plans have much of a future. "The no-frills model is very fragile." says Chris Voss of London Business School. "Stelios is applying it rather indiscriminately." The entrepreneur"s record is mixed. He launched easyJet in 1995, when he was 28, and it now has 70 planes and revenues of £932 million last year, up nearly 70 percent from 2002. But his first attempt to clone the no-frills model, a Europe-wide chain of Internet cafes launched at the height of the bubble, has since struggled to make money. His first easy Cinema-tickets for just 50 pence is suffering because big distributors, fearful of undercutting their other business, refuse to allow cheap screenings of new blockbusters. The larger problem: reducing prices is not enough to make no-frills work. Stelios, for example, likes to sell direct to the customer, preferably online, and avoids corporate accounts on the theory that only individuals care enough about price to be loyal no-kills customers. He chooses only sectors in which the volume of business will clearly rise as prices fall. There"s no point, say, in offering a cut-rate burial service. Says Stelios: "The demand for funerals isn"t going to go up—regardless of the price." If one travels on the Mediterranean cruise in the future,
A. he/she will become a cheapskate.
B. it will cost him/her more money.
C. it will become more economical.
D. there will be no free services.