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Intelligent car door clamps up when danger’s about Accidents caused by car doors being opened into the path of oncoming vehicles or cyclists are common in cities. But these incidents could become a thing of the past, if doors that react to potential impacts catch on. The creative idea of Michael Graf at BMW and Michael Strolz’s team at the Technical University of Munich, the "haptic"-technology that gives tactile feedback-doors could cut both road injuries and repair bills, they say. The current prototype looks like a normal car door, but an extra metal bar runs through its centre and connects to the car’s frame between the hinges. In normal mode, the bar moves freely and doesn’t affect the door’s movement. However, if sensors detect a nearby obstacle at the same time as an accelerometer detects an attempt to open the door, the door’s swing is restricted by a linear motor attached to the bar. To pass on more information to the user, the amount of door resistance is in proportion to the proximity of an object-for example, you might swing a door halfway open without problems before it gets stiffer as it nears a lamp post. The current prototype uses supersonic sensors to spot dangers, but because they have a limited field of view, the next version will use cameras that can span 180°, says Strolz. "Then we will be able to sense the complete workspace of the door and detect people walking by the car or cycling towards it," he says. Reactions from 16 volunteers who tried the new door at BMW’s Munich research centre have been encouraging, the team told a recent conference on haptics in Salt Lake City, Utah. The technology is mature enough that a car factory could be pumping it out in cars within a year, says Strolz. The basic mechanism is like one already featured in some cars-for example, taxis with automatic passenger doors. However, BMW is yet to make any decision on whether to roll it out. How did the volunteers who tried the new door at BMW respond to it
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Passage 3 Not too many decades ago it seemed "obvious" both to the general public and to sociologists that modern society has changed people’s natural relations, loosened their responsibilities to kin and neighbors, and substituted in their place superficial relationships with passing acquaintances. However, in recent years a growing body of research has revealed that the "obvious" is not true. It seems that if you are a city resident, you typically know a smaller proportion of your neighbors than you do if you are a resident of a smaller community. But, for the most part, this fact has few significant consequences. It does not necessarily follow that if you know few of your neighbors you will know no one else. Even in very large cities, people maintain close social ties within small, private social worlds. Indeed, the number and quality of meaningful relationships do not differ between more and less urban people. Smalltown residents are more involved with kin that are big-city residents. Yet city dwellers compensate by developing friendships with people who share similar interests and activities. Urbanism may produce a different style of life, but the quality of life does not differ between town and city. Nor are residents of large communities any likelier to display psychological symptoms of stress or alienation, a feeling of not belonging, than are residents of smaller communities. However, city dwellers do worry more about crime, and this leads them to a distrust of strangers. These findings do not imply that urbanism makes little or no difference. If neighbors are strangers to one another, they are less likely to sweep the sidewalk of an elderly couple living next door or keep an eye out for size and its social heterogeneity. For instance, sociologists have found much evidence that the size of more likely than their small-town counterparts to have a cosmopolitan outlook, to display less responsibility to traditional kinship roles, to vote for leftist political candidates, and to be tolerant of nontraditional religious groups, unpopular political groups, and so-called undesirables. Everything considered, heterogeneity and unusual behavior seem to be outcomes of large population size. What is the passage mainly about
When will the price be quotedAfter our selection is ______.
1. Digital Realm In the digital realm the next big advance will be voice recognition. The rudiments are already here but in primitive form. Ask a computer to "recognize speech," and it is likely to think you want it to "wreck a nice beach." But in a decade or so we’ll be able to chat away and machines will soak it all in. Microchips will be truly embedded in our lives when we can talk to them. Not only to ourcomputers; we’ll also able to chat our automobile navigation systems, telephone consoles, browsers, thermostats, VCRs, microwaves and any other devices we want to boss around. That will open the way to the next phase of the digital age: artificial intelligence. By our providing so many thoughts and preferences to our machines each day, they’ll accumulate enough information about how we think so that they’ll be able to mimic our minds and act as our agents. Scary, huh But potentially quite useful. At least until they don’t need us anymore and start building even smarter machines they can boss around. The law powering the digital age up until now has been Gordon Moore’s: that microchips will double in power and halve in price every 18 months or so. Bill Gates rules because early on he acted on the assumption that computing power—the capacity of microprocessors and memory chips—would become nearly flee; his company kept churning out more and more lines of complex software to make use of the cheap bounty. The law that will power the next few decades is that the bandwidth (the capacity of fiber-optic and other pipelines to carry digital communications) will become nearly free. Along with the recent advances in digital switching and storage technologies, this means a future in which all forms of content—movies, music, shows, books, data, magazines, newspapers, your aunt’s recipes and home videos—will be instantly available anywhere on demand. Anyone will be able to be a producer of any content; you’ll be able to create a movie or magazine, make it available to the world and charge for it, just like Time Warner! The result will be a transition from a mass. market world to a personalized one. Instead of centralized factories and studios that distribute or broadcast the same product to millions, technology is already allowing products to be tailored to each user You call subscribe to news sources that serve up only topics and opinions that fit your fancy. Everything from shoes to steel can be customized to meet individual wishes. It is possible for anyone to make a movie and charge for it in the future.
In recent years a new farming revolution has begun, one that involves the manipulation of life at a fundamental level—the gene. The study of genetics has (51) a new industry called biotcehnology. As the name suggests, it (52) biology and modern technology through such techniques as genetic engineering. Some of the new biotech companies specialize in agriculture and are working feverishly to (53) seeds that give a high yield, that (54) diseases, drought and frost, and that reduce the need for hazardous chemicals, If such goals could be achieved, it would be most (55) . But some have raised concerns about genetically engineered crops. In nature, genetic diversity is created within certain (56) . A rose can be crossed with a different kind of rose, but a rose will never cross with a potato. Genetic engineering, (57) usually involves taking genes from one species and inserting them into another in an attempt to transfer a desired characteristic. This could mean, for example, selecting a gene which leads to the production of a chemical with anti-freeze (58) from an artic fish, and inserting it into a potato or strawberry to make it frost, resistant, in essence, then, biotechnology allows humans to (59) the genetic walls that separate species. Just like the green revolution, (60) some call the gene revolution contributes to the problem of genetic uniformity-some say even more so (61) geneticists can employ techniques such as cloning and (62) culture (培养) and processes that produce perfectly (63) copies. Concerns about the erosion of biodiversity, therefore, remain. Genetically altered plants, however, raise new (64) ,such as the effects that they may have on us and the environment. "We are tlying blindly into a new era of agricultural biotechnology with high hopes, few constraints, and little idea of the potential (65) ," said science writer Jeremy Rifkin.
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