Problem: About 400 high school students from Western Pennsylvania and the neighboring state of Ohio joined a heated discussion recently on "China: What Does the Future Hold?" "It's either going to turn out really good or really bad - who knows?" said Braveen Ragunathan, a senior from an Ohio high school. In his mind all Americans are connected to China in some way. The forum was held in Pittsburgh, once a US industrial center, now facing job-cuts because of competition brought about by globalization. The aim of the forum is to help American students learn more about the outside world. Elliott Blackwell, a junior at the Neighborhood Academy, said the forum let him know more about how China's economic development will affect America in the future. Some students, although impressed by China's economic boom, expressed uneasiness about the nation's practices and differences from the American way of doing business and politics. "China is a power coming up,so they might challenge us," Paul Amon, a junior from Oil City High School, said. "I'd hope that China can be our partner but I think that we'd clash along the way because we're too different," he added. George Riley, a teacher explained: "The view of China is usually negative and I think that's fueled by the media." However, some negative feelings are not from the media. Merri Ebel is a senior at East Allegheny High School north of Pittsburgh. Both her parents lost their jobs recently. The company they worked for said it was cheaper to produce goods in China rather than the US. "China is just this big question mark. China was just a big country with millions of people that no one really knew about because it was so far away and our class was more American history based," she said. For better or worse US teenagers are eager to know more about China, the forum shows.
1. What were the students intensely talking about?
2. What town were they holding this talk in?
3. Were some of the kids from a different state than that?
4. How many kids were there?
5. What was the goal of this conversation?
6. Does Pittsburgh have a lot of job openings?
7. Are American teens eager to learn about China?
8. What state is Braveen from?
9. Is he a freshman?
10. Does he think we're all connected to China?
11. Did Elliott learn about China's impact on our future?
12. Does Paul think we've got too many difference with China?
13. Who was the teacher?
14. Does he think the news is fueling negativity about China?
15. What happened to Merri's parents?
16. What does she think China is?
17. Does she think China is distant from her school?
18. What did Pittsburgh used to be?
19. What one word describes the job cuts there?
20. Is Paul a senior?
Answer: 1. China
2. Pittsburgh
3. Western Pennsylvania and the neighboring state of Ohio
4. 400
5. help American students learn more about the outside world
6. facing job-cuts
7. yes
8. Ohio
9. a senior
10. yes
11. yes
12. yes
13. George Riley,
14. yes
15. they lost their jobs
16. she doesnt know
17. yes
18. industrial center
19. globalization
20. no

Problem: Buenos Aires ( or ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, on the South American continent's southeastern coast. "Buenos aires" can be translated as "fair winds" or "good airs", but the first one was the meaning intended by the founders in the 16th century, by the use of the original name "Real de Nuestra Senora Santa Maria del Buen Ayre". The Greater Buenos Aires conurbation, which also includes several Buenos Aires Province districts, constitutes the fourth-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas, with a population of around 17 million.

The city of Buenos Aires is neither part of Buenos Aires Province nor the Province's capital; rather, it is an autonomous district. In 1880, after decades of political infighting, Buenos Aires was federalized and removed from Buenos Aires Province. The city limits were enlarged to include the towns of Belgrano and Flores; both are now neighborhoods of the city. The 1994 constitutional amendment granted the city autonomy, hence its formal name: Ciudad Autonoma de Buenos Aires (Autonomous City of Buenos Aires). Its citizens first elected a chief of government (i.e. mayor) in 1996; previously, the mayor was directly appointed by the President of the Republic.
1. What is the capital of Argentina?
2. Do a lot of people live there?
3. What does Buenos Aires mean?
4. How many people live in Buenos Aires?
5. What cities in Argentina are bigger?
6. What kind of district does the city lie in?
7. When was it given autonomy?
8. Does the city have a more formal name?
9. What is it?
10. What does that mean?
Answer: 1. Buenos Aires
2. yes
3. "fair winds" or "good airs"
4. around 17 million.
5. none
6. several Buenos Aires Province districts
7. 1994
8. yes
9. Ciudad Autonoma de Buenos Aires
10. Autonomous City of Buenos Aires

Problem: Originally based on the English alphabet, ASCII encodes 128 specified characters into seven-bit integers as shown by the ASCII chart on the right. The characters encoded are numbers 0 to 9, lowercase letters a to z, uppercase letters A to Z, basic punctuation symbols, control codes that originated with Teletype machines, and a space. For example, lowercase j would become binary 1101010 and decimal 106. ASCII includes definitions for 128 characters: 33 are non-printing control characters (many now obsolete) that affect how text and space are processed and 95 printable characters, including the space (which is considered an invisible graphic:223).

The code itself was patterned so that most control codes were together, and all graphic codes were together, for ease of identification. The first two columns (32 positions) were reserved for control characters.:220, 2368,9) The "space" character had to come before graphics to make sorting easier, so it became position 20hex;:23710 for the same reason, many special signs commonly used as separators were placed before digits. The committee decided it was important to support uppercase 64-character alphabets, and chose to pattern ASCII so it could be reduced easily to a usable 64-character set of graphic codes,:228, 23714 as was done in the DEC SIXBIT code. Lowercase letters were therefore not interleaved with uppercase. To keep options available for lowercase letters and other graphics, the special and numeric codes were arranged before the letters, and the letter A was placed in position 41hex to match the draft of the corresponding British standard.:23818 The digits 09 were arranged so they correspond to values in binary prefixed with 011, making conversion with binary-coded decimal straightforward.
1. what is based on the eng. alphabet?
2. how was it made?
Answer:
1. ASCII
2. encodes 128 specified characters into seven-bit integers