*Question*
Read the article and select the best answer. Article: For many blind people, computers are inaccessible. It can cost $1,000 to purchase "screen reader" software, but two blind computer programmers from Australia have solved this problem. Queensland University of Technology (QUT) graduate James Teh and business partner Michael Curran developed a free, open-source program, called NVDA, which provides a voice to read the words on a computer screen as the cursor moves over them. NVDA won the blind inventors an award in the grand final program of the ABC's New Inventors, which aired on September 23. They took home the award for an invention that "might make a real difference to people's lives or the environment." "A sighted person takes for granted that they can sit down at any computer and use it," Mr Teh said. "We really are in the information age -- everything is online these days. So access to computers for the blind is very important, which is why we wanted our software to be free." Mr Teh, who majored in software engineering at QUT, said blind students typically didn't have the money to purchase "screen reader" technology, at the time in their life when they most needed it. Now NVDA could be downloaded on to anyone's personal computer free of charge. "It can also be copied to a USB stick, which can be used on any PC at school or university, with no installation required," he said. Mr Teh and Mr Curran have drawn on their own experience as blind computer users to develop a product which has some unique features. For example, as the mouse moves up and down the screen, a sound becomes higher and lower to let you know where the cursor is located. NVDA has been translated into 27 languages, thanks to volunteer translators. To date, there have been over 50,000 downloads. Mr Teh and Mr Curran have been working on the project since 2006. They worked on their product without any pay for two years. When Mozilla offered some funding in 2008, Mr Teh was able to quit his day job and work full-time developing NVDA. Question: Why did James Teh and Michael Curran want their software to be free? Options: A: They got funding from Mozilla. B: They belonged to a volunteer group. C: They wanted to help the blind. D: They wanted people to give up "screen reader" software.
**Answer**
C

*Question*
Read the article and select the best answer. Article: In the late 1500s, a large powerful gun was placed on top of the Signal Hill, in prefix = st1 /Newfoundland, to prevent attacks from the outside. Flags were also flown there to warn sailors of bad weather. It's fitting, then, the Italian Gulielmo Marconi should have chosen this site to receive the world's first radio signal -- in Morse code -- from England on December 12, 1901. Marconi, combining earlier ideas with his own, led us to a new communications age. For the next 50 years, until the appearance of television, radio ruled the air waves. Today, it's the TV that rules. No single person can say to have invented television. In 1884, the German Paul Nipkow invented a device that sent pictures mechanically , and in 1906, Boris Rosing, a Russian, used a ray and a disc to create the world's first TV system. Then in the early 1920s, another Russian, Vladimir Zworykin,invented a picture display tube. He took out a patent for color1 TV, even though it wouldn't be developed for another 25 years. In 1924, a Scot entered the scene -- John Logie Baird. He first succeeded in sending a moving picture and a year later got the first actual TV picture. In 1926, Baird showed TV in aLondonlaboratory. Two years later inNew York, Felix the Cat became the first TV star. TV excited everyone's imagination, but hardly anyone had a set, with just two thousand in use worldwide in the mid-1930s. Since the late 1940s, TV technology has developed very quickly. Computers may finally be combined with all televisions to give people a total all-in-one communications network. Today, it's possible to sit and watch TV in the middle of a forest or in the Arctic. It's surprising when one considers that Marconi was on Signal Hill in the same century. Question: The writer believes that the day will come when _ . Options: A: the future computers will be able to do the work TV is now doing B: the future computers will become available to everyone in the world C: the future computers will be connected to create one international network D: the future computers will take the place of televisions and radios
**Answer**
A

*Question*
Read the article and select the best answer. Article: The Growing Credit Crisis Forces Many Companies to Seek Government Help On September fifteenth, Lehman Brothers, a one hundred fifty-eight year-old investment bank, sought legal protection from its creditors. It had failed to find a buyer after months of searching. With over six hundred billion dollars in debt, Lehman's failure was the largest bankruptcv in United States history At the same time,the nation's biggest insurance company,American International Group, had gotten into trouble selling credit default swaps These are contracts Similar to insurance that protect the holder against credit risk. Credit rating agencies downgraded A.I.G because of concerns it could not honor its contracts. Unable to get new loans, A.I.G asked for government help The Federal Reserve agreed to loan A .I.G. eighty-five billion dollars in return for eighty percent of the company but it was not enough. By November, the government had extended a total of about one hundred fiftv billion doliars in aid to A .I.G--the most to any single company during the crisis. As banks refused to lend, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson proposed a plan to loosen credit markets by buylng risky assets. Congress approved the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of Two. Thousand eight on October third The bill provided seven hundred billion dollars to buy hard to-value securltles from banks. But within weeks, the government changed plans. The Treasury moved to invest two handred fifty billion dollars directly in banks to help them lend money again. Lack of credit not only hurt banks but manufacturers, too. Falling car sales threatened America's carmakers The big three automakers--General Motors, Ford and Chrysler--told Congress that they needed loans or they faced bankmptcy. In December, President Bush offered G.M and Chrysler over seventeen billion dollars in loans. As the year ended, the Federal Reserve tried to support economic growth by lowering its main interest rate to nearly zero for the first time. But there was one more bad surprise New York... Question: The last sentence of this passage indicates that the author's attitude towards the U.S economy in 2008 is Options: A: pessimistic B: optimistic C: objective D: subjective
**Answer**
A