Article: In Western countries people have been using the installment plan since the first half of the twentieth century. Today, a large number of families in Great Britain buy furniture, household goods and cars by installments .In the U.S., the figure is much higher than in Great Britain, and people there spend over 10 percent of their income on the installment plan. The price of an article bought on installments is always higher than the price that would be paid by cash. There is a charge for interest. The buyers pays one quarter or one third of the price as a down payment when the goods are delivered to him. He then makes regular payments, weekly or monthly, until the full price is paid up. The legal ownership of the goods remains with the seller until the final payment has been made. Installment buying has advantages and disadvantages. It can help couples with small incomes to furnish their homes and start housekeeping, It increases the demand for goods, and in this way helps business and employment. There is ,however, the danger that when business is bad, installment buying may end suddenly, making business much worse. This may result in a great increase in unemployment. If the people on the installment plan lose their jobs, they will probably not be able to make their payments. If great numbers of people are not able to pay their installment debts there is a possibility that businessmen cannot collect their debts and will therefore lose money. If businessmen lose money or fail to make a satisfactory profit, it becomes more likely to have a depression. This is why, in some countries, the government controls the installment plan by fixing the amount of the down payment to discourage people from buying more than they can pay for on the installment plan. Question: What will happen to a buyer if he fails to make the full payment for an item bought on installments? Yes or no, is the answer "He will stop owning the item he has bought"?
No

(Question)
Article: The disadvantage you usually find about MP3 players like the iPod is that they are too big. But get ready for the MP3 player in your hand to get much smaller--the size of a Band-Aid . It's called the Skinny Player, and it's being designed by industrial designers Chih-Wei Wang and Shou-His Fu. Unlike the current types of iPod Shuffles and iPod Nanos, the Skinny Player does not need to be fixed onto your clothes or put into your pocket. It could stick to your skin like you would attach a Band-Aid. But unlike Band-Aids, this tiny MP3 player will not lose its stickiness as you pull it off for the hundredth time. The Skinny Player features flexible speakers allowing the user to enjoy music conveniently. When it gets dirty, the user can simply clean it using a damp cloth. No batteries either. The Skinny Player's designers say it will be powered by body heat, using a flexible battery charging device that is in contact with skin whenever the player is being used. The design only include an on/off button and flexible speakers, no word yet on arranging the volume. Besides, the memory capacity won't be the best, as it is designed to only store one album. The small size and the ability to stick it onto your skin like a Band-Aid should make the Skinny Player perfect for runners who now depend on their iPod to keep them energized on the running path. Question: According to the writer, the disadvantage about the iPod is mostly about its _ . Yes or no, is the answer "size"?
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No

Ques: Article: Despite the anxiety that Jones' Host--said by some to be the first digital novel--caused in 1993, publishers weren't too concerned that e-books would one day replace printed books. However, that attitude was changed suddenly in 2007 when Amazon's Kindle came onto the market, which led to e-book sales jumping up to 1,260%. Since then, e-books' popularity has continued to rise steadily. The publishing industry seemed to have lost all possible ability to regain its position. Will printed books eventually become a thing of the past? According to Mike Shatzkin, founder and CEO of the Idea Logical Company, printed books just for plain old reading will, in 10 years from now, be unusual. "Not so unusual that a kid will say, 'Mommy, what's that?' but unusual enough that on the train you'll see one or two people reading something printed, while everyone else is reading off of a tablet." And Shatzkin believes that the de mise of print is sure to happen, though such a day won't arrive for perhaps 50 to 100 or more years. Robert Stein, founder of the Institute for the Future of the Book, however, believes that books won't disappear entirely, at least not anytime soon. "Print will exist, but it will be in a different field and will appeal to a very limited audience, as poetry does today. Like woodblock printing, hand-processed film and folk weaving , printed pages may assume an artistic value," he says. He imagines that future forms of books might be developed not by traditional publishers but by the gaming industry. He also predicts that the distinction between writer and reader will be made less obvious by a social reading experience in which authors and consumers can digitally interact with each other to discuss any passage, sentence or line. Is there anything we risk sacrificing, should print really disappear entirely? According to Maryanne Wolf, director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University, electronic reading can negatively affect the way the brain responds to text, including reading... Question: How did publishers feel about the rising e-book sales inspired by the Kindle? Yes or no, is the answer "Worried."?
Ans: No

Article: It's not just great minds that think alike. Dozens of the genes involved in the vocal learning that _ human speech are also active in some songbirds . And knowing this suggests that birds could become a standard model for investigating the genetics of speech production and speech disorders. Complex language is a uniquely human trait, but vocal learning -- the ability to pick up new sounds by imitating others -- is not. Some mammals, including whales, dolphins and elephants, share our ability to learn new vocalizations . So do three groups of birds: the songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds. The similarities between vocal learning in humans and birds are not just superficial. We know, for instance, that songbirds have specialised vocal learning brain circuits that are similar to those that mediate human speech. What's more, a decade ago we learned that FOXP2, a gene known to be involved in human language, is also active in "area X" of the songbird brain -- one of the brain regions involved in those specialised vocal learning circuits. Andreas Pfenning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues have now built on these discoveries. They compared maps of genetic activity in brain tissue taken from the zebra finch, budgerigar and Anna's hummingbird, representing the three groups of vocal-learning birds. They then compared these genetic maps with others taken from birds and primates that can't learn new vocalisations, and with maps taken from the brains of six people who donated tissue to the Allen Brain Institute in Seattle. Their results showed that FOXP2 is just one of 55 genes that show a similar pattern of activity in the brains of humans and the vocal-learning birds. Those same genes show different patterns of activity in the brains of animals incapable of vocal learning. "The similarities are beyond one or a handful of genes," says Pfenning. "There are just systematic molecular similarities between song-learning birds and humans." "There's potential for songbirds to be used to study... Question: What can we infer from the passage? Yes or no, is the answer "Experiments with songbirds are likely to help cure Huntington's disease."?
No