READING PASSAGE 3You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Rise of the Robots

If you're into technology, you're living in wonderful times. Things are developing in leaps and bounds, especially gadgets. Let's look at the technology that's set to break through.

CELESTRON SICYSCOUT

Backyard star-gazing goes seriously hi-tech with the Celestron SkyScout, which was judged to be the Best of Innovations at the New York Consumer Electronics Show press preview event in November. It's nor difficult to see why. The SkyScout is a hand-held viewing device that's capable of finding and identifying more than 6000 celestial objects visible to the naked eye, thus transforming the night sky into your own personal planetarium. Using GPS technology and a substantial celestial database, the camcorder-sized SkyScout enables stargazers to point the device at any visible object in the sky, press a button and then listen to a commentary. For the truly celestially challenged, if you want to view a star or planet but haven't a clue which bit of the heavens to look in, don't despair, the SkyScout's “locate” feature will guide you to it using illuminated arrows in the viewfinder.

NOKIA N91

This amazing mobile jukebox is due out early in 2006. Nokia's N91 looks set to be in a class of its own as a multimedia mobile phone, It will play music, take photos, surf the web and download videos, store contact details and generally organise your life. The robust little phone, resplendent in its stainless steel case, is the first Nokia to be equipped with a hard drive (4Gb), which means that it can store up to 3000 songs. The N91, which has a hi-fi quality headset and remote control, supports a wide range of digital music formats, including MP3, Real, WAV and WMA, It uses wireless technology to allow users to find and buy music from the operator's music-store, You can also drag and drop music from your PC to the N91 and manage and share play-lists. If you can find the time. you can get on the blower, too.

SEIKO SPECTRUM E-PAPBR WATCH

The Seiko Spectrum is no ordinary wristwatch. At first glance, it's an attractive and futuristic bracelet-style. watch. Look closer, however, and you'll notice that its display is unlike any you've seen before. Rather than the usual LCD screen, the display is made of "e-paper"--from the electronic paper pioneers E Ink Corp--and shows a constantly changing mosaic pattern along with the time. Because e-paper is so flexible and thin, it allows the display to curve round the wrist along with the watch band--something conventional liquid-crystal displays cannot do, as they have to be flat. Seiko says the e-paper display not only produces far better contrast than an LCD screen, but requires no power to retain an image, so the batteries last longer. Seiko is releasing only 500 of the watches next month, priced at about ￡1,250--so you'd better lose no time.

HIGH-DEFINITION TV

HDTV, already available in the United States, Japan and Australia, will hit the UK in 2006. When you watch a programme filmed in the HD format, you'll see a much sharper, clearer and more vibrant image. This is due partly to the way a programme is filmed, but also to the high-definition TV set itself, which uses either 720 or 1080 visible rows of pixels (depending on which format the individual HDTV uses) to display images, compared to the 576 rows of pixels used in current sets.

ELECTROLUX TRILOBITB 2.0 ROBOT VACUUM CLEANER

Next time you're expecting visitors, don't bother to vacuum first--wait until they arrive, and then entertain them with this little gadget. The Electrolux Trilobite 2. 0 is a robotic vacuum cleaner that navigates its way around your floors using ultrasound, just like a bat. It pings out ultrasound vibrations at surfaces to create a map of the room, which it remembers for future cleaning assignments. The Trilobi

A．tell you information about the stars.

B．tell you where in the world you are.

C．find objects in the sky that are not normally visible.