Terrafugia Company has said that its flying car, named Transition, has successfully finished a 37- second test flight.

    On March 5th, 2009, at Plattsburgh International Airport in New York. The company's chief pilot, Phil Meteer, piloted the flying car.

    Transition is a two-seat airplane that can take off and land at airports as well as drive on roads.

    The company said that the flying car can travel at speeds up to 115 mph in the air, drive at highway speeds on the ground, and fold up (折叠）to fit in a garage (车库) 81 inches wide and 80 inches high.

Hospitals could use it to transport patients so as to avoid road traffic. It may start running on wheels, and when it gets to traffic lights it can fly overhead the lights and keep its way forward. So it's good news to avoid traffic problems and the traffic accidents.

But some people say this is a going airplane rather than a flying car, at least on the appearance. Anyway, we are happy for scientific-technical progress, what a fantastical world in the near future!

    What would the world be like if cars could drive themselves? Imagine seeing an empty car passing by on its way to pick up its owner, or a car full of passengers who are reading, listening to music or even sleeping. But none of them are worried about the road ahead.

    Well, all of this could be the future of driving. There are several companies, including Google, working on driverless cars. So far, no Google self-driven car has gotten a traffic ticket, bus some of them have been in accidents when other cars hit them.

    These cars are now still in the testing stages. But, if the tests are successful, these electric self-driven cars could be put into use very soon.

    The cars already have many features（特点）allowing them to take the place of drivers during certain situations. Some features include cars being able to park themselves, or slow down when they notice objects close by. They can also control the speed if there are dangerous conditions.

    Scientists and engineers believe, with the help of wireless（无线电的）signals, cameras and GPS, we are now at a stage where creating a safe self-driven car might be possible.

    The cause of deadly road accidents is usually careless drivers or dangerous conditions. The self-driven car may be able to prevent these. However, some people do not like the idea. American lawyer Whit Drake, for example, doesn't believe these cars are safe. He thinks that technologies can also be mistakes.

    Do you know why different animals or pests(害虫) have their special colors? Colors in them seem to be mainly used to 1 themselves.

    Some birds like eating locusts(蝗虫), but birds cannot 2 catch them. Why? It is because locusts change their 3 with the change of the colors of crops. When crops are green, locusts look 4 But as the harvest time comes, locusts change into the same brown colo 5 crops have. Some other pests whose colors are 6 plants are easily found and eaten by 7 So they have to hide themselves for lives and appear only 8 

    If you 9 animals' life, you'll find the main use of colors is to protect 10 Bears, lions and other animals 11 quietly through forests. They cannot be easily seen by hunters 12 their colors are much like the trees.

    Colors are useful not only on the land, but also in the 13 A kind of fish can 14 （液体) when they face danger. The liquid spreads over quickly, so they cannot be found by their enemies and can quickly swim away. That is 15 they can live safely though they are not strong at all. So colors are really useful to animals.

New App Helps People Remember Faces

    Large gatherings such as weddings and meetings can be socially Q flooded with people. Learning people's names only adds to the stress. A new facial-recognition app could come to the rescue, but experts suggest people should be careful while using it.

    The app, called SocialRecall, connects names with faces through smartphone cameras and facial recognition, avoiding the need for formal introductions. "It breaks down these social barriers we all have when meeting somebody, "says Barry Sandrew, who created the app and tested it at an event attended by about 1, 000 people.

    After receiving an invitation to download SocialRecall from an event organizer, the user is asked to take two selfies and sign in through social media. At the event, the app is active within a previously set geographical area. When a user points his or her phone camera at an attendee's face, the app identifies the person, displays the person's name, and links to his or her social media information. To protect Privacy, it recognizes only those who have agreed to use. And the app's creators say it automatically removes users' data after an event.

    Ann Cavoukian, a expert who runs the Privacy by Design Center of Excellence praises the app's creators for these protective measures. She added, however, that when people choose to share their personal information with the app, they should know that "there may be unexpected results down the road with that information being used in another situation that might come back to bite you."

    The start-up project has developed the app for people who suffer from prosopagnosia, or "face blindness, "a condition that prevents people from recognizing people they have met. To use this app, a person first receives an image of someone's face, from either the smartphone's camera or a photograph, and then tags it with a name. When the camera spots or recognizes that same face in real life, the previously entered information is displayed. The collected data are stored only on a user's phone, according to the team behind the app.

    Once people thought that dinosaurs were brown or gray in colour, but the answer is to be found out. After examining the remains of a dinosaur, scientists say the colour of the feathers is bright. American and Chinese scientists rebuilt the feathers of a flightless(不能飞的)dinosaur

that lived about 150 million years ago, and researchers studied melanosomes(黑素体)in the feathers. The researchers compared them to the melanosomes that control the colour of feathers on modern birds. They were then able to make out the colours of dinosaurs' feathers. Richard Prum, a biologist(生物学家)at Yale University, said the dinosaur would be a beautiful creature if it were still alive. The discovery is useful to scientists in another way. It helps them better understand not only how dinosaurs looked but also how they lived in their daily life. Some researchers plan to use this way to study the colours of other feathered dinosaurs.