Hundreds of students from around the world gathered in New York City last week for the Microsoft Imagine Cup finals. They came to present their ideas for using technology to solve world problems.
Microsoft education director Suzi Levine says the nine-year-old program began mainly as a competition to create technology.
SUZI LEVINE: "When we realized that students really actually want to have a purpose for what they're creating, we introduced the idea of inspiring them with the UN Millennium Development Goals and suggesting that they use those for their muse(灵感). "This past year we also rolled out something called the Imagine Cup Solve This library（创新杯求解计划知识库）, where IGOs, NGOs and nonprofits can submit some of the technical challenges that they would like students to consider for their solutions."
Microsoft says over 350，000 high school and college students registered for this year's competition. Judges chose more than four hundred of them to attend the finals.
SUZI LEVINE: "One from Thailand was called NewKrean, where they created a Windows Phone 7 application that allows you to broadcast your location to your social network of friends so that you can be more easily rescued." They named their application Terra.
Suzi Levine says there were also ideas from Egypt inspired by the revolution that overthrew president Hosni Mubarak in February.
SUZI LEVINE: "One was to use Bluetooth as sort of a Twitter equivalent so that if the government shuts down the Internet, you actually can still have a massive social distribution."
Students competed in nine categories. For example, in software design the top prize of twenty-five thousand dollars went to Team Hermes from Ireland. The students developed a device for cars to collect information on road conditions, driving behavior and traffic incidents.
A team from Taiwan's National Tsing Hua University won first place in the embedded（内嵌的） development category. They developed a network of wireless devices to help plot the safest escape routes during a fire.
Next year's awards ceremony will take place in Australia. Registration for Imagine Cup twenty-twelve opened Friday. Also, Microsoft announced plans for a three million dollar program to help Imagine Cup winners further develop their projects.
小题1:Which of the following is true ?
A．The program is sponsored by Microsoft.
B．Next year, the awards ceremony will be held in New York City.
C．Any high school or college student can attend the finals.
D．The initial purpose of the program is to solve world problems using technology.小题2: What can we infer from the third paragraph?
A．The UN offers great help to the program.
B．Microsoft sets up a library for the students who want to achieve their goals.
C．IGOs, NGOs and nonprofits also provide help for the students.
D．Microsoft takes effective measures to inspire the students.小题3:What does the underlined word “overthrew ” in Paragraph 6 mean ?
A． Abandoned
B．Supported
C．Drove away
D．Overturned小题4:What can we know from Paragraph 7?
A．They want to replace Bluetooth with Twitter.
B．They want to combine Bluetooth with Twitter.
C．They want to replace Twitter with Bluetooth.
D．Twitter can still be used without the Internet.
