Đề Thi Thử THPT Quốc Gia 2019-2020 Lần 1 Môn Tiếng Anh Sở GD&ĐT Vĩnh Phúc

rapidly destroying the lonely resource we have by which all people can survive and prosper. Everywhere fertile soil is ____27____ built on or washed into the sea. Renewable resources are exploited so much that they will never be able to recover _____28_____. We discharge pollutants into the atmosphere without any thought of the consequences. As a result, the planet's ability to support people is being reduced at the very time when rising human numbers and consumption are ____29____ increasingly heavy demands on it.

The Singapore Science Centre is located on a six-hectare site in Jurong. At the centre, we can discover the wonders of science and technology in a fun way. Clap your hands and colorful bulbs will light up. Start a wheel spinning and it will set off a fan churning. It is a place to answer our curiosity and capture our imagination.

The centre features over four hundred exhibits covering topics like solar radiation, communication, electronics, mathematics, nuclear energy and evolution. It aims to arouse interest in science and technology among us and the general public. The centre is the first science one to be established in South East Asia. It was opened in 1977 and it now receives an average of one thousand, two hundred visitors a day. The exhibits can be found in four exhibition galleries. They are the Lobby, Physical Sciences, Life Sciences and Aviation. These exhibits are renewed annually so as to encourage visitors to make return visits to the centre.

Instead of the usual “Hands off” notices found in exhibition halls, visitors are invited to touch and feel the exhibits, push the buttons, turn the cranks or pedals. This is an interesting way to learn science even if you hate the subject. A Discovery Centre was built for children between the ages of three and twelve. This new exhibition gallery was completed in 1985. Lately this year a stone-age exhibit was built. It shows us about the animals and people which were extinct.

Smart cards and mobile phones are becoming an increasingly popular way to make all sorts of payments. Even now, in Japan thousands of transactions, from paying rail tickets to picking up the groceries, take place every day with customers passing their handsets across a small flat-screen device. And predictions in the world of finance reckon that payments using mobile phones will have risen to more than $50 billion in the very near future.

What's the appeal of e-cash? Compared to cheque or credit cards, it offers the speed of cash, but more so. It takes just one tenth of a second to complete most transactions and as no change is required, errors in counting are eliminated. Fraud and theft are also reduced and for the retailer, it reduces the cost of handling money. Sony's vision of having a chip embedded in computers, TVs and games consoles means that films, music and games can be paid for easily without having to input credit card details. And what about the future of the banks? Within their grip on the market, banks and creditcard firms want to be in a position to collect most of the fees from the users of mobile and contactless-payment systems. But the new system could prove to be a "disruptive technology" as far as the banks are concerned. If payments for a few coffees, a train ticket and a newspaper are made every day by a commuter with a mobile, this will not appear on their monthly credit card statements but on their mobile phone statements. And having spent fortunes on branding, credit-card companies and banks do not want to see other payment systems gaining popularity. It's too early to say whether banks will miss out and if so, by how much. However, quite a few American bankers are optimistic. They feel there is reason to be suspicious of those who predict that high-street banks may be a thing of the past. They point out that Internet banking did not result in the closure of their high-street branches as was predicted. On the contrary, more Americans than ever are using local branches. So, whether we'll become a totally cash-free society remains open to contention.