Word: tolls
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WHAT'S THAT? CARS ZIPPING PAST TOLLBOOTHS ON the New York State Thruway without stopping? Ordinarily such apparent lawlessness would be followed by flashing red lights in the rearview mirror. Not this time. New York is the latest state to test an electronic toll-collection system that lets motorists pay up without having to stop and fumble for cash or tokens. If adopted, the automated system promises to save time for motorists, improve safety at toll plazas, cut pollution and possibly reduce tolls. Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas currently use automated toll collection. New York is jointly testing two technologies...
...both cases, passing cars, the time of day and toll amount are identified electronically and registered in a central computer that automatically charges a prepaid account. The systems can process up to 1,250 vehicles an hour, compared to 350 an hour for conventional tollbooths. And the machines can handle a car traveling as fast as 100 m.p.h. -- though that is likely to draw some flashing lights...
...world's poorer countries, the fight against infectious disease is already a disaster. Malaria, tuberculosis, cholera and dysentery may claim more than 10 million lives each year. While inadequate medical care and sanitation are mainly responsible for the death toll, increasing microbial resistance to drugs is making a bad situation worse. The antimalarial drug chloroquine is no longer broadly effective, and even the newest substitute, mefloquine, is encountering resistance from some strains of the malarial parasite...
...helped build an audience for the ) future." Barry Gould, publisher of Pay-Per-View Update, predicts that the next Olympics will have a far more sophisticated array of viewing options. "I think the technology will be in place to offer the programming on a timed basis, like a toll call. You turn on your television set, and then a meter starts running." And if Letterman is still around, he'll have a field...
...main limitation on such systems is that they can deal with only relatively small vocabularies -- usually a few dozen words at a time. But that's enough to take orders at fast-food restaurants or to handle toll-free calls in which a customer must choose from a fixed list of catalog items, airline flights or bank transfer options. More than $150 million worth of voice-recognition systems were sold in the U.S. last year, according to Voice Information Associates, a research firm in Lexington, Mass., and the market is growing more than 40% a year. The big breakthrough will...