. Last month ,studenrs from 103 universities in 88 coontries took part in international computer programming contest. The Battle of the Brain took place in Harbin, China. Three---person terms from each school had hours to solve eleven real world problems. Jerry Cain coached the team from Standford University in Palo Alto,California. He says the problems involved, among other things, paperweights, robots, castles and lakes. JERRY CAIN: “One of the programming problems was trying to figure out how to break an chocolate bar into a certain number of pieces of a certain number of sizes and to do it as quickly as possible. And that’s probably the simplest of all them.” The students first listed the problems in order of difficulty and then they wrote the needed software systems. They designed ways to test their solutions. And they wrote the needed software systems , Even the winning team from Shanghai Jiaotong University in China was not able to solved all the problems within the given time limit. Stanford’s team solved five problems and finished in fourteenth place. Standford was one of twenty---one America universities that took part in the conest this year. The conest began in 1970 at Texa A and M University. The first final competition was held in 1977 at the Association for Computer Machinery Computer Science Conference. It developed and grew as more and more schools took part in local and area contests. Contest spokenman Doug Heintzman says the world champions receive prizes and scholarships. They are also guaranteed an offer of employment or practice period with IBM. “We’re had past world champions that IBM has given a post to in our Zurich research Iaboratory and they are now working on some of the Ieading edge materials in science and physics. So this competition is an opportunity to be recognized and to be recruited by some of the top  technology and firms around the world “ 68. It can be inferred that__________. A .the contest is increasingly unpopular with the universities B..the contest this year was not easy for the participants C. most of the American universities took part in this contest D. whether to win or not has nothing to do with the participants’ future 69. Which of the following is true about contest? A. Every team consisted of five members. B. The participants from Shanghai Jiaotong University in China performed best. C. Except American, there are sixty---seven countries taking part. D. Finally Stanford’s team came fourth in the contest 70. The underline word in the text can be best replaced by_________. A. promoted    B. fired   C. given a salary increase  D.employ 71. The purpose of this passage is to__________. A.provide some information on how to enter for the contest B.call on university students to take part in the contest C.introduce the international computer programming contest. held this year D.inform the readers of the result of the contest