Exploration and Settlement

The Pacific islands of the south and west were populated by Asian migrants who crossed long distances of open sea in primitive boats. European travelers including Marco Polo had reported an ocean off Asia, and in the late 15th cent. trading ships had sailed around Africa to the western rim of the Pacific, but recognition of the Pacific as distinct from the Atlantic Ocean dates from Balboa's sighting of its eastern shore (1513). Magellan's crossing of the Philippines (1520-21) initiated a series of explorations, including those of Drake, Tasman, Dampier, Cook, Bering, and Vancouver, which by the end of the 18th cent. had disclosed the coastline and the major islands. In the 16th cent. supremacy in the Pacific area was shared by Spain and Portugal. The English and the Dutch established footholds in the 17th cent., France and Russia in the 18th, and Germany, Japan, and the United States in the 19th. Sealers and whalers sailed the Pacific from the late 18th cent., and Yankee clippers entered Pacific trade in the early 19th cent.

(Source: http://www. popsci.com)

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TEXT 5. IT'S JUST NOT NATURAL

Genetic modification can give us easy-peel oranges, cancer-fighting strawberries and blue potatoes. But if you don't want your food fiddled about with, can you avoid it?

When you bite into an apple, do you ever wish it was a pineapple instead? Well, now you can have the best of both worlds. Australian scientists have created a fruit with the convenience of an apple and the taste of a pineapple. The aim of the Snack Apple is to persuade children to eat more fresh fruit and vegetables and it's just one illustration of how far science is prepared to go in pursuit of this worthy ideal.

First on the scene was frozen-food company Iceland which came up with chocolate-flavoured carrots, made by freezing the vegetables with granules of chocolate sauce. And plant breeders have a range of mini-vegetables such as carrots, broccoli and cauliflower, which they hope will make them popular snack foods with youngsters and a healthier alternative to crisps.

But science can now do more than this and create new types of foods by means of genetic manipulation. A gene may be transferred from a different species in order to increase the nutritional value of the plant, or to make it more resist­ant to pests and disease. Incredibly, scientists have used a gene from a fish to give antifreeze properties to tomatoes and so increase their growing season.

Despite the benefits, however, not everyone is in favour of genetically modified (GM) foods or "Frankenfoods", as the media calls them. Because there are no long-term studies to prove the safety of GM foods, their long-term effect on human health is unknown. There is also a great deal of concern for the environment, with fears that GM crops might spread their genes by pollination to other plants grow­ing nearby. This kind of genetic pollution would be very difficult to clean up.

There is particular controversy surrounding soya, a com­mon ingredient in processed foodstuffs. One of the problems is that imports of soya from the US contain both GM and non-GM beans because it's not thought practical to separate them at their source. It is therefore difficult to avoid GM soya because we don't know which products contain it and which don't. A large number of consumers object to this and have called for clearer labeling of GM products.

But should we reject all GM foods? There are plans to introduce more appealing products: peas which contain more vitamin C and broccoli, strawberries and tomatoes with more of the anti-cancer compound, sulphophane. We could also have blue potatoes. The genes that make one natural blue dye have recently been transferred from bacteria to flowers, so why not to food plants? Scientists are already working on blue roses using this technology. And if your main objection to fruit is the unpeelable orange, there are also plants for an orange that will practically peel itself.

(Source: http://www. popsci.com)

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TEXT 6. ENGLISH GEO

When we speak of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland we actually speak about four countries united into one state. So Great Britain proper comprises: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Each of these countries has its own language, its capital, its government. The United Kingdom of Great Britain is situated on the British Isles lying to the north-west of the continent of Europe. The British Isles consists of two main Islands, Great Britain and Ireland, and over five hundred small Islands.

Britain is comparatively small, but thee is hardly a county in the world where such a variety of scenery can be found in so small a compass. There are wild desolate mountains in the northern Highlands of Scotland, flat tulip fields round the Fens, that would make you think you were in Holland, within a few miles of Manchester and Sheffield you can be in glorious heather-covered moors.

You can notice on the map how deeply indented the coastline is. This indentation gives a good supply of splendid harbours for ships; and you can note too, that owning to the shape of the country there is no point in it that is more than seventy miles from the sea.

The surface of England and Ireland is rather flat while the highland area comprises Scotland and most of Wales. The Cheviot Hills running from east to west, separate England from Scotland. The Pennine Chain extends southward from the Cheviot Hills into the Midlands.

There are many rivers in Great Britain but they are not long. The longest river is the Severn, flowing south-west into the Irish Sea. The busiest and the most important river is the Thames. The chief river in Scotland is the Clyde. Many of the English and Scottish rivers are joined by canals, so that it’s possible to travel by water from one end of Great Britain to the other. The rivers of Britain are of no great value as water-ways, few of them are navigable except near the mouth for anything but the smaller vessels.

The UK has many beautiful lakes in Scotland and north-west England. Many Scottish valleys between the hills are filled with lakes, called lochs. The best known is Loch Ness where as some people think a large monster lives. The Lake District in northern England with its lakes, mountains and valleys is a favourite holiday resort.

There are no great forests in Great Britain now. Historically, the most famous forest is Sherwood Forest, the home of Robin Hood. It is to the north of London.

The seas round the British Isles are shallow. The North Sea is nowhere more than 600 feet deep, so that if St. Paul’s Cathedral were put down in any part of it some of the cathedral would still be above water.

The Atlantic Ocean and the warm waters of Gulf Stream influence the climate of Great Britain, making it temperate and mild. Rains all year round and thick fogs in autumn or in winter are the most typical features of the climate in Great Britain.

(Source: http://www. popsci.com)

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TEXT 7. EASTER ISLAND

One of the world's most famous yet least visited archaeological sites, Easter Island is a small, hilly, now treeless island of volcanic origin. Located in the Pacific Ocean at 27 degrees south of the equator, some 2200 miles (3600 kilometers) off the coast of Chile, the island is 63 square miles in size and has extinct volcanoes rising to 1500 feet. In the early 1950s, the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl (famous for his Kon-Tiki raft voyages across the oceans) popularized the idea that the island, called Rapa Nui by the natives, had been originally settled by advanced societies of Indians from the coast of South America. Extensive archaeological, ethnographic, and linguistic research has conclusively shown this hypothesis to be inaccurate. It is now recognized that the original inhabitants of Easter Island are of Polynesian stock (DNA extracts from skeletons have recently confirmed this), that they most probably came from the Marquesas or Society islands, and that they arrived around AD 380 to 400. At the time of their arrival, the island was entirely covered in thick forests and was teeming with land birds. It was the richest seabird breeding site in Polynesia and probably in the whole Pacific. Within a matter of centuries this profusion of wildlife was entirely destroyed by the islanders' way of life. The reasons are today eminently clear.

It is estimated that the original colonists, who were quite probably lost at sea, arrived in just a few canoes and numbered fewer than 100. Because of the plentiful bird, fish, and plant food sources, the population grew rapidly and gave rise to a rich religious and artistic culture. However, the resource needs of the growing population inevitably outpaced the island's capacity to renew itself ecologically and the ensuing environmental degradation triggered a social and cultural collapse. Pollen records show that the destruction of the forests was well under way by the year 800, just a few centuries after the start of the first settlement. These forest trees were extremely important to the islanders, being used for fuel, for the construction of houses and ocean-fishing canoes, and as rollers for transporting the great stone statues. By the 1400s the forests had been entirely cut, the rich ground cover had eroded away, the springs had dried up, and the vast flocks of birds coming to roost on the island had long since disappeared. With no logs to build canoes for offshore fishing, with depleted bird and wildlife food sources, and with declining crop yields because of the erosion of good soil, the nutritional intake of the people plummeted. First famine, then cannibalism, set in. Because the island could no longer feed the chiefs, bureaucrats, and priests who kept the complex society running, chaos resulted, and by 1700 the population dropped to between one-quarter and one-tenth of its former number. During the mid 1700s rival clans began to topple each other's stone statues. By 1864 the last of the statues was thrown down and desecrated.

Easter Island was unknown to Europeans until 1722 when it was accidentally sailed upon by the Dutch admiral, Jacob Roggeveen, on Easter Day. The barren lands and social strife that Roggeveen first recorded make it difficult to imagine the extraordinary culture that had flowered on the island during the previous 1400 years. That culture's most famous features are its enormous stone statues called moai, more than 200 of which once stood upon massive stone platforms called ahu. At least 700 more moai statues, in various stages of completion, are scattered around the island, either in quarries or along ancient roads between the quarries and the coastal areas where the statues were most often erected. Nearly all the moai are carved from the tough stone of the Rano Raraku volcano. The average statue is 14 feet, 6 inches tall and weighs 14 tons; some moai were as large as 33 feet and weighed more than 80 tons (one statue only partially quarried from the bedrock was 65 feet long and would have weighed an estimated 270 tons). The moai and ahu were in use as early as AD 700, but the great majority were carved and erected between AD 1000 and 1500. Depending upon the size of the statue, between 50 and 150 people were needed to drag it across the countryside on sleds and rollers made from the island's trees. While many of the statues were toppled during the clan wars of the 1600 and 1700s, other statues fell over and cracked while being transported across the island. Recent research has shown that certain statue sites, particularly the most important ones with great ahu platforms, were periodically ritually dismantled and reassembled with ever larger statues. A small number of the moai were once capped with "crowns" or "hats" of red volcanic stone. The meaning and purpose of these capstones is not known, but archaeologists have suggested that the moai thus marked were of pan-island ritual significance or perhaps sacred to a particular clan.

Scholars are unable to definitively explain the function and use of the moai statues. It is assumed that their carving and erection derived from an idea rooted in similar practices found elsewhere in Polynesia but which evolved in a unique way on Easter Island. Archaeological and iconographic analysis indicates that the statue cult was based on an ideology of male, lineage-based authority incorporating anthropomorphic symbolism. The statues were thus symbols of authority and power, both religious and political. But they were not only symbols. To the people who erected and used them, they were actual repositories of sacred spirit. All carved objects in ancient Polynesian religions were, when properly fashioned and ritually prepared, believed to be charged by a magical spiritual essence called mana. The ahu platforms of Easter Island were the sanctuaries of the people of Rapa Nui, and the moai statues were the ritually charged sacred objects of those sanctuaries. While the statues have been toppled and re-erected over the centuries, and while great social and environmental calamity afflicted the island, the mana or spiritual presence of Rapa Nui is still strongly present at the ahu sites and atop the sacred volcanoes.

(Source: http://www. popsci.com)

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TEXT 8. ECOLOGY

We live on a very beautiful planet – on the Earth. Our planet has very rich resources: the bright blue of the sky, fresh, crystal-clear mountain lake water, the rich green of the mountains slopes, wild flower, picturesque views – all these sceneries of nature fill us with admiration.

That’s why those who live in cities prefer spending their days off and their holidays far from the noise of the city, to be closer to nature. Perhaps they like to breathe fresh air or to swim in clear water because the ecology is not so poor as in the cities.

Ecology is the study of the ways in which organisms (plants and animals) depend upon each other and upon their surroundings. Each organism requires conditions in order to be able to live and breed. These conditions are its environment by changing the ecological conditions.

So, pollution is one of the most burning problems of nowadays. Now millions of chimneys, cars, buses, trucks all over the world exhaust fumes and harmful substances into the atmosphere. These poisoned substances pollute everything: air, land, water, birds and animals people. So, it is usually hard to breathe in the large cities where there are lots plants. Everything there is covered with soot and dirt. All these affect harmfully.

Water pollution is very serious, too. Ugly rivers of dirty water polluted with factory waste, poisoned fish are all-round us. And polluted air and poisoned water lead to the end of the civilization. So, nowadays a lot of dead lands and lifeless areas have appeared. Because our actions and dealings can turn the land to a desert.

So, we see that our environment offers an abundance of subject matter for discussion. The problems and prospects of the blue planet interest not only scientist and futurologists, but also politicians, industry, the public – and above all, young people! There is hardly a young person who is not conserved with the preservation of our natural habitat. To recognize environmental problems and master them, to reduce and avoid environmental pollution, to discover and develop ecologically sound technologies – there are the essential building blocks for our future.

Whether scientist or politicians, bankers or student, whether Greek, Norwegian, Hungarian or Finn … all are encouraged to make a contribution towards protecting the environment. Dedication and the courage to change one’s way of thinking are called for.

We are to stop pollution. So, we can grow plants and trees, to purify waste, to start urgent campaigns in order to preserve environment For example, in 1989 in Australia, Sydney. In a year the same kind of action was held all over Australia and it was called “Clean up Australia” the following years 110 countries hold the similar actions within the ecological program of the UNO.

Nowadays there are many different pressure and interests groups in British, which try to find solutions to the problems of pollution at the national and international level. So they are groups of people with a common interest in trying to draw the public attention to environment problems, to influence the government decisions.

Greenpeace is a very famous pressure group. It started functioning in 1971. Its headquarters are at Amsterdam, but it operates in 25 countries worldwide. The aim of Greenpeace is to protect wildlife of toxic wastes, nuclear tests.

“Friends of the Earth” (FoE) is one of the British pressure groups with an international reputation. Its general aim is to conserve the planet’s resources and reduce pollution. FoE was established in 1971 and now it operated in 44 countries worldwide. It campaigns among other things, for recycling and renewable energy, and the destruction of wildlife and habitat. The main campaigning issues of the FoE are:

• The protection of all animals and plants in danger of extinction.

• An end to the destruction of wildlife and habitats.

• A program of energy conservation measures, etc.

So, a number of campaigns resulted in:

• The ban or other hunting in England and Wales

• And indefinite delay in the construction of the Commercial East Breeder Reactor, etc. But not only great groups can influence the problem of pollution. So, different people have their own opinions on this problem:

• The continued pollution of the earth, if unchecked, well eventually destroys the fitness of

this planet as a place for human life. (B. Commoner).

• The Earth has enough for every man’s need, but not for man’s greed. (Ganlui).

And I agree with them because it is really so. And terrible examples prove them.

The Baltic Sea is a special case. Because it is such a small sea and it becomes dirty very easily. Its waster changes slowly through the shallow straits. As many as 250 rivers run into the Baltic. There are hundreds of factories in these rivers and millions of people live along them. Quite a lot of big cities lie on its coast. All these combined with the active navigation of the sea naturally affects the state of the sea water and the shore line flora and fauna. People suffer from the waster pollution; cancer deaths increase people’s concern.

And there is no escape from this ecological crisis without organizing a single body dealing with the environmental problems, developing and carrying out a nationwide program of environmental protection and co-operating with international schemes.