Reading and speaking

I. Read the text below. Are Viruses Alive?

This is a very interesting question which has instigated many heated debates in scientific circles. Why are viruses such a big deal? Well, viruses are interesting because they are neither inanimate nor living; a virus is “midway between brute matter and living organism” (Wolfhard Weidel). Because of this ambiguity, it is difficult to define and classify viruses. Although viruses are not composed of cells, they possess all the other characteristics of living things. They replicate, require energy (from living cells), adapt, respond to stimuli and display heredity. Because viruses satisfy six of the seven characteristics of living things, they are on the verge of being classified as a living organism. Perhaps the haziness surrounding our very definition of “living” is at fault for not including viruses as a form of life. As scientist Wolfhard Weidel once said, “nothing brings us so close to the riddle of Life – and to its solution – as viruses”.

1. What is the main idea of the text?

2. Give details of problem using phrases: without going into detail, I’d like to note, I want to point out.

II. Take part in the discussion of the virus role for the disease origin. Listening and Speaking

List of words:

apparently – очевидно

defy – игнорировать

attempt – попытка

fuse – растворять(ся)

argue – обсуждать

claim – обвинять, возражать

repetitive - повторный

entire – полный, совершенный, целый

flow - зависеть, происходить из-за чего-то

exactly – точно

script - почерк, шрифт

precise – точный

correspondence – соответствие, соотношение

thrust – выдвигать

Discuss the questions with another students. Then share the ideas with the class.

In your opinion how important is it for the scientist to take into account the results of researches in biology and physics?

1. Listen and answer the questions: Text 3 What is life? The physicist who sparked a revolution in biology

Erwin Schrödinger introduced some of the most important concepts in biology, including the idea of a ‘code’ of life

Seventy years ago, on 5 February 1943, the Nobel prizewinning quantum physicist Erwin Schrodinger gave the first of three public lectures at Trinity College, Dublin. His topic was an unusual one for a physicist: “What is Life?” The following year the lectures were turned into a book of the same name.

One of Schrodinger’s key aims was to explain how living things apparently defy the second law of thermodynamics – according to which all order in the universe tends to break down. It was this that led my colleague Professor Brian Cox to use Schrodinger as the starting point of his BBC series Wonders of Life, leading to What is Life? shooting up the Amazon sales chart.

But Schrodinger’s book contains something far more important than his attempt to fuse physics and biology. In that lecture 70 years ago, he introduced some of the most important concepts in the history of biology, which continue to frame how we see life.

At a time when it was thought that proteins, not DNA, were the hereditary material, Schrodinger argued the genetic material had to have a non-repetitive molecular structure. He claimed that this structure flowed from the fact that the hereditary molecule must contain a “code-script” that determined “the entire pattern of the individual’s future development and of its functioning in the mature state”.

This was the first clear suggestion that genes contained some kind of “code”, although Schrodinger’s meaning was apparently not exactly the same as ours – he did not suggest there was a correspondence between each part of the “code-script” and precise biochemical reactions.

Historians and scientists have argued over the influence of Schrodinger’s lectures and the book that followed, but there can be no doubt that some of the key figures of 20^th century science – James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and others – were inspired to turn to biology by the general thrust of Schrodinger’s work.

1. When did Erwin Schrödinger give the first lecture? 2. What was his topic? 3. What was the key aim? 4. What did his concept contain? 5. What had the genetic material to have? Do gene contain a “code-script.” 6. What slit field does it determined?

2. Give a brief summary of the text using the following patterns; the article deals with, the article says that, the text stresses, it goes on to say, in conclusion the text says that…