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TRS Grammar.doc
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Text I Scientific imagination.

1. Read the text and answer the following questions on the text:

1) What should scientific imagination be based upon?

2) Why is it difficult to imagine things in science?

3) What is scientific imagination according to the text?

4) When does scientific imagination stimulate research?

5) When is it useless or even harmful?

6) What do you think of the future of physics (chemistry, welding, etc.)?

7) Along what lines will it develop?

Our science makes terrific demands on the imagination. The degree of imagination that is required is much more extreme than that required for some of the ancient ideas. The modern ideas are much harder to imagine. We use a lot of tools, though. We use mathematical equations and rules, and make a lot of pictures.

The whole question of imagination in science is often misunderstood by people in other disciplines. They try to test our imagination in the following way. They say, "Here is a picture of some people in a situation. What do you imagine will happen next?" When we say, "I can’t imagine", they may think we have a weak imagination. They overlook the fact that whatever we are allowed to imagine in science must be consistent with everything else we know: that the electric fields and the waves we talk about are not just some happy thoughts which we are free to make as we wish, but ideas which must be consistent with all the laws of physics we know. We can't allow ourselves to seriously imagine things which are obviously in contradiction to the known laws of nature. And so our kind of imagination is quite a difficult thing.

One has to have the imagination to think of something that has never been heard of before, never been seen before. At the same time the thoughts are restricted in a strait jacket, so to speak, limited by the conditions that come from our knowledge of the way nature really is. The problem of creating something which is new, but which is consistent with everything which has been seen before, is one of extreme difficulty.

Text II National Research Council

1. Read the text and write an abstract of the text in 3 sentences.

Canada's premier science and technology research organization, National Research Council (NRC) is a leader in scientific and technical research, the diffusion of technology and the dissemination of scientific and technical information. The National Research Council's (NRC) research strengths are organized around key sectors such as biotechnology, information and communications technologies, measurement standards, molecular sciences, aerospace, manufacturing, construction, ocean engineering and others. NRC has moved boldly into emerging and strategically-important fields such as: Bioinformatics, Environmental and Sustainable Development Technologies, Fuel Cells. Genomics, Nanotechnology, Photonics.

The National Research Council plays a key role in Canada's goal to be an integral part of the international quest for discoveries at the atomic and molecular level. Nanotechnology – the research, development and commercialization of materials and devices on the scale of a billionth of a meter – is opening up vast new horizons in virtually all sectors of the economy, from materials sciences, to biomedicine, to communications and information technology. Research on nanotechnology is underway in several NRC institutes nation wide in the following sectors: nanotechnology, nanomaterials, nano-components, materials and devices catalysts, electrodes and membranes for fuel cell technology, polymer nanocomposites, nanoelectrodes and biosensors, performance of thin films and surfaces nanometrology.

Established in 2001 as a partnership between NRC and the University of Alberta, National Institute for Nanotecnology ( NINT) explores the integration at the molecular level of nature's most powerful nano-devices, such as proteins, lipids and other biological structures made from "soft" organic material, with crystalline semiconductors, metals and catalysts made from inorganic "hard" materials. In 2006, NINT moved to one of the world's most technologically advanced research facilities. At 15,000 square meters, it is able to accommodate 120 permanent staff, 45 guest workers and up to 275 graduate and post-doctoral researchers.

Today, much of the NRC's focus is on developing partnerships with private and public-sector technology companies, both nationally and internationally. The Council will be celebrating its centenary in 2016.

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