polunina_ln_bobrovskaia_im_priroda_nauka_tekhnologii

UNIT 11

TECHNOLOGIES

WARMING UP

5.There have been a lot of technological advances in the last twenty years. What technological advances do you consider the most important?

6.What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of technology?

7.What is the future of technology?

8.Would you like to have a personal robot at home that would work for you?

READING

The future of technology is in some ways easy to predict. Computers will become faster, materials will become stronger, and medicine will cure more diseases. Nanotechnology, which works on the nanometer scale of molecules and atoms, will be a large part of this future, enabling great improvements in all these technologies. Advanced nanotechnology will work with molecular precision, building a wide range of products that are impossible to make today.

Molecular manufacturing will bring both great opportunities and great potential for abuse. Advanced systems could be used to build large, complex products cleanly, efficiently, and at low cost. Building with atomic precision, desktop-scale (and larger) manufacturing systems could produce the products like the following, with consequences for many global problems. Inexpensive, efficient solar energy systems, a renewable, zero-carbon emission source, desktop computers with a billion processors, medical devices able to destroy viruses and cancer cells without damaging healthy cells, materials 100 times stronger than steel, superior military systems can be produced.

Faster, cheaper, cleaner production of superior products will also be disruptive. Costs, resource requirements and economic organization will be transformed. Advanced lethal and non-lethal weapons, deployed

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quickly and cheaply, could make the world a more dangerous place. The list of potential consequences is long, and as with all powerful technologies, the results will depend on the intent of the users.

Nanotechnology is expected to have a variety of economic, social, environmental, and national security impacts. In 2000 the National Science Foundation began working with the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) to address nanotechnology’s possible impacts and to propose ways of minimizing any undesirable consequences.

For example, nanotechnology breakthroughs may result in the loss of some jobs. Just as the development of the automobile destroyed the markets for the many products associated with horse-based transportation and led to the loss of many jobs, transformative products based on nanotechnology will inevitably lead to a similar result in some contemporary industries. Examples of at-risk occupations are jobs manufacturing conventional televisions. Nanotechnology-based fieldemission or liquid-crystal display (LCD), flat-panel TVs will likely make those jobs obsolete. These new types of televisions also promise to radically improve picture quality. In field-emission TVs, for example, each pixel (picture element) is composed of a sharp tip that emits electrons at very high currents across a small potential gap into a phosphor for red, green, or blue. The pixels are brighter, and unlike LCDs that lose clarity in sunlight, field-emission TVs retain clarity in bright sunlight. Field-emission TVs use much less energy than conventional TVs. They can be made very thin - less than a millimeter - although actual commercial devices will probably have a bit more heft for structural stability and ruggedness.

Other potential job losses could be those of supermarket cashiers if nanotechnology-based, flexible, thin-film computers housed in plastic product wrappings enable all-at-once checkout. Supermarket customers could simply wheel their carts through a detection gateway, similar in shape to the magnetic security systems found at the exits of stores today. As with any transformative technology, however, nanotechnology can also be expected to create many new jobs.

The societal impacts from nanotechnology-based advances in human health care may also be large. A ten-year increase in human life expectancy in the United States due to nanotechnology advances would have a significant impact on Social Security and retirement plans. As in

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the fields of biotechnology and genomics, certain development paths in nanotechnology are likely to have ethical implications.

Nanomaterials could also have adverse environmental impacts. Proper regulation should be in place to minimize any harmful effects. Because nanomaterials are invisible to the human eye, extra caution must be taken to avoid releasing these particles into the environment. Some preliminary studies point to possible carcinogenic (cancercausing) properties of carbon nanotubes. Although these studies need to be confirmed, many scientists consider it prudent now to take measures to prevent any potential hazard that these nanostructures may pose. However, the vast majority of nanotechnology-based products will contain nanomaterials bound together with other materials or components, rather than free-floating nano-sized objects, and will therefore not pose such a risk.

At the same time, nanotechnology breakthroughs are expected to have many environmental benefits such as reducing the emission of air pollutants and cleaning up oil spills.

(Adapted from Drexler, K.E. Revolutionizing the Future of Technology, Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia; Microsoft Encarta, 2008)

Expand your vocabulary

improvement – улучшение, усовершенствование precision – точность

consequence – (по-)следствие advanced – передовой device – устройство, прибор disruptive – разрушительный

to deploy – (воен.) развертывать(ся) impact – влияние, воздействие

breakthrough – открытие, крупное достижение inevitably – неизбежно, неминуемо

obsolete – вышедший из употребления heft – (амер.) вес

ruggedness – прочность hazard – шанс, риск

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POST-READING ACTIVITY

1. Discuss the following questions.

6.Using your own words, try to explain the following statement from the text: “Molecular manufacturing will bring both great opportunities and great potential for abuse”. Give reasons and specific examples to support your answer.

7.What impacts is nanotechnology expected to have?

8.May nanotechnology breakthroughs result in the loss of jobs? Supply some examples of at-risk occupations.

9.Discuss the societal impacts from nanotechnology-based advances in human health care.

10.Could nanomaterials have any adverse environmental impacts?

2. Here are some words in phonetics. Write the words.

3. Match the words with their meanings.

4. Find the word closest to the meaning of the italicized word from the reading.

1. Advanced nanotechnology will work with molecular precision, building a wide range of products that are impossible to make today.

2. Molecular manufacturing will bring both great opportunities and great potential for abuse.

3. For example, nanotechnology breakthroughs may result in the loss of some jobs.

4. These new types of televisions also promise to radically improve picture quality.

5. They can be made very thin - less than a millimeter - although actual commercial devices will probably have a bit more heft for structural stability and ruggedness.

5. The following words are verbs. Give the corresponding nouns.

6. Put questions to the words or word expressions in the bold type.

6.Advanced systems could be used to build large, complex products cleanly, efficiently, and at low cost.

7.In 2000 the National Science Foundation began working with the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI).

8.These new types of televisions also promise to radically improve picture quality.

9.Field-emission TVs use much less energy than conventional TVs.

10.Nanomaterials could also have adverse environmental impacts.

LANGUAGE IN USE

7. Complete the text with the appropriate tense form of the verbs in brackets.

What is Nanotechnology?

Answers (1) … (to differ) depending on who you ask, and their background. Broadly speaking however, nanotechnology (2) … (to be) the act of purposefully manipulating matter at the atomic scale, otherwise known as the “nanoscale.”

Coined as “nano-technology” in a 1974 paper by Norio Taniguchi at the University of Tokyo, and encompassing a multitude of rapidly emerging technologies, based upon the scaling down of existing technologies to the next level of precision and miniaturization. Taniguchi (3) … (to approach) nanotechnology from the ‘top-down’ standpoint, from the viewpoint of a precision engineer.

Foresight Nanotech Institute Founder K. Eric Drexler (4) … (to introduce) the term “nanotechnology” to the world in 1986, using it to describe a ‘bottom-up’ approach. Drexler approaches nanotechnology from the point-of-view of a physicist, and (5) … (to define) the term as “large-scale mechanosynthesis based on positional control of chemically reactive molecules.”

In the future, “nanotechnology” (6) … likely … (to include)

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building machines and mechanisms with nanoscale dimensions, referred to these days as Molecular Nanotechnology (MNT).

It (7) … (to use) uses a basic unit of measure called a “nanometer” (abbreviated nm). Derived from the Greek word for midget, “nano” is a metric prefix and (8) … (to indicate) a billionth part.

There (9) … (to be) one billion nms to a meter. Each nm (10) … (to be) only three to five atoms wide. They're small. Really small. ~40,000 times smaller than the width of an average human hair.

(From Nanotechnology Basics, www.nanotech-now.com)

8. Arrange the parts of the text in logical order so that the text was complete.

Nanotechnology

(1) The nanoscale is unique because nothing solid can be made any smaller. It is also unique because many of the mechanisms of the biological and physical world operate on length scales from 0.1 to 100 nm. At these dimensions materials exhibit different physical properties; thus scientists expect that many novel effects at the nanoscale will be discovered and used for breakthrough technologies.

(2)Nanotechnology is in its infancy, and no one can predict with accuracy what will result from the full flowering of the field over the next several decades. Many scientists believe it can be said with confidence, however, that nanotechnology will have a major impact on medicine and health care; energy production and conservation; environmental cleanup and protection; electronics, computers, and sensors; and world security and defense.

(3)Nanotechnology, the creation and use of materials or devices at extremely small scales. These materials or devices fall in the range of 1 to 100 nanometers (nm). One nm is equal to one-billionth of a meter (.000000001 m), which is about 50,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Scientists refer to the dimensional range of 1 to 100 nm as the nanoscale, and materials at this scale are called nanocrystals or nanomaterials.

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(4) A number of important breakthroughs have already occurred in nanotechnology. These developments are found in products used throughout the world. Some examples are catalytic converters in automobiles that help remove air pollutants, devices in computers that read from and write to the hard disk, certain sunscreens and cosmetics that transparently block harmful radiation from the Sun, and special coatings for sports clothes and gear that help improve the gear and possibly enhance the athlete’s performance. Still, many scientists, engineers, and technologists believe they have only scratched the surface of nanotechnology’s potential.

(Adapted from Microsoft Encarta, 2008)

SPEAKING

9. Answer the following question. What other products could be improved? Give your own examples.

What would it mean if we could inexpensively make things with every atom in the right place? We could continue the revolution in computer hardware; we could inexpensively make very strong and very light materials; we could make surgical instruments of such precision and deftness that they could operate on the cells and even molecules from which we are made. The list goes on - almost any manufactured product could be improved.

10. Do you agree with the following? Why is positional control considered to be one of the basic principles of nanotechnology? Give reasons to support your answer.

At the molecular scale, the idea of holding and positioning molecules is new and almost shocking. However, as long ago as 1959 Richard Feynman, the Nobel prize winning physicist, said that nothing in the laws of physics prevented us from arranging atoms the way we want: “...it is something, in principle, that can be done; but in practice, it has not been done because we are too big.”

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WRITING

11. Study the following information from the text (“Size”) and write out all the numerals written in numbers according to the example. Example: 1 – one.

Let’s start BIG, with something you can get your hands on (so to speak). A meter is about the distance from the tip of your nose to the end of your hand (1 meter = 3.28 feet). One thousandth of that is a millimeter.

Now take one thousandth of that, and you have a micron: a thousandth of a thousandth of a meter. Put another way: a micron is a millionth of a meter, which is the scale that is relevant to – for instance

– building computers, computer memory, and logic devices.

Now, let’s go smaller, to the nanometer. A nanometer is one thousandth of a micron, and a thousandth of a millionth of a meter (a billionth of a meter). Imagine: one billion nanometers in a meter.

Another perspective: a nanometer is about the width of 6 bonded carbon atoms, and approximately 40,000 are needed to equal the width of an average human hair.

Another way to visualize a nanometer: 1 inch = 25,400,000 nanometers

Red blood cells are ~7,000 nm in diameter, and ~2000 nm in height White blood cells are ~10,000 nm in diameter

A virus is ~100 nm

Nanoparticles range from 1 to 100 nm Fullerenes (C60 / Buckyballs) are 1 nm Quantum Dots (of CdSe) are 8 nm Dendrimers are ~10 nm

DNA (width) is 2 nm

Proteins range from 5 to 50 nm Viruses range from 75 to 100 nm Bacteria range from 1,000 to 10,000 nm

(From Nanotechnology Basics, www.nanotech-now.com)

12. Rate how important each of the following impacts of nanotechnology is to you personally, using a one-to-five scale. Circle

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the numbers in the table below. Compare your results with a partner’s.

less important >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> → important

13. Write a short report on one of the major impacts of technology on the modern society.

KEYWORDS

accuracy, advanced, advantages/disadvantages, arrange, atom, breakthrough, building, consequences, control, creation, deftness, desktop-scale, development, device, dimension, engineering, impact, implications, improvement, manufacturing, molecule, nanocrystals, nanomaterials, nanometer (nm), nanometer scale, nanotechnology, opportunity, particle, position, potential, precision, product, production, property, technique, technological advances, technology, tool

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Tools and techniques

(1) There are several important modern developments. The atomic force microscope (AFM) and the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) are two early versions of scanning probes that launched nanotechnology. There are other types of scanning probe microscopy, all flowing from the ideas of the scanning confocal microscope

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