Text b How to live with stress

Stress has become an epidemic according to Dr. Paul J. Rosh, professor of medicine psychiatry at New York Medical College and president of the American Institute of Stress. The frantic pace of modern life, he reports, has brought us to the point where:

90% of all adult Americans experience high levels of stress once or twice a week and one-fourth of us nearly every day.

75% to 90% of visits to physicians are for stress-related illnesses and complaints.

Stress is known to be a major contributor to the leading causes of death in the U.S.: heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, accidental injuries and suicide. Stress often underlies obesity, alcoholism and drug abuse. And, of course, stress is a major factor in the painful headaches and backaches that afflict millions.

Stress in Everyday Life

We're assaulted by stressful situations every moment of waking lives. Meeting deadlines, making decisions, traffic jams, marriage, and divorce, getting a job, losing a job, any change in one’s life situation - pleasant or unpleasant - can lead to a buildup of stress.

Scientists are learning that it’s not the amount of stress that leads to a sense of helplessness, anxiety or even full-blown depression. Rather, it is one’s inability to control stressful situations that causes the major damage. "The key to avoiding the harmful effects of stress," says Rosch, "is learning how to distinguish between stress that you can’t avoid and stress that you can do something about, so that you can use your time and energy effectively".

However, the damage is not only psychological. Stress manifests itself with a host of physical signs said symptoms, prominent among them: headache, neck pain, backache and muscle spasms; heartburn, stomach pain and nausea; unexplained allergy attacks, and susceptibility to colds and infections. Before attributing symptoms to stress, you should, of course, consult your physician. They may signal other underlying diseases. But if your headache or stomach pains are stress related, you can take an effective pain reliever. Exercise or an appropriate muscle relaxant may also help.

Keep in mind that stress has its good as well as its bad side. The famed father of stress research, Dr. Hans Selye, called it "the spice of life". Falling in love, riding an ocean wave, seeing a great opera - all mobilize the same stress-inducing hormones as does great danger. Stanford University neurochemistry Dr. Jack Barchas observes: "A certain amount of stress is positive and pleasurable. It leads to productivity in the human race".

In other words, stress enables you to meet deadlines, jump out of the way of a speeding car and handle life's crises.

Still, countless millions of Americans struggle every day to avert the ill effects of stress.

Handling Stress at Work

"It's the bossed, not the bosses, who experience the most stress on the job".

That's just one of the startling findings reported by Drs. Robert Karasek and Tores Theorell in a just—published book, "Healthy Work". This is not to say that corporate executives and managers necessarily suffer less stress than assembly-line workers or secretaries; it's just that people whose work allows them latitude for decision making are able to handle stress better.

Actually, work stress may be America’s number one health problem, according to Dr. Paul J. Rosch. A recent survey reveals that more than three-fourths of all workers say that their jobs cause significant stress. 60% to 80% of all industrial accidents are related to stress. The resulting cost to employers, because of absenteeism, lost productivity, medical bills and workers' compensation, totals more than $200 billion a year.

Researchers are turning up some surprising findings about who suffers the most from stress. Contrary to popular belief, the hard-driving Type A personality often handles stress very well as long as he or she is in control. However, one subgroup of Type A’s — people who are unable to express their anger — are highly vulnerable to illness due to stress, Dr. Rosch points out.

According to Drs. Karasek and Theorell, people in high—strain jobs, under heavy pressure with little or no decision-making possibility, suffer the ill effects of stress the most. This describes people at many levels, from middle managers to telephone operators. One recent study showed that such workers have three times as many heart attacks as those whose jobs give them a sense of control.

Nonetheless, our high-tech, success-driven society increasingly subjects people who work — with their heads, or their hands or both - to stressful demands. What's worse, emphasizes Rosch, is that people are losing the human contact so essential to avoiding the harmful effects of stress. Too often they spend significantly more time communicating with each other by computer or fax machines rather than in person.

Rosch states: "The result is a working population increasingly frustrated by failure to achieve unrealistic goals. A mounting number of work-stress victims suffer from loss of social contact, low self-esteem, fatigue, anxiety, depression - and job burnout".

SPEAKING PRACTICE

Express your opinion on how to handle stress choosing from the following suggestions. Begin with: "I think the best way to avoid/to handle stress is not to is to..."

1. Don't waste your time and energy trying to influence things you can't possibly change. Stress is unavoidable consequent of life.

2. Do remember, however, that many stressful situations are under your control.

3. Don't allow anyone to put you in an inferior position without your consent. If you have been treated unfairly, learn to act assertively but reasonably. Persist in repeating a useful proposal.

4. Do learn to say "no" when a request is unreasonable or can't be accomplished in the allotted time.

5. Do manage your time properly. Establish appropriate goals and schedule your day. Set aside personal time for yourself on a regular basis - read, reflect, listen to music or just relax.

6. Strengthen relationships with others. Get involved in group activities or hobbies that provide pride of accomplishment.

STUDY NOTES

The words you encounter in Science English are sometimes long and complex. Once you see how ROOTS, PREFIXES and SUFFIXES work in the words you already know, you can discover the meaning of new words based on these forms. Many scientific words are based on Latin and Greek roots.

Greek roots

bios + logos	life + word	biology
hypo + tithenai	under + to place	hypothesis
genos	race/ sex/ kind	genetics
psyche + soma	soul + body	psychosomatic
bio + graph	life + write	biography

Prefixes and suffixes are also helpful in understanding the meanings of a great many words.

Prefix	Meaning	Example
uni-	one	unify
tetra-	four	tetrachloride
poly-	many	polygamy
micro-	small	microscope
anti-	against	antibiotic
pre-	before	prehistory
re-	back, again	review
inter-	between	international
mis-	wrong, ill	misunderstand
mal-	bad, wrong, ill	malnutrition
Suffix	Meaning	Example
-ic	pertaining to	democratic
-ful	abounding in	colorful
-ive	qualityof	creative, adaptive
-less	lack of, free of	helpless, colorless
-ance, -ence	quality or state of	competence, insurance
-or	one who performs an action	doctor
-hood	state or condition of	childhood
-ment	act or condition of	environment

REMEMBER: learning related words according to a system is far more effective than memorizing words at random.

PRACTICE IN WORD-FORMATION AND VOCABULARY

Exercise 1.Match the following adjectives with the negative prefixes UN, NON, IN. The first has been done for you.

-in organic (substance)

-animate (matter)

-living (body)

-natural (behavior)

-separable (union)

-mistakable (signs of life)

Exercise 2.Point out which of the words with the same root belong to N (noun), V (verb), Adj (adjective), Adv (adverb) classes. Be guided by suffixes as structural signals. Translate these words into Russian.

variety - vary - variation - various

responsiveness - response - respond - responsive

nature - natural - naturally

activity - active - actively - activate - activeness

reproduction - reproductive - reproduce - reproducible

distinguish - distinguishable - distinguished – distinguishing

Exercise 3. Give Russian equivalents to the following word combinations. In case of difficulty turn to the translations given below.

Variety of life, a rich variety of insects, members of a species vary, to observe variations, to distinguish between living and non-living bodies, the distinction is not difficult to observe, the distinct activities of living bodies, distinct species

of plants and animals, hardly distinguishable plants, all typical organisms are responsive, inanimate responses are simple reactions, responsiveness of organisms, organisms respond to light and food.

Способность организмов к биологической реакции, наблюдать изменения, основные отчетливые проявления жизнедеятельности организмов, многочисленные виды насекомых, едва отличимые друг от друга растения, разнообразие жизни, проводить различие между живым и неживым в природе, все типичные организмы реагируют на раздражение, члены вида изменяются, этот отличительный признак не трудно заметить, неживые тела характеризуются простыми реакциями, организмы реагирует на свет и пищу, разные виды растений и животных.

Exercise 4.Note some cases of word-formation (the initial word comes from TEXT A). Translate them into Russian.

1. Develop (v) ---- development (n) ---- developmental (adj)

2. Distinguishable (adj) ---- distinguish (v) ---- distinguished (adj)

3. Determinant (adj, n) ----determine (v) ----determinative (n, adj)

4. Hereditary (adj) ----heredity (n) ----inherit (v) ----inheritance (n)

UNIT 4

PRE-TEXT TASKS

Study carefully the list of phrases and their Russian equivalents to avoid any difficulty in working through text A.

1	at least	по крайней мере
2	whatever	какие бы
3	elongate and branched	вытянутые и разветвленные
4	regardless of their shape	независимо от их формы
5	tend to become rounded into drop-like spheres	имеют тенденцию к образованию округлой, каплеобразной формы
6	ranges from ... to	колеблется в пределах от ... до
7	most... protein synthesis is believed to take place...	считают, что синтез белков в основном происходит в ...
8	staining	окрашивание
9	takes a deeper colour	придает более темную окраску
10	has sufficient resolution	имеет достаточную разрешающую способность ( о микроскопе )
11	protects against extremes of temperature	защищает от экстремальных температур
12	sequences of amino acids	последовательности аминокислот
13	maintains a supply of amino acids	сохраняет запас аминокислот
14	particular properties	определенные свойства
15	are arranged in the chain	расположены в цепочке
16	they make up the giant molecules	они образуют гигантские молекулы
17	strands	Спирально закрученные нити / ДНК /
18	... are coiled round each other	обвивают друг друга
19	the bases can only be paired in two ways	/азотистые/ основания соединяются попарно только двумя способами
20	enzyme transcriptase	фермент транскриптаза
21	messenger RNA	информационная РНК

Т Е XT А