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Why Do Electric Fish Swim Backwards?

This is not a trick question like the one about the chicken crossing the road. To understand the answer to the electric fish mystery, zoologists should discuss only the fish with active electric sensing systems. This group includes quite a large number of different fish that are capable of generating pulses of electricity. These pulses (up to 1,000 per second) radiate through the water around. Small fish and other nearby objects change these electric fields. Electroreceptors on the fish and a sophisticated processing system convert the field changes into an "image" of the area around and nearby.

M. and S. J. Lannoo, of Ball State University, have watched the black knife fish, which lives in deep Amazon waters. Swimming backward, the knife fish slowly moves past its potential victim. If the electrical image looks appetising, the knife fish attacks its dinner with a quick forward movement as it appears in front of it. The researchers suggest that the fish swims past objects to scan them with its electroreceptors. This is the only way the fish can identify the object because an electric sense cannot be focused like an eye. But if the fish carried out its scan by swimming forwards, the victim would end up at its tail. The fish must swim backwards to be in a position to eat the food.

1. What do the electric fish radiate pulses of electricity for?

2. Why does the black knife fish swim backwards?

Вариант №3 I. Переведите текст на русский язык.

What is marketing?

What does the term marketing mean? Most people mistakenly think of marketing only as selling and promotion. And no wonder. Americans are bombarded with television

commercials, newspaper ads, direct mail, and sales calls. Someone is always trying to sell something.

Therefore many students are surprised to learn that selling is only the tip of the marketing iceberg. It is but one of several marketing functions, and often not the most important one. If the marketer does a good job of identifying consumer needs, developing good products, and pricing, distributing, and promoting them effectively, these goods will sell very easily.

Peter Drucker, a leading management thinker, put it this way:

The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.

This does not mean that selling and promotion are unimportant, but rather that they are part of a larger "marketing mix," a set of marketing tools that work together to affect the marketplace. Here is our definition of marketing:

Marketing is human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange processes.

To explain this definition, we will look at the following terms: needs, wants, demands, products, exchange, transactions, and markets.

Needs:

The most basic concept underlying marketing is that of human needs, which we define as follows:

A human need is a state of felt deprivation in a person.

Human beings have many complex needs. These include basic physical needs for food, clothing, warmth, and safety; social needs for belonging and affection; and individual needs for knowledge and self-expression. These needs are not created by Madison Avenue, but are a basic part of the human makeup.

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