Английский язык. Практикум по чтению научно-технических текстов
.pdfbe less than 50g. In addition, poisons must exert effects through chemical or physicochemical mechanisms. The above definition eliminates hypersensitivity reactions, which do not occur in the average person, and also excludes agents that cause purely physical damage.
The history of poisons is as old as man. Even today, some of the most primitive peoples of the world possess substances whose development is shrouded in mysticism and superstition. Often the ingredients have remained impervious to modern analysis, occasionally one of these poisons is purified, standardized and introduced into accepted medical use. For example, curare originated as arrow poison for the South American Indians of the Amazon and Orinoco regions. Although a synthetic compound now has been developed, the action is similar, but instead of using amounts that cause fatal muscle paralysis, the physician uses lesser quantities to relax the muscular system.
Other medicines, which have been handed to civilization from which doctors and ancient priesthoods, include strychnine, opium, caffeine, cocaine, atropine, digitalis and ergotamine. Still more compounds, usually prepared from certain plants, have been used from time to time to remove an unwanted person, or more commonly, have been used by large numbers of a population as partial poisons to produce certain effects. The most notable of these are opium, hashish, caffeine, nicotine, marijuana, heroin, betel, and fly agaric. The deadly nightshade, henbane, mandrake root, and the thorn apple are examples of plants which have been used and misused because of their “magical” properties, which permit the mind to experience fantastic states or to be plunged into a narcolepsy, impervious to pain, fatigue, or sorrow.
Modern man has added innumerable chemicals capable of potential injury, even though most have been isolated or synthesized for beneficial reasons. Modern chemical and pharmaceutical processes have developed hundreds of new products, which are used daily. Many are poisons whose usefulness outweighs the occasional instances of sickness or death they cause.
Ex. 4. Read text 4 and find the answers to the following questions:
a)what does mining cause? Is it important for science and society?
b)where does the process of technical formation of landscapes represent a still ongoing process?
c)what does ecosystem development depend on? Give an example.
d)what is the source of environmental contamination?
e)what does sustainable reclamation of degraded land require?
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Text 4
Landscape and Ecosystem Development after Mining
World wide mining activities cause severe disturbances of the cultural landscape. In particular, opencast mining operations replace the former dynamic equilibrium of the landscape, eventually resulting in the development of new ecosystems. Therefore, the sustainable establishment of new ecological systems on mined areas is an important interdisciplinary challenge for science and society.
In the 20th century, the availability of industrial mining technologies, such as bucket-wheel excavators or conveyor bridge systems, enhanced the complete modification of landscapes on a regional scale in practically all large mining districts of the world. In this context, lignite mining in Central Europe offers good examples and interesting case study sites. Large-scale postmining landscapes are widely known from Germany, the Czech Republic, or Poland where the process of the technical formation of new landscapes after opencast lignite mining represents a still ongoing process.
In these new post-mining areas, the water surface area is often remarkably increased when compared to the former natural landscape, being a consequence of both the mass deficit caused by the exploitation of raw materials and rising water tables. With regard to water-related aspects a very common problem of post-mining landscapes is the phenomenon of acid mine drainage (AMD), which leads to extreme site conditions.
With regard to the establishment of terrestrial ecosystems on postmining sites, mechanisms of plant succession and the establishment of a site-specific biocoenosis are the focus of several investigations. Under these conditions, ecosystem development depends strongly on the severity of site modification during the previous mining activities. For example, site contamination by heavy metals or other pollutants influences the ecosystem development due to the fact that fewer sensitive or specifically adapted ones displace less pollutant-tolerant species. It was also shown that soil fauna allows conclusions regarding future a trend of ecosystem development after site disturbance as the occurrence of soil organisms is closely interrelated with chemical and physical spoil conditions.
In particular, young mining waters often lack organic matter. This deficit impedes natural remediation processes of mining lakes. Therefore, experimentally examined the influence of acid water on the fall velocity of organic particles. Fall velocity affects the distribution of organic matter in sediments of streams influencing ecologically important physical and chemical stream characteristics. The availability of phosphorus is of cru-
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cial importance for water quality of mining lakes. Thus, in their contribution discuss processes of P-mobility and retention in sediments of acid mining lakes as well as future eutrophication threats for these lakes. Not only do recent mining activities affect the environment but also former mine sites may be a source for environmental contamination. Mining-related heavy metal impact has been examined by in a river catchment with abandoned ore mines. For different spatial scales, the authors give a comprehensive overview of behavior and ways of enrichment of heavy metals in the food chain and of associated influences on affected ecological systems.
Sustainable reclamation of degraded land requires more than just the establishment of a (preliminary) vegetation cover. For successful reclamation approaches, close collaboration of different ecological disciplines is important. Without ecological knowledge, new sustainable landscapes cannot be achieved. On the other hand, post-mining areas provide for excellent case studies with regard to ecosystem development starting at “point zero” on a landscape scale.
Ex. 5. Translate text 5 in writing using a dictionary.
Text 5
Ceiling Dust: a “Museum” of Contamination and Potential
Hazard
by Jeffrey J. Davis and Brian L. Gulson
Ceiling or attic dusts provide an indirect measure of air pollution integrated over varying time periods. We undertook an investigation into the p -size distributions and sources and exposure pathways of metals in ceiling dusts from 38 houses in the city of Sydney, Australia. The houses ranged in age from 4 to 106 years and were grouped into three settings: industrial, semi-industrial, and non-industrial. The main roof types were terracotta tile (n = 23), cement tile (n = 8), and corrugated iron (n = 4), with two slate and one asbestos. Soils and rocks from the Sydney area were also analyzed to provide “background” values and allow the estimation of enrichment factors. The bulk of the dusts contained p s derived from soil of crustal origin and organic plant material, with an anthropogenic component estimated at up to 25 %. P sizes from selected dust samples showed a bimodal distribution, and the volumes of fine dusts were 50 % < 63 μm, 30 % < 38 μm, and 7 % < 10 μm; the highest metal concentrations were in the finest fractions. The geometric mean concentrations of important an- thropogenic-derived metals from the industrial setting were 17294 μg/g Zn, 1660 μg/g Pb, 111 μg/g Cr, 261 μg/g Cu, and 26 μg/g As. The metals
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Cd, Cu, Pb, Sb, and Zn were consistently higher in the industrial settings than in the other settings. Median regression analyses showed that there were significant differences in the urban setting for the metals Cd, Co, Ni, Pb, and Zn. Enrichment factors for metals in the dust from the industrial site houses compared with background soils and rocks from the Sydney area were As, ×5; Cr, ×2; Co, ×3; Cu, ×12; Pb, ×10; Sb, ×26; and Zn, 596. For the three roof types of terracotta tile, cement, and iron, median regression analyses showed that there were no significant effects with respect to age. Median regression analyses for terracotta tile, cement tile, and corrugated iron roofs showed a “roof” effect for Cu and V. Significant correlations (P 0.03) were observed between most of the metals As–Cd–Cu–Pb– Sb–Zn, especially from the industrial settings. Pathways of dust exposure in this study are classified as being passive or active based upon the probable route of dust infiltration. Ceiling dusts pose a probable health hazard if the dust is disturbed and allowed to plume within the living areas of a dwelling, thereby exposing the occupants, especially children, to elevated levels of metals and fine particulates. Modeling shows that exposure to the elevated levels of Pb in dust could give rise to blood lead concentrations exceeding current guidelines for the industrial and semi-industrial areas.
Ex. 6. Translate text 6 in writing using a dictionary.
Text 6
The Usage of Speed Control Traffic Signals
by Margarida C. Coelho, Tiago L. Farias and Nagui M. Rouphail
In an attempt to control speeds and reduce crashes, traffic signals are being installed at several locations on highways to serve as speed reduction devices. One concern about this type of signals is that while they may be effective in reducing high-speed crashes, they not only stop traffic that is exceeding the speed limit, but other traffic on the approach that is not. As a result, vehicle emissions are likely to increase, because of the existence of excessive delays, queue formation and speed change cycles for approaching traffic. An approach, based on experimental measurements and on modelling traffic and emission performance of speed control traffic signals, is presented here in order to explain the interaction between the signal control variables (for example minimum signal settings, speed threshold setting and minimum green call scenarios) and environmental and traffic performance variables, in particular, carbon monoxide, nitric oxide and hydrocarbons emissions and delay. The experimental data for validation were gathered on Highway N6, connecting the cities of Lisbon and Cascais, in Portugal. The main conclusions of the present research are
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that, for traffic flow values corresponding to 50 % of the road capacity estimate for a traffic signal approach, 85 % of the speed violators are effectively stopped, while the fraction of vehicles unfairly stopped reaches 30 %. Concerning emissions, the presence of signals leads to an increase in CO emissions of about 15 %, while NO and HC emissions increase by 10 % and 40 %, respectively. It was also concluded that the control of speed violators increases with traffic flow. As a trade-off, overall traffic delay will also increase as well as the number of vehicles that are unfairly stopped.
Ex. 7. Read text 7 concentrating on the necessity of long-term storage and disposal of radioactive waste.
Text 7
Long-Term Storage and Disposal of Radioactive Waste
The safety of long-term storage and disposal of radioactive waste is ensured by multilevel protection system. The impervious geological environment is the major and strongest protecting barrier assured against an environmental contamination by radioactive waste. Geodynamics evolution of the earth crust and seismic activity can change the protected properties of geological formation with time and a long-term prediction of impermeability of geological formation that contains storage and disposal of radioactive waste is important.
The goal of the project spoken of below is the creation of information technology for expert assessment of the suitability of the use of selected location for long-term underground storage and disposal of high-level radioactive waste (HLRW). The proposed expert system is based on data of time-space monitoring of a tested area, on computer modeling of geodynamic processes and on expert knowledge base.
The first HLRW repositories in the territory of the Russian Federation are planned to be constructed in the regions of Krasnoyarsk, Novaya Zemlya and the Far East. These areas are the objects of application of proposed expert system. The areas are named below as the tested areas. The project includes three tasks:
Task 1. Collecting data on tectonic, hydrological, seismological and geodynamic environment of the tested areas; constructing databases of the tested areas and a knowledge base on geological environment stability characteristics; elaborating prognostic functions and major criteria of geological environment stability assessment.
Task 2. Elaborating algorithms of computer modeling of geodynamic evolution of the tested earth crust areas. Developing the expert system tools based on modern mathematical methods of analysis of a complex
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system in the case of insufficient and indefinite information (artificial intelligence, vague logic etc.).
Task 3. Estimating geological environment suitability of the regions of planning location of long-term repositories of HLRW; predicting the geoecological risk of HLRW repositories location in these areas.
The safe isolation of radioactive waste is a very urgent and complicated scientific and technological problem and the proposed information technology will allow to ensure the safe conditions of operating HLRW repositories in conformity with modern requirements of ecology. The mathematical approaches, expert system tools and the results of complex analysis and interpretation will be novel and will have no analogs either in Russian or in foreign literature.
In the work, great potentialities are proposed to be used by scientists and engineers who were engaged in the research of the nuclear arm tests, aiming those potentialities at ensuring ecological safety of population and the environment.
In the course of the Project, it is planned to obtain the following major results, which are of fundamental and applied significance. A problemoriented expert information system will be elaborated and will be used for analysis of regions of planning location of long-term repositories of HLRW. The result of this analysis will be the assessment of the geoecology risk of location of long-term underground storage and disposal of high-level radioactive waste in the tested areas in the case insufficient information about properties of geological and geophysical environment. It allows also making the optimal choice of the locations where geological environment ensures reliable and ecologically safe isolation of radioactive waste of various activities.
The results obtained will be used by the Ministry of Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation and the State Atomic Surveillance of the Russian Federation bodies controlling ecological safety.
Ex. 8. Read text 8 and find out what parts of Moscow are radioactively contaminated.
Text 8
Radioactive Waste Threatens Moscow
For the past two years, a group of nuclear workers and technicians have been wielding spades and plastic bags to remove more than 70 tones of radioactively contaminated soil from an embankment of the Moscow River on the city’s south near Kashirskoye Highway.
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These workers come from Moscow’s representative of Radon, a loose conglomeration of 15 plants throughout Russia that store radioactive waste. These plants essentially bury, in special tombs, lowand mediumlevel radioactive waste. But the Moscow plant is the only one to process the waste through vitrification in blocks that are then buried in special casks.
The Moscow group is sponsored by City Hall, and is perhaps the city’s single barrier against the radiation emanating from thousands of the shallow graves where radioactive waste was dumped by some two thousand Cold War research institutes and industries around what were then the outskirts of Moscow. But the city grew and, thanks to that practice, the sites where this dangerous waste was buried now form the foundations of many residential neighbourhoods where Muscovites are routinely exposed to radiation levels several times higher than is considered safe.
In an effort to help avoid this, Moscow’s Radon has had the responsibility of conducting radiation surveys in areas slated for construction since 1996. In one such case, in 2000, the scheduled construction of an apartment complex near the Noviye Cheryomushki metro station was halted for five years while Radon dug, and continues to dig, radioactive waste – some of it emitting up to 2 microsieverts, or 2 microSv, per hour – out of the ground. The normal background radiation in Moscow is 0,25 microSv per hour.
Of the 65 plants in Russia that participate directly in Russia’s nuclear cycle – and are under the oversight of the Ministry of Atomic Energy, or Minatom – 20 are located within the 11-million-resident city of Moscow.
The most dangerous among them is the Russian Research Centre ‘Kurchatov Institute,’ which has piled up more than six metric tonnes of radioactive waste containing more than 1017 becquerels. Other dangerous radioactive offenders in Moscow include the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, the All-Russian Research Institute of Chemical Technology, the Plant of Polymetals and the formerly defense-related Molniya Machine Works.
According to a representative of Radon Press, the riverbank territory was contaminated between the 1940s and 1960s, when industrial radioactive waste – emitting more than 30 microSv per hour – was carted out of town and buried there. At the time, the city limit of Moscow was near the Oktyabrskaya metro station, which is now 11 stops from the end of this line. The depth at which the radioactive waste was buried – at that time it was between 3 and 8 meters – was considered safe.
Radon’s data indicates that more than 70 per cent of all the radioactive sites found in Moscow are located in the residential areas where intensive construction is taking place, or in Moscow’s parks.
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According to Moscow City Hall figures, 11 nuclear research reactors currently operate in the city. More than 2000 organisations are using about 150000 sources of ionising radiation, and almost 90 per cent of them have exceeded their predicted periods of service.
Moscow has long considered moving its most dangerous nuclear plants and institutions – like the Kurchatov Institute – out of town, but that won’t happen any time in the near future. To move a facility of Kurchatov’s size, which includes 14 separate research institutes and hundreds of specialists – would require the construction of a whole new town.
However, from an environmental point of view, even that might not help. In a 2000 aerial study by the Aerogeophysica Research Enterprise of background gamma radioactivity emanating from Moscow’s radiological institutes, the Kurchatov Centre topped the list.
Ex. 9. Read text 9 and find the answers to the following questions:
a)what has the energy sector been traditionally based on?
b)what is the perspective of the power companies in the future?
c)what principle must an environmentally effective energy policy focus on?
Text 9
Energy Policy
Traditionally, the energy sector has been based on fossil energy sources, with supplementation from some nuclear power and hydropower. Production has therefore been very centralized and the major companies have become production specialists. Their products have been counted in barrels of oil, liters of gasoline or diesel, cubic meters of gas, and kilo- watt-hours of electricity, etc., and commercial divisions have mainly been divided into stationary production and use, and transportation.
As consumers of power, our needs will not always necessarily comprise a liter of gasoline or a kilowatt of hydropower. In the future, the power companies will not be able to concentrate only on traditional methods of optimal production of one source, but must evaluate how they can supply the whole scope of basic energy services, which are needed.
Since there is no basic characteristic that makes energy a pollutant, the only logical energy and environmental goal must be that all production and use of energy must take place without generating emissions or encroaching harmfully on the environment. An environmentally effective
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energy policy must focus on the following principle: use the highest quality, cleanest energy as efficiently as possible.
There are several non-traditional methods, sources, and forms, which can meet the needs for energy and at a fraction of the cost to the environment. New renewable sources of energy will mean a decentralization of energy production, effective local solutions, and more "small is beautiful" operators will appear in the market. In order to remove CO2 and benefit from economy of scale advantages, the sources of fossil fuel emissions will need to be concentrated in central discharge stations. Even though this may seem to be a paradox, there will be both centralization and decentralization of energy products at the same time.
Several oil companies are redefining themselves as energy companies, entering into alliances and integrating themselves down line in the value chain. Likewise, the industrial companies are engaging themselves more and more in the production of energy.
In 1991, Norway became one of the first countries to deregulate the power market. Sweden, Finland, and several EU countries have since followed suit. In the next decade, a large portion of the market in Western Europe will be deregulated, which will lead to several smaller operators merging into larger entities. Good consumer relations will be important, and companies with these relations will be able to break into the market as suppliers of energy-which will in turn mean that energy can be offered as a multi-product package that only a larger supplier can offer.
Looking at the big picture, society has so far evolved from an agricultural society to an industrial society, and we are now on the threshold of a new millennium, which many call the "knowledge society." It is very clear that this will open up the possibilities for a more intelligent control of energy use, where waste is minimized without compromising comfort.
Norway's energy policy, for example, has always been closely connected to other political goals, such as promotion of industry. Development in recent years, including deregulation, would seem to indicate that the time is past when energy production "subsidizes" industrial production. However, a considerable amount of the energy-intensive industrial production can be justified purely in terms of energy use, with respect to general energy consumption. Even though the basic cost is the same, it is not unlikely that taxation of the various energy products will be determined in a way that takes this into consideration.
The energy producing companies will be forced to consider both a more environmentally aware market in the struggle for customers, and an increasing environmental awareness in the workforce, which will affect
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the companies' ability to retain the best personnel in the field. This is important because human resources will be of greater importance as a competition factor, as employees will no longer be tied to the operation of heavy machinery in the workplace.
Ex. 10. Read text 10 concentrating on the main principles of energy technology in Norway.
Text 10
Energy Technology in Norway
Hydrogen cars will be on the market in a few years. Electric cars with a range of over 200 km and which can be quick-charged to 80 % in 20 minutes are already on the market in some countries. The lack of a hydrogen infrastructure and battery charging stations are used as arguments against these new technologies. New technology is also blocked from entering the market because of its high costs until a mass market develops which makes the production less expensive.
Hydrogen and electric buses, ideally with combined fuel types, as well as trams, represent an emission-free alternative to today's diesel buses. Hydrogen buses will be sold commercially by 2002, while trams already use well-proven technology. Continuing the policy of tax-free diesel can hinder the introduction of environmentally friendly technology.
Requirements for health and quality of life have high priority in northern Europe, Japan, and on the west coast of the USA. Germany, USA, and Japan have initiated extensive programs, which support the development of this type of technology.
Approximately 200–300 people die each year of cancer due to emissions from diesel-fueled vehicles in Norway. As many as 750000 Norwegians suffer from air and noise pollution caused by traffic. Moving towards a pollution-free transportation system will be a big step towards improving the quality of life for many.
Norway has profited considerably from the source of the climate problems we are experiencing today. The future cannot be based on today's energy carriers, and it would be in our own interest to lead the development and implementation of zero-emission technology, goods, and services, which will be sought after in the future.
Bellona proposes the following standards for the transportation sector: Norway should follow California's Clean Air Act, which means that all car manufacturers must have zero-emission cars on the market, and at least
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