Лингвистика текста и переводческое реферирование. Учебное пособие

been shown to cause DNA changes. For the public good, the focus should be on reducing harm, since preventing all harm is impossible.

Many people are physically dependent on nicotine. People may come to first use nicotine through smoking tobacco, or, less commonly, may start using nicotine by vaping. Once dependent, it is very hard to quit. If you try to stop, you will suffer from unpleasant withdrawal symptoms and experience cravings.

Some people, particularly with support, can overcome nicotine dependence. Others find it more difficult or don’t want to stop using nicotine. For these people, public health doctors must encourage smokers to use nicotine in ways that reduce harm, through vaping or by using nicotine replacement products.

The costs to people’s health of using nicotine by continuing to smoke are huge. The World Health Organization estimates that tobacco kills more than 8 million people a year.

It is irresponsible to report sensationalist headlines to the public based on complex studies that in reality do not show any real-world harm. Particularly compared to the immense harms to health of tobacco smoking (24).

ТЕКСТ 9.

Задание 1. Составьте краткий реферат данной статьи.

A new species of early human? Why we should be cautious about new fossil footprint findings

A collection of fossil footprints at Laetoli in Northern Tanzania, preserved in volcanic ash and dated to 3.66 million years ago, are still yielding surprises almost 45 years after their discovery.

Based on a re-analysis of fossil footprints from one of Laetoli’s sites, the authors of a new study published in the journal Nature say they’ve discovered evidence of a previously unknown early human species at this spot. However, there are reasons to be cautious about this conclusion.

Before we delve into these new findings, let’s orientate ourselves. Laetoli, an area well-known for paleontological excavations, has a number of distinct sites, each denoted by letters of the alphabet. British

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paleoanthropolgist Mary Leakey and her colleagues first reported fossil footprints in 1978 at Site G, the main track site at Laetoli.

In 2016, a team led by Fidelis Masao, an archaeologist in Tanzania, uncovered additional tracks close to Site G, at Site S. The footprints from Sites G and S are usually assigned to the well-known ancestral human (hominin) species Australopithecus afarensis, of which the skeleton “Lucy” is the best-known example.

Less well-known is the fact that in 1976, two years before Leakey’s famous discovery, a set of five footprints were found at Site A. Importantly, all these sites occur on the same ash surface, so we know they date from the same time period.

But the five footprints from Site A were largely forgotten, eclipsed by Leakey’s later discovery. This was understandable because the footprints at Site A had poor morphological shape, or definition, and there were fewer of them (there are more than 30 individual footprints at Site G).

In 1987, American paleoanthropologist Russell Tuttle suggested that these footprints may have been made by a species of bear, or by a different hominin from those of Site G. He also cautioned that the diversity in the footprints’ form as compared to those at Site G might simply reflect the changing properties of the ash layer over which the hominin walked.

Seeking to find out who these footprints belonged to, a team of international researchers re-excavated the tracks from Site A in 2019. Their findings are the focus of the new paper in Nature.

The researchers used various methods including photography and 3D scanning to inspect the Site A footprints. They compared the width and length with footprints from black bears, chimpanzees and humans, as well as the tracks from Sites G and S. They also explored the bear hypothesis by examining video footage of modern black bears which, on rare occasions, walk upright.

The authors concluded that on balance, the footprints at Site A did not resemble bear tracks, and were different from the footprints at Sites G

and S.One particular feature they draw attention to is that the Site A trackway cross-steps, almost as if one was attempting to toe a line as part

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of sobriety test. Based on this and their other findings, the authors suggest that the tracks at Site A were made by a different hominin than those at sites G and S. They argue that two hominin species walked the Laetoli landscape 3.66 million years ago.

The broader evolutionary context at this time suggests what the authors are proposing would be possible. There was more than one species of hominin on the African landscape during this period, and we’ve seen anatomical variation in the foot within some Australopithecus species. That said, it’s quite a significant leap to identify a second species based on a handful of poorly defined tracks.

Variation in trackways is the key issue here. Imagine going for a walk down a beach or sandy path. The footprints you make will vary from one step to the next. This reflects natural variability in human gait, as well as subtle differences in the characteristics of the ground you’re walking on.

In a recent paper we suggested that you need a minimum of between ten and 20 footprints before you can confidently quantify the variability in just one dimension, such as footprint length, let alone several. Others have suggested that you may need over 250 tracks to adequately quantify the three-dimensional form of a footprint.

Footfall and the resulting footprints are more variable than once thought and some have argued that even individuals of the same species may have highly unique gaits.

In this context it is rather surprising that the authors of this paper make inferences not just about one individual, but a whole species.

One way to strengthen their conclusions would be to use modern “whole foot” methods to statistically compare the best footprint at Site A with those at Sites S and G. This could be an approach for future research.

Certainly more evidence is needed to determine whether these footprints justify this excitement, and do indeed belong to another early human species (24).

ТЕКСТ 10.

Задание 1. Сделайте реферативный перевод данной статьи.

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How plankton helped create the Earth’s mountains 2 billion years ago

A world without the great mountain ranges – the Himalayas, the Alps, the Rockies, the Andes – is unimaginable, but they were not always a part of the Earth’s geography. Mountains didn’t start forming widely until 2 billion years ago, half way through the planet’s history. Now our research has revealed how primitive life played a key role in their introduction to the planet.

While the formation of mountains is usually associated with the collision of tectonic plates causing huge slabs of rock to be thrust skywards, our study has shown that this was triggered by an abundance of nutrients in the oceans 2 billion years ago which caused an explosion of planktonic life.

Making mountains

Mountains are not just a beautiful backdrop for recreation, they are essential to the way the world works, through their influence on weather, climate, the distribution of fresh water and the erosion of rock to make cultivable soil.

Before there were mountains, the plate movements that reshape the distribution of oceans and continents only occurred on a limited scale. But the movement of these plates are essential to making mountains. The pressure of one plate pushing against another – typically an ocean plate hitting a continental plate – causes slabs of ocean rock to break off and stack up on top of each other as they are pushed from behind.

Over millions of years the stack of rocks builds up, creating mountains, just as the Himalayas were built from ocean rocks between India and Eurasia, pushed northwards until the ocean disappeared and its remains were left piled high.

We know these mountains came originally from the ocean by the sea fossils found on the Tibetan plateau, thousands of metres above sea level. But piling up huge slabs of rock on such a scale needs serious lubrication, otherwise friction would stop them. That lubricant is carbon, which became part of the ocean rock when dead plankton fell to the ocean floor and became buried.

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Plankton have lived in our oceans for over 3 billion years, but 2 billion years ago their numbers exploded when abundant nutrients entered the water. At the time, life was no more complex than their single cells. But the cells became much bigger, and they contained more carbon.

When they died they sank quickly and were buried in mud which created rock with unprecedented amounts of carbon, which was turned into graphite by heat and pressure. Graphite makes a great lubricant. Locks, hinges, gears, wheels and even zips all move more easily with graphite – and so do rocks.

The plentiful graphite that accumulated beneath the ocean floor had a profound effect, by lubricating the building of mountains. While it has long been known that tectonic processes were lubricated, our research shows that it was the sheer abundance of carbon in the ocean that played a crucial role in the thickening of the Earth’s crust that built its mountain ranges.

The process has continued since then, and other geological layers like salt have also played their part, but the graphite beds of 2 billion years ago were especially slippery, and some have been involved in making mountains more than once.

The biggest mountains on Earth, the Himalayas, are geologically young – about 50 million years old – but rocks made in a much older ocean slid over each other to help create them. They had already slid in the first millions of years after they formed, and then after a long dormancy they slid again to help the rise of the Himalayas. They may slide again in the distant future.

Long after mankind is gone, those ancient plankton will continue their influence on the planet. The mountains made 2 billion years ago are worn down now, but we can still see their roots in places like Scotland, for example.

Our study looked at 20 cases of mountain building around the world from that time, from Australia to China, South America to the Arctic and in north-west Scotland, where we can see the slip surfaces in graphitebearing rocks in Harris, Iona and Gairloch, formed during earthquakes that accompanied the earliest mountain building. The island of Tiree is one of

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the flattest places in Britain, but the seabirds that run over its sandy beaches cross the foundations of huge, long-gone mountains.

Graphite resources

In each of the 20 ancient mountain ranges that were studied, exceptional amounts of graphite were recorded. In many cases the graphite is abundant enough to have been mined as a resource.

Graphite is now a hot commodity, as it is needed in the batteries that are central to green technology (far more graphite is required than lithium in a lithium ion battery). Many of the largest graphite deposits in the world were formed about 2 billion years ago. The graphite that helped bring us mountains may prove critical to the planet once more, and play a key role in its preservation for future generations.

Without the carbon from countless cells of plankton, the distribution of tectonic plates may have evolved rather differently, and we would not have mountains as we know them. Ours is a planet fundamentally shaped by life (24).

ТЕКСТ 11

Задание 1. Сделайте реферативный перевод данной статьи.

Whether people inform themselves or remain ignorant is due to three factors

Source:

University College London

People choose whether to seek or avoid information about their health, finances and personal traits based on how they think it will make them feel, how useful it is, and if it relates to things they think about often, finds a new study by UCL researchers.

Most people fall into one of three 'information-seeking types': those that mostly consider the impact of information on their feelings when deciding whether to get informed, those that mostly consider how useful information will be for making decisions, and those that mostly seek information about issues they think about often, according to the findings published in Nature Communications.

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Co-lead author Professor Tali Sharot (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences and Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research) said: "Vast amounts of information are now available to individuals. This includes everything from information about your genetic make-up to information about social issues and the economy. We wanted to find out: how do people decide what they want to know? And why do some people actively seek out information, for example about COVID vaccines, financial inequality and climate change, and others don't?

"The information people decide to expose themselves to has important consequences for their health, finance and relationships. By better understanding why people choose to get informed, we could develop ways to convince people to educate themselves."

The researchers conducted five experiments with 543 research participants, to gauge what factors influence information-seeking.

In one of the experiments, participants were asked how much they would like to know about health information, such as whether they had an Alzheimer's risk gene or a gene conferring a strong immune system. In another experiment, they were asked whether they wanted to see financial information, such as exchange rates or what income percentile they fall into, and in another one, whether they would have liked to learn how their family and friends rated them on traits such as intelligence and laziness.

Later, participants were asked how useful they thought the information would be, how they expected it would make them feel, and how often they thought about each subject matter in question.

The researchers found that people choose to seek information based on these three factors: expected utility, emotional impact, and whether it was relevant to things they thought of often. This three-factor model best explained decisions to seek or avoid information compared to a range of other alternative models tested.

Some participants repeated the experiments a couple of times, months apart. The researchers found that most people prioritise one of the three motives (feelings, usefulness, frequency of thought) over the others, and their specific tendency remained relatively stable across time and

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domains, suggesting that what drives each person to seek information is 'trait-like'.

In two experiments, participants also filled out a questionnaire to gauge their general mental health. The researchers found that when people sought information about their own traits, participants who mostly wanted to know about traits they thought about often, reported better mental health.Co-lead author, PhD student Christopher Kelly (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences and Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research) said: "By understanding people's motivations to seek information, policy makers may be able to increase the likelihood that people will engage with and benefit from vital information. For example, if policy makers highlight the potential usefulness of their message and the positive feelings that it may elicit, they may improve the effectiveness of their message.

"The research can also help policy makers decide whether information, for instance on food labels, needs to be disclosed, by describing how to fully assess the impact of information on welfare. At the moment policy-makers overlook the impact of information on people's emotions or ability to understand the world around them, and focus only on whether information can guide decisions." (27).

ТЕКСТ 12

Задание 1. Выделите главную мысль и основные подтемы и сделайте краткое изложение данной статьи на русском языке.

Are you binge-watching too much? How to know if your TV habits are a problem – and what to do about it

The term “binge-watch” was a contender for the Oxford English Dictionary’s 2013 word of the year. Although it didn’t win (“selfie” ultimately took the crown), this pointed to the rise of what was becoming a popular activity of watching multiple episodes of a TV show in a single sitting.Today, millions of us – including me – regularly consume our favourite series in this way. The proliferation of streaming services over

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recent years has made it very easy to do. Unsurprisingly, during COVID lockdowns, research shows many of us spent more time binge-watching than usual.

But can binge-watching become problematic or addictive? And if you can’t tear yourself away, what can you do?

Problematic binge-watching isn’t defined by the number of episodes watched (although most researchers agree it’s at least two in a row), or a specific number of hours spent in front of the TV or computer screen. As with other addictive behaviours, more important is whether binge-watching is having a negative impact on other aspects of the person’s life.

Over many years studying addiction, I’ve argued that all addictive behaviours comprise six core components. In relation to binge-watching, this would mean:

Binge-watching is the most important thing in the person’s life (salience)

The person engages in binge-watching as a way of reliably changing their mood: to feel better in the short-term or to temporarily escape from something negative in their life (mood modification)

Binge-watching compromises key aspects of the person’s life like relationships and education or work (conflict)

The number of hours the person spends binge-watching each day has increased significantly over time (tolerance)

The person experiences psychological and/or physiological withdrawal symptoms if they’re unable to binge-watch (withdrawal)

If the person manages to temporarily stop binge-watching, when they engage in the activity again, they go straight back into the cycle they were in previously (relapse).

In my view, any person who fulfils these six components would be genuinely addicted to binge-watching. A person who only fulfils some of these may be exhibiting problematic binge-watching, but wouldn’t be classed as addicted by my criteria.

Like many other behavioural addictions, such as sex addiction, work addiction and exercise addiction, binge-watching addiction is not officially recognised in any psychiatric manuals. We also don’t have accurate

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estimates of the prevalence of problematic binge-watching. But research into this phenomenon is growing.

A look at the evidence

In the latest study on this topic, a research team in Poland surveyed 645 young adults, all of whom reported that they had watched at least two episodes of one show in a single sitting. The researchers wanted to understand some of the factors underlying problematic binge-watching.

The authors (who based their definition of problematic bingewatching partly on my components model of addiction) used a questionnaire they developed in an earlier study to assess problematic binge-watching among participants. Questions included: “How often do you neglect your duties in favour of watching series?” “How often do you feel sad or irritated when you can’t watch the TV series?” and “How often do you neglect your sleep to binge-watch series?”

Participants had to give answers on a six-point scale from one (never) to six (always). A score above a certain threshold was deemed indicative of problematic binge-watching.

Using a range of other scales, the researchers found that impulse control difficulties, lack of premeditation (difficulties in planning and evaluating the consequences of a given behaviour), watching to escape and forget about problems, and watching to avoid feeling lonely were among the most significant predictors of problematic binge-watching.

Using the same data, the researchers reported in an earlier study that problematic binge-watching had a significant association with anxietydepressive syndrome. The greater the symptoms of anxiety and depression, the more problematic a person’s binge-watching was.

Other studies have reported similar findings. A study of Taiwanese adults, for example, found problematic binge-watching was associated with depression, anxiety around social interaction and loneliness.

An American study found the behaviour was associated with depression and attachment anxiety. Most related studies – like this one from Portugal – have also shown escapism to be a key motivation of problematic binge-watching.

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