Биология в современном мире. Учебное пособие
.pdf5)What are research facilities in your labs? Are they excellent or just
adequate?
6)What do you think is the role of curiosity in the work of a research man?
7)What is the aim of basic (applied) research?
8)Radioactivity began as a piece of pure research, now its results are used in many ways. Can you give some more examples of such an interaction of pure and applied research?
9)What can cause errors in an experiment? Do you think emotion can cause
errors?
10.3.7 Exercise 7
Compare Russian and English texts. Study them. Then try to translate Russian text into English.
Эволюция биосферы.
Взаимодействие человека с природой – одна из наиболее важных и трудных проблем человечества. Возникающие в этих взаимоотношениях конфликты – разнообразны. Промышленность загрязняет атмосферу, почву и воду опасными для всего живого веществами, нарушает сложившийся на отдельных участках арены жизни тепловой баланс, увеличивает содержание CO2 в атмосфере.Сотни миллионов лет поддерживала биосфера оптимальное соотношение важных для жизни элементов.
Несколько десятков лет промышленной революции оказались достаточными, чтобы нарушить это равновесие. Современная биология обладает достаточными теоретическими знаниями для разумного сотрудничества с природой и достаточным арсеналом технических средств для того, чтобы знать,
что мы можем требовать от природы и чего требовать от природы нельзя.
Evolution of the biosphere.
Man’s interaction with nature is one of the most important and complex problems facing mankind. The conflicts that arise in this interaction are various.
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Industry is polluting the atmosphere, soil and water with substances that are harmful to all living things disrupting the thermal balance existing at individual points of the life arena, increasing the CO2 content in the atmosphere.
The biosphere has maintained optimum propotions of the vital elements for hundreds of millions of years.
A few decades of the industrial revolution have been enough to disrupt this equilibrium.
Present-day biology has enough theoretical knowledge to cooperate with nature reasonably well and it has enough technical means to know what we can demand from nature and what is beyond our reach.
10.3.8 Exercise 8
Read the statement of Russian scientists – bioengineers given to the journal
“Scientific American”. Answer the questions: “What do you think of the problem of cloning human beings?”, “What can we demand from nature?”, “What is beyond our reach?”
The 21st century is the century of biology. The brilliant discovery was recently made in Russian scientific research center of bioengineering technologies. The scientists of the center managed to get a so-called trunk (стволовая) cell. The trunk cell will soon be taught to reproduce itself up to the level of any human organ. Then the physicians will be able to place this cloned cell into the human body instead of destroyed cells, e.g. canceled cells, cells of deseased myocard, liver and other deseased organs. These new healthy cells will grow, force out and replace the deseased cells. So they will treat for human deseases and make people healthy.
The cloning of human beings is out of question for the present but the cloning of human cells is the primary task of bioengineering in the 21st century.
10.3.9 Exercise 9
Make up dialogues using some hints:
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1)Interrelations between man and the biosphere; all living organisms depend on what the biosphere provides; water, oxygen, food, etc.; the biosphere is affected by human activities; man creates new substances unknown to the biosphere; we are polluting ourselves out of existence; forests are disappearing; deserts are advancing; the biosphere: to be or not to be; be nice to mother nature.
2)To specialize in the field of ecology; three laws of ecology; everything is connected to everything else; everything must go somewhere; nature knows best; the
word “ecology” comes from the Greek word “Aikos” meaning “house”.
10.3.10 Exercise 10
Make up your report on some problems:
1)Evolution in the biosphere;
2)The biosphere: to be or not to be;
3)Be nice to Mother nature;
4)Cloning of human beings: your pros and cons (за и против).
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Список использованной литературы
1 Дамблтон, К.У. Русско-английский биологический словарь
(Russian-English Biological Dictionary) / К.У.Дамблтон. - Москва-Минск-Киев,
Технические словари, 2000. - 524 с. - ISBN: 985-4627-06-3.
2 Дмитриева, В.А. Русско-английский словарь терминов по микробиологии (Russian-English dictionary of microbiological terms) / А.В.
Дмитриева, В.В. Дмитриев. - АН СССР: Институт биохимии и физиологии микроорганизмов. - Москва: Наука, 1991. - 248 c. - ISBN: 5-02-004011-8.
3Appel, T. Shaping Biology: The National Science Foundation and American Biological Research, 1945–1975. / T. Appel. - Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
4Armer, T. Cambridge English for Scientists / T. Armer. - Pap/Com edition – Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. – 128 p. – ISBN
10:052115409X. - ISBN 13: 978-0521154093
5Coleman, W. Biology in the Nineteenth Century: Problems of Form, Function, and Transformation, Ch. 2. / W. Coleman. - Cambridge University Press: New York, 1977. - ISBN 0-521-29293-X
6Ibbotson, M. Professional English in Use / M. Ibbotson. – Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. – 148 p. – ISBN 978-0-521-73488-2
7Raymond, M. English Grammar in USE / M. Raymond. - 3-rd edition –
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. – 391 p.
8Richards, Robert J. The Romantic Conception of Life / Robert J. Richards. - Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
9Smith, A.L. Oxford dictionary of biochemistry and molecular biology / A. L. Smith. - Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 508. ISBN 0-19-854768-4.
10Smocovitis, V.B. Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and
Evolutionary Biology / V.B. Smocovitis. - Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1996.
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11Strick, J.E. Sparks of Life: Darwinism and the Victorian Debates over Spontaneous Generation / J.E. Strick. - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000.
12Словари и энциклопедии на Академике. - Режим доступа:
http://biology_en_ru.academic.ru/
13 Wikipedia For School. - Режим доступа: http://schoolswikipedia.org/wp/b/Biology.htm
14 Biology - The Origins Of BiologyРежим доступа: http://science.jrank.org/pages/8468/Biology-Modern-Biology.html
15 Introduction: the nature of science and biology. - Режим доступа: http://www2.estrellamountain.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/BioBookintro.html
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Приложение А
(обязательное)
Texts for additional reading
А.1 Organic matter (after I. Asimov. Guide to Science)
The term molecule (from a Latin word meaning “small mass”) originally meant the ultimate, indivisible unit of a substance, and in a sense it is an ultimate particle because it cannot be broken down without losing its identity. To be sure, a molecule of sugar or of water can be divided into single atoms or groups, but then it is no longer sugar or water.
Just as then atoms have furnished chief excitement in twentieth-century physics, so the molecule has been the subject of equally exciting discovery in chemistry. Chemists have been able to work out detailed pictures of the structure of even very complex molecules, to identify the roles of specific molecules in living systems, to create elaborate new molecules, and to predict the behavior of a given structure with amazing accuracy.
By the mid 20th century the complex molecules that form the key units of living tissue, the proteins and nucleic acid, were being studied with all the techniques made possible by an advanced chemistry and physics. The two sciences, biochemistry (the study of the chemical reactions going on living tissues) and biophysics (the study of the physical forces and phenomena involved in living processes) merged to form a brand new discipline – molecular biology.
Through the findings of molecular biology modern science has in a single generation of effort all but wiped out the borderline between life and non-life.
Yet less than a century ago the structure of not even the simplest molecule was understood. About all the chemists of the early 19th century could do was to separate all matter into two great categories. They had long been aware that substances fell into two sharply distinct classes with respect to their response to heat. One group (salt, water) remained basically unchanged after being heated. On the other hand, the second group of substances (sugar, olive oil) were changed permanently by heat. Eventually the scientists noted that the heat resisting
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substances generally came from the inanimate world of the air, ocean and soil, while the combustible substances usually came from the world of life, either from living matter directly or from dead remains. In 1807 the Swedish chemist Jons Jakob Berzelius named the combustible substances-organic and all the restinorganic.
Early chemists focused mainly on the inorganic substances. The study of the behavior of inorganic gases led to the development of the atomic theory, which soon clarified the nature of inorganic molecules. Analysis showed that inorganic molecules generally consisted of a small number of different atoms in define proportions. The water molecule contained two atoms of hydrogen and one oxygen, sulphuric acid contained two atoms of hydrogen, one of sulphur and four of oxygen, etc.
When the scientists began to analyse organic substances the picture seemed quite different. Two substances might have exactly the same composition and yet show distinctly different properties. For example, ethyl alcohol is composed of two carbon atoms, one oxygen atom and six hydrogen atoms; so is dimethyl ether – yet one is a liquid at room temperature while the other is a gas. The organic molecules contained many more atoms than the simple inorganic ones, and there seemed to be no reason or rhyme in the way they were combined. Organic compounds simply could not be explained by the laws of chemistry that applied so beautifully to inorganic substances.
Berzelius decided that the chemistry of life was something apart which obeyed its own set of subtle rules. He said that only living tissue could make an organic compound. His point of view is an example of “vitalism”.
In 1828 the German chemist Friedrich Wohler, a student of Berzelius, produced an organic substance in the laboratory. He was heating a compound called ammonium cyanate, which was then considered inorganic. He discovered that on being heated, this material turned into a white substance identical in properties with urea, a component of urine. According to Berzelius, only the living kidney could form urea, yet Wohler had formed it from inorganic material being
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heated. But other scientists confirmed the results many times, they even proceeded to synthesize many other organic compounds from inorganic ones. Thus
Berzelius’s version of vitalism had been really killed. More and more it became clear that the same chemical laws applied to inorganic and organic molecules were alike.
Eventually the distinction between organic and inorganic substances was given a simple definition: all substances containing carbon (with the exception of a few simple compounds such as carbon dioxide) are called organic; the rest are inorganic.
Answer the questions:
1)What did the term molecule originally mean?
2)What is the origin of molecular biology?
3)Into what classes did the early chemists distinguish all the substances? What was the reason for this distinction?
4)What is the difference in structure between organic and inorganic substances?
А.2 Exploring the frontiers of the mind.
The most mysterious least-known area of mans universe doesn’t lie in the farthest reaches of outer space. Nor is it found in the most remote Amazonian jungle. It is located instead inside the human skull, and consists of some 3.5 pounds of pinkish-grey material with the consistency of oatmeal. It is, of course, the human brain.
The brain is the most important of the body’s organs. The heart, after all, is merely a pump; the lungs are an oxygenation system. But the brain is the master control, the guiding force behind all of man’s actions. It is the seat of all human thought and consciousness “the source of ingenuity that made it possible for man’s ancestors to survive and eventually to dominate their physically more powerful adversaries and evolve into the planet’s highest form of life. Everything that man has ever been, everything he will be, is the products of his brain. It is the brain that
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makes man. But it took many centuries to comprehend that there was a miraculous mechanism inside his head and begin to investigate its working. Aristotle taught his pupils that the brain was merely a radiator or cooling system for the blood; he identified the heart as the organ of Thought”. Pliny (Плиний), the Elder was one of the first to identify the brain as “the citadel of sense perception”. But neither he nor generations of scientists who followed him had the knowledge or techniques to explore it. Investigations were interfered with philosophical obstacles. The brain was considered the seat of the soul. Man has made to-day a lot of remarkable discoveries. He has split the atom, cracked the genetic code, leaped from his own terrestrial Home to the moon. But he has yet to solve the mystery of memory, learning and consciousness of managed to understand himself.
The brain is the newest and perhaps last frontier in man’s exploration of himself. Crossing that frontier could have the same impact on humanity as the discovery that the earth was round.
The rapidly growing interest and activity in brain research parallels an energetic, worldwide investigation of genetics that preceded Yames Watson and
Francis Crick’s 1953 discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule. Indeed, many outstanding biochemists and microbiologists who helped lay the groundwork for that monumental breakthrough have recognized that the brain now represents science’s greatest challenge. Some have announced their conversion to neuroscience, the discipline that deals with the brain and nervous system. The work of the neuroscientists has already produced an exponential increase in man’s understanding of the brain.
It has led to a host of new medical and surgical treatments for such disorders as schizophrenia, depression, Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy. It has also resulted in improving and promising new techniques for relieving pain and controlling some forms of violence.
None of these engaged in neuroscientific research underestimates the difficulty of reaching that understanding, for the brain is an organ of enormous complexity. While a sophisticated electronic computer can store and recall some
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100 billions bits of information, for example, the capacity of the brain seems
infinite.
Answer the questions:
1)What is the most mysterious and least-known area of man’s universe?
2)Why is the brain the most important of the body organs?
3)When was the brain recognized as the “citadel of sense perception”?
4)What impact on humanity may the proper understanding of the work of brain have?
5)What has already been achieved in man’s exploration of the brain?
А.3 Nervous system of a man.
Organs of the nervous system like other organs are composed of various kinds of tissues, including nervous tissue, connective tissues and blood. These organs can be divided into two groups. One group consisting of the brain and spinal cord, form the central nervous system, and the other, composed of the nerves (peripheral nerves) that connect the central nervous system to other body parts, is called the peripheral nervous system. Together these systems provide three general functions – a sensory function, an integrative function and a motor function.
The sensory function of the nervous system involves sensory receptors at the ends of peripheral nerves. These receptors are specialized to gather information by detecting changes that occur inside and outside the body. They monitor such external environmental factors as light and sound intensities as well as the temperature, oxygen concentration, and conditions of the body’s internal fluids.
The information gathered by the sensory receptors is converted to signals in the form of nerve impulses which are then transmitted over peripheral nerves to the central nervous system. There the signals are integrated – that is, they are brought together creating sensations (perceptions) adding to memory or helping produce thoughts. As a result of this integrative function, conscious or subconscious decisions are made and then acted upon by means of motor functions.
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