Добавил:
ivanov666
Опубликованный материал нарушает ваши авторские права? Сообщите нам.
Вуз:
Предмет:
Файл:Your majesty science. Учебное пособие
.pdf
SELF-ASSESSMENT III
1. Translate the article using a dictionary.
Meet Rex, the real bionic man
It cost six million dollars to create bionic superhero Steve Austin. Scientists
however have built a man from artificial limbs for a sixth of the price. Known as
Rex – short for robotic exoskeleton – his 6ft frame is made up of an array of artificial
limbs and organs from around the world. Built for a Channel 4 documentary
exploring how far technology has developed, Rex raises ethical dilemmas. Research
on advanced prosthetics and artificial organs means scientists could soon not only
replace missing body parts, but improve on them. The C4 program’s presenter is Dr
Bertolt Meyer, a social psychologist from Switzerland who himself has a £30,000
bionic limb after being born without a left hand. He said: ‘It’s exciting and a bit
scary. We might be at a point in science and technology where we see first glimpses
of the possibilities to go beyond the limits of evolution.’
George Annas, Professor of Bioethics and Human Rights at Boston University,
warned: ‘I think when it comes to our bodies, the danger is we might change what it
is to be human. Create a new species that may turn around to bite us, similar to the
Frankenstein myth, where your creature let loose in the world becomes destructive
and uncontrollable.’
The bionic man is being built from $1,000,000 (£640,000) of limbs and organs
by leading UK roboticists Richard Walker and Matthew Godden.
There is the artificial eye, which consists of a microchip implanted into the
retina that receives images captured by a camera housed on the patient’s glasses. It
sends electrical pulses that are translated by the brain into shapes and patterns.
Professor Robert MacLaren, from Oxford University, said: ‘We are hoping
patients who are completely blind will be able to see basic shapes and objects.’
21
Scientists are hoping prosthetic replacements for failing hearts, kidneys, pancreas and
spleens could one day solve the worldwide shortage of donor organs.
One example, the SynCardia Systems artificial heart is already saving lives,
with more than 1,000 implanted. Powered by a battery, it can temporarily replace a
diseased heart until a donor is found.
A prosthetic foot and ankle – developed by Massachusetts Institute of
Technology professor Hugh Herr, who lost his legs to frostbite in a climbing
accident – mimics the actions of the calf muscle and Achilles tendon. The professor
said he was now able to climb better than before his accident.
Mail Online
2. Come up with an idea of a domestic robot servant. Support you
presentation with all the necessary drawings and diagrams.
22
UNIT FOUR
ФУНКЦИИ ГЕРУНДИЯ В ПРЕДЛОЖЕНИИ
В предложении герундий может выполнять следующие функции:
1. Подлежащее: Working for the company means respect and higher social status.
2. Предикатив (именная часть составного сказуемого): What he always
wanted was doing what he liked.
3. Сказуемое в односоставных предложениях (структурно ограничено,
чаще в вопросительных предложениях после what about и how about): What
about translating it this way? How about coming here again?
4. Часть составного глагольного сказуемого (после глаголов to begin, to
start, to continue, to go on, to cease, to keep on): The students went on writing. He
continued looking at her in amazement. At last they started working on the project.
5. Дополнение.
a. после глаголов to admit, to avoid, to consider, to delay, to deny, to enjoy, to
escape, to finish, to give up, to keep, to leave off, to mention, to postpone, to put off,
to recall, to resent, to resume, to risk, to stop, to suggest, etc.): He denied having
stolen the purse. If you invest all your money into the project you risk losing it.
b. после модальных сочетаний can’t imagine, can’t stand, can’t help: She can’t
help smiling.
c. после фразеологического сочетания to feel like: I don’t feel like talking to you
tonight.
d. в предложениях с формальным подлежащим “it” после глаголов to
matter, to come down to: It doesn’t matter your being much talked about.
e. в предложениях с формальным подлежащим “it” после прилагательного
worth: It’s worth trying again.
f. в функции предложного дополнения к любому глаголу или
прилагательному: He objected to my selling the car.
6. Объектный предикатив.
a. после глаголов to catch, to discover, to feel, to find, to hear, to imagine, to
keep, to leave, to like/dislike, to notice, to see, to send, to set, to stop, to watch:
The news set me thinking.
b. после глаголов to consider, to explain, to guarantee, to mention, to regard, to
speak of, to take, to think of, to treat, to understand, если за ними следует as:
They thought of him as being a prominent scientist.
7. Обстоятельство (с предлогом): She was tired after reading. She found herself
much recovered upon waking.
8. Определение (обычно вводится предлогами of, in, for, at, about, to): I
began to have a feeling of being watched.
9. Вводные словосочетания: generally speaking, roughly speaking, strictly
speaking etc. Strictly speaking, their presence is not necessary.
23
PRACTICE
1. Translate from English into Russian.
a) Learning English can be fun.
b) What I need now is having a cup of coffee.
c) What about discussing the matter later?
d) He answered the phone and went on writing the report.
e) He gave up smoking and felt much better.
f) She couldn’t help wondering at how inventive the child was.
g) We don’t feel like going out tonight.
h) When it comes down to speaking in public, I always feel nervous.
i) The project isn’t worth supporting.
j) She objected to the child’s being taken to hospital.
k) Nobody likes being cheated.
l) Generally speaking, I got on well with most of the staff.
2. Skim the article to find the sentences with the Gerunds and state their
functions.
Fields of automation
A new generation of agricultural equipment promises to take more of the toil out
of farming by automating the business of growing fruit
In the early 1830s, spurred on by his hatred of
sweaty field work, Cyrus McCormick took an idea his
father had been working on at the family farm in
Virginia and produced a mechanical reaper. Others
devised similar machines. Despite initial skepticism,
farmers eventually bought them in droves. With one person riding the horse that
pulled the reaper, and another raking the cut stalks off the back, the machines could
harvest as much grain in a day as a dozen men breaking their backs with reaping
hooks.
24
Mechanical reapers became even more efficient after being adapted to bale the
stalks into sheaves, too. Development continued: today a driver in the air-conditioned
cabin of a combine harvester may be guided by satellites as he cuts, threshes and
pours clean grain into a fleet of accompanying trailers.
One machine, the New Holland CR9090, holds the record after harvesting a
colossal 551 tons of wheat in just eight hours from a farm in Britain in 2008. Given
that such machines cost around £350,000 ($580,000), agricultural automation must
make economic sense - because farmers don’t spend money on frivolities.
But there are farms where people like McCormick still dream of taking hard,
manual work out of agriculture. These farms grow crops that mostly have to be
tended and picked by hand, such as apples, oranges, and strawberries. In rich
countries it is becoming increasingly difficult to find people to do this at wages
farmers say they can afford. Even Japan’s exquisite and expensive strawberries are
becoming too costly to pick because of a shortage of workers, in part caused by an
ageing population.
Just as the mechanical reaper transformed the economics of cereal farming, a
new wave of agricultural automation promises to do the same in other areas of
horticulture. Because picking apples is very different to plucking strawberries, the
machines are taking various forms. Some have giant mechanical arms and are towed
behind tractors through orchards and vineyards. Some are fully autonomous and able
to scurry around on their own, even in paddy fields, like the robotic rice-planter
developed by Japan’s National Agricultural Research Centre. Others trundle about
inside experimental greenhouses.
The Economist
3. Read the article again carefully and work out the questions to the given
answers.
a) In the early 1830s.
b) After being adapted.
c) 551 tons.
25
d) £350,000.
e) Because picking apples is very different to plucking strawberries.
f) By Japan’s National Agricultural Research Centre.
4. Translate the last paragraph of the article in written form.
5. Skim the following article to find the sentences with the Gerunds and
state their functions.
A way for the damaged surfaces of metals to repair themselves
Metal, heal thyself
has been devised
Sadly for engineers, inanimate objects cannot
yet repair themselves. But scientists have invented a
way of healing damaged metals.
The surfaces of many metal objects are coated
with other metals for protection. Iron, for instance, is
frequently galvanized with zinc. The basic idea of the new technology is to infiltrate
this coating with tiny, fluid-filled capsules. When the metal coating is punctured or
scratched, the capsules in the damaged area burst and ooze restorative liquids, in the
form of compounds called trivalent chromates. These react with nearby metal atoms
and form tough, protective films a few molecules thick to ameliorate the damage.
The idea of doing this has been around for years, but it has proved difficult in
practice because the capsules used were too big. Surface coatings tend to be about 20
microns thick. The capsules were 10-15 microns across - large enough to disrupt the
coatings, and thus do more harm than good. The trick worked out by scientists is how
to create capsules a few hundredths of this size.
The capsules researchers have come up with are made by mixing
butylcyanoacrylate, a chemical found in superglue, with an oil carrying the healing
compounds. This mixture is then, itself, mixed with dilute hydrochloric acid. The
26
result is an emulsion of droplets between 100 and 300 nanometers across. Each
droplet has an oil core surrounded by a thin layer of butylcyanoacrylate molecules.
To make the droplets stable, phosphate is added to the emulsion. This triggers the
polymerization of the butylcyanoacrylate into a tough plastic, which forms the
outside of the capsule.
The greatest challenge, however, was not making the capsules in the first
place, but stabilizing them during the plating process. Though galvanization is often
done by dipping steel in liquid zinc, it is sometimes done by electrolysis - and nickel
and copper plating are normally done this way. The capsules, though, tend to stick
together in the liquids used as electrolytes during electroplating, and are also
destroyed by the extreme acidity or alkalinity that is often involved in the process. To
overcome these problems special detergents that stick to polybutylcyanoacrylate
were used, and thus both stop the capsules sticking together and protect them from
the electrolytes. The techniques were proved in electroplated layers of copper, nickel,
and zinc, and self-repairing metals are believed to commonly be available in the years
ahead.
The Economist
6. Read the text again and match the italicized words and word
combinations with their meanings.
a) ___________________a task or situation that tests someone's abilities
b) ___________________a cleansing agent, esp. a surface-active chemical
such as an alkyl sulphonate, widely used in industry
c) ___________________ to think of a plan or idea and suggest it
d)___________________to have gained knowledge and experience of the
world
e) ___________________ restore (something damaged, faulty, or worn) to a
good condition
f) ___________________ lacking the qualities or features of living beings
27
g) ___________________ a substance formed from two or more elements
chemically united in fixed proportions
h)__________________ to make or become better; improve
7. Read the text once more carefully and answer the questions.
a) What means of corrosion prevention do you know?
b) What idea lies behind the new technology of protecting metals?
c) Why was it difficult to put the idea into practice?
d) How did researchers manage to overcome the problem?
8. Translate the last paragraph of the article in written form.
9. Translate into English using the Gerund where possible.
Все люди, которые связаны с разработкой, эксплуатацией и ремонтом
сложной электронной техники, знают, что в большинстве случаев выход из
строя электронных устройств связан с их механическими повреждениями,
приводящими к появлению трещин и микротрещин в проводниках. Поиск таких
повреждений является делом долгим, трудным и дорогостоящим. В некоторых
случаях ремонт электронного устройства становится нецелесообразным с
экономической точки зрения. Но в последнее время ведутся разработки
технологий самовосстанавливающейся электроники, благодаря которым
электронные устройства могут сами ликвидировать возникшие повреждения и
продолжить работать в нормальном режиме.
Технологии самовосстановления не являются чем-то новым. Обычно
твердый материал заполняется капсулами с заключенной в них жидкостью. Эта
капсулы разрываются, если материал получает повреждения. Выпущенная из
них жидкость затвердевает на воздухе, восстанавливая целостность материала.
Этот принцип используется в изготовлении самовосстанавливающихся
строительных материалов и полимеров. Исследовательская группа из
университета Иллинойса применила подобный принцип по отношению к
электронике. Они создали технологию, которая позволяет автоматически
восстановить проводимость треснутого проводника за доли секунды. В
28
качестве капсул самовосстановления используются микрогранулы, размерами
около 10 микрон, заполненные "жидким металлом", сплавом галлия и индия.
SELF-ASSESSMENT IV
1. Translate the article using a dictionary.
A healing balm
Self-healing substances that are capable of repairing themselves
when damaged are under development
One of the differences between animals and machines is that
animal bodies can repair a lot of the damage that a cruel and
hostile world inflicts on them. A machine, by contrast, has to
wait for someone to come and fix it. But that may change if
researchers in the field of self-repairing materials have their way. Two groups in
particular - one in America and one in Britain - are trying to create composite
materials that mend themselves if they get cracked, in much the same way that an
animal's broken bone heals itself. The difference is that these materials will heal in
minutes rather than months.
Such self-healing composites may take a while to enter everyday use. But if
they can be made reliably they will be welcome in high-stress applications that are
difficult to inspect regularly (the blades of wind turbines, for example) or are critical
to safety (such as the doors and window-frames of aircraft).
Jeffrey Moore and his colleagues at the University of Illinois are working on
the problem by adding extra components to their composites. Like most such
materials, these composites consist of fibres (in this instance, carbon fibres)
embedded in a plastic matrix (an epoxy resin). The main extra component added by
Dr Moore is a sprinkling of tiny capsules containing a chemical called
29
dicyclopentadiene. If the composite cracks, the capsules near the crack break open
and release the dicyclopentadiene molecules, which link together to form another
type of plastic that binds the crack together and thus heals the material.
To start with, Dr Moore had to nurse this process along by adding a second
extra component—a catalyst based on ruthenium. This worked well in the laboratory,
but ruthenium is too expensive for mass deployment. However, when he was playing
with solvents that might be added to the system to speed the transfer of the
dicyclopentadiene to the cracks it is intended to heal, he found a solvent that
encouraged the process to work without the ruthenium catalyst. Alas, the solvent Dr
Moore hit on, chlorobenzene, is pretty nasty stuff (it is used, for example, in the
manufacture of DDT). However, he has since found a suitable alternative that turns
out to be even better. The chlorobenzene process restored only 80% of a material's
original toughness. The new solvents restore it completely.
2. Make a presentation on advances in the sphere of self-repairing
materials.
The Economist
30
Соседние файлы в предмете [НЕСОРТИРОВАННОЕ]