II. Read the article Louis von Ahn

E-mail users hate “spam”, and the people who send spam hate Louis fon Ahn. They use programs called spambots to steel e-mail addresses. To stop them, von Ahn developed a visual test involves recognising distorted words, letters and numbers. Humans can pass the CAPTCHA, or “Completely Automated Public Turning Test to Tell Computers and Human Apart”, but spambots cannot. Some 60 million CAPTCHAs are decoded by people every day. Then von Ahn started thinking about using the method to digitize books. Pages are scanned into computers that convert images into text. But computers cannot recognize distorted letters. That’s where humans can help, says von Ahn. The solution is to send unclear texts in the form of CAPATCHAs for people to decode. Born in Guatemala City, 30-year-old von Ahn teaches computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, Pensylvania.

Business Spotlight, 2/08

Try to give the explanation of the following words from the text:

Spam, spambot, to distort, to apart.

DISCUSSION

Work in pairs.

Discuss with your partner:

• What scientific achievement, discovery or invention plays an important part in our/your life.

• Why?

• How often do you use it in your everyday life?

WRITING

Write a report concerning the previous activity.

Homework

Prepare presentation.

Lesson 6 Women in science

LEAD-IN

Read the names of the different women and say what they are famous for, matching the names on the left with the professions on the right:

Julia Roberts - a scientist

Jane Austen - a mathematician

Marie Curie - a founder of the nursing profession

Sofia Kovalevskaya - a cosmonaut

Florence Nightingale - a writer

Jane Fonda - a singer

Valentina Tereshkova - a politician

Margaret Thatcher - a film star

Kylie Minogue - the creator if aerobics

So we have been discussing a lot about the contributions of famous scientists who have revolutionized science and our life. Many of these scientists have been men. However, there have been many women and other minorities who have contributed to the progress science has made. Today we are going to talk about the contributions of women scientists. One of them isMarie Curie.

READING

Dr. Marie Curie is known to the world as the scientist who discovered radioactive metals i.e. Radium & Polonium.

Marie Curie was a Polish physicist and chemist who lived between 1867-1934. Together with her husband, Pierre, she discovered two new elements (radium and polonium, two radioactive elements that they extracted chemically from pitchblended ore) and studied the x-rays they emitted. She found that the harmful properties of x-rays were able to kill tumors. By the end of World War I, Marie Curie was probably the most famous woman in the world. She had made a conscious decision, however, not to patent methods of processing radium or its medical applications.

Marie Curie was born on November 7, 1867 in Poland and died on July 4, 1934. Her co-discovery with her husband Pierre Curie of the radioactive elements radium and polonium represents one of the best known stories in modern science for which they were recognized in 1901 with the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1911, Marie Curie was honored with a second Nobel prize, this time in chemistry, to honor her for successfully isolating pure radium and determining radium's atomic weight.

As a child, Marie Curie amazed people with her great memory. She learned to read when she was only four years old. Her father was a professor of science and the instruments that he kept in a glass case fascinated Marie. She dreamed of becoming a scientist, but that would not be easy. Her family became very poor, and at the age of 18, Marie became a governess. She helped pay for her sister to study in Paris. Later, her sister helped Marie with her education. In 1891, Marie attended the Sorbonne University in Paris where she met and married Pierre Curie, a well-known physicist.

After the sudden accidental death of Pierre Curie, Marie Curie managed to raise her two small daughters (Irène, who was herself awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935, and Eve who became an accomplished author) and continue an active career in experimental radioactivity measurements.

Marie Curie contributed greatly to our understanding of radioactivity and the effects of x-rays. She received two Nobel prizes for her brilliant work, but died of leukemia, caused by her repeated exposure to radioactive material.

Mary Bellis, Your Guide to Inventors

Give possible synonyms or definitions to the following words or find their meaning in the dictionary:

To extract, tumor, application, accomplished.

Answer the questions:

1. What new facts and information have you learnt from the text?

2. Which information mostly surprised you? Why?

LISTENING

New words

Try to guess the meaning of the following words:

to drip, backer, to commit.

Listen to the interview with Mandy Haberman, inventor of a non-spill cup for children and after listening try to explain the following expressions:

made a series of prototypes

look for a financial backer

applied for a patent

exhibited at trade shows

set up my own company.

PRESENTATION

This is the final lesson on the topic. Your homework was to prepare presentation.

All teams present their articles to the editorial team and make a report to a class about the person of their article. At the same time all the listeners play the part of the members of the editorial team: make some notes in order to be ready for giving the evaluation of the reports, collate the articles for getting out the newsletter in its final form.

After the presentation make a conclusion.