VII. Read the sentences containing non-finite forms of the verb (Infinitive, Gerund, and Participle). Define their functions. Translate into Russian.

1. Reading aloud is useful.

2. Primitive people believed colors to take on mystic and religious significance.

3. Reading this text we came to know many interesting things about color.

4. The experiments made by Newton in the 17^th century were of significance.

5. Our intention is getting more data on this unusual phenomenon.

6. He was the kind of person that one is happy to have known.

7. Color is and important facet of nature influencing the life of almost every creature.

8. I was surprised at seeing so many changes in the final version of his paper.

Look through the text and write out the sentences containing non-finite forms. State their functions. Translate the sentences into Russian.

VIII. Study the following sentences. Define forms of the Subjunctive Mood. Translate into Russian.

1. But neither animals nor plants could have evolved were it not for the protection and nurturing of the ocean.

2. If you were to travel back about some 470 million years ago, Earth would seem lifeless, inhospitable and very barren.

Read and translate the following sentences.

1. If it were Sunday tomorrow, we should have no classes.

2. If the text were easy, George would translate it without dictionary.

3. If the book had been interesting I should have read it up to the end.

4. If he were in the laboratory, he would check the results.

5. If this project had been successful, we should have learnt a great deal about the Earth.

6. If I had used a computer, my calculations could have been without mistakes.

IX. Answer the questions:

1. Where did land plants and land animals come from?

2. When did animal life appear on the Earth?

3. What was the first plant on the Earth?

4. How did the first plants evolve?

5. What increased the percentage of oxygen or carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere?

X. Write out the sentences expressing the main idea of the text. Give the title to the text.

SUPPLEMENTARY TEXTS.

PART I. TEXTS FOR HOMEREADING

COLOSSAL SQUID

Last month fishermen in the icy Ross Sea encountered a deep-sea giant.

Almost 20 feet (6 meters) long, with spiked tentacles and huge, protruding eyes, it was feeding on Patagonian toothfish caught on longlines set by the fishermen.

The creature was hauled aboard and taken to New Zealand for analysis. This confirmed the encounter as the first live sighting of a colossal squid.

Usually called Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, scientists who examined the Ross Sea specimen coined the term "colossal squid" to distinguish it from giant quid (Architeuthis). They say the species is the biggest and most fearsome squid known to science and could grow to 40 feet (12 meters) in length—longer than a whale. Thought to be only the second intact example ever recovered, the massive cephalopod was armed with two huge beaks and rotating hooks along its tentacles.

This latest find has revived interest in sea monster legends of old. Could it be such monsters really existed, and still exist today?

Scientists who identified the Ross Sea squid have fueled such speculation.

New Zealand squid expert Steve O'Shea, from Auckland University of Technology, has described the squid as "a true monster." He told the BBC: “Giant squid is no longer the largest squid that's out there. We've got something that's even larger and not just larger but an order of magnitude meaner."

Auckland University of Technology research associate Kat Bolstad, also talking to the BBC, added: "This animal, armed as it is with the hooks and the beak that it has, not only is colossal in size but is going to be a phenomenal predator and something you are not going to want to meet in the water."

SEA MONSTERS

Some of the earliest tales about huge, tentacled sea monsters date back to the 12th century when Norwegian seafarers described an awesome beast called a Kraken.

By the 18th century the Kraken still had a fearsome reputation. In the Natural History of Norway, the Bishop of Bergen likened it to a "floating island” adding, ‘It seems these are the creature's arms, and, it is said, if they were to lay hold of the largest man-of-war [a ship], they would pull it down to the bottom."

Over time the reputed size of these "monsters" was scaled down considerably, but stories persisted. An alleged encounter between a giant squid and a French naval vessel was the basis for Jules Verne's "squid of colossal dimensions" which was featured in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

There is also an account of sailors being attacked by a giant squid after their ship sunk during the Second World War. At least one sailor was supposedly eaten. And even this year, French yachtsmen taking part in the appropriately named Jules Verne Trophy reported that a 26-foot-long (8-meter) squid clamped itself to their boat.

An early description of what is thought to be Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni appeared in an article entitled Hunting Sea Monsters in 1953. It was, Gilbert Voss wrote, "a squid that could qualify in the most lurid deep-sea drama."

There is some truth to this observation. Whalers who once worked the southern oceans were well aware of "deep-sea dramas" played out between colossal squid and sperm whales which fed in Antarctic waters. The whalers often discovered giant squid beaks inside the stomachs of these whales.

Professor Paul Rodhouse, head of biological sciences at the British Antarctic Survey, says whalers also noted deep scars and circular marks around the heads of their quarry.

WHALE STORIES

However, Rodhouse is quick to scotch stories about such squid killing and even eating sperm whales.

"Whalers could see the damage these squid caused so it was well known what was going on, but the stories got elaborated and expanded on," he said, whales that go into Antarctic waters to feed on these creatures are the larger bulls. These are very powerful predators and my guess is they would be able to capture even the biggest squid."

Richard Ellis also believes such stories have been blown out of proportion.

"This creature, like Architeuthis, is probably a deep-water dweller”, he said. "What earthly—or oceanic—reason would a squid have for attacking a ship? I think both these squids are fish-eaters. The long tentacles of Architeuthis and the hooks of Mesonychoteuthis support this contention, and do not indicate any predilection to attack whales, people or ships."

Rodhouse is more concerned about the colossal squid than the fate of humans who may encounter one. In particular, he is worried about the recent influx of fishing vessels into Antarctic waters that target Patagonian toothfish. He says the fish is a major prey species for colossal squid.

"The fish can grow to over 2 meters (6 feet) but it's being overfished in many parts of the southern ocean," he said. "Toothfish and these squid form рart of a deep water ecosystem that we know virtually nothing about—yet we are already exploiting it with commercial fisheries."

At least the colossal squid isn't likely to join toothfish on the seafood menu. Calamari as big as car tires might sound an appetizing idea, but jumbo-sized squid usually contain high levels of ammonia and their meat is said to taste like floor cleaner.

(For National Geographic News April 23, 2003)

CAN VITAMINS BEAT BACK THE KLLERS?

Vitamins, garlic and fish oils have all been suggested as aids to a longer life. Can fighting disease really be so simple?

Scientists from research centers all round the world claim that foods containing anti-oxidant vitamins can protect the public from developing cancer and might also slow down the growth of early tumors. The long list of other beneficial effects included protection against heart disease, cataracts and the effects of smoking, the delaying of ageing and slowing the progress of Parkinson’s disease.

The latest research reinforces what many experts in disease patterns have long suspected — that a Mediterra­nean-type diet rich in fish, garlic, olive oil and with plenty of fruit and vegetables can prevent premature death from the leading killer diseases. a report published in The Lancet last week revealed that a diet rich in fatty fish has a protective effect on the heart. This study from the Medical Research Council's Epidemiology Unit in Cardiff found that men with heart disease who ate two or three kipper meals a week had a lower death rate from all causes than those who reduced their dietary fat intake or increased the amount of fiber they ate.

Fatty fish such as herring, mackerel, sardines, salmon, halibut and trout are high in two essential fatty acids, EPA and DHA. These are known to have a thinning effect on the blood, making it less likely to form clots in the blood vessels.

Fish oils are also believed to have a lowering effect on blood fats. The Cardiff researchers conclude that men with heart disease may reduce their chances of dying prematurely by adding 12 ounces of oily fish to their diet each week.

But this was not the only good news on the nutrition front. It was announced that garlic pills may also reduce mortality among heart disease patients. Studies in West Germany have shown that garlic treatment reduced the death rate by half and the number of non- fatal heart attacks by a third. As with fish the effects are thought to result from a lowering of blood cholesterol and a thinning of the blood.

The British researchers are impressed by the growing evidence of the protective effects of the nutrients contained in fruit and vegetables.

Vitamins are anti-oxidants, vitamin C, vitamin D and beta-carotene. Vitamin C is found in cauliflower , potatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli, Brussels, sprouts and citrus fruits and vitamin E in vegetable oils, corn oil, sunflower oil, margarine, wheat germ, nuts, whole grains and leafy green vegetables.

Beta-carotene is known as a pro­vitamin because it is partially con­verted to vitamin A in the body. Unlike vitamin A itself, large quanti­ties are not harmful. It is found in carrots, cress, spinach, broccoli, tom­atoes, mangoes, melons, apricots, peaches and oranges.

Anti-oxidant vitamins are said to prevent illness by canceling out the effects of free radicals. These are highly unstable oxygen molecules believed to cause cell damage and possibly promote both cancer and the laying down of fatty deposits in the arteries.

About 178,000 people die of heart disease and 160,000 of cancer in the U K each year. The concept of reducing the toll of Britain's big two killers simply by eating more sensibly is enticing, but is it really possible? And if so, what other dietary measures should people take to protect their health?

CLONING WILL BE DONE

Dr Lee Silver is a molecular biologist at Princeton University, a renowned fertility scientist, the author of a new book about "cloning and beyond". Genes are his subject and he points out that he has a few that could be improved on. He has asthma, for instance.

Dr Silver believes that we are not that far from being on the brink of a brave new world of reproductive genetics — or reprogenetics as he calls it — where parents will have the choice whether to pass such things on to their children. "If I could have fixed it so my children didn't have asthma, I would have thought very seri­ously about that, it is a basic instinct for parents to want their chil­dren to have all possible advantages. I'm suggesting that our tech­nologies will allow us to get children with, at first, simple traits such as being taller or who are resistant to cancer, or diabetes, or heart disease", he says.

Dr Silver thinks clones have had a bit of a bad press. "Most people get upset about cloning because they think you can replicate an entire person". This is not true, he says, because a cloned child will be growing up in a different time and place than their parent. Not to mention a different personality and soul. All you are doing is creating a later-born identical twin.

Dr Silver doesn't think cloning is so bad. He thinks it is irrele­vant actually. He thinks it is going to become available some place and he thinks it will be used by a small percentage of people. He thinks it is reasonable to happen in 15 years.

He says that cloning is a sideshow. It doesn't do anything to so­ciety. What will have an effect on society is genetics and making genetic changes in the embryo.

He foresees a future where par­ents with enough money will be able to purchase two types of pro­cedures. The first — which he calls The Virtual Child — involves analysing a batch of your own embryos to decide which one has the best genetic profile. This is an extension of genetic screening which is already done for some diseases. The second type of procedure uses genetic engineering to create a Designer Child. The parents choose which genes to add to their embryo and then it is implanted. This is the most significant thing that is going to happen to the human race, ever", says Dr Silver.

Is it immoral to mess around with life in this way? Can the mystery of life be contained in a Petri dish? Is it a sin? Should it be illegal? Dr Silver says that these questions may be very interesting but that they miss an essential point — which is that it will be done.

WHAT IS CANCER?

Actually cancer is not one but many diseases. Under the micro­scope hundreds of different varieties of cancer cells can be identi­fied. Cancer is therefore a group of diseases characterized by ab­normal, uncontrolled, "lawless" growth of body cells. Plants and animals are also subject to cancerous growths.

Cells are the fundamental units of all living matter. In the nor­mal process of growth and repair, cells grow and take their places in the economy of the body according to what may be called the "rules of nature". Cell growth and development is an extremely complicated process whose central secrets have not yet been fath­omed.

Sometimes, for reasons still unknown, a cell or group of cells breaks the ordinary rules of nature. They behave in a disorderly way; they grow wildly. There is no place for them in the normal structure and function of the body. Like weeds in a garden, they crowd out normal, useful cells and steal their food supply. When enough of these wild cells cluster together, they can sometimes be felt as a lump. Unless the growth of these abnormal cancer cells can be checked by some means (usually outside intervention), they oust so many normal cells that the body can no longer function and the victim dies. For example, when cancer cells invade the stomach, they crowd out the specialized stomach cells necessary for digest­ing food. Hence the patient eventually partially starves to death.

Cancer cells can start in any part of the body, but some sites are more favored. Unfortunately these cells rarely remain where they originate. Clusters or clumps of cancer cells break off and travel in the blood stream to other parts of the body — from the breast to the armpits, for example. This spread of cancer cells is called metasta­sis.

Cancer cells are definitely different from ordinary cells, and these differences can be observed in tiny sections of tissue exam­ined under a microscope. Identifying cancer cells is an important part of the job of the pathologist.

Many names have been given to the different cancer cells iden­tified. Most end in the suffix "oma". Thus, for example, carcinoma is cancer of the epithelial tissues (skin, glands, membranes); sar­coma, of connective tissue (bone, muscle); melanoma, of the pig­ment cells of skin. Leukemia, so-called cancer of the blood, reflects a disturbance in the blood-forming organs, which manufacture so many white blood cells that the essential red blood cells are crowded out.

AIDS – RELATED INFECTIONS

The AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does not by itself produce most of the illness and death associated with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). HIV can dam­age organs directly, but by progressively crippling the body's de­fenses, the virus also sets the stage for the development of oppor­tunistic infections: invasions of microorganisms that proliferate wildly only because the immune system is defective. Such infec­tions, which rarely cause disease— impairment of organ func­tion— in people with a healthy immune system, account for as much as 90 percent of the mortality of AIDS (the end stage of HIV infection).

Antiviral drugs that are effective against HIV, such as zidovudine (AZT), do not eradicate HIV completely, but they do slow the HIV-related decline in immunity. In so doing, they help to delay the onset of opportunistic infections. Until there is a cure for HIV infection, however, the survival time and comfort of patients will depend greatly on therapies that specifically prevent individual opportunistic infections or treat them more effectively.

Research into such therapies has expanded markedly in the past five to 10 years and is already bringing improvements in patient care. For instance, at the start of the AIDS epidemic, there was no way to combat severe infection by cytomegalovirus, a herpesvirus that in immunocompromised patients can cause blindness or dam­age to the digestive tract or lungs. As of 1990, one drug is licensed and a second is widely available for acute therapy and prevention of recurrences. Until recently the disease Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia struck 85 percent of all HIV-infected patients at least once. Today two thirds or more of these episodes can be prevented with medication.

HIV-related opportunistic infections are quite varied, yet they share several features. For example, most of them also arise in peo­ple with immunity impaired for other reasons, such as those who take immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection of organ trans­plants.

AIR POLLUTION

In recent years there has been great interest in the environment and many "new" words have become part of our vocabulary, words such as ecology, environment, photochemical smog and greenhouse effect. Simultaneously we have been made aware of environmental problems caused by the high technology created to achieve the material comforts we demand. Among these problems are the affects of air pollution. Air pollution causes increased respiratory illness in the old and young, decreases visibility, damages plants and animals and has possibly catastrophic effects on global scale.

Air pollution has long been known to have an adverse effect on plants. If we first examine the physiology of the leaf, we can appreciate some of the reasons why damage occurs. The leaf veins function much as the blood vessels do in animals, acting as the transport system for water minerals and food. The leaf tissue is in layers within a skin or epidermis layer on top and bottom and the photosynthesis cells in between. The stomata are entrances in the leaf bottom through which CO enters to take part in the photosynthesis process. These openings are protected by two guard cells which open and close to allow gases to enter or leave the leaf. Such gases can, of course, also include pollutants.

Most of our air pollution comes from combustion of fuels to produce heat and work. The very rapidly accelerating use of such fuels has greatly increased air pollution and the problem of air pollution has become the very urgent problem of our time. Initiatives to clear up one situation may in fact worsen it or create another, that's why the solution of this problem must have come from cooperative efforts between all nations and between all specialists, i.e. biologists, technologists and nontechnologists.