Book 2 Listening (Л.Н. Шевырдяева - Naturally Speaking & Listening), страница 6

Listen to the text again and answer the questions:1. What is the main obstacle to making immune system attack drugs?2. How can this obstacle be overcome?3. What components is the vaccine against methamphetamine constructed from?4. What makes nicotine so hard to target with a vaccine?5. What method was used to deal with that difficulty?6. How effective were the vaccines?Text D. Wine gumsExercise 9. Before listening to the text answer the following questions:1. What protective properties of wine do you know?2.

What wine compounds account for these properties?floss – зубная нитьcavity – кариесto bestow – даровать, присуждатьExercise 10. Listen to the text (Script 37) which describes a new prospectivemethod for teeth hygiene. Put the stages of the research in the correct order,describe each stage in detail.a. The scientists exposed the discs to various treatments.b.

The scientists grew five oral bacteria.c. The scientists compared antibiofilm properties of the treatments.d. The bacteria formed films on the discs.e. The scientists identified the wine compund.f. Research demonstrated that red wine has antimicrobial properties.29Unit 13. Sex and GenderLexics: Physiology / Embryology / Reproduction / Neurobiology / Genetics /GenomicsListening. 4 textsText B.

Lifespan and the sexesExercise 5. The following text (Script 39) correlates with the text Why is lifeexpectancy longer for women than it is for men? in Exercise 2 of Book 1. Listen tothe text and compare the facts presented in both. Make a full list of factors thataccount for the difference in life expectancy between the sexes.to buck – противиться, вставать на дыбыtomcat – котram – баранeunuch – евнухExercise 6. Listen to the text again. Using information from the text answer thequestions:1. What are the current trends in life expectancy?2.

What factors explain the narrowing gap between life expectancy of men and womenin Great Britain?3. What countries can be considered exceptions from the general trends? What arethe reasons?4. Is it possible that men and women will have equal life expectancy? Why? Why not?Text C. Prehistoric reptiles and reproductionExercise 7. Before listening to the text discuss the following questions:1. How do reptiles reproduce?2.

How did prehistoric reptiles – dinosaurs – reproduce?viviparous – живородящийcetaceans – китообразныеExercise 8. Listen to the text (Script 40) and explain what dolphins and killerwhales have in common with ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs.Exercise 9.

Listen to the text again and explain what the following figures referto in the text:4.71.51.82/31987Exercise 10. Using information from the text prove that:301. The set of bones inside female plesiosaur fossil belonged to its fetus.2. Giving birth to one offspring is a risky adaptive strategy.3. Reproduction strategy allows to reveal important facts about fossil species.4. Reproduction strategy reflects social behavior and degree of intelligence.Text D. Genetic damage and paternal ageExercise 11. Discuss the following questions:1. How do reproductive abilities change with age in men and women?2. What effect does parental age have on the health of the child?to curtail – сократить, урезатьcensus – перепись населенияconception – зачатиеto tally – подсчитать, суммироватьExercise 12. Listen to the text (Script 41) which describes Iceland experimentand describe how scientists revealed the effects of parental age on child’s health.Exercise 13.

What do the following figures refer to in the text:170387478631429496910%283317%Exercise 14. Using information from the text prove that:1. Iceland presents unique opportunities for genetic investigations.2. The number of mutations passed on from the father is age-dependent.3. The differences in the number of mutations passed on are accounted for by theformation of sex cells in men and women.4. Father's age at conception can determine severe genetic disorders in childre.5. Iceland demonstrates significant shifts in demographics which may affect thecountry's overall health.31Unit 14. AgingLexics: Biochemistry / Molecular genetics / Cytology / Neurology / Embryology /GerontologyListening. 4 texts.Text A.

Stress and agingExercise 1. What do you know about telomeres? Answer the questions:1. What are telomeres and what is their function?2. What is Hayflick limit?3. What role do telomeres play in cancer development?4. How does chronic stress impact telomeres?Exercise 2. Listen to the text (Script 42) to check your answers in Exercise 1.How can stress management (e.g. telephone counseling) and physical exercise affecttelomeres and aging?Text B. Exercise and longevity.Exercise 3.

Before listening to the text remember what you know aboutautophagy and autophagosomes.Exercise 4. Listen to the text (Script 43) and describe the corellation between lifeexpectancy, starvation, exercise and autophagy.Exercise 5. Listen to the text again and say if the following statements are trueor false, correct the false ones:1. Exercise causes severe negative consequences for health.2. The term autophagy is derived from Greek “self-regeneration”.3. Exercise increases the rate of autophagosomes in muscles.4.

Both groups of experimental mice demonstrated similar short- and long-termresponses to exercise.5. Autophagy emerged as a defense mechanism against infection.6. Autophagy is involved in the process of aging – by destroying cells it speeds upaging.7. Near-starvation diets account for life extension.8.

Disposal of worn-out mitochondria through autophagy slows down aging.32ScriptsUnit 1. Human bodyScript 1. Blood transfusion.Painted outHow to disguise red blood cells so that their blood group is invisible.There are 29 possible combinations of human blood groups, and for a patient to begiven a safe transfusion the right one needs to be available. Besides the familiar ABO andrhesus systems, science has (after a sticky start) uncovered the MNS system, the Kellsystem, the Lewis system and the D+ and D- group. Choose wrong or settle for a less thanperfect match because no other is to hand - and antibodies produced by the recipient'simmune system may attack the foreign cells.

That can lead to serious consequences. In theworst cases a patient's organs may fail and he may die.Several attempts have been made to create artificial blood from chemicals that readilydissolve and transport oxygen, or to process the natural stuff in ways that eliminate theantigenic proteins which provoke this immune response. None, so far, has succeeded. Butthat has not stopped people trying. The latest effort, reported in Biomacromolecules byMaryam Tabrizian of McGill University in Montreal and her colleagues, follows the secondapproach, but with a twist. Instead of purging the antigenic proteins from red blood cells, DrTabrizian covers them up.In essence, what she is doing is painting the cells.

And, like all good decorators, sheuses two coats. The first - the undercoat - is a material that sticks both to the fatty surfacemembrane of the red cells and to the mixture Dr Tabrizian chose as the outer coat. Crucially,this second mixture is of no interest whatsoever to the immune system. Nor is anythingburied beneath it. Like blemishes on a bathroom wall, the antigenic proteins become invisiblewhen painted over. In practice, as is often the case when decorating a house, more than twocoats may be needed to cover things up. But the layers can be alternated to any thicknessdesired, and inconvenient antigens thus hidden from view.And it seems to work. When Dr Tabrizian exposed the newly coated blood cells toantibodies that would normally have been expected to stick to them and cause them togather in useless clumps, nothing happened.

Nor does the coating appear to harm the cells.That is mainly because red blood cells do very little other than absorbing and releasingoxygen and carbon dioxide as appropriate. They have no nuclei and no metabolism worthspeaking of, so there is little to go wrong. Both types of paint are, though, permeable byoxygen and carbon dioxide, and that permeability means the red blood cells can still do theirjob. Initial tests monitoring the flow of oxygen in and out of the cells show that they are ableto transfer the gas just as efficiently as cells that have not been tampered with.What Dr Tabrizian and her colleagues have not yet done is put their new creation backin an animal.

That is the next test. But if the cells do work in vivo as well as in vitro, the teamwill have taken a big step on the road to the much-desired goal of blood transfusion that nolonger has to worry about matching blood groups. (From The Economist, March 19, 2011)Script 2. Medical technologyA not-so-hard graftTransplantable blood vessels can now be grown as desired.Another advance in the emerging technology of regenerative medicine has just beenannounced. It should soon be possible to make blood vessels that can be stored and used"off the shelf" for surgery that requires arteries or veins to be bypassed.The vessels, prototypes of which are described this week in a paper in ScienceTranslational Medicine, are made by Humacyte, a small firm based in Durham, NorthCarolina, that was founded by Shannon Dahl, the paper's principal author, and twocolleagues.

The recipe Dr Dahl and her colleagues concocted begins with smooth-muscle33cells. Smooth muscle is different from the familiar sort that cloaks bones and enables bodilymovement. It is a component of organs such as the gut and the blood vessels thatsometimes need to change shape while they are functioning.To make artificial blood vessels the team took smooth-muscle cells from fresh corpsesand cultured them on tubular scaffolds made of a material called polyglycolic acid. Grown thisway, smooth muscle secretes collagen, a structural protein that is, among several otherthings in the body, an important component of the walls of blood vessels.