Диссертация (1146760), страница 41

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Some species have declined by as much as 92% in the last 18 years, and there are fewerthan 50 bears left. Dr Jonathan Baillie from the Zoological Society of London says the problemsbegan after the collapse of communism."In the early 1990s... the social system changed rapidly. It was formerly heavily influenced by the Soviet Union, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union there was high unemployment, and also the regulatory mechanisms broke down, so wildlife trade really increased," hesaid.

Law enforcement on hunting and trading has become increasingly lax, and vehicles andguns are far more widely available.The Zoological Society has begun working with local partners in Mongolia to try to reverse the trend. There is at least one precedent for this - the last breed of wild horse in Mongoliawas declared extinct 10 years ago, but it has since been re-introduced by conservationists. Nowthere are more than 250 such animals roaming the steppes once again.Задание 28Speaker 1This is nothing new, of course. One of the most horrific examples of this was the Black Death inEurope (in around 1348 to 1350).

The Black Death was bubonic plague, caused by bacteriatransmitted by the rat flea, which can spread to humans. An outbreak of bubonic plague was recorded in China in the 1330s, and by the late 1340s it had reached Europe. By the end of theepidemic, a third of Europeans, that's 25 to 40 million, had been killed, and we don't know howmany Chinese had died. These deaths changed the economic and cultural life of Asia and Europeforever.

Similarly, the native peoples of "The New World" also suffered when the European explorers and colonists arrived after 1492. Measles, smallpox, infiuenza, and whooping coughkilled many of the natives throughout North and South America, the Pacific Islands, and Australia. Some populations were completely wiped out, and others had such severe disease rates thattheir cultures were destroyed.242Speaker 2In the history of the wars the historian Procopius of Caesarea recorded a dreadful event whichbefell Byzantine in the year of 542.

In this time, he wrote, there came a pestilence by which thewhole human race was nearly annihilated. It is said that the half of the city population died ofbubonic plague. And perhaps it was the most serious outbreak of the disease before the BlackDeath ravaged in Europe in the 14th century. Plague and other infectious deceases such asleprosy are documented in ancient literature and apparently have been with us through millenniabut others such as HIV and Ebola have emerged only in recent decades.

So where do infectiousdiseases come from? Where can we trace their origins? Procopius believed the plague he documented had begun in Egypt. Modern DNA techniques suggest that, in fact, it originated in China.Задание 29And before you start to do that you have to make the liquid ink by grinding a solid block of inkwith water. You do that with your left hand, and that's very rhythmic. And then when you'vemade enough ink you start to draw or to write. And my friend says that when you have the brushjust about um a couple millimetres from the paper, you can imagine in your eye, in your mind,the perfect stroke that you're going to make, it's going to be just perfect. And you can almost feelit going down your arm into your hand where you're holding the brush.

But the moment thebrush touches the paper you realise that you haven't done the perfect one, that there's somethingwrong with it. So then you lift the brush and you try again, and you try again and you try again.Задание 31Часть 1woman 1) OK. Let's see where we are on this project for geography class. Our presentation's intwo days, and I hope we're almost ready.man) I hope so, too. We were each going to look up information about a different lake — with anemphasis on how each lake was formed — and we'll each present information on that lake to the,to the class. My job was to look up information on Lake Superior, and I've done that.woman 2) I've done my research on the Caspian Sea.woman 1) And I'm ready with information about Lake Baikal .woman 2) Great.

I'll go first. I'll be discussing the Caspian Sea, which is the largest inland bodyof water in the world. The Caspian Sea is a saltwater lake between Europe and Asia. It is believed that this lake was originally connected to the world oceans, which would account for itssaltwater content. As the Earth's plates moved, this arm of the ocean was cut off.243(man) Well, here's what I found on Lake Superior. Lake Superior is, of course one of the GreatLakes in North America and it's the largest freshwater lake in the world. Along with the otherGreat Lakes, it was formed by glaciers.

Glaciers covered the northern part of North America until 10,000 years ago and were responsible for carving out the Great Lakes, including Lake Superior.(woman 1) OK, now for Lake Baikal, which is the lake I'll be discussing. Lake Baikal's in Russia, and it was formed when the earth's crust broke apart at a fault. Because Lake Baikal formedover a split in the Earth's crust, it's a very deep lake, the deepest lake in the world. Lake Baikal'sso deep that, even though its surface area is much smaller than the surface area of Lake Superior,it could hold the water of all the Great Lakes combined.(man) Well, it looks like we've all found information about each of these lakes and, in particular,how they were formed.

Now we need to talk about how we can present the information to therest of the class.(From D. Phillips “Preparation Course for the TOEFL Test)Часть 2Today, I’ll be talking about the major rivers of the world. The four longest are the Nile, the Amazon, the Mississippi and the Yangtze. The Nile River in Africa is the longest, at 4,145 miles inlength. It flows north from the equator to empty into the Mediterranean and irrigates more than amillion acres of land.

The Amazon River in South America is slightly shorter than the Nile atjust over 4,000 miles in length. Though it is the world's second longest river, it carries more water than any other river. Asia also has a massive river system. The Yangtze River in China isAsia's longest at 3,436 miles. Because the mountains at its source are at such a high altitude, theYangtze flows more rapidly than other major rivers for most of its length. The Mississippi Riveris the best-known river system in North America, and it's the United States' chief inland waterway. However, it's not the longest river in North America; the Missouri River, at 2,340 miles inlength, is slightly longer than the Mississippi.(From D.

Phillips “Preparation Course for the TOEFL Test)Задание 33Many of the world cities are more vital, more successful, more dynamic than ever. Thatdoesn’t mean that all cities are. Cities like Detroit, not Chicago, I would actually differentiatebetween those two, and cities like Detroit and Liverpool and many cities of the Continent whichhave not yet managed to turn themselves around.

Now, if you want to understand why some cities have been able to succeed and other cities have not, it’s the… If you go back to the 18th cen-244tury, cities succeeded… Cities were able to reinvent themselves through a combination ofskilled people, of smart people, small firms in connection with the globalized world. This iswhat made Birmingham great in the 18th century, that’s what made New York thrive at the ageof Alexander Hamilton.And it’s what makes cities succeed today.

But the industrial city moved away from that.The Great.. uh.. the Industrial Revolution itself a child of urban Britain. Henry Ford’s mass produced automobiles created by the enormous entrepreneurship of Detroit in the early part of the20th century that produced these vast vertically integrated companies that were walled off fromthe outside world and provided lots of employment for less educated people which on one levelwas a great thing but on another level it set the stage for a very difficult process of reinvention.On the other hand, cities like New York and London have managed to come back because the same proximity that once got hogsheads onto clipperships now enables smart peopleto learn from one another. The reason why some cities have come back is because the city’surban proximity plays to what is humankind’s greatest asset — our ability to learn from oneanother, our — we come out of the womb with this remarkable ability to soak up informationfrom the people who are near us.

And to create these collaborative chains of invention which areyou know responsible for humankind’s greatest hits from Athenian philosophy to Florentine Renaissance art to Facebook which come out of cities in connection.. and that, that’s what makesthe difference.Задание 35Today, I’ll be talking about the information in Chapter 22 from the text, the chapter onconifers. You should've read the chapter already and turned in the answers to the ten questions atthe end of the chapter.Do you know what conifers are? Well, conifers are the type of trees, such as pines, thathave cones stead of colorful flowers.

About a third of the world's trees are conifers, and the vastmajority of conifers are found in the great conifer forests of North America and Siberia. Conifersare hardy trees that have been able to survive well, and as a result, both the oldest and biggesttrees in the world belong to the conifer family. The oldest known living tree is a four-thousandyear-old bristlecone pine, which is located in California. The giant redwoods, which are alsofound in California, are the largest trees; they can be several hundred feet tall and weigh as muchas 2,000 tons. An interesting note about the giant redwoods is that, even though the trees are solarge, they have relatively small cones.245What is true of most, but not all, conifers is that they are evergreens with needle- likeleaves.

The needle-like shape of conifer leaves evolved as a reaction to drought. When comparedwith a flat leaf a needle presents a much smaller surface area, which decreases the amount of water lost through the leaves. Because most conifers are evergreens, they lose and replace theirneedles throughout the year, rather than shedding all their leaves in one season, as deciduoustrees do.

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