01-04-2020-Орловская И.В., Самсонова Л.С. Учебник английского языка для технических университетов и вузов (6-е издание, 2006)(1) (1171846), страница 55
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The private schoolsdo not receive any tax money, so most of them must charge the students several hundred dollars a year to pay for the cost of theschool. Boys and girls attend the public schools together, but manyprivate schools are for girls only or for boys only.To be read after Lesson 2The Trees Fell — So Did the PeopleEarly civilisations may have killed themselves off by plundering(хищнически уничтожать) local plants and animals. New archeological findings suggest that far from living in perfect harmony withnature, prehistoric civilisation dealt major and sometimes fatalblow to natural surroundings. Many investigators now question theidea that environmental problems began only with the industrialrevolution in the 19th century.Long before the appearance of industrial civilization prehistoricsocieties were destroying (уничтожать) forests, plants, animalsand farmland.
Such destruction sometimes destroyed them in turn.The mysterious disappearance of Anasasi Indians may be a dramatic example of this. In territories that are now New Mexico andArizona the Indians built a complex of roads, irrigation systems andgiant «houses» with 800 rooms and more. All were abruptly left bythem around A.D. 1200. Until now, the majority of archeologistshave believed that the reason was a prolonged drought (засуха),but by using an electron microscope to analyze the tree rings American scientists found that over two centuries or so the Indians weresystematically deforesting the canyon where they lived until theforests' ability to replenish itself was destroyed.Some Words About WordsWith about 200,000 words in current usage English is generallyregarded as the richest of the world's languages.
Few other languages can match this word power. Chinese comes close. Germanhas a vocabulao of only 184,000 words, and French has fewer than100,000 words.English owes its exceptionally large vocabulary to its ability toborrow and absorb words from outside. Atomic, jeans, khaki, sput258nik, perestroika, glasnost are just a few of the many words that havecome into use during this century. They have been taken oradopted from Italian, Hindi, Creek and Russian. The process ofborrowing words from other languages has been going on for morethan 1,000 years. When the Normans crossed over from France toconquer England in 1066, most of the English spoke old English orAnglo-Saxon — a language of about 30,000 words.
The Normansspoke a language which was a mixture of Latin and French. It tookabout three centuries for the language to become one that is the ancestor of the English they speak today. The Normans gave us wordssuch as «city», and «palace».
The Anglo-Saxon gave us «ring andtown».Latin and Greek have been a fruitful source of vocabulary sincethe 16th century. The Latin word «mini», its opposite «maxi» andthe Greek word «micro» have become popular adjectives to describe everything from bikes to fashion.To be read after Lesson 3Nuclear Power? Well, YesAlthough nuclear reactors have generated electricity commercially for more than 40 years and nearly 400 now in operation, twomajor accidents — in the US in 1979 and Chernobyl in the USSRin 1986 — have put the industry under a radioactive cloud.
In thepopular imagination, reactors are nuclear bombs; even if they don'texplode, they go on accumulating waste that will finally cause aglobal catastrophe.As a result, an energy source once considered as the fuel of thefuture became questionable. But not everywhere.
Nuclear powerprovides nearly a quarter of the electricity generated in the industrialized Western world by the 24-member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In Francemore than 76 % of electric power is nuclear-generated, in Belgium— 62 %, Sweden — 50 %, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Finland come in at one third, Japan — a little less; Britain, the US andCanada — under 20 %. Some countries have no nuclear powerplants at all and don't want any.Not only the strong emotions of fear have worked against nuclear power. Energy demand grew more slowly than expected in thepast decade. Prices of oil and coal have reduced.
However, energyprices can rise. Moreover, supplies of fossil fuel are limited, while259energy needs and tide (прилив) can't meet the increasing requirements. Besides, nuclear power doesn't add to global warming.All this causes the people to believe that the worid can't liveand work without nuclear power.To be read after Lesson 4TelecommunicationA group of people enter a room, the lights go down, the screenscome...
the videoconference is under way.Tomorrow's scientific fiction has become today's new technology -a daily reality for global companies who recognise the importance of regular communication between groups of people indifferent locations around the world.Essentially the videoconference room resembles a usual conference room.
Delegates sit along one side of a table facing their colleagues on screen on the other side. They can see, hear and talk toeach other simultaneously and can present slides of diagrams, evenpieces of equipment. The technology is relatively simple. A devicecalled videocodec takes the picture, digitalizes it for transmissionover a special network and reforms the picture at the other end.The problem today is to manufacture codec to the new international standard and to improve picture quality through faster transmission speeds.
Research and development is also focusing onmobile videoconferencing with broadcast quality pictures whichenable to have instant communication with colleagues around theworld.There is no doubt about the effectiveness of videoconferencing,as the videoconference eliminates the working time lost throughtravel.The First Travelling Post OfficeThe first travelling post office in the United States was Abraham Lincoln's hat. That was a strange place, indeed, for mail; butthat is where it was kept. Lincoln was appointed postmaster of NewSalem, a small Western town, about the year 1833. The postmanvisited the place once a week and brought the mail — a dozen letters, perhaps, and two or three newspapers — in his saddle (седло)bags. He was always met by Postmaster Lincoln who put the lettersinto his hat for safekeeping.
Lincoln was also the clerk in the country store, so he had a good opportunity to distribute the mail. But if260people did not come for it, he put on his hat and delivered it. SoNew Salem was the first town in the US to have rural free delivery,even though the postmaster received very small pay for his work. Atthat time, stamps and envelopes were not used.
When the sender ofa letter paid the postal charges, the postmaster wrote PAID in thelarge letters on the face of the letter. But the postal rates were sohigh that the sender seldom paid them. Thus, the mailing chargeswere usually collected from the person who received the mail. Thepostmaster always held his postal receipts until a government representative came for them.The InternetThe Internet is a magnificent global network with millions andmillions of computers and people connected to one another whereeach day people worldwide exchange an immeasurable amount ofinformation, electronic mail, news, resources and, more important, ideas.It has grown at a suфrising rate.
Almost everyone has heardabout it and an increasing number of people use it regularly. Thecurrent estimate is that over 70 million people are connected, insome way, to the Internet — whether they know it or not.With a few touches at a keyboard a person can get access to materials in almost everywhere. One can have access to full-text newspapers, magazines, journals, reference works, and even books.
TheWeb is one of the best resources for up-to-date information. It is ahypertext-based system by which you can navigate through theInternet. Hypertext is the text that contains links to other documents. A special program known as «browser» can help you findnews, pictures, virtual museums, electronic magazines, etc. andprint Web pages. You can also click on keywords or buttons thattake you to other pages or other Web sites.
This is possible becausebrowsers understand hypertext markup language or code, a set ofcommands to indicate how a Web page is formatted and displayed.Internet Video conferencing programs enable users to talk toand see each other, exchange textual and graphical information,and collaborate.Internet TV sets allow you to surf the Web and have e-mailwhile you are watching TV, or vice versa. Imagine watching a filmon TV and simultaneously accessing a Web site where you get information on the actors of the film.
The next generation ofInternet-enabled televisions will incorporate a smart-card for261home shopping, banking and other interactive services. Internetenabled TV means a TV set used as an Internet device.The Internet is a good example of a wide area network (WAN).For long-distance or worldwide communications, computers areusually connected into a wide area network to form a single integrated network. Networks can be linked together by telephone linesor fibre-optic cables. Modern telecommunication systems use fibre-optic cables because they offer considerable advantages. Thecables require little physical space, they are safe as they don't carryelectricity, and they avoid electromagnetic interference.Networks on different continents can also be connected via satellites.
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