Interview with an austrian student

How would you describe Moscow in a single word?

— Exciting.

— Was there something that has really surprised or shocked you here?

— Well... Actually, nothing. There were no extreme differences for me, comparing it with my country. Probably the reason is that I've just had a big trip: we started in Beijing, then went through Mongolia to Russia. And China was different for us; afterwards, in Ulan-Bator we've seen poor people and very bad things, so Moscow seems to be okay.

— What do you like most of all about Moscow?

— I do not know if many Europeans say the same, but it's your metro. Of course, we have one in Vienna, but here it is much more comfortable with everything: short breaks, a clear line system... Also, I like the buildings, the architectural style of Moscow Just walking around and looking at them... And last but not least: I'm very impressed with Moscow girls. Yes, I heard a lot about Russian beauty but I never imagined so many pretty and stylish ones are just all around you, everywhere you go.

— Did you try Russian cuisine?

— Yes. It's more or less normal food — again, I mean, after my trips to the East... And I like that you eat a lot of meat. By the way, my favorite Russian dish is pelmeni. You eat a pack of them, and you feel strong enough to travel a whole day more!

— What traits of Moscow life would you prefer never to see again?

— The queues, rubbish in the streets and homeless people all around.

4. Прочитайте текст. Согласны ли вы с Леонардом Гриффитом? Переведите устно последний абзац текста:

ARE YOU REALLY FREE?

Several years ago a Canadian author named Leonard Griffith wrote a book entitled The Illusion of Our Culture,in which he stated, "Freedom is one of the great illusions of our time. We are not free and we never will be!"

Griffith did not intend to contradict the great democratic affirmations so cherished by humankind. Rather, he was saying that life without any restraints is impossible in our world. Freedom has its limitations.

We are never free from the necessity of making decisions.

An ancient writer once declared, "Wise is he who remembers that there may be freedom of choice but not freedom from choice." Someone has rightly said that most of the unhappiness in our world is the result of people pursuing goals that are incompatible with one another. When our objectives are contradictory, the result is always frustration.

Most people, for instance, want to be healthy — yet we want to be free from the discipline of exercise. We seek education but do not want to be encumbered with studying. We want to succeed in business without working. We long for happy families, but stay so busy that there is no time to be with our spouses and children. We cannot travel two roads at the same time. Somewhere, sometime we must choose.

Все последующие тексты предназначены для письменного перевода.

5. Cancer Study

The mechanism by which cancer spreads from one place in the body to many, has been the subject of intensive research by scientists for many years. What may be an answer to that question — and a suggestion as to how metastasis might be inhibited — came from the Institute for Cancer Research.

Speculation on how cancer spreads throughout the body has included the possibilities that it does so through the migration of

whole malignant cells from the primary tumor mass, or through viruses that are released from dying cancer cells.

The report in the journal Science suggests a third possibility. This is that cancer cells or viruses leak their genes — in the form of deoxyrebonucleic acid, or DNA — into the bloodstream, and the DNA then travels to places where it invades normal cells and transforms them to malignant ones.

To test this hypothesis scientists injected mice with DNA from рolyoma cancer virus and from a pneumococcal bacterium and compared the results.

They found that DNA from tumor viruses was much more resistant to body defences than the bacterial DNA. The reason for this, they said, may have had something to do with the closed-ring form of the tumor-type DNA molecules. They said their results indicated that this DNA could still produce its cancerous effects.

Thus, the report said that "tumor-inducing DNA can be transported in biologically active form from one part of the body to another."

From The New York Times

6. Manipulating the brain

Some persons were disturbed last week over a report of experiments in which the behavior of animals and people was influenced by electrical stimulation of selected regions of their brains.

According to the report, weak currents made to flow through electrodes implanted in the brains of monkeys and cats enabled scientists to "play" the animals like little electronic toys. They yawned, climbed, ran, turned, slept, mated and changed their emotional states from passivity to rage and vice versa,all on electrical command.

In one of the most spectacular experiments, a Spanish fighting bull was stopped in full charge by a stimulus radioed to an electrode implanted in its brain, which inhibited aggressiveness.

People, too, have undergone such stimulations in the course of diagnosis and therapy for severe cases of epilepsy. Electrical stimulations of certain regions of their brains have produced feelings of intense pleasure and of severe anxiety, a loss of ability to think or express themselves, a sudden increase in word output and profound feelings of friendliness.

The scientist who reported these findings was Dr. Jose Delgado of Yale University's School of Medicine. In a lecture, Dr. Delgado discussed some aspects of this work that might worry persons outside this field of research.

He emphasized, first, that the implantation of the electrodes in the brain and the passage of weak currents through them neither hurts (brain tissue is insensitive) nor causes any functional damage.

Such studies, Dr. Delgado believes, may enable scientists to discover the cerebral basis of anxiety, pleasure, aggression and other mental functions, which we could influence in their development and manifestation through electrical stimulations, drugs, surgery and especiaily "by means of more scientifically programmed education."

Dr. Delgado believes that control of human behavior on a large scale would not work because the effect of a stimulus can be changed or even overridden by the subject's own desires, emotions, etc. This has been shown in experiments on both animals and people. For example, monkeys in which aggressive behavior was electrically stimulated did not just attack any other member of the colony, but made "intelligent" attacks only on rivals, sparing their "friends".

Dr. Delgado thinks it will be necessary to develop new theories and concepts to explain the biological bases of social and antisocial behavior. These, he said, "for the first time in history can be explored in the conscious brain".

From The New York Times

7. NEW DINOSAUR SKELETONS FOUND

Although dinosaurs roamed virtually the whole earth for 160 million years, dinosaur skeletons are relatively scarce. The reason is that it takes very special conditions to make a fossil and a lot of luck to find one.

For many years, information about Tyrannosaurus rex was sketchy at best. However, in the summer of 1990, the first nearly complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever found was excavated in the Montana badlands. That same year a second, even more complete, skeleton was found in South Dakota. Together these skeletons yielded surprising new insights into the most famous of the dinosaurs, about the anatomy and behavior of T. rex and the world in which it lived.

Among the surprising discoveries were that T. rex was a far sleeker, but more powerful, carnivore than previously thought, perhaps weighing less than 6 ¹/₂ tons, no more than a bull elephant, and that T. rex's habitat was forest, not swamp or plain as previously believed. Moreover, there appears to have been two forms of T. rex,the male quite different from the female. Scientists hope that future fossil discoveries and increasingly more sophisticated techniques will provide more accurate and complete

information about not only T. rex but all the dinosaurs, giving us a window on the world so many millions of years into the past.

8. FAA set to regulate inflammable vapor

NEW YORK — The DC-10 was trying to land in Faro, Portugal, in a downpour when the wind shear hit. A hard landing turned into a disaster when the jet's right wing hit the runway and the rest of the plane broke into pieces. As fire raced through the cabin, passengers were scrambling through holes in the fuselage and getting out alive.

Four minutes later, the fuel tank exploded.

Many who had not escaped were burned to death. Of the 340 people on board, 56 people died in the accident.

But a new U.S. Federal Aviation Administration study estimates that half of those lives could have been saved if the plane had been equipped with a system to keep the fuel tanks from exploding.

Researchers have long known that putting nitrogen into fuel tanks can prevent explosions like the one that brought down TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island, New York, in 1996, and many millitary aircraft have used such systems for years. But the new study shows that such systems can save lives not only by preventing explosions that cause accidents, but also by preventing explosions that occur after a crash — explosions that sometimes keep those who survived the impact of the crash from escaping alive.

In the study — a joint project between the FAA and England's Civil Aviation Authority — British researchers combed through a worldwide data base of survivable accidents, identifying 13 accidents over a 30-yeaг period in which a fuel tank explosion occurred or is likely to have occurred after a crash.

Using information from autopsy reports and descriptions of the accident, they used a mathematical technique to predict how many lives might have been saved if different methods of placing nitrogen in the fuel tanks had been used. In some cases, many deaths were due to the impact of the crash, but in others, the explosion prevented some passengers who had survived the impact from getting out alive.

The study found that a total of 101 lives could have been saved by preventing post-crash explosions, an average of six lives per year.

9. From bridges to baby carriages

So what's so revolutionary about a bridge made of steel? Or the chassis of a baby carriage? And can steel be used to make things like wine barrels or shoes? The rapid development of the industry is reflected in its applications. Here's how.

Steel, as a construction material, is nothing short of remarkable. Everyone knows that cars, saws and railroad cars are made ofit. We simply take it for granted. But a closer look reveals a much larger and fascinating world.

Take stainless steel. It's nothing new. Most people have stainless steel in their homes — cutlery, pots and pans and kitchen sinks. But now, due to its special, long-lasting qualities, stainless steel has also become useful in many other areas.

Just recently, a bridge totally made of stainless steel was inaugurated in a suburb of Stockholm.

In France, a few wine producers have discovered the benefits of using stainless steel wine barrels — and to avoid upsetting the traditionalists, they cover the barrels in oak.

For SSAB, the Swedish steel manufacturer of high-strength steel, it is important to encourage new applications. By using high-strength steel, weight can be reduced and strength can be maintained. Since 1999, the company has awarded a prize for the most innovative way of using high-strength steel and in 2000, the winner was Emmaljunga for the high-strength steel chassis it uses in its baby carriages. In doing so, the company managed toreduce weight by 20 percent.

Weight reduction was also the objective when a shoe manufacturer decided to use stainless-steel caps in work boots — a big step forward and a welcome relief for thousands of workers.

Today, there is no end to the possibilities. And if the steel producers get their way, reducing weight and replacing "old" steel with "new" will change the world.

10. 'Jaws' author wants to save the sharks

By Duncan Campbell

The man most responsible for creating a fear of great white sharks with his novel "Jaws" is now campaigning to save them. He hopes to "de-demonize" the creatures, whose numbers are falling dramatically.

Peter Вenchley is the author of "Jaws," which was both a best-selling novel and a 1975 box-office hit film directed by Steven Spielberg. The haunting theme music has become synonymous with fear. Now, 25 years on, Вenchley says that he could not "in good conscience" have written the book today, having discovered much more about the true nature of the beast.

"Great white sharks have survived, virtually unchanged, for millions of years," he writes in National Geographic magazine. "They are as highly evolved, as perfectly in tune with their environment as any living thing on the planet. For them to be drivбд to extinction by man, a relative newcomer, would be more than ecological tragedy; it would be a moral travesty."

Вenchley says that, contrary to what was believed when he wrote his book, sharks attack human beings only by accident, mistaking them for normal prey." Back then, we thought that once a great white scented blood, it launched a feeding frenzy that inevitably led to death," he writes.

"Now, we know that nearly three-quarters of all bite victims survive, perhaps because the shark recognizes that it has made a mistake and doesn't return for a second bite." Great white sharks have been responsible for only 74 deaths in the past 100 years, according to International Shark Attack File.

From The Guardian

PRACTICE IN EVERYDAY ENGLISH
Практика разговорной речи

1. GREETINGS ПРИВЕТСТВИЯ

Good morning [ɡʊd'mɔ:nɪŋ] — Доброе утро! (Здравствуйте!) Приветствие, используемое при встрече утром.

Good afternoon [ɡʊd,ɑ:ftə'nu:n]. — Добрый день! (Здравствуйте!) Приветствие, используемое при встрече днем.

Good evening [ɡʊd 'i:vnɪŋ]. — Добрый вечер! (Здравствуйте!) Приветствие, используемое при встрече вечером.

Good night [ɡʊd 'naɪt]. — Спокойной/Доброй ночи! Говорят при прощании вечером.

How do you do?— Здравствуйте!

Формальная фраза, используемая при первой встрече, знакомстве с кем-нибудь. Отвечают той же фразой.

Good-bye [ɡʊd'baɪ] — До свидания!

Говорят при прощании. Используется также форма Bye [baɪ] — Пока!

Hello [hə'Iəʊ] (также hallo, hullo)— неформальное приветствие при встрече друзей, хороших знакомых. Также используется в этих ситуациях приветствие Hi [haɪ] — Привет!

How are you?[,haʊ 'ɑ: ju:] может использоваться как вопрос о здоровье, имеющий значение «Как вы себя чувствуете?», но также используется как приветствие при встрече со знакомыми людьми.

1. Прочитайте и заучите следующие мини-диалоги:

1. — Hello.

— Hello.

2. — Good morning.

— Good morning.

3. —Good afternoon.

— Good afternoon.

4. — Good night.

— Good night.

5. — Bye.

— Bye.

6. — Hello.

— Hello. How are you?

— Very well, thanks [θæŋks]. (Спасибо) And you?

— Fine [faɪn]. (Прекрасно!)

2. Дополните диалог и заучите его:

Tom:James! [ʤeɪnmz] Hello.

James:___, Chris. How are you?

Tom:I'm___, thank you.___?

James:___, thanks.

Tom:And how's Jane?

James:Oh she's___.

Tom:And the children?

James:They're___too.

Tom:Good.

3. Вставьте глагол be в нужной форме и устно переведите предложения:

1. How___you?

2. How___your wife / husband?

3. How___the children?

4. How___you and the children?

2. INTRODUCING PEOPLE
КАК ПРЕДСТАВЛЯТЬ ЛЮДЕЙ ДРУГ ДРУГУ

Когда людей представляют друг другу, называют их имена, фамилии, звания и титулы в зависимости оттого, является ли ситуация представления формальной или неформальной. Следующие титулы добавляются к фамилиям при представлении людей друг другу:

Mr (= Mister) ['mɪstə] — мистер, господин

Mrs (= Mistress) ['mɪsɪz] — миссис, госпожа (перед именем замужней женщины)

Miss [rшs] мисс, госпожа (перед именем незамужней женщины)

Ms [mɪz] госпожа

Эта форма стала широко использоваться с 1970-х годов в тех случаях, когда семейный статус женщины неизвестен говорящему или пишущему (например, в деловых письмах) или когда женщина не хочет сообщать сведения о своем семейном статусе.

Перед именем могут также использоваться слова Professor [prə'fesə] (профессор)и Doctor, Dr ['dɒktə] (доктор): Professor Smith, Doctor Harris.

1. Прочитайте и заучите следующие мини-диалоги:

1. — Jane, I'd like you to meet my brother Nick.

— Hello, Nick.

— Pleased ['pli:zd] to meet you, Jane.

2. — Mary, let me introduce [,ɪntrə'dju:s] you to my sister Jane.

— Hello, Jane.

— Pleased to meet you, Mary.

3. — Mother, may I introduce Dr. Anderson, my English teacher?

— How do you do?

— How do you do?

4. — Hullo, my name's Tom Jackson.

— How d'you do [,haʊ djə 'du:]? или Pleased to meet you.

My name's Peter Swan.