Освіта чернівеччини чернівці 2013


Mark the statements true (T) or false (F)



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Mark the statements true (T) or false (F)

1. The population of the world is expected to increase by two million by 2050.

2. If we don’t reduce the amount of meat we eat, there probably won’t be enough food to feed the world.

3. If we reduce the amount of protein we get from animal-based foods by %, we might be able to feed everyone in 2050.

4. Five to ten times more water is needed to produce meat than is needed to produce vegetables.

5. At the moment, 60% of the world’s water is used for food production.

6. The cost of food has increased as heavy monsoon rains have damaged the crops.

7. To reduce food shortages, we should also try not to waste food and water and to improve the trade in food between countries.


Answer these questions according to the article.

1. How will eating less meat save water?

2. What will happen if we don’t reduce our meat intake?

3. Why have food prices risen so dramatically recently?

4. What were the consequences of food shortages in some areas of the world in 2008?

5. How much of the world’s available water supply is used for food production?

6. Besides eating less meat, what other measures could we take to reduce the water deficit?

7. What other factors are increasing our demand for water?


Text № 30

Life expectancy data packed with surprises

Sarah Boseley, health editor 13 December, 2012


A girl born today in the UK can expect to live nearly to the age of 82 on average and her brother will live to 78. They would have a longer life in Andorra (85 and 79 respectively) but will live a little longer than in the US (81 and 76). If they lived in the Central African Republic, they would die in middle age (49 and 44). However, almost everywhere in the world, with the exception of countries such as Lesotho, which have experienced HIV and violence, life spans are lengthening. And the best news is that small children are much less likely to die than they were forty years ago. There has been a drop in deaths in under-fives of nearly 60%, from 16.4 million in 1970 to 6.8 million in 2010.

This last statistic provides justification for the enormous project that the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle has led over the past five years, involving nearly 500 researchers, to assess the global effects of disease. Knowing how many children die and from what cause allows the world to focus its efforts and resources on keeping them alive. There are many lessons to be learnt from the enormous database they have put together, which will help global organizations and individual governments to better care for us all.

The project was a big task and is not without controversy. IHME has been very radical in some of its methods. Where they did not have death registries or medical records, for instance, they have taken evidence from verbal autopsies – deciding the cause of death by an interview with the family. The most surprising result has been the malaria figure. IHME said 1.2 million die of the disease every year – twice as many as previously thought. The big increase is in adult deaths. It is commonly believed that malaria kills mostly children under five.

“The way I was taught as a doctor and everybody else is taught is that, in malarial areas, you become semi-immune as an adult,” said Dr Christopher Murray, IHME Director. “We originally went with that opinion but there has been a change as we have become more empirical, following the data. African doctors write on hospital records that adults are dying of malaria a lot.” But, he adds, their fever could be something else. The findings have led to further studies.

Although Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization, gave the IHME study a warm official welcome, some of the staff are cautious. “We need to be very careful in assessing the validity [of the figures],” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist. “We need to wait to be persuaded by evidence.” His colleague Dr Tiers Boerma, Director of one WHO department, added: “People should understand that some of the numbers are very different and the WHO can’t go with any academic publication that states a different number.” However, said Mathers, “IHME has pushed the envelope with some of these analyses and that is stimulating”. One of the main themes, said Murray, was “incredibly rapid change in the main causes of death and the speed of that change is a lot faster than we expected it to be”.

Reduced fertility and longer life have led to a rise in the average age of the world’s population in a decade from 26 years old to almost 30. The change has been dramatic in Latin America, for instance, where countries like Brazil and Paraguay had life expectancy of below 30 in 1970 and almost 64 in 2010. That is a 35-year increase in the average age of death over four decades. “In a place like Brazil, the speed of change is so fast that most institutions are not able to deal with it,” Murray said.

A second factor is the move outside Africa from communicable diseases and the common causes of mother and baby deaths to what are sometimes termed “lifestyle” diseases, such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer – some of which have significant genetic triggers. That change has been particularly marked in Latin America, the Middle East and south-east and even south Asia, he said.

The third big finding was, Murray said, “a surprise to us”. There is a lot of disability and it has a big effect on people who are living longer but not healthier lives. “The main causes of disability are different from the ones that kill you,” he said. They were mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression, and disorders, such as arthritis and lower back pain, anaemia, sight and hearing loss and skin disease. In addition, there was substance abuse. “The numbers for these are not going down over time,” he said. “We are making no progress in reducing these conditions.”


Mark the statements true (T) or false (F)

1. Life expectancy is increasing in every country in the world.

2. The number of deaths among under-fives has fallen by nearly ten million.

3. Life expectancy in the US is longer than in the UK.

4. More people die from malaria than was previously thought.

5. In 1970, Brazil had life expectancy of below 30 years.

6. The average age of the world’s population has increased by almost four years in the past ten years.

7. Life expectancy is getting longer in every country in the world.

8. Fewer people die from “lifestyle” diseases than before.

9. The average age of the world’s population is 40.

10. Progress is being made in reducing disabilities.
Choose the best answer according to the text

1. Why are life spans not increasing in certain countries?

a. Because of poverty and malaria;

b. Because of HIV and violence;

c. Because of politics and communicable diseases;
2. What is the average life expectancy for women in Andorra?

a. 85


b. 95

c.75
3. Where are men expected to live longer?

a. In the UK

b. In Great Britain

c. In the US?
4. Why did the research team sometimes take evidence from verbal autopsies?

a. Because they are more reliable than official autopsies;

b. Because they had no death registries or medical records to refer to in those cases;

c. Because they wanted to keep up the efforts against HIV in Africa;


5. What is the average life expectancy for men in the Central African Republic?

a. 34


b. 44

c. 54
6. What was most surprising about the malaria figures?

a. Twice as many people die from it each year as previously thought.

b. Children under five no longer die from it.

c. Adults become semi-immune to malaria in malarial areas.
7. How many people die each year from malaria?

a. 4 thousand

b. 1.2 million

c. 1.6 million


8. What was life expectancy in Brazil in 1970?

a. Over 30

b. Below 40

c. Below 30


9. What is the connection between lifespan and disability?

a. People who live longer are less likely to suffer from disabilities.

b. People who suffer from disabilities usually die younger.

c. People are living longer and are therefore more likely to suffer from

disabilities.
10. What is life expectancy in Brazil now?

a. Almost 64

b. Almost 54

c. Above 30
Text № 31
Abominable Snowman is known in various localities by names such as Yeti, Bigfoot, Meh-Teh, and Sasquatch. This unsubstantiated creature is said to be seven to ten feet tall with feet twice the size of a human’s, and a noticeably disagreeable aroma. It has been reported in Tibet, Nepal, China, Siberia, Canada and the US Northwest.

In 1832, a report from the UK representative in Nepal described a hirsute creature that reportedly had attacked his servants. This appears to be the first report of the Snowman made by a Westerner. An impressive report was made by mountaineers who crossed a Himalayan glacier in 1951 and photographed giant footprints measuring thirteen inches by eighteen inches. However, tracks left in snow tend to enlarge when exposed to direct sun, and this may well explain many of the accounts of Snowman tracks, since smaller tracks of native animals tend to spread under warmth.

Other tracks found in Canada and the USA are the admitted results of hoaxers, even though the “experts” have sometimes validated the artifacts as genuine tracks of an unknown species. A short piece of film made in 1967 by Roger Patterson at Bluff Creek, California, appears to show a female Bigfoot casually walking away from the camera. The film has been hotly contested over the years, and is the best of all the evidence ever offered.

It is possible that Patterson himself was hoaxed; the figure he saw and filmed might have been a person in costume. In the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey and the 1989 film Gorillas in the Mist, most viewers were not aware that the apes shown were actors in costume. The Patterson figure is nowhere near as good as those representations, though we cannot expect that a genuine Bigfoot must move like an ape, and may very well move like a human dressed in an uncomfortable costume.



While the existence of such a creature is not at all impossible, two elements speak against it: first, there would need to be a very considerable number of them available to maintain the gene-pool and ensure survival of the species; it is difficult to imagine that the population of such a large animal could so successfully avoid detection. Second, the fact remains that to date, not one bit of material evidence (hair, skin, bones and droppings) of this creature has ever been produced, though a chimpanzee scalp was once offered and is still occasionally brought up by devotees of this fascinating legend.
Mark the statements true (T) or false (F)

  1. Abominable Snowman is known in various localities by names such as Yeti, Bigfoot, Meh-The.

  2. This unsubstantiated creature is said to be six to eleven feet tall.

  3. In 1832 a report from the UK representative in Tibet described a hirsute creature that reportedly had attacked his servants.

  4. A short piece of film made in 1967 by Roger Patterson at Bluff Creek, California, appears to show a female Bigfoot.

  5. The figure he saw and filmed might have been a real Yeti.

  6. In 1969 film “2002: A Space Odyssey” and the 1989 film “Gorillas in the mist” most viewers were not aware that the apes shown were actors in costume.

  7. It is difficult to imagine that the population of such a large animal could so successfully avoid detection.

  8. Not one bit of material evidence of these creatures has ever been produced.

  9. An ape scalp was once offered and is still occasionally brought up by devotees of this fascinating legend.

Circle the correct item

  1. Abominable Snowman is known in … locations.

  1. various

  2. different

  3. many

  1. Snowman … in Tibet, Nepal, China, Siberia, Canada and the US Northwest.

  1. has been described

  2. has been reported

  3. has been informed

  1. The UK representative in Nepal described a hirsute creature who reportedly attacked his …

  1. servants

  2. family

  3. children

  1. … report was made by mountaineers who crossed a Himalayan glacier in 1951.

  1. A majestic

  2. A breathtaking

  3. An impressive

  1. However, …left in snow tend to enlarge when exposed to direct sun.

  1. paths

  2. tracks

  3. marks

  1. A short piece of film appears to show … Bigfoot casually walkig away from the camera.

  1. a male

  2. a child

  3. a female

  1. The film has been hotly contested over the years and is the best of all the … ever offered.

  1. evidence

  2. information

  3. facts

  1. A genuine Bigfoot must move like …

  1. an animal

  2. an ape

  3. a monkey

  1. It is difficult to imagine that the population of such a large animal could so … avoid detection.

  1. wonderfully

  2. successfully

  3. beautifully

  1. Not one bit of material evidence of this creature has ever been…

  1. produced

  2. created

  3. made

Text № 32

SCRIPT

From "Google's Artificial Intelligence Translates Poetry"

by NPR Staff, NPR, 2011
Researchers at Google are tackling what they call one of the most difficult challenges in artificial intelligence.

"It's what we call AI complete," says Dmitriy Genzel, a research scientist at Google. "Which means it's as difficult as anything we can attempt in artificial intelligence."

Programming a machine to simply understand language, after all, is a task IBM spent four years and millions of dollars to accomplish with its Watson computer, which competed on Jeopardy last week. Watson understands human speech. But for a computer to understand and translate poetry, there are added problems of length, meter and rhyme.

At a conference a few months ago, Genzel presented a paper outlining those problems and described the ways Google's computers work to solve them.

Most translation software works by searching through a wealth of possible translations, then evaluating what's most accurate.

"Whereas, if you translate poetry," Genzel says, "you have to preserve what you want the reader to feel."

Although some poets insist even human-to-human poetry translation is incapable of matching that 'feeling' Genzel's research does take some big steps toward preserving a poem's length, meter and rhyme.

Translating a haiku? Genzel can preprogram his computer to generate online lines of five, seven and five syllables.

A Shakespeare sonnet in iambic pentameter? "The computer can read a pronunciation dictionary," Genzel says, "like you would use to learn another language." Once it knows where the stress falls in a given word, it can correctly place that word in a metered sentence.

"The hardest thing to do is rhyme," Genzel says, "because it connects to different places in a sentence," and because two words that rhyme in English may not rhyme in another language.

In that case, the best Google can do is to cycle through a long list of optional matches to find a rhyme that's right.

That means, if you're translating Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven:



Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and teary...

For every close option, the computer also cycles through a choice that's not even close:



Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and orange.

"So it will pick 'orange' just as happily, and it will have to throw it away afterwards," Genzel says. Researchers have no way around the pick-and-choose process, so the translations are far from instant and no beta is public.

But there's a reason it's useful to improve translation software of any kind, Genzel says. "Most of the content on the Web is not in English anymore," he says. "So even for English speakers, there's a huge amount of stuff on the Web that you don't have access to."

Some browsers even offer real-time translation of foreign sites, which can open up new avenues of information.

"If you read a news article about some country, you bet if you open their news site — which may not be in English — and read that, you'll get a huge understanding that people don't really see things in the same way," Genzel says.

Translating perspective is more difficult in poetry. Vladimir Nabokov, Genzel points out, famously claimed it's impossible for even a human to preserve both the meaning and form of a translated poem.

"But there's quite a big aspect of [poetry translation] that machines can do pretty well," Genzel says. "It's not such a human endeavor as people might think."
Mark the statements true (T) or false (F)

1. Dmitriy Genzel is a research scientist at Microsoft.

2. When talking about artificial intelligence, describing something as 'AI complete* means that it is an easy task for scientists.

3. IBM spent 14 years and millions of dollars developing Watson.

4. Watson is a computer that translates poetry well.

5. The game show Jeopardy hosted a computer on their show.

6. It is possible for computers to translate the text that uses iambic pentameter.

7. Current translation technology can accurately translate poems into any language.

8. Most of the Internet is now written in a language other than English.

9. Web browsers are unable to translate sites in real time.

10. Vladimir Nabokov once stated that it is impossible for even a human to preserve both the meaning and form of a translated poem.

Circle the correct item

1. The main idea of the text was about …

a) Watson the robot

b) learning how to write poetry

c) new technology for computers to translate poems

d) Dmitriy Genzel, a research scientist at Google

2. The following statements are all true about Watson BUT …

a) it is a computer

b) it understands English

c) it competed on Jeopardy

d) it was created by Apple

3. Scientists have created AI programs that understand human speech, but in order to translate poetry, according to the text, a computer must also understand …

a) meter, rhyme, length, and symbolism

b) subliminal messages

c) Shakespearean iambic pentameter

d) the circumstances of the author

4. ‘Incapable of’ means …

a) adept at

b) not able to

c) not talented at

d) very capable of

5. According to the text, one should try to preserve …

a) emotions

b) the sound of human speech

c) historical accuracy

d) contour

6. The hardest thing for the computer to do when translating poetry is …

a) to rhyme words

b) to translate a sonnet

c) to write in iambic pentameter

d) to write a haiku

7. According to Genzel, it is useful to improve translation software because …

a) we can create smarter robots

b) it allows artificial intelligence to compete on Jeopardy

c) most of the Internet is no longer in English and needs translation

d) humans are too lazy to translate with dictionaries

8. According to the text, many web browsers can now…

a) allow you to 'surf the Internet undetected

b) give you tutorials in how to write poetry

c) put web pages in your language

d) teach you foreign languages

9. The text referred to every author EXCEPT…

a) Vladimir Nabokov

b) William Shakespeare

c) Dmitriy Genzel

d) Edgar Allan Poe

10. A more creative name for this text would be…

a) ROBO-POETRY: Poetry Translation and Google

b) Shakespeare's Digital Sonnets

c) Watson's Big Day

d) Genzel: the Man behind the Poetry
Text № 33

Why fathers want to look after the baby (yes, really)

One of the most extensive surveys of fathers has now shown that, far from the stereotype, most men would like to share childcare duties with their partners or wives.

The survey made by the Equal Opportunities Commission shows a modern type of father: the New Dad. He takes part in day-to-day childcare and does not mind helping with the vacuuming and washing-up - if only when his partner asks him to. The EOC interviewed sixty-four fathers and their partners about their home and work life. Most fathers agreed that it was important to 'be there' for their children for key events such as school sports day, their first appearance in the school play and for at least one meal a day. Many agreed that parenting classes would be a good way to give them more confidence around the home.

Based on the survey results, four types of fathers were defined, from the traditional type of dad to the perfect New Dad, who is as much involved in taking care of the children as the mother. The survey found that the majority of men were somewhere between these two types.

In the first category comes Enforcer Dad, the old-fashioned disciplinarian who does not see himself as involved in the day-to-day care of his children. He sees his responsibilities as setting clear limits for them and being a role model. Most fathers do not see this as their only role.

The two biggest categories are Entertainer Dad and Useful Dad. Entertainer Dad is at his best keeping his children laughing while his partner gets on with household chores and arranging the children's school and extra activities. Useful Dad is willing to help out around the house, even though he expects the mother to be the 'team leader' in all domestic things.

Finally, and probably every woman's dream, is Fully Involved Dad. He is equally engaged in running the home and the family, and sees the role of the father and the mother as practically identical. Fully Involved Dads adjust their work arrangements to their partners' professional duties. 'I do have definite childcare commitments,' said one father in this category. 'There are certain times or occasions where it is non-negotiable and I just leave the office on time.'

Julie Melior, chairwoman of the EOC, said that fathers were still not given enough flexibility at work and mothers would feel fully supported only if employers treated (and paid) both sexes equally. 'Mums and dads should be able to choose how they want to share the responsibilities of bringing up children and working outside the home: she said. 'But until we have equal pay, decent childcare and more opportunities to work flexible hours, many fathers will continue to find it hard to be there for their children and many women will continue to be disadvantaged at work. This is not necessarily the best solution for parents, children or employers. Equality at work or home depends on both mums' and dads' family responsibilities being acknowledged: Melior said.



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