Write a summary to the text below.

                         How your mother affected your memory

A new study in mice suggests that a mother’s childhood experiences may affect the brain function of her offspring. Researchers found that mice moms, who were physically active, stimulated and changed their living arrangements frequently as youngsters gave birth to babies with better memory than those born to mothers raised in dull environments. “How well mice remember when they were young is influenced by exposures to stimuli of their mothers when they were young,” says Larry Feig, a biochemist at Tuffs University Medical School in Boston and senior author of the study that will published tomorrow in The Journal of Neuroscience.

This study adds to an accumulating body of evidence that not all the physiological characteristics passed from parents to offspring are genetic, Feig notes. Is it possible the same is true for humans? “The best we could say is if this occurs in humans,” he says, “it would suggest that experiences your mother had during adolescence could influence your memory.” Feig”s team previously showed that stimulating environments trigger a biochemical cascade in mice that enhances their recall by fostering a communication between nerve cells in the hippocampus, a region of the brain that controls memories In this study , the researchers were trying to determine whether mothers and fathers could pass along this enhanced memory to their offspring.

Feig says that he and his colleagues spilt several hundred pre-adolescent (15-day-old) mice, genetically engineered to have poor memories, into two groups: half spent their “adolescence” (two weeks) living good life in large   cages with about a dozen other mice and filled with plastic tubes, toys, cardboard boxes and running wheels. The researchers regularly rearranged the toys in their cages and placed novel objects in them. The other group of mice, meanwhile, was put in sparse, small cages with fewer companions and nothing but a bed of pine chips. There were no toys or treadmills – and nothing was rearranged during their stay. When the mice reached sexual maturity (two month later), the researchers allowed them to mate and then studied the brain activity of their offspring. The offspring of mice housed in the exciting digs performed better than their peers in the small, boring quarters on memory tests and showed enhanced brain activity.

In fact, Feig says, the offspring of the stimulated moms had such good memories that they performed as well as mice that did not carry the engineered genetic defect. Unfortunately, he said, their sharp recall faded after around three months and their kids did not appear to benefit. Dads – no offence, but the researchers found that fathers’ upbringing apparently plays no role in the memory abilities of their young.

10. Translate the text into English:

Кровоснабжение головного мозга обеспечивают в первую очередь сонные артерии; у основания мозга они разделяются на крупные ветви, идущие к различным его отделам. Хотя вес мозга составляет всего 2,5% веса тела, к нему постоянно, днем и ночью, поступает 20% циркулирующей в организме крови и соответственно кислорода. Энергетические запасы самого мозга крайне невелики, так что он чрезвычайно зависим от снабжения кислородом. Существуют защитные механизмы, способные поддержать мозговой кровоток в случае кровотечения или травмы. Особенностью мозгового кровообращения является также наличие т.н. гематоэнцефалического барьера. Он состоит из нескольких мембран, ограничивающих проницаемость сосудистых стенок и поступление многих соединений из крови в вещество мозга; таким образом, этот барьер выполняет защитные функции. Через него не проникают, например, многие лекарственные вещества.

GRAMMAR PRACTICE: Conditionals-II

11. Fill the gaps with the synonyms of if .

 

a) as long as                    b) in case c) provided                   d) unless

1. Prophesy, like poetry can teach us about ourselves. …, of course, that we abandon the notion that it predicts anything.

2. The first law was the idea of inertia or momentum. It basically means that things keep moving at the same speed in a straight line… something pushes on them – that is, a force.

3. In 1742 Leonard Euler, the greatest number theorist of the 18^th century, became so frustrated by his inability to prove Fermat’s last theorem, that he asked a friend to search Fermat’s house… some vital scrap of paper was left behind.

4.  In some cases a theory has not been confirmed, but merely not falsified; it could however be worked with provisionally … new tests did not discredit it.

 

12.  Translate the following sentences, paying attention to functions of if.

1. Max Planck did not display an outstanding aptitude for science and math at the early age. If anything, he showed more promise in music. He was blessed with the gift of perfect pitch, and was a talented pianist and organist.

2. Despite the difficulties, nanotechnology will let us do some useful - if crude - things.

3. Scientists study the phenomena, dream up a hypothetical explanation, deduce some consequences of this explanation, and then devise experiments to see if these consequences are reflected in nature. If they are,  scientists consider the theory (hypothesis) confirmed.

 

13. Choose the correct conjunction until or unless

1. Democritus, astonishingly, proposed the first atomic theory − the word atom comes from the Greek ‘atomon’, literally translated as ‘indivisible’. Just how inappropriate the word was would not be recognized unless/until demonstrated in spectacular fashion by Ernst Rutherford in the twentieth century.

2. The search was fruitless until/unless Giuseppe Piazzi of Palermo, on the opening day of the nineteenth century, observed what he at first mistook for a small comet approaching the Sun, but which was presently recognized as a new planet – later named Ceres, the first of the minor planets known today.

3. Exactly the opposite is true: something will keep on moving at the same speed unless/until  it down.

4. Today an amateur using a home-made telescope hooked up to a CCD cameras and a PC – a rig that typically costs no more than a decent motorcycle – can explore the depths of space to a range that until/unless now was attainable solely at the legendary Palomar observatory.

14. Translate the following sentences paying attention to functions of but/but for.

1. “If others would but reflect on mathematical truths as deeply and continuously as I have they would make my discoveries.” Einstein

2. But for all its elegant simplicity, the double helix is only part of the story. The helix itself still holds a few surprises. The fact that it can conduct electricity means DNA has an in-built shield against gene mutations.

3.  The highest wisdom has but one science – the science of the whole – the science explaining the whole creation and man’s place in it. (Leo Tolstoy)

4. The lineage of Gauss, Prince of Mathematicians, is anything but royal. The son of poor parents, he was born in a miserable cottage at Brunswick (Braunschweig), Germany in 1777. His parental grandfather was a poor peasant.

5. German nationalism spawned a movement to expunge all but Germanic stems from the language.

6. It is hard to imagine anyone but Hooke being willing to fulfill such an arduous brief – or making such a success of it.

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