Complete the sentences with the words from the box and give the text a suitable title.

a)  online b) around the world c)  immediately d) all the time e) a lot smarter       f) exactly        g) traceable h) permanently  i) automatically  j) much less

 

 

  Try to imagine a day, twenty years in the future. You leave work and your heater and a cooker at home … (1) turn themselves on. You can't find your car keys, but your watch tells you that you left them on your desk. You stop at the supermarket and just walk out with the things you want, paying for everything … (2). You get home and the lights and TV come on and your dinner is ready. Science- fiction? If experts' predictions are right, this could be the way we live with the 'grid', the computer system that will replace the Internet.

  All the products we buy these days have barcodes on them. They help shops keep track of their Stock and mean that we spend … (3) time at the checkout. If a barcode is passed over a special laser, the machine can read the information in the barcode. Inventors are now working on an improved kind of barcode. Tiny computer chips on labels would transmit information about themselves − what the product is, where it is, how it's working − to receivers with no need to use a laser. If you connect all those chips together with computers through the Internet, you have the grid.

The Internet is a global system of computers, all linked to one another. Information can be sent from one machine to any other machine which is … (4). If you send an e-mail or surf the Internet, information from your machine is sent to a central computer, which then sends it on to other computers … (5). But what if you didn't need a computer? What if your clothes, food, car, electrical items and, perhaps, even your body were connected … (6)? If this did happen, what effect would it have on our lives? First of all, the machines around us would seem … (7). They would report back to the manufacturers when they broke down, sending information about the fault. If you bought ready meals, small chips in their labels could tell the cooker … (8) how long to cook them and at what temperature. If you wanted to, you could even have a chip put under your skin to constantly send information about your health to you doctor!

On the other hand, if firms link products to customers at the checkout, ordinary objects could become … (9) to their purchasers (imagine a stray pack of cigarettes at the scene of a crime). To many people it may seem too invasive to their privacy. In that case they can use a “kill command” included into chip that can … (10) disable the tag. The customer would forego after-sales benefits, such as better warranty and returned gods services, for instance, or chickens that could tell ovens how to cook them. But the “kill commands” just the thing for those who suspect that their fridge has begun to spy on them.

 

9. Give a summary to the following text in English:

          Фундаментальные космические исследования

Все окружающие нас достижения цивилизации обязаны своим существованием проводившимся ранее фундаментальным научным исследованиям. Например, двигатели внутреннего сгорания (internal combustion engine) не могли бы существовать без сделанных когда-то открытий в таких научных направлениях, как термодинамика, молекулярная физика, электродинамика, магнетизм, органическая химия и т.д.

Теперь в силу ускорения научно-технического прогресса результаты научных исследований находят применение в технике и быту уже в среднем через промежуток времени 20 - 30 лет. Часть из них вносят решающий вклад в технический прогресс.

  Значительную роль в этом процессе играют и фундаментальные науки, изучающие Вселенную. Достаточно напомнить, что гелий был открыт на Солнце и только потом найден наЗемле, или, что для ядерной физики некоторые объекты во Вселенной являются естественной лабораторией, где сама Природа ставит эксперименты, которые невозможны в земных лабо-раториях. Кроме того, фундаментальные космические исследования оказывают мощное прямое воздействие на развитие технологий. Это происходит из-за постоянных требований экспериментаторов к повышению чувствительности, разрешающей способности (resolution) и улучшению других параметров (characteristics) научных приборов. Фундаментальные космические исследования дали мощный толчок развитию наших представлений об устройстве Вселенной.

 

GRAMMAR PRACTICE: Text Organizers

 

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