Pre-reading exercises to the text 10

I. Выделите суффиксы в следующих словах и определите, к какой части речи они относятся:

specific, childless, fruitful, realize, treeless, elegant, frosty, protective, protector, scientific, rainy, speechless.

II. К какой части речи относятся следующие слова? Переведите их без словаря.

systematize, collectivize, nationalize, utilize, localize.

Text 10

Cattle

Identifiable cattle breeds throughout the world number 277, with 33 generally classified as beef breeds, 18 as drafts breeds, 39 as meat-draft, 54 as meat-dairy, 21 as dairy-draft, 61 as meat-dairy-draft, and 51 as dairy breeds. Most of these are quite limited in distribution in importance. No cattle are native to the North American continent, only bison and buffalo. Cattle used for draft purposes are usually oxen – that is castrated males at least two or three years old. Though long supplanted by the horse and the tractor in the developed countries, oxen are still used in Africa and tropical Asia.

In the U.S. today there are four times as many beef cattle as dairy cattle. Production of milk per dairy cow in the U.S. more than doubled after 1930 and reached 12, 147 pounds (5, 510 kilograms) in 1981. Elsewhere in the New World, the vast pampas of Argentina – an area as large as France – provide excellent conditions for grazing of cattle throughout the year without need for shelter.

In Australia cattle have always ranked second in importance among livestock after sheep. Today’s Australian beef cattle are raised mostly in the east and northeast portions of the continent, where feed and climate are unsuitable for sheep.

Vocabulary:

1. identifiable – опознанный, установленный

2. a breed – порода

3. pampas – пампасы

4. grazing of cattle – выпас скота

5. a shelter – укрытие

6. unsuitable – неподходящий

Questions:

1.What is the number of cattle breeds identifiable throughout the world?

2. What is the general classification of cattle breeds?

3. Which cattle are native to the North American continent?

4. What purposes are oxen usually used for?

5. Where are today’s Australian beef cattle mostly raised?

Text 11

Plants and nature

Plants and animals are organic nature. On the Earth plants make one third.

Animals and man will not live without plants, because the circle of nature links them. This natural process gives man and animals oxygen and food. The Sun gives energy for this process. Plants are special living things: they accumulate sunlight and make organic matter from inorganic in their leaves. Plants use sunlight and make their food: they give off oxygen into the air during this process. Man and animals breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, which plants combine with sun energy, water and minerals from the soil and in this way make their food. After plants and animals die, rotting process will give back minerals to the soil, where plants will again use them.

Plants also play a very important part in conservation and protection of soil, water and animals. They protect soil from the wind and keep water in the soil.

Trees give off a lot of oxygen into the air. For example, a hectare of pine forest gives oxygen for ten people. It is necessary to have 1000 square kilometers of forest for ten million people.

If there are many parks and trees in a city and many forests around it, then its population will have enough oxygen to breathe.

Vocabulary:

1. the circle of nature – природный цикл

2. oxygen – кислород

3. organic matter – органическое вещество

4. to give off – выделять

5. carbon dioxide – углекислый газ

6. rotting process – процесс гниения

7. a pine forest - сосновый лес

Ex.1. Fill in the gaps:

1. Plants make organic … from inorganic. 2. Plants and … are organic nature. 3. Man and animals breathe in … and breathe out … 4. Plants are necessary for … and … of soil, water and animals. 5. … protect soil from the wind and keep water in the soil.

Ex.2. Find the synonyms of the following words in the text:

men, to combine, at the time of, to return, much, a role, ground, wood, preservation.

Ex.3. Make up sentences from the following words:

1. Animals, there, are, any, Moscow, near forest?

2. Oxygen, want, why, living things, do, all?

3. Protect, plants, wind, soil, from, the.

4. Future, grow, in, will, plants, new, the Earth, on.

5. Trees, off, give, a lot of, air, oxygen, into, the.

Ex.4. Make antonymous pairs from the following words:

a lot of, important, breathe off, take, organic, with, live, dead, water, after, give, die, breathe in, unimportant, inorganic, without, living, land, before, little.

Pre-reading exercises to the text 12

I. По сходству с какими словами в русском языке можно догадаться о значении следующих слов:

experiment, theory, photosynthesis, hectare, chlorophyll, territory, process, effect, phosphates, sulphates, ammonia, patriot, standard, concentrate, bacteria, physiology

II. Определите по суффиксам, к какой части речи относятся следующие слова и переведите их:

activity, practitioner, physiologist, industrial, cultivator, independence, intensify, modernization, central, lecture, harmful, farmer, researcher, preparation, naturalist, democratic, difficulty, agriculturalist

Text 12

Genetics

The word genetics is derived from the Greek word genesis which means descent. It is a science which deals with heredity. Genetics tries to discover the mechanism whereby qualities are inherited from parents to offspring. This science also attempts to predict the outcome of particular matings in certain animal and plant species. Genetics is a comparatively recent science and as yet we know relatively little about heredity in man. Genetics is also of great theoretical interest since modern theories of evolution are based on the science of heredity.

During the early part of the nineteenth century many investigators studied the problem of the instability of hybrids. They found that certain types of inheritance were frequent in particular hybrid matings, but their experiments were not carried out on a large enough scale to allow them to predict the proportions of the various offspring obtained by the mating of hybrids nor were their experiments numerically recorded and analysed.

The first large-scale and carefully controlled experiments on heredity in plants were carried out by an Austrian named Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-1884)

Mendel’s experiments were carried out on peas. That particular kind of plant proved to be suitable for his work for the following reason: there are a number of varieties, which are easily distinguished by differences in height, shape and colour of seeds.

In his first experiment which Mendel describes he chose the form and colour of the seed for study. One variety of the plant had smooth round seeds, while another variety had wrinkled seeds.

Mendel crossed these two varieties of plant and observed that only round seeds were produced. Continuing this experiment Mendel allowed the hybrid plants which formed these round seeds to pollinate themselves, and produce seeds. From 253 hybrid plants 5474 round seeds and 1850 wrinkled seeds were obtained. Further experiments showed that about one-third of the round seeds behaved like the original round seeds of their grandparents and produced round-seeded offspring only while the other two-thirds resembled those seeds which formed their hybrid parents. It appears that approximately one half of the offspring of hybrid parents resemble their parents, while the other half has equal chances of resembling either one or the other grandparent.

By means of these experiments Mendel showed that inheritance of certain characteristics, at least, could be predicted with reasonable accuracy, and since the types of offspring of hybrid crossed appears in definite numerical proportions. The experiments on hybrids which form the earlier part of Mendel’s work showed that, in some cases, the inheritance of characteristics could best be explained in terms of factors or genes.

Subsequent research made by many investigators in different countries has confirmed Mendel’s ideas but showed that inheritance is often complicated by the influence of various conditions, environment in particular.

The Mendelian factors, or genes, are fond in the chromosomes of the nucleus; there is evidence that nucleic acids, also found in the nucleus, are related to genes.

Vocabulary:

1. heredity – наследственность

2. offspring – отпрыск, потомок; плод, результат

3. outcome – результат, последствие

4. mating – скрещивание, спаривание

5. species – вид; разновидность

6. to carry out – выполнять

7. to distinguish – различать; видеть различия

8. variety – разнообразие; вид

9. to cross – скрещивать

10. nucleus – ядро; зародыш

Questions:

1.What does the word genetics mean?

2. What does the genetics try to discover?

3. Who carried out the first carefully controlled experiments on heredity in plants?

Tasks:

I. Find in the text the following word combinations:

мы знаем сравнительно мало о наследственности человека; проблема нестабильности гибридов; их эксперименты не были выполнены на достаточно математически просчитанном уровне; пропорции разного потомства, полученного в результате скрещивания гибридов

II. Translate into English:

1. Приблизительно половина потомства гибридных родителей напоминает своих родителей.

2. Виды потомства скрещенных гибридов появляются в определенной числовой пропорции.

3. Наследование часто осложняется влиянием различных условий, в частности окружающей средой.

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