RARE FLOWERS IN TRANS-BAIKAL LAND

East of the Lake Baikal stretches an immense mountainous country, known in Russia as Zabaikalye, Trans-Baikal Land. Many people know of this region primarily as a place for exile of the Decembrists, Poland's insurgents and other «rebels» of the distant and recent past. However, this rich and blessed land is a residence of not only settlers but also of descendants of the native population with their own cus­toms and traditions. One of the highlights in this legacy is the folk healing which had long become known as Tibet medicine. This medicine is rooted in ancient India and China, where sick people had mainly been treated with medical herbs as early as several thousand years ago BC. Phyto-therapy came to Tibet concurrently with Budhism, in the 5—6th centuries AD. From Tibet phytotherapy travelled to Mongolia in the 13th century, and then to Trans-Baikal Land, in the 18th century, to which healing plants were brought from China and India. Besides, the Trans-Baikal people used more than 400 kinds of local herbs for making medicines.

In our days, there are only a few ex­perts in old recipes and healing methods left in the Trans-Baikal land. This means that the century-old experience of healers who learnt and tested the power of local plants may sink into oblivion, since almost no written sources are preserved, and because of man's economic activity some of our green friends had already disap­peared. So as not to allow this to happen with the rest of them, it is in this land that we should collect all the information available on herbs, the composition of me­dicinal powders and the particular proper­ties of their application. But the first thing we have to do is save this land's flora. This was the reason for publication of the Red Book of Buryatia, which in­cludes 133 plant species.

Those who practised Tibetan medicine were able not only to diagnose a disease and to find a cure for it but also to strengthen the state of the human body with the aid of herbs. This is why most medicines they developed consisted of many components, including 10 to 20 and occasionally 45—60 kinds of herbs.

DEAD WATER

Among the dramatic events of World War II three especially mysterious ones remained unknown or did not attract par­ticular attention.

The first event took place in France. On May 16, 1940, when Nazi troops were marching on Paris, two French scientists from the Joliot-Curie laboratory were making their way to the south of France. They had with them several sealed con­tainers in which there were 185 kilograms of water. In Bordeaux the containers were loaded onto the British ship Brampark. A raft was built on the deck and all the con­tainers of water were secured to it. Had the vessel been destroyed by enemy sub­marines the containers would not have been lost. The voyage, however, was suc­cessful and the load was brought safely to Great Britain.

The second mysterious event took place in Denmark, then occupied by Ger­man troops. On a rather stormy night Niels Bohr, a well-known physicist, es­caped to Sweden in a small boat. The most precious thing in his luggage was a beer bottle, which he cherished dearly. The beer bottle, however, was only a camou­flage: it was filled with pure water.

No less mysterious was an event that occurred in Norway. In 1942 the small Norwegian town of Rjukan was raided by British paratroopers. The object of this enigmatic operation long remained a se­cret. Only after the war did it become known that this risky operation had been undertaken with the purpose of destroying a small plant and a store of four hundred litres of water kept there.

The real reason for all these incompre­hensible events was, in fact, heavy water. Heavy water was discovered not long ago. Some forty years ago the American scien­tist Urey found that, besides ordinary hy­drogen, there exists heavy hydrogen, whose atoms are twice as heavy as those of ordinary hydrogen. Scientists were so perplexed that they gave the new hydro­gen the name of deuterium, as if it were not hydrogen at all but a completely dif­ferent substance.

As is known, a water molecule com­prises two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. When atoms of heavy hydrogen are present heavy water is formed. It was more recently discovered that an even heavier hydrogen exists, called tritium, and that there are two kinds of heavy oxy­gen. Molecules of water are made up of various combinations of the atoms of these substances. Thus, any water is a mixture of eighteen various compounds, seventeen of which are varieties of heavy water.

The proportion of heavy water in ordi­nary water is negligible. Molecules con­taining the heaviest oxygen occur at the rate of one thousand per million, and those containing deuterium, two hundred per million. Heavy water, which was first obtained in a pure form just before the war, was essential in the creation of the atomic bomb. For this reason, the Allies took measures to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Nazis.

What is heavy water like? The water studied best is that containing deuterium. It cannot be distinguished from ordinary water by its colour, small or taste, but it is not good for living organisms. In this way popular legends about live and dead water arose. Heavy water proved to be dead in the real sense of the word, for it cannot sustain life.

Plant seeds placed in heavy water fail to germinate. Fish and single-celled organ­isms and microbes die after a short time. Mice and rats which are given heavy wa­ter to drink do not live long. If the heavy water they are given is diluted they sur­vive, but suffer from terrible thirst. Heavy water always brings about death. It has oven been suggested that an accumu­lation of heavy water in an organiam is responsible, for ageing, but there is still no convincing evidence to support this.

Is the small admixture of heavy water that is always present in ordinary water harmful to us? Obviously, it is not. In fact, small amounts of heavy water are beneficial for man, as it intensifies certain vital processes, whereas large quantities retard them. Heavy water is not lethal for living beings, but any marked retardation of vitally important processes is fatal.

 

Ответьте на вопросы по тексту:

1. Where is Tibet medicine rooted?

2.Why had some of our green friends already disap­peared?

3. Why did most developed medicines consist of many components, including 10 to 20 and occasionally 45—60 kinds of herbs?

4.What was the real reason for all mysterious incompre­hensible events?

5. When was Heavy water discovered?

6. What was heavy water essential in?

7..Why did heavy water prove to be dead?

 

Текст 3

The History of Science

On the simplest level, science is knowledge of the world of nature. There are many regularities in nature that mankind has had to recognize for survival since the emergence of Homo sapiens as a species. The Sun and the Moon periodically repeat their movements. Some motions, like the daily " motion" of the Sun, are simple to observe; others, like the annual " motion" of the Sun, are far more difficult. Both motions corre­late with important terrestrial events. Day and night provide the basic rhythm of human existence; the seasons determine the migration of ani­mals upon which humans depended for millennia for survival. With the invention of agriculture, the seasons became even more crucial, for fail­ure to recognize the proper time for planting could lead to starvation. Science defined simply as knowledge of natural processes is universal among mankind, and it has existed since the dawn of human existence.

The mere recognition of regularities does not exhaust the full mean­ing of science, however. In the first place, regularities may be simply constructs of the human mind. Humans leap to conclusions; the mind cannot tolerate chaos, so it constructs regularities even when none ob­jectively exists. Thus, for example, one of the astronomical " laws" of the Middle Ages was that the appearance of comets presaged a great up­heaval, as the Norman Conquest of Britain followed the comet of 1066. True regularities must be established by detached examination of data. Science, therefore, must employ a certain degree of skepticism to prevent premature generalization.

Regularities, even when expressed mathematically as laws of nature, are not fully satisfactory to everyone. Some insist that genuine under­standing demands explanations of the causes of the laws, but it is in the realm of causation that there is the greatest disagreement. Modern quan­tum mechanics, for example, has given up the quest for causation and today rests only on mathematical description. Modern biology, on the other hand, thrives on causal chains that permit the understanding of physiological and evolutionary processes in terms of the physical activi­ties of entities such as molecules, cells, and organisms. But even if causa­tion and explanation are admitted as necessary, there is little agreement on the kinds of causes that are permissible, or possible, in science.

Certain conventions governed the appeal to God or the gods or to spirits. Gods and spirits, it was held, could not be completely arbitrary in their actions; otherwise the proper response would be propitiation, not rational investigation. But since the deity or deities were themselves ra­tional, or bound by rational principles, it was possible for humans to uncover the rational order of the world.

Science, then, is to be considered as knowledge of natural regulari­ties that is subjected to some degree of skeptical rigour and explained by rational causes. One final caution is necessary. Nature is known only through the senses, of which sight, touch, and hearing are the dominant ones, arid the human notion of reality is skewed toward the objects of these senses. The invention of such instruments as the telescope, the mi­croscope, and the Geiger counter has brought an ever-increasing range of phenomena within the scope of the senses. Thus, scientific knowledge, of the world is only partial, and the progress of science follows the ability of humans to make phenomena perceivable.

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