Высшего профессионального образования «Чувашский государственный университет имени И. Н. Ульянова» английский язык тексты для чтения и перевода чебоксары 2010

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Today We Are in the Twenty-First Century.
Virtual Reality Applications, Today and Tomorrow.
Technology to Change Our life
Ever Tried Talking to a Computer?

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Today We Are in the Twenty-First Century.

Today we are in the twenty-first century. This is an occasion to strike the balance of the twentieth century in the progress, of modern science. We can name the fruits of this progress:

Television in every home

Nuclear energy giving electricity

Laser in communications, in aviation and in clinics

Phone contacts across the oceans and continents

Personal computers hooked into Internet

Infection diseased that carried off millions of lives are stamped out Gene engineering opening the way for new medicines and new methods of treatment and many others.

But still many problems facing people on the earth remain. Shortage of energy is one of them. The available reserves of gas and oil will last for a few decades. Hydraulic power stations cannot solve the problem either. Atomic power stations can supply any amount of heat and electricity, but they are not reliable. In the opinion of many experts, thermonuclear power can be the best solution. But we are still on the initial stage of our work toward controlled nuclear fusion.

In January this year Russian scientists were reported to make a sensational discovery. They found a new kind of radiation which can give a non-stop supply of cheap energy.

Nuclear physicists from Kurchatov Institute became interested in the action of electromagnetic pulses upon the earth crust. The energy of a high intensity electromagnetic field is known to be liberated in an earthquake focus. This phenomenon usually lasts 10-20 seconds. An immense amount of electromagnetic energy acts upon the crust of the earth.

So a research team having modeled earthquake in laboratory conditions got quite unlooked-for results. The devices registered a new kind of non radioactive radiation, emergence of ball light-nings and turning elements of Mendeleyev system into new ones. The scientists repeated the experiment again and again but the result remained the same. And they supposed that magnetic unipolar radiation caused this phenomenon. This kind of radiation is not studied yet, it manifests itself in certain conditions.

During this process the amount of energy released is much higher than the amount of energy consumed. It may be hundreds of times as high as that provided by thermonuclear reaction. This discovery may appear to have the greatest significance for economy, power engineering, industry and defense.

But the scientists refused to comment on the phenomena until they are properly studied and explained, because they can basically change our life. Such elements as titanium, plumbum and others can be turned into iron, copper, silver, gold and other rare elements. This property can be used to clean our planet from radioactive waste. As I have said this newly discovered kind of radiation is connected with earthquakes and gravitational forces. So the scientists will be able to prognosticate strong earthquakes and suggest new ideas in studying gravitation.

The discovery under consideration has been patented both in Russia and abroad. Members of the Goverment Ilya Klebanov and Sergei Shoigu have informed the President Vladimir Putin about this achievement of Russia science.

Virtual Reality Applications, Today and Tomorrow.

Virtual reality may be one the most important technologies in our future reaching many fields. While most people now focus on VR's use in entertainment areas, its real impact will be in the arts, business, communication, design, education, engineering, medicine, and many other fields. More and more objects exist first in computer graphics and later in real form. Computer graphics is a way of seeing and creating the world. We are just beginning to see the potential of virtual reality. I would like to suggest some important applications it will have in future. Architecture and Construction. Virtual reality is already showing its potential in the architecture and construction industry. A building can be created as electronic prototype while still being designed, so that both architect and client can experience the structure, modify it and costly changes during or after construction are avoided. In the future clients will not only be able to see the structure, but hear sounds from within it and feel its texture. Home builder are particularly excited about the potential of virtual reality to sell their designs. Why build expensive model homes when prospective buyers can see the range of options electronically? City planners will use virtual reality to redesign streets without leaving the room.

The Arts. At present you can see "virtually" a number of actual art galleries and museums via the Internet. Some museums conduct special exhibits of virtual reality art works. Virtual reality will change our conception of what constitutes art. A work of art may become a physically interactive experience. You may travel into a virtual painting, which will actually be a mini-world for you to explore. You may interact with its elements, perhaps even change them. You may enter a sculpture gallery and interact with the art pieces. You will actually become part of the art as you interact with it. Virtual techniques are used in film making to generate the very realistic characters and scenery in feature films.

Medicine. Virtual reality is just beginning to be used in medicine and medical research. The University of North Carolina uses it in biochemical engineering. They test the docking of molecules using visual displays and a force-feedback device. Several companies in Maryland and Connecticut are creating virtual bodies, a kind of "body electronic" to enhance medical training. In the future medical students will study anatomy by virtual dissecting which is cost effective and efficient way of studying the human body. Medical students and surgeons will practice virtually. They may even practice an operation for a specific patient, whose unique body characteristics have been scanned into the computer. Different diseases can also be simulated to test a medical student's or doctor's knowledge regarding treatment. Likewise virtual reality could help improve relaxation techniques, providing a pleasant world in which to relax.

Education and Training. Virtual reality is just beginning to be applied in education and training. Students can study anatomy or explore our galaxy. Some training applications relate to health and safety. They allow trainees to walk through a virtual factory and learn more about hazards than reading a manual or attending a lecture. In the future students will be able to learn through studying in virtual worlds. Chemistry students will be able to conduct experiments without risking an accidental explosion in the lab. Astronomy students will be able to visit a range of virtual galaxies to study their properties. History students will be able to visit different historical events and perhaps even participate in the action with historical figures. English students could be on stage at the Globe Theater as it was when Shakespeare's plays were first presented. They will also able to enter into a book and interact with its characters.

Virtual reality will also be used in teaching adults. Trainees in a wide variety of environments will be able to safely try out new techniques. They will be able to learn by doing tasks virtually before applying them in the real world. They will use these practice tasks in hazardous environs and also practice dealing with emergencies on the job. However, much remains to be done to bring virtual reality fully into the classroom.

Engineering. Engineers of all descriptions are already using virtual reality simulations to create and test prototypes. Each of the Big Three automakers is using some form of virtual reality to test new models. In the aerospace industry, the new Boeing 777 was the first aircraft to be designed and tested using virtual-reality technology.

Physical prototypes take a great deal of time to produce and are very costly. Changes to electronic or simulated prototypes can be done rapidly and inexpensively, shortening development time. Hoping to save money in prototyping and avoid cost overruns, the U.S. military has even coined the phrase, "Sum it before you build it!" In the future, nearly every engineering project will use virtual-reality prototypes. Even the manufacturing process and expected repairs will be simulated, saving money. Given advances in electronic networks, virtual work benches will be created with engineers in distant locations around the globe working in teams to design products.

Entertainment. Virtual reality is already being applied in entertainment. Entertainment centers are cropping up in major cities around the globe and travelling virtual-reality entertainment shows are on the ground. Soon, nearly ail video arcades will be VR centers; all games will be 3-D, interactive, and immersive. While the number of such entertainment centers will increase in the future, home based virtual reality will also grow dramatically. Current system are primitive, due to lack of computing power and the high cost of most virtual-reality equipment, but advanced virtual reality it set to invade the home entertainment scene in the years ahead. While stand-alone entertainment systems will be offered, perhaps the most important form of home VR will come over wide distances.

Imagine an adventure game in which you are immersed in a three-dimensional world, interacting with other participants. It can become a real, role-playing event. Imagine a movie in which you are a participant interacting with the plot and other characters. While these kinds of entertainment have been seen as separating participants in the past, in the future they may be seen as a new kind of socializing, one which may lead to richer relationship in the "real" world.

Marketing. Virtual reality is just beginning to be used by companies who want customers to experience their products and to understand them better. They" с found that a new technology, such as virtual reality, draws people to their exhibits and involves them with a product much more than standard displays. Cabletron, a cable network company in Rochester.

Business. Already, several companies have created three-dimensional visualization of the stock market. This arrangement shows the rise and fall of stock prices and a stock broker can quickly see the activity of stocks. A click can bring information t the screen and given the broker an opportunity to rapidly buy or sell a stock. The use of virtual reality in stock market trading will greatly increase in the future. The companies will apply virtual reality to identify trends on stock markets and make trades more rapidly. They will, in fact, be interacting with the stock markets in real time. Their work will be much like playing a large and complex video game. Some virtual reality software developers have been working on a product called Data Spaces, a step beyond the data base. Data Spaces represents information so as object that differ in size, colour, shape and spatial relationships. You will surf through information in a world of three-dimensional objects, selecting the information you need by clicking on the appropriate one. In the next few years you will be a' e to conduct this kind of search on the Internet using a recently accepted standard called Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML).

The Promise of Virtual Reality. These are just some present and tutu e applications of virtual reality. As you can see, there are many potential applications for virtual reality. Perhaps, in the future, we will only be limited by our imagination: regarding the uses of virtual reality. Virtual reality is neither good nor bad. It is a new tool that will have important implications in our future.

In working in the field of virtual reality, I have found a very important aspect of it that is often overlooked. In order to create virtual worlds, one must have an in-depth understanding of how our everyday world works. Perhaps one of virtual reality's greatest gifts will be helping us to understand better our own reality.

John C. Briggs

Technology to Change Our life

Speech, being a means of communication people feel comfortable with, has great potential as a way to direct our computers. People are quite eager to talk to their machines. Any number of science fiction movies testify to the perception that, inevitably, we will talk to our machines...

Yet speech recognition is one of those technologies that seems perpetually around the comer. It is easy to simulate in science fiction movies, but a live, useful, and broad implementation has been elusive. The main problem is not getting the computer to speak up. Even a crude system like the early Macin Talk allowed a human listener to understand a line of text. The real problem is figuring out what we say. Leave aside the question of what we mean - there are enough problems in making computers smart enough to take dictation. When humans speak, they use complex languages, loaded with ambiguities, colored by inflection and tone. And each human speaks differently - there are accents, street dialects, slang. What's machine going to do?

Yet the field abounds with optimists who think that automatic speech recognition is a beast to be broken. John Oberteuffer, the president of Voice Information Associates, a firm that follows the technology, informs me that, indeed, computers will soon be able to interpret speech at laest as well as humans. We won't type into our computers, but talk to them. «In ten years, people will look at a computer key-board the way they now look at a slide rule, » Oberteuffer predicts. «Anything you do on a keyboard, you will do by speaking. You will have a mouse and a microphone».

Ever Tried Talking to a Computer?

Technology has changed people and their lives. No period in history has had as many significant changes as the past century. Improvements of all kinds, such as those in communication and transportation have seriously changed many people's lives - not all positively. Many people are conservative. They do not like and cannot accept the new results of technology. Conservative people often resist the new. They might prefer to take trains instead of airplanes and to receive letters instead of phone calls. They might like soft, gentle music rather than fast, noisy modern music. Above all, many conservative people find the increasing use of computers confusing, annoying and impersonal.

Computers are an obvious part of technology that reaches into most people's lives. Computers answer telephones, retrieve information instantly, read and answer letters, and make mathematical computations in much less time than a person can. However, how do people react as the use of the computer increases in their daily lives? There is a big difference between talking to a human being about a mistake on a bill and trying to tell a computer. A computer does not treat people in a human way. After all, it is only a machine. A person who learns to use any machine can benefit from its services. The same is true for the computer. The investment of time and patience that a person makes in learning how to use a computer pays off many times. What can a computer do? A computer can easily perform simple and complex calculations. It can record all kinds of information. It can sort material either alphabetically or in number sequence. It can classify, report, and edit data, information that is put in. The only requirement is that the computer must be correctly programmed to perform these functions, or jobs. Once a program is set, many people can use it to make it work for them. A computer programmer is a person who is trained to program or communicate with computers. In a sense, he teaches the computer to do the work by writing a program. He uses special computer languages to control and instruct the different parts of the computer. He writes a program, the detailed set of instructions for the computer, in a computer language.

Computers have so many everyday uses that the business world would stop without them. They can reserve airplane tickets, keep bank accounts, rent cars, control prices, order goods and supplies, process registration cards, keep inventories, record grocery items, and list houses for sale. All of these jobs can be done, and many more, in a fraction of the time that a person would need. By using computers, people in business save large amounts of time. Whether people realize it or not, computers control so many parts of society that, without them, people's lives would be much more difficult. For every mistake on a bill, the computer does a million others right. Computers save great amounts of time by doing uninteresting jobs that take people a long time. Computers are designed for repetitive projects, for processing and storing a large amount of data, and for accuracy and speed. By using computers, human beings can free themselves to do more human projects.

ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ

What Is a Computer? 3

The First Calculating Devices 4

Four Generations of Computers 6

Data Processing and Data Processing Systems 6

Computer System Architecture 8

Hardware, Software, and Firmware 9

From the History of Computer Development In Russia 10

Central Processing Unit 11

The CPU Main Components 12

Input Output Environment 14

Input Devices 15

Output Devices. Printers 16

Keyboard Devices 18

Scanners 19

Personal Computers 20

Microcomputer System Organization 21

Computer Programming. 23

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Living in the Twentieth Century 24

Alfred Nobel – a Man of Contrast 25

Computer Uses from A to Z 27

Computer Viruses 30

DNA Computers 33

Internet: How It Affects US 34

Internet in Business 35

Programming Languages 37

Today We Are in the Twenty-First Century. 38

Virtual Reality Applications, Today and Tomorrow. 39

Technology to Change Our life 43

Ever Tried Talking to a Computer? 44