Английский язык (стр. 5 )

Text 27

MERCATOR, GERARDUS (1512–1594)

1. Gerardus Mercator, was the foremost geographer and cartographer of the 16th century. It was in Duisburg, now in Germany, that in 1569 Mercator developed the map projection for which he is famous. Parallels and meridians are rendered as straight lines spaced so as to produce at any point an accurate ratio of latitude to longitude. His projection enabled mariners to steer a course over long distances by plotting straightlines without continual adjustment of compass readings. This projection is one of the oldest and most important cylindrical projections, particularly used for navigational charts. All parallels and meridians appear as straight lines perpendicular to each other. The most important feature of this map is that a straight line between two points on the map will give the true azimuth between those two points; that is, a straight line on the map is a line of constant azimuth, commonly referred to as a Rhumb line1.

2. G. Mercator was born in Rupelmonde, Flanders (now Belgium) on March 5, 1512. He was educated in Netherlands, receiving training in Christian doctrine, dialectics, and Latin. In 1530 he entered the University of Louvain, in Belgium to study the humanities and philosophy and graduated with a master’s degree in 1532.

3. Gemma Fisius, the leading theoretical mathematician, a physician (терапевт) and astronomer in the Low Countries2, taught Mercator the essentials (основы) of mathematics, geography, and astronomy. Frisius and Mercator also frequented (часто посещали) the workshop of Gaspar a Myrica, an engraver and goldsmith. The combined work of these three men soon made Louvain an important centre for the construction of globes, maps, and astronomical instruments.

the time he was 24, Mercator was a superb engraver, an outstanding calligrapher, and a highly-skilled scientific-instrument maker3. In 1535-36 he cooperated with Myrica and Frisius in constructing a terrestrial globe and in 1537 its celestial counterpart. During that period he also began to build his reputation as the foremost geographer of the century with a series of printed cartographic works; in 1537 a map of Palestine, in 1538 a map of the world on a double heart-shaped projection4, and about 1540, a map of Flanders. In 1540 he also published a concise manual5 on italic lettering, for which he engraved the wood blocks himself. In 1552 Mercator established a cartographic workshop and engaged his own engravers. In 1554 he published a map of Europe. In 1564 he completed a map of the British Isles.

5. Mercator began to execute a series of publications intended to describe the creation of the world and its subsequent history. He also introduced the term Atlas for a collection of maps. In 1569, as the first section, he published a chronology of the world from the Creation to 1568. He then published 27 of the maps originally prepared by the Greek geographer Ptolemy, with corrections and commentary in 1578.The next part of the Atlas, consisting of a set of new maps covering France, Germany, and Netherlands, came out in 1585, with maps of Italy, the Balkan countries, and Greece following in an addition with the previous sections. Another printing followed in 1602, and further maps were added by his son in a later edition of 1606 after his death.

G. Mercator died on December 2, in 1594 in Germany.

Notes:

1. a Rhumb line	румб
2. the Low Countries	Франция, Бельгия, Люксембург
3. scientific-instrument maker	создатель приборов для научных исследований
4. double heart-shaped projection	проекция двойная, сердцевидная
5. concise manual	краткий справочник (руководство)

Text 28

MAP

1. From the earliest civilizations maps have been used to portray information about the earth’s surface. A map is a graphical representation of a portion of the earth’s surface, drawn on a plane to some definite scale. Maps are classed as large-scale, small-scale, and intermediate-scale maps.

2. A map consists of a group of discrete points, lines, and areas that are positioned with reference to1 a common coordinate system. It is usually represented in two dimensions so that it is easily portrayed on a flat sheet (piece) of paper. The group of lines, points, and areas are coded using symbols, textures and colours, that are explained in the map legend. The map legend links the non-spatial attributes to the spatial data. Symbols, colours, line width and other map elements are selected to suit the need for visual analysis of the map data. A map of the earth or a portion of the earth generally shows the physical features of the country: roads, rivers, mountains and lakes, land cover types, political boundaries, the situation of towns and cities, relatively to2 each other, and by means of3 the lines of latitude and longitude relatively to every point on the earth’s surface.

3. The information for a geographic feature4 has four major components: its geographic position, its attributes5, its spatial relationships6, and time. More simply, the four components are: where it is, what it is, what is its relationship to other spatial features and when did the condition or feature existed.

4. The map itself serves to both store the data and to present the data to the user. It is a relatively inexpensive means of storing a considerable amount of spatial information. Maps are, of course, essential to geologic and mineral resource surveys, to marine geology and hydrology, to water-resources inventories, land utilization studies, urban planning, highway location studies and countless other activities.

Notes:

1. with reference to	относительно чего-либо
2. relatively to	относительно чего-либо
means of	посредством; с помощью чего-либо
4. geographic feature	характер рельефа
5. attributes	атрибуты
6. spatial relationships	пространственное положение точек на местности

Text 29

MAP PROJECTION

1. Map-making is older than writing. The oldest map now in existence was found near Babylon, and shows part of northern Iraq as it was 4,500 years ago. Many primitive people, like the Marshall islanders and the Eskimos, for example, still can’t write but they do make surprisingly efficient maps and have made them for centuries. Man, being a land-bound hunter in the beginning, first developed maps of the territory over which he pursued his game1. When he later took to the waters2 he developed nautical charts.

2. The earth’s shape. About four hundred years before Christ, someone, probably a Greek, calculated that the earth was round, but it wasn’t until Magellan’s sailors arrived home in September 1522 after a three-year voyage around the world that this was finally proven. Even after that many people believed that the world was flat – some still do – and it wasn’t until the middle of the nineteenth century that we really had an accurate understanding of what the world actually looks like.

3. Mathematicians and scientists in recent years have been able to give us a very accurate picture of the size and shape of the earth. For practical everyday needs we may consider the earth to be a sphere; however, this is not quite true and the cartographer (map-maker) cannot use this approximation but must allow for the flattening effect at the poles. The exact shape of the earth – an irregular spheroid – cannot be expressed by any simple mathematical formula, and in order to accomplish this3 the cartographer considers the earth to be an ellipsoid. If you take an ellipse with a major diameter equal to that of the Equator, 7 927 miles; a minor diameter equal to that of the polar axis, 7 900 miles; and revolve this ellipse around its minor diameter, you will obtain the shape of the earth employed by the cartographer. How closely does this approach our first approximation – that of a sphere? Let us consider the equatorial diameter scaled down to 25 feet, then the polar diameter would be 24 feet 11 inches. The unaided human eye4 cannot distinguish between the perfect sphere and the ellipsoid if it viewed two figures with these dimensions. So you see, we are not too far off when for all practical purposes we consider our earth to be a sphere.

4. Map projection. A map projection can be defined as any orderly network. The purpose of a map projection is to permit the representation of some portion of the earth’s surface on a map that is drawn on a plane surface. The discovery that the world is round, and therefore has a curved surface, complicates (усложняет) the map-making procedure considerably. It is impossible truly to represent a curved surface on a plane, which is precisely what a map pretends to do, just as you cannot flatten out an orange peel, half of a rubber ball, or a balloon without some tearing or stretching. This stretching or tearing shows up in the map as distortion. Since the distortion cannot be entirely eliminated, it must be controlled, and that is the function of a map projection.

5. When we first consider the preparation of a map projection we must ask ourselves what features are we going to project onto the plane surface? Will we use the topographic features, the land outlines, the cultural features5, or is some other method open to us? Most projections are not truly projected but are computed analytically; we must, therefore, find mathematical expressions for the projection lines and the detail we desire to project. Since geographic features are irregular, no simple mathematical expression for their location or description can be found, and such a system is, therefore, not feasible. To solve this problem we divide the earth into regular sections by employing a system of angular coordinates, known to us as parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude. The planes of the parallels and meridians are regular geometric features, and since the intersections of these planes with the earth’s surface are regular geometric features, we can express them mathematically and construct the projections analytically as well as graphically.

6. A map projection can then be considered a systematic drawing to scale, of lines representing the meridians and parallels of the globe, on a plane surface, for the whole earth or for some portion of it. Small areas of the earth, not exceeding three hundred square miles, may be mapped accurately with a negligible amount of distortion, since an area of this size very nearly approximates a plane, and a projection can be constructed that will represent the true shape of the earth. The surveyors are able to establish the geographic coordinates of any point on the earth by means of celestial observation. These so-called control points6 are plotted on the projection in their proper location and the geographic and cultural features can then be filled in from aerial photographs, as in photomapping, or by means of the plane-table or other surveying methods7.

7. However, when we try to draw a map of the entire world, visible distortion will be introduced into the map. The task of map-making can be broken down into the following steps: (1) the preparation of accurate maps of small areas; (2) the construction of a projection for a large land area, a hemisphere, or even the entire globe; and (3) the fitting of the accurate map into the space allotted it on the projection8.

Notes:

1. pursued his game	охотился на дичь
2. took to the waters	освоил водное пространство
3. in order to accomplish	чтобы выполнить
4. unaided human eye	невооруженным глазом
5. the cultural features	здесь: особенности среды обитания человека
6. control points	пункты геодезического обоснования
7. the plane-table or other surveying methods	методы мензульной и других геодезических съемок
8. the fitting of the accurate map into the space allotted it on the projection	здесь: выбор проекции для картографирования геопространства

1 inch (in) дюйм – 2.540 см 1 foot (ft) фут – 30.45 см 1 yard (yd) ярд – 91.44 см

1 mile (m) миля – 1 609 м 1 морская миля – 1 853 м 1pound (pb) фунт – 0.453 кг

Text 30

THE ROYAL OBSERVATORY AT GREENWICH

1. In 1674, a certain Frenchman, claimed he had discovered a method of finding longitude at sea by observing the positions of the Moon against the background of the stars1. The Royal Observatory was founded in 1675 in the site – within the park at Greenwich, upon the highest ground2. The Observatory was founded specifically «in order to the finding out of the longitude of places for perfecting navigation and astronomy», and, for the first 200 years, the work of the observatory was almost exclusively related to the needs of navigation, though the by-products3 – for example the Greenwich Meridian and the world’s time zone system4 based on it – were of tremendous value to those ashore and to astronomy generally.

2. In 1884 an International Meridian Conference was convened in Washington. Any meridian could have been chosen as the world’s Prime Meridian: the Conference selected «the Meridian passing through the centre of the Transit Instrument5 at Greenwich2 chiefly because at that time 72 per cent of the world’s shipping tonnage already had the Greenwich Meridian on their charts, and because the vast North American railroad networks already used a time-zone system based on GMT.

the 1930s the smoke and street lights of metropolitan London had made Greenwich Park no longer a fit place6 for England’s premier observatory, so, after World War II, the Royal Observatory (renamed the Royal Greenwich Observatory) left these historic buildings and moved to Herstmonceux in Sussex7 in 1948. Many of the ancient instruments came then into the care of the National Maritime Museum.

Though the astronomers have left Greenwich for the clearer skies of Sussex, the world continues to base its longitude and its time systems on ‘the centre of the Transit Instrument at Greenwich’ in the Meridian Building and in working order.

4. The National Maritime Museum, has been called the most beautiful museum in Britain. The main buildings are at the foot of Observatory Hill and five minutes walk from the Old Royal pleted in 1635, this became the pattern for many houses built in the American colonies. Though opened as recently as 1937, the museum is now the world’s largest and most comprehensive maritime museum. It has some of the world’s finest and oldest collections of ship models, marine paintings, navigational instruments, sea charts, manuscripts and other objects connected with the sea and ships. Among these are many objects of astronomical and horological interest.

Notes:

1. against the background of the stars	на фоне звезд
2. upon the highest ground	здесь: на самом высоком холме
-products	здесь: дополнительные функции
4. time zone system	служба времени
5. through the centre of the	через ось вращения пассажного инструмента
Transit Instrument	(универсальный прибор для определения астрономической долготы и широты)
6. a fit place	подходящее место
7. Herstmonceux in Sussex	Хортмонсо (графство Сасекс)

ECOLOGY

Text 31

ECOLOGY

1. Ecology – study of the relationships between organisms and their environments. Ecological studies focus on the relationships between individual (отдельный) organisms and the physical and chemical features of the environment. An ecosystem (ecological system) is dynamic in that its various parts are always in a state of flux (постоянное движение). Since each member of the ecosystem belongs to the environment of every other part of that system, any change in one alters the environment for all the others. And as those components react to the alteration, they in turn continue to transform the environment for the others. The destruction of nature gradually led to the loss of the most essential element of existence, a healthy biological habitat (естественная среда, фауна). Paradoxically, today we know more about processes going on (происходящих, имеющих место) on far-off planets than we do about what is happening deep inside the Earth, and on its surface. There are a lot of examples of interaction of human history and geologic circumstances and phenomena.

2. None of us is immune1 to geologic hazards. Entire civilizations have been destroyed by geologic catastrophes, but most people remain ignorant of the ways that geologic processes interact with man. One way for organisms to survive (выживать) is to exploit a vacant ecological niche; through variation and natural selection, some characteristics of the species change over time in order to enhance (повышать) its survivability in that niche. We humans, take a more aggressive approach to our surroundings. Rather than passively adapting to new conditions we often modify the environment so that it is more suitable for us. People’s striving to reach an immediate objective, their consumer (потребительское) attitude to nature in disregard of natural laws break natural balance.

3. Many modifications of the physical environment are extremely dangerous for our munities often fail to plan intelligently2 for new building and development by taking into account the geology of their surrounding. Some locations are simply unsuitable for anything but open space and parks. Few citizens are aware of the potential geologic disaster when buying property or building extensive networks of highways, construction of dams, utilization of natural resources. Houses are build today on sandy beaches exposed to open ocean, across active fault zones, or on steep hillsides – that are prone to sliding3.

Notes:

1. none of us is immune	никто не защищен от …
2. fail to plan intelligently	не удается разумно планировать
3. are prone to sliding	потенциально опасны оползнями

Text 32

GEOLOGISTS MAKING A DIAGNOSIS

1. In the second half of this century ecology has become everyone’s concern1 everywhere. The field of knowledge which arose a little over a century ago and for a long period drew the attention of but a small number of scientists all of a sudden found itself2 in the general focus. The scientists are ever more persistently warning about the threat of a global ecological catastrophe as a result of man’s economic activity. The medics note with alarm the growing number of diseases caused by the Earth’s pollution with smoke, dust and sewage (сточные воды). The earth and air are inseparable: virtually everything that gets into the air inevitably settles on the earth, penetrates the bowels and contaminates underground waters. The realization of this indissoluble connection made it imperative to make a comprehensive study of ecological problems.

2. Man and nature. Nature provides man with everything he needs for his existence. Human society is known to be most intimately associated with nature. The forms of this association have undergone changes over the ages. Primitive man derived very little from his environment and his activity did not affect the course of natural phenomena. With the development of technology man’s influence on nature has been continuously growing. Modern industry uses ever greater quantities of almost all minerals occurring in the earth’s crust. It is true that the natural resources will not last forever, while human needs know no limits. But it is not oil, coal and other natural resources as such that are important. The important thing is to what extent the main needs of human society for power, food, living space and so on are or will be satisfied (удовлетворять).

3. Let us take power. There was a time when the only source of energy known to man was his own muscular effort. Later man learned to use the power of animals, water, wind and solar energy stored in different fuels. The production of power is ever increasing. In future the energy of hot springs, tides, solar radiation and nuclear reactions will be widely used. The same holds for food. Early man had to cultivate large areas in order to have enough food. As time went by, agriculture became more and more productive, as each unit (участок) of cultivated area yielded (давать) bigger and bigger crops. But that is not all. People have begun to exploit the ocean. In addition to fish it contains vast stores of biological raw materials which can be used as food for thousands of millions of human beings (людей).

4. The biosphere is made up of several components: the lower part of the atmosphere, natural waters, microorganisms, plants, animals and the upper part of the earth’s crust. All these components are interrelated and cannot exist without one another. The biosphere, therefore is a unified, complex self-regulating system and a disturbance in any one of its components entails changes3 in all the others. For example, air pollution (загрязнение) may lead to climatic changes; the water pollution in some countries results in a drinking water shortage (дефицит), etc. Therefore awareness (осознание) of the importance of nature conservation is reaching increasing numbers of people every year. The conservation is not an end in itself and does not aim at the impractical goal (цель) of preserving natural elements in their virgin (нетронутый) state: its key task is the rational use of natural resources, such use making them last longer and preventing (препятствовать) the optimal conditions of mankind’s existence from being undermined (разрушать).

Notes:

1. has become everyone’s concern	стала заботой каждого
2. all of a sudden found itself	совершенно неожиданно оказалась в …
3. entails changes	вызывает изменения

Text 33

PROTECTION OF THE BIOSPHERE

1. With the present-day scientific and technical progress, man’s influence is changing the biosphere and it is passing into a new state. This is a man-controlled sphere, where man is becoming the main factor which changes the world. Man’s activity, however, is unbalancing the set pattern (устоявшаяся структура) of the biosphere. The modern biosphere differs essentially from the course of natural processes which took shape before man appeared on Earth. The violations (нарушение) of natural processes are different. The circulation of substances and the flow of energy are radically accelerated and increased.

2. The air we breathe, the earth we live on and its rivers and seas are becoming polluted with ever more dangerous materials – by products (побочный продукт) of man’s activities. Man depends for his life on what the biosphere provides: water, oxygen, food, etc. But the biosphere is strongly affected by all sorts of human activities. For example, man creates new compounds, new substances, pure chemical elements which are unknown to biosphere. They do not belong to the natural cycle of matter. They weaken the capacity of natural processes for self-regulation. Though not changing biologically, we change the environment in which we live. The Russian great scientist Vladimir Vernadsky was the first in the world to realize the necessity for quite a new approach to the biosphere as early as midforties. The increasing noise level is a special problem nowadays. We need silence as much as we need fresh air and unpolluted water. Noise does not only do physical damage to the hearer but can weaken his energy and break down his nerves. Transport is a major source of environmental pollution. Every car consumes many tons of air. Its exhaust gases contain poisonous carbon dioxide which makes difficult the emission of the earth’s heat into space. Many cities now are too noise to live in.

3. Pollutants are not only harmful to health but to buildings as well. Our cities are dying physically. In most city centers some of the oldest and finest buildings are falling in pieces. On the one hand, the foundations are being shaken by all traffic and, on the other hand, the bricks are being eaten away1 by fumes from the traffic. It is a slow process but it is going on even though you can’t see it. One more aspect of the problem is water pollution. Sea-and river-going ships often pollute sea and river water with various oil products. At a rough estimate2, no less than five million tons of oil are discharged into seas and oceans each year and one ton of oil can spread over about twelve square kilometers of the water surface as a fine film which prevents air-water oxygen exchange. One liter of oil makes one million liters of fresh water unfit for drinking. We must stop the contamination of our water-ways which comes from so many sources: chemical waste (отходы) from factories, thermal waste from power stations, domestic waste from cities and towns and so on.

Notes:

1. are being eaten away	разъедаются
2. at a rough estimate	по грубым подсчетам

Text 34

THE IMPORTANCE OF WATER

1. Our Earth is not yet as comfortable and convenient as it might be for man in all respects1. Just think that the land area on which man lives occupies less than 30 per cent of the whole surface of the planet and approximately 70 per cent of the earth’s surface is covered with water. More than 15 per cent of the land is occupied by hot deserts, 16 million square kilometers of the land is covered with glaciers (ледники), including one whole continent and a lot of islands. That is why people have been active in changing nature, trying to adapt it to their needs, throughout the history of human society. We find evidence of this in the gigantic irrigation systems of India and Egypt. Natural waters can be conveniently divided into three groups: rain water, surface water, and sea water.

2. Rain water is the purest of natural waters; it is simply condensed water vapour (пар). However it is difficult to collect and it is not a convenient source of drinking water. Surface waters, which include streams (поток, ручей), rivers, and lakes, are the most important source of water for all purposes. However river water contains a large number of compounds (соединение) in solution (растворенное состояние). Of these calcium compounds are the most common. The amount of dissolved2 impurities (примесь) depends upon the solubility of rocks (порода) over which the streams flow. The sea water is the reservoir for all dissolved solids carried down by rivers, and its unpleasant taste (вкус) is due to3 these substances in solution. Elements that form the most plentiful compounds in sea water are sodium, potassium (калий), magnesium, calcium, chlorine. Calcium is the most abundant element in river water, whereas sodium is the most plentiful in sea water. The explanation of the paradox is that in the sea many kinds of small animals build hard shells (раковина, панцирь) of calcium carbonate from the calcium compounds in solution.

3. Geologists can estimate the age of the oceans by studying the salinity of ocean water. The salts in the oceans were deposited primarily by rivers and streams containing dissolved and suspended minerals washed out from the rocks of the earth’s crust through the action of rain and other forms of precipitation. The process started with the first precipitation reaching the earth's surface and has continued since that time. The primeval (первобытный) oceans must have been only slightly salty. Salt concentration in the ocean today is much greater, of course, amounting to about 3 per cent, or enough to cover an area of size of the United States with a layer approximately 2 miles high. In an never-ending cycle the oceans salinity has gradually increased and continues to increase. The persistent flow of river waters containing dissolved minerals, silt, and larger suspended rock particles into the oceans occurs concomitantly (параллельно) with the evaporation of water from the oceans. Precipitation returns the water to the land and then to the oceans again, maintaining the cycle continuously.