1
UNIT 6 – THE FUTURE IS NOW
LEAD-IN
Scientists and technologists
are pushing back the frontiers of
knowledge every day. Scientists
publish their findings and those
findings
are
developed
into
commercial applications. We have
become very skilled at harnessing
technology in all sorts of creative
ways. New cutting-edge advances
are transforming our daily lives and
our businesses.
 How important in your opinion is science today? How can science help us address our
common problems and contribute to making the world a better place?
 How important is the national strategy for innovation? Is career in science a matter of
prestige among young people in your country?
READING-1:
Predicting the World we live in
Pre-reading: Think of the technical innovations that have quietly entered - and improved? - our
lives over the last 20 years.
Read the texts. Do the assignments that follow.
TEXT 1
COMPUTERS AND TECHNOLOGY
Has the present lived up to the expectations of the past? Throughout the ages people have
tried to predict what life in the twenty-first century would be like. Many science-fiction writers
did manage to predict the influence the computer would have on our world. Some even imagined
that it would take over our lives, develop a personality, and turn on its creators.
To some extent they were right, especially when it comes to children and cyber addiction.
One constant prediction was that, thanks to computers and machines, the time devoted to labour
would diminish. Even in 1971, in his book Future Shock, Alvin Toffler envisaged a society
awash with 'free time'. The author noted that time at work had been cut in half since the turn of
the previous century and wrongly speculated that it would be cut in half again by 2000.
However, our gadget-filled homes are a tribute to the various visions of the future: the
microwave oven, internet fridges with ice-cube dispensers, freezers, video monitors, climate
control, dishwashers, washing machines, personal computers, wireless connections and
cupboards full of instant food. These may no longer be considered cutting-edge but they have
matched, if not surpassed, visions of how we would live. The domestic robot never quite
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happened, but if you can phone ahead to set the heating and use a remote control to operate the
garage door, they may as well be redundant.
The car, of course, has failed to live up
to our expectations. It has been given turbo
engines, DVD players and automatic windows,
but its tyres stick stubbornly to the road. Why
doesn't it take off? The past promised us a flying
car in various guises. In 1947 a prototype
circled San Diego for more than an hour but
later crashed in the desert. Some 30 patents for
flying cars were registered in the US patent
office last century but none of these ideas has
been transformed into a commercially available
vehicle.
At least communication technology in
this digital age hasn't let us down. Even in the
most remote areas people have access to some form of communication device. The introduction
of the telephone last century changed our world, but today's mobile phones and the virtual world
of the Internet have revolutionised it.
Look at the statements below. See which of them are true. Give your reasoning by citing
the text.
1)
A modern problem proves that computers are dominating our lives in some way
2)
Alan Toffler's predictions have been proven true
3)
Household gadgets today have been a disappointment
4)
We have enough gadgets now to make robots unnecessary in the home
5)
Today's cars have fulfilled all predictions
6)
The mobile phone and the Internet have changed our world for the better
TEXT 2
Open Cloze
PREDICTING THE WORLD WE LIVE IN
Which nineteenth-century writer predicted the world we know most accurately? 'Jules
Verne' would be a reasonable guess, but is not the (0) correct answer. The man who foresaw
most of the technological advances we take for (1) _______ was a French writer, Albert Robida,
(2) _______ novel 'The Twentieth Century' appeared in 1882. Robida did not know nearly as (3)
_______ science as Verne but he possessed an intuitive sense of what technology would be
capable of in a hundred years' time even though he did not understand (4) _______ the advances
would be achieved.
His successful predictions make a formidable list. He not (5) _______ foresaw radio and
television but air travel and fast-food restaurants. He was also far-sighted enough not to share his
contemporaries' blind faith (6) _______ progress, realising that technological advance might
cause problems as well as (7) _______ life more comfortable.
In some ways, however, Robida failed to foresee (8) _______ our world would be like
and in each case the error was due to his personal prejudices. When cars came (9) _______
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fashion later in his life, he disliked them so much (10) _______ of their noise and fumes that he
refused to revise his predictions to include them. (11) _______ did he envisage the development
of computers and the extent of their influence (12) _______ every aspect of our lives today.
But his most serious errors were sociological. He was typical (13) _______ his age and
social class in thinking that women were less intelligent than men and the working class would
always be mainly employed (14) _______ servants. Though he foresaw many of the
technological developments that have (15) _______ into being in our time, he could not imagine
the sexual and social revolutions of the twentieth century.
LANGUAGE FILE to Reading-1
Ex. 1 Match the words in Text 1 with their suggested synonyms or definitions and use
them to fill in the gaps.
 dependency
 guessed
 be greater than expected
 unwanted
 a machine invented for a specific purpose (x 2)
 relating to computers
 the first working example of a machine
 computer
 almost real
 very modern
1. The Philippines’ burgeoning gaming industry may _____ Singapore’s $5.6-billion gaming
market by 2018 on the back of favourable local demographics.
2. Hitachi recently announced the development of provably secure _____ signature technology
based on the use of biometric information.
3. Internet _____ is known as an impulse control disorder and can be similar to a gambling
problem.
4. India will soon have a _____ security policy that will ensure preventive measures against
computer crime and fraud.
5. A _____ imaging technique will help fire-fighters see through flames, and thus locate and
rescue people trapped at the spot.
6. Some districts are not only encouraging students to bring the _____ to school, they are using
them and other _____ — laptops, tablets, even Nintendo — in class.
7. A kilometre of overhead cable came down and brought train services between London and
Scotland to a _____ standstill.
8. One in seven workers 3.5m employees has been made _____ since the start of the recession.
SPEAKING 1 Pair work
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In pairs think of 5 most anticipated inventions that can revolutionise the 21st century. Give
examples of innovations unthinkable just a few years ago which have now become reality. Get
ready to present one of the inventions in a 3-minute statement.
READING-2:
Culture of Science
Pre-reading: What in your understanding is the culture of science? Why is it important to
adhere to ethical norms in scientific research? What problems do researchers face nowadays?
Read the text and analyse it following the instructions in the MANUAL.
HOW SCIENCE GOES WRONG
The Economist
October 19, 2013
Scientific research has changed the world. Now it needs to change itself
A simple idea underpins science: “trust, but verify”. Results should always be subject to
challenge from experiment. That simple but powerful idea has generated a vast body of
knowledge. Since its birth in the 17th century, modern science has changed the world beyond
recognition, and overwhelmingly for the better.
But success can breed complacency. Modern scientists are doing too much trusting and
not enough verifying—to the detriment of the whole of science, and of humanity.
Too many of the findings that fill the academic ether are the result of shoddy experiments
or poor analysis. A rule of thumb among biotechnology venture-capitalists is that half of
published research cannot be replicated. Even that may be optimistic. Last year researchers at
one biotech firm, Amgen, found they could reproduce just six of 53 “landmark” studies in cancer
research. In 2000-12 roughly 80,000 patients took part in clinical trials based on research that
was later retracted because of mistakes or improprieties.
Even when flawed research does not put people’s lives at risk—and much of it is too far
from the market to do so—it squanders money and the efforts of some of the world’s best minds.
The opportunity costs of stymied progress are hard to quantify, but they are likely to be vast.
And they could be rising.
One reason is the competitiveness of science. In the 1950s, when modern academic
research took shape after its successes in the Second World War, it was still a rarefied pastime.
The entire club of scientists numbered a few hundred thousand. As their ranks have swelled, to
6m-7m active researchers on the latest reckoning, scientists have lost their taste for self-policing
and quality control. The obligation to “publish or perish” has come to rule over academic life.
Competition for jobs is cut-throat. Full professors in America earned on average $135,000 in
2012—more than judges did. Every year six freshly minted PhDs vie for every academic post.
Nowadays verification (the replication of other people’s results) does little to advance a
researcher’s career. And without verification, dubious findings live on to mislead.
Careerism also encourages exaggeration and the cherry-picking of results. In order to
safeguard their exclusivity, the leading journals impose high rejection rates: in excess of 90% of
submitted manuscripts. The most striking findings have the greatest chance of making it onto the
page. Little wonder that one in three researchers knows of a colleague who has pepped up a
paper by, say, excluding inconvenient data from results “based on a gut feeling”. And as more
research teams around the world work on a problem, the odds shorten that at least one will fall
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prey to an honest confusion between the sweet signal of a genuine discovery and a freak of the
statistical noise. Such spurious correlations are often recorded in journals eager for startling
papers. If they touch on drinking wine, going senile or letting children play video games, they
may well command the front pages of newspapers, too.
Conversely, failures to prove a hypothesis are rarely even offered for publication, let
alone accepted. “Negative results” now
account for only 14% of published papers,
down from 30% in 1990. Yet knowing what is
false is as important to science as knowing
what is true. The failure to report failures
means that researchers waste money and effort
exploring blind alleys already investigated by
other scientists.
The hallowed process of peer review is
not all it is cracked up to be, either. When a
prominent medical journal ran research past
other experts in the field, it found that most of
the reviewers failed to spot mistakes it had
deliberately inserted into papers, even after being told they were being tested.
If it’s broke, fix it
All this makes a shaky foundation for an enterprise dedicated to discovering the truth
about the world. What might be done to shore it up? One priority should be for all disciplines to
follow the example of those that have done most to tighten standards. A start would be getting to
grips with statistics, especially in the growing number of fields that sift through untold oodles of
data looking for patterns. Geneticists have done this, and turned an early torrent of specious
results from genome sequencing into a trickle of truly significant ones.
Ideally, research protocols should be registered in advance and monitored in virtual
notebooks. This would curb the temptation to fiddle with the experiment’s design midstream so
as to make the results look more substantial than they are. (It is already meant to happen in
clinical trials of drugs, but compliance is patchy.) Where possible, trial data also should be open
for other researchers to inspect and test.
The most enlightened journals are already becoming less averse to humdrum papers.
Some government funding agencies, including America’s National Institutes of Health, which
dish out $30 billion on research each year, are working out how best to encourage replication.
And growing numbers of scientists, especially young ones, understand statistics. But these trends
need to go much further. Journals should allocate space for “uninteresting” work, and grantgivers should set aside money to pay for it. Peer review should be tightened—or perhaps
dispensed with altogether, in favour of post-publication evaluation in the form of appended
comments. That system has worked well in recent years in physics and mathematics. Lastly,
policymakers should ensure that institutions using public money also respect the rules.
Science still commands enormous—if sometimes bemused—respect. But its privileged
status is founded on the capacity to be right most of the time and to correct its mistakes when it
gets things wrong. And it is not as if the universe is short of genuine mysteries to keep
generations of scientists hard at work. The false trails laid down by shoddy research are an
unforgivable barrier to understanding.
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TOPICAL VOCABULARYLIST -1
to generate – electricity, growth, controversy, income, energy, new jobs
a body of ~ (knowledge, expertise, evidence, information, work etc.)
to change (sth) beyond recognition
to breed complacency
to do sth.to the detriment of / without detriment / to be a detriment to
flawed research
to put people’s lives at risk
to squander money and efforts
stymied progress
to lose the taste for self-policing
a cut-throat competition
to fall prey to sth/sb temptation, crisis, deception, mistake, addiction
to shore sth up (economy, demand, growth, support, reputation, confidence)
to get to grips with sth (challenge, fear, sb’s death, problem)
to curb the temptation
humdrum (papers)
to allocate (space, resources, money, duties)
LANGUAGE FILE to Reading-2
Ex.1
Explain and expand on the following.
1. But success can breed complacency.
2. Modern scientists are doing too much trusting and not enough verifying…
3. A rule of thumb among biotechnology venture-capitalists is that half of published
research cannot be replicated.
4.
Careerism also encourages exaggeration and the cherry-picking of results.
5.
The hallowed process of peer review is not all it is cracked up to be, either.
6.
The most enlightened journals are already becoming less averse to humdrum
papers.
Ex.2 Fill in the gaps with the words from TOPICAL VOCABULARY LIST - 1 above. Each can
be used more than once.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
A month ago, Kenya ______ a sudden burst of post-electoral violence that has left over
1,000 dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.
Disagreements over what to do with additional money and a borrowing package have
______ progress on the House's budget proposal.
Jeff Hill yesterday launched an intensive effort ______ among Latino voters in Texas.
Granting tax holidays for foreign companies ______ of their local counterparts will not
help develop the economy.
Young fathers will be helped ______ their new responsibilities under a scheme run by the
charity Action for Children.
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6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
A flurry of deals in the pharmaceutical sector helped ______ global stock markets on
Tuesday.
When it comes to making investment decisions, many investors ______ snap judgments or
simply become overwhelmed by information overload.
he global strategic framework has changed ______ in the past decade, even if the majority
of the world’s population cannot grasp it.
Being constantly bombarded with far more information than we can process works ______
of our memory.
With some Labour MPs determined to unseat the prime minister within days, Brown has
been ringing backbenchers ______ his position.
Efforts to expand Internet access via mobile technologies may be _____ by economic and
social challenges.
The technologies older people need ______ are far more basic: remote
controls, non-mobile phones and even jam jar lids.
But Bali, the idyllic spot, may soon ______, a prey to the accumulated effects of mass
tourism, unbridled consumption of resources and environmental collapse.
Leading British Muslims call on followers of the faith ______ to militant groups fighting
in Syria and Iraq.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a step backwards to the days before the WTO when the
US and Europe controlled the global trading system ______ of developing economies.
According to the PM, the nature of the threats to national security has ______ in recent
decades.
SCIENCE BASICS QUIZ
1. Which over-the-counter drug do doctors recommend that people take to help prevent
heart attacks?
a.
Antacids
b.
Cortisone
c.
Aspirin
2. According to most astronomers, which of the following is no longer considered a planet?
a.
Neptune
b.
Pluto
c.
Saturn
d.
Mercury
3. Which of the following may cause a tsunami?
a. A very warm ocean current
b. A large school of fish
c. A melting glacier
d. An earthquake under the ocean
4. The global positioning system, or GPS, relies on which of these to work?
a. Satellites
b. Stars
c. Magnets
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d. Lasers
5. What gas do most scientists believe causes temperatures in the atmosphere to rise?
a. Hydrogen
b. Helium
c. Carbon dioxide
d. Radon
6. How are stem cells different from other cells?
a. They can develop into many different types of cell
b. They are found only in bone marrow
c. They are found only in plants
7.
a.
b.
c.
d.
What have scientists recently discovered on Mars?
Platinum
Plants
Mold
Water
For each statement that follows, please indicate whether it is true or false.
8. The continents on which we live have been moving their location for millions of
years and will continue to move in the future:

True

False
9. Lasers work by focusing sound waves:

True

False
10. Antibiotics will kill viruses as well as bacteria:

True

False
11. Electrons are smaller than atoms:

True

False
12. All radioactivity is man-made:

True

False
READING 3: Future of Science
Pre-reading: Who are Luddites? What is technophobia? What is innovation and how
important is it? What is the role of science today? How far can technology progress?
Read the texts. Do the assignments that follow.
TEXT 1
THE GREAT INNOVATION DEBATE
The Economist
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January 12, 2013
Fears that innovation is slowing are exaggerated, but governments need to help it along
WITH the pace of technological change making heads spin, we tend to think of our age
as the most innovative ever. We have smartphones and supercomputers, big data and
nanotechnologies, gene therapy and stem-cell transplants. Governments, universities and firms
together spend around $1.4 trillion a year on R&D, more than ever before.
Yet nobody recently has come up with an invention half as useful as that depicted on this
page. With its clean lines and intuitive user interface, the humble loo transformed the lives of
billions of people. And it wasn’t just modern sanitation that sprang from late-19th and early20th-century brains: they produced cars, planes, the telephone, radio and antibiotics.
Modern science has failed to make
anything like the same impact, and this is why
a growing band of thinkers claim that the pace
of innovation has slowed. Interestingly, the
gloomsters include not just academics such as
Robert Gordon, the American economist who
offered the toilet test of un-inventiveness, but
also entrepreneurs such as Peter Thiel, a
venture capitalist behind Facebook.
If the pessimists are right, the
implications are huge. Economies can generate growth by adding more stuff: more workers,
investment and education. But sustained increases in output per person, which are necessary to
raise incomes and welfare, entail using the stuff we already have in better ways—innovating, in
other words. If the rate at which we innovate and spread that innovation slows down, so too,
other things being equal, will our growth rate.
Doom, gloom and productivity figures
Ever since Malthus forecast that we would all starve, human ingenuity has proved the
prophets of doom wrong. But these days the impact of innovation does indeed seem to be tailing
off. Life expectancy in America, for instance, has risen more slowly since 1980 than in the early
20th century. The speed of travel, in the rich world at least, is often slower now than it was a
generation earlier, after rocketing a century or so ago. According to Mr Gordon, productivity
also supports the pessimists’ case: it took off in the mid-19th century, accelerated in the early
20th century and held up pretty well until the early 1970s. It then dipped sharply, ticked up in
late 1990s with computerisation and dipped again in the mid-2000s.
Yet that pattern is not as conclusively gloomy as the doomsayers claim. Life expectancy
is still improving, even in the rich world. The productivity gains after electrification came not
smoothly, but in spurts; and the drop-off since 2004 probably has more to do with the economic
crisis than with underlying lack of invention. Moreover, it is too early to write off the innovative
impact of the present age.
This generation’s contribution to technological progress lies mostly in information
technology (IT). Rather as electrification changed everything by allowing energy to be used far
from where it was generated, computing and communications technologies transform lives and
businesses by allowing people to make calculations and connections far beyond their unaided
capacity. But as with electricity, companies will take time to learn how to use them, so it will
probably be many decades before their full impact is felt.
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Computing power is already contributing to dramatic advances far beyond the field of IT.
Three-dimensional printing may cause a new industrial revolution. Autonomous vehicles, like
the driverless cars produced by Google, could be common on streets within a decade. The
performance of human prosthetics is rapidly catching up with that of natural limbs.
And although it is too soon to judge how big a deal these inventions will turn out to be,
globalisation should make this a fruitful period for innovation. Many more brains are at work
now than were 100 years ago: American and European inventors have been joined in the race to
produce cool new stuff by Japanese, Brazilian, Indian and Chinese ones.
Spend a penny—or two
So there are good reasons for thinking that the 21st century’s innovative juices will flow
fast. But there are also reasons to watch out for impediments. The biggest danger is government.
When government was smaller, innovation was easier. Industrialists could introduce new
processes or change a product’s design without a man from the ministry claiming some
regulation had been broken. It is a good thing that these days pharmaceuticals are stringently
tested and factory emissions controlled. But officialdom tends to write far more rules than are
necessary for the public good; and thickets of red tape strangle innovation. Even many
regulations designed to help innovation are not working well. The West’s intellectual-property
system, for instance, is a mess, because it grants too many patents of dubious merit.
The state has also notably failed to open itself up to innovation. Productivity is mostly
stagnant in the public sector. Unions have often managed to prevent governments even
publishing the performance indicators which, elsewhere, have encouraged managers to innovate.
There is vast scope for IT to boost productivity in health care and education, if only those sectors
were more open to change.
The rapid growth in the rich world before the 1970s was encouraged by public spending
on infrastructure (including in sewage systems) and basic research: the computer, the internet
and the green revolution in food technology all sprang out of science, where there was no
immediate commercial aim. Wars provide the sharpest example of the innovative power of
government spending: astounding new developments in drone and prosthetic technology—let
alone the jet engine—are a bittersweet testament to that. Even in these straitened times, money
should still be found for basic research into areas such as carbon capture and storage.
For governments that do these things well—get out of the way of entrepreneurs, reform
their public sectors and invest wisely—the rewards could be huge. The risk that innovation may
slow is a real one, but can be avoided. Whether it happens or not is, like most aspects of
mankind’s fate, up to him.
TEXT 2
ONWARDS AND UPWARDS
The Economist
December 17, 2012
Why is the modern view of progress so impoverished?
In the rich world the idea of progress has become impoverished. Through complacency
and bitter experience, the scope of progress has narrowed. The popular view is that, although
technology and GDP advance, morals and society are treading water or, depending on your
choice of newspaper, sinking back into decadence and barbarism. On the left of politics these
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days, “progress” comes with a pair of ironic quotation marks attached; on the right,
“progressive” is a term of abuse.
The idea of progress forms the backdrop to a society. In the extreme, without the
possibility of progress of any sort, your gain is someone else’s loss. If human behaviour is
unreformable, social policy can only ever be about trying to cage the ape within. Society must in
principle be able to move towards its ideals, such as equality and freedom, or they are no more
than cant and self-delusion. So it matters if people lose their faith in progress. And it is worth
thinking about how to restore it.
Modern science is full of examples of technologies that can be used for ill as well as good.
Think of nuclear power—and of nuclear weapons; of biotechnology—and of biological
contamination. Or think, less apocalyptically, of IT and of electronic surveillance. History is full
of useful technologies that have done harm, intentionally or not. Electricity is a modern wonder,
but power stations have burnt too much CO2-producing coal. The internet has spread knowledge
and understanding, but it has also spread crime and pornography. German chemistry produced
aspirin and fertiliser, but it also filled Nazi gas chambers with Cyclon B.
The point is not that science is harmful, but that progress in science does not map tidily
onto progress for humanity. In an official British survey of public attitudes to science in 2012,
just over 80% of those asked said they were “amazed by the achievements of science”. However,
only 46% thought that “the benefits of science are greater than any harmful effect”.
From the perspective of human progress, science needs governing. Scientific progress
needs to be hitched to what you might call “moral progress”. It can yield untold benefits, but
only if people use it wisely. They need to understand how to stop science from being abused.
And to do that they must look outside science to the way people behave.





What is the role of science, technology and innovation in the economy?
What is the role of science in innovation?
Has the environment for innovation changed?
How can governments improve the environment for innovation?
What is the role of government in funding science?
LANGUAGE FILE TO Reading-3
Ex. 1
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Explain and expand on the following.
...the pace of technological change is making heads spin
...the gloomsters include not just academics, but also entrepreneurs
If the rate at which we innovate slows down, so too, other things being equal, will our
growth rate.
...human ingenuity has proved the prophets of doom wrong
…these days the impact of innovation does indeed seem to be tailing off
…21st century’s innovative juices will flow fast
…thickets of red tape strangle innovation
The West’s intellectual-property system is a mess, because it grants too many patents of
dubious merit.
…the green revolution in food technology sprang out of science, where there was no
immediate commercial aim
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10. …astounding new developments in drone technology are a bittersweet testament to that
11. …the scope of progress has narrowed
12. …morals and society are treading water
13. The idea of progress forms the backdrop to a society.
14. Without the possibility of progress of any sort, your gain is someone else’s loss.
15. …social policy can only ever be about trying to cage the ape within
16. Society must be able to move towards its ideals or they are no more than cant and selfdelusion.
17. Scientific progress needs to be hitched to what you might call “moral progress”.
Ex.2 Give as many synonyms as you can to the italicized words, continue the string of
words that collocate with them.
to support sb's case
to use sth for ill
impediment
to think apocalyptically
SPEAKING 2: Discusion + Individual reports
1.
2.
Where in your opinion will the next R&D breakthroughs come from?
Get ready with a 3-5-minute statement on the most anticipated discovery of the 21st
century.
PROFICIENCY FILE
LIFE ON MARS
Speculation about life on Mars began, like so much speculation, with the ancient Greeks.
For them, as for us, it formed part of a larger question: Are there intelligent life forms elsewhere
in the universe, and if (1) ………., are they anything like us?
As (2) ………. as Christians believed that the Earth was the centre of the universe, interest
(3) ………. such matters (4) ………. out but revived in the nineteenth century. The reason why
discussion began to focus (5) ………. Mars was that Italian astronomers claimed there were lines
on the surface, which they called canali or channels. When the word was translated (6) ……….
English as 'canals', implying that they had been artificially constructed, the stage was set for all
kinds of hypotheses.
After the astronomers came the novelists, (7) ………. all the young H G Wells, who
portrayed the Martians as ruthless invaders in The War of the Worlds. The success of Wells'
novel (8) ………. Rise to a host of imitations, (9) ………. them an early work of Edgar Rice
Burroughs, later the creator of Tarzan. Burroughs' Mars was inhabited not only by monsters (10)
………. also by beautiful princesses who gave birth by (11) ………. eggs.
Since a spacecraft landed there in J 997, Mars has once again been in the news. (12)
………. always, public interest is aroused by the hope that life might be found there. So far such
speculation remains wishful (13) ………. and one cannot help wondering why it should seem
important to us. The answer may be that we (14) ………. it comforting to imagine that we are not
(15) ………. in the universe.
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WHAT DNA CAN TELL US ABOUT THE PAST
DNA is the substance from which all life as we know it is derived. But how (0) long
can it survive? Is it out of the (1) ………. to think of recreating a creature from DNA found in
the remains of one? The discovery of traces of DNA in an animal known (2) ………. the
quagga, a cross (3) ………. a horse and a zebra that became extinct in the last century, was the
starting point for a series of investigation of this type.
The initial excitement has (4) ………. down a little since subsequent research has
demonstrated that however well preserved a creature's remains may be, the upper limit for the
survival of DNA is about 100,000 years and using it to (5) ………. a quagga back to life is the
stuff of fantasy. Yet the discovery can be used to provide (6) ………. to many questions about
prehistory that have troubled archaeologists.
For example, as a result of extracting DNA from the remains of a Neanderthal, scientists
have (7) ………. the conclusion that it belonged to a different species and we are not its
descendants. Another problem concerns the inhabitants of Easter Island in the South Pacific. In
this case, the DNA evidence of ancient human remains does not bear (8) ………. the theory that
they came from South America but nor does it prove that they were from South East Asia, the
alternative suggestion (9) ………. forward.
It might be imagined that these new scientific techniques would (10) ……. an end to
traditional archaeological research but this is very (11) ………. from being the case. (12)
………. the contrary, they provide a basis (13) ………. many further projects, if we (14)
………. into consideration the hundreds of samples of hair, bone and tissue containing DNA in
museums that can be analysed to throw (15) ………. on the unsolved mysteries of the past.
THE DANGER OF DISSENT
Some would argue that, in matters (1) …………… great public importance, scientific
dissent should be silenced. It can, it is true, (2) …………… harm. When AIDS first (3)
…………… its ugly head, no one knew what caused it. Gradually, the virus responsible was
isolated, identified and then attacked successfully with drugs (4) …………… specifically to (5)
…………… its reproduction. A few scientists, though, refused to (6) …………… the evidence
and some politicians used their arguments to (7) …………… inaction.
Now this newspaper believes that global warming is a serious threat, and that the world
needs to take steps to try to (8) ……………….. it. That is the job of the politicians. But we do
not believe that climate change is a certainty. There are no certainties in science. Prevailing
theories must be constantly tested (9) ……………. evidence, and refined, and more evidence
collected, and the theories tested again. That is the job of the scientists. When they stop
questioning orthodoxy, mankind will have given up the (10) …………… for truth. The skeptics
should not be silenced.
Gapped Sentences
1. Shell is poised to become the first oil major to sign a deal to _____ natural gas in the
Kurdish region of Iran.
Brutal interrogation methods and even executions are allegedly used by the security services to
_____ information about insurgents.
Read this _____ from an information booklet about the work of an airline cabin crew.
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2.
MyTravel, the embattled tour operator, is understood to be preparing to _____ back its retail
division by shedding senior staff and closing up to 260 shops.
There is now a consensus among politicians of all parties that it is time to face up to the _____ of
the problem in the public finances.
To _____ fish at home, start to_____ from tail to head with the back of a table knife.
3. The menu will be ready as soon as you _____ up your computer
In the United States, a _____ camp is a military training camp for new recruits, with strict
discipline.
Alice was not just the smartest girl in the class; she was the best dancer, to _____
4. Gerry was seen as a computer wizard capable of debugging convoluted _____ in his sleep.
It was as if the speaker’s words contained a concealed _____ that only we were picking up.
Remember to dial the area _____ if you are phoning from outside Nottingham.
5. As with any complex project, it’s a _____ of getting the right mix of skills.
In the brain, the cerebral cortex is a layer of grey _____ lying above each cerebral hemisphere.
Helping him to escape had not been a minor _____ and he knew that if these people were caught
they would be punished.
2. Though she was an exacting boss at work she could never put her _____ down in the affairs
of her family.
There is a mounting dissent between the participants in the deal over who should _____ the bill
for the technology needed.
Put your best _____ forward and work on the assumption that there is an acceptable solution to
every problem you are likely to face.
Word formation
Today, of course, we face more complex challenges than we have ever
faced before: a medical system that holds the promise of (1)…………… new
cures and treatments -- attached to a health care system that holds the potential
for bankruptcy to families and businesses; a system of energy that powers our
economy, but simultaneously (2)…………… our planet; threats to our security
that seek to exploit the very (3)............... and openness so (4)…………… to our
prosperity.
And if there was ever a day that reminded us of our shared stake in
science and research, it's today. We are closely monitoring the emerging cases of
swine flu in the United States. And this is obviously a cause for concern and
requires a (5)…………… state of alert. But it's not a cause for alarm. The
Department of Health and Human Services has declared a public health
emergency as a (6)…………… tool to ensure that we have the resources we
need at our disposal to respond quickly and effectively. And this is one more
example of why we can't allow our nation to fall behind.
(7)……………, that's exactly what's happened. Federal funding in the
physical sciences as a portion of our gross domestic product has fallen by nearly
half over the past quarter century.
Our schools continue to trail other developed countries and, in some
cases, developing countries. Our students are (8)…………… in math and
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science by their peers in Singapore, Japan, England, Hong Kong, and Korea,
among others. And we have watched as scientific integrity has been undermined
and scientific research (9)…………… in an effort to advance (10)…………… policy,
ideological agendas.
determine
Key Word Transformation
1. It’s only after a week that you begin to feel relaxed here.
home
You won’t begin to feel ……………….. gone by.
2. He is almost certain to leave before we get there.
arrive
By the time ………………..left.
3. The inhabitants were far worse-off twenty years ago than they are now.
nowhere
The inhabitants are ……………….. were twenty years ago.
4. I just had to tell him how much I enjoyed meeting him.
pleasure
I just had to tell him ……………….. him.
5. The intentions of the last government were far clearer than the present one’s
like
The present government’s ………………. the previous one.
6. We will of course take into account her comparative youth
allowances
We will of course………………. comparatively young
READING - 4: Science and Religion
Pre-reading: Search the Internet for information on the Great Rift and the Intelligent Design.
Expand on the notions. Explore the history behind the religion vs science debate.
Read the texts and say if in your opinion science and religion are irreconcilable. Give your
reasons.
TEXT 1
RELIGION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SCIENCE – AND VICE VERSA
Francisco J. Ayala
May 28, 2010
www.theguardian.com
Some scientists assert that valid knowledge can only come from science. They hold that
religious beliefs are the remains of pre-scientific explanations of the world and amount to
nothing more than superstition.
On the other side, some people of faith believe that science conveys a materialistic view
of the world that denies the existence of any reality outside the material world. Science, they
think, is incompatible with their religious faith.
I contend that both – scientists denying religion and believers rejecting science – are
wrong. Science and religious beliefs need not be in contradiction. If they are properly
understood, they cannot be in contradiction because science and religion concern different
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matters.
The scope of science is the world of nature: the reality that is observed, directly or
indirectly, by our senses. Science advances explanations about the natural world, explanations
that are accepted or rejected by observation and experiment.
Outside the world of nature, however, science has no authority, no statements to make, no
business whatsoever taking one position or another. Science has nothing decisive to say about
values, whether economic, aesthetic or moral; nothing to say about the meaning of life or its
purpose.
Still, science as a mode of inquiry into the nature of the universe has been immensely
successful and of great technological and economic consequence. The US Office of Management
and Budget has estimated that 50% of all economic growth in the US since the second world war
can be directly attributed to scientific knowledge and technical advances.
The technology derived from scientific knowledge pervades our lives: the high-rise
buildings of our cities, throughways and long-span bridges, rockets that take men and women
into outer space, telephones that provide instant communication across continents, computers
that perform complex calculations in millionths of a second, vaccines and drugs that keep
pathogens at bay, gene therapies that replace DNA in defective cells. These remarkable
achievements bear witness to the validity of the scientific knowledge from which they
originated.
People of faith should stand in awe of the wondrous achievements of science. But they
should not be troubled that science may deny their religious beliefs. Nor should people of faith
transgress the proper boundaries of religion by making assertions about the natural world that are
contrary to scientific knowledge. Religion concerns the meaning and purpose of the world and
human life, the proper relation of people to their Creator and to each other, the moral values that
inspire and govern their lives.
Religion has nothing definitive to say about the natural processes: nothing about the
causes of tsunamis or earthquakes or why volcanic eruptions occur, or why there are droughts
that ruin farmers' crops. The explanation of these processes belongs to science. It is a categorical
mistake to seek their explanation in religious beliefs or sacred texts.
Successful as it is, however, a scientific view of the world is hopelessly incomplete.
Matters of value and meaning are outside the scope of science.
Even when we have a satisfying scientific understanding of a natural object or process,
we are still missing matters that may well be thought by many to be of equal or greater import.
Scientific knowledge may enrich aesthetic and moral perceptions promoted by religion and
illuminate the significance of life and the world, but these matters are outside the realm of
science.
TEXT 2
SCIENCE AND RELIGION CANNOT BE RECONCILED
Victor Stenger
Huffington Post
February 19, 2013
This essay is based on the 2012 book, God and the Folly of Faith (Prometheus Books).
Religious apologists, spiritualist gurus, and accommodating atheists have been
bombarding us with assertions that science and religion have no reason not to get along. This
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may be politically convenient, but it's simply untrue. Science and religion are fundamentally
irreconcilable, and they always will be.
Faith is belief in the absence of supportive evidence and even in the light of contrary
evidence. Science however analyzes observations by applying certain methodological rules and
formulates models to describe those observations. It justifies that process by its practical success,
not by any logical deduction derived from dubious metaphysical assumptions. We must
distinguish faith from trust. Science has earned our trust by its proven success. Religion has
destroyed our trust by its repeated failure.
Using the empirical method, science has eliminated smallpox, flown men to the moon,
and discovered DNA. If science did not work, we wouldn't do it. Relying on faith, religion has
brought us inquisitions, holy wars, and intolerance. Religion does not work, but we still do it.
Science and religion are fundamentally incompatible because of their unequivocally
opposed assumptions they make concerning what we can know about the world. Science is the
systematic study of the observations made of the natural world with our senses and scientific
instruments.
By contrast, all major religions teach that humans possess an additional "inner" sense that
allows us to access a realm lying beyond the visible world -- a divine, transcendent reality we
call the supernatural. If it does not involve the transcendent, it is not religion.
No doubt science has its limits. However, that fact that science is limited doesn't mean
that religion or any alternative system of thought can or does provide insight into what lies
beyond those limits. For example, science cannot yet show precisely how the universe and life
originated naturally, although many plausible scenarios exist. But the fact that science does not
at present have a definitive answer to this question does not mean that ancient creation myths
such as those in Genesis have any substance, any chance of eventually being verified.
We cannot sweep under the rug the many serious problems brought about by the
scientific revolution and the exponential burst in humanity's ability to exploit Earth's resources
made possible by the accompanying technology. There would be no problems with
overpopulation, pollution, global warming, or the threat of nuclear holocaust if science had not
made them possible. The growing distrust of science can be understood by observing the
disgraceful examples of scientists employed by oil, food, tobacco, and pharmaceutical
companies who have contributed to the unnecessary deaths of millions by allowing products to
be marketed that these scientists knew full well were unsafe.
But does anyone want to return to the pre-scientific age when human life was nasty,
brutish, and short? Even fire was once a new technology. We can solve the problems brought
about by the misuse of science only by better use of science and more rational behavior on the
part of scientists, politicians, corporations, and citizens in all walks of life. And religion, as it is
currently practiced, with its continued focus on closed thinking and ancient mythology, is not
doing much to support the goal of a better, safer world. In fact, religion is hindering our attempts
to attain that goal.
Today science and religion find themselves in serious conflict. Even moderate believers
do not fully accept Darwinian evolution. Although they claim to see no conflict between their
faith and evolution, they insist that God still controlled the development of life so humans would
evolve, which is not at all what the theory of evolution says. Evolution, as understood by
science, has no room for God.
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From its very beginning, religion has been a tool used by those in power to retain that
power and keep the masses in line. This continues today as religious groups are manipulated to
work against believers' own best interests in health and economic well-being in order to cast
doubt on well-established scientific findings. This would not be possible except for the
diametrically opposed world-views of science and religion. Science is not going to change its
commitment to the truth. We can only hope religion will change its commitment to nonsense.
 Comment on the following two quotations that indicate the range of beliefs about the
conflict and harmony between science and religion:
Anon: "There can never be a conflict between true science and true religion, because they both
describe reality."
Peter Atkins: "Science is almost totally incompatible with religion."
Abdu'l-Bahá: "Religion without science is superstition and science without religion is
materialism."
WRITING: a Summary
THE FUTURE IS NOW
Joel Achenbach
April 13, 2008
The Washington Post
The most important things happening in the world today won't make tomorrow's front page.
They won't get mentioned by presidential candidates or Chris Matthews or Bill O'Reilly or any
of the other folks yammering and snorting on cable television. They'll be happening in
laboratories -- out of sight, inscrutable and unhyped until the very moment when they change life
as we know it.
Science and technology form a two-headed, unstoppable change agent. Problem is, most of us
are mystified and intimidated by such things as biotechnology, or nanotechnology, or the various
other-ologies that seem to be threatening to merge into a single unspeakable and
incomprehensible thing called biotechnonanogenomicology. We vaguely understand that this
stuff is changing our lives, but we feel as though it's all out of our control.
What's unnerving is the velocity at which the future sometimes arrives. Consider the Internet.
This powerful but highly disruptive technology crept out of the lab (a Pentagon think tank,
actually) and all but devoured modern civilization -- with almost no advance warning. The first
use of the word "internet" to refer to a computer network seems to have appeared in this
newspaper on Sept. 26, 1988, in the Financial section, on page F30 -- about as deep into the
paper as you can go without hitting the bedrock of the classified ads. The scientists knew that
computer networks could be powerful. But how many knew that this Internet thing would
change the way we communicate, publish, sell, shop, conduct research, find old friends, do
homework, plan trips and on and on?
It's not just us mortals, even scientists don't always grasp the significance of innovations.
Tomorrow's revolutionary technology may be in plain sight, but everyone's eyes, clouded by
conventional thinking, just can't detect it. So where does that leave the rest of us? In
technological Palookaville.
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Science is becoming ever more specialized; technology is increasingly a series of black boxes,
impenetrable to but a few. Americans' poor science literacy means that science and technology
exist in a walled garden, a geek ghetto. We are a technocracy in which most of us don't really
understand what's happening around us. We stagger through a world of technological and
medical miracles. We're zombified by progress.
Our ability to monkey around with life itself is a reminder that ethics, religion and old-fashioned
common sense will be needed in abundance in decades to come. How smart and flexible and
rambunctious do we want our computers to be? Let's not mess around with that Matrix business.
Every forward-thinking person almost ritually brings up the mortality issue. What'll happen to
society if one day people can stop the aging process? Or if only rich people can stop getting old?
It's interesting that politicians rarely address such matters. The future in general is something of a
suspect topic . . . a little goofy. Right now we're all focused on the next primary, the summer
conventions, the Olympics and their political implications, the fall election. The political cycle
enforces an emphasis on the immediate rather than the important.
And in fact, any prediction of what the world will be like more than, say, a year from now is a
matter of hubris. The professional visionaries don't even talk about predictions or forecasts but
prefer the word "scenarios." When Sen. John McCain, for example, declares that radical Islam is
the transcendent challenge of the 21st century, he's being sincere, but he's also being a bit of a
soothsayer. Environmental problems and resource scarcity could easily be the dominant global
dilemma. Or a virus with which we've yet to make our acquaintance. Or some other "wild card."
Some predictions are bang-on, such as sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke's declaration in 1945 that
there would someday be communications satellites orbiting the Earth. But Clarke's satellites had
to be occupied by repairmen who would maintain the huge computers required for space
communications. Even in the late 1960s, when Clarke collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on the
screenplay to "2001: A Space Odyssey," he assumed that computers would, over time, get
bigger. We have built into us an idea that tomorrow is going to be pretty much like today, which
is very wrong.
The future is often viewed as an endless resource of innovation that will make problems go away
-- even though, if the past is any judge, innovations create their own set of new problems.
Climate change is at least in part a consequence of the invention of the steam engine in the early
1700s and all the industrial advances that followed.
Look again at the Internet. It's a fantastic tool, but it also threatens to disperse information we'd
rather keep under wraps, such as our personal medical data, or even the instructions for making a
fission bomb.
We need to keep our eyes open. The future is going to be here sooner than we think. It'll surprise
us. We'll try to figure out why we missed so many clues. And we'll go back and search the
archives, and see that thing we should have noticed on page F30.
Palookaville is a 1995 motion picture about a pair of trio burglars and their dysfunctional family
of origin. It is a comedy about bumbling buddies who decide to live a life of crime. But there's a
problem: the only thing they know about being criminals is what they've seen on TV so you can
imagine the problems they encounter when planning their big score
READING - 5
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With the advent of new technology there have been many semantic changes: some
words have changed their meaning, a lot on “new” words appeared. In the text “We are
Survivors”, find the words the meaning of which has changed. See if you know both their
“original” and the “new” meaning. If you don’t, consult the dictionary. Note that many of
the words are stylistically coloured.
YOU ARE SURVIVORS!
(for those born some time ago)
You were born before television, before penicillin,
polio shots, frozen foods, Xerox, plastics, contact
lenses, DVDs and Frisbees. You were before radar,
credit cards, split atoms, laser beams and ball point
pens; before dishwashers, tumble dryers, electric
blankets, air conditioners … and before man walked
on the moon. You got married first and then lived
together (how quaint can you be?). You thought ‘fast
food’ was what you ate at Lent, a ‘Big Mac’ was an
oversized raincoat and ‘crumpet’ you had for tea.
You existed before house husbands, computer dating,
dual careers, and when ‘sheltered accommodation’
was where you waited for a bus.
You were before day-care centers, group homes and
disposable nappies.
You never heard of FM radio, key boards, artificial
hearts, yoghurts and young men wearing earrings.
For you ‘time sharing’ meant togetherness, a ‘chip’ was a piece of wood or a fried potato,
hardware meant nuts and bolts, and software wasn’t a word.
‘Made in Japan’ meant junk, pizzas, McDonalds and instant coffee were unheard of. In your day,
cigarette smoking was ‘fashionable’, ‘grass’ was mown, ‘coke’ was kept in a coal house, and a
‘joint’ was a piece of meat. ‘Rock music’ was grandmother’s lullaby, ‘Eldorado’ was an ice
cream, a ‘gay person’ was life and soul of the party and nothing more, while ‘aids’ just meant
beauty treatment, wooden legs or help for someone in trouble.
You, who were born a long time ago, must be a hardy bunch when you think of the way in which
the world has changed and the adjustments you have had to make. But … by the grace of God …
you have survived!!
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