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Exercise 3. Answer the questions to the text.
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Exercise 3. Answer the questions to the text.
1. What does DTP mean?
2. What do such systems allow to produce nowadays?
3. What does the abbreviation IBM correspond to?
4. How can you describe this device?
5. What ways of using it can be found in the office?
6. Do you use such devices for work or study?
7. Do they really help in work or do they cause any problems?
PART 2 PRACTICE YOUR READING COMPREHENSION SKILLS
Text 1
Exercise 1. Read the text:
Robonauts
1. What do you get when you cross a robot and an astronaut? A Robonaut! Robonauts are robot helpers designed to work side-by-side with astronauts. Work on the first Robonaut began in 1997, and by 2002 Robonaut B was revealed to the public. Robonaut B may have featured interchangeable lower bodies, like four-wheel mode or hydraulic legs, but scientists and engineers continued to improve Robonaut. In February of 2010, Robonaut 2 was released to the public. Robonaut 2 moved four times faster than the first Robonaut. An advanced version of Robonaut 2 was finally tested in outer space in 2011. Robonaut functioned exactly as designed. 2. Automation is the use of machines to reduce the need for human labor. In other words automation is when jobs done by people become jobs done by robots. Automation can be a good thing. Because of automation, clothing, cars, and other manufactured products are available at good prices and in large supply. But automation can also be a bad thing. Because of automation, there are over 700, 000 robots in America alone that do jobs once performed by humans. The way of automation may not be best for humanity, but it is the course we are taking.
3. From airplanes to forklifts, hydraulic power is the strength behind many amazing technologies that affect our daily lives, even the breaks on your school bus, but how do they work? First, fluid is rapidly released into a chamber through a valve. As the fluid collect, the valve is slammed shut which causes a pressure spike. Because the chamber is sealed, the pressure has nowhere to go. The hydraulic mechanism channels the pressure and provides great power. And that’s how, with the help of hydraulics, Grandma can stop a car with one foot.
4. Many people use the words cyborg and android interchangeably when, in fact, they have different meanings. Both terms refer to beings powered by robotics, but an android is powered entirely by robots. Though androids are completely mechanical, they are designed to look like humans. They may have synthetic skin, hair, and other features, but no human organs. On the other hand, cyborgs are part human and part machine. They may have robotic hands, legs, or eyes, but all cyborgs have surgically implanted technologies that enhance their abilities.
5. It is widely acknowledged fact that machines are stronger than people, but is it possible for them to become smarter than us too? Some scientists fear that it is, or so says the theory of technological singularity. In a nut shell, the theory of technological singularity says that when a computer becomes capable of improving its own capabilities, even in just the slightest way, it will go into an infinite loop, getting progressively smarter, which would inevitably lead to machines becoming smarter than people, or so the theory goes. Such gains in available intelligence might lead to huge improvements in science and medicine. Diseases could be cured and so forth. On the other hand, it could lead to the total domination of mankind by robots, which would be bad. I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.
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6. Fellow Members of the Springfield Robotics Club: It has come to my attention that the workshop has been left an absolute mess on at least two separate occasions. Remember, that this is a shared space, so we must clean up behind ourselves after every meeting. It is in the spirit of keeping our club meeting space that we establish this rule: when you take a tool off the rack, put it back. If everyone puts their tools back immediately after they are done using them, there will be minimal mess to clean up, and we won’t get kicked out of the spot. So if you like having a meeting place, put your tools back.
Exercise 2. Create a title for each passage and fill in the table:
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Exercise 3.
Text 2
Exercise 1. Read the text:
Idiotic Inventions... and Products We Could Live Without
1. In 1937 the aptly named Constance Honey of Chelsea, London patented a chocolate spoon for giving medicine to reluctant children. Basically, her idea failed because it was too popular. She would tell her young relatives: 'I'd give you your medicine, but I haven’t a spoon left in the house. ’
2. ‘It is well known that cooling the top of the head will have a cooling effect on the entire person, ’ stated Chicago's Harold W. Dahly in his 1967 patent for solar-cooled headgear. Unfortunately, any benefits of the hat, which operated by means of a solar- powered fan inside the top, were outweighed by the fact that it made the wearer look totally ridiculous.
3. This hygienic item was designed in 1959 by Milwaukee inventor Bertha Dlugi in response to what she obviously thought was a problem: Pet birds were often allowed to fly through an owner's house, yet ‘These birds cannot normally be house- trained as other pets are, and their excremental discharge is frequently deposited on household furnishings when they are at liberty, creating an unsanitary condition. ’ The answer to this? The bird diaper, a triangular patch of material attached to a harness that you can put around your pet parakeet.
4. In 1919 John Humphrey of Connecticut invented an unusual alarm clock, one which would rouse a sleeper from his slumbers by hitting him. The apparatus consisted of a timepiece attached to an adjustable rod with a rubber ball on the end. When the alarm on the dock went off, instead of a bell ringing, the rod would be activated, causing the ball to hit the desired area of the sleeper’s anatomy. Humphrey deemed his device to be of great benefit to people who might be upset by bells... but presumably not by being whacked over the head with a ball,
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5. To reduce pedestrian casualties in 1960, David Gutman from Philadelphia came up with a special bumper designed to be fixed to the front of a car. Not only would it cushion the impact, but it also had a huge pair of claws which would grab the pedestrian around the waist to prevent him dropping to the street.
6. This bra was created to honour Mozart on the two hundredth anniversary of his death and was manufactured by Japanese lingerie maker Triumph International. The bra contains a memory chip that plays a twenty second selection of Mozart’s musical works and also has lights that flash in time as the music plays. One drawback: the bra isn't washable, so it's not for everyday wear.
7. Do you ever worry about Fido’s eyesight? This invention, patented by a French optician in 1975, is the answer. The inventor developed them after she made sunglasses for her own dog. Just like glasses for people, they can be adjusted to different visual deficiencies - there are corrective lenses for myopic dogs; glasses for dogs recuperating from cataracts; even protective ones against wind and dust for dogs who hang their heads out of car windows.
8. British housewife Sarah Fox found bathtimes a nightmare with four small children. The bars of soap turned gooey as they slipped underwater and then the youngsters slipped on them when standing to get out. So Sarah set out to make a floating soap. Early attempts - including inserting a table-tennis ball inside a soap bar - sank without trace, but then she hit on a buoyancy technique. This involved grating soap, microwaving it and finally putting it through a food processor. Sarah and her husband ploughed cash into marketing attempts, but shops showed no interest and the big soap companies did not even reply to her letters; in 1992 she was forced to abandon the project.
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