Extraterrestrail Life Landed on Earth Many Years Ago

Such is the hypothesis two Australian resear­chers, Paul Davies and Charles Lineweaver, recently offered. They have published their observations in the Astrobiology magazine.

Alas, small green creatures possessing phenomenal tech­nologies are out of the ques­tion. According to the two sci­entists, the aliens are likely to be primitive microbes that appeared on Earth some 4 billion years ago.

As is known, our planet at the time was being bombard­ed by meteors and giant

asteroids which probably carried some living organisms to Earth, where they now modestly live among humans. The researchers think that the bombarding of Earth could result in a series of “stop-go” experiments, in the course of which life appeared to be later destroyed by a hail of meteors and asteroids.

Some life forms, however, could have survived the bombardment and may now lurk deep below the Earth’s surface, in the oceanic depths, in the atmosphere or in contaminated lakes. They have even colonized Mars, Davies says. Moreover, the extraterrestrials may live under our very nose being so alien to us that we are simply unable to discover them.

"We could try to find them with the help of modern technologies, we just ha­ven't bothered to do that," Paul Davies says. "Alien microbes are likely to be missed or discarded in even the most general microbial analysis."

The aliens may also have no properties that would reveal them to be living organisms. They may just lie motionless at some place waiting for conditions necessary to spring to life. "For all these reasons we could be sur­rounded by living, dormant or dead alien microbes with­out being aware of it," Davies concludes.

He says the relatively recent discovery of tiny microbes that look like bacteria but genetically differ greatly from all the known species may serve as an indirect evi­dence of the existence of extraterrestrial microbes.

"Microbial world has many hidden surprises, one of which may be alien life," Davies explains. "Our con­clusion is that alien micro­bes could exist on earth today and have remained undetected by our best efforts."

UNIT 4

WORRIES ABOUT WORLD’S ECOLOGY

Text 1

The Vanishing Ozone Layer

The depletion of the ozone layer is a problem that has very similar implications from the viewpoint of ecological democracy than the issue of global warming: everybody will suffer from a problem to which some people – the world's rich minority – contribute much more than the others. Most of the emissions that are damaging the ozone layer are still produced by West Europe and North America, which only have about one eighth of the world's population.

Ozone, the three-atomic molecule of oxygen, has two very different roles. In the lower atmosphere (troposphere) it is a greenhouse gas that contributes to the global warming. It is also poisonous to people and harmful for plants. However, the thin layer of ozone in the upper atmosphere (stratosphere) filters the most damaging forms of the Sun's ultraviolet radiation and prevents them from reaching the ground level. Without this protection we would be exposed to much more intensive and dangerous X-radiation. This would increase the rate of skin cancers and cataracts and damage many food crops. Serious loss of ozone could also reduce fish catches by killing fish larvae that are vulnerable to strong ultraviolet radiation.

In the early 1970's scientist became worried about the possibility that nitrous oxides from fertilizers, supersonic aeroplanes and space shuttle flights might destroy stratospheric ozone. Somewhat later it was understood that also the so called freons or CFC compounds (chloro-fluoro-carbons) were harmful for the ozone layer. CFCs were first used in fridges and air conditioning systems and later as cleaning solvents, aerosol propellants and to puff up polystyrene foam for hamburger cartons and for other purposes. Their world production rose from 2200 tons in 1940 to 491 700 tons in 1970, and it was still growing by 20 per cent per year when it was discovered that the CFCs were both strong greenhouse gases and efficient ozone-depleting substances.

The issue was taken seriously only five years after the British scientists had discovered a vast "ozone hole" over the Antarctic in 1982. The delay was caused by an American satellite, whose computer had been programmed to ignore the impossible results. Thus the satellite did not see the ozone hole and could not confirm the results reported by the British ground stations. It took five years before the confusion was sorted out. At that time the Antarctic ozone hole had grown to cover an area of 14 million square kilometres. Under this area almost all stratospheric ozone vanished during the spring months.

After the existence of the Antarctic ozone hole had been confirmed, the governments started to move with a record speed. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was negotiated and signed in 1987. In the Montreal Protocol the signatory governments agreed to cut their CFC emissions. During the coming years further meetings of the parties adopted more ambitious targets and finally agreed to phase-out the CFCs and most other ozone-depleting substances. According to the Environmental Protection Agency of the USA, these treaties are likely to prevent about 137 million cases of skin cancer and about 40 million cataracts before the year 2075, so they certainly were a major victory for the humans and for the environment.

However, we still have the problem of nitrous oxide from nitrogen fertilizers and from the burning of fossil fuels. According to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change the nitrous oxide concentrations in the atmosphere are likely to rise by 45 per cent by the year 2100. The Australian research agency CSIRO says that the ozone levels in the mid-latitudes are likely to recover a little because of the elimination of the CFC production. However, they should start falling again around the year 2040 because of the build-up of nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. CSIRO predicts that the ozone layers above the mid-latitudes should be about 9 per cent lower at the end of the century, and they could keep on falling with an accelerating speed.

The new threat to the ozone layer could be even more serious than the CFCs, unless the problem will be prevented in advance. The ozone depletion caused by chlorine and bromine compounds mostly occurs in mid­winter, when there is less sunlight in the northern latitudes and when the people are usually well covered because of low temperatures. But most of the ozone loss caused by the nitrous oxide takes place in mid-summer when the ultraviolet radiation is the most intense and when people generally wear much less clothing. The damage caused by nitrous oxide is also likely to concentrate on the mid-latitudes where the majority of the world's population lives, and not on the unpopulated polar regions.

It is likely that nitrous oxide will become a major topic in international environmental negotiations in the near future. The most important ways to tackle the problem are to promote organic farming, in which chemical fertilizers are not used, or to develop nitrogen fertilizers that do not cause significant nitrous oxide emissions.

Some types of chemical nitrogen fertilizers that are in use now, especially anhydrous ammonia and aqua ammonia, produce approximately one hundred times more nitrous oxide than the most benign alternatives like sodium nitrate and nitrogen solutions.

Text 2

Озоновые дыры – следствие глобального потепления

Ученые обнаружили жесткую связь между потеплением и озоновыми ды­рами, которые регулярно появляются, главным образом, над полюсами нашей планеты. В журнале Science появилась статья, в которой группа исследователей из НАСА, возглавляемых профессором Азадехом Табазадехом, рассказывает о кольцевых облаках, которые рождаются в стра­тосфере и уничтожают озон.

Об этих облаках известно давно, однако только сейчас выяснилось, что они зарождаются при помощи впервые обнаруженных в стратосфере полос холодного воздуха. По мере того как поверхность Земли нагрева­ется из-за парникового эффекта, стратосфера становится все холоднее. Мало того что вся стратосфера замораживается, так еще выясняется, что в ней начинают появляться кольцевые полосы более холодного воздуха. Кольцевые облака, появляющиеся при помощи этих полос, состоят из во­ды и азотной кислоты. А так как состоят они из сравнительно крупных ча­стиц – размером с крупицу дорожной пыли, – то быстро опускаются вниз, попутно высасывая из атмосферы азот и тем самым нанося земной атмо­сфере двойной вред: во-первых, они связывают азот, который в свобод­ном состоянии частично компенсирует вредное воздействие озоновых дыр, а во-вторых, раскалывают молекулы фреонов (газов, запрещенных сейчас международными соглашениями, а прежде широко применяемых в качестве хладагентов), тем самым активизируя молекулы хлора, которые с еще большей жадностью начинают выедать озоновый слой.

По словам Азадеха Табазадеха, чем больше появляется таких обла­ков, тем труднее восстанавливается озоновый слой. Единственное спасе­ние – приостановить глобальное потепление. Если температура в страто­сфере стабилизируется, кольцевые облака станут дефицитом, а так как выпуск фреонов в атмосферу сейчас ограничен, то и озоновый слой со временем придет в норму. Дальнейшее же потепление может сделать си­туацию с озоновыми дырами необратимой.

Text 3

Тропические леса

Особое место среди лесов занимают тропические леса, которые опоясывают землю по экватору зеленым поясом шириной в 3 000 миль. Тропические леса раньше покрывали более 14% поверхности Земли. Сейчас осталось всего лишь шесть процентов. 1/3 от того что осталось, находится на территории Бразилии и по 10% приходится на Заир и Индонезию.

Хотя все типы лесов важны для экосистем, половина всех имеющихся на Земле видов растений и животных находятся в тропических лесах.

Тропические леса являются также одним из мировых природных резервуаров углекислого газа, который поглощается ими для фотосинтеза. Однако из-за того, что многие тропические леса сжигаются, выделяя при этом углекислый газ, тропические леса сейчас выбрасывают в атмосферу гораздо больше С02, чем поглощают. 25 % парникового эффекта происходит из-за сжигания тропических лесов.

По отчету США на 2000 год – более одного миллиона видов растений, находящихся в тропических лесах, могут стать исчезающими к концу этого века.

Несколько цифр и фактов.Только Азия теряет более 22 миллионов гектар лесов в год, Латинская Америка и Карибы – 19 миллионов гектар, Африка – более 19 миллионов га.

Более 61 миллиона га лиственных лесов исчезает ежегодно. Печальный список возглавляет Латинская Америка и Карибы, которые теряют более 32 миллионов га ежегодно.

Более 18 миллионов га сухих лиственных лесов исчезают ежегодно, 40% этих потерь приходится на Судан, Парагвай, Бразилию и Индию.

Леса, растущие в пустынных районах, теряют более 82 000 га, 60% которых приходится на Мексику и Пакистан. Ежегодно исчезает 25 миллионов га лесов, которые растут в горах, 640 000 га из них теряет Бразилия, 370 000 га Мексика и 150 000 га Индонезия.

Text 4

На Эльбрусе борются с «экологической дремучестью»

И даже стихия не может этому помешать.Молодежная экологиче­ская экспедиция клуба «При­ключение» во главе с Дмитри­ем Шпаро приступила к поко­рению Эльбруса. Однако спуск с двухвершинной краса­вицы для членов экспедиции будет намного тяжелее, чем подъем: участники намерева­ются унести с заснеженных вершин три тонны мусора.

В переводе с кабардинского Эльбрус – «гора счастья». За «счастьем» на высоту чуть меньше шести тысяч метров ходят уже более века, но тя­желая экологическая ситуа­ция сложилась на Эльбрусе лишь в последние 20 лет. Склоны засоряют в основном сами же туристы.

Дмитрий Шпаро считает, что по сути экологическая про­грамма довольно примитивна: нужно только наклониться, подобрать мусор и упаковать его в большой черный мешок из «Макдоналдса».

В разговоре с корреспон­дентом Дмитрий Шпаро выразил надежду, что в ско­ром времени туристы, уходя с Эльбруса, будут уносить весь мусор с собой. А тому из ре­бят, кто утащит больше всего в этот раз, будет вручен специ­альный приз.

Но путешествий без при­ключений не бывает. Дорогу из Нальчика в Балканское ущелье участникам экспеди­ции перегородил сильный се­левой поток. Пришлось пере­таскивать вещи на руках че­рез завалы в другой автобус. Поэтому на место ребята доб­рались с однодневным опозда­нием. К счастью, никто не по­страдал, а сам Дмитрий уве­ряет, что это происшествие никак не повлияет на планы экспедиции: благое дело будет доведено до конца.

Text 5

Неутешительные прогнозы

Рекордная жара и сильней­шая засуха в США – это предвестник гораздо более серьезных проблем, выз­ванных начавшимся глобаль­ным потеплением земной атмос­феры. С таким предупреждени­ем выступил институт «Уорлд-уотч». «Фактически под угрозой находятся условия, необходи­мые для существования жизни в том виде, как мы ее знаем, – указывается в вестнике инсти­тута журнал «Уорлдуотч». – Потенциальный ущерб от «пар­никового аффекта» сравним с последствиями ядерной войны». По данным министерства сель­ского хозяйства США, в 2002 году собран урожай в 191 млн. тонн (обычно он превышает 300 млн. тонн), а потребят американ­цы – 202 млн. тонн зерна. Уже повторение засухи а будущем году может привести и мирово­му дефициту зерна, поскольку США и Канада являются круп­нейшими мировыми экспорте-рами зерна. «Уорлдуотч» кон­статирует, что, по данным уче­ных, повышение температуры атмосферы всего на несколько градусов будет иметь катастро­фические последствия для Зем­ли, поскольку это приведет к смещению климатических зон на сотни километров в течение всего нескольких десятилетий. «Вопрос сейчас не в том, что­бы остановить глобальное по­тепление: при жизни нынешне­го поколения это невозможно. Необходимо немедленно замед­лить производство газов, вызы­вающих парниковый эффект, чтобы избежать наиболее вне­запных и катастрофических из­менений климата», – указывают ученые «Уорлдуотч». А это, по их мнению, вполне осуществи­мая задача, которая, однако, требует международных усилий. В первую очередь необходимо резко сократить потребление горючих ископаемых, переходя на альтернативные виды топ­лива – энергию солнца, ветра, термальных вод, атома и повы­шая эффективность использования энергии. Кроме того, необходимы самые срочные меры по прекращению вырубки лесов, в особенности тропических, и по их восстановлению.

UNIT 5

EDUCATION

Text 1

UST Experiment in Progress

Thanks to a unified state test, a regulated education services market has emerged in Russia

An experiment to replace high school finals and college entrance exams with a unified state test (UST) is into its sec­ond year in Russia. While there are still plenty of outstanding problems, oppo­sition to the UST is gradually weaken­ing. Why?

Little Tricks of the Trade. Regional government officials have stopped brooding: The innovation is not fraught with extra spending for the lo­cal budgets — quite the contrary, the fed­eral center has taken on a part of the financial burden. Furthermore, there is now hope that the money currently cir­culating in the shadow coaching sector (in the RF Education Ministry estimate, approximately $1 billion a year) will be funneled by parents into something more worthwhile. Yet another concern has been addressed: It seems that there is not going to be. a fall in the number of those wishing to study in the prov­inces. Enrollments could even grow when senior college and university en­trants, having accessed the federal UST data bank (such a bank, ac­cording to RF Edu­cation Minister Vladimir Filippov, will be established in 2004-05), see that the number of points they have scored falls short of what is required by 5 prestigious higher educational establishments based in Moscow and St. Pe­tersburg.

Regional education authorities are also happy with UST results. They are longing for a clearcut yardstick for as­sessing the performance of educational establishments — what with innovation schools, personality development schools, and what have you. Meanwhile, 2001 showed that the UST, which grades the school-leaver on a 100-point scale using unified standards through­out Russia, can clearly demonstrate which high school provides a better education and which university is a suc­cess. This 100-point grading tool can help effectively regulate the education market. Some senior college and uni­versity training courses can be started and some closed (not being in demand), and some secondary schools can be supported (those that better prepare students for the UST) while others de­nied support.

In the summer of 2002, regional offi­cials went out of their way to show how popular the UST was in each particular region. Reports to the RF Education Ministry on the number of school stu­dents who had taken the UST differed greatly from the figures provided by the Ministry and the Test Center (an orga­nization in charge of the UST program): 414,000 Russian schoolchildren were apparently entered for the June round with subsequent reports confirming par­ticipation by only 372,000, but toward the fall it transpired that fewer than 300,000 high-school students had ac­tually sat for the UST.

In some instances, school students took two days to do the UST, thus ille­gally improving on their performance, whereas the second was the reserve day, when the UST was only to be taken by those who had been sick on the set date.

"Teachers and students should know that the Test Center computer is bound to catch them out if they take the UST twice," Viktor Bololov, first deputy ed­ucation minister in charge of the UST program, publicly warned regional ed­ucation authorities.

"It will take several years to train a generation of qualified organizers and executors," Vladimir Khlebnikov, direc­tor of the Test Center, commented.

What is to be done with the elite? The key question is, can the UST change for the better the life of gifted college and university entrants? Thus far not all straight-A school-leavers in the provinces, assured that they will be able to compete on a par with their peers in the capital cities, have benefited from die UST. A large number of prestigious establishments of higher learning have opted out of the experiment. They hope that by 2004-05 (when the experiment is extended across Russia), the Educa­tion Ministry will have designated a group of so-called leading higher educational establishments that will have the right to admit school-leavers who have passed the UST plus an addition­al exam, at their own discretion. The latter is sometimes referred to as the "Cambridge exam." True, what is over­looked is that in Cambridge itself (as well as in other major educational es­tablishments in the U.K. - the London School of Economics, Oxford Universi­ty, etc.) this exclusive exam was abol­ished several years ago. Now British high-school students only take an A-Level exam and submit its results to Ox­ford or Cambridge before the end of Sep­tember.

In an interview with this reporter, Vladimir Filippov spoke out strongly against the "Cambridge exam" in Rus­sia and generally against the idea of granting a group of privileged educa­tional establishments of higher learning a "leading" status:

"This status may be granted — not until the summer of 2005 (when full-scale re­form will begin) – to particular special­ties, not senior colleges and universities. To enroll in a particular training pro­gram, an entrant will need to pass an additional exam on top of the UST. Thus far this is still on the drawing boards."

To date, only a few higher education­al establishments in Moscow have embraced the project. According to Alex­ander Komaritsky, vice rector of the RF Government Finance Academy, Acade­my selection commissions picked 17 aspirants from the provinces. The Mos­cow Higher School of Economics (its chiefs are the masterminds behind the UST program) have this year selected 95 people with UST certificates (eight percent of the total intake).

Yet not all whizzkids have been so lucky. Eighty points on the UST being equivalent to the five-plus, or A-plus, grade (the highest mark in secondary school), 110 school-leavers who took the UST in 2002 scored a unique 100 points in mathematics and 31 in Russian. Some of them live in the Orenburg region. According to the re­gion's public education officials, no one in Moscow took any interest in the 100-pointers.

Yaroslav Kuzminov, rector of the Higher School of Economics, says he is ready to enroll entrants who have scored 100 points on the UST, above the quota. "Some banks would be interested to help," he added. This is, basically, a new ap­proach. In and of itself, the UTS will not bring Russians either an equal right to education or social justice. What is needed is not only new examination technology, but also new state and pri­vate initiatives to support gifted stu­dents. Pending 2005, while the UST project is still being "road-tested," heads of regional administrations and rectors should think about student dor­mitories, low-cost cafeteria, subsidized public transport passes, and so forth. Otherwise the UST will fail to become a springboard for talented students.

Text 2

A Clash of the Craniums

The Massachu­setts Institute of Technology (MIT) is the top-ranked universi­ty in the U.S. for engineer­ing. It boasts numerous Nobel Prize winners. The brightest students from around the world flock to its tree-lined campus. Yet on March 31, Russian students from the St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics humbled this top American institution in an international clash of the craniums.

The International Colle­giate Programming Contest is held each year by the Association for Computing Machinery. It is "the oldest, largest and most prestigious programming competition in the world." Hundreds of universities from around the world send their best minds to this Programming Olym­piad in the hopes of bring­ing back the gold. This year the contest was held in Prague, the Czech Republic.

According to the official ICPC web page, the contest "pits teams against eight or more complex, real-world problems, with a grueling five-hour deadline. Huddled around a single computer, competitors race around the clock in a battle of logic, strategy and mental en­durance... The team that solves the most problems in the fewest attempts in the least cumulative time is declared the winner."

Winning this tournament is a real achievement for Russia. While much of the western hemisphere focuses their daily attention on the Motherland's dark side (with some Russians only too happy to oblige them), the results of this contest prove that rumors of Rus­sia's death have been great­ly exaggerated, to borrow a bit from Mark Twain, if I may. It is worth noting that two other Russian universi­ties ranked high at the event: Perm State Univer­sity captured fourth place, while Izhevsk State Tech­nical University ranked eighth. A university from Belarus went home with the bronze.

President Vladimir Putin has arranged to personally meet with the winning teams at the Kremlin. This is a fine gesture. However, if Russia really wants to profit from its programming edge, it needs to award these unique talents more than just bouquets of red roses and gold plaques. It needs to ensure that these students do not get sucked down the brain drain.

I would not be revealing any secrets by saying that, for better or for worse, we are living in an Information Age (I say "for better or for worse," because wisdom does not necessarily come with information). It would be difficult to name a pro­fession that does not rely on computer technology in one way or another. Therefore, the economic pundits who claim that Russia is, in terms of the economy, on a par with Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, or what have you, fail to take into ac­count these hidden resour­ces. In the long term, these rich pools of genius could be more invaluable to Russia than all the oil in Siberia.

While many Russians are only too willing to help the oligarchs spend their cash, perhaps there is a more rea­sonable method. Instead of incarcerating the insanely rich, where they are not doing anybody any good, send them (with a gentle prodding, of course) to the Russian universities where they can speak to the stu­dent body about money, success and, uh, money. They could sponsor awards and scholarship programs. They could help discover the next Russian Bill Gates. After all, let's face it: poli­tics is nothing but a headache.

Text 3