English for Academic Purposes - Reading 2

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Effective reading 2 You are reading for a purpose Dr. Indriana Kartini

Cholera, a highly infectious disease, has resulted in millions of deaths time after time over centuries. It is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, first isolated by Robert Koch in 1883. The organism enters the body through the digestive tract when contaminated food or water is ingested. The bacteria multiply in the digestive tract and establish infection. As they die, they release a potent toxin that leads to severe diarrhea and vomiting. This results in extreme dehydration, muscle cramps, kidney failure, collapse, and sometimes death. If the disease is treated promptly, death is less likely. In many countries, a common source of the organism is raw or poorly cooked seafood taken from contaminated waters. The disease is especially prevalent after a natural disaster or other destruction that results in a lack of fresh water. Sewer systems fail, and waste travels into rivers or streams; piped water is not available so people must take their drinking and cooking water from rivers or streams. Because people frequently develop communities along waterways, the disease can be spread easily from one community to the next community downstream, resulting in serious epidemics.

The ubiquitous bar code, developed more than twenty years ago, is not a stagnant product. On the contrary, the technology has been improved so that it can be used more efficiently. Much less expensive than a computer chip, the bar code can hold more information than it has in the past by adding a second dimension to the structure. The bar code consists of a series of parallel vertical bars or lines of two different widths, although sometimes four widths are used, printed in black on a white background. Barcodes are used for entering data into a computer system. The bars represent the binary digits 0 and 1, just like basic computer language, and sequences of these digits can indicate the numbers from 0 to 9, which can then be read by an optical laser scanner and processed by a digital computer. Arabic numbers appear below the code. The traditional bar code has been used to monitor skiers at ski lifts and to determine price and perform inventory control on groceries, drugs, medical supplies, manufactured parts, and library books to name a few. The bar code used on grocery products, introduced in the 1970s, is called a universal product code (or UPC) and assigns each type of food or grocery product a unique code. The five digits on the left are assigned to a particular manufacturer or maker and the five digits on the right are used by that manufacturer to identify a specific type or make of product. Traditional single dimension bar codes are not readily customizable because there is little extra space. The two-dimensional bar code, with an information density of 1,100 bytes, allows a considerably greater amount of information to be coded than does the traditional bar code, including customized information. It also has built-in redundancy, meaning that the identical information is duplicated on the same code. Therefore, if the code is damaged, it can still be read. The technology even allows pictures or text to be contained within the code, as well as barcode encryption. The new technology dramatically reduces the errors of the single dimensional bar code and reduces the enormous costs that some companies have reported in the past.

Lord May, the president of the Royal Society, has claimed that the world is facing a wave of extinctions similar to the five mass extinctions of past ages. He calculates that the current rate of extinction is between 100 and 1,000 times faster than the historical average. The cause of previous extinctions, such as the one which killed the dinosaurs, is uncertain, but was probably an external event such as collision with a comet. However the present situation is caused by human consumption of plants, which has resulted in a steady increase in agriculture and a consequent reduction in habitat for animals. Although many people are still hungry, food production has increased by 100% since 1965. Lord May also pointed out that it was very difficult to make accurate estimates as nobody knew how many species of animals lived on the planet. So far 1.5 million species had been named, but the true figure might be as high as 100 million. Our ignorance of this made it almost impossible to work out the actual rate of extinction. However, the use of intelligent guesses suggests that losses over the past century were comparable with the extinctions of earlier periods, evidence of which is found in the fossil record.

The majority of people in the small Derbyshire village of Poolsbrook have joined a scheme to make power from rubbish. Methane gas will be collected from the local rubbish tip and will be used to heat houses more cheaply and generate electricity. The villagers, who have been affected by the closure of the local coal mines, suffer from unemployment, so cheap heating is especially important for them. They have raised the £2 million cost from development agencies. The new system, which will be the first of its kind in Europe, will lead to a healthier environment by cutting CO2 emissions, and should also create three full-time jobs. 1). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Indian researchers are trying to find out if there is any truth in old sayings which claim to predict the weather. In Gujarat farmers have the choice of planting either peanuts, which are more profitable in wet years, or castor, which does better in drier conditions. The difference depends on the timing of the monsoon rains, which can arrive at any time between the beginning and the middle of June. Farmers, however, have to decide what seeds to sow in April or May. There is a local saying, at least a thousand years old, which claims that the monsoon starts 45 days after the flowering of a common tree, Cassia fistula. Dr Kanani, an agronomist from Gujarat Agricultural University, has been studying the relationship since 1996, and has found that the tree does successfully predict the approximate date of the monsoon’s arrival. a) Indian scientists checking ancient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . b) Old saying links monsoon to . . . . c) Used by farmers to select peanuts (for wet) or . . . . . . . d) Dr Kanani of Gujarat Agricultural University has found that . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Even a muddy pond contributes to the ecosystem that affects the environment. A vernal or springtime pool is only a few feet deep and lasts only from March until midsummer but yields a considerable number of diverse life forms. Like all of nature, there are predators and victims, and a particular living being may be one or the other, depending on its age and characteristics. One may find masses of spotted salamander eggs floating just under the surface of the pond, left behind by adults who entered the pond early in the season before predators arrived. Other amphibians and reptiles return to the recurrent pond year after year to reproduce, as their ancestors have done for years. Various forms of algae grow well in the murky water, if there is sufficient sunlight. They in turn produce and transmit oxygen to the salamander embryos and other young that are not yet able to survive outside of water. Diving beetles feast on eggs and larvae deposited in the pond by the salamanders and other amphibians that have called it home. Tadpoles are born in the late spring and feed on the algae. The pond also invites wood frogs staking their territory and courting potential mates, calling as loud as quacking ducks. By the end of the short season, the pond dries to spongy mud and then dries further, becoming covered with leaves and debris, until the following spring when the process repeats itself.

Scientists have developed a new bionic computer chip that can be mated with human cells to combat disease. The tiny device, smaller and thinner than a strand of hair, combines a healthy human cell with an electronic circuitry chip. Doctors can control the activity of the cell by controlling the chip with a computer. It has long been established that cell membranes become permeable when exposed to electrical impulses. Researchers have conducted genetic research for years with a trial and- error process of bombarding cells with electricity in an attempt to introduce foreign substances such as new drug treatments or genetic material. They were unable to apply a particular level of voltage for a particular purpose. With the new invention, the computer sends electrical impulses to the chip, which triggers the cell’s membrane pores to open and activate the cell in order to correct diseased tissues. It permits physicians to open a cell’s pores with control. Researchers hope that eventually they will be able to develop more advanced chips whereby they can choose a particular voltage to activate particular tissues, whether they be muscle, bone, brain, or others. They believe that they will be able to implant multiple chips into a person to deal with one problem or more than one problem.

• The research about the effect of chitosan preparation method to chitosan properties and its application as antibacterial material on cotton fabric was conducted. The purposes of this research are to study the effect of variation method of chitosan preparation to characteristic properties of chitosan, to study the effect of different characteristic properties of chitosan that is prepared to antibacterial activity of cotton coated chitosan, to study the rate of reduction cotton coated chitosan to the number of bacteria S. aureus colonies with variation concentration of chitosan; to study the strength of bonding chitosan on cotton surface through laundering test that monitored with antibacterial assay.

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