What are plants?

1. Plants are one of the two groups into which all living things were traditionally divided; the other is animals. The division goes back at least as far as Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) who distinguished between plants which generally do not move, but their leaves move to catch the sun and their roots move towards water. Plants have cell structure with walls containing cellulose, and organisms capable of photosynthesis. Plants need air, water, soil, and sunlight to live and manufacture their own food. They include familiar organisms: trees, forbs (разнотра́вье), shrubs, grasses, vines, ferns, and mosses. To see a presentation follow www.slideshare.net

2. Some plants in the pea family have a rather unusual ability that sets them apart from the rest of the plant world. They can collapse their leaves and stems when touched or disturbed in some way. The best known of these ‘sensitive plants’ is Mimosa pudica, a tropical weed (сорняк) that comes from South and Central America.

3. It is a complex process that happens within the plant’s cells that provide support to the leaves and stems. The cells are filled with water, which keeps them turgid and firm, when the plant is touched the cells release the water deflating them, resulting in the leaves and stems to collapse (сжиматься) and fold inwards… if you watch closely, a few minutes later the water will be pumped back and they will return to normal.

4. So why do they do it? Plants have to come up with many clever ways to stop themselves being munched on by animals and insects, as they can’t run away and hide! So the drooping leaves will deter (удерживать) hungry animals and hopefully shake off insects. The sensitive plant also comes in quite useful if you get bitten by a monocled Cobra snake, the extracts from the roots can be used to counteract the venom (яд).

Pence Penny Pennies …. Где здесь единственное число, где множественное, и почему здесь три слова????

 

Непредсказуемые формы множественного числа

Нет правил без исключений. Но некоторые исключения оказываются весьма необычными.

Pence Penny Pennies …. Где здесь единственное число, где множественное, и почему здесь три слова????

Начнем с того, что слово «pennies» - это не множественное число от слова «pence». Оба эти слова являются формами множественного числа слова «penny». Пенни - это английская копейка 😁, мелкая денежная единица, минимальная по номиналу монета в Британии, штампуемая на монетках - 1 пенни (one penny).

Во множественном числе слово «penny» имеет две формы - «pennies» и «pence». Различия между словами «pennies» и «pence» кроются в контексте, в котором они употребляются!

«Pennies» - стандартная форма и употребляется, когда мы считаем монетки, монетки по одному пенни. Со словом «pence» все посложнее. Все монетки номиналом более одного пенни называют «pence», также называют и любую сумму меньше фунта.

Немного математики…
Мы можем сказать, что 11 pence складывается из монетки в 10 пенсов (а tenpence) и монетки в 1 пенни (a one penny piece); 34 pence - это две монетки в 10 пенсов, 2 монетки 5 пенсов и 2 монетки в 2 пенса.

С другой стороны, 11 pence можно собрать и из 11 монеток по 1 пенни, т.е. из 11 pennies, а 34 pence - из 34 монеток по 1 пенни, т.е. из 34 pennies 😎.

А теперь самое забавное… Символом обозначения пенсов является английская буква «p». Отсюда пошла традиция так называть пенсы в разговорной речи [piː].

Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov

Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (1887-1943): botanist, plant breeder, geographer and geneticist. Visiting researcher at JIHI, autumn 1913 to first part of 1914; Foreign Member of Royal Society, 1942

Vavilov was born in Moscow, the son of a wealthy textile merchant who had risen from a peasant background. Well-educated in his early years, Vavilov graduated from the Moscow Agricultural Institute in 1911 where he had become interested in plant selection and the work of Gregor Mendel.

Vavilov is recognized as the foremost plant geographer of contemporary times. To explore the major agricultural centers in this country and abroad, Vavilov organized and took part in over 100 collecting missions. His major foreign expeditions included those to Iran (1916), the United States, Central and South America (1921, 1930, 1932), the Mediterranean and Ethiopia (1926-1927). For his expedition to Afghanistan in 1924 Vavilov was awarded the N.M.Przhevalskii Gold Medal of the Russian Geographic Society. From 1931 to 1940 Vavilov was its president.

These missions and the determined search for plants were based on the Vavilov's concepts in the sphere of evolutionary genetics, i.e. the Law of Homologous Series in Variation (1920) and the theory of the Centers of Origin of Cultivated Plants (1926).

N.I.Vavilov was a prominent organizer of science. In the period from 1922 to 1929 he headed the Institute of Experimental Agronomy (the former ASC) which developed in 1930 into the V.I.Lenin All-Union Academy of Agriculture; from 1930 to 1935 Vavilov was its first president. From 1930 to 1940 he was director of the Institute of Genetics. Vavilov organized and participated in significant home and international scientific meetings and congresses on botany, genetics and plant breeding, agricultural economy, and the history of science. All around the world N.I.Vavilov has gained respect and renown; he was elected member of many academies of sciences and various foreign scientific societies.

Vavilov, the symbol of glory of the national science, is at the same time the symbol of its tragedy. As early as in the beginning of the 1930's his scientific programs were being deprived of governmental support. In the stifling atmosphere of a totalitarian state, the institute headed by Vavilov turned into a resistance point to the pseudo-scientific concepts of Trofim D.Lysenco. As a result of this controversy, Vavilov was arrested in August 1940, and his closest associates were also sacked and imprisoned.

Vavilov's life ceased in the city where his star had once risen. He died in the Saratov prison of dystrophia on 26 Jan

Ecological problems

1. Our planet is home to millions of different kinds of plant and animal species, which are linked in different ways. Together, they make up the complex world of nature. Unfortunately, co-habiting with humans brings up ecological problems. The most acute are pollution, acid rain, wildlife destruction, shortage of natural resources and global warming. These problems are interrelated as everything in the natural world depends on one another.

2. Wild plants and animals live in a particular set of surroundings, called their habitat. Nowadays people change habitats to suit their own. A lot of species - fish, reptiles, insects, birds, mammals - are disappearing fast. Many plants in the world are known to be in danger or threatened with extinction. A lot of forests are so badly damaged that they will hardly be able to recover. It’s reported that by 2030 25% of all animals, birds and insects may be extinct.

3. Acid rain falls when poisonous gases from power stations and vehicles (транспортные средства) mix with oxygen and moisture in the air. The problem could be controlled by reducing vehicle emissions and limiting the gases released from power stations.

4. World temperatures are currently rising every year. This phenomenon is called global warming. As the planet warms up, the water in the oceans will take up more space and water from glaciers (ледники ) and the polar ice caps will start to melt. This could cause sea levels to rise and many habitats will disappear under water. The cause of global warming is attributed to the greenhouse effect. It works in the following way - sunlight gives us heat which warms the atmosphere. Some of the heat returns into space. Nowadays the air surrounding the earth has become much warmer because the heat can't go back into space. 

That's why winter and summer temperatures in many places have become higher. These changes can be dangerous for our planet which needs protection. The measures to be taken include limitations for cutting rainforests and poisonous gas emissions as well as personal ecology of humans.

For more information click here

Местоимения somebody, someone, something

 то-то необыкновенно грустное, приветливое и красивое.

Это Антон Павлович так об осени.
Красивое описание❤️

Дальше читаем: «Взял бы и улетел куда-нибудь вместе с журавлями. Когда-то в детстве я осенью лавливал певчих птиц и продавал их на базаре.»

Этот отрывок его письма как тренировочный текст для перевода неопределённых местоимений: что-то, куда-нибудь, когда-то.

Да, тут нужно употребить местоимения, производные от some, any. Нужно выбрать из слов: someone, somebody, something, somewhere, anyone, anybody, anything, anywhere.

❓Как осуществить такой выбор, чем руководствоваться?

Местоимения somebody, someone, something употребляются в утвердительных предложениях и в просьбах.
Аnybody, anyone, anything – в отрицательных предложениях и в вопросах, а также в условных предложениях.

Местоимения somewhere и anywhere переводятся «где-то», «где-нибудь», «где-либо», «куда-то», «куда-нибудь». Их употребление аналогично употреблению слов something/somebody и anything/anybody - в утвердительных предложения используем somewhere, а в вопросительных и отрицательных - anywhere.

Слово «когда-то» тоже имеет свои тонкости в переводе. Вариантами могут быть слова: some time, sometime, once, formerly …
Но самое интересное, что в данном контексте значение «когда-то» возможно передать при помощи выражения used to, а все потому, что «лавливал птиц» - это действие которое он часто совершал в детстве, ну а в зрелости, на момент написания письма, этого он уже не делает.