Nature Protection

Nature Protection/ Защита природы.

Computers project that between now and the year of 2030 we are going to have increase of the average temperature between 1,5—4,5 Degrees C. Sea levels would rise by several metres, flooding coastal areas and ruining vast tracts of farmland. Huge areas would be infertile and become uninhabitable. Water contamination could lead to shortages of safe drinking water. It looks like the end of civilization on the Earth. For hundreds of thousands of years the human race has thriven in Earth's environment.

But now, at the end of the 20th century, we are at a crucial turning point. We have upset nature's sensitive equilibrium releasing harmful substances into the air, polluting rivers and oceans with industrial waste and tearing up the countryside to accommodate our rubbish. These are the consequences of the development of civilization. We are to stop it by joint efforts of all the people of the world. The range of environmental problems is wide.

But the matters of people's great concern nowadays are atmosphere and climate changes, depletion of the ozone layer, freshwater resources, oceans and coastal areas, deforestation and desertification, biological diversity, biotechnology, health and chemical safety. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) concentrates its activities on these issues. Acid Rains One of the most alarming forms of air pollution is acid rain. It results from the release into the atmosphere of sulphur and nitrogen oxides that react with water droplets and return to earth in the form of acid rain, mist or snow.

Acid rain iskilling forests (Nearly every species of tree is affected) It has acidified lakes and streams and they can't support fish, wildlife, plants or insects. Depletion of the Ozone Layer The protective layer of the Earth, the ozone layer, which protects the Earth from the sun's destructive UV (ultraviolet) rays, is being damaged by CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons). They are released by the daily use of industrial and household products: refrigerators, air conditioners, foam insulation, cleaning chemicals, food packaging. In the ozone layer they attack the ozone molecules making a «hole». This «hole» allows more UV rays to penetrate to the Earth. It increases the risk of skin cancer, weakens the immune system of people.

Besides, UV rays influence the oceans, the growth of plankton, an essential part of the marine-life food chain in the negative way, reduce economically important-crops (rice, cotton, soy beans).

The life cycle is going to be undermined by the ozone. Destruction of the Tropical Forest It's generally agreed that the destruction of the tropical forest has a major impact on the world climate. The tropical rain forest is a natural recycler, provider and protector for our planet. It recycles carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, helps determine temperature, rainfall and other climatic conditions and supports the most diverse ecosystem in the world. Deforestation could cause one forth of all species on earth to vanish in the next 25 years.

These forests in Amazonia, South-East Asia and West and Central Africa are being destroyed at an alarming rate of 42 million acres per year. Measures to Be Taken We have only a few years to attempt to turn things around. We must review our wasteful, careless ways, we must consume less, recycle more, conserve wildlife and nature, act according to the dictum «think locally, think globally, act locally».

To my mind, we are obliged to remove factories and plants from cities, use modern technologies, redesign and modify purifying systems for cleaning and trapping harmful substances, protect and increase the greenery and broaden ecological education. These are the main practical measures, which must he taken in order to improve the ecological situation. Some progress has been already made in this direction. 159 countries-members of the UNO have set up environmental protection agencies.

They hold conferences discussing ecological problems, set up environmental research centres and take practical urgent measures to avoid ecological catastrophe. There are numerous public organisations such as Greenpeace that are doing much to preserve environment. The 5th of June is proclaimed the World Environmental Day by the UNO and is celebrated every year.

Nevsky Prospekt, Saint Petersburg/ Невский проспект, Санкт-Петербург.

Nevsky Prospekt, or the Nevsky Avenue, is the main street in the city of St Petersburg. Planned by Peter the Great as beginning the road to Novgorod and Moscow, the avenue runs from the Admiralty to the Moscow Railway Station and, after making a turn at Vosstaniya Square, to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

The chief sights include the Rastrelliesque Stroganov Palace, the huge neoclassical Kazan Cathedral, the Art Nouveau Bookhouse (Dom Knigi), half a dozen 18th-century churches, a monument to Catherine the Great, an enormous 18th-century shopping mall, a mid-19th-century department store, the Russian National Library, and the Anichkov Bridge with its horse statues.

The feverish life of the avenue was described by Gogol in his story The Nevsky Prospect. During the early Soviet years (1918-44) it was known as the Avenue of the Twenty-Fifth of October, alluding to the day of the October Revolution.

The Nevsky today functions as the main thoroughfare in Saint Petersburg. The majority of the city's shopping and nightlife, as well as the most expensive apartments, are located on or right off of the Nevsky Prospekt.

New York City/ Нью-Йорк.

New York - city and port located at the mouth of the Hudson River, southeastern New York state, northeastern U.S. New York City is the centre of the largest urban agglomeration in the United States. It occupies Manhattan and Staten islands, the western end of Long Island, a portion of the mainland, and various islands in New York Harbor and Long Island Sound. Its urban area extends into neighbouring parts of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

New York City is an ethnic melting pot where the most dramatic cultural contrasts are commonplace. It is among the most geographically and demographically complex of world cities, its economy one of the most diverse, and its cultural scene among the richest and most variegated.

A brief treatment of New York City follows. For full treatment, see New York City.

The city consists of five boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island [formerly Richmond]), which correspond to five counties of New York state (New York, Kings, Queens, Bronx, and Richmond, respectively). All are located near the point where the Hudson River empties into Upper New York Bay of the Atlantic Ocean. The city's only land boundaries are Westchester county on the north and Nassau county on Long Island to the east. The city's waterfront is used for shipping and recreation.

The city may be described as a collection of many neighbourhoods, each with its own character and life-style. Manhattan is the economic and cultural heart of the city and is often considered to be "the city." Administration and services, however, have become increasingly decentralized as community planning boards have assumed more power in areas such as education, health, housing, and public works. Manhattan, the magnet for tourists and businessmen, is at first glance a city of skyscrapers, glaring lights, and frenetic pace. The shopping promenade of Fifth Avenue, the financial institutions of Wall Street, the residential mansions of Park Avenue, or the bohemian life in the East Village and SoHo give typical impressions. Only Brooklyn of the other boroughs has a similar ethnic heterogeneity and a similar range of social life, with commercial and industrial districts and residential areas ranging from the wealth of Brooklyn Heights to the most abject poverty of parts of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Queens is mainly residential and middle class, and Staten Island is partly suburban but still rural in some areas. In the Bronx luxurious residences and solid middle-class apartments prevail in some sections, but other areas, especially the South Bronx, are the scene of severe urban blight.

Ethnic pockets abound throughout Manhattan, from black and Spanish Harlem in the north, to the various enclaves of the Lower East Side such as Little Italy and Chinatown. New York City also has large numbers of Italians, Irish, Puerto Ricans, and West Indians, as well as the largest Jewish population of any city in the world. This ethnic and racial mix is the result of the waves of immigration that the city has absorbed during its history. The Statue of Liberty, located on Liberty Island off Manhattan, has long stood as a symbol of refuge and opportunity.

New York City is a centre of world trade and finance, communications, art and entertainment, and fashion. The city is the financial capital of the United States and holds the headquarters of many of the world's largest corporations. Wall Street in Manhattan is home to the nation's largest stock exchange and is the headquarters of the country's largest brokerage firms. With the headquarters of the nation's television and radio networks and the main offices of the largest advertising agencies, New York City is the heart of the mass media in the United States. Printing and publishing are also of great importance, and most of the nation's major publishing houses are based in midtown Manhattan. The city's economic life also depends on the great diversity of its numerous small businesses and manufacturing establishments.

Wearing apparel, symbolized by its famous garment district, continues to be New York City's major manufacturing industry. White-collar jobs, however, are far more numerous. The main nonmanufacturing employers include service businesses; wholesale and retail trades; finance, insurance, and real estate; transport and public utilities; government; and construction.

Automation and mergers have resulted in the loss of many jobs in the city. In addition, escalating rents and taxes and high crime rates have caused many firms to leave. Steps have been taken by the city government, however, to alleviate these problems and to provide incentives for remaining.

The artists of New York City exhibit in a wide variety of forms, ranging from traditional crafts to the most avant-garde work, flavoured by complex blends of ethnic and national influences. Theatrical arts and entertainment are also widespread: Broadway is the synonym for musical comedies and legitimate drama; Carnegie Hall is one of the most famous concert halls in the world; and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is the home of the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Opera, the New York Philharmonic, and the New York City Ballet. Though the importance of Broadway has declined, theatre is very much alive in the more venturesome Off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions. The city has numerous motion-picture theatres, among which are many revival and foreign-film houses.

The New York Public Library is one of the best research libraries in the world. Most famous among the city's many museums are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the American Museum of Natural History. Many lesser known museums house special collections. The city's extensive system of public parks includes Central Park in Manhattan.

New York City has an extensive public university system. Outstanding private colleges and universities in the city include Columbia, New York, Rockefeller, and Fordham universities, numerous medical schools, the New School for Social Research, and the Juilliard School.

New York City's subway system carries more than one-third of all mass-transit passengers in the metropolitan area, with the balance provided by commuter rail lines and buses. The once-famous docks of Hell's Kitchen along the Hudson River in Manhattan have disappeared, and considerable shipping has shifted to the New Jersey side of the harbour. Rail lines radiate in all directions. International and domestic air service is provided by Kennedy, La Guardia, and Newark (New Jersey) international airports. Area city, 304 square miles (787 square km); metropolitan area, 1 384 square miles (3 585 square km). Pop. (1990) city, 7 322 564; New York PMSA, 8 546 846; New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island CMSA, 18 087 251.

Ottawa city, capital of Canada/ город Оттава, столица Канады.

Ottawa - capital of Canada and seat of Carleton County, southeastern Ontario, at the confluence of the Ottawa, Gatineau, and Rideau rivers. Its metropolitan area lies astride the Ontario-Quebec border.

The first descriptions of Ottawa's future site were written by the founder of New France, Samuel de Champlain, in 1613. The rivers served as passageways for explorers and traders over the following two centuries. The Napoleonic Wars increased Britain's need for shipbuilding timber, and the Ottawa Valley offered just such resources. In 1800 an American, Philemon Wright, had begun timbering across the Ottawa River in what became the city of Hull. During the War of 1812 between Britain and the United States, the Rideau provided the British with a safe shipping route from the Ottawa River to Kingston, on Lake Ontario, thus spurring settlement of Ottawa. It was hastened by the arrival in 1826 of Lt. Col. John By of the Royal Engineers to work on canalizing the river, and the town became Bytown.

Ottawa might still be a modest city had not political quarrels between Quebec city and Toronto and between Montreal and Kingston induced leaders to call upon Queen Victoria to designate a capital for United Canada. In 1855 Bytown was incorporated and rechristened Ottawa after the Indian tribe. It became the fastest growing metropolis in eastern Canada, a development due largely to the presence of the national government. In 1937 Prime Minister William L. Mackenzie King brought the architect Jacques Grйber from France to begin the redevelopment of the national capital district.

The fur trade and lumbering have diminished in importance, and industry now employs only a small fraction of the labour force. The federal government is the major employer. Many commercial and financial associations from around the country as well as embassies and trade associations are also located there.

Ottawa is served by both of Canada's major railroads and several airlines. There is bus service throughout the city. Navigation on the Ottawa and Rideau rivers, except for pleasure craft, is a thing of the past.

The major cultural centres remain the city's three universities. The University of Ottawa and St. Paul University are bilingual institutions, whereas instruction at Carleton University is entirely in English. A large community college, Algonquin, provides technical training. Ottawa also houses the National Arts Centre, which includes an opera house and two theatres, the National Library and Public Archives Building, the National Museum of Science and Technology, and the National Gallery of Canada. Pop. (1991) city, 313 987; Ottawa-Hull metropolitan area, 920 857.

Painting/ Живопись.

Painting - direct application of pigment to a surface to produce by tones of color or of light and dark some representation or decorative arrangement of natural or imagined forms.

Materials and Techniques

Painters use a number of materials to produce the effects they desire. These include the materials of the surface, or ground; the pigments employed; the binder, or medium, in which the color is mixed; and its diluting agent. Among the various media used by artists are fresco, watercolor, oil, distemper, gouache, tempera, and encaustic. In addition to these, painting properly embraces many other techniques ordinarily associated with drawing, a term that is often used to refer to the linear aspects of the same art.

If painting and drawing are not always clearly distinguishable from each other, both are to be distinguished from the print (or work of graphic art), in which the design is not produced directly but is transferred from another surface to that which it decorates. While the print may be one of many identical works, the painting or drawing is always unique. Painting has been freely combined with many other arts, including sculpture, architecture, and, in the modern era, photography.

History

In ancient Greece and medieval Europe most buildings and sculptures were painted; nearly all of the ancient decoration has been lost, but some works from Egypt have preserved their coloring and give us an insight into the importance such an art can assume. The art of painting in China was linked from the 1st cent. AD with the development of the Buddhist faith. Early Christian and then Byzantine artists established iconographic and stylistic prototypes in wall painting and manuscript illumination that remained the basis for Christian art (see iconography).

Highly spiritualized in concept, the medieval painting tradition gave way to a more worldly orientation with the development of Renaissance art. The murals of Giotto became a vehicle for the expression of new and living ideas and sentiments. At the height of the Renaissance a large proportion of the works were decorations of walls and altarpieces, which were necessarily conceived in terms of their part in a larger decorative whole and their appeal for a large public. The greatest masterpieces of Raphael and Michelangelo and of the Florentine masters are generally public works of this character. The same period also saw the rise of the separate easel painting and the first use of oil on canvas. Simultaneously are found the beginnings of genre and other secular themes and the elaboration of portraiture.

Basing their art on the technical contributions of the Renaissance, e.g., the study of perspective and anatomy, the baroque masters added a virtuosity of execution and a style of unparalleled drama. From the age of the rococo, painting tended in the direction of greater intimacy. It is noteworthy, for example, that many of the masterpieces of the 19th cent., and particularly of impressionism, are small easel paintings suitable for the private home. The same period saw the rise of the large public gallery with both temporary and permanent exhibitions, an institution greatly expanded in the 20th cent.

A reawakened interest in mural painting and the contributions of painting to such arts as the motion picture and video have led some to believe that a return to a greater emphasis on the public functions of the art is taking place. Such a view can find support in the notable influence of abstract painting in the fields of industrial and architectural design. This art also continues to enjoy undiminished popularity in the home and gallery. Painting has had a long and glorious world history as an independent art. From Giotto to Picasso and from Ma Yuan to Hokusai, painting has never ceased to produce great exponents who have expressed not merely the taste but the aspirations, the concepts of space, form, and color, and the philosophy of their respective periods.

Radio/ Радио.

Radio - transmission or reception of electromagnetic radiation in the radio frequency range. The term is commonly applied also to the equipment used, especially to the radio receiver.

Uses of Radio Waves

The prime purpose of radio is to convey information from one place to another through the intervening media (i.e., air, space, nonconducting materials) without wires. Besides being used for transmitting sound and television signals, radio is used for the transmission of data in coded form. In the form of radar it is used also for sending out signals and picking up their reflections from objects in their path. Long-range radio signals enable astronauts to communicate with the earth from the moon and carry information from space probes as they travel to distant planets (see space exploration). For navigation of ships and aircraft the radio range, radio compass (or direction finder), and radio time signals are widely used. Radio signals sent from global positioning satellites can also be used by special receivers for a precise indication of position (see navigation satellite). Digital radio, both satellite and terrestrial, provides improved audio clarity and volume. Various remote-control devices, including rocket and artificial satellite operations systems and automatic valves in pipelines, are activated by radio signals. The development of the transistor and other microelectronic devices (see microelectronics) led to the development of portable transmitters and receivers. Cellular and cordless telephones are actually radio transceivers. Many telephone calls routinely are relayed by radio rather than by wires; some are sent via radio to relay satellites. Some celestial bodies and interstellar gases emit relatively strong radio waves that are observed with radio telescopes composed of very sensitive receivers and large directional antennas (see radio astronomy).

Transmission and Reception of Radio Waves

For the propagation and interception of radio waves, a transmitter and receiver are employed. A radio wave acts as a carrier of information-bearing signals; the information may be encoded directly on the wave by periodically interrupting its transmission (as in dot-and-dash telegraphy) or impressed on it by a process called modulation. The actual information in a modulated signal is contained in its sidebands, or frequencies added to the carrier wave, rather than in the carrier wave itself. The two most common types of modulation used in radio are amplitude modulation (AM) and frequency modulation (FM). Frequency modulation minimizes noise and provides greater fidelity than amplitude modulation, which is the older method of broadcasting. Both AM and FM are analog transmission systems, that is, they process sounds into continuously varying patterns of electrical signals which resemble sound waves. Digital radio uses a transmission system in which the signals propagate as discrete voltage pulses, that is, as patterns of numbers; before transmission, an analog audio signal is converted into a digital signal, which may be transmitted in the AM or FM frequency range. A digital radio broadcast offers compact-disc-quality reception and reproduction on the FM band and FM-quality reception and reproduction on the AM band.

In its most common form, radio is used for the transmission of sounds (voice and music) and pictures (television). The sounds and images are converted into electrical signals by a microphone (sounds) or video camera (images), amplified, and used to modulate a carrier wave that has been generated by an oscillator circuit in a transmitter. The modulated carrier is also amplified, then applied to an antenna that converts the electrical signals to electromagnetic waves for radiation into space. Such waves radiate at the speed of light and are transmitted not only by line of sight but also by deflection from the ionosphere.

Receiving antennas intercept part of this radiation, change it back to the form of electrical signals, and feed it to a receiver. The most efficient and most common circuit for radio-frequency selection and amplification used in radio receivers is the superheterodyne. In that system, incoming signals are mixed with a signal from a local oscillator to produce intermediate frequencies (IF) that are equal to the arithmetical sum and difference of the incoming and local frequencies. One of those frequencies is applied to an amplifier. Because the IF amplifier operates at a single frequency, namely the intermediate frequency, it can be built for optimum selectivity and gain. The tuning control on a radio receiver adjusts the local oscillator frequency. If the incoming signals are above the threshold of sensitivity of the receiver and if the receiver is tuned to the frequency of the signal, it will amplify the signal and feed it to circuits that demodulate it, i.e., separate the signal wave itself from the carrier wave.

There are certain differences between AM and FM receivers. In an AM transmission the carrier wave is constant in frequency and varies in amplitude (strength) according to the sounds present at the microphone; in FM the carrier is constant in amplitude and varies in frequency. Because the noise that affects radio signals is partly, but not completely, manifested in amplitude variations, wideband FM receivers are inherently less sensitive to noise. In an FM receiver, the limiter and discriminator stages are circuits that respond solely to changes in frequency. The other stages of the FM receiver are similar to those of the AM receiver but require more care in design and assembly to make full use of FM's advantages. FM is also used in television sound systems. In both radio and television receivers, once the basic signals have been separated from the carrier wave they are fed to a loudspeaker or a display device (usually a cathode-ray tube), where they are converted into sound and visual images, respectively.

Development of Radio Technology

Radio is based on the studies of James Clerk Maxwell, who developed the mathematical theory of electromagnetic waves, and Heinrich Hertz, who devised an apparatus for generating and detecting them. Guglielmo Marconi, recognizing the possibility of using these waves for a wireless communication system, gave a demonstration (1895) of the wireless telegraph, using Hertz's spark coil as a transmitter and Edouard Branly's coherer (a radio detector in which the conductance between two conductors is improved by the passage of a high-frequency current) as the first radio receiver. The effective operating distance of this system increased as the equipment was improved, and in 1901, Marconi succeeded in sending the letter S across the Atlantic Ocean using Morse code. In 1904, Sir John A. Fleming developed the first vacuum electron tube, which was able to detect radio waves electronically. Two years later, Lee de Forest invented the audion, a type of triode, or three-element tube, which not only detected radio waves but also amplified them.