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пятница, 9 декабря 2011 г.
среда, 7 декабря 2011 г.
Inventions.
Henry Ford and the Model
Find out how Henry Ford's Model T revolutionized transportation in America.
The Telegraph and Telephone
What did the first-ever telegraph message--sent by the machine's inventor Samuel Morse in 1844--say? And is it true that Alexander Graham Bell was initially unable to find any buyers for his new invention, the telephone? Find out more.
Find out how Henry Ford's Model T revolutionized transportation in America.
The Telegraph and Telephone
What did the first-ever telegraph message--sent by the machine's inventor Samuel Morse in 1844--say? And is it true that Alexander Graham Bell was initially unable to find any buyers for his new invention, the telephone? Find out more.
вторник, 6 декабря 2011 г.
среда, 30 ноября 2011 г.
Food. Task for 9b
Watch the video, complete the gaps in the exercise given and check your answers.
Link >>>
Link >>>
Science and Technology 12 a
вторник, 29 ноября 2011 г.
Hey Protein. You need help folding. Form 12 a
A changing room for proteins! It is a place inside a cell where they can go, fold themselves into their final forms, and come out fully functional. Sounds bizarre? Well, science is full of such amazing surprises.
And, for figuring this one out, Dr. Arthur L. Horwich (Medical geneticist at Yale University) and Dr. Franz-Ulrich Hartl (Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Germany) have won the prestigious Lasker Basic Medical Research Award.
Into the world of proteins
Let’s explore this world of proteins a little more. Proteins are essential to life. They are formed from molecules called amino acids (basically a molecule with the elements hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen). These amino acids arrange themselves into 3-dimensional shapes that perform certain functions. These functions include metabolism and allowing medicines (like Tylenol) to help heal the body. This 3-dimensional shape is called a protein.
Different proteins have different strings of amino acids which attract and repel each other in specific ways – this results in particular 3-D shapes for each protein. Under stress or under extreme heat conditions within cells, the proteins become vulnerable and may not end up with the right shape. This would mean that they do not function properly. When proteins don’t function as they are meant to, things go wrong in the body. This is what leads to some types of diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and, in some cases, cancer.
Need help folding?
So, proteins must fold correctly; take their correct shape in space, right? Apparently, to cross mitochondrial membranes, the proteins have to unfold. Well, they have to fold back once done crossing. Now, it turns out, they have help inside the cell to do this!
Horwich and Hartl figured out that there is something called a Heat-Shock Protein 60 (HSP60), a molecule that is shaped like a barrel, which acts like a “changing room.” They called this helper barrel-shaped molecule, the HSP60, a “chaperonin.” Basically, while the sequence of amino acids determines the shape a protein will take, this “chaperonin” is also required to make sure it does.
The protein enters into it, a lid (called a cochaperonin) snaps shut. Inside there, the protein, protected from heat and other molecules, can change into its shape. In 10 seconds, when the lid opens again, the 3-D protein exits. Now, if it is not done changing, it can re-enter the barrel and finish up. Each protein, takes turns doing this until they are done attaining their allotted shapes!
Horwich is not only a scientist, but also works as a medical doctor. He is now investigating if it is possible to make extra copies of the HSP60 so that more proteins have the opportunity to fold correctly. “The hope is that we’ll get better and better at providing something for people who get sick,” he is quoted to have said to the New York Times.
Here is a short video that shows you how protein folds and un-folds, trying to reach its final 3-D shape: Video
Source
воскресенье, 27 ноября 2011 г.
Kinect: Not Just For Games
Doctors in Sunnybrook Hospital, Canada, use the XBox 360 Kinect, while they operate on patients. No, they are not exactly playing games. They wave their hands to rotate and manipulate X-ray (MRI) images of the patient's body without leaving the operating table - saving time, saving lives! The Kinect is a year old this week, and it is very exciting to see it being used in amazing ways, beyond just games.
Almost as revolutionary as the Wii itself, Kinect is a totally new way for you to interact with the game you're playing - using just your body and your voice, so you don't need a remote control. Watch the video first, before reading more about how it works.
The Kinect has 2 cameras - a normal video camera that captures images, and an infra-red camera, that measures the depth of what it is seeing. The Kinect emits infra-red rays, which are invisible to the naked eye, just like x-rays and radio waves. When some of those rays bounce off your body and reach the infra-red camera, Kinect measures the time taken for the round-trip and hence the distance of your body from the TV.
Now, the clever engineers at Microsoft trained the Kinect with millions of videos of human body movements (using a technique called Machine Learning), so the system knows how to map out your skeleton as your body moves. As different parts of your body move, Kinect knows exactly what you are doing, whether you move your hand or your leg, or crouch or jump!
Kinect is good for health!
Doctors at Sunnybrook hospital in Toronto, Canada hooked up a Kinect console to their medical imaging computer. Earlier, when doctors in the operating room wanted to look at MRI (or X-Ray) scans, they had to disinfect and leave the operating room, and then scrub back in. But now, they virtually manipulate the scans by pulling it up on screen with a wave of their hand. Virtual reality!
Patients suffering from stroke or other trauma, at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, U.K., are using Kinect software to do exercises to regain mobility, coordination and balance.
Tedesys, of Cantabria, Spain, is using the Kinect to help doctors operate on patients through remotely controlled instruments -- an application that could save lives in disaster areas, battlefields, and other areas that may be too dangerous or far away for doctors to go to.
Endless possibilities
Microsoft has released an SDK (software development kit), that will allow just about anyone (even you!) to develop exciting and useful applications using the Kinect. Some future applications are biometric security (making security checks more effective without being intrusive), virtual reality (traveling through fantasy worlds), video conferencing (talking to grandma as if she were in the living room with you), and more.
Video >>>
Can you think of any other uses for Kinect?
Video >>>
Source
The Seven "New" Natural Wonders
Do you know the seven "new" natural wonders? Nature never fails to amaze. It seems like everything in it is almost perfect – colors, form, function. And when this perfection is on show at a grand scale, it is called a wonder of the world. Not that smaller things are not wondrous, but our human mind likes to be awed. Last week saw seven “new” natural wonders of the world revealed.
You may read about the new wonders and add your comments >>>
Thanksgiving Day
Although Thanksgiving celebrations dated back to the first European settlements in America, it was not until the 1860s that Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November to be a national holiday
The places we live
The year 2008 has witnessed a major shift in the way people across the world live: for the first time in human history , more people live in cities than in rural areas. This triumph of the urban does not represent progress, as the number of people living in urban slums will soon exceed 1 billion.
To read more about the problem and watch photos, go to >>>
To read more about the problem and watch photos, go to >>>
суббота, 5 ноября 2011 г.
Healthy Lifestyle. Task for 9b
A listener from Brazil, Elenir Scardueli, sent us a list of popular expressions about food. So today we will talk about expressions that use vegetables and fruits.
For example, a cucumber is a long, green vegetable that people often eat in salads. You might say a person is as cool as a cucumber if he never seems to worry about anything and stays calm in a stressful situation. If you put a cucumber in a solution of vinegar and spices for a long time, it becomes a pickle. But if you are in a pickle, you are in trouble or a difficult situation.
If two people are very similar, you might say they are like two peas in a pod.
Read more about it and do different exercises on the topic.
Food Expressions 1
For example, a cucumber is a long, green vegetable that people often eat in salads. You might say a person is as cool as a cucumber if he never seems to worry about anything and stays calm in a stressful situation. If you put a cucumber in a solution of vinegar and spices for a long time, it becomes a pickle. But if you are in a pickle, you are in trouble or a difficult situation.
If two people are very similar, you might say they are like two peas in a pod.
Read more about it and do different exercises on the topic.
Food Expressions 1
среда, 2 ноября 2011 г.
Task for the 10th form
Surf the Internet, find some interesting information about Estonia, download some pictures with their links and sent your work to: constellation.remmelg59@gmail.com
Environmental protection. Task for 11th forms
вторник, 1 ноября 2011 г.
On-line dictionaries for 10 form
среда, 19 октября 2011 г.
пятница, 14 октября 2011 г.
Learn foreign words with pleasure
Learn words using your computer, phone or mobile device.
Take reading, writing, listening and visual exercises.
Use built-in science-based algorithm to remember words forever.
четверг, 22 сентября 2011 г.
среда, 21 сентября 2011 г.
вторник, 20 сентября 2011 г.
English Idioms
Idioms are the weirdest part of the English language. They never mean what they say. They "roll off the tongue" without stopping at the brain.
пятница, 16 сентября 2011 г.
вторник, 6 сентября 2011 г.
Online tasks for 10th form
Here are some exercises that you can practise in the Internet revising Simple Tenses. Pupils of all forms are also welcome to these tasks.
Present Simple Task 1 >>>
Present Simple Task 2 >>>
Past Simple Task 1 >>>
Past Simple Task 2 >>>
Past Simple Task 3 >>>
Future Simple Task 1 >>>
Future Simple Task 2 >>>
Good Luck!!!
Present Simple Task 1 >>>
Present Simple Task 2 >>>
Past Simple Task 1 >>>
Past Simple Task 2 >>>
Past Simple Task 3 >>>
Future Simple Task 1 >>>
Future Simple Task 2 >>>
Good Luck!!!
пятница, 2 сентября 2011 г.
четверг, 1 сентября 2011 г.
Jobs and professions. Task for individual training for 9b form.
среда, 31 августа 2011 г.
суббота, 6 августа 2011 г.
среда, 29 июня 2011 г.
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