Grammar: The Participle. The Gerund

Word List:

1. kiln	печь для обжига
2. single layer fast firing concept	принцип быстрого сгорания однослойного материала
3. setting	установка
4. single layer firing setting	установка для сгорания однослойного материала
5. firing process	процесс сгорания
6. ceramic plant engineering	производство керамики
7. burner	камера сгорания
8. combustion product outlet speed	скорость сгорания продуктов горения на выходе
9. clay mineral	минерал, содержащий глину
10. fluorinated	фторированный
11. fluorinated-polluting agents	фторированные загрязняющие продукты горения
12. fumes stack	вытяжная труба
13. sampling	выборка, образец
14. valid	способный, пригодный
15. SOV (Volatile Organic Substances)	летучие органические вещества
16. R&D (research and development)	НИР
17. silk-screen printing media	средства печатания c шёлковой изоляцией
18. fixing agent	фиксатор
19. fluidizer	образовыватель суспензии
20. inlet	вход
21. outlet	выход

New Firing Technology

The new generation of the kilns called “Windfire”, protected by three European patents, has enabled to change dramatically the single-layer fast firing concept, thus paving the way for a new kiln concept and for its introduction in the industrial and environmental segment. It is not only a matter of pure development and structure optimization of a machine originating from a single-layer firing setting, but it implies a new integration method for the firing process according to a modern concept of the ceramic plant engineering.

The principle of this new firing technology was the development of special burners featured by a variable flame speed enabling to check the kiln temperature distribution through controlling the combustion product outlet speed.

After the coming into force of the act dated July 12^th 1990 in Italy, the limit for SO₂ content in the emissions from kilns and furnaces is 1500 mg/m³, as this pollutant is considered as extremely harmful. Thus, its presence is considered as undesirable. Different suitable systems for its removal have been developed, though involvingmanaging problems and production cost are increasing. As natural gas used in these systems contains very low sulphur levels, the SO₂ content comes from the sulphur bonded on the clay minerals used.

The detected presence of fluorinated compoundsdeveloping during the final firing steps and in the first cooling step does not create problems; rather it removes from the emissions in the cooling area those fluorinated-polluting agents that can be cleaned only in the fumes stack. Through the combustion products the above pollutants reach the installed filters.

The possibility of carrying out samplings at temperatures below 500 ^oC in the pre-heating sections allowed IPEG to achieve a project valid also to reduce the SOVs that currently were not treated, as their cleaning would have required an extremely difficult and expensive procedure, with an after-combustion of all the fumes produced inside the firing channel. A preliminary study carried out in the R&D lab of IPEG proved that the degradation of SOV more and more used in the ceramic industry such as silk-screen printing media, fixing agents, fluidizers, organic glues, occurs during the thermal treatment in a temperature range between the kiln inlet and 500 ^oC.

Focused Practice

I. Answer the following questions:

1. What has the new generation of the kilns enabled to do?

2. What was the principle of this new firing technology?

3. When did the act come into force in Italy?

4. How harmful is SO₂ considered to be?

5. What systems have been developed?

6. When does the degradation of SOV occur?

II. Analyse the grammar structures underlined in the above text.

III. Speak on: The recent innovation in firing technology.

Unit 52

Grammar: Non-finite Forms of the Verb.
The Infinitive Constructions

Word List:

1. to emit	излучать
2. handset	мобильный телефон, мобильник
3. tissue	ткань
4. tumour	опухоль
5. rate of radiation	качество излучения
6. DNA	хромосомы
7. benign tumour	доброкачественная опухоль

Mobile phones: a health risk?

Are mobile phones harmful to your health? There^’s been an ongoing debate over this question since the first analogue mobiles appeared in
the 1980s.

It’s an important question given that worldwide, about 1.5 billion people use one. This year 650 million are expected to be sold. If they are harmful, the health of very large populations could be at risk.

We do know that mobile phones emit radiofrequency radiation from the handset and that these low-energy electromagnetic waves travel into the head. But do they cause injury to living tissue, possibly triggering a brain tumour or other disease?

Unfortunately, no-one knows for sure – hence the fierce debate. There hasn’t been much research into the effects of the radiation, especially over the long term. Mobile phones haven’t been around long enough. Also, the technology keeps changing. Third generation (3G) phones – which emit higher rates of radiation than earlier models – are just coming onto the market in big numbers. The technology is evolving faster than scientists can do trials to monitor safety. And many brain conditions, such as brain tumours, take years to develop.

Still, there is enough evidence to make some scientists concerned. Studies have shown mobile phone radiation does produce biological changes in humans- such as changes in brain temperature and activity as well as blood pressure changes. Others have shown they cause an increased incidence of illness in laboratory animals- for example cancer in mice.

Last December, a consortium of 12 research groups in seven European countries announced it had found evidence mobile phone radiation can damage DNA in human cells in the laboratory – changes that weren’t repaired by the cells and remained when they divided.

Many scientist dismiss these findings as inconsistent and unreliable. Millions of people who use mobile phones don’t seem to be harmed by them, they point out. The energy emitted by a mobile phone is so low as to be almost biologically insignificant – and it is fear of new technology rather than radiation that is the real problem.

Mobile phone companies are anxious to push this line too. They point out that there hasn’t to date been any evidence that mobile phones cause disease in humans. It’s a view supported by an influential report from a UK panel, the Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones. It concluded in 2002 that while mobile phones do cause biological effects there’s no evidence that they cause illness.

But a study published in October last year challenged this notion. The Swedish study, published in the journal Epidemiology, showed a four-fold increase of a benign (non-cancerous) brain tumour in people who had been using a mobile phone for more than ten years. The increase in the tumour – called an acoustic neuroma – occurred in the side of the head where the person used the phone. But there was no increased risk of any other type of brain tumour.

Focused Practice

I. Answer the following questions:

1. How long has there been an ongoing debate over the question if mobile phones are harmful to our health ?

2. How many people use mobile phones worldwide and how many mobile phones are expectedto be sold this year?

3. What do we know about mobile phones for sure?

4. What aren’t we certain about?

5. What have studies shown concerning a health risk?

6. What did a consortium of 12 research groups in seven European countries announce?

7. Why do many scientists dismiss these findings as inconsistent and unreliable?

II. Analyse the grammar structures underlined in the above text.

III. Speak on: The possibility of mobile phones to be harmful to our health.

Unit 53

Grammar: Non-finite Forms of the Verb.
The Infinitive constructions

Word List:

1. base-station antenna	антенна базовой станции
2. directional beam	направленный луч
3. side-lobes	излучение антенны по боковым лепесткам
4. mast	мачта с антенной, радиовышка
5. main beam	центральный луч
6. μW/cm	микроватт на см – плотность энергии
7. microwaves	СВЧ диапазон волн
8. surge	большая волна
9. time division multiple access (TDMA)	многоканальный доступ с разделением во времени
10. energy-saving discontinuous transmission mode(DTX)	энергосберегающий режим передачи с прерыванием
11. absorption	поглощение
12. guideline	волновод
13. to irradiate	облучать
14. size resonance	резонанс, обусловленный размерами
15. disorder	отклонение
16. to exert	вызвать
17. to facilitate	содействовать
18. to underpin	подпирать
19. oscillatory electrical process	процесс в виде электрического колебания
20. metabolism	обмен веществ
21. microwave carrier	несущая частота СВЧ диапазона
22. compatibility	совместимость
23. endogenous	эндогенный, внутренний
24. response	последствия, реакция
25. light flashing	вспышки света
26. coherent	когерентный, согласованный
27. microwave radiation (MWR)	излучение в СВЧ диапазоне

Mobile Telephony Biological Impacts

Part I

1. Physics of Mobile Telephony

A base-station antenna typically radiates 60 W and a handset between 1 and 2 W (peak). The antenna of a handset radiates equally in all directions but a base-station produces a beam that is much more directional. In addition, the stations have subsidiary beams called side-lobes, into which a small fraction of the emitted power is channeled. Unlike the mean beam, these side-lobes are localized in the immediate vicinity of the mast, and, the power despite their low power, density can be comparable with that of the main beam much further away from the mast. At 150–200 m, for example, the power density in the main beam near ground level is typically tenths of a μW/cm.

A handset that is in operation also has a low-frequency magnetic field (EMF) associated, not with the emitted microwaves, but with surges of electric current from the battery that are necessary to implement «time division multiple access» (TDMA), the system currently used to increase the number of people who can simultaneously communicate with a base-station. With handsets that have an energy-saving discontinuous transmission mode (DTX), there is an even lower frequency pulsing at
2 Hz, which occurs when the user is listening but not speaking.

2. Biological Impacts: Thermal

Heating of biological tissue is a consequence of microwave energy absorption by the tissue’s water content. The amount of heating produced in a living organism depends primarily on the intensity (or power density) of the radiation once it has penetrated the system, on certain electrical properties of the biomatter, and on the efficiency of the body's thermoregulation mechanism.

Above a certain intensity of the microwaves, temperature homoeostasis is not maintained, and effects on health ensue once the temperature rise exceeds 1 ^oC. Safety guidelines impose upper limits on the radiation intensity to ensure that this does not happen.

Heating occurs whether the organism is alive or dead. The frequency of the radiation, as opposed to the intensity, is taken into account only in so far as affects (via size resonance) the ability of the organism to absorb energy from the irradiating field.

Animal studies indicate that a variety of behavioral and physiological disorders can be provoked by temperature rises below 1 ^oC — i.e, under much less acute exposure conditions; there are reports of adverse health effects of subthermal intensities, the possible origin of which will now be considered.

Part II

3. Biological Effects: Non-Thermal

The possibility that the pulsed, low-intensity MWR currently used in GSM mobile telephony can exert subtle, non-thermal influences on a living organism arises because microwaves are waves; they have properties other than the intensity that is regulated by safety guidelines. This microwave radiation has certain well-defined frequencies, which facilitate its discernment by a living organism (despite its ultralow intensity), and via which the organism can, in turn, be affected.

The human body is an electrochemical instrument of exquisite sensitivity whose orderly functioning and control are underpinned by oscillatory electrical processes of various kinds, each characterised by a specific frequency, some of which happen to be close to those used in GSM. Thus some endogenous biological electrical activities can be interfered with via oscillatory aspects of the incoming radiation, in much the sameway as can the reception on a radio.

The biological electrical activities that are vulnerable to interference from GSM radiation include highly organised electrical activities at a cellular level whose frequency happens to lie in the microwave region, and which are a consequence of metabolism. Although not universally accepted, there is experimental evidence consistent with these endogenous activities, in terms of which effects of ultralow-intensity microwave radiation of a specific frequency on processes as fundamental as cell division, for example, can be understood in a rather natural way.

Furthermore, the DTX pulse frequency at 2 Hz and the TDMA frequency of 8–34 Hz correspond to frequencies of electrical oscillations found in the human brain, specifically the delta and alpha brain-waves, respectively. It is thus quite possible that living organisms have a two-fold sensitivity to the pulsed GSM signal i.e., to both the microwave carrier and the lower frequency pulsings of the TDMA and DTX signals.

To deny this possibility yet admit the importance of ensuring electromagnetic compatibility with electronic instruments by banning theuse of mobile phones on aircraft and hospitals (a prohibition driven by concerns about non-thermal interference) seems inconsistent.

The intensity of radiation needed for this recognition is many orders of magnitude below even that currently associated with non-thermal effects. This influence is possible only when the organism is alive, with excited endogenous frequencies; the dead have flat electroencephalograms.

Non-thermal effects thus depend on the state of the person when exposed to the radiation i.e. non thermal effects are non-linear. A low-intensity field can entail a seemingly disproportionately large response (or none at all), and vice versa, quite unlike the predictable thermal responses. Thus not everyone can be expected to be affected in the way by identical exposure to the same radiation. A good example of human vulnerability to a non-thermal, electromagnetic influence is the ability of a light flashing at about 15 Hz to induce seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy. It is not so much the amount of energy absorbed from the light that provokes the seizure, but rather the information transmitted to the brain buy the (coherent) regularity of its flashing, at a frequency that the brain “recognises” because it matches or is close to a frequency utilised by the brain itself.

Focused Practice

I. Answer the following questions:

1. How do the antenna of a handset and a base-station antenna differ?

2. Why does a handset that is in operation have a low frequency magnetic field?

3. What does the amount of heating produced in a living organism
depend on?

4. In what cases is the frequency o the radiation taken into account?

5. Why does the possibility that MWR currently used in GSM mobile telephony can exert subtle non-thermal influences on a living organism arise?

6. What do the biological electrical activities that are vulnerable to interference from GSM radiation include?

II. Analyse the grammar structures under lined in the above text.

III. Speak on: Biologicaleffects of mobile telephony.

 

 

SECTION VI

MEASURING TECHNIQUE AND EQUIPMENT

Unit 54