VI. Переведите тексты, прокомментируйте используемые способы перевода сокращений на русский язык:

A. The Russian authorities have committed themselves to fulfilling all the recommendations of the European coincil pertaining to Russia’s intention to join this international body. A document testifying to this fact has been handed over in Paris to the Chairman of the Parliamentary Assemly of the EC (PAEC). Russia applied to join the EC, which united 38 countries in May 1992 and a favourable decision was expected to be received in 1995. However, following the events in Chechnia the PAEG suggested that discussion of Moscow’s application should be suspended.

B. Memo from: Mr. Braneless (MD)

Date: 3/5/01

To: All staff

Ref: 04056/DC

May I remind you that all new lab equipment should be registered with Stores&Supplies, Room 354 (ext 2683). NB: new items must be notified before 1700hrs on the last day of the month of purchase, i.e. within the current budgeting month. All a/c nos must be recorded.

C. This year's Lasker award for basic research was shared by Dr. Pierre Chambon of the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology in Strasbourg, France; Ronald Evans of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif.; and Elwood Jensen of the University of Chicago.

The Lasker award for clinical research was given posthumously to Dr. Charles Kelman, who made cataract removal an outpatient procedure. Previously, cataract operations were risky ordeals requiring more than a week of hospitalization with the patient's head immobilized by sand bags. Last year's winners of the Nobel Prize were Briton Sir Peter Mansfield and American Paul C. Lauterbur for discoveries leading to the development of MRI, used by doctors to get a detailed look into patients' bodies.

The award for medicine opens a week of Nobel Prizes culminating Oct. 11 with the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

The peace prize, the only one bestowed in Oslo, Norway, will be announced Oct. 8. The awards always are presented Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896. Nobel-watchers and bookmakers believe the favorites for the peace prize are people or groups leading efforts to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction, including the International Atomic Energy Agency and its director, Mohamed El Baradei; former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix; and former Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., and Sen. Richard Lugar (news, bio, voting record), R-Ind., for their Cooperative Threat Reduction program intended to dismantle leftover nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union.

D. A linear decelerator for neutral molecules, identical in principle to a linear accelerator (LINAC) for charged particles, has been demonstrated by researchers in the Netherlands (Gerard Meijer, University of Nijmegen), providing a new way to cool molecules to ultra low temperatures. Previous methods for cooling molecules either depend upon the presence of a cold background gas and magnetic fields, or they are restricted to those molecules, which can be formed by combining already cold trapped atoms. In their demonstration, the researchers constructed a 35-centimeter long “Stark decelerator,” containing a succession of 63 pulsed electric fields. The decelerator can slow down any neutral molecule with a permanent dipole moment, i.e., a permanent separation of electric charge within the molecule. This includes any diatomic molecule composed of two different elements (such as NaCl), but also molecules like H2O and NH3. The researchers chose to demonstrate their technique with carbon monoxide (CO).

When a pre-cooled mixture of CO in xenon gas entered the linear decelerator, each molecule experienced the Stark effect; at every electric field, their internal energy shifted upward and caused them to lose some kinetic energy. After passing through all 63 electric-field stages, a subset of the CO molecules was slowed down from 225 m/s to 98 m/s, with an equivalent temperature of 30 millikelvin. Additional electric field stages could in principle cool the molecules further. This technique promises to be useful for cold-molecule physics, a field that is “expected to bloom in the next decade,” says Meijer.

E. High-Tech Help To Give Blind More Freedom

Walking around in places that are unfamiliar to them can be fraught with problems for blind and partially sighted people.

In a bid to help ease the problem, a university research team in the United Kingdom has applied itself to the very real problems that blind people regularly experience and has come up with a high-technology solution.

The group has devised a ground-breaking navigational tool that use a global positioning system (GPS), combined with mobile phone technology and a specially adapted digital map, to help blind people orientate themselves around unfamiliar territory. The system is revolutionary as it is very compact and offers blind or partially sighted users human contact as opposed to only computer support.

Designed by Professor Wamadeva Balachandran and his research team at Brunel University, near London, the system comprises a small, portable device that is carried by a person with sight difficulties – the user. This incorporates a GPS receiver, a mobile transceiver, and an electronic compass and control electronics which allow two-way communication.

The software is based on the most straightforward PC and mobile phone technologies and means that, in certain situations, friends or family of the user could take on the role of “helper”. “A certain amount of common sense is needed from the helper in guiding the user”, said Professor Balachandran. The system would mostly be run by organizations that cater for the needs of blind or partially sighted people and who would offer it as a service to their membership. In this way, one operator would be able to help man users in different locations.

“Once our system is commercially available, a person who is blind or partially sighted can use it to ask for directions by picking up a unit that looks something like a mobile phone but is a bit heavier, “ said Professor Balachandran.

The blind person will start by pressing a button that alerts an operator at the navigation centre. The operator can see instantly where the user is because the mobile navigation unit calculates the position and the software brings up the appropriate map. This happens very quickly. Then the blind person asks the operator where to go and the operator answers with detailed advice. In addition, an electronic compass in the headset speaks to the user to give directions. The team predicts that the system will be ready to go out to license for manufacture by 2005.

F. RELATIVISTIC SLEIGH RIDE. The December 11 issue of Fermi News seeks to answer the perennial question of how Santa Claus can, in the course of a single night, deliver gifts to each of the world's 2 billion children. Even if a full-scale quantum computer were to work out the optimum course plan St. Nick must still cover a flight path of some 160 million km and stop at 800 million homes along the way. How does he do it? By traveling at close to the speed of light, of course, which, incidentally, also explains why (thanks to time dilation) Santa never seems to age. The Fermi News article helpfully addresses such questions as to how it is that the fat fellow can fit into Lorentz-contracted chimneys in the first place and how one can determine the color of the Doppler-shifted light emitted by Rudolph-the-rednosed-reindeer at sleigh velocities approaching the speed of light.