Алексей ВИНИДИКТОВ
АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫК.
Пополняем словарный запас.
ВЫПУСК # 63
от 19 апреля 2003 г.

I. Разговорные слова и выражения

II. How Evolution Works. Question Two

Разговорные слова и выражения

It's all right for you/him (etc.) тебе-то/ему-то (и т.д.) хорошо

It's all right for you, but it's not your car. - Тебе-то хорошо, это не твоя машина.

almighty огромный, сильный, ужасный
very big, strong, great, etc.

He's an almighty bore. - Он ужасный зануда.

I heard an almighty crash. - Я услышал ужасный грохот.

ancient очень старый
very old

I've got a very ancient car. - У меня очень старая машина.

My grandparents are rather ancient. - У меня очень старые бабушка и дедушка.

Be an angel and ... Будь так добр ...
Could you ... Please, ...

Be an angel and fetch my spectacles. - Будь добр, принеси, пожалуйста, мои очки.

He knows all the answers. Он за словом в карман не полезет.

 

How Evolution Works

Question 2: How Can Evolution Be So Quick?

Imagine that you create a very large cage and put a group of mice into it. You let the mice live and breed (размножаться) in this cage freely, without disturbance (беспокойство). If you were to come back (если бы вы вернулись) after five years and look into this cage, you would find mice. Five years of breeding would cause ((не) вызвали бы) no change in the mice in that cage -- they would not evolve in any noticeable (заметный) way. You could leave the cage alone for a hundred years and look in again and what you would find in the cage is mice. After several hundred years, you would look into the cage and find not 15 new species, but mice.

The point is that evolution in general is an extremely slow process. When two mice breed, the offspring (потомок) is a mouse. When that offspring breeds, its offspring is a mouse. When that offspring breeds... And the process continues. Point mutations do not change this fact in any significant way over the short haul.

Carl Sagan, in "The Dragons of Eden," put it this way:

The time scale (масштаб, шкала) for evolutionary or genetic change is very long. A characteristic period for the emergence (возникновение) of one advanced (продвинутый, (более) развитый) species (вид) from another is perhaps a hundred thousand years; and very often the difference in behavior between closely related (бликородственные) species -- say, lions and tigers -- does not seem very great. An example of recent evolution of organ systems in humans is our toes (пальцы ног). The big toe plays an important function in balance while walking; the other toes have much less obvious utility (полезность, практичность). They are clearly evolved from fingerlike appendages (придатки) for grasping (для хватания) and swinging (и качания), like those of arboreal (живущие на деревьях) apes and monkeys. This evolution constitutes (представляет собой) a respecialization -- the adaptation of an organ system originally evolved for one function to another and quite different function -- which required (требовало) about ten million years to emerge (чтобы появиться).

The fact that it takes evolution 100,000 or 10 million years to make relatively (сравнительно) minor (небольшие) changes in existing (существующие) structures shows just how slow evolution really is. The creation of a new species is time consuming (требующая много времени).

On the other hand (с другой стороны), we know that evolution can move extremely quickly to create a new species. One example of the speed of evolution involves the progress mammals (млекопитающие) have made. You have probably heard that, about 65 million years ago, all of the dinosaurs died out (вымерли) quite suddenly. One theory for this massive extinction (вымирание) is an asteroid strike (удар). For dinosaurs, the day of the asteroid strike was a bad one, but for mammals it was a good day. The disappearance of the dinosaurs cleared the playing field (букв. освободило игровое поле) of most predators. Mammals began to thrive (процветать) and differentiate.

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Table of Contents:
Introduction to How Evolution Works
The Basic Process of Evolution
How Life Works: DNA and Enzymes
The Simplest Example of Evolution
The Speed of Mutations
Natural Selection
Creating a New Species
Holes in the Theory
Question 1: How Does Evolution Add Information?
› Question 2: How Can Evolution Be So Quick?
Question 3: Where Did the First Living Cell Come From?
The Future of Evolution
Lots More Information!


That's all, folks!

 

С наилучшими пожеланиями,

Алексей Винидиктов.


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Any criticism or praise is welcome.

To be continued...

Copyright 2002, Алексей ВИНИДИКТОВ