F u l l s p a t e P r eF u l l s p a t e P r eF u l l s p a t e P r eF u l l s p a t e P r e ---- P r o f i c i e n c y P r o f i c i e n c y P r o f i c i e n c y P r o f i c i e n c y P r i me r P r i me r P r i me r P r i me r

Unit 6 Minds and Machines Introduction One of the hottest topics in the field of computing is artificial intelligence (a.i.). To get the ball rolling here are a few things to talk about:

Smart robots, androids, cybermen and other beings with artificial intelligence have featured in a number of films. Can you describe one or two of them?

We say that kids who are really good at maths are smart, but what about your pocket calculator, is it clever? It is certainly fast, but is it intelligent?

And what about the programmes on your computer, are any of them intelligent? In computer games where you set your wits against a virtual opponent, the character you are struggling to outwit is actually a programme with a set of strategies and a bank of information about the situations it might encounter. Some virtual opponents are programmed to analyse the way you play, remember your strategies and then tailor their strategies to increase the chances of them beating you the next time you play. If your antagonist defeats you, does that mean it is cleverer than you?

Reading If you look up artificial intelligence in an encyclopaedia, these are a few of the developments you might come across:

Breakthroughs in the Field of A.I. Deep Blue, a chess-playing computer built by IBM, made history in 1997 when it defeated the man who was then the worlds chess champion, Garry Kasparov. Many people have since taken this as a milestone in the history of artificial intelligence. Interestingly, Kasparov noted that Deep Blue was quite unlike any other chess-playing computer he had played against. He had never seen so clever a machine. At one point, he was even suspicious that someone was secretly influencing the computers decisions.

Expert systems are another development in the field of A.I. An expert system can now be designed to come up with an accurate diagnosis of a patients medical condition. A human physician uses a vast bank of knowledge to interpret results from tests on the patient and so come up with an appropriate diagnosis. Computer software can now perform precisely the same task on the inputs it is given and it can have access to a much greater body of knowledge than any single human doctor could recall.

Neural networks: These are computerized models of the way the brain works, quite different from traditional computer programmes. The big plus with neural networks is their ability to learn from experience. We take our ability to identify and categorize objects in our environment for granted, but in fact it is a complex skill we have acquired through a process of learning that is far from simple. An artificial neural network can be connected to a camera and taught to recognize, for instance, tanks on the battlefield. If a new tank that it has never seen before shows up, it will still recognise it as a tank, assuming that it bears some resemblance to tanks it has previously learnt to recognize.

Chatterbots are in use in chat rooms on the internet. Here the software comes up with an appropriate reply to whatever you might say, and it can leave you with the impression that you have been chatting to a real person.

Navigation systems. These are the systems a robot would use to find its way around an environment. The first application of this in the home has been the vacuum cleaner that can automatically and systematically cover all of the floor area on a single level of your house. Another application is automatic transport systems in warehouses for moving goods from one area to another. They can be told where to go and they will find their own way there, avoiding obstacles along the way. The smart bombs now used by the military employ another form of navigation system. These use Global Positioning Satellites to understand where in the world they are and how to get to their target. The military also now has pilotless planes able to determine their own route to and from a given target instead of relying on some system of remote control.

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Questions 1. In what way are expert systems of diagnosis said to be superior to the abilities of human

doctors?

2. What new ability do neural networks make possible that more traditional forms of computer architecture were incapable of?

3. Explain what the verb to navigate means.

4. When you launch a smart missile, why doesnt it matter very much which direction its

pointing in at the moment you launch it?

Vocabulary 1. In the introduction it was said that in many computer games we set our wits against our opponents and try to outwit them. Wit has its roots in the ancient Sanskrit word vid meaning to know. The verb no longer survives in modern English, but a number of related expressions are still in use:

If a game is a battle of wits, it is a test to see who is the cleverest.

Before tests like this you must sharpen your wits.

We say: Keep your wits about you in a difficult situation where people must think quickly and concentrate on what they are doing.

If you are at your wits end, you are desperate and dont know what to do next.

A witless person is a bit stupid.

If you unwittingly delete a file on your computer, you press the button without realizing what you are doing.

However, wit has a second, quite different meaning: a sense of humour.

A witty person is funny in a clever and imaginative way.

Question: So if you are trying to outwit your virtual opponent in a computer game, what are you trying to do?

2. The section on neural networks uses the word complex and then it uses a phrase with the same meaning to avoid repeating that word. What is the phrase (not in bold)?

3. Look back at the words and phrases in bold from the beginning of this unit and find those that match the following definitions.

a. a large building for a company to store goods

b. relating to nerves/neurons c. to look like d. to find out the facts about something

e. collection, store f. use g. advantage

h. to design something so that it perfectly satisfies certain needs i. opponent j. a breakthrough that marks an important new development k. literally: a space from which the air has been removed

l. the information that is fed into a computing system m. appears

Over to you 1. If you read the literature on computing you see that all of the developments mentioned in the

previous passage are referred to as forms of artificial intelligence. Do you feel that all of them deserve to be called intelligent?

2. If you have your reservations about these being truly intelligent, what would you say constitutes true intelligence? In other words, what are the hallmarks of genuine intelligence? How could you spot it? Can you think of any criteria you might use to recognise artificial intelligence?

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Reading Here we continue our meditation on the prospects for a.i.

Its an inevitability Some people, such as the philosopher John Searle, argue that programmes like the ones mentioned above are not really intelligent. They are excellent at processing a vast amount of information at lightning speed but they still lack an essential ingredient: awareness (consciousness). None of these systems is aware of what it is doing. Did Deep Blue, for example, realize it had defeated the greatest human chess champion? It certainly didnt jump for joy.

However, many of those who are actually involved in developing a.i. are convinced that their systems will one day be sophisticated enough to acquire a consciousness of what they are doing. They criticize people like Searle for assuming that machines cant think. On the contrary, they insist, machines can think. Look at the brain. Its a machine and it thinks. There is no doubt in their minds that once we design the right hardware and software we will be able to put together a machine that works at least as well as the human brain with its 100 billion interconnected neurons.

One reason why current a.i. doesnt look particularly smart is because the computing power available at the moment doesnt come close to that of the human brain. At the turn of the 21st century computers were powerful enough to perform a few billion calculations per second a figure which put them roughly on the same level as an insect brain. One estimate of the computational power of the human brain puts it at 100 trillion (million, million) calculations per second. Although the gap seems huge, it wont be long before it is bridged if computer power keeps increasing at its current rate. Since the 1990s the power of computers has been doubling every year. One expert in the field, Hans Moravec, estimates that at this pace computers will be as powerful as human brains by 2030. Then it will just be a question of tweaking the artificial neural networks to optimize the way they learn from their mistakes and reprogramme themselves.

Questions 1. According to Searle, what made Deep Blue unintelligent?

2. What is the gap referred to in the last paragraph, and how will it be bridged?

3. In a way, Searle belongs to a school of thought for which the most essential aspect of our

mental life is something mysterious something like the soul that we could never hope to

understand. What is the alternative view put forward by Searles critics?

4. According to Moravec, what ought to happen by the year 2030?

5. You have been making a new machine and now it is nearly ready. You just have to tweak some of the settings. What do you think this means?

6. Moravec predicts that sometime soon we will design computers capable of reprogramming

themselves. How much of a breakthrough would that be?

Vocabulary 1. Note the use of the phrase On the contrary in the passage. This is not to be confused with By contrast. The former is only used when we are criticizing peoples mistaken opinions. E.g.:

Many people are convinced that bread is fattening. On the contrary, it is surprisingly low in calories (around 215 for 100g of brown bread).

By contrast, we use by contrast when we compare two different things:

A digital camera is useless once its battery runs out. By contrast, a good manual camera can take pictures without a battery.

In the middle of a sentence we would use whereas or while instead of by contrast.

Computer screens nowadays can reproduce 16 million different colours whereas screens sold in the 1980s offered a choice of only two: orange or green.

Lets practise using on the contrary and by contrast by completing these two sentences.

Some people say that machines will always be unintelligent. On the contrary, ................ ...............................................................................................

Moravec is optimistic about the prospects for artificial intelligence. By contrast, John Searle .......................................................................................

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2a. The passage mentioned computers performing calculations. This is not the only possible use of the verb perform. Look at the following list of objects and say which of them can be performed.

a. a delicate operation in an operating theatre b. a play c. a piece of music d. a dance e. a service to the community f. a function within an organization g. a prize-giving ceremony at a school

2b. If someone is not happy with the performance of a company or with the academic performance of their daughter, what are they concerned about?

3. If someone treats you roughly they are too aggressive and harsh. This adverb is used with a quite different meaning in the passage. What is it?

Over to you 1. Do you think Moravec is right and unquestionable artificial intelligence is an inevitability?

2. Would you see this as a threat? Why/ Why not?

Reading

Hawkings Doomsday Scenario Back in 2001 the acclaimed scientist and professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge Stephen Hawking spoke to the popular press to issue a warning: People need to wake up to the staggering pace at which computers are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and to wake up to the threat that will be posed to humanity once the intellectual capabilities of a.i. outstrip our own. The danger is real, he said, that this computer intelligence will develop to such an extent that it takes over the world.

Hawking, who is also the author of the best-selling book A Brief History of Time, insisted that to avoid this doomsday scenario humanity had to take steps to raise human intellectual performance. He suggested that one possibility would be the manipulation of our genes to upgrade the genetic basis for human intelligence. It is imperative that we enhance our DNA or be left behind. He conceded the road to genetic modification would be a long one but said: We should follow this road if we want biological systems to remain superior to electronic ones.

He also advocated accelerating research into developing an interface between brains and computers. We must develop this direct connection as quickly as possible so that we can use artificial intelligence to augment human intelligence.

Questions 1. In your own words as much as possible, what is professor Hawkings warning?

2. What two courses of action does he suggest we take?

Vocabulary A. Which phrase, not in bold, does Hawking use instead of simply saying We must?

B. Match some of the bold words in the Hawking passage with the following.

a. astonishing, very surprising b. change (noun) c. literally: taking hold of something by the hands to change it and exert an influence over it d. highly respected and praised e. give, make public, communicate f. to support and argue for publicly g. to overtake; to go faster than something else h. a connection between two different things i. to add to something j. admit/accept part of the opposite side of the argument

B. The title refers to Doomsday, which is another name for the Day of Judgment described in the last book of the Bible: the Apocalypse (also known as the Book of Revelation). The word doom originally meant judgment but because of its association with the end of the world it is used in modern English to refer to the terrible fate that awaits those of us who havent always

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done the right thing. Hence, we say: She had a sense of doom, when she felt that there was going to be a catastrophe.

The original verb meaning to judge was deem. We still use this in formal English. For instance: His story was deemed to be true.

C. Hawking said we had to upgrade our DNA. There are a number of related words in English which we use in different contexts. Choose from the words below to fill in the gaps:

enhance renovate upgrade enrich update renew

1. You might add more RAM to your computer to ........................ it.

2. You can use software such as Paintshop Pro to ......................... (improve) the colours of your digital photos.

3. When you ........................ an old page on your website you add new details of more recent developments.

4. If you have a very old and neglected house that is now in a very bad condition, you might get the builders to ................................ it.

5. You usually have to pay a fee every year to ................... your membership of a club.

6. The people who make Coco Pops ....................... the breakfast cereal by adding certain vitamins and minerals.

rectify refine purify augment refresh supplement

7. Hawking believes that we will be able to use artificial intelligence to .......................... our natural intellectual abilities.

8. Some people who think their diet lacks certain vitamins and minerals take pills to ........................... their diet.

9. If you cant remember the details of a lecture, you might look back at your notes to ........................... your memory.

10. Sugar is naturally brown, so to make it white it must be put through a chemical process to .............................. it.

11. People who are suspicious of the quality of their tap water sometimes install a filter to ............. ........................ it.

12. In comparison to using a typewriter, writing on the computer makes it much easier to .................. mistakes in the text.

Over to you 1. Do you think Hawking was describing a real possibility, or was this just a moment of craziness

in an otherwise brilliant intellectual career?

2. One of the many responses to Hawking came from Sue Mayer, an expert in the field of genetics. She said: It is naive to think that genetic engineering will help us stay ahead of computers. What does naive mean? (Clue: in another situation we say that someone is naive if they think that all taxi drivers around the world are only interested in one thing: getting you to your destination by the shortest possible route as quickly as possible.)

3. Part of the naivety of Hawkings suggestion has to do with how slow the process of improving human intelligence by genetic engineering would be. Why do you think it would be such a slow process?

Reading

A Boon to Humanity One of the many responses provoked by Hawkings article in the popular press came from Raymond Kurzweil, one of the most prominent figures in the world of a.i. He pointed out that genetic engineering would be a waste of time because it would still leave us at a huge disadvantage. A DNA-based brain with its biochemical neurotransmitters has some structural limitations which mean that it will always be slower and less accurate than computers of the future. The brain evolved over millions of years to skilfully coordinate the motor activity of our limbs with our sensory inputs in the way needed to hunt and play football. Brains like that never were and never will be particularly good at thinking. The ability which many have said is unique to us: the power of reason is actually the area in which computers will excel.

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Kurzweil agrees that computers will outstrip us soon and he suggests that to ensure we dont get left behind we really need to develop a way of hooking our weak brains up to those superfast computers. In fact, the first steps along this road have already been taken. In 2005 Matt Nagel, who had been paralysed after a knife attack, had part of his brain wired up to an artificial hand. He became the first person in history to move a mechanical limb by the power of thought alone. Although this was a huge breakthrough, some of the technology they used was really quite crude, such as the metal electrodes inserted in the brain. Even though these wires were as thin as a human hair and were made of gold they would be far too crude for the brain-computer interface that people like Kurzweil have in mind. However, it looks as if the rapidly developing field of nanotechnology* will be able to create sub-microscopic devices which could link individual nerve cells in the brain with a computer without invasive surgery.

Once the brain has been hooked up it will overcome all of its limitations. Sharing information will no longer involve the time-consuming and tedious process of writing things down, reading them, making sense of them and trying to remember it all. Instead it will simply be a matter of logging your grey matter onto the internet and downloading what youre interested in. Want to pass your pearls of wisdom on to your kids? Just hook them up and in a fraction of a second they become as wise as you.

Whereas people like Hawking are quick to emphasize the threat from a.i., Kurzweil takes pains to highlight how much of a boon this could be to humanity. A.i. could boost our intellectual capacities to unimaginable levels and begin a totally new phase of evolution which will proceed at a pace incomparable to the current one. What is more, he even holds out the promise of immortality. As well as downloading information Kurzweil envisages the possibility of uploading a digital copy of the brain onto the internet. We will then be able to live in virtual worlds of our own creation and be liberated once and for all from the limitations of biological bodies that can be left to rot. In opposition to the prophets of doom, Kurzweil wants us to realise that this could be heaven.

(*Nanotechnology is the field of technology in which scientists make sub-microscopic devices whose

size is measured in millionths of a millimetre.)

Questions 1. According to the passage, why was Hawkings suggestion about genetic engineering

misguided?

2. Evolutionary pressures forced the developing brains of our ancestors to become particularly adept at certain activities. Which activities were these?

3. What was the great achievement in the case of Matt Nagel?

4. How will an efficient brain-computer interface affect the way we learn new information?

5. In the third paragraph, what is meant by grey matter?

6. Raymond Kurzweil is looking forward to uploading his mind to the internet. Do you share his enthusiasm?

Vocabulary A. The last paragraph includes the phrase (not in bold) proceed at a pace. What does that mean?

B. Look for words and phrases in bold that match the following.

a. literally: a religious figure who predicts the future

b. try hard (verb) c. a gift that benefits something and enables it to improve

d. e.g. an arm or a leg e. chemicals enabling signals to pass from one nerve cell to another

f. boring g. connect

h. not sophisticated; insufficiently developed i. to go bad (e.g. meat or fruit)

j. the ability to live forever k. operations that involve cutting patients open

l. area of knowledge m. make someone notice something or realize something

n. a very short period of time o. to synchronise one movement with another

p. do better than something else q. insights, knowledge

r. foresee, predict

s. increase quickly

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Reading Finally, here are a couple of ideas from Hans Moravec, who has spent his entire life thinking about the future of artificial intelligence.

Hans Moravec says that the first generation of intelligent machines could be programmed to selflessly care for us in the same way that some biological children can be convinced to care for their elderly parents. With careful planning and diligent maintenance we can arrange for a period of comfortable retirement. However, Moravec, who is less optimistic than Kurzweil, thinks that ultimately the future will belong to wilder forms of artificial intelligence that refuse to play the role of servants to an inferior form of life. As he says: Rather quickly, they could displace us. I'm not as alarmed as many by this possibility, since I consider these future machines our rightful heirs, built (by us initially) in our image but so much more potent than us. Like biological children of previous generations, they will embody humanity's best chance for a long-term future. It is our duty to give them every advantage and to bow out gracefully when we can no longer contribute.

Questions 1. Moravec envisages two possible phases, once computers finally demonstrate their

unquestionable superiority. What is the first of these two phases?

2. The passage uses the word retirement. What does this refer to as it is used here?

3. What is the second phase that follows the emergence of wilder forms of artificial intelligence? (Computers, by that time, will be designing their own offspring.)

4. What is Moravecs advice about how humanity should respond to the challenge to its authority?

Vocabulary A. Match the phrases in bold with the following.

a. hardworking (adjective) b. to push something out of the way c. to give up and retreat in a civilized manner d. powerful e. those who ought to inherit our belongings once our time is up f. shocked g. be the carrier or representative of something in the physical world

B. At the end of a performance the actors come to the front of the stage and bow. What is this?

Vocabulary revision A sentence transformation exercise. You must not change the form of the word given in bold when you complete the second sentence.

1. Deep Blue proved it was cleverer than Kasparov. outwit

Deep Blue proved it ........................................... Kasparov.

2. Kasparov had never seen such a clever machine. so

Kasparov had never seen ............................... machine.

3. Neural networks have the tremendous advantage that they can learn from experience. plus

.................................. with neural networks is that they can learn from experience.

4. This tank looks nothing like the others. bears

This tank .................................................. to the others.

5. In an instant you will be able to absorb the contents of an entire book. fraction

In ................................................. you will be able to absorb the contents of an entire book.

6. They say that the human race will become extinct. envisage

....................................... the extinction of the human race.

7. There will be no comparison between the speed of evolution in the future and that of today.

proceed

Evolution in the future ......................................... pace much faster than the current one.

8. We must develop an interface between our brains and computers. imperative

................................................... an interface between our brains and computers.

9. It would be advantageous for society if there were a race of robots willing to serve us. boon

A race of robots willing to act as servants would ...............................................

10. We must realize that this could threaten the human race. poses

We must wake up to ................................................... to humanity.

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Language extra: transitive and intransitive verbs A. When we learn new verbs it is worth thinking about whether or not they are used with objects. For instance, in the passage we read: A.i. could be used to boost our intellectual capacities. The verb boost must have an object (unless it is used in the passive voice). For that reason it is referred to as a transitive verb. Another example is the verb raise. It too must be used with an object.

The government plans to raise taxes.

However, rise is not used with an object and that is why it is referred to as an intransitive verb. Taxes are due to rise.

Some verbs can be used both with and without objects. One example is the verb increase.

A.i. will increase our intellectual capacities. Our intellectual capacities will increase.

B. Which of the following verbs must be followed by an object and which must not?

sleep buy carry wait snore

C. Whether a verb takes an object or not can depend on the context. Think of ways of using these verbs both with and without objects.

walk run

D. We often need to talk about things increasing and decreasing. Here are some useful verbs. To help you with some of these verbs try to answer the questions that follow.

Intransitive verbs related to increasing or doing well:

soar shoot up mushroom thrive flourish

Verbs related to increasing which can be transitive: add to augment expand extend magnify inflate enlarge boost

Transitive verbs meaning make a bad situation better: alleviate ameliorate

Intransitive verbs related to decreasing and getting worse:

fall plunge plummet decline worsen deteriorate decay

Transitive verbs related to decreasing: reduce lower

Transitive verbs meaning make a bad situation worse: exacerbate aggravate

1. One autumn day you go for a walk in the forest and see nothing between the trees but dead leaves. The next day the same place is full of mushrooms. Bearing this in mind, what does it mean when we say that incidents of vandalism have mushroomed?

2. We say the eagle soars when it rises rapidly in the sky. What happens when the number of computers sold by your IT company soars?

3. Some people with poor eyesight have a special lens on a handle that they can use to magnify the words printed in a book or newspaper so that they can read them more easily. What does this lens do exactly?

4. If you throw something off a cliff you watch it plunge or plummet to the ground below. If the profits of your little IT company start to plummet, what happens?

5. Your teacher starts to worry when she sees that the quality of your work is beginning to deteriorate. What is going on?

6. What causes teeth to decay?

7. Your friend has dedicated his life to uploading his brain onto the internet. He finds it is not going to work and is now terribly depressed. What could you do to alleviate his suffering?

8. Unemployment is devastating the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. What could the government do to ameliorate the situation?

9. The last verb in the list is related to an adjective that means serious. What is the adjective?

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Writing

Topic:

Some have claimed that the development of strong artificial intelligence is an inevitability. To what extent do you think the evidence supports this claim? If that breakthrough does occur which of the possible scenarios for the future do you consider to be the most likely? How optimistic can we be about the future for humanity? Are we heading for extinction?

Tips: Because exam essays are so short it is not always necessary to write an introduction in which you provide an overview of everything you will say. You can devote all the first paragraph to the first issue you want to deal with. You might choose to do this in response to the above essay question because it poses two quite different issues: firstly, whether strong artificial intelligence is possible, and, secondly, what the repercussions of this will be for humanity.

Paragraph 1 Ever since the classical epoch there have been those who have dreamed of creating machines with a life of their own. More recently there have been indications that this dream could soon become reality. (Details of one or two of the most important recent developments and the accelerating pace of progress.)

Paragraph 2 Some people who are not directly involved in the field remain sceptical that a machine will ever really deserve to be called intelligent. (The argument and your response to it.)

Paragraph 3 If the predictions of computer scientists prove to be true, there are a number of ideas about what this breakthrough might mean for humanity. As I see it, the most likely scenario is that ...................... (Or: Ideally, this would make it possible for us to ............) .................... The idea that ................................. strikes me as highly unlikely for the reason that .............

Paragraph 4 (If you havent already done so, you can round off your essay by giving a final statement about

how likely we are to become an endangered species. You might also want to outline a few steps

that society ought to be taking to ensure that future developments will not pose a threat to

humanity.)

As things stand at the moment we have every reason to be optimistic that ........

(Or:) If artificial intelligence is a real possibility we have every reason to be pessimistic about our collective future. .......... In view of this, it would be wise to .................

Ideas for steps to be taken Isaac Asimov, the famous science fiction writer, suggested a number of measures to prevent robots posing a threat to humanity. Among these was the idea that there must be an international agreement to ensure that all robots are programmed both to obey their human masters and never to do harm to human beings. It might also be worth ensuring that intelligent devices are not given the power to replicate themselves.

Language for likelihood Here are some phrases for talking about how likely or unlikely it is that something will happen.

It is almost certain that ....

It is highly likely that ........

In all probability something will/will not happen.

The chances are that we will survive.

It seems to me that there is little likelihood of robots taking control of the planet.

There is no possibility whatsoever of ......

Write it! Write 240-300 words on the subject of artificial intelligence, not forgetting to use one or two of the verbs for talking about things increasing or decreasing.

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F u l l s p a t e P r eF u l l s p a t e P r eF u l l s p a t e P r eF u l l s p a t e P r e ---- P r o f i c i e n c y P r i me rP r o f i c i e n c y P r i me rP r o f i c i e n c y P r i me rP r o f i c i e n c y P r i me r

Unit 7 Flab

Introduction Flab is fat. If someone is overweight and out of shape people often use the adjective flabby to describe them not a flattering expression. If you are slimming, people sometimes say you are trying to fight the flab. By contrast, if you think someone is nice and fat (but not too fat) you would use the adjective plump a positive expression. Another positive expression is chubby. Mums want young babies to be chubby nice and round with cheeks like tennis balls.

Thats the topic of this unit: body weight, together with the related issues of diet, fitness, health and self-esteem.

Discussion 1. What do you do if anything to keep fit? How important is it for you to know that you can

sprint a hundred metres without having a heart attack?

2. If you were out of shape and wanted to get back into shape which method would you choose:

a. Buy a treadmill and jog in front of the telly. b. Work out at a gym. c. Take up a team sport at a local club. d. Arrange to go hiking in the hills with a few friends.

3. Do you think most people who are keen to keep fit do it primarily to stay healthy or is their priority to ensure that they look good in a tight T-shirt? Do you see some of these people getting carried away and getting things out of proportion? How would you criticize the excesses of the fitness fanatic?

4. English has adopted a saying from ancient Greek: Healthy body, healthy mind. What might this mean? Is there a grain of truth in it or are your intellectual capacities quite independent of your ability to dribble a football with both feet and kick it into the back of the net?

5. Lots of people want to be slim, but a few of these take it too far and end up being skinny. In extreme cases, which can sometimes be life-threatening, doctors would say that the person is suffering from the disorder known as anorexia nervosa. What do you know about this? Do you have any idea about how to account for it?

6. Have you any idea how to work out if you are overweight or underweight?

Reading

Am I Fat? If you want to find out whether or not you are over- or underweight, you might think it is enough to stand in front of the mirror wearing your swimming costume. Wrong. You need to be a bit more scientific. What you need to do is calculate your Body Mass Index. How? First you have to weigh yourself and then measure your height. To find your BMI, divide your weight in kilos by your height in metres squared.

Lets imagine you are 2m tall and you weigh 100kg. 2 squared is 4, and 100 divided by 4 is 25, so your BMI is 25. What does that mean? If your BMI is between 25 and 30 you are overweight, and if it is over 30 your doctor will say you are obese.

The BMI, though, has its critics. The fact that you are heavy, they say, doesnt necessarily mean that you have a larger than normal amount of body fat. It might just be that you are more muscular than normal - muscle weighs much more than fat (it is far denser). If you are overweight and start pumping iron regularly you might find you lose inches but not pounds. Not to worry. Its the inches of fat that matter, not the pounds of body mass. Larger muscles add considerably to your weight, but they pose no health risks.

Is it true that the leaner you are the better? No, especially if you are a woman. Male athletes can reduce their body fat to as little as 4% of their total body weight with no ill-effects. When the figure for women drops below 10% (as it does in the cases of anorexics and many athletes) the natural female hormonal cycle is disrupted. A healthy percentage of body fat for a woman ranges between 20 and 28%, compared to 15% for men.

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Questions 1. What is your body mass index? Work it out.

2. Why might this figure give a misleading indication of how fat we are and whether or not we have a weight problem?

3. A female friend of yours shows you a photograph of a model who is all skin and bone and says that that is what she is aiming for. What would you say to her?

4. Read the following, find out what stocky means, and work out your frame size.

Some heavier people say they are not really overweight because they have thicker bones and so are naturally stocky. What these people are referring to is their frame size. How can we determine whether our frame size is small, medium or large? Take your thumb and third finger and encircle your opposite wrist right at widest the point where you would wear a watch or bracelet. If they just touch, you have a medium frame. If they overlap, you have a small frame and if they dont touch your frame is large.

Vocabulary A. Look back at the passage and at the material before it to find words in bold that match the following.

a. to prevent something carrying on with its normal order

b. without fat c. broad and heavy (human body shape)

d. a jogging machine e. a single small piece (e.g. of salt, wheat, truth)

f. having a greater mass for a given volume g. to lift weights to build your body

h. to be excessive; to take something to an extreme

i. to establish the facts about something j. to cut something into smaller equal pieces

B. We ought to know the names of at least some parts of the body. 1. How about the joints? Do you know where these are:

wrist elbow shoulder ankle knee hip

2. If you dont sit up straight in your chair you will have a problem with your spine (also called the spinal column). This is made up of 33 hollow bones through which runs the spinal chord (a delicate bundle of nerves). What is this?

3. Pirates used to have a flag with an image of the skull and two crossed bones beneath it. Which part of your skeleton is this?

4. Lots of machines are advertised to help you flatten your abdomen. Whats this?

5. Your hands have eight fingers and two thumbs. What do your feet have?

6. If you have a runny nose you need a paper tissue (or a handkerchief) but in a medical context you are more likely to hear people talking about muscle tissue, bone tissue and nervous tissue. What on earth is that?

7. We have different ways of talking about things that hurt. Complete the following sentences with these words: pain hurt ache sore

a. I wont play tennis today I have a ................... elbow.

b. You know you cant put off going to the dentist any longer when you have a

tooth............

c. Before a heart attack you experience a severe ............... in the chest and down

the left arm.

d. When a doctor meets a new patient who is clearly in .................. he asks: Where

does it ..............?

e. People who are suffering from a cold or flu often have a cough and a .....................

throat.

f. You dont tell someone you think their new hairstyle is a big mistake because you

dont want to .............. their feelings.

g. If someone is really irritating, they are a ............... in the neck.

Pre-reading What is your impression about the levels of obesity in your country? Are they rising or falling?

What would you attribute this to?

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Reading If something is a blight it causes great difficulties and unpleasantness. E.g. Pollution is a modern blight. The fact that I am so ugly has been a perpetual blight on my life.

Obesity: the Blight of the Rich The most common food-related disorder in the developing world is malnutrition whereas in the Western world it is obesity. In the UK it was recently estimated that two thirds of adult men and half of women are overweight, and almost a fifth of both sexes are obese. By comparison, back in 1980 only one in three men and one in four women were overweight.

Doctors put part of the blame on our increasingly sedentary lifestyle. Shopping, for instance, used to involve a lot of walking. Now its a quick car trip to the out-of-town hypermarket and then back home for a snack. Another factor is the increased consumption of unhealthy convenience foods such as frozen meals that just need a couple of minutes in the microwave oven. Medical experts are also concerned about the way advertising campaigns for high-fat and high-sugar snacks are encouraging kids to develop unhealthy eating habits from a very young age habits that it will then be extremely difficult to break.

Questions 1. How have the proportions of men and women who are overweight changed since 1980?

2. Broadly speaking the doctors highlight two main causes of obesity. How would you identify these two main factors?

3. Students and people who work in offices almost inevitably have a sedentary lifestyle. What do you think this is?

4. The passage mentions frozen meals as an example of convenience foods. Which of the following fall into the same category:

a tin of beans, a packet of dehydrated pasta with a powder for a carbonara sauce, a leg of lamb.

5. We have a number of ways of expressing a proportion. We can refer to a percentage or a fraction. What third way is used in the first paragraph?

6. As far as obesity is concerned does it sound as if the situation in the UK is better or worse than that in your country?

Pre-reading discussion 1. From your chemistry lessons at school do you remember anything about the different kinds of

fats?

2. Some fats and oils are healthier than others. Have you any idea which are good for us and

which are not so good? Are some fats essential to a good diet?

Reading

The Facts about Fat Many people still believe that the less fat you consume the better, but this is an overly simplistic notion that medical research shattered long ago. Another notion that doesnt stand up to scrutiny is that fat from animals is bad whereas that from plants is good.

The thing that we really ought to avoid is saturated fat. Fats like these are easily spotted because they are solid at room temperature. (They are called saturated because the fat molecules are completely covered with hydrogen atoms.) Although all animal fats fall into this category, so do some vegetable products such as butter from coconuts and cocoa beans. It is advisable to cut down the intake of saturated fats because they stimulate the liver to make more cholesterol which, in turn, increases the risk of heart disease.

Monounsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature. Studies show that switching from saturated fats to monounsaturated ones, such as olive oil, reduces the level of blood cholesterol and so lowers the risk of a heart attack or a stroke*.

When the food industry was looking for a cheap way to make its own solid fats it discovered the process of hydrogenating vegetable oil molecules. These synthetic hydrogenated vegetable oils, despite being based on plant products, are as unhealthy as the fat dripping from your T-bone steak and your roast beef. They are the main ingredient of all margarines

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and are present in a wide range of processed foods such as pastries, biscuits, cakes and your favourite chocolate spread.

So why wouldnt it be a good idea to cut out fat altogether? Apart from the fact that our diet would be very bland (many of the chemicals that give food its taste are present in its fats and oils), we would deprive ourselves of the essential vitamins A, D, E and K which are fat soluble and can only be absorbed by the body if consumed in conjunction with a certain quantity of fat or oil. Some essential fatty acids (constituents of larger fat molecules) are essential building blocks in the production of cell membranes, and are essential for the correct functioning of the bodys nervous, hormone and immune systems. One particular category of fatty acids, called Omega-3 fatty acids, has also been shown to inhibit tumour growth in animals and is associated with lower rates of malignancy in humans. Foods rich in these beneficial oils include certain fish (sardines, mackerel, salmon, trout and tuna), walnuts and green, leafy vegetables.

(*stroke: a blockage of an artery in the brain often leading to some degree of paralysis)

Questions 1. Why is it wrong to maintain that all animal fats are harmful whereas all those derived from

plants are not?

2. Are all fats solid at room temperature?

3. According to the second paragraph, which organ of the body is capable of producing

cholesterol?

4. Although olive oil is more expensive that corn oil or sunflower oil some people claim it is worth

the extra money. What reasons for this point of view are mentioned in the passage?

5. How healthy is margarine?

6. What is the connection between fat consumption and certain vitamins?

7. Which parts of your body might suffer if your diet is deficient in certain essential fatty acids?

8. Using the information from the passage, what advice could we give to people whose families

have a history of cancer?

Vocabulary Exercise A 1. A sponge will absorb water up to a point. Then it is saturated. Does that make the meaning

of the word crystal clear?

2. We read about atoms and molecules. Do you know what the difference is?

3. There are two kinds of fabric: that made from natural fibres and that made from synthetic fibres. What is the difference?

4. When you roast meat on a spit you can see the fat dripping down onto the burning charcoal. Taps (US: faucets) also drip if you dont turn them off completely. What does drip mean?

5. In English you roast meat but you bake a cake. Do you have two corresponding verbs in your native language or does a single verb cover the two activities?

6. How do you like your eggs: fried or boiled?

7. We say that a solid is soluble when you can dissolve it in a liquid (known as a solvent). Salt is soluble in water but some of the spices in curry powder only dissolve in oil so you need to heat them in hot oil to give your food its full curry flavour.

8. Have you looked at plant and animal cells in biology? Plant cells have a thick cell wall made of a chemical called cellulose. Animal cells, by contrast, just have a thin cell membrane.

9. AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. People dont die of AIDS exactly, you die of simple infections that your body can no longer defend itself against because the HIV virus has caused so much damage to the bodys immune system. How would you sum up the function of this system?

10. Ordinary people talk about lumps that they can feel beneath the skin (these are very worrying) but doctors talk about tumours. Do you know what these are?

11. So far we have come across two words with the prefix mal-: malnutrition and malignant. We also have an example of a word beginning with the opposite prefix ben-: beneficial. In general terms one means good and the other means bad. Lets say someone discovers a lump somewhere and goes to the doctor (oncologist) for a test. When he gets the result does he want to hear that the tumour is benign or malignant?

12. We say that Merenda and Nutella are chocolate spreads because you spread them on your bread. We also say that an infectious disease spreads through the population. How would you describe this in other words?

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Exercise B Look for underlined words and phrases in the text that match the following.

a. close inspection or consideration b. consumption (by mouth) c. tasteless d. identify e. when no more atoms can be added to a molecule or no more solid can be dissolved in a liquid f. together with g. components; parts of something

h. literally: to break into hundreds of small pieces i. to not let someone have what they need j. to obstruct; slow down the development k. to cause; to excite l. prepared (by the food industry so that it is ready to eat) m. reduce n. eliminate, exclude o. change

Language extra: relative clauses In the previous passage we came across a sentence beginning like this:

Foods rich in these beneficial oils include ...........

This could have been written with a full relative clause:

Foods which are rich in these beneficial oils include ..............

For this reason constructions like the first one are sometimes known as reduced relative clauses.

A. Often the clause is shortened by omitting the relative pronoun and the verb to be. However, this is not always possible. Look at these four sentences. Which relative clause cannot be reduced? Can you see the girl who is running down the path? This would be the perfect present for a child who is fond of scuba diving. This would also be good for children who are energetic. Anyone who is caught stealing will be prosecuted.

B. More generally we usually miss out relative pronouns where we can. Do you remember the rule about when we can make this omission? First you need to remember that the relative pronoun can be either the subject or the object of the verb that follows. Look at these two sentences. In which one can the relative pronoun be left out and what is the rule?

Thats the girl who bought my bike.

Thats the girl who I sold my bike to.

C. It is not uncommon for sentences to end with a preposition, like the second sentence about the girl above. To make the sentence more formal the preposition would be moved to an earlier position in the sentence in front of the relative pronouns whom or which, if this is possible. Rewrite the following sentences to make them more formal:

There are some things young children should know nothing about.

Bob is a person I have perfect trust in.

The woman Mrs Miller left her money to will arrive tomorrow.

This is the book Catherine was referring to.

The garden is a great place to play in.

D. When referring to times and places we commonly use the relative pronouns when and where, but there are some more formal alternatives. Use your own ideas to complete these sentences:

The dungeon is the place in which .......................................

If there is a full moon, midnight is the time at which ................................

The Day of Judgment is the day on which .....................

E. Notice that the relative pronoun where replaces in which or at which. For this reason it is not always appropriate to begin relative clauses that refer to places with where. Think about your home town and complete these two sentences:

(My home town) is a place where ...........................

(My home town) is a place which ............................

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F. Do you remember when we use commas with relative clauses? Look at these sentences and add commas where necessary:

I had never previously met anyone who was so charismatic.

Mr Hubbard who had the audience in the palm of his hand persuaded everyone that

only he knew how to give them peace of mind.

I never met him again which was a pity.

G. Relative clauses are a must in essays. They help us pack more information into a sentence and that often helps us write some longer sentences to add variety to our writing. Practise this by joining together the following shorter sentences in your notebooks using the relative pronoun in bold. (Dont forget commas where necessary.)

1. Anorexia can be a life-threatening condition. It is affecting an increasing number of young women. which

2. Some girls have very low self-esteem. They are most at risk. whose 3. Eventually Tracy started eating again. This is what her mother had been praying

for. which 4. Dr Northrup is renowned for her innovative treatment of anorexia. Many girls owe

their lives to her. whom

Pre-reading 1. In your estimation what proportion of the adult female population in your country is on a diet?

2. Do you think men are becoming more concerned about their figure? Why/Why not?

3. Can you describe any diets that struck you as particularly odd or particularly effective?

4. What do you think about all the pressure that people are under to be slim? Some people argue that society should be more tolerant and encourage people of all shapes and sizes to feel good about themselves. How sympathetic are you to this point of view?

Reading

The Craze for Dieting Recent surveys in the UK indicate that at any one time 60% of the female population are on some sort of diet, despite the fact that 98% of dieters put all of the weight back on soon after the diet. Dieting may be futile but it is good for business. It is reckoned that in the UK over a billion pounds is spent annually on slimming clubs, related books, magazines, machines and gadgets as well as food products and dietary supplements that claim to aid weight loss. Some estimates for the US put the figure at around $50 billion.

No one would deny that it is great to be fit and healthy, but something has gone sadly wrong when so many women spend so much time worrying about their figure instead of simply enjoying life. As one 50-year-old woman from Bradford put it: I could weep for the past 30 years Ive lost waiting to be slim before I could start living. Another woman who confesses she used to be a compulsive dieter recalls: My husband said to me one day: Are you going to do this for the rest of your life? I thought, well, am I? That was enough to sow the seed that maybe there was an alternative.

It would be a mistake to say that individual women are to blame for this. They are under so many cultural pressures, particularly from images so persuasively promoted by the mass media. Anyone who flicks through a popular glossy magazine or watches TV is repeatedly bombarded by the message that to look attractive and successful you must be slim very slim. It is a message that can only be ignored with a great effort of will.

Men have traditionally been exempt from the pressure to diet, but commercials for jeans, deodorants and underwear have stepped up the pressure on men to fight the flab, tone their muscles and flatten their bulging abdomens. Another UK survey discovered that over half of British men were worried about their weight, and 82% confessed to feeling insufficiently muscular. Commenting on these findings, Dr Martin Skinner, a psychologist at Warwick University, said: The idea that men should be unconcerned about their physical appearance has been eroded. Commercial trends have encouraged men to be more self-conscious.

Questions 1. When you drastically cut down the amount of food you eat you might be worried you are not

getting enough vitamins and minerals so you might start taking certain tablets or powders to supplement your diet. What do you think these are?

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2. Weep means cry. What is the woman from Bradford sad about?

3. What do you think a compulsive dieter is?

4. After you have ploughed the fields and the soil is ready, you sow the seed (sow, sowed, sown). In the second paragraph, however, the expression has a metaphorical meaning. What is it?

5. Before you decide which magazine to buy you flick through a few of them. What does this mean?

6. A hamster doesnt swallow its food immediately so while it still has all that food in its mouth you can see its cheeks bulging (bulge - regular verb). If your abdomen starts to bulge, whats the problem?

7. What do you think the commercial trends might be that Dr Skinner refers to in the last sentence?

Vocabulary 1. The word figure is used with two quite different meanings in the passage. What are they?

2. The passage referred to the effort of will needed to ignore the pressures from the media. Do you know what your will is? Here are some other examples: You need strong will-power to stick to a strict diet. It might be a tricky situation but as they say, Where theres a will, theres a way. People who believe in liberty think we have a free will. Anyone who is compelled to do something is forced to do it against their will.

3. Look for phrases in bold that match the following.

a. something used to neutralize bad smells b. shiny c. not achieving anything d. have a quick look (at a book or

magazine) e. cry

f. estimate g. wear away (as the sea wears away the

cliffs) h. not affected by (more usually: not under

an obligation) i. to hit time after time

Over to you If, as the passage claims, it is futile to try to lose weight permanently just by going on a diet what advice could be given to people who really do need to lose a few kilos? Any ideas?

Would you agree with the following?

Some health experts maintain that just lowering your calorie intake is a mistake. It lowers your bodys metabolism and triggers other changes that inhibit fat loss. The key, they argue, is to speed up your metabolic rate. Any kind of vigorous exercise will do, but there is an added benefit to forms of exercise that also build muscle. Muscle tissue burns far more calories than fat tissue even when you are not exercising.

Writing

Topic:

Governments in the US and the UK have adopted a policy of banning the sale of fizzy drinks and junk food in schools as part of a campaign to tackle the problem of obesity in children. Write an essay assessing whether or not this is a sensible measure to take and considering whether by itself it will be sufficient to reverse the trend towards increasing levels of childhood obesity.

The plan If you want, you can choose topics for your paragraphs from the following. Choose four of them and decide which order to put them in:

the reasons why children are conscious of their weight from an increasingly younger age.

an explanation of why it is a good idea to ban fizzy drinks and junk food; importance of habits developed at a young age; future health risks.

an explanation of why it is wrong to restrict childrens freedom of choice; childrens have a right to eat whatever they want.

a consideration of the other policies that need to be adopted to improve the healthiness of childrens diets.

how ineffective the policy will be; what children will do as soon as the school day ends.

the scale of the problem of obesity; the new proposal; the issue of how effective it might be.

a consideration of how optimistic we can be about the future and a statement about the next step that must be taken.

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Research In exams you never have the opportunity to do any research, but in real life you only write an essay after you have tried to look a bit deeper into the topic. The articles above will give you some facts and figures, and here are a few more you can choose from:

The new rules in the UK affect both school meals* and vending machines in schools. (*Note: in UK schools pupils have a midday meal, not just a snack.)

The new proposals for British schools recommend:

1. No cakes or sweets should be sold 2. In vending machines in schools bags of crisps (US: potato chips) should be replaced by unsalted nuts, sugar-free muesli bars and sesame seed bars

3. A variety of fresh fruit and vegetables should be available 4. The only drinks available should be bottled water, low fat milk, pure fruit juices, yoghurt and milk drinks with a low sugar content.

Many pupils opposed the change in menu for school meals I hate boiled potatoes, said one. Where have the chips gone? (US: French fries) Parents, though, were very keen.

Professor Fergus Lowe, from the University of Wales, said: "The new policy won't achieve much unless a serious effort is made in other ways to change children's habits and attitudes."

Other policies also being considered include: ensuring all secondary school pupils are taught how to cook healthy meals; banning TV adverts for fizzy drinks and junk food before 9.00pm.

On average British children watch 3,000 TV ads a year for sweets, drinks, junk food and fast food restaurants. One doctor said: Although children are encouraged to watch what they eat, many eat what they watch. As kids watch more television, they eat less fruit and fewer vegetables."

The latest study of 11-15 year-olds in the UK shows: 26.7% of girls and 24.2% of boys are obese - nearly double the rate in 1995. In 2006 a total of 46% of girls and 30.5% of boys were either overweight or obese.

One charity in the UK said the figures indicated a public health time bomb, adding that obese children were more likely to suffer from heart disease, diabetes and cancer in later life.

Health experts recommend that everyone eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day (although surveys indicate that only one in four people do this).

Language Here are some excerpts from an essay about backache which has a structure you may want to follow. Feel free to borrow useful words and phrases.

Paragraph 1.

Backache is an increasingly common phenomenon in modern Western societies. The latest estimates indicate that almost one in three employees will miss work at some point in their careers because of a back complaint. Not only does this cause misery to the individuals concerned but it also results in a significant loss of productivity for the economy as a whole. As a response to this problem it has recently been proposed that companies should be legally obliged to provide orthopedic seating for employees. While most groups welcome this proposal, questions have been raised about how effective it will be unless it is accompanied by other measures to prevent injury to the spine.

Paragraph 2.

Orthopedic chairs undoubtedly constitute a great step forward. .....

Paragraph3.

It would be a grave mistake, however, to think that the chairs are a panacea. Changing peoples seating is unlikely to achieve very much unless .........

Paragraph 4.

If this broader approach were taken we could look forward to a significant drop in ........... However, the chances are that there will be strong opposition from ................

Write it! As you are writing your 240-300 words on this topic try and make sure you include at least one reduced relative clause and an inversion.

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F u l l s p a t e P r eF u l l s p a t e P r eF u l l s p a t e P r eF u l l s p a t e P r e ---- P r o f i c i e n c y P r im e rP r o f i c i e n c y P r im e rP r o f i c i e n c y P r im e rP r o f i c i e n c y P r im e r

Unit 8 Doping Introduction The word dope originally referred to an alcoholic drink used as a stimulant in ceremonial dances in South Africa. In today's sporting context, doping refers to the use of banned substances or methods that may enhance the performance of an athlete.

Points for discussion

A. The first task of organisations like the World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA) is to clarify the distinction between acceptable and unacceptable ways of boosting an athletes performance. Consider this example: Two cyclists are training for a long road race. One of them lives near a mountainous region and can train at high altitude. The advantage of training up in the mountains is that the reduced level of oxygen in the atmosphere increases the concentration of red blood cells in the athletes circulatory system. This enhances the bodys ability to transfer oxygen from the lungs to the muscles a vital factor in any aerobic exercise. The other cyclist lives in a country with no high-altitude training facilities. His team doctor, however, can prescribe him the drug known as EPO which has exactly the same effect on the blood that training at high altitude has. When they turn up for the race, both athletes have a raised red blood cell count.

Questions: Has one of these athletes done something wrong? Why not both of them? Where would you draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable ways of boosting performance?

B. When this line was drawn by the International Olympic Committee it gave priority to two values, the first of which was the health of athletes. This became an urgent issue for the first time in 1967 after the death of the English cyclist Tommy Simpson during the Tour de France a death attributed to the amphetamines he had been taking to combat fatigue.

Question: Is this a good reason for banning certain substances or techniques, or is it a good reason for making sure that all athletes have the specialist medical supervision they require?

The other value was fairness. Consider another example: You and I are sprinters, both equally dedicated. You, though, have bigger thigh and calf muscles than me, not because you train harder but just because you were born with more of a certain male hormone called testosterone.

Question: Nature obviously isnt fair, so dont we make things a little fairer if I have a few hormone injections to give me a chance of beating you?

C. Question: If you were an international athlete, and you saw that your more successful competitors were using substances that were banned, and you realized that you would never win anything unless you did the same, would you choose to stay a clean, fair-playing loser?

Vocabulary 1. Why do you think the system that comprises the heart, arteries, capillaries (the narrowest

blood vessels) and the veins is called the circulatory system? (Bear in mind that we have

the verb circulate.)

2. Two of the verbs in bold are similar in meaning. Which is more synonymous with improve

and which is more synonymous with increase?

3. Look for the words and phrases in bold which are synonymous with the following. a. distinguish

b. the top of the leg between the knee and the hip

c. the muscular part at the back of the lower part of the leg between the ankle and the knee d. an athlete who runs fast over a short distance

e. prevent oneself from suffering from something (literally: fight) f. the quantity of something in a specific volume of gas or liquid

g. height above sea level

h. exhaustion i. the process by which an expert follows and checks what someone else is doing

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Reading

The State of Play Doping is nothing new. Those who need to demonstrate tremendous physical performance, such as athletes and warriors, have always sought ways to have an edge over their opponents. Before going into battle some of the ancient Norse warriors used to eat a kind of mushroom that has a pronounced effect on the brain, and chariot racers in ancient Rome would dope their horses to make them run faster around the stadium.

There are two things, though, that are new. One is the scale of the phenomenon. To get some estimate of this most commentators agree that it is useless to try to draw conclusions from the numbers of cases of positive anti-doping tests. The accounts of athletes who have spoken out publicly are much more revealing. According to them, there has been a substantial increase in the use of performance-enhancing drugs since the 1960s, both in the numbers of athletes involved and in the range of sports or athletic events. It was originally confined mainly to weightlifters, hammer-throwers and cyclists, but now it is much more widespread. Whats more, its no longer just the elite athletes with an inter-national status, but it is also the guys at the local gym pumping iron, snacking on protein powders and taking body-building pills.

How did it get to be like this? One factor in the early days was the rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union during the period known as the Cold War. International sport became as politically important as the race to put a man on

the moon. We now know that Soviet coaches systematically doped virtually all of their world-class athletes. One of their innovations in the 1950s was the use of male hormones to increase muscle mass. In response, scientists in the US developed synthetic versions of those hormones (anabolic steroids) to make their athletes even more muscular.

The second new dimension is the vast and bewildering array of techniques available today to enhance performance. Gone are the days when cyclists sucked ether-coated sugar cubes to try to break through the pain barrier (as they did in the nineteenth century). As one commentator from the world of cycling put it: Maximizing a cyclists performance is now such a highly complex task. Only the team doctor has the specialist knowledge, so the average professional cyclist with no scientific background just has to do what he is told. He opens his mouth, holds out his arm, and trusts.

Nothing is an offence until there is a law condemning it. Doping only officially became a problem in 1928 when the International Amateur Athletic Federation banned participants from doping, but this was completely ineffective because at that time there were no tests. It wasnt until 1967 that the International Olympic Committee introduced a series of tests for a list of banned substances. However, those responsible for testing have always found it hard to keep up with the latest innovations in the field of doping.

Questions 1. How far back does the practice of doping go?

2. Since the 1960s what are the two developments that have marked a new phase in the history of doping?

3. What are anabolic steroids and what do they do?

4. Why did drugs in sport become particularly important during the Cold War (the period after the Second World War when the West and the Soviet Union threatened each other with destruction)?

5. Why does the average cyclist now have to put blind faith in his team doctor?

6. When did the authorities responsible for regulating athletics really begin to get serious about the phenomenon of doping?

7. What happened in 1967 to prompt officials to act? (See the introduction.)

Vocabulary Match the words in bold in the reading text with the following definitions.

a. size

b. big, very significant

c. aspect, side d. limited

e. limit f. soldier, fighter

g. people whose job it is to express an

opinion about something

h. those at the top of the hierarchy i. competition

j. confusing k. advantage

l. variety

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Microscopic language extra In the fourth paragraph there was a sentence that began like this:

Gone are the days when .........

Here the word gone is used as an adjective, and this is an example of another inversion that is possible, although rare. Heres another example:

Happy is the child who can still believe in Father Christmas.

Warning: if you want to use this structure, stick closely to examples you come across and dont forget the relative clause because without it the sentence just doesnt work. For instance, we cant say: Fast is the Ferrari or Handsome is Tom Cruise.

Pre-reading discussion Before reading the following overview of doping techniques you should first talk about forms of

doping you have already heard of and any recent scandals that you can remember.

Reading

Doping Techniques: an Overview Here are a few highlights from the long list of banned substances:

Caffeine Not all banned substances are those you would normally need a doctors prescription for. Caffeine is one of them. This mild stimulant boosts alertness, reaction time and combats fatigue. It also has a beneficial effect on the way the body uses its fat reserves as a source of energy during exercise. Four cups of filter coffee or six cans of Coke would put you over the IOC limit. Be careful: 10g of pure caffeine can be lethal.

Amphetamines Stimulants (closely related to ecstasy) taken to reduce fatigue in sports where endurance is paramount. As with ecstasy, there can be particularly adverse effects when used in a hot climate. Amphetamines reduce the blood flow to the skin, which impedes the mechanism for maintaining a constant body temperature, thereby increasing the risk of heatstroke. The death of English cyclist Tommy Simpson (mentioned above) in 1967 occurred during a particularly hot and steep climb under the influence of amphetamines.

Bronchodilators These drugs dilate the airways in the lungs thereby increasing the bodys ability to take in oxygen. These drugs are normally only prescribed to people suffering from asthma. Some people were surprised that at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games 607 athletes notified the Olympic Committee that they were asthmatic and so had a medical reason for taking these drugs.

Human Growth Hormone (HGH) The big problem with anabolic steroids for guys and girls wanting even bigger muscles (apart from kidney damage, sterility and disturbing personality changes) is that they are easily detectable for up to six months after their use. HGH stimulates muscle growth but is not easy to detect and, so far, evidence of adverse side-effects on athletes is sparse. (Warning: HGH on the black market sometimes comes from the pituitary glands* of corpses and may be contaminated with the virus that causes Creutzfeldt-Jakob syndrome, otherwise known as Mad Cow Disease.)

Erythropoietin (EPO) This is a hormone normally produced by the kidneys which stimulates the bone marrow (the soft tissue in the centre of our bones) to produce red blood cells. The effect is to increase the capacity of the blood to carry oxygen. The downside is that the increased density (thickness) of the blood can lead to the formation of a clot which could block a major artery. Some have attributed the unusually high number of fatal heart attacks among competitive cyclists in the recent past to the use of EPO.

Blood doping A quantity of blood is removed from an athlete two months before the competition date. The night before the race, it is then injected back into the circulatory system. As with EPO, the effect is to raise the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood.

(*pituitary gland a small gland beneath the brain which produces hormones.)

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Questions 1. If you are an Olympic athlete why should you be careful about drinking Coke before a race?

2. What are the side-effects of amphetamines?

3. Bronchodilators are normally used to treat asthma. What effect do you think they have on the airways (tubes, passages) in the lungs?

4. If you want to build your muscle mass, what are the two options mentioned in the passage?

5. What is the health risk for athletes who take EPO?

6. Imagine you have a team of cyclists training for the Tour de France and the WADA announces that at last it has a reliable test for EPO (which you have been using since the late 1990s) what would you do to give your team the same edge that it had the previous season?

Vocabulary 1. Which word in bold refers to something that makes you more energetic?

2. Look for the name of a part of the body amongst the words in bold (actually the organ responsible for removing liquid waste from the blood).

3. If you are going down a steep hill on your bike you will need good brakes. What does steep mean?

4. If you look into someones eyes as the light is getting dimmer you will see their pupils (the dark part in the centre) getting wider. Which of the words in bold refers to this process of expanding something circular like the pupil or a tube?

5. Long races like the marathon are tests of the athletes endurance. Marathon runners have to be able to endure the unpleasant aspects of such a long run. What does this mean?

6. Match the remaining words and phrases in bold with the following definitions.

a. a dead body

b. the inability to have children

c. things which are stored d. fatal; causing death

e. negative f. disadvantage

g. a solid or semi-solid lump in

something that is normally a liquid

h. not present in a large quantity i. containing dangerous impurities

j. the state of being fully awake and ready for action

k. obstruct

Points for discussion 1. At international athletics competitions people expect to see old world records being broken

and new ones being set. Is it reasonable to expect that this can carry on forever? Is human athletic achievement unlimited? On a graph, would it be a straight line that continues upwards, or would it be a curve that levels off at some point?

2. Now compare your views with that of a group of academics. Are they right?

Without either doping or genetic engineering athletics could soon reach a state in which no new world records are set. This was the conclusion drawn by academics at Wolverhampton University in England in 2005 after they surveyed the historical data of world records in athletics. There was a dramatic increase in athletic performance between the 1940s and the 1960s, which can be attributed to the application of a more scientific approach to training by coaches. At that time, world records were falling like flies. By contrast, over the last two or three decades many records have proved to be much more durable. The academics contend that the benefits to be gained from the more scientific training programmes are limited because human athletic potential has a ceiling. They suggest that in some athletic events the limit of the human body, unaided by drugs or genetic manipulation, may already have been reached.

3. What impact do you think it will have on the world of sport if spectators can no longer expect to see world records being broken?

4. What do you think of this argument?

Some argue that professional sport is now an important part of the entertainment industry. It has its own star system, rewarded not just by gold medals but by lucrative sponsorship deals. It is the stars who attract the spectators. They flock to sports events in the hope of seeing a new sporting feat. The system would break down if the best athletes were no longer able to break records and so advance the boundaries of human achievement. For this reason we must allow athletes to use all the reasonably safe methods they can to enhance their performance. If there were no prospect of a new world record, interest would wane and the industry would suffer.

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Vocabulary 1. Your friend can shake her hips like Shakira. What does she have the potential to become?

2. Look for phrase in bold in the last two little excerpts that match the following.

a. profitable; making good money b. to look at systematically c. maintain, assert, argue d. to reduce (slowly) e. to drop or die in large numbers and at

great speed

f. the activity when large numbers of people go somewhere all at the same time

g. exerting control over something in a skilful way

h. upper limit i. lasting; surviving for a long time j. a great achievement

3. Lets use the word flock as an excuse for revising some of the names for different groups of

things. Match these:

1. herd 2. swarm 3. flock 4. stream 5. gang 6. mob 7. shoal 8. squad 9. pack 10. constellation 11. bundle 12. bunch

a. of angry demonstrators b. of thieves c. of refugees crossing the border d. of policemen e. of birds/sheep f. of elephants/cattle g. of bees h. of fish i. of flowers j. of sticks k. of stars l. of cards/wolves

Language extra: cleft sentences A. In the last paragraph of the previous extract we came across this sentence.

It is the stars who attract the spectators.

This could have been written more simply like this:

The stars attract the spectators.

The advantage of the first structure is that if you say the sentence out loud it is much easier to put a lot of emphasis on the word stars, which is appropriate here because we want to emphasize what an important role the stars have to play.

Sentences like these are called cleft sentences. Cleave means cut, and what we do here is cut up a simple sentence and change it so that it becomes more emphatic. This is a nice little device for our essays when we want to emphasize something and show how fantastic our command of the English language is.

B. Heres how you can use this structure to emphasize different aspects of a situation such as this:

Millar tested positive for EPO yesterday.

Complete the following sentences and think about why you might want to emphasize that particular aspect of the situation.

It was Millar .............

It was EPO ..............

It was yesterday ..................

C. Another structure is also possible. Instead of this straightforward sentence:

Above all else, athletes want to win.

We can write:

What athletes want above all else is to win.

Instead of:

I object to people cheating.

We can write:

What I object to is people cheating.

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Practice: Try to turn the following into cleft sentences in your notebooks. You will need to think a little about whether it is better to use the It... structure or the What... structure.

1. Spectators want to see records being broken.

2. I am concerned about the health risks for athletes.

3. The coach has the ultimate responsibility for whatever is done to the athlete.

4. He wants the laws against doping to be relaxed. (Clue: this is a bit tricky so use the phrase a relaxation of...)

Note: When we say, What I want ... we mean, The thing that I want ... and this is why we may use a singular verb and ignore the fact that the object is plural. So we can say: What I want is three gold

medals, a world record and a lucrative sponsorship deal.

Reading You are going to read an article about the next era in the history of doping. It begins by referring to gene therapy. To someone who isnt as well-informed as you how would you explain the difference between genes, chromosomes and DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid)?

Gene therapy uses viruses. Do you know what these are? How do they compare with bacteria?

Gene Doping As the 21st century was dawning astonishing breakthroughs in the world of medicine were being followed with keen interest by those in the world of sport. In a number of laboratories around the world a new technique called gene therapy was being perfected. The research had nothing to do with sport and everything to do with finding cures for previously untreatable medical conditions, but it was already obvious to those in athletics that the new techniques could be applied to healthy athletes to take sport into a whole new dimension.

One team at the University of Pennsylvania, hoping to find a treatment for muscular dystrophy (which causes muscles to become smaller and weaker), announced that they had successfully applied a form of gene therapy to mice with the result that muscle growth increased by up to 30%. The leader of the team, Professor H. Lee Sweeney, was surprised that the majority of people phoning him after the research findings were published were not doctors treating muscular dystrophy patients but sports coaches wanting to get their hands on some of the magic formula.

The new technique of gene therapy exploits a virus ability to alter the DNA of the cell it infects. A virus, being much smaller than a bacterium, is able to penetrate the cells of the infected organism and modify the host DNA. Those modifications are normally only to the advantage of the virus, which is then able to produce countless copies of itself ready to infect other cells.

The Sweeney team took a virus that readily infects muscle tissue and genetically engineered it so that instead of causing a disease it simply introduced a new gene a synthetic gene designed to induce further muscle growth. After being injected with the virus, young mice which were kept sedentary showed a gain of between 15 and 30% in muscle mass. When a different group of rats were injected in only one leg and then made to exercise daily on a treadmill for eight weeks, the muscle mass of their injected legs was almost twice that of the uninjected ones.

The new gene works by producing a growth hormone that acts locally on the injected muscle and doesnt enter the bloodstream. This is a huge plus because raised levels of the hormone in the circulatory system are associated with cardiac problems and cancer. It would be an even bigger plus for athletes because this would make it undetectable in blood and urine samples.

In 2002 the World Anti-Doping Authority called a meeting and made a statement that the new techniques, if applied in athletics, would amount to gene-doping and would be banned.

Questions 1. What was the ultimate objective of Sweeneys team at the University of Pennsylvania?

2. Why are viruses so useful for gene therapy?

3. Sweeneys team didnt use an ordinary virus. They used one that they had modified. What was this new virus designed to do?

4. In the second experiment the rats exercised daily on a treadmill. How did the activity of the rats in the first experiment compare to this?

5. Why do you think they injected only one of the legs of each of the rats?

6. What is the big advantage of gene doping for athletes who want to cheat?

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Vocabulary Exercise A 1. The word exploit has two uses, one of which has a positive connotation and the other a

negative connotation. Look at the two sentences below and say which is positive and which is negative.

There are still vast oilfields underground which we ought to exploit. People who set up factories and make huge profits while they pay their workers only a few dollars a day can be accused of exploitation.

2. After the sun goes down and the light starts to fade we have the time of day called the dusk. What do we call the opposite of this, when the sky starts to become light in the early morning?

3. We say that painters work in two dimensions and sculptors produce three-dimensional works of art. Whats this?

4. If you go to buy a new carpet you will be asked for the dimensions of your room. What does the guy in the carpet shop want to know?

5. Some diseases are infectious (or contagious) and you have to be careful not to pass them on to other people. Other diseases like asthma and Alzheimers are not infectious. If you sneeze on someone and infect them with your flu virus, what do you do?