Scientific and technological progress
Itӳ difficult to overestimate the role of science and technology in our life. They accelerate the development of civilization and help us in our co-operation with nature. Scientists investigate the laws of the universe, discover the secrets of nature, and apply their knowledge in practice improving the life of people.
Let's compare our life nowadays with the life of people at the beginning of the 20th century. It has changed beyond recognition. Our ancestors hadn't the slightest idea of the trivial things created by the scientific progress that we use in our every day life. I mean refrigerators, TV sets, computers, microwave ovens, radio telephones... They would seem miracles to them that made our life easy, comfortable and pleasant.
On the other hand, the great inventions of the beginning of the 20th century, I mean radio, airplanes, combustion and jet engines have become usual things and we can't imagine our life without them.
A century is a long period for scientific and technological progress, as it's rather rapid. Millions of investigations the endless number of outstanding discoveries have been made. Our century has had several names that were connected with a certain era in science and technology. At first it was called the atomic age due to the discovery of the splitting of the atom. Then it became the age of the conquest of space when for the first time in the history of mankind a man overcame the gravity and entered the Universe. And now we live in the information era when the computer network embraces the globe and connects not only the countries and space stations but a lot of people all over the world.
All these things prove the power and the greatest progressive role of science in our life. But every medal has its reverse. And the rapid scientific progress has aroused a number of problems that are a matter of our great concern. These are ecological problems, the safety of nuclear power stations, the nuclear war threat, and the responsibility of a scientist. But still we are grateful to the outstanding men of the past and the present who have courage and patience to disclose the secrets of the Universe.
The mathematical sciences
Rapid growth in the nature and applications of mathematics means that the Newtonian core - calculus, analysis, and differential equations - is now just one part of a more diverse mathematical landscape. Yet most scientists have explored only this original territory, because that is all that was included in their curriculum in high school, college, and graduate school. With the exception of statistics, an old science widely used across all disciplines that has become largely mathematical during the 20th century, the narrow Newtonian legacy of analysis is the principal connection between practicing scientists and broad mathematical foundations of their disciplines.
The dramatic changes in the mathematical sciences of the last quarter century are largely invisible to those outside the small community of research mathematicians. Today's mathematical sciences, like yesterday's Gaul, can be divided into three parts of roughly comparable size: statistical science, core mathematics, and applied mathematics. Each of these three major areas is led (in the United States) by a few thousand active researches and receives approximately $50 million in federal research support annually. Although the boundaries between these parts overlap considerably, each province has an identifiable character paradigm established by Newton: data, deduction, and observation.
Core mathematics investigates properties of number and space, ideas rooted in antiquity. Its tools are abstraction and deduction; its edifices include functions, equations, operators, and infinite-dimensional space. Within core mathematics are found the traditional subjects of number theory, algebra, geometry, analysis, and topology. After a half-century of explosive specialized growth, core mathematics is experiencing a renaissance of renewed integrity based on the unexpected but welcome discovery of deep links among its various components.
Science
Science is a source of progress. It develops the world we live in. Our century is an epoch of great discoveries in science and engineering. It is epoch of scientific and technological revolution, when new ideas are being born and new discoveries, inventions are being made at an ever increasing rate.
Today science has become the most important factor in the development of national economy in the whole world. Scientific progress serves the interests of society, helps to increase the well-being of people and develops public education.
Computer technology plays the most important role in the progress of science. The ability of computers to solve many mathematical problems more effective than man does, has given rise to new trends in mathematics. Computer science is a new field of study and research. In recent years scientists of the world have achieved great success in the development of physics, chemistry, biology, and such astonishing, interesting science as psychology.
But science may be turned both for peace and military purpose. It can take good forms and evil forms. With the help of scientific inventions politicians make weapons of mass destruction. But on the other hand researches help us in our life: at home, at work, at school and make the level of the country development higher. That's why there are a lot's of facts telling about a great amount of well-known scientists who had burned their works when they've understood the consequences of their inventions.
There are a lot of world-known scientists. One of the greatest names in history of man's work in physics is James Clerk Maxwell. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on November 13, 1831. After school he entered the University of native city, attended the University of Cambridge which he graduated in 1854. For two years he lectured, made experiments in optics at Trinity College, studied much himself. In 1856 he became a professor of natural philosophy and in 1860 - a professor of physics and astronomy at kings College in London.
In 1871 Maxwell became a professor of experimental physics at Cambridge. At that time students couldn't even have such subjects like electricity and magnetism, as there was no laboratory for the study of these subjects. Maxwell organized such a laboratory, which made Cambridge world-known. This was a fruitful period of Maxwell's life. He studied the problems of electromagnetism, molecular physics, optics, and mechanics.
His most outstanding investigations are in the field of kinetic theory of gases and electricity. Maxwell is the founder of the electromagnetic field (side by side with Faraday). In 1873 he published his work on electricity and magnetism. During these years he also wrote his classic "Matter and Motion", "Atoms", "Attraction", "Faraday". Maxwell died in 1879.
Enzymes
No living organisms are stable. They are in a continual state of chemical change. All the time that we are alive we are continually dying and being reborn. About three million of our blood cell die while we read a sentence, and at the same time three million more cells are made.
The word metabolism is used to signify the chemical changes which take place in living organisms. By using of suitable measuring instruments it is possible to follow the blood cells in the body and to find out how long they live. This work has revealed that the average life of each blood cell is about a fortnight. Even bones are much less stable than we might expect. It is clear that since the living body is in a state of constant change, the chemical changes must be precisely controlled.
We now know that each of the many thousands of chemical reactions which take place in a living body is controlled by a particular enzyme. Enzymes are organic catalysts which take part in the chemical processes occurring in living bodies. The change of one form of sugar into another, a reaction which is common in living organisms, is a simple instance of the action of an enzyme. This means that in the presence of water a molecule of sucrose may split into two smaller molecules, one of glucose and the other of fructose. These are sugars which each have the same molecular formula but the atoms are arranged differently in each sugar.
A great number of enzymes bring about hydrolysis - that is a chemical reaction in the presence of water. The process of digestion is brought about by hydrolyzing enzymes. Another group of enzymes brings about oxidation's. i.e. reaction during which pairs of hydrogen atoms are removed from molecules and are combined with oxygen atoms to make water. It seems probable that a single cell may contain a thousand or more different enzymes which bring about a similar number of chemical reactions.
Computers
When Charles Babbage, a professor of Mathematics at Cambridge university, invented the first calculating machine in 1812 he couldn't imagine the situation we find ourselves in today. Nearly everything we do in the world is helped, or even controlled by computers, the complicated descedants of his simple machine. Computers are used more and more often in the world today, for the simple reason that they are far more efficent than human beings. They have much better memories and they can store much information. No man alive can do 500000 sums in one second, but a computer can. In fact, computers can do many of the things we do, but faster and better. They can predict weather, and ever play chess, write poetry or compose music.
Just as television has extended human sight across the barriers of time and distance, so the computers extend the power of the human mind across the existing barriers.
Computers are one of great importance in modern hospital. The chief use of computers is the storing and sorting the medical knowledge which has been equired in the last 50 years. No doctor can possible keep up with all discoveries. The only solution of the problem is store medical knowledge in a computer. Today there are medical computer centers were all existing knowledge of simpthoms of various dessieses and of their treatment is stored. Doctors feed data on simpthoms in the computer and get the nessesary information on correct diagnostics and treatment.
Ordinary computer can remember only the data stored in the hard disk. Now scientists have desighned machines, that are capable of learning from experience and remembering what they have learned. Such a machine is capable of recognising objects without human help or control. Of course, they made many mistakes.
There is another similar machine which can look at letter alphabet a simple words and they "say" thought a loudes speaker what it has seen. The machine has as certain learning power.
Information science with the ideas and message of processing and storing informations is of great importance today. That's why computer technology must be told in secondary school. The new subject "basic information science", and "computing machine" was intreduste for the siner forms at schools. The pupils teach computers to anlestigate school problems. Contact with the machine increases the interest in learning, makes them more serious about studing new subject. School computers are used not only for studing information science, but also examinations purposes. Young people who finish the school must be trained to operate computers.
Internet in daily life
More and more people nowadays are interested to be known about all events, in taking some information quickly. With the help of Internet you can make it easily.
Back in the 1960th, at the time of cold war, Pentagon needed military systems that would continue to work even the phones and radio had broken down. In 1964 Paul Baran connected 4 computers in different parts of the USA and posted a message.
You couldn't destroy Internet – if some computers will be broken down, the rest will work well. Nobody owns the Internet, and no organization controls its use.
Now millions of people around the world are logging into libraries, call up satellite weather photos, download computer programs and music, take part in discussion groups. Even the Presidents have their own Internet accounts. In fact, anyone with modem connected to the phone line can enjoy Internet.
The total number of people in Russia, who get into Internet, due the Putin's statistics, is 10 million. In the modern Europe this number is much more – there are more than 200 million Internet users.
In future all technics will be connected to the Internet. Now we can connect with Internet mobile phone, photo camera, palm computers and even alarm clock. Now we can be connected with all the world everywhere – in the bus, underground and even on the north pole.
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