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Is there an undiscovered tenth planet circling the Sun, as
big as Earth? Many St. Petersburg astronomers believe so.
Their opinion is based on a complicated mathematical analysis
of the flight trajectory of a comet know in the astronomical
catalogues under the index number of 1862-3.
The comet's orbit seems to be distorted by a large unknown
gravitational center.
If, as they think, it is a planet, it would have a diameter
of 5,000 to 7,500 miles and a similar mass and volume as Earth.
It would be very much farther out, however-circling the Sun
at a distance of about 5,000 million miles, some 54 times
the distance of Earth from the Sun.
If the orbit coincides with the one calculated, it will be
certain proof of the existence of the unknown planet.
MYSTERY OF LAKE SOLVED
One of the mysteries of Lake Balkhash, in eastern Kazakhstan,
has been cleared up. This salt lake, as large as half a dozen
English counties, always stays at the same level, though it
stands in a desert which rarely gets any rain and is fed by
only a few surface rivers.
It has now been discovered that there are, however, huge
rivers underground.
The largest of them carries some 176,000 million gallons
a year.
Remains of an extinct hippopotamus have been discovered in
the Gobi desert by a party of paleontologists.
This is the first such discovery in the Gobi - hitherto such
fossils have been discovered only in North America. The Gobi
hippo lived about seven to ten million years ago. At that
time the Gobi desert was a hot marshy plain covered with rich
vegetation.
THE LEGEND
A legend has long been current that the town of Yangikent
in the Syr-Daiya delta in Central Asia was abandoned by its
inhabitants because of a plague of snakes.
The ruins of the town were first discovered by Russian travellers
in 1741, but there was no clue to why it had been abandoned.
There were no traces of conquest. The most recent tombstones
were dated 1362.
GRAVEYARD OF GIANTS
A rich grave, almost 5,000 years old, has been found inside
а hill in the Northern Caucasus.
It is made of slabs of volcanic rock, some of them weighing
over a ton.
It contained the bodies of a man and a woman, together with
household utensils and golden ornaments and jewellery, possibly
of Sarmatian and Hunnish origin.
One of the most interesting points was the height of the
man: over 7 ft 2 1/2 in.
He would have been a giant today, let alone 5,000 years ago,
when most researchers suggest that men and women were generally
very much shorter than at present.
ROBOT ZAAN SORTS OUT THE REJECTS
A robot recruit to British industry was shown to the public
in London. The creature's name is Zaan, and its talent is
for sorting out small objects by their colour. In particular,
for the food industry to pick out foreign bodies and sub-standard
candidates from rivers of beans or nuts or potato flakes.
It can separate rejects at the rate of 200 rejects a second.
This sort of work has been done in the past by four or five
men sitting alongside a conveyor belt picking out tiny or
bad fried potato flakes from satisfactory ones. Men can pick
out rejects at a rate of about one a second; it is tedious
work. It costs $ 50 a ton to sort dehydrated food flakes by
hand.
There are machines which can sort small objects by size and
shape, for instance rejecting a bean with a maggot hole which
is detected by intelligent needles. But Zaan Colour Sorter
inspects the small particles with photo-electric eyes and
casts out any which are the wrong colour or the wrong brightness.
Unlike human sorters, the machine is unaffected by emotional
problems, fatigue, eye-strain, the tea-break, or the conversational
next door. The inventors claim that it is cheaper, more hygienic,
and more accurate than traditional methods of sorting.
The mechanism by which by which spreads from one place in
the body to many, has been the subject of intensive research
у scientists for many years. What may be an answer to that
question - and a suggestion as to how metastasis might be
inhibited - came from the Institute for Cancer Research.
Speculation on haw cancer spreads throughout the body has
included the possibilities that it does so through the migration
of whole malignant cells from the primary tumour mass, or
through viruses that are released from dying cancer cells.
The report in the journal Science suggests a third possibility.
This is that cancer cells or viruses leak their genes - in
the form of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA - into the bloodstream,
and the DNA then travels to places where it invades normal
cells and transforms them to malignant ones.
To test this hypothesis scientists injected mice with DNA
from polyoma cancer virus and from a pneumococcal bacterium
and compared the results.
They found that DNA from tumor viruses was much more resistant
body defences than the bacterial DNA. The reason for this,
they said, may have had something to do with the closed-ring
form of the tumor-type DNA molecules. They said results indicated
that this DNA could still produce its cancerous effects.
Thus, the report said that "tumor-inducing DNA can be
transported in biologically active form from one part of the
body to another."
From The New York Times
MANIPULATING THE BRAIN
Some persons were disturbed last week over a report of experiments
in which the behaviour of animals and people was influenced
by electrical stimulated of selected regions of their brains.
According to the report, weak currents made to flow through
electrodes implanted in the brains of monkeys and cats enabled
scientists to "play" the animals like little electronic
toys. They yawned, climbed, ran, turned, slept, mated and
changed their emotional states from passivity to rage an vice
versa, all on electrical command.
In one of the most spectacular experiments, a Spanish fighting
bull was stopped in fall charge by a stimulus radioed to an
electrode implanted in its brain, which inhibited aggressiveness.
People, too, have undergone such stimulation's in the course
of diagnosis and therapy for severe cases of epilepsy. Electrical
stimulation's of certain regions of their brains have produced
feelings of intense pleasure and of severe anxiety, a loss
of ability to think or express themselves a sudden increase
in word output and profound feelings of friendliness.
The scientists who reported these findings was Dr. Jose Delgado
of Yale University's School of Medicine. In a lecture, Dr.
Delgado discussed some aspects of this work that might worry
persons outside this field of research.
He emphasized, first, that the implantation of electrodes
in the brain ah the passage of weak currents through them
neither hurts (brain tissue is insensitive) nor causes any
functional damage.
Such studies, Dr. Delgado believes, may enable scientists
to discover the "cerebral basis of anxiety, pleasure,
aggression and other mental functions, which we could influence
in their development and manifestation through electrical
stimulation's, drugs, surgery and especially by means of more
scientifically programmed education".
Dr. Delgado believes that control of human behaviour on a
large scale would not work because the effect of a stimulus
can be changed or even overridden by the subject's own desires,
emotions, etc. This has been shown in experiments on both
animals and people. For example, monkeys in which aggressive
behaviour was electrically stimulated did not just attack
any other member of the colony, but made "intelligent"
attacks only on rivals, sparing their "friends".
Dr. Delgado thinks it will be necessary to develop new theories
and concepts to explain the biological bases of social and
anti-social behaviour. These, he said, "for the first
time in history can be explored in the conscious brain".
from The New York Times
A special kind of fishing expedition was organized in Ohio.
Its goal was to collect specimens, most of them known as placoderms,
that lived some 300 million years ago.
What had brought about the project was the cutting of a highway
into Cleveland. Giant earth-moving machines would cut through
a formation of worldwide fame, the Cleveland shale. For more
than a century it had been known as a rich source of fossil
fish from the Devonian period. Specimens, collected where
rivers had cut through the shale, were prized possessions
of the British in New York and other centres.
Cleveland's Museum of Natural History conducted the new hunt
which, it was hoped, would provide the first complete with
movable jaws. Some of these species had been partially reconstructed
into creatures of frightening appearan-ce.
From The New York Times
TRAINS HALTED BY PROTEST
Eastern region rail services were halted last night after
drivers stopped work in sympathy with a driver who was dismissed.
The driver, who is based in Leeds, was acting in line with
a decision by Eastern Region staff not to implement changes
in working schedules arising from British Rail's economy measures.
After refusing to take out a train in accordance with a new
schedule, he was sent home, and 400 drivers at the Leeds Holbeck
depot decided to stop work until be was allowed to start work
again. The action was supported by drivers in the London area.
On the Southern Region, the National Union of Railwaymen
is recommending members to stop work for part of Thursday
afternoon to coincide with the funeral of a guard 0 who was
stabbed to death.
TIDAL WAVE EXPERTS WORKING TOGETHER
Experts from Russia, the United States and Japan have left
Vladivostok aboard the research vessel Pegasus to study tsunami
- the devastating tidal waves produced by undersea earthquakes
in the Pacific.
There is regular exchange of information between the tsunami
study centers in Sakhalin and Honolulu. Sakhalin transmits
data from observers in Kamchatka and the Kuril islands. These
lie in a zone where four-fifths of all earthquakes in the
world occur. These earthquakes sometimes originate only 100-125
miles from Russian shores, a distance a tidal wave can cover
in 20-30 minutes. But Russian stations give warning of possible
danger within seconds of the quake.
NORTH SEA OIL IS POLLUTING THE BALTIC
The oily waters of the North Sea are polluting the Baltic.
This is the verdict of studies conducted by expeditions aboard
the research ship Oceanograph. The waters of the North Sea
now contain far greater amounts of harmful substances, particularly
oil and oil products.
In the past the picture was quite the reserve. The currents
passing through the Skagerrak and Kattegat brought oxygen
into the Baltic and served as a ventilator for its waters
at great depths.
The pollution of the North Sea has been caused by the rapid
increase in oil extraction there. Large quantities of oil
have escaped on to the northern European, particularly Scandinavian,
continental shelf.
Urgent and efficient measures are needed to decrease the
quantities of harmful waste thrown into the sea. All the states
of northern Europe would agree with that, of course, but many
aspects of the problem remain unsolved.
So far as the Baltic is concerned, the states along its shores
have worked out a convention to prevent its pollution.
At the Institute of Gerontology in Kiev scientists are waging
an offensive against old age.
We begin to age far earlier than we think. The process of
"descending development" begins in the early thirties.
As a biological species, man ought to live 100-120 years,
but for various reasons we lose the last 30 or 40.
We can now, however, to some extent, lengthen life. In experiments
on animals, we have learned to prolong it by a third or more.
One aspect of the institute's work is the discovery and testing
of substances which will produce a physiological effect -
combinations of vitamins which the aging body needs and preparations
with microelements and amino-acids. Some of these are giving
promising results.
Old age is a contradictory process. On the one hand, the
body adapts itself in some ways, while, on the other, certain
faculties atrophy and die.
It appears that our brains and muscles tend to stay young
the more actively and regularly we use them.
A correctly chosen profession, doing as much work as we are
fit for, sensible meals and purposeful, not passive, leisure
are all things that help the body adapt.
It has long been remarked that there are in the world some
places where people live longer, are less frequently ill,
and are able to work almost to the end of their days.
The Kiev Institute of Gerontology has examined some 40,000
people aged 80 and | 
Ключевые слова:изучение английского
