Upper-Intermediate By Adrian Wallwork, Keith Harding Дополнительнительные материалы
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Welcome To Tomorrow In the 1950s, the future was seen as an explosion of imaginative technology - food in pill form, easy travel between planets, huge skyscrapers and jet-propelled backpacks. Homes would be full of labour-saving innovations and appliances, and would have a glamorously minimalist style. In some ways, not much has changed. We still tend to view the future in terms of technological advances. We're still looking towards inhabiting other planets, and films containing a futuristic element still tend to draw costume ideas from the shiny-silver-jumpsuit stereotype. __________________________________________________________________. In order to decrease our impact on the planet, the homes of the future will be radically different, with a focus on energy-efficiency, sustainability and social responsibility. Recognising that change happens, and we need to be looking toward the future, Zurich has launched a study in association with award-winning architectural practice, Arup Associates. The study looked at how changes in our environment, working style and social lives will impact the design of our homes, and the way we live in them. Working in partnership with Arup Associates, Zurich has identified what the house of the future might look like in about 2080. Their projections cover everything from building materials to non-toxic cleaning products. Here are some of the issues addressed: Energy efficiency __________________________________________________________________. Solar panels, gas-filled triple-glazed windows and intelligent insulation, which can automatically adjust to the external temperature to control the heat indoors, could all be standard fittings and fixtures. To cope with peak summer temperatures that might regularly be seven degrees higher than today, energy-hungry air-conditioning units will be replaced by geothermal pipes carrying cool, recycled water built into, and around, ceilings and beams. The UK might be growing more of its own energy in the future thanks to greater use of biofuels from plants such as rapeseed. Energy generation could become a community activity with smaller, local substations supplied with energy generated by family wind turbines and solar panels. Water efficiency __________________________________________________________________. Rain collection barrels, drought-tolerant plants and rooftop rainwater collection systems can supply significant amounts of water. Today's bathrooms could one day represent relics of a more indulgent age, as water becomes a luxury the planet can't afford to waste. The priority will be saving water and our homes will be tailor-made to re-use and recycle water. Greywater systems filter and recycle water from bathroom sinks, showers and washing machines for re-use in flushing toilets and/or for irrigation. With appropriate treatment the water could be recycled and repeatedly used in sinks and showers. The house of the future will have a 'green roof' - a roof garden or permeable paving, possibly with an inverted pitch to maximize rainwater gathering. A green roof replaces surfaces that previously would have allowed rainwater to seep into building foundations and the surrounding area. Social responsibility and innovative design The internationally recognised definition of sustainable development, as stated by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), is 'development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.' To achieve this, everyone would need to play their part in building sustainable communities. __________________________________________________________________. Walls, rooms and even floors could be added or taken away to accommodate three generations as we live longer and land becomes an even greater commodity. Using modular units, which can be joined together to create larger or smaller homes as families needs change, is considered to be a sustainable construction technique, as large-scale factory production creates less waste. Biomimicry harnesses and is inspired by the natural efficiencies and processes of nature. A biomimetic building would be made from local materials, minimising the energy necessary to create it. It could be naturally ventilated and illuminated and use the minimum amount of energy to move air and water. Composting toilets and ecological wastewater treatment systems would also be standard, and most of the materials deployed could be reused at the end of their life. To create a cleaner indoor environment we could switch to using non-toxic, natural products for cleaning and buy more environmentally friendly furniture and furnishings. The society of the future, like the house of the future, will have to be flexible enough to adapt to any lifestyle or environment changes that come along. By working with experts such as Arup, Zurich can stay abreast of relevant changes and developments that could affect our customers, they way they live and the way they cope with that change _____________________________________________________________________________.
No Loopy Idea Elon Musk, electric-car entrepreneur and proponent of private colonies on Mars, now plans to redesign the railway. HALF a century after they were pioneered in France and Japan, could high-speed trains be coming to America? Last year California’s legislators gave $7.7 billion to a project called California High Speed Rail (CHSR). If and when it is completed it will connect San Francisco to Los Angeles, with branch lines to Sacramento and San Diego. This first slice of what the budget suggests will eventually be a bill for $68 billion will be used to construct 210km (130 miles) of track between Fresno and Bakersfield. But just because the money has been allocated does not mean the line will actually get built. It is far from universally popular. Besides the estimated price (and even this is probably a shot in the dark, for big infrastructure projects are hardly known for coming in on budget), it may not even be that fast. The short distances between many of its stations mean trains will rarely be able to reach their planned top speed of 350kph. Fortunately, California is home to many clever people. One of them is Elon Musk, the hyperactive boss of Tesla Motors, an electric-car company, and SpaceX, a rocketry business (he also sits on the board of Solar City, a solar-energy firm). There is nothing Mr Musk likes more than revolutionising high-tech industries. On August 12th, in a short document published on the websites of Tesla and SpaceX, all was revealed. Essentially, Mr Musk proposes to revive an old science-fiction idea called the vac-train (short for “vacuum train”), albeit with a few important tweaks. The Hyperloop would carry passengers across California at more than 1,200kph—faster than a jet airliner—allowing them to zoom between San Francisco and Los Angeles in little over half an hour, compared with more than two-and-a-half hours for CHSR. It would be solar-powered, would take less land than a high-speed railway, and would be cheaper to boot. Mr Musk’s notional budget is around $6 billion, less than a tenth of what the high-speed train is supposed to cost. Vac-trains, as first described in the 1910s by Robert Goddard (better known as a pioneer of rocketry), would send rolling stock (or hovering stock, perhaps) hurtling through hermetically sealed tubes from which the air has been evacuated. The trains would thus encounter no drag, and be able to reach immense speeds. Goddard reckoned his design—which also proposed magnetic levitation instead of wheels—was good for about 1,600kph. This and other designs for transporter tubes inspired much futuristic art, as the illustration above suggests. But none was ever built because maintaining a vacuum in a long tunnel is difficult. Pumps must work exponentially harder as the pressure falls, to evacuate the few air molecules that remain. And even a small leak would scupper a full-fledged vac-train, which relies on no air at all being able to build up in front of it, and thus slow it down. For that reason, the Hyperloop is not actually a true vac-train. Instead, Mr Musk plans to remove sufficient air from the tubes to give them a pressure roughly a sixth of that on the surface of his beloved Mars, or a thousandth of that on Earth at sea level. This would keep the air resistance low enough to deal with in other ways. The chief of these would be to suck up the air that did accumulate in front of the tube’s rolling stock (putatively, individual pods that could hold 28 people each) using a fan, and then expel most of it from the pod’s rear end. Some of this air, though, would be diverted out of the sides through special skis, to create a cushion that would stop the pod touching the tunnel walls. Each pod would be launched by a linear-induction motor (such motors are also being tested for use as catapults on aircraft carriers), and booster motors every 110km would keep its speed up. On reaching its destination, the pod would pass through a motor that worked in reverse, converting its kinetic energy back into electricity for storage in batteries or use in motors up the line. And, this being California, the whole thing would naturally be powered by solar panels mounted on the roof of the tube. That, at least, is the theory. There are doubters, of course. Some worry that passengers will not like the prospect of hurtling through a steel tube, in a cramped capsule, at almost the speed of sound. And there are inevitable questions about safety, though the pods would have wheels that could be deployed if needed, allowing them to limp to their destinations using batteries if the power failed. But, its breathtaking audacity aside, the thing does look feasible as an engineering project. The tube would be held above ground, on pylons, reducing the amount of land it consumed, and would follow existing roads, which should simplify construction and make maintenance easier. The proposed route features only gentle curves. And the air cushion surrounding each pod should ensure that the ride is smooth. Moreover, although unexpected engineering problems would be bound to crop up, Mr Musk’s experience—and that of his engineers—with space flight and car design would bode well for overcoming them. With projects like this, though, good engineering is never enough. Politics and economics are more forbidding obstacles. Being new, the Hyperloop is risky. Also, the CHSR has a tortuous history going back decades. Much political and reputational capital is invested in it. To replace it now with a completely different design would require an agility that California’s government is almost certainly incapable of. Nor is there any reason to believe that Hyperloop would be immune to the hypertrophication of cost that every other grand infrastructure project seems doomed to suffer. Building it alongside existing roads would certainly cheapen things as well as simplifying them, but critics who are poring over Mr Musk’s cost estimates, for everything from land permits to the construction itself, doubt the numbers stack up (though to be fair, both his electric cars and his space rockets have come in on budget). A few, presumably not Californian patriots, have even suggested that somewhere like Texas—where the bureaucracy is less stifling—might be a more feasible place to try the idea out. Lastly, it is not clear just how serious Mr Musk really is. In the past he has said that, given his other commitments, he lacked the time to try to build the Hyperloop himself. The reason for putting it into the public domain was therefore to give someone else the chance to take it up. But it is hard to think of anyone else who has both his deep pockets and his technical track record. Or at least, that was the case before August 12th. In a conference call that day discussing the idea, he admitted that his thinking may be changing, at least a little. “I think it might help if I built a demonstration article,” he mused. “So I think I probably will do that, actually.” (the Economist, August 2013) C: Read the text and express your opinion on the inovation. Amazon Plans To Deliver Parcels By Drone With 'Prime Air' Washington: Want that Amazon order in just 30 minutes? Company CEO Jeff Bezos says he hopes to soon deploy an armada of mini-drones able to drop small packages at your doorstep. The US online retail giant’s revolutionary project still needs extra safety testing and federal approval, but Bezos believes that Amazon “Prime Air” would be up and running within four to five years. “These are effectively drones but there’s no reason that they can’t be used as delivery vehicles,” Bezos told CBS television’s “60 Minutes” programme. “I know this looks like science fiction. It’s not,” he said. “We can do half-hour delivery ... and we can carry objects, we think, up to five pounds (2.3 kilograms), which covers 86 per cent of the items that we deliver.” A video posted on the company’s website shows a prototype drone. The body of the device is about the size of a flat-screen monitor, and it is attached to eight small helicopter rotors and sits on four tall legs. The claws under the belly of the “octopeter” then latch onto a standard sized plastic bucket that rolls down a conveyer belt at Amazon’s fulfilment centre. Inside the bucket is the order. The drone lifts off and whizzes into the air like a giant mechanical insect to deliver the package just 30 minutes after clicking the “pay” button on Amazon.com. Then it buzzes back into the air and returns to base. The mini-drones are powered by environmentally-friendly electric motors and can cover areas within a 10-mile (16-kilometre) radius of fulfilment centres (Amazon warehouses), thus covering a significant portion of the population in urban areas. The drones operate autonomously and follow the GPS coordinates they receive to drop the items off the target locations. “It’s very green, it’s better than driving trucks around,” said Bezos. He also claims they are safe; the prototype has redundant motors that will keep it in the air and prevent it from crashing. “The hard part here is putting in all the redundancy, all the reliability, all the systems you need to say, ‘Look, this thing can’t land on somebody’s head while they’re walking around their neighbourhood,’” Bezos told CBS. Amazon said the octocopters would be “ready to enter commercial operations as soon as the necessary regulations are in place,” noting that the Federal Aviation Administration was hard at work hammering out rules for the use of unmanned aerial vehicles. Amazon projected a more optimistic timeline than Bezos himself for the project to be activated, saying the FAA’s rules could be in place as early as 2015, and that Amazon Prime Air would be ready at that time. Bezos hinted that part of the motivation behind the mini-drones was to make sure Amazon remains on the cutting edge of the retail industry. “Companies have short lifespans ... And Amazon will be disrupted one day,” he said. “I would love for it to be after I’m dead.” If the plan succeeds other retailers like Wal Mart, or even the local pizza store, could also start home deliveries via drone. Comments on Twitter about the programme ranged from amazed to humorous. “If this weren’t on the CBS website, I would think this Amazon drone thing was an Onion article,” wrote Iris Blasi, referring to the popular satirical tabloid. Unit 5 |
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