HW_for_19-03-2021

Done by: M. Zabolotnikov group №: 9373

Homework (for the 19^th of March)

WB: ex.1 (p.58)

1. I suffer severe burns because (f) I'd had to fight my way out through the fire.

2. The hospital doctors recommended a steady supply of liquids and painkillers, so (c) I was put on a drip.

3. I'm fine now. Once the wound had healed, (g) I had my stitches removed and that was that.

4. I was put on a waiting list after the doctors confirmed that (d) I would need an operation.

5. They couldn't operate on my leg again after the injury, so to repair the muscle damage (a) I underwent extensive physiotherapy.

6. As I hadn't been able to clean the cut properly, (e) I actually dot an infection.

7. When the ambulance arrived, (h) I was rushed to hospital.

8. It wasn't serious. After the doctor took my temperature and listened to my cough, (b) I was diagnosed with the flu.

WB: ex.2 (p.58)

1. She had to undergo surgery to remove the lump in her leg.

2. I have to fast for at least 12 hours before the operation, with no food at all.

3. She had to have an operation to insert metal rods to hold the bones together.

4. The bite swelled up horribly until it was the size of a grape!

5. The headaches became worse, so he had to have a scan to see what was wrong.

6. After the car accident, Stephen had to take part in a long rehabilitation programme.

7. The cut was so deep I had to have stitches to close the wound.

8. When I crashed into the tree, I broke my arm I two places, and it took months for it to heal.

The most serious illness in my life

I got ill most seriously five months ago, in October. Honestly, not that I have ever been extremely ill, but that case as one of the toughest.

Firstly, I felt that my throat was hurt. It was like a standard throat ache after you had eaten lots of ice-cream one very warm day. So I didn't pay attention to it because I thought some hot tea with a piece of a lemon would help me.

But the day after my temperature had risen up unexpectedly high. For the whole day I was feeling shivery. But I had to study, therefore I couldn't take a rest and sleep a bit. I had been in such a bad state for two or three days – I don't actually remember. During this period of time I was sick, so the bathroom had become the place where I spent most of time.

After my state had got better, I figured out that my nose didn't smell anything. And I would not have paid any attention to this, unless I had never had my nose not being able to smell for so long – two weeks. So, in light of recent events, my dad guessed that I had caught COVID-19. But my mum didn't believe him saying it didn't look like coronavirus. Anyway I did no necessary actions to fight that Schrodinger's virus, but warmed my throat and nose, drank big amount of tea with lemon and slept a lot. Finally, after two weeks had past, I completely recovered and since that got no ill.

For now, the test has shown that I have no coronavirus, so I am happy.

Retelling the article

Lasers Write Data Into Glass

Magnetic tape and hard disk drives are much better than other kinds of memory storages. This is because they are cheaper and more reliable. Also they are nonvolatile, and such types of technologies have been used by many companies for a very long time.

But archivists may no longer need those types of memory storages, because scientists invented the optical form of data storage. It uses fast laser to write data on a small piece of glass. This project was called "Project Silica" and is carried on by the University of Southampton in England and Microsoft Research. For now, they have managed to write the 1978 film "Superman" on a single piece of glass and retrieve it.

Using this method, archivists will be able to store up to 360 TB of data on a DVD-size disk. Some companies try to store the less amount of data for the near future. Waguih Ishak, chief technologist at Corning Research and Development Corp. says that people's need in storages will encourage scientist to look into other kinds of materials. James Byron, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at the University of California, Santa Cruz, says scientists see it as a distinguishing kind of technology. And they are focused on understanding the potential of optical data storage in glass.

Data is supposed to be written with a focused femtosecond laser on a pure glass like the one used for the Hubble Space Telescope’s mirror and the windows on the International Space Station.

The thing is that the laser deforms the glass at the focal point and so creating a voxel. Some properties of this voxel can represent several bits of data per voxel. Currently, Microsoft can write so many layers of voxels into each piece of glass. And all of this data can be written to once and read back many times.

Reading back this data is a drawback as it requires different setup. Researchers shine different kinds of polarized light onto specific voxels, capture the results with the camera, analyze those images and translate their measurements into data.

Ishak is pretty sure that such new methods of storing data will eclipses and dwarfs everything we use now. He also says those pure materials like fused silica will play the main role.

One of the challenges that remain is that it is hard to make writing process more reliable and repeatable, because the problem is how to read the data from the glass using the minimum signal possible. The Microsoft group are now correcting and refining the machine-learning algorithms to automate the read-back process and they have already improved writing speeds.

And one more problem is how to store data for a long time. That is what the Microsoft team are now wondering about.