text VI

This is the first chapter of the mythic Star Wars saga.

Set thirty years before the original Star Wars film, Episode I introduces young Anakin Skywalker, a boy with special powers, unaware that the journey he is beginning will transform him into the evil Darth Vader.
Obi-Wan Kenobi, the wise old Jedi from the original series, is a determined young apprentice and Palpatine, well known as the evil Emperor, is an ambitious Senator in the Galactic Republic.
It is a time when the Jedi Knights are the guardians of peace in a turbulent galaxy and a young Queen fights to save her people. In the shadows an evil force is waiting for the right moment to strike.

                                    

(Reinildes Dias. Reading Critically in English, 3^rd ed. UFMG 2002.)

                        Solar System’s Water is Older Than the Sun

      Next time you’re swimming in the ocean, consider this: part of the water is older than the sun.
      So concludes a team of scientists who ran computer models comparing the ratios of hydrogen isotopes over time. Taking into account new insights that the solar nebula had less ionizing radiation than previously thought, the models show that at least some of the water found in the ocean, as well as in comets, meteorites and on the moon, predate the sun’s birth.
      The only other option, the scientists conclude, is that it formed in the cold, intersteller cloud from which the sun itself originated.
      The discovery, reported in this week’s Science, stems from the insight of lead author Lauren Ilsedore Cleeves, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan, who realized that planet- forming disks around young stars should be shielded from galactic rays by the strong solar winds, dramatically altering the chemistry occurring inside the disks, said Conel Alexander, with the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
      “The findingX makes it quite hard for these regions in the disk to synthesize any new molecules. This was an ‘aha’ moment for us - without any new water creation the only place these ices could have come from was the chemically rich interstellar gas out of which the solar system formed originally,” Cleeves wrote in an email to Discovery News.
      “It’s remarkable that these ices survived the entire process of stellar birth,” she added.
      The finding has implications for the search for life beyond Earth, as water is believed to be necessary for life.
      “If the sun’s formation was typical, interstellar ices - including water - are likely common ingredients present during the formation of all planetary systems, which puts a wonderful outlook on the possibility of other life in the universe,” Cleeves said.
      In addition, it’s not just water that likely survived the solar system’s birth.
      “The same must be true for the organic matter that we know is present in molecular cloud ices. So I think this strengthens the case that we have interstellar organic matter in meteorites and comets too,” Alexander wrote in an email to Discovery News.

                                                                                          Available in: http://news.discovery.com

Read the text below and answer the questions that
follow:

At the Airport

Laura is at the airport. She waits for her flight.
Her flight is to Berlin, and it is 4 hours away. Laura
walks around the airport and looks at the shops. She
has a nice time.
After an hour she wants to visit the bathroom.
She searches for it, but she doesn’t find it. “Where is
the bathroom?” she asks herself. She looks and looks
but she can’t find it. She starts asking people
where it is.
Laura: “Excuse me sir, could you please tell
mewhere is the bathroom?”
“The restroom is over there,” the lady
answers andwalks away.
Laura is confused. “What’s their problem?
I need to use the bathroom and they send me to rest?!
I don’t need a restroom, I need the bathroom!”
After a while Laura gives up. She feels tired of
all this walking and asking. She decides that maybe
they are all right and she does need to rest. She walks
to the restroom. Now she is surprised. She realizes
the restroom is actually the name for a public
bathroom!