Для чтения прекрасных современных статей на английском существует замечательный журнал "Hot English".

Сегодня возьмём одну статью как раз из этого журнала. Называется она "Science gone mad". Это статья об известном событии "The Ig Nobels". (С Вас - в комментариях написать как это событие называется по-русски).

Вот объяснение о названии на английском:

The name of the competition (the lg Nobels) forms an expression that sounds like the English word "ignoble" which is basically the opposite of "noble" (a "noble" person has excellent qualities of character, including honesty, generosity and selflessness). For more information on lg Nobels, visit: www.improbable.com/ig

Итак, сама статья:

"Science gone mad"

Science is a serious subject, right? Well,not always.The Ig Nobels are prizes for

unusual scientific research­ the kind of research that makes you laugh, then makes you think . The award ceremony for the prizes is organised by science magazine The Annals of Improbable Research , and takes place at Harvard University. Here are some of this year's winners.

The Medicine Prize went to a team from Japan and China for their research on mice that had undergone heart transplants . They looked at the effects that listening to opera had on the mice.

The joint Prize in Biology and Astronomy was awarded to scientists from South Africa and Sweden for discovering that when dung beetles get lost, they can navigate their way home by looking at the milky way.

The Chemistry Prize went to a team from japan and Germany for their research into the biochemical process that causes onions to make people cry. Their conclusion was that it's even more complicated than previously thought.

The Safety Engineering Prize was awarded to the late Gustano Pizzo (from the US) for inventing an electro-mechanical system to trap airplane hijackers. The system drops a hijacker through trap doors and parachuted to the ground, where the police can arrest him.

The Psychology Prize went to an international team for confirming that people who think they're drunk also think they're more attractive. In the study, people in a bar were asked how funny, original and attractive they found themselves. The  higher their blood alcohol level the more attractive they thought they were. The same effect was also found for those who thought they'd been drinking alcohol, when in  fact they'd been having a non-alcoholic placebo drink.

The Probability Prize was awarded to a team from the UK and the Netherlands for their study on cows.

The team made two related discoveries: firstly, the longer a cow has been lying down, the greater the probability that it'll soon stand up; and secondly, that once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict when that cow will lie down again. On a  more serious note, the study could help farmers and vets detect health problems in cows.

Finally, this year's Peace Prize went jointly to the president of Belarus for making public applause illegal, and to the country's state police for arresting a one-armed man for the offence.

Задание: читаем и письменно переводим (письменный перевод значительно отличается от устного, поэтому не ленимся!) про одну из наиболее Вам понравившихся номинаций.

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