Applications

Applications

Internal combustion engines are most commonly used for mobile propulsion systems. In mobile scenarios internal combustion is advantageous, since it can provide high power to weight ratios together with excellent fuel energy-density. These engines have appeared in almost all cars, motorbikes, many boats, and in a wide variety of aircraft and locomotives. Where very high power is required, such as jet aircraft, helicopters and large ships, they appear mostly in the form of gas turbines. They are also used for electric generators and by industry.

For low power mobile and many non-mobile applications an electric motor is a competitive alternative. In the future, electric motors may also become competitive for most mobile applications. However, the high cost, weight, and poor energy density of PbA and even NiMH batteries and lack of affordable on board electric generators such as fuel cells has largely restricted their use to specialist applications. However recent battery advancements in lightweight Li-ion and Li-poly chemistries are bringing safety, power density, lifespan, and cost to within acceptable or even desirable levels. For example recently battery electric vehicles began to demonstrated 300 miles of range on Lithium, now improved power makes them appealing for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles whose electric range is less critical having internal combustion for unlimited range.

Номинация II. Художественный перевод

Задание: Перевести с английского языка на русский язык отрывок из романа современного британского писателя Фредерика Форсайта «The Fox».

Frederick Forsyth.The Fox. Transworld Publishers, London 2019

ISBN 978-0-552-17578-4

Three months before the raid a team of American computer aces working at the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, discovered what they also could not believe. The most secret database in the USA, probably in the world, had apparently been hacked.

Fort Meade, as the word ‘fort’ implies, is technically an army base. But it is a lot more than that. It is the home of the fearsome National Security Agency, or NSA. Heavily shielded from unwanted view by forests and forbidden access roads, it is the size of a city. But instead of a mayor it has a four-star army general as its commanding officer.

It is the home of that branch of all intelligence agencies known as ELINT, or electronic intelligence. Inside its perimeter, rank upon rank of computers eavesdrop the world. ELINT intercepts, it listens, it records, it stores. If something it intercepts is dangerous, it warns.

Because not everyone speaks English, it translates from every language, dialect and patois used on planet Earth. It encrypts and decodes. It hoards the secrets of the USA and it does this inside a range of super-computers which house the most clandestine databases in the country.

These databases are protected not by a few traps or pitfalls but by firewalls so complicated that those who constructed them and who monitor them on a daily basis were utterly convinced they were impenetrable. Then one day these guardians of the American cyber-soul stared in disbelief at the evidence before them.

They checked and checked again. It could not be. It was not possible. Finally, three of them were forced to seek an interview with the general and destroy his day. Their principal database had been hacked. In the- ory, the access codes were so opaque that no one without them could entet the heartland of the supercomputer. No one could get through the protective device known simply as 'the air gap-. But someоnе had.

Worldwide, there are thousands of hacker attacks per day. The vast bulk are attempts to steal money. There are endeavours to penetrate the bank accounts of citizens who have deposited their savings where they believed they would be safe. If the ‘hacks’ are successful, the swindler can pretend to be the account holder and instruct the bank’s computer to transfer assets to the thief’s account, many miles and often many countries away.

All banks, all financial institutions, now have to encircle their clients’ accounts with walls of protection, usually in the form of codes of personal identification which the hacker cannot know and without which the bank’s computer will not agree to transfer a penny or a cent. This is one of the prices the developed world now pays for its utter dependence on computers. It is extremely tiresome but better than impoverishment and is now an irreversible characteristic of modern life.

Other attacks involve attempts at sabotage stemming from pure malice. A penetrated database can be instructed to cause chaos and functional breakdown. This is generally done by the insertion of a sabotage instruction called ‘malware’ or a Trojan horse. Again, elaborate protections in the form of firewalls have to be wrapped around the database to frustrate the hacker and keep the computerized system safe from attack.

Some databases are so secret and so vital that the safety of an entire nation depends upon them remaining safe from cyber-attack. The firewalls are so complicated that those who devise them regard them as impossible to breach. They involve not just a jumble of letters and figures but hieroglyphs and symbols which, if not in exactly the right order, will forbid entry to anyone but an officially ‘cleared’ operator with the precise access codes.

Номинация III Перевод краеведческого материала «Малые города России»

Задание. Перевести с русского языка на английский язык

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