F2F Class Notes (Raph)[R]

Vocabulary

Boredom (n): 1- the state of being bored.
E.g.: They played cards to fight boredom.

Bore (v): 1- to talk or act in a way that makes someone lose interest.
E.g.: “Am I boring you?” she asked anxiously.
E.g.: This class bores me. I’m going home!

Boring (adj): 1- not interesting or exciting:
E.g.: She finds opera boring.
E.g.: It’s boring to sit on the plane with nothing to read.

Bored (adj): 1- feeling unhappy because something is not interesting or because you have nothing to do.
E.g.: It was a cold, wet day and the children were bored.
E.g.: He was getting bored with/of doing the same thing every day.
E.g.: I was bored in salsa class, because the lesson was too boring.

Ban (n/v): 1- to forbid (= refuse to allow) something, especially officially.
E.g.:The film was banned (= the government prevented it from being shown) in several countries.
E.g.:She was banned from driving for two years.

Bitterly (adv): 1- in a way that shows strong negative emotion such as anger or disappointment.
E.g.: She cried bitterly at the news.
E.g.: He was bitterly disappointed not to get the job.
E.g.: Last winter was bitterly cold.

Bittersweet (adj): 1- containing a mixture of sadness and happiness.
E.g.: Moving to a new city always feels bittersweet.

Dwelling (n): a house or place to live in.
E.g.: There is an estimated shortfall of some five million dwellings across the country.
E.g.: Water-dwelling mammals (mammals that live in the water)

Furnace (n): 1- a container that is heated to a very high temperature, so that substances that are put inside it, such as metal, will melt or burn.
E.g.: People who work with furnaces in a steel factory need to wear protective clothing.
E.g.: This room’s like a furnace (= is very hot)!

Doom (n): 1- death, destruction, or any very bad situation that cannot be avoided
E.g.:A sense of doom hung over the entire country.
E.g.:The newspapers are always full of doom and gloom (= bad news and unhappiness) these days.

Caterpillar (n): 1- oruga

-272º C = Minus two hundred seventy two degrees Celsius.

Water Bears Will Survive Until the Sun Dies
(Source: breakingnewsenglish.com/1707/170717-water-bears.html)

A new study has revealed that a tiny, water-dwelling creature is likely to live until the end of the Earth. The near indestructible tardigrade, also known as water bear, looks like a short caterpillar with eight legs. It is just one-tenth of a millimeter in size but has the physiological makeup to be able to survive in any extreme conditions. The microscopic water bear can survive without food for three decades. It can also exist in bitterly freezing temperatures of -272º Celsius and in furnace-like temperatures of 150ºC. Water bears can also survive the crushing pressure of deep oceans, the vacuum of outer space, nuclear war, global warming, or any other extreme meteorological event that would doom humans.

Scientists say water bears are so hardy and resilient that the only thing that would wipe them out for good is if the Sun boils all the Earth’s oceans away. The study says this is likely to happen in several billion years from now. The new study states that complex life is extremely difficult to destroy and could exist on other planets. A researcher said: “Tardigrades are as close to indestructible as it gets on Earth, but it is possible that there are other resilient species examples elsewhere in the Universe.” He added: “There is a real case for looking for life on Mars and in other areas of the Solar System. If tardigrades are Earth’s most resilient species, who knows what else is out there?”