The Seasons of the Year. My Favourite Season.

It's a universal truth that every season is beautiful in its own way. Isn't it wonderful to tramp down the country lanes on a frosty winter day. Everything is white with snow and it crunches under your feet. The rime sparkles on the branches and the icicles like precious diamonds hang from the roofs of the houses. It's a merry time for both children and grown¬ups. They can go skating and skiing, sledging and having a fight with snowballs or making a snowman. I suppose, it is very pleasant while the frost lasts, an unpleasant time comes when the thaw begins. Cars and buses go along streets splashing the mud an slush on the passers-by. Everyone is grumbling and scolding the weather. But soon a warm wind blows up heavy grey clouds and the sun shines brightly in the cloudless azure sky. In a few months summer will come.
Summer is the most suitable season for holidays and vacations. People enjoy bright summer days if they are in the country or at the seaside. They go bathing and swimming, and fishing and boating. But it's unbearable to stay in town on such hot and glaring days. Everybody droops and shambles and tries to hide in the shade. Then after a good rest autumn and harvest time comes. The corn has turned golden and the farmer will reap it and put it in his barn. The air is fresh and full of the autumn fragrance of ripe apples,plums and peaches and of course, coloured asters, chrysanthemums. But the weather is so changeable in autumn, people have to wear raincoats and umbrellas if they don't want to get wet through. The dead leaves cover the ground like a thick motley carpet, the roads are slippery and wet,there are lots of puddles in the streets and again everyone is looking forward to frosty winter days and much snow out-of-doors. It's rather difficult to say what season is the best one, however dull and nasty or charming and marvellous the weather may be.
As to me, I always look forward to summer. I am never tired of its long sunny days, warm rains with thunderstorms and hail, the buzz of mosquitoes and midges. I like to spend my summer holidays at the seaside. In my childhood I used to enjoy playing on the beach, making castles and forts in the sands. When one becomes older one begins to notice the murmur of the sea and it's so beautiful to look at the moon's way on the water in the darkness. The air is fresh and it's easy to breathe. I like to lie in the sun getting as brown, paddle in the water or get splashed by the waves. But it's not every year that you can go to the seaside. Sometimes I spend my holidays in the country. Most of my time I spend in the woods gathering strawberries and flowers or at the river bathing and swimming in it. Very often, I help my granny in the vegetable garden weeding it or gathering tomatoes, cucumbers or raddish. I like to walk in the rain or just sit indoors watching the raindrops falling down from the green leaves and blades of the grass onto the ground. When summer is over, I always feel sorry, because it was too short and was too quick to pass.

My name is Oksana.avi

When HIV Becomes AIDS (HIV #2)

AIDS is an acronym for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and is thought to be caused primarily by a virus that invades white blood cells (lymphocytes) and certain other body cells including the brain.Although treatments for both AIDS and HIV exist to slow the virus' progression in a human patient, there is no known cure. The rate of clinical disease progression varies widely between individuals and has been shown to be affected by many factors such as host susceptibility.AIDS is thought to have originated in sub-Saharan Africa during the twentieth century and is now a global epidemic.In 1983 and 1984, French and U.S. researchers independently identified the virus believed to cause AIDS as an unusual type of slow-acting retrovirus now called « human immunodeficiency virus » or HIV. Like other viruses, HIV is basically a tiny package of genes. But being a retrovirus, it has the rare capacity to copy and insert its genes right into a human DNA.Once inside a human host cell, the retrovirus using its own capacities begins to copy its genetic code into a DNA molecule which is then incorporated into the host's DNA. The virus becomes an integral part of the person's body. But the viral DNA may sit hidden and inactive within human cells for years, until some trigger stimulates it to replicate.Thus HIV may not produce illness until its genes are «turned on» five, ten, fifteen or perhaps more years after the initial infection.During the latent period, HIV carriers who harbour the virus without any sign of illness can unknowingly infect others. On average, the dormant virus seems to be triggered into action three to six years after first invading human cells. When switched on, viral replication may speed along, producing new viruses that destroy fresh lymphocytes. As viral replication spreads, the lymphocyte destruction virtually sabotages the entire immune system.In essence, HIV viruses do not kill people, they merely render the immune system defenceless against other infections, e.g. yeast invasions, toxoplasmosis, cytomegalovirus, massive herpes infections, special forms of pneumonia that kill in half of all AIDS patients.That is AIDS. There are several types of AIDS. No one has been cured up to the present moment.