小C的每日电台时‪间‬ BarryFeng

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LEMON TREE

April 28, 2020

Even from Home, NASA Team Keeps Mars ExplorerMoving

Exercise 1- Vocabulary
remote – adj. faraway
screen – n. aflat area on an electronic device where images can be seen
chat – n. aninformal talk with someone
juggle – v. totry to do several things at once
three-dimensional – adj. havingor seeming to have length, width, and depth
sensitive – adj. ableto measure very small details
drill – v. tomake holes in hard materials with a machine
workflow –n. the steps involved in moving from the beginning to the end of a workingprocess
figureout – v. to finally understand something or someone after a lotof thought

Excercise2 - Article
Even from Home, NASA Team Keeps Mars ExplorerMoving

Millions of people around the world arecurrently working from home in an effort to slow the spread of the newcoronavirus. Many of them have had to learn new ways of performing their jobswhile attempting to turn living spaces into work-friendly environments.
While such change can be difficult for anyworker, it can be even harder for a scientist or engineer who cannot work intheir usual laboratory setting.
The American space agency NASA employs a largenumber of these workers. Almost all of them have been working from home for thepast month.
Recently, the NASA team that controls theCuriosity explorer on Mars showed that they were able to perform their dailyduties completely from their homes. NASA recently reported on the team’s latestactivities on itswebsite.
Usually, the Curiosity control team operatesfrom NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL, in Pasadena, California. But forthe first time ever, all members of the team have had to do all of theirwork remotely.
Alicia Allbaugh leads the Mars ExplorationProgram. She said the current situation is very different from the environmenther team is used to working in at JPL headquarters. "We're usually all inone room, sharing screens, images and data. People are talking in smallgroups and to each other from across the room," she said.
The Curiosity team has attempted to recreatethe same cooperative work atmosphere by using video conferencing technology andmessaging apps. Effective communication is very important. So, team leadershave added extra planning time each day to help make sure all team members areconnected.
Carrie Bridge is the chief of scienceoperations for the team. She said one of her main jobs is to be a bridgebetween the scientists and engineers to make sure they understand each other’swork.
Bridge said she is also now looking at about 15different message chats at all times to keep effective communicationflowing. "You're juggling more than you normally would,"she said.
The remote Curiosity team was lacking sometechnology and tools they usually use to perform their jobs. Some employeeswere able to pick up some computer and communications equipment. But otherequipment could not be sent home.
For example, the team uses special goggles, oreyewear, to examine three-dimensional (3D) images sent from Mars. Theequipment helps scientists get a better look at the surface of the planet sothey know where to drive Curiosity and how far they can extend the explorer’sarm.
The gogglesrequire high-powered computer systems to operate that team members could notset up at home. So, they were told to use simple red-blue 3Dglasses instead. While not nearly as sensitive as theusual goggles, the team reported that the low-tech 3D glasses worked just aswell for planning drives and arm movements for Curiosity.
After a lot of planning and test runs, theremote team was excited to announce that the explorer had received its commandsfrom Earth and performed as expected. The first result: Curiosity successfullycompleted a rock drilling operation in an area called “Edinburgh.”
While the effort required a lot of creativethinking and workflow changes, Carrie Bridge sa

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LEMON TREE

April 27, 2020

US Supreme Court’s ‘Next Big Thing’: theTelephone

Exercise 1- Vocabulary
pandemic -n. an occurrence in which a disease spread quickly around the world
brief -n. a document that states the facts a lawyer plans to use in a court case
branch -n. a major part of a government
excited -adj. very enthusiastic and eager about something

Excercise2 - Article
US Supreme Court’s ‘Next Big Thing’: theTelephone

The Chief Justice of the United States, JohnRoberts, said in2014 that courts will always be careful when it comes to “the next big thing”in technology. And it took a worldwide pandemic for the U.S. SupremeCourt to finally agree to use, of all things, the telephone.
In May, the court’s members will hear argumentsover the telephone for the first time. Public television service C-SPAN willbroadcast audio of the arguments “live.”
Clare Cushman is director of publications atthe Supreme Court Historical Society. She called the decision to use telephonesa “giant leap forward” for a place that sticks to tradition. But she noted thathearing arguments on the phone is somewhat backward given how much of thecountry and other courts are now using video conferencing.
Until 1971, the Supreme Court was still usingpneumatic tubes to send documents. They were popular in the late 1800s forshipping mail, papers, and other things between offices. The court was stillusing Linotype machines to print documents in the early 1980s while othersprinted from desktop computers.
Just two years ago, the high court made itsdocuments available on the internet, well after other courts.
Before the coronavirus crisis, Supreme Courtjustices were exchanging messages and opinions on paper. Yet most of the ninejustices — six of them over the age of 65 — appear to use modern technology intheir own lives.
Justice Elena Kagan has said she is on thesocial media website Twitter. Justice Samuel Alito has described readinglegal briefs on an Apple iPad. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wears anelectronic sensor that keeps watch over her health. And Justices Neil Gorsuchand Brett Kavanaugh have young children who might be expected to send textmessages to their fathers.
This month, 81-year-old Justice Stephen Breyerused the videoconference service Zoom to talk to students at a New York school.Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the oldest member of the court at the age of 87.She reads emails on an iPhone and once told people that she uses another Appledevice as a sound machine to help her sleep.
Still, the decision to hear arguments viatelephone during six days in May was unimaginable two months ago. The change isan effort to limit large gatherings of people to slow the spread of the diseaseCOVID-19.
This year, the cases before the Supreme Courtinclude President Donald Trump’s effort to keep his tax and financial recordssecret. The court also will hear whether Electoral College members must votefor the candidate who won their state in presidential elections.
The court’s willingness to use telephones mightlast only a short time. But those who want more openness on the court hope itwill continue after the pandemic.
Melissa Murray is a law professor at the NewYork University School of Law. She said live audio gives Americans the abilityto observe the third branch of the U.S. government at work. Sheadded, “I don’t know why you wouldn’t want that.”
Stephen Dillard serves on the Georgia Court ofAppeals. He supports openness in the courts. He told The Associated Press,“This is a great first step, and I’m excited about it, but I hopethey will go further in years to come and allow live video streaming.”

Questions:
1. Who was the The Chief Justice of theUnited States in 2014 who mentioned about the next big thing in technology?
2. How will it be helpful?
3. How is technology very helpful whenthe pandemic, coronovirus, paralyzed education and busines

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LEMON TREE

April 26, 2020

Teenage Engineers in Afghanistan Use Car Partsto Build Ventilators

Exercise 1- Vocabulary
ventilator – n. amachine that forces air into the lungs of a sick patient to keep them breathing
mission – n. animportant effort or job
proud – adj. muchpleased; feeling very good about someone or something
battery – n. anobject that provides electricity for things
pandemic – n. thespread of an infectious disease over a large area in a short period of time

Excercise2 - Article
Teenage Engineers in Afghanistan Use Car Partsto Build Ventilators

Young female engineers in Afghanistan are usingold car parts to develop ventilators to treat coronavirus patients.
The girls - ages 14 to 17 - are members of aprize-winning robotics team. They say they are on a life-saving mission.Somaya Farooqi is among them.
“If we even save one life with our device, wewill be proud,” she said.
On most mornings, Farooqi’s father drives thegirls to a workspace outside the western Afghan city of Herat, where they live.The trip takes careful planning to avoid police roadblocks set up to enforcestay-at-home orders for people in Herat.
There are a limited number of special permitsto avoid the police stops, but Farooqi’s father has not been able to get one.The girls say they have to work fast so they are willing to take risks totravel outside the city. “We are concerned about security driving out of thecity,” Farooqi said.
But there is no other way, she said, adding,“we have to try to save people’s lives.”
The team’sefforts would have been unthinkable in Afghanistan just a generation ago. UnderTaliban rule in the late 1990s, girls were not permitted to even go to school.Farooqi’s mother was forced to leave school in the third grade.
After the United States invaded Afghanistan in2001, girls were permitted to return to schools. The struggle to gain equalrights for females continues and the young engineers push forward with theirwork. “We are the new generation,” Farooqi said. “We fight and work for people.Girl and boy, it does not matter anymore.”
Afghanistan is facing the coronavirus crisiswith limited supplies of medical equipment. The country has just 400ventilators for its population of more than 36 million. So far, the country hasreported more than 1,000 cases of the virus, and about 30 deaths. But expertssay the number of cases are likely much higher since virus testing remains verylimited in the country.
More coronavirus cases have been reported inHerat province because it sits close to the border with Iran, which hasexperienced a severe spread.
The local spread of the virus led Farooqi andher team to try to come up with a medical solution. At their workspace, theteam has experimented with two different designs. One of them is based on plansdeveloped by engineers at America’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT).
Parts usedto build the ventilators include the motor of a small car device,car batteries and sets of oxygen pumps. A group of auto repair expertshelps the team build the ventilator structure.
DanielaRus, a professor at MIT, welcomed the team’s quick development efforts. “Itwill be excellent to see it tested and locally produced,” she said.
Afghan businesswoman Roya Mahboob founded therobotics team and raises money to empower girls in technology. She says shehopes Farooqi’s group will finish building a working model by May or June. Themodel will then be tested by the country’s health ministry, at first onanimals, a government spokesman said.
Somaya Farooqi says her team felt the need toseek a solution to help people at home. “Afghans should be helping Afghanistanin this pandemic,” she said. “We should not wait for others.”

Questions:
1. What breakthrough did the youngfemale engineers make in Afghanistan?
2. What parts did they use in makingsuch discovery?
3. What are the ag

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LEMON TREE

April 25, 2020

Tech Companies Continue to Fight FalseCoronavirus Information

Exercise 1- Vocabulary
perpetuate – v. tomake something continue, especially something bad
rumor – n. informationor a story that is passed from person to person but has not been proven true
debunk – v. toshow evidence that something is not true
void – n. alarge hole or empty space

Excercise2 - Article
Tech Companies Continue to Fight FalseCoronavirus Information

False information about the new coronavirus hascontinued to spread around the world, just like the illness itself. In answer,major technology companies have created new tools and rules to reducemisinformation and provide facts about the virus.
Health officials and others have welcomed thenew efforts. They have long urged tech companies to do more to prevent thespread of false information online.
AndyPattison is head of digital solutions for the World Health Organization (WHO).He told The Associated Press that some major tech companies have taken strongeraction to reduce coronavirus misinformation.
For the past two years, Pattison has beenurging companies like Facebook to take more aggressive action against falseinformation about vaccinations. Now, he says his team spends a lot of timeidentifying misleading coronavirus information online. Sometimes, Pattisoncontacts officials at Facebook, Google and YouTube to request that they removesuch misinformation.
In some cases, coronavirus misinformation hasled to deadly results. Last month, Iranian media reported more than 300 peoplehad died and 1,000 were sickened after eating methanol, a poisonous alcohol.Information about the substance being a possible cure for coronavirus hadrecently appeared on social media.
In the American state of Arizona, a man diedand his wife became seriously ill after taking chloroquine phosphate, a productthat some people mistake for the anti-malaria drug chloroquine.
The U.S.Food and Drug Administration, FDA, says chloroquinephosphate is used to treat disease in fish kept at home. It is not meant to betaken by humans. Chloroquine has been used to treat malaria and some otherconditions in humans. It is being studied as a possible treatment for COVID-19,the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
U.S. President Donald Trump and some of hissupporters have said they think chloroquine could be an effective treatmentagainst the virus. Similar claims about chloroquine were widely publicized andshared on social media.
However, health officials have warned that thedrug has not been proven to be safe or effective in treating or preventingCOVID-19. Twitter and Facebook decided to take steps to reduce the spread ofinformation about such unproven treatments.
Twitter removed a post by Trump’s personallawyer Rudy Giuliani that described hydroxychloroquine, which is related tochloroquine, as “100 percent effective” against coronavirus. Twitter alsoremoved a tweet from a Fox News broadcaster in which she said the drug hadshown “promising results.”
And in what may have been a first, Facebookremoved information posted by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who claimedhydroxychloroquine was “working in every place” to treat coronavirus. Twitteralso removed a linked video.
Facebook, Twitter, Google and others haveincreased their use of machine learning tools to identify false information.They also have put in place new restrictions on publishing misinformation.
Dipayan Ghosh is co-director of the PlatformAccountability Project at the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge,Massachusetts. He told The Associated Press that technology companies havelearned that the publication of misinformation about the coronavirus can havetragic results.
“They don’twant to be held responsible in any way for perpetuating rumors thatcould lead directly to death,” Ghosh said.
For example, the Facebook-owned privatemessaging service WhatsApp has

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LEMON TREE

April 24, 2020

Some Countries, US States Ease Anti-CoronavirusMeasures

Exercise 1- Vocabulary

relaxing –n. toloosen rules or requirements

nonessential –adj. notcompletely necessary

brake –n. adevice that slows or stops a vehicle

Excercise2 - Article


Some Countries, US States Ease Anti-CoronavirusMeasures



With millions of people out of work, severalnations are planning to ease anti-coronavirus restrictions on businesses andother activities.

The push to reopen has brought warnings fromhealth officials. They say relaxing the stay-at-home restrictions tooquickly could bring the virus back.

Returningto work

Nonessential workers, includinghairdressers, dentists and construction laborers, can go to work in Denmark,Austria, Spain and Germany. Australia said doctors can resume non-emergencyoperations next week.

Spain will begin permitting children out oftheir homes for short periods next Monday. Denmark announced plans to reopenTivoli Gardens, the famous amusement park in Copenhagen in May.

In Austria, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said allshops will reopen at the beginning of May and restaurants in mid-May. He saidthe government will study the situation every two weeks and added he will “pullthe emergency brake if that is necessary.”

Meanwhile, some state governors are planningsimilar easing measures in the United States. Georgia, South Carolina,Tennessee, West Virginia and Colorado, announced plans to slowly reopen in thecoming days. Boeing is among the large industrial manufacturers that will startproduction across the country.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio warned, “Ifsome of these re-openings are done the wrong way, it’s going to affect all ofus.”

The moves to reopen for business come asunemployment has sharply increased. And the International Monetary Fund haswarned the outbreak could lead to the developed world’s worst economicdepression since the 1930s.

On Tuesday, financial markets in Asia andEurope followed American stocks lower after U.S. oil contracts lost all theirvalue. Far too much oil is now on the market because of a lack of demand asfactories, cars and airplanes are not being used.

Call for more testing

Worldwide, COVID-19 has infected more than 2.5million people and caused more than 170,000 deaths. Those numbers come fromJohns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center.

The U.S.has recorded more than 42,000 deaths. That is the most in the world. About800,000 U.S. infections have been reported.

However, the true number of infections aroundthe world is believed to be much higher. That is because of limited testing,difficulties in counting the dead and efforts by some governments to hide theextent of their outbreaks.

Officials at the United Nations have called forefforts to ensure that all people can be tested for the new coronavirus. Theyalso are urging that medical supplies, drugs and future vaccines be madeavailable, especially in developing countries.

African officials have strongly noted the needfor medical supplies across the continent. Experts worry that Africa’s healthcare systems are weak and could become overwhelmed.

A report from the U.N. Economic Commission forAfrica said that Africa will need $44 billion for testing, personal protectiveequipment and treatment. But the report estimates that ten times that muchcould be needed in the worst case.

Will life return to normal?

But in a sign that it will be some time beforelife returns to normal, Spain canceled its Running of the Bulls in Pamplona.The more than 400-year-old event was made famous by Ernest Hemingway’s 1926novel “The Sun Also Rises.”

And the U.S. canceled the popular ScrippsNational Spelling Bee. The competition has been held since 1925. It was onlystopped once before — in 1943-1945, because of World War II.

Questions:

1. Have some private business establisgmentsreopened amid covid pandemic?

2.

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LEMON TREE

April 23, 2020

Strange Object May Be Remains of a Planet TornApart

Exercise 1- Vocabulary

solarsystem – n. our sun and the planets that move around it

journal – n. amagazine that reports on things of special interest to a particular group ofpeople

alien – adj. fromsomewhere other than the planet Earth

tidal – adj. ofor relating to the regular upward and downward movement of the level of theocean that is caused by the pull of the Sun and the Moon on the Earth

comet – n. anobject in outer space that develops a long, bright tail when it passes near thesun

asteroid – n. anyone of thousands of small planets that circle around the sun

disrupte(d)– v. to cause (something) to be unable to continue in the normal way

mutual – adj. sharedbetween two or more people or groups

hypothesize(d) –v. to suggest an idea or theory

Excercise2 - Article

Strange Object May Be Remains of a Planet TornApart

A long, thin object moving throughour solar system may be the remains of a planet that was pulledapart, scientists say.

Researchers say the planet was likely destroyedlong ago when it moved either too far from or too close to the star it onceorbited.

The object is called ‘Oumuamua, which means“messenger from afar” in the native Hawaiian language. A report on the recentfindings appears in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Scientists have been trying to understand moreabout ‘Oumuamua since its discovery in 2017. Some have even proposed it may bean alien spacecraft. In the recently published research, astronomersYun Zhang and Douglas Lin said computer predictions suggest the object was apiece of a planet or planetary building block. The planet might have been tornapart by its star’s “tidal forces.”

‘Oumuamua is the first object from another starsystem found passing through our solar system. It is about 400 meters long. Itsshape, strange way of moving and lack of dust and gases suggest it is not anormal comet or asteroid.

When a smaller body passes near a much biggerone, tidal forces created by the larger body can destroy the smaller one. Thisis what happened when comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 came too close to the planetJupiter in 1992.

Zhang told the Reuters news agency that mostplanetary bodies are made of groups of rocks joined under the influence ofgravity. In a way, they are similar to the sandcastles that children make atthe beach, except that they are floating through space, Zhang said.

“Their structure canbe disrupted when the force acting on the individual ‘sand particle’is larger than their mutual gravity,” he added.

Zhang noted that ocean tides on Earth areaffected in this way. Tides result from the gravitational pulls of the sun andmoon. In space, a planetary body that comes close enough to a star falls victimto its strong gravitational pull.

Lin is an astrophysicist at the University ofCalifornia, Santa Cruz. He said the star that destroyed ‘Oumuamua’s home worldprobably was one-tenth to eight-tenths of the mass of our sun. Or it might havebeen a rare kind of cool and dense star called a white dwarf, Lin added.

The studysuggests the existence of many objects formed this way.

“We show the possibility of panspermia carriedby these objects,” Zhang said. Panspermia is the hypothesized spreadof microorganisms or chemicals that support life on objects moving throughspace.

‘Oumuamua is continuing on its path out of oursolar system.

Questions:

1. What have the scientist noticed inthe solar system that have been moving in our solar system?

2. How does it look like?

3. How was it like?

4. When was it discovered?

5. What did the scientist believe on where theremais come from?

6. What is Panspermia and how is it beneficial toliving objects?