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I'm Carolyn Presutti with the VOA Special English Health Report In the early nineteen fifties, researchers found that people scored lower on intelligence tests if they spoke more than one language. Research in the nineteen sixties found the opposite. So which is it? Researchers presented their newest studies in February at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The latest evidence shows that being bilingual does not necessarily make people smarter. But researcher Ellen Bialystok says it probably does make you better at certain skills. She says: "Imagine driving down the highway. There are many things that could capture your attention and you really need to be able to monitor all of them. Why would bilingualism make you any better at that?" And the answer, she says, is that bilingual people are often better at controlling their attention -- a function called the executive control system. She says it is possibly the most important cognitive system we have. It is where all of our decisions about what to attend to, what to ignore and what to process are made. Ms. Bialystok is a psychology professor at York University in Toronto, Canada. She says the best method to measure the executive control system is called the Stroop Test. A person is shown words in different colors. The person has to ignore the word but say the color. The problem is that the words are all names of colors. She explains: "So you would have the word 'blue' written in red, but you have to say 'red.' But blue is just lighting up all these circuits in your brain, and you really want to say 'blue'. So you need a mechanism to override that so that you can say 'red.' That's the executive control system. Her work shows that bilingual people continually practice this function.

They have to, because both languages are active in their brain at the same time. They need to suppress one to be able to speak in the other. This mental exercise might help in other ways, too. Researchers say bilingual children are better able to separate a word from its meaning, and more likely to have friends from different cultures. Bilingual adults are often four to five years later than others in developing dementia or Alzheimer's disease. Foreign language study has increased in the United States. But linguist Alison Mackey at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. points out that Englishspeaking countries are still far behind the rest of the world.

For VOA Special English I'm Carolyn Presutti.

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Im Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Technology Report. Builders in developing countries are often not required to build strong buildings. So, when a disaster strikes, the damage is often widespread. Yet, Japan is one of the most developed countries in the world. Still, the March eleventh tsunami waves destroyed more than fourteen thousand buildings. Brandy Cox is an assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of Arkansas. He is also an earthquake expert with an organization called Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance, or GEER. The group studies major disasters. Professor Cox says Japan has one of the best building code systems in the world. However, he says, this earthquake was huge, one of the top five earthquakes in recorded history. So anytime there is an earthquake that large, there is going to be damage.

The quake measured magnitude nine. He says one thing many people dont understand is that building codes are meant to prevent loss of life in earthquakes. That doesnt mean that the buildings wont have major damage. Mr. Cox says Japan has invested a lot in seismic research and design since a magnitude seven point five earthquake in Niigata in nineteen sixty-four. That same year a nine point two quake shook the American state of Alaska. He says those two earthquakes opened up a lot of new research on something called soil liquefaction. Soil liquefaction is the process by which the strength of stiffness of soil is weakened by an event like the shaking of an earthquake. The soil begins to move like liquid. Professor Cox says the first step to designing an earthquake-resistant building is to study the soil. Then the structural engineers take that information and decide the details of the construction, such as, is this going to be a steel structure? Is it going to be reinforced concrete? How will the framing of the building be designed? A team from Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance is going to Japan to examine the destruction. Mr. Cox says they will also be working on rebuilding efforts. They want to make sure that schools, hospitals, police and fire stations and government buildings are rebuilt well. Mr. Cox and other members of GEER went to Haiti after the powerful earthquake last year, and continue to work with Haitian officials. For VOA Special English, Im Alex Villarreal.

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This is VOA Special English Economics Report.

Microsoft has fought legal battles with officials in Europe and the United States over competition in the personal computer market. But at the end of March, Microsoft accused Google of being anti-competitive. A complaint to the European Commission accused Google of unfairly controlling the Internet search market in Europe. Google was already talking to the Commission about the issue and said it was happy to explain to anyone how its business works. But Google also faced other issues. Gmail users in China began reporting problems with Googles email service in late February. The problem came as news of the revolution in the Arab world filled the Internet and there were online calls for protests in China. Google said the government was interfering with its email service. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokewoman Jiang Yu called those accusations unacceptable. But Google spokewoman Jessica Powell said, This is a government blockage, carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail. Google is the world leader in Internet search. But in China the biggest search engine is Baidu. And in the late March, Chineses largest Internet media company, Sina, dropped Googles search engine from its website. Sina said it would use its own technology. And estimated four hundred fifty million Chinese are online about half of all Internet users in Asia. In two thousand ten, Google said, a cyberattack from China had attempted to get the information from the Gmail accounts of human rights activists. Google also express concerns about censorship. So Google relocated its Chinese search engine from the mainland to Hong Kong. In March, Google also faced new problems at home. A federal judge in New York ruled against its plan to put millions of books online. Google wants to create a digital library of all the worlds books. It reached one hundred twenty five million dollar in two thousand eight with groups representing writers and publishers. Google agreed to create a system to pay copyright holders when their works are used online. But judge Denny Chin rejected the proposed settlement. He said it would give Google monopoly control of the book search market. But he left open the possibility for a new plan. On a similar issue, Baidu in China said it removed almost three millions documents from its

library. Writers have complained that Baidu would not have permission for their works to appear on its document-sharing sites. For VOA Special English, Im Alex Villarreal. You can read and listen to our program about business and other subjects at voaspeacialenglish.com. And click on the classroom for interactive exercises for English learners.

bai4 Test of Big Space Rocket Set for Late 2012. This is the VOA Special English Technology Report. An American space company says a powerful new rocket should be ready for a test launch by the end of next year. The company is Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX. Its new rocket is called the Falcon Heavy. Company officials say it will be able to transport satellites or spacecraft weighing up to fiftythree metric tons into orbit. That load weight is double the capacity of NASA space shuttles. The space agency is retiring its shuttles after thirty years. Elon Musk is the chief executive officer of SpaceX. He says fifty-three metric tons is more than the weight of a fully loaded Boeing 737 with one hundred thirty-six passengers, luggage and fuel. It's more payload capability than any space vehicle in history, he says, apart from the Saturn Five. NASA used Saturn Five rockets during its Apollo and Skylab programs in the nineteen sixties and seventies. A Saturn Five launched the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first humans on the moon in nineteen sixty-nine. The rockets were removed from service in nineteen seventy-three. But they remain the most powerful ever built. Elon Musk says the Falcon Heavy will be the second most powerful rocket ever. He says it was designed to do more than carry satellites and other equipment into space. He says the rocket was designed to meet NASA's ratings for human flight safety. So it could someday be used to carry astronauts and other travelers into space. Mr. Musk says the Falcon Heavy could also be used for missions like carrying a robotic lander to collect samples from Mars. He says a mission like that requires a great amount of lift capability. The lander has to reach Mars and still have enough fuel to return to Earth.

The first launch is planned from the company's launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. A launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, is expected in late twenty-thirteen or fourteen. In time, SpaceX hopes to launch ten Falcon Heavy rockets a year. It says the rocket should reduce launch costs to about two thousand dollars a kilogram. That is about one-tenth the cost of carrying loads into orbit on a space shuttle. SpaceX already has a billion-and-a-half-dollar deal with NASA to use a smaller rocket to transport cargo to the International Space Station. The rocket is the Falcon 9, and the deal is for after the two last shuttles -- Endeavour and Atlantis -- are retired this year. For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti. For more ways to learn American English and stay informed every day, go to voaspecialenglish.com from your computer or mobile device.

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I'm Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Health Report. The crisis at the damaged Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Power Station in northern Japan has raised worries about radiation risks. We spoke with Jonathan Links, an expert in radiation health sciences. He is a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. Professor Links says workers within the nuclear plant are the only people at risk of extremely high doses of radiation. For other people, he says, there may be a long-term worry. People can get cancer from low doses of ionizing radiation, the kind released in a nuclear accident. Professor Links says scientists can use computers to quickly model where radioactive material has blown and settled. Then they measure how large an area is contaminated. He says if the situation is serious enough, officials could take steps like telling people not to eat locally grown food or drink the water. But he said that would only be the case if there was a major release of radiation. And if it was shown that the radioactive material was blown over the area and then settled into and onto water, plants, fruits and vegetables. The reactors at Fukushima are on the Pacific coast. But Professor Links says people should not worry about any radioactive material leaking into the ocean. He said even in the worst accident, the sea dilutes the radiation. So the amount of radioactivity in the seawater would still be quite low. Japan is the only country to have had atomic bombs dropped on it. That memory from World War Two would create a stronger "psychological sensitivity" to radiation exposure, Professors Links says. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the explosion and fire that destroyed a reactor at Chernobyl in Ukraine was in April.

The nineteen eighty-six event was the world's worst accident in the nuclear power industry. A new United Nations report says more than six thousand cases of thyroid cancer have been found. These are in people who were children in affected areas of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. The report says that by two thousand five the cancers had resulted in fifteen deaths. The cancers were largely caused by drinking contaminated milk. The milk came from cows that ate grass where radioactive material had fallen. For VOA Special English I'm Alex Villarreal. To get the latest updates, go to voaspecialenglish.com. Bai6 I'm Mario Ritter with the VOA Special English Education Report. Some American parents might think their children need better educations to compete with China and other countries. But how much do the parents themselves need to change? A new book called "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua has caused a debate about cultural differences in parenting. Ms. Chua is a professor at the Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut, and the mother of two daughters. She was raised in the American Midwest by immigrant Chinese parents. In the Chinese culture, the tiger represents strength and power. In her book, Ms. Chua writes about how she demanded excellence from her daughters. For example, she threatened to burn her daughter's stuffed animals unless she played a piece of music perfectly. She would insult her daughters if they failed to meet her expectations. Ms. Chua says she had a clear list of what her daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were not permitted to do. They could not attend a sleepover, have a play date, watch TV or play computer games, be in a school play or get any grade less than an A. Many people have criticized Amy Chua. Some say her parenting methods were abusive. She even admits that her husband, who is not Chinese, sometimes objected to her parenting style. But she says that was the way her parents raised her and her three sisters. Ms. Chua makes fun of her own extreme style of parenting. She says she eased some of the pressure after her younger daughter rebelled and shouted "I hate my life! I hate you!" Ms. Chua says she decided to retreat when it seemed like there was a risk that she might lose her daughter. But she also says American parents often have low expectations of their children's abilities. She says: "One of the biggest differences I see between Western and Chinese parents is that

Chinese parents assume strength rather than fragility." Stacy DeBroff has written four books on parenting. She says the debate over Ms. Chua's book has to do with two questions. What does it mean to be a successful parent, and what does it mean to be a successful child? Ms. DeBroff says Amy Chua's parenting style is not limited to Chinese families. She says it represents a traditional way of parenting among immigrants seeking a better future for their children. But she also sees a risk. When children have no time to be social or to follow their own interests, they might not develop other skills that they need to succeed in life. Stacey DeBroff advises parents to develop their own style of parenting and not just repeat the way they were raised. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. What are your thoughts about parenting styles and cultural differences? Tell us at voaspecialenglish.com or on Facebook at VOA Learning English. For VOA Special English, I'm Mario Ritter.

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Video games can be fun to play. They also can teach people how to settle conflicts peacefully. This is a video game called Food Force. It can be downloaded from the Web site of the World Food Program. The groups Jennifer Parmalee says the game shows children the difficulty of getting food to areas of conflict. JENNIFER PARMALEE: It helps them feel like they can be part of a solution. Thats something empowering and fun for them. Another video game is called A Force More Powerful. It takes place in a city similar to Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia. Ivan Marovic designed the game. Ten years ago, he organized protests against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The president resigned after disputed election results in two thousand. He was arrested on war crimes charges, but died before his trial was completed. Marovic says his game shows non-violent ways to help remove oppressive governments. IVAN MAROVIC: Like strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, street protests, in order to force the regime to either concede or to step down. Marovic says another goal is to win public support. He says the goal is to win the loyalty of people who support the government. Another goal is to keep up the interest of your current supporters. This game deals with the situation in Darfur, Sudan.

The conflict in Darfur has displaced three million people. A Web site called Second Life was used to create the Darfur video game. Players can build their own make-believe world and contact others through voice and text messages. Scott Sechser works for Linden Labs, which created Second Life. He says the game lets players come in and see what is taking place in Darfur, listen to a family which left Darfur and is now in a refugee camp. The Second Life Web site is able to change text messages in English to other languages. Sechser says he has communicated with people from around the world. Other parts of Second Life help to support democracy and conflict resolution. They include a courtroom where people can learn about legal systems in a democracy. I'm Bob Doughty.

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It is hard to believe that New York City was once a small Dutch settlement. An old document shows that Dutch settlers did, in fact, pay for this land. The document can be seen at the citys South Street Seaport Museum. Martin Berense is head of the Netherlands National Archives. He says the letter tells about a ship arriving in Amsterdam. The ships operator said, The settlement is going well. And, we bought the island of Manhattan for sixty guilders. The letter is on loan for New Yorks four hundredth anniversary. Berendse says the letter tells about the settlement, which became New York. The museum also has a map of the settlement. Another map shows just how small Manhattan was. That changed when Britain took control. Historian Barry Lewis says the British filled in part of the East River with waste because more land was needed. BARRY LEWIS: We had only about one hundred thousand people at the beginning of the nineteenth century. By 1875, the population of Manhattan is over one-million people. By 1910, over two million people are living in Manhattan island. The Brooklyn Bridge was built in eighteen eighty-three so people could move to Long Island, where land was less costly. Lewis says people crossed the East River by carriage or boat. Or they walked across the bridge. He says New Yorks underground trains led to the development of land in areas far from the center of the city. Many businesses needed to be in Manhattan. So developers started building up, creating the skyscraper.

BARRY LEWIS: People were afraid it would fall down in the first windstorm. And anyone who had property in the commercial buildings next to it, they were terrified that no one would rent in their buildings because that thing was next door. But more and more skyscrapers were built. Each one was higher than the next. Lewis says the big reason for so many skyscrapers was money. He says New York was built by investments in land. That is not why everything was built. Some structures have improved the look of the city. Two examples are the Washington Square Arch and the Guggenheim Museum. But money is still important on the island that began as a trading center four centuries ago. The area the Dutch settled is now Wall Street, the worlds financial capital. Im Steve Ember.

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Im Mario Ritter with the VOA Special English Agriculture Report. Cacao or cocoa trees grow in hot, rainy areas of Africa, Asia and Central and South America. Their beans are used to make cocoa powder, cocoa butter and of course chocolate. There are five to six million growers, maybe more. Many are poor family farmers with only a few hectares. West Africa produces more than half of all cocoa beans. Ivory Coast leads the world in production, followed by its neighbor Ghana. The trees are usually in their fifth year when they start to grow the pods that contain the beans. The trees produce the most pods when they are ten, but they are still productive long after that. Workers use large knives to cut the lower pods and long tools to remove pods from high on the trees. Later they break open the pods to remove the beans. A half-gram of chocolate requires about four hundred beans. The World Cocoa Foundation says an average pod contains twenty to fifty beans. And experts say growers may lose perhaps one-third of their harvest to diseases and insects. But now scientists have genetic maps of two kinds of cocoa trees. These genomes are mostly complete and could lead scientists to new ways to increase production and prevent disease. Mapping genes is the first step to understanding an organism. Next comes learning the job of each gene. The American food company Mars took the lead in paying for mapping the genes of the Forastero cocoa tree. The Forastero provides eighty to ninety percent of the world's cocoa beans.

Mars depends on those beans for its M&Ms and other chocolate candies. The company's research partners included several universities and the United States Department of Agriculture. The average West African cocoa farmer produces about four hundred kilos of beans per hectare. But Howard-Yana Shapiro, head of plant science and external research at Mars, thinks that science could greatly increase the yield. A competitor of Mars, Hershey's, supported the gene mapping of the Criollo, a far less common cacao tree. Cirad, a French government research center, led scientists from six countries in creating that genome. We'll talk more about the cocoa industry next week, when we look at efforts to help child laborers in Ivory Coast and Ghana. For VOA Special English I'm Mario Ritter. You can read and listen to our reports at voaspecialenglish.com. Bai10 I'm Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Education Report. Songs teach language. Consider a song like "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega. An American teaching English overseas once told us that students love that song. Recently we asked people on the Special English Facebook page to suggest other songs that English learners might like. Noemi Nito wrote: I'm one of those English students who love "Tom's Diner." I started learning English with "Lemon Tree" by Fool's Garden. Another favorite is "Truly Madly Deeply" by Savage Garden. Another person, Asi Tambunan, suggested the song "God Only Knows" by Orianthi. Gyongyi Jako wrote that ABBA's songs from Sweden are perfect for class work. Other good songs for learning English are songs by the Beatles and John Lennon, as well as Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World." Paul Cifuentes says Bob Marley's songs are amazing for teaching. Another teacher, Joseph Deka, says songs by Johnny Cash have always worked in his classroom. He says his students can hear the words, plus the songs often have stories. He also likes "We Will Rock You" by Queen and "Beautiful Girls" by Sean Kingston. He says young children love "C Is for Cookie" by Cookie Monster from the TV show "Sesame Street." Nina John Smith suggested these songs: "It's My Life" and "We Weren't Born to Follow" by Bon Jovi. Also "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica. Aurelio Lourenco Costa Gusmao says he began to like English after his teacher played the Westlife song "I Have a Dream."

He wrote: That was eight years ago. I was in the seventh grade. And from that day on, my dream of improving my English skills became attached in my mind. Teachers can use this song to convey the message to their students that they should have their own dream for the future. Aurelio's story was no surprise to another commenter, Katie Kivenko. She especially likes songs by Michael Jackson and Queen. She wrote: When you listen to your favorite songs, you feel emotionally high and it moves you to action. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal. Do you have any favorite songs for learning English? You can share other music suggestions for English learners at our website, voaspecialenglish.com or on Facebook at VOA Learning English. We are also on Twitter and iTunes.

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I'm Carolyn Presutti with the VOA Special English Education Report. The International Primary Curriculum is an idea that began in Britain eight years ago. Today this curriculum is taught in more than one thousand primary schools in fifty-eight countries, including the United States. Educator Martin Skelton co-wrote the International Primary Curriculum, or IPC. He says for children to learn and succeed, they need a program that permits them to learn individually. He says the idea with the curriculum is to help today's children become good citizens of the world and twenty-first century leaders. He says most of world problems are going to be solved internationally. No single country is going to solve the environment or terrorism. Mr. Skelton says the curriculum has activities built around the development of "international mindedness" starting from the age of five. The British American School of Los Angeles is one of a few American private schools that teach the International Primary Curriculum. Second grade teacher Alison Kerr says the main goal is to engage children in the learning process. This term, for example, her class is learning about people important in history. She says the children dressed like famous people. They had to research and bring ten written clues and the rest of the class had to guess who the people were. The British School in Boston held a fair for students and parents called Around the World in a Day. Emma Northey, head of primary learning at the school, says fifty-one nationalities were represented. She described one activity designed to teach about similarities among different cultures. She says the children were each given a passport. They knew that they were going around the world in a day. We said to them 'You have to come back with two similarities that you had seen between the

different cultures.' Even the three-year-olds came back to me saying 'Gosh, you know everybody writes. Some people write going down. Some people write from left to right, some from right to left.' Another educator, Kate Foy of the British School in Washington, says the teacher's role is to enable students to discover for themselves. For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti. Tell us if you have experience with the International Primary Curriculum and what you think of it. Share your comments at voaspecialenglish.com or on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English. Bai12 I'm Carolyn Presutti with the VOA Special English Economics Report. Unrest in North Africa and the Middle East pushed oil prices back into the news. Prices rose at their fastest level since two thousand eight. Libya is not among the ten largest oil exporters. But the rebellion against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi reduced production, affecting the global market. In March, oil prices rose above one hundred dollars a barrel. Prices went above one hundred forty-five dollars a barrel in two thousand eight. The price of oil affects prices and demand for energy, plastics, farm chemicals and many other products made with petroleum. During the last week of February, Americans paid the second biggest weekly increase in gasoline prices in twenty years. The United States has a Strategic Petroleum Reserve that contains more than seven hundred million barrels of oil. President Obama could use some of this emergency supply to help ease fuel prices. But intervening in the market could hurt oil production in the United States. Oil prices have been rising at a bad time, just as many economies have been recovering from the global recession. Also, several countries in the euro area are still struggling with debt crises. European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said in March that "strong vigilance" is needed to contain inflation. That could mean raising interest rates which could hurt European countries heavily in debt. In the United States, higher fuel prices come just as General Motors and Chrysler show signs of recovery after their reorganizations. American car sales in February were twenty-seven percent higher than last February. GM led all carmakers with a forty-seven percent increase. High fuel prices reduce demand for big cars and trucks. But economist George Magliano says this time, high prices may be good for carmakers. He says with gasoline prices higher, some people might want to get a much more fuel-efficient vehicle. He says gasoline vehicles get twenty-five to thirty percent better mileage today than they did

three or four years ago. For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti. Share your stories about what high fuel prices mean to you. You can comment at voaspecialenglish.com or on Facebook at VOA Learning English. You can also download podcasts on our website and watch videos on our YouTube channel at VOA Learning English.

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I'm Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Technology Report. Today we tell about some of the top technology developments of the last ten years. The technological revolution is changing the way we work and play. Mobile phones became smartphones, with abilities like computers. Many people started reading books on electronic readers. Televisions became high-definition and the screens became flat. Digital music players got smaller in size but large enough for people to download their entire music collections. Worldwide broadband subscriptions passed five hundred million. And, at least two billion people were expected to be online by the end of two thousand ten. Stephen Baker is the vice president of industry analysis for the consumer electronics market research group NPD. He says the technological developments of the twenty-first century have brought about some historic advances in consumer electronics. He said ten years ago might as well be a hundred years. If you look back at the way people interacted with electronics in two thousand and the way they interact with them today, there is no comparison. Ten years ago there were no flat panel televisions. There were no mobile web devices or smartphones. There were no e-book readers. And very few people had notebook computers. Bruce Bachenheimer is with the MIT Enterprise Forum in New York City. He is also the director of entrepreneurship at Pace University. He talked about what he believes are the most important technological developments of the twenty-first century. They are mobile computing, digital media content, broadband, social media platforms and usergenerated content. Also, digital photography and global positioning systems for consumers. Mr. Bachenheimer says all of these things have worked together to revolutionize technology. And, he says the technology is constantly changing, faster than at any other time in history.

He said telephones had not changed for three or four decades. They could be on a wall or on a table top. But now cell phone technology is changing every year. He asked: "How many people have a cell phone that is more than a year or two old?" For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal. You can learn more about technology on our website, voaspecialenglish.com. And you can follow us on Facebook, Twitter and iTunes at VOA Learning English.

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I'm Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Technology Report. A report by the Consumer Electronics Association says electronics were among the most popular gifts bought this holiday season. It also predicted that spending on these devices would set new records. The CEA said consumers were expected to spend an average of about two hundred thirty dollars on electronics. This is five percent more than in two thousand nine and the highest level since the organization began keeping records of holiday spending. Jim Barry is a spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association. He said the CEA study found that electronics represented three of the top five things on its Holiday Gift Wish List in two thousand ten. He said: Notebook computers are at the top, followed by iPads and then e-readers. IPad is a touch-screen tablet computer and that's really the big player in that category. The computer company Apple began selling its small, touch-screen computers in April. People use the touch-screen computers to surf the Web, write e-mails, watch movies and read books. Since the iPad's release, several other companies came out with their own tablet computers just in time for Christmas. A report from the e-Marketer research group predicts that worldwide tablet sales will reach more than eighty-one million in two thousand twelve. Still, Jim Barry says these devices faced tough competition from another Christmas favorite. He said: "Another hot category right behind that are the e-readers. So you can read on an iPad or a touch-screen tablet, but the e-book readers are less expensive. The Kindle is the market leader there from Amazon. But you also have the Nook from Barnes and Noble and the e-reader from Sony." Jim Barry says modern technology is changing the way people relate and increasing their expectations for their electronic devices.

He said: "It's really the ability to take your information and entertainment with you just about anywhere to stay connected to your work and your family." The Consumer Electronics Association report found that iPod music players were also in high demand this holiday season. So were video game systems and digital cameras. But not all of the things on the holiday gift wish list involved electronics. The one thing that people wanted most? Jim Barry said: "At the top of the list was peace and happiness." For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal.

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This is the VOA Special English Education Report. India was once a colony in the British Empire. But now Indian tutors are helping to teach math to some British children over high-speed Internet connections. Early results suggest that online tutoring may improve student performance. But not everyone is happy at this so-called outsourcing of tutors. Students at Raynham Primary School in London gather at three-thirty for their after-school math lessons. Five time zones and thousands of kilometers away, their math tutors are also arriving for class. Each pupil gets an individual online tutor. The students work with activities on their computer screen and wear a headset and microphone to talk to their tutor. Their classroom teacher, Altus Basson, says he has seen an improvement in results. "Children who struggle to focus in class focus a lot better on the laptops," he says. Nine-year-old Samia Abdul-Kadir says she enjoys the online lessons. "It helps me because sometimes when we're doing it in class, I don't hear the teacher very much and I don't understand, but online is better," she says. Her friend, Abdul-Fadil Badori, agrees. He says, "Online, you can hear it, it's not shared by everyone, everyone has different topics they're learning." Tom Hooper started the company that provides the online tutoring. The company is called BrightSpark Education. He says "Children today feel very confident online, they feel very engaged, they feel very in control. And that's half the battle with education. Give them control, make them feel confident and enjoy their learning and you'll see them start

to improve and embrace it." Online tutoring costs between twenty and twenty-five dollars an hour. An online tutor is about half the cost of traditional face-to-face coaching. But some people say an Internet connection is not enough of a connection for teaching and learning. Kevin Courtney is deputy general secretary of Britain's National Union of Teachers. He says there's a "really important emotional connection between a teacher and a child, whether it's a whole class or whether it's one-to-one. You need that immediacy of feedback, and we're not convinced that that can happen across an Internet connection. In one of the wealthiest countries in the world, we think that we can afford to have teachers with the genuine emotional connection there with the children." BrightSpark Education says the online tutoring is used only as an addition to supplement regular teaching. The company says its service does not represent a threat to teachers' jobs in Britain. Some parents say they are satisfied with the results. And what about the children? Some say they love it. But at least one declared: "I hate maths!" So math -- or maths, as the British call it -- is still not everyone's favorite subject even with the latest technology to teach it. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villareal. You can watch a video of the online tutoring by going to voaspecialenglish.com. You can also find English teaching activities plus MP3s, podcasts and transcripts of our programs.

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I'm Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Economics Report. Business is the most popular subject for international students in the United States. At last count, twenty-one percent of foreign students at American colleges and universities were studying business and management. The Institute of International Education in New York says engineering is the second most popular field, in case you were wondering. Thomas Cosse is a professor of marketing and business at the University of Richmond in Virginia. He says international students who want to study business need to have good English skills -and not just to study at his school. But the world has more non-native speakers of English than native speakers. As a result, Americans working with foreign companies may need to learn some new English

skills themselves. At the University of Richmond, teams of graduate students work with companies seeking to enter the American market. The students learn about writing market entry studies. The reports are written in English. But Professor Cosse tells his students to consider who will read them. He said his students have to write the report so that it can be understood by someone who is an English speaker but not a native English speaker. For example, he tells his students to avoid jargon and other specialized terms that people might not know in their own language. This can be good advice even when writing for other native speakers. But effective communication involves more than just words. Kay Westerfield is director of the international business communication program at the University of Oregon. She says you must have the language skills as well as cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence means the need to consider local behaviors in everything from simple handshakes to speaking to large groups. Still, Kay Westerfield says the ability of foreign workers to speak English is becoming more important to companies looking to move operations to other countries. Or, as she puts it, to "off-source." Also, she says English skills often provide a competitive edge for business students when they seek jobs. She said: "As one business student in West Africa put it, 'English is a lifeline.'" For VOA Special English I'm Alex Villarreal. You can read and listen to our programs and find activities for English learners at voaspecialenglish.com. We're also on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English.

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I'm Carolyn Presutti with the VOA Special English Education Report. The Intel Science Talent Search is the top science competition for high school students in the United States. The forty finalists were honored in Washington in March. They met with scientists and politicians. President Obama welcomed them to the White House. These forty students were selected from almost two thousand contestants nationwide. They had to present original research to be judged by professional scientists. The students showed their research projects on large posters. The winners were announced March fifteenth.

Wendy Hawkins is executive director of the Intel Foundation. She says the forty finalists represented excellence across many areas of science. Their projects are deep and rich and insightful. Selena Li is from Fair Oaks, California. She wanted to find a more effective treatment for liver cancer. She began her research four years ago. A scientist at the University of California, Davis, taught her how to design and do experimental work in the laboratory. She says: "I researched a new approach to targeting liver cancer by basically starving the liver cancer cells to death, while leaving the normal cells unaffected. And, to go one step further, I blocked a survival pathway to make the treatment more effective." Ms. Li placed fifth in the Intel Science Talent Search and was awarded thirty thousand dollars. Scott Boisvert lives near Phoenix, Arizona. He began using a laboratory at the University of Arizona at the age of fourteen. Over four years, he completed a project studying a fungus linked to the decrease in amphibians around the world. He was trying to find out if different chemicals and substances in the water could kill the fungus. He collected and tested water samples across Arizona. He says: "My results were able to identify a list of chemicals that were significant in the growth and in the movement of the fungus" He placed tenth in the Intel competition and was awarded twenty thousand dollars. Evan O'Dorney of Danville, California, won the top award of one hundred thousand dollars in this year's Intel Science Talent Search. For his mathematical project, he compared two ways to estimate the square root of an integer, a number with no fractional parts. Wendy Hawkins at the Intel Foundation says these young people represent the next generation of scientists who will help shape America's future. For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti.

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This is the VOA Special English Economics Report. Many children first learn the value of money by receiving an allowance. The purpose is to let children learn from experience at an age when financial mistakes are not very costly.

The amount of money that parents give to their children to spend as they wish differs from family to family. Timing is another consideration. Some children get a weekly allowance. Others get a monthly allowance. In any case, parents should make clear what, if anything, the child is expected to pay for with the money. At first, young children may spend all of their allowance soon after they receive it. If they do this, they will learn the hard way that spending must be done within a budget. Parents are usually advised not to offer more money until the next allowance. The object is to show young people that a budget demands choices between spending and saving. Older children may be responsible enough to save money for larger costs, like clothing or electronics. Many people who have written on the subject of allowances say it is not a good idea to pay your child for work around the home. These jobs are a normal part of family life. Paying children to do extra work around the house, however, can be useful. It can even provide an understanding of how a business works. Allowances give children a chance to experience the things they can do with money. They can share it in the form of gifts or giving to a good cause. They can spend it by buying things they want. Or they can save and maybe even invest it. Saving helps children understand that costly goals require sacrifice: you have to cut costs and plan for the future. Requiring children to save part of their allowance can also open the door to future saving and investing. Many banks offer services to help children and teenagers learn about personal finance. A savings account is an excellent way to learn about the power of compound interest. Compounding works by paying interest on interest. So, for example, one dollar invested at two percent interest for two years will earn two cents in the first year. The second year, the money will earn two percent of one dollar and two cents, and so on. That may not seem like a lot. But over time it adds up. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villareal. You can learn more about economics with MP3s and transcripts of our programs at voaspecialenglish.com. And you can find us on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English.

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This is the VOA Special English Economics Report. In early April, President Obama announced his plans to seek re-election in November of next year. In an e-mail to supporters, Mr. Obama said "the race may not reach full speed for a year or more." But he said the work of building the campaign "must start today." Some of that work will depend on how many jobs are created in the months ahead. Mr. Obama welcomed a report that the United States economy added two hundred sixteen thousand jobs in March. The unemployment rate dropped one-tenth of one percent for the second straight month. The unemployment rate edged down to 8.8 percent, the lowest in two years. And some economists say this spring may be the start of better news to come. Consumer spending has been increasing. Stephen Hess is a political scientist who studies the presidency at the Brookings Institution in Washington. He says, "The next election will, more than anything else, depend on employment in the United States." Labor Secretary Hilda Solis pointed out that the economy has added jobs for twelve months in a row. She says the economy has added a million and a half private sector jobs. But, she added, "we need to continue to not lose sight of where we need to go to increase opportunities for people to get employed in new jobs." President Obama has filled a top job in his party as he prepares to seek a second term. He chose Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida to head the Democratic National Committee. She replaces Tim Kaine who plans to run for the Senate from Virginia next year. Among Republicans, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty recently formed a committee to explore a presidential campaign. Several other Republicans are also considering races for their party's nomination. The latest jobs report showed that thirteen and a half million Americans remained unemployed in March. Another concern is that oil prices remained over one hundred dollars a barrel. High energy prices could threaten the recovery from the recession. In another development, Portugal became the latest member of the European Union with heavy debts to request emergency loans. Portugal joined Greece and Ireland which have also received aid. Portuguese opposition parties refused to accept budget cuts proposed by Prime Minister Jose Socrates. For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti. For more ways to learn American English and stay informed every day, go to voaspecialenglish.com from your computer or mobile device. Bai20

This is the VOA Special English Health Report. Do you think getting cold can give you a cold? Is it bad to drink milk when you have a cold? Can chicken soup cure a cold? Ranit Mishori is a family medicine doctor at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington. She says colds are more common in winter, but not because of low temperatures. The cold weather just means people stay inside more, often with other people. "And the way the common cold virus is transmitted from one person to another is through handshakes, through sneezing, or through coughing on one another." Adults generally get two to three colds a year. Children are likely to catch four or five. Dr. Mishori says some people mistakenly believe they can become resistant to colds. She says, "There are about two hundred different viruses that cause the common cold. People think that once you get infected one time you develop immunity for the rest of your life. This is wrong. There is still no cure for the common cold. But Dr. Mishori says there are ways to feel better sooner. "So if you catch a cold and on day one you start taking about two grams of vitamin C a day, there is evidence you might shorten the number of days that you will be suffering with these symptoms." She says honey can also help. There is evidence that it can shorten the length of the common cold sometimes even by two to three days. She says honey seems to be especially effective in children with colds. But the Agriculture Department says never to feed honey to babies less than one year old. It says even honey in prepared foods may contain substances that can make babies very sick. Some people believe in treating a cold with chicken soup. Does it work? Dr. Mishori says, "Chicken soup has anti-inflammatory properties, so it helps reduce the duration but also it helps clear the mucus." Mucus is the sticky substance that can make you cough and have trouble breathing during a cold. Have you ever heard the old saying "feed a cold, starve a fever"? Dr. Mishori says this is not necessarily a good guideline to follow. She says if you have a cold but do not feel hungry, then don't eat. "But you have to drink a lot and you can drink water or tea -- anything that gets fluids into your body.

That's very important." But what about drinking milk during a cold? Some people think it only causes more mucus. Dr. Mishori says yes and no. Dairy products do not cause increased mucus, she says, but they can thicken the mucus. She says, "It's possible that discomfort is somewhat more enhanced when you drink milk. But obviously, if you're a baby and that's all you drink, you should not stop giving babies milk." For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villareal. MP3s, podcasts and transcripts of our reports are at voaspecialenglish.com. We're also on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English.

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I'm Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Economics Report. Facebook is the world's biggest social network -- and the subject of the movie "The Social Network." The real Mark Zuckerberg and his friends at Harvard University launched the site in two thousand four. Facebook says it reached five hundred million users last July. Now, the American bank Goldman Sachs and the Russian company Digital Sky Technologies have friended Facebook. They are investing a total of five hundred million dollars in the company. The deal values Facebook at fifty billion dollars -- more than many publicly traded Internet companies. Goldman Sachs is expected to raise a billion and a half dollars more by selling shares of ownership in Facebook to rich investors. The plan does not include a public stock offering -- at least not right now. For now, Facebook would remain a private company -- meaning a company that does not sell shares to the public. The plan has brought new attention to the largely secretive world of private financing and the rules for private companies in the United States. The idea is that investors in public companies have protections that investors in private companies do not. The Securities and Exchange Commission says a private company must report financial information if it has more than five hundred shareholders. A new business, a startup company, is usually considered too risky for average investors. But a promising startup may find a small number of private investors, often known as "angels." These investors are willing to lose everything for a chance at big returns. Rikki Tahta has been involved in raising money for startups.

He is now chairman of his own investment company, Covestor, with offices in New York and London. Mister Tahta compares the difference between public and private companies to the difference between marriage and dating. When people are dating, he says, there are understandings but few rules. In marriage, the rules are more clear and well-defined. In his opinion, the only real benefit for a private company is lower administrative and recordkeeping costs. Yet he tells us Covestor remains a private company after a few years because it is still too risky for most investors. For VOA Special English I'm Alex Villarreal. You can comment on our programs and find transcripts and MP3s at voaspecialenglish.com. We're on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English.

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I'm Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Economics Report. A ten-billion-dollar deal aims to create the world's largest exchange company. The plan would combine the operators of the New York Stock Exchange and Germany's Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The two companies, NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Borse, announced the agreement in February. Deutsche Borse shareholders would own about sixty percent of the combined group. One thing it still needs is a name. The new company would have headquarters in Frankfurt and New York City. The New York Stock Exchange is the world's most famous stock market and a symbol of American capitalism. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says New York will remain at the heart of the world's financial system for a long time to come. But the exchange business has changed in these days of high-speed trading by computers in a globally connected economy. The Big Board now has to compete with smaller exchanges. Where stocks are traded has become less important than how much those trades cost. NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Borse had profits of almost four and a half billion dollars last year. They expect to save four hundred million dollars a year by combining their operations. These savings could lower the cost of stock orders. But the size of the company could raise concerns about competition in the exchange industry.

The new company would also have trading operations in Britain, France and other European countries. Stock trading and other financial services would remain important to the combined company. But much of its income is expected to come from trading complex financial products called derivatives. The deal requires approval by American and European officials and by shareholders. Other exchange operators, like the CME Group, could try to offer a higher price for NYSE Euronext. The CME Group, operator of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, is one of the world's largest traders of derivatives. Duncan Niederauer, chief executive of NYSE Euronext, is expected to keep that job in the new company. He says combining with Deutsche Borse will make the company more competitive. In February, the operators of the London and Toronto stock exchanges announced a deal to combine their companies. And in October the Singapore Exchange offered to merge with Australia's exchange. For VOA Special English I'm Alex Villarreal.

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This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Professors have lectured for centuries. But how effective is lecturing to students compared to working with them? A new study compared two classes of a beginning physics course at the University of British Columbia in Canada. There were more than two hundred sixty students in each section. Both were taught by popular and experienced professors. The study took place for one week near the end of the year. One class continued to be taught in the traditional lecture style. The other professor was replaced by two teachers. They had little teaching experience but received training in interactive teaching methods. The training was led by Carl Wieman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who leads a science education program. There was almost no lecturing. The teachers put the students in small groups to discuss and answer questions. The instructors always gave feedback after the groups did tasks. And they gave readings and quizzes to finish before class so the students would come prepared to discuss the material.

Professor Wieman says there was a great deal of data showing how identical these two large sections of the class were before the study. At the end of the experiment, both classes took the same test. Students in the interactive class scored nearly twice as high as those in the traditional class. Attendance also increased that week. Graduate student Ellen Schelew was one of the teachers. She says the methods they used are designed to encourage students to think like scientists. The study appeared in May in the journal Science. It seems to confirm earlier findings about lecturing to large classes. But some experts have criticized the way the study was done. Both of the researchers who taught the class, Ms. Schelew and Louis Deslauriers, were also authors of the study. This could raise questions about whether their involvement might have influenced the results. Professor Wieman is currently on leave from the University of British Columbia and the University of Colorado. He is the associate director for science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He says research has shown better ways to teach based on evidence about how the brain learns. And he hopes more professors will learn that how someone teaches may be more important than who does the teaching. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal. You can find a link to the physics test that the students took at voaspecialenglish.com.

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This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report. What can you do with earthworms? Some people use the creepy crawlers to catch fish. But others put worms to work making compost. Compost looks and feels like good soil. Gardeners and farmers add it to soil to make plants grow better.

You can make compost from food waste at home with or without the help of worms. How the worms help is by first eating and processing the food. It comes out the other end of the worm as rich compost. Kim Gabel from the University of Florida Extension service in Key West says worms known as red wigglers are the best varieties to use. You need a container to hold the waste and the worms. The size of the composting bin depends on how much compost you want to make. You need about a kilogram of worms for each half a kilogram of daily food waste that you add.Kim Gabel says the bin needs holes so the worms can breathe. And they also like to be in the dark, so cover the bin to keep out the light. One thing worms do not like is very high temperatures. Kim Gabel lives in the warm climate of southern Florida. She keeps her worm bin indoors. Unpleasant smells can be prevented by controlling the amount of food waste added to the bin and avoiding meat or bones. For composting with worms, you need bedding that is moist but not too wet. The amount of water you add will depend on the bedding material you use. Kim Gabel uses newspaper cut into strips about two and a half centimeters wide. Add two handfuls of soil for every half square meter of bedding material and mix well. Spread the worms over the bedding. The worms will start to wiggle their way down. Remove any worms that remain on top of the bedding after two hours. When you feed the worms, place the food about two and a half centimeters below the surface of the bedding and cover it. The worm's waste, or castings, should be ready to use as compost within two to six months. To remove the compost, you can push it all to one side of the bin. Place new bedding and food on the other side. Within a few weeks the worms will move to the new bedding.

Now you can remove the compost and fill the empty space with new bedding. For VOA Special English, I'm Mario Ritter. For more gardening advice, and for more programs and activities for English learners, go to voaspecialenglish.com. We're on Facebook, Twitter and iTunes at VOA Learning English.

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This is the VOA special English Agriculture Report. Europe's deadly outbreak of a rare form of E.Coli bacteria has brought new attention to food safety issues. One of the problems when people get sick from food is that the simplest question is often difficult or even impossible to answer. Just what did the people eat that made them sick? Of course, one way to avoid these medical mysteries is to keep dangerous organisms out of the food supply. This is easier said than done, but scientists keep trying. Scientists in the United States have developed an experimental system that uses a high-tech optical scanner. This inspection system is meant for packing houses where produce is sorted for market. The system is designed to identify the presence of contaminants like soil or animal waste on fresh produce. These can be sources of Escherichia coli, better known as E.coli. E. coli bacteria naturally live in the intestines of humans and many animals. Most kinds of E. coli are harmless, but some can make people sick. The new scanner can also show damage and imperfections that might make the produce unappealing to shoppers. Scientists designed the system at a Department of Agriculture research center in Beltsville, Maryland.

Moon Kim of the Agricultural Research Service led the team. He says they were asked to develop a method to detect contamination in produce So they started with the apple as their model sample. The scanner uses a high-speed camera placed over the conveyer belt that moves the produce along. As the apples move along the belt, the scanner captures images of each piece of fruit. The system is equipped with an ultraviolet lamp and a halogen lamp that produces nearinfrared light. A spectrograph device can use the near-infrared light bouncing off an apple to show evidence of damage. The ultraviolet light can show contaminants. Moon Kim says the team hopes the system will be available to the food industry in the next several years. The scanner can direct a sorting machine to separate the bad apples from the good ones. The system is currently able to show the surface of only half the apple as it speeds by. The inventers hope to improve the process so it can show the whole surface. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal. You can learn American English and much more every day at voaspecialenglish.com.

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I'm Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Agriculture Report Sub-Saharan Africa has the world's highest hunger rate. The United Nations says thirty percent of the people were undernourished last year. But a new report says African farmers also have ideas that could help the world fight hunger and poverty. Danielle Nierenberg from the Worldwatch Institute in Washington spent a year visiting twentyfive countries south of the Sahara.

In Nairobi, Kenya, for example, Ms. Nierenberg found women farmers growing vegetables just outside their doorsteps in the Kibera settlement. She says the area is crowded, dirty and noisy. But the people are finding ways to make their lives better. The women use old sacks filled with soil. They cut holes in the sides of the tall bags so air gets to the seeds. The women feed the vegetables to their families and sell their surplus. They use the money to send their children to school. Last year, an estimated nine hundred twenty-five million people worldwide did not get enough to eat. Half of all people in the world now live in and around cities. Researchers like Ms. Nierenberg are looking increasingly at creative ideas to feed those who are malnourished. She said there are a lot of lessons that people in the Western world can learn from Africa. And what they are doing can be done in other developing countries. Farmers in the developing world lose between twenty and forty percent of their harvest before it ever reaches market. Asma Lateef from the group Bread for the World says there are many reasons why food gets wasted. Farmers are without electricity and cold storage. They lack good seeds and fertilizer. They lack good roads. Ms. Lateef says conditions like these keep small farmers in poverty. Danielle Nierenberg says more attention needs to be paid to protecting harvests. In Nigeria, village processing centers are helping farmers reduce their losses and earn more money. The centers process cassava, a root vegetable, into basic food products. In Uganda, the Worldwatch report says some schools are teaching children how to grow local crops. And in South Africa and Kenya the report praises the breeding of local kinds of livestock. These animals may produce less milk or meat than other breeds, but they can survive heat and drought conditions. The report is called "State of the World 2011: Innovations That Nourish the Planet. For VOA Special English I'm Alex Villarreal

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This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report. George Ballas of Houston, Texas, lived a long life. He was a businessman and property developer. A university lecturer and author. A dancer and dance studio owner whose son Corky and grandson Mark followed in his footsteps into the dance world. And Mr. Ballas was the inventor of the Weed Eater. The man who found an easier way for people to cut grass and weeds died in Houston on June twenty-fifth. He was eighty-five years old. George Ballas was born in Louisiana. He joined the military at seventeen. He served in World War Two and the Korean War. After the military, he became a dance teacher and executive in the dance school industry. In the nineteen fifties, he built a dance studio of his own in Houston. People called it the biggest in the world. Dance City USA had one hundred twenty teachers. Mr. Ballas sold the studio in nineteen sixtyfour. By the early seventies, he was on to the next big thing. The idea had come to him at a car wash. He watched the needle-like bristles of the brushes as they went round and round against his car. Could a similar idea be used to cut grass in places out of reach of someone pushing a lawn mower? To find out, he placed lengths of fishing line through holes in a tin can. He attached the can to the spinning part of a motorized grass edger. The result? A revolution for millions of people who cut grass for a living or just to keep their neighbors happy. George Ballas became known as the "Weed King." As he once told the Houston Chronicle, "A Weed Eater comes along once in a lifetime."

His invention grew into a company which he later sold. Today his idea lives on in a new generation of string trimmers and edgers that people often call weed whackers. The noise may not be the nicest, but neither is a loud mower. Trimmers work well in corners and along walls and fences. They also avoid the use of chemicals and the labor of pulling weeds by hand. Of course, in the wrong hands, a weed whacker can do damage like any other power tool. The high-speed cutting line can whack pieces out of trees, wood fences, stone surfaces or birdbaths. In nineteen fifty-two, George Ballas married Maria Louisa Marulanda, a flamenco dancer and film actress. They were together for fifty-nine years until his death. For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti. You can find Voice of America's daily news and information service for people learning English at voaspecialenglish.com.

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This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report. Weeds compete with plantings for water and nutrients. So farmers and gardeners may have good reason to hate them. But weeds can also bring pretty flowers and wild beauty to places lacking either. British nature writer Richard Mabey offers support for them in his new book. The title says it all. "Weeds: In Defense of Nature's Most Unloved Plants. " But when exactly is a plant considered a weed? Experts at Penn State University say the answer is simple: when the undesirable qualities outweigh the good qualities. A crop plant generally produces several hundred seeds.

But a weed plant can produce tens or even hundreds of thousands of seeds. And if seeds get buried, they may survive for many years underground. Eradicating weeds means that you have to remove all the seeds and roots so the plants will not grow back. But birds or the wind can reintroduce them to the land. A more common way to deal with weeds is to control them enough so that the land can be used for planting. Experts advise using two or more control methods to deal with weeds. Chemical weed killers or natural treatments like corn gluten can suppress weed growth. But so can dense planting. Bill Curran is a professor of weed science at Penn State. He says a dense, competitive crop that quickly shades the soil from the sun will help reduce weed growth. Other controls include turning over the soil, pulling the weeds or covering them with mulch made of wood, garden waste or other material. But even mulch has its limits. Natural resource specialists point out that weeds can be transported in mulch. This is also true of soil, grain, hay and animals. Yet animals like sheep or goats eat weeds, so they can provide a biological control. Insects and other organisms can also act as biological controls. Preventing the spread of weeds is an important part of weed management. Farm vehicles should be kept out of areas with weeds. If that is not possible, then clean off the equipment and your shoes when leaving. Some people burn weeds or bury them deep in the ground or make them into mulch. Professor Curran says another way to make use of weeds is to compost them. The process of making organically rich compost produces heat. This heat kills many, though not all, weed seeds.

The same is true for seeds that pass through animals that graze on weeds. For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti.

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This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Spain is struggling with a recession. More than one in five Spaniards are out of work. The unemployment rate is the highest of the seventeen nations that use the euro. But one area of the economy that seems to be doing well is English classes. A report this year from the EF Education First company listed Spain is a "low proficiency" country in English. Spain ranked just below Italy and just above Taiwan. About a fifth of the world speaks Spanish. There are many Spanish language TV shows and movies. Spaniards can also watch Hollywood movies dubbed in Spanish or news from Latin America. One of the few English voices on Spanish TV belongs to Richard Vaughan. Mr. Vaughan is from Texas but for thirty-five years has lived in Spain. He operates that country's biggest English teaching company. It even has its own TV channel. "Aprende Ingles" -- Learn English -- is Spain's only national channel in English. He says people watch his channel and take his classes to get a better job. "People don't learn English here for cultural reasons. Some do. But the motive is always, ninety-nine percent of the time, professional. " Modern changes in the world economy -- globalization -- may offer chances for a better job in another country. But economic problems at home can also make people feel they have few other choices. The director of the language center at the London School of Economics says "language learning is up" across Europe.

In Spain, some of those studying English hope for jobs in Britain or the United States. But others want to work for international companies with offices in Spain. Many companies now require workers to be bilingual. Dominic Campbell is an American who lives in Madrid and teaches English part time He says a lot of jobs now "want at least Spanish and English. And a lot of them are asking for Spanish, English and French -- especially airlines. He says many of his students thought "I've got Spanish, that's all I need. " But people also need jobs. More than forty percent of Spaniards in their twenties are out of work. Inigo Gomez has an education degree but could not find a teaching job. "So I think it's a good idea to go to the United Kingdom and try to find a job as a Spanish teacher." And while he does that, many Spaniards for the first time will be spreading their new education in English at home. For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti. You can learn English and get the latest news every day at voaspecialenglish.com.

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This is the VOA Special English Economics Report. Small business entrepreneurs play an important part in American job growth. Small businesses have created almost two-thirds of new jobs in the last fifteen years. The economy has traditionally been divided into three sectors. One is the private sector, meaning businesses. The second is the public sector, or government. And the third is the nonprofit sector. But now some people talk about a fourth sector. It represents nonprofit and for-profit organizations working toward goals of social change and environmental activism. Universities are starting to offer training and degree programs to prepare students to work in

this area. One of these schools is Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. It now offers a degree in social entrepreneurship. Bernard Turner is director of the Center for Social Entrepreneurship at the university. He says student interest is driving many of these new programs. "Students are saying 'Now I want to be an entrepreneur, but I want to do something that deals with a social problem or a social issue that's dear to me.'" William Paddock is founder and director of a business consulting company in Tennessee called WAP Sustainability. He has a business degree and training in the area of environmental sustainability. Recently, the Custom Packaging company of Lebanon, Tennessee, hired him to help make its business more environmentally friendly. The company makes cardboard advertising displays for sales campaigns. Mr. Paddock advised the company on recycling and ways to create less waste. He also persuaded the business to use electricity from solar energy. William Paddock offers his consulting services for profit, but says social responsibility is a big part of what his company does. "For us it's about protecting the environment, being better to society, but also there's an economic piece to it. We love to... find our passions, but also save somebody money." There are now more than sixty American universities offering so-called green business degrees. The definition of social entrepreneurship and the exact nature of this sector continue to evolve. Some people are more interested in social programs and charity. Others are more interested in business plans and profits. But the root of the movement seems to be a desire to earn a living and make a difference at the same time. For VOA Special English, Im Alex Villarreal. You can watch a video report on social entrepreneurship at voaspecialenglish.com.

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This is the VOA Special English Economics Report. Apple's new version of its desktop operating system for Mac computers is called Mac OS X Lion. Apple says this latest OS X upgrade has over two hundred new features. But one big difference is how the company will sell it -- only by download at its Mac App Store. The price is twenty-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents. Users without the current version, Snow Leopard, will have to pay an extra thirty dollars to download the new release. Last year, Apple had more than five hundred million dollars in sales of its desktop operating system. Experts say download-only software is getting more common. Dave Wolf is a vice president at Cynergy Systems in Washington. His company helps software designers to develop and market products. He says the computer that many people use most is their mobile phone. People who download apps to smartphones have come to expect quick and easy software updates. Now, Dave Wolf says phones are shaping expectations for other computers. Downloadable programs mean fewer trips to stores to buy software. But that can also mean fewer sales for stores that depend on physical products, including most video games. And not everyone has a high-speed Internet connection to make downloads quick and easy. But Dave Wolf says the cost savings are a big help to small businesses trying to reach a wide market. "I think it's a boon to small software companies and entrepreneurs who have incredible ideas and want to get them out to market." He says the Internet radio service Pandora, for example, can offer free music because it has no costs of selling discs in stores. Pandora began selling shares of stock to the public in June.

Next to go may be software stored on individual computers. Many companies are moving to cloud computing. The idea is to save money by storing software on somebody else's servers in large data centers. This way people can easily access their music library or other applications from any device. This is not the case for users of Apple's iTunes. Now Apple thinks it has a solution with a cloud-computing service called iCloud. And Microsoft has developed Windows Azure. This platform is for businesses and software developers to use Internet-based applications For VOA Special English, Im Alex Villarreal. For daily news and information plus activities for English learners, go to voaspecialenglish.com.

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This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report. Onions come in different sizes, shapes, colors and flavors, from mild and sweet to hot and strong. A full-grown onion plant has roots, bulbs and leaves. The leaves are long, thin and hollow. They stand straight up and thicken at the bottom to form a bulb. Onions are biennials; their life cycle is two years long. But they are usually picked during their first year after flowers form and the bulbs stop growing. Onions grow best in loose, fertile soil. They can grow in many different climates. In cooler climates, onions may need fourteen to fifteen hours of daylight to start forming bulbs. In warmer climates, onions can begin developing bulbs with fewer hours of daily sun. Organic material like compost or leaf mulch can help onions grow in heavy soil. Barbara Fick is an extension agent at Oregon State University in the northwestern United States.

She says a faster way to grow onions is to plant small bulbs known as sets instead of seeds. Onions can be harvested once their tops have dried and fallen over. You can store onions for months. But Barbara Fick says stored onions need to be cured first. "Curing is a way of making sure those leaves on the outside are nice and dry." Here are some directions from editors at the National Gardening Association. First, dry the onions in the sun for a day or so. Then bring them out of direct sun for two to three weeks. Spread them out in any warm, airy place that is covered. Or cover the onions with a light cotton sheet held in place with stones along the edge. The sheet will keep the sun from burning the bulbs. Don't worry about rain. And do not use a plastic or canvas sheet. Heavy coverings will trap moisture and keep the onions from drying fully. Turn the bulbs a couple of times to help them dry evenly. After curing the onions, you can hang them indoors in mesh bags to dry even more. There should be no wet spots on the onions when they are put in storage. Editors at the National Gardening Association say the longer onions are cured, the better they will keep. Some people cut off the top leaves before curing onions. If you do that, do not cut the leaves any closer than two and a half centimeters from the bulb. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal. For more stories about gardening, including more advice about growing onions, go to voaspecialenglish.com.

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This is the VOA Special English Health Report.

Old age may not sound exciting. But research findings offer good news for older people and for people worried about getting older. Researchers found that people become happier and experience less worry after they reach the age of fifty. In fact, they say by the age of eighty-five, people are happier with their life than they were when they were eighteen years old. The findings came from a survey of more than three hundred forty thousand adults in the United States. The Gallup Organization questioned them by telephone in two thousand eight. At that time, the people were between the ages of eighteen and eighty-five. The researchers asked questions about emotions like happiness, sadness and worry. They also asked about mental or emotional stress. Arthur Stone in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Stony Brook University in New York led the study. His team found that levels of stress were highest among adults between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-five. The findings showed that stress levels dropped sharply after people reached their fifties. Happiness was highest among the youngest adults and those in their early seventies. The people least likely to report feeling negative emotions were those in their seventies and eighties. The study also showed that men and women have similar emotional patterns as they grow older. However, women at all ages reported more sadness, stress and worry than men. The findings appeared last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers say they do not know why happiness increases as people get older. One theory is that, as people grow older, they grow more thankful for what they have and have better control of their emotions. They also spend less time thinking about bad experiences. Professor Stone said the emotional patterns could be linked to changes in how people see the world, or maybe even changes in brain chemistry.

The researchers also considered possible influences like having young children, being unemployed or being single. But they found that influences like these did not affect the levels of happiness and well-being related to age. For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti.You can learn English and stay informed every day from your computer or mobile device at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter and iTunes at VOA Learning English.

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This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Young people are perhaps better known for spending money than for saving it. But some new banking websites are seeking to change that. These websites offer young people the information and tools they need to watch over their money. These sites also let users share their financial experiences with other young people. Michael Ferrari developed SmartyPig with a friend in two thousand seven: "SmartyPig is really all about helping people save for very specific financial goals. So that could be a wedding, a vacation, an iPhone." Mr. Ferrari says SmartyPig began after he started a college savings account for his new baby. He says that experience helped him realize the power of saving for a specific goal. Helping other savers pay attention to their goals is the idea behind his company. Mr. Ferrari says his website also enables outsiders to add money to the accounts of its users. "Perhaps maybe a holiday is coming up or your birthday is coming up, and rather than getting a gift, your friends, your family can actually contribute to any of your SmartyPig goals." A growing number of young people have shown an interest in personal finance sites like SmartyPig. These sites offer tools that help users follow their spending, set up a budget and combine their investments. And the sites all involve social media.

Janet Stauble is with the personal finance website bankrate.com. She says a lot of people feel at ease sharing personal information online. "It's not likely that, you know, you might go to a friend and say, 'Hey, I paid off one thousand dollars on my credit card today,' but people write up blog posts about it and they explain how they did it, and how much closer they are to their financial goal, whatever it is." Steve Weisman teaches about financial issues at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He says the more creative the websites are in providing services, the more successful they will be in competing against traditional banks or even cooperating with them. "For instance, SmartyPig, they are not actually a bank, but they are partnered with a bank. And what you're going to see is big banks and little banks that are legitimate financial institutions, but not necessarily the most savvy when it comes to computers or the Internet, they will partner up with other companies that may be doing some of the Web material and other assistance." For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal.

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This is the VOA Special English Economics Report Finance ministers from the euro area met in Poland in the middle of September to discuss the Greek debt crisis. American Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner joined them. Fabian Zuleeg, chief economist at the European Policy Center in Brussels, said the United States was right to get involved. "The intervention from the US has also shown at least a risk that the stability of the financial system as a whole -- the global financial system -- might be under threat again." Earlier, the leaders of France, Germany and Greece held a conference call to discuss how to contain Europe's deepening financial crisis. Germany and France are Europe's two largest economies.

Seventeen European Union countries use the euro as their currency. On September fifteenth, five major central banks agreed to lend additional dollars to European banks in the euro zone. The European Central Bank says the three-month loans will provide as many dollars as the banks need. The operations will end in December. The European Central Bank is acting with the United States Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank. The announcement helped lift European bank shares and major European stock lists.The Parisbased Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has lowered its growth estimates for the euro area. In Greece the economy has shrunk this year. German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged eurozone nations to do everything possible to avoid an "uncontrolled insolvency" by Greece. On September thirteenth, she warned that problems would quickly spread if Greece failed to pay its international rescue loans. And, she said, "If the euro fails, Europe fails."The next day, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso spoke to the European Parliament. He announced that the commission would propose creating "eurobonds." The idea is for euro zone governments to jointly guarantee their debts. Germany and France have opposed such bonds. Mr. Barroso also said the current system that lets individual countries easily block policy is not working. "I am convinced we need a deeper and more results-driven integration. ... A system based purely on intergovernment cooperation has not worked in the past and will not work in the future." For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal.

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This is the VOA Special English Technology Report Falling prices are fueling growth in high-speed Internet services, especially in developing countries.

Recently the International Telecommunication Union released its "Measuring the Information Society 2011" report. The ITU, part of the United Nations, compared access, use and skills in one hundred fifty-two countries.The report says South Korea has the world's most developed economy in information and communication technology, or ICT. Sweden, Iceland, Denmark and Finland were also among the top five in the ICT Development Index. The index compares two thousand eight and two thousand ten scores. Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Vietnam and Russia had some of the biggest improvements between those years. Susan Teltscher is head of the ICT Data and Statistics Division at the International Telecommunication Union in Switzerland. She says most of the growth has come from one source. "Mobile broadband is now leading the growth race among the different ICT indicators -- much higher than the other key indicators that we look at, like regular mobile phone subscriptions, fixed telephone or fixed broadband. ... And the good news is that it's also starting to grow in developing countries." Mobile broadband subscriptions reached eight hundred seventy-two million by the end of last year. Three hundred million of those are in developing countries. Ms. Teltscher says "If we can bring Internet over the mobile phones, then we can really make a difference in terms of improving Internet access also in developing countries." Falling prices are adding to the growth, she says: "Especially in the broadband area, the prices dropped by over fifty percent between two thousand eight and two thousand ten -- which is a very encouraging finding because this was primarily drops in the developing countries." Even so, the report says people in many low-income countries are still paying too much for high-speed Internet connections. In Africa, broadband service for a home or office cost almost three times an average monthly income last year. That was down from six and a half times as much in two thousand eight. Also, there are big differences in broadband speed and quality from country to country. South Korea has Asia's fourth largest economy.

Susan Teltscher says, "If you look at ... what they have been achieving in terms of ICT development, it's actually higher than what you would expect given their national income." For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti.

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This is the VOA Special English Health Report Dengue fever feels like a severe case of the flu, including pain in the muscles and joints. The World Health Organization says there may be fifty million dengue infections every year. Deaths are rare, fewer than thirteen thousand a year. But dengue has spread sharply since the nineteen seventies. The disease is found mostly in cities. The WHO says forty percent of the world's population is now at risk in more than one hundred countries. Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific are the most affected. Dengue is also found in Africa, the Americas and the eastern Mediterranean. There is no vaccine against dengue and no special treatment. Scott Ritchie of James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, says control efforts target the mosquitoes that spread dengue. He says the only way to control it is through the use of pesticides chemicals and perhaps community education. But some mosquitoes are getting resistant to those pesticides. He and other scientists from Australia and the United States are working on a different plan of attack. They blocked the growth of dengue virus in mosquitoes by infecting them with a kind of bacteria called Wolbachia pipientis. Wolbachia is commonly found in fruit flies and is safe for people. The researchers released mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia into an indoor test area filled with uninfected mosquitoes. The infected ones mated with the uninfected ones and successfully spread the bacteria. The researchers then tried their experiment outdoors.

Over a two-month period they released more than three hundred thousand infected mosquitoes in two Australian towns. Scott O'Neill at Monash University in Melbourne says the mosquitoes quickly infected wild populations just as they had in the indoor test. Once the release has stopped, the Wolbachia continued to increase until the experiments ended. Next, the plan is to do tests over the next two to three years in an area where many people are infected with dengue. The researchers described their work in two papers published in the journal Nature.Mosquitoes also spread malaria. The kind of mosquito that injects the malaria parasite into the people it bites is most active around sunset and sunrise. So bed nets can help protect people while they sleep. But the mosquito that spreads dengue, Aedes aegypti, is most active during the day. For VOA Special English, I'm , I'm Alex Villarreal.

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This is the VOA Special English Technology Report Amazon.com recently launched its Kindle library-lending service in the United States. Millions of users of the Kindle reader and app can now borrow Kindle books from their local public library. The company is working with OverDrive, a leading supplier of e-books and other digital content to libraries. The service will be available through the websites of more than eleven thousand local libraries across the country. Users of other devices including the Barnes and Noble Nook and Sony Reader have already been able to borrow library books. Experts say Amazon's entry is likely to reopen a debate between publishers and libraries over e-book lending. Bill Rosenblatt is president of Giant Steps Media Technology Strategies, a consulting company.

He says "Publishers and libraries are enemies that occur in nature like snakes and mongeese. Libraries would like to be able to make books available to everyone, all the time, with no limitations. And publishers, of course, would like to sell more books to the public." Mr. Rosenblatt says the debate in the United States centers on what is known as the law of first sale. "Once you buy any kind of media product such as a book or a CD or a DVD or anything like that, you can do whatever you want with it. You can read it, you can give it away, you can lend it, you can resell it, you can burn it, you can use it as a Frisbee -- whatever you want." This law of first sale is what permits libraries to lend books over and over again without having to pay publishers each time. But it does not include digital products. Technology known as digital rights management can make e-books unreadable once they have reached a certain time or user limit. Bill Rosenblatt points out that one of the major publishers made an announcement several months ago. Harper Collins said it was only going to allow e-books to be lent out twenty-six times, and then they would have to be purchased by the libraries again. HarperCollins says it took the action to protect the growing e-book industry and its own book sales. But Bill Rosenblatt says critics did not see it that way. They think "because a digital book lasts forever, as long as it's stored somewhere in digital form, that it should be lendable forever." He says the debate over e-book lending will likely end up in court. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal.

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This is the VOA Special English Health Report Japanese doctors have begun examining three hundred sixty thousand children in Fukushima Prefecture. The goal is to learn the extent to which radiation may increase their risk of thyroid cancer. Children who lived closest to the Fukushima-1 Nuclear Power Station were among the first to be tested.

The earthquake and tsunami that struck northeastern Japan in March left twenty thousand people dead or missing. So far no one has died from radiation exposure. But tens of thousands remain displaced from a twenty-kilometer area around the disabled power plant. Officials say the thyroid tests will be done every two years until the children reach the age of twenty. After that, tests will be done every five years. Most cancers of the thyroid gland can be treated if found early. Some people in Tokyo and other cities are measuring radiation levels themselves. They worry about a possible risk from Fukushima. Recently, a private laboratory confirmed the presence of increased levels of radioactive cesium in some dirt at Tokyo's Edogawa ballpark. The area is nearly two hundred fifty kilometers from the reactors. Two mothers at the ballpark expressed surprise when told about the radioactive hot spot. The women said they had heard many general reports about radiation since the disaster in March. They felt they could not be overly concerned about those reports or they would not be able to go on with their daily lives. Private citizens found abnormal levels of radiation in the air on the path to a Tokyo school. However, government officials said the cause was under the floor of a nearby house: old bottles containing radium powder. Radium was used in the past to make watch and clock faces glow in the dark.The International Atomic Energy Agency said in October that Japan must avoid becoming too "conservative" in its clean-up efforts. Japanese officials have ordered an increase in radiation testing, but they say hot spots outside Fukushima are not a cause for worry. They say no one spends enough time at the sites to get enough radiation to cause harm. They also say the small dosimeters that some private citizens use to measure radiation can give a wrong reading. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal. Our programs are a way for people to read, listen and learn American English and much more.

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This is the VOA Special English Education Report Hult International Business School has campuses in Boston, San Francisco, London, Dubai and Shanghai. The Hult Global Case Challenge is a competition based on the idea that solving world problems requires a good business plan. Teams compete for prizes of one million dollars to help an organization with efforts to solve problems like hunger, poverty and disease. A Hult student, Ahmad Ashkar, created the challenge for teams from business schools around the world. This year's challenge deals with poverty. Teams will compete to develop business plans for three nongovernmental organizations. SolarAid works on energy projects in east and southern Africa. Habitat for Humanity builds lowcost housing. And One Laptop Per Child builds computers for governments in developing countries to supply to poor communities. That group is taking part in the competition for the second time. David Batley from SolarAid says his group works with local entrepreneurs to bring power from the sun to rural communities. "I think the winning team will be one that uses a combination of really innovative thinking and taking account of the practicalities of operating in Africa and the challenges that that represents." Sandy Parakilas took part in the first competition in two thousand nine. The challenge that year was to help an organization reach one hundred million people in five years. One of the three top prizes went to his team from Carnegie Mellon University for their business plan for One Laptop Per Child. "They were struggling with competition from Microsoft and Intel. And they were having trouble basically making money. So it was a great opportunity for some business students to come in and create some ideas for a not-for-profit to be more profitable, essentially."

Howard McNally is chief executive officer of the Hult Global Challenge. He says, "It's the equivalent of about twenty thousand hours of consulting advice from the world's smartest, youngest people." Mr. McNally says the students learn about world problems and the opportunities that might be available for them in the market. "And it's also a tremendous opportunity for the NGOs that we're working with to get the kind of advice that they're going to get about their vision and their goals." The five Hult campuses will hold regional competitions in February. Finalists will be chosen in New York in April. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal.

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This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report Generations of newcomers have brought their tastes and sometimes their farming skills to American soil. These include refugees who have gotten help from government agencies and private groups to grow crops on community farms. These farms and gardens can be found across the country. Bantu refugees from Somalia helped start the New Roots Community Farm in San Diego, California. Many of them did not have much money or much fresh produce in their lives. Some, especially young people, were eating unhealthy fast food. The refugees wanted to grow their own food. Cambodians and other groups in San Diego were in a similar situation. A community farm seemed like a good answer. The refugees got help from the group that had resettled many of them, the International Rescue Committee. But getting a permit to use some open land owned by the city took about two years. The New Roots Community Farm opened in two thousand nine. The farm is almost one hectare. People can learn how to grow foods from back home as well as traditional American crops.

The growers sell some of their produce at a marketplace and to restaurants. One result of the community farm is that people are learning about foods from other people's homelands. First lady Michelle Obama -- who has her own vegetable garden at the White House -- visited the farm in San Diego last year. A group called the Somali Bantu Zigua Community has operated a farm for several years near Boise, Idaho. Dadiri Nuro is the group's president. He says: "We are farming people. We like to farm." Mr. Nuru came to the United States in two thousand four. He and his family had been living in a refugee camp in Kenya. He says more than fifteen crops are grown without pesticides at the farm, including potatoes, tomatoes, kale, lettuce, cabbage, onion and shallots. The farm also grows two kinds of corn. Mr. Nuru explains that "we have African corn, and we have American corn. Americans, they like soft corn, and the Bantu, we like hard corn."The community group sells some of its produce at a farmers market and has now bought storage freezers. The group has also donated food to other communities. The Idaho state Office for Refugees has advice on its website about starting a community garden. You can find a link at voaspecialenglish.com. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal.

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This is the VOA Special English Technology Report Have you ever heard the expression "a ball of energy"? People often use the term to describe very active children. But today we tell about an invention called the sOccket, that is a real ball of energy. A woman who developed the sOccket calls it, a cutting-edge, portable generator in the form of a soccer ball. Julia Silverman developed the sOccket with Jessica Matthews as part of a group project for an engineering class at Harvard University.

To better understand what a sOccket is, you first need to understand how it works. When you play with a ball, a lot of energy is transferred, or moves, to the ball. Julia Silverman says the sOccket captures this energy before it is lost or breaks up into the environment. Her invention attempts to capture the energy, and then store it for future use. The sOccket collects and stores this energy with every kick, hit or throw of the ball. Julia Silverman says users can connect small electrical devices, like a light, directly into the ball. For every fifteen minutes of game play, the sOccket can provide enough electricity to power an LED lamp for up to three hours. The ball can store up to twenty-four hours' worth of power. The International Energy Association reported last year that nearly one and a half billion people did not have access to electricity. Most of them live in India, other Asian nations and in Africa, south of the Sahara. Julia Silverman and Jessica Matthews both had experience in developing countries before they began the project. They knew that power shortages are a serious problem in many areas. Julia Silverman says there is an energy crisis in the world. She notes that one in every five people does not have any electricity. And, there are health issues because those with no electricity may use devices like kerosene lamps, which can produce a lot of smoke. Ms. Silverman says the sOccket is one small solution to a big problem. Jessica Matthews and Julia Silverman have started a nonprofit organization called Uncharted Play. They hope their sOccket ball will shine more light on the problem of power shortages. It offers people a chance to put their energy into the world's most popular sport and get some energy in return. And that's the VOA Special English Technology Report. For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti.

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This is the VOA Special English Technology Report India could pass the United States in the number of Internet users in less than two years. A new report says India reached one hundred twelve million users in September. India is the third largest Internet market after China and the United States. China reported four hundred eighty-five million Internet users in June, and there are two hundred forty-five million in the United States. The Internet and Mobile Association of India says Internet growth was especially strong among people in smaller towns and cities. There was also a large increase in Internet use among school-aged children and college students. This is partly because of the growing number of e-learning services and educational websites. Subho Roy is president of the Internet and Mobile Association of India. He says another big change this year is that more and more people are using the Internet from home, and not just at cyber cafes or offices. "People are probably buying their own broadband connections and accessing it from their own devices rather than going to common service points." This growth in Internet use has also led, not surprisingly, to an increase in online businesses. Deepinder Goyal owns Zomato.com. His website provides information about restaurants and nightlife activities across India. Mr. Goyal got the idea for Zomato while working at a consulting firm three years ago. He and his coworkers kept restaurant menus in their office so they could order lunch from different places. "We scanned these menu cards and put them online. So starting an Internet venture was actually an experiment and it worked out really well, and currently we are getting around two million people just looking up menu cards on our website every month." Zomato now provides information on more than seventeen thousand restaurants across India. It covers areas from the Dehli national capital region to Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai.

Deepinder Goyal says Zomato used to depend mostly on business people going online at work, often to order lunch. But now, with the rise in home use, "weekends are also very heavy traffic for us." In a separate report, GSMA, the global trade group for the mobile industry, says Africa is the world's fastest growing mobile phone market. Africa has the second largest number of mobile phone connections after Asia. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal.

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This is the VOA Special English Technology Report Nurses spend their lives helping other people recover from injuries and illnesses. Yet nurses suffer a surprising number of injuries and illnesses themselves because of their work. In fact, the United States Department of Labor says nursing is the second leading profession for on-the-job injuries. It ranks higher than construction work and law enforcement. Only freight and stock movers report higher injury rates. Nurses and other health care workers do a lot of heavy lifting on the job. Lifting and moving patients improperly leads to sprains, strains and muscle tears -- leading causes of injuries to nurses. Gretchen Gregory is an instructor at the Sinclair School of Nursing on the Columbia campus of the University of Missouri. She says back problems are the greatest threat that nurses face when they lift or move patients. "You're talking about people that have handicaps or limited mobility, that need much assistance. And we have untrained people to do that assisting and that puts them at risk for hurting their backs." Ms. Gregory leads a new training room where nurses can learn to keep themselves and their patients safe. She says most nurses lack training in how to lift patients.

"That's not something that we teach in school, but that's when falls happen and that's when nurses get hurt." The safe practices room has special training equipment, including a life-size mannequin doll. This "patient" can be filled with water and made to weigh as much as one hundred fifty-nine kilograms. Ms. Gregory says most American hospitals have lifting equipment to help nurses move patients. But she says the equipment is often pushed back in a corner somewhere -- unused and forgotten. She says the safe practices room teaches the importance of using the tools and skills available. The training room also seeks to improve communication skills and other practices in a setting designed to copy a busy hospital or clinic. As Gretchen Gregory puts it: "If we provide an environment where everything's nice and quiet and they can give their medications or they can communicate to a physician when there's nothing going on, that's not really a real-life setting. They have to be able to do it with some distraction." An unidentified donor gave three hundred thousand dollars to build the new room. The University of Missouri describes it as one of the first of its kind at a nursing school in the United States. You can find pictures of it at voaspecialenglish.com. For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti.

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This is the VOA Special English Economics Report In December, the Japanese electronics company Olympus made a public apology. It said company officials hid over one billion dollars in losses going back to the nineteen nineties. Olympus said it was investigating and considering legal action against some of its current and former officials.

The company's stock lost half its value between October and December. The problems at Olympus seemed to come from thinking more about declaring profits in the short-term instead of building real value. This was one of the issues considered by management expert Peter Drucker over his long career. Peter Drucker died in two thousand five. But many of his ideas remain very meaningful today. Drucker liked to share his knowledge not by answering questions but by asking them. He once said business people must not ask "what do we want to sell?" but "what do people want to buy?" He taught at the Claremont Graduate School of Management in California for over thirty years. He advised companies on business methods. And he wrote thirty-nine books on business and economic ideas. Peter Drucker was born in Austria in nineteen nine. In the late nineteen twenties, he worked as a reporter in Frankfurt, Germany. He also studied international law. He fled Germany as Adolf Hitler came to power in nineteen thirty-three. Drucker spent four years in Britain as an adviser to investment banks. He then came to the United States.In the nineteen forties, Drucker argued that the desire for profit was central to business efforts. He also warned that rising wages were harming American business. He was later invited to study General Motors. He wrote about his experiences in the book "The Concept of the Corporation." In it, he said that workers at all levels should take part in decision-making, not just top managers. Later in his career, he warned that businesses that seek only profit growth help their competitors. Peter Drucker received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in two thousand two. He lived a long life; he died at the age of ninety-five. Drucker was a voice for change and new ways of thinking about social and business relations. He used terms like "knowledge workers" and "management goals." Many of his ideas have become highly valued in business training and politics.

For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti.

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This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report Less than a third of people in developing countries own or have any official right to the land they live on. Development experts say gaining land rights is important for reducing poverty and increasing economic growth and food production. Poor people can then use the land as security to get bank loans. Land records can also show foreign investors that the land and the rights of those on it are legally secure. Foreign demand has increased in recent years for agricultural land in Africa, Asia and South America. UN-Habitat official Clarissa Augustinus in Nairobi, Kenya, says: "When an investor goes to the government and says 'I want a piece of land,' the government looks on their maps which show that that particular piece of land is empty, and they give it to an investor. But when the investor goes there and looks at the land, he sees that it is fully occupied by a tribe or a family or whatever. Forcing the people off the land can harm the investor's image. Ms. Augustinus says ownership documents like deeds and titles are rare because establishing property lines and recording land is expensive. UN-Habitat says the answer for some countries is to create a series of steps in gaining land rights -- a so-called property ladder. First, people could receive a simple document or starter title to the land they are on. They would be safe from the threat of being forced off the land by the state or wealthy buyers. Higher steps would provide greater rights. Finally, a majority of a community could decide to allow individual ownership of the land. Namibia, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia are among the countries adopting property ladders.

Ms. Augustinus says Ethiopia has already provided twenty million land certificates on the lower end of the property ladder for about one dollar each. In Southeast Asia, the United States Agency for International Development is working on a project to help Timor-Leste develop property rights. The first step is an official certificate recognizing a landholder's unopposed claim. East Timor separated from Indonesia in nineteen ninety-nine. The Indonesian army had destroyed land records and forced communities from their land to break up resistance. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal. You find live English lessons Monday through Friday at the VOA Learning English page on Facebook. You can also read, listen and learn with MP3s and texts of stories at voaspecialenglish.com.

Bai47
This is the VOA Special English Economics Report Today we look back at some of the top stories of twenty-eleven. In Europe, the debt crisis that started in two thousand ten in Greece and Ireland spread to other countries. Portugal needed a financial rescue, and Italy needed a new prime minister. Silvio Berlusconi lost his job over Italy's debt problems. Former European Union official Mario Monti replaced him in November. Pressures on Europe's financial system called into question the future of the euro. European finance officials called for greater cooperation and new rules. World Bank President Robert Zoellick said Europe would have to find its own answers to its debt problems. "Europe has to rescue Europe, OK? And it's very important. If there's any message when I'm asked, "Well, what can the U.S. do and what can China do?" The best thing they can do is clean up their act at home, be a source of growth at home. "Mr. Zoellick also said it was important for other big economies to deal with their own budget imbalances.

"The downgrade of America from triple A didn't affect the finances today, but it may be one of those events people look back on ten years from now and say, 'Did they get the warning?'" In August, a credit rating agency cut the United States' credit rating from the highest level, triple A, to double A-plus. Also in August, Steve Jobs stepped down as chief at Apple because of his failing health. He died of cancer in October at the age of fifty-six. He brought the world the iPod, iPhone and iPad, and helped make Apple into one of the world's most valuable companies. Twenty-eleven will be remembered as a year of protests. Revolutions for political freedom swept North Africa and the Middle East in the Arab Spring. But protests over budget cuts and jobs were heard around the world. In the United States, activists in hundreds of cities protested economic inequality and joblessness. Protesters were angry that banks got rescued with taxpayers' money during the financial crisis nearly four years ago. But many Americans continue to face hardship. Anger over government budget cuts led to protests in Greece, Britain and elsewhere. And in southeastern China, villagers in Wukan rebelled against local officials they accused of illegally taking land. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal. If your New Year's resolution is to learn English, we can help. Find out more at voaspecialenglish.com and on Facebook, Twitter and iTunes at VOA Learning English.

Bai48
This is the VOA Special English Technology Report A new study shows that "sexting" is not as common among young people as earlier findings suggested.

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire interviewed more than one thousand five hundred Internet users between the ages of ten and seventeen. Just two and a half percent of them said they had either sent or received naked pictures over their mobile phones or the Internet. Earlier surveys had suggested that as many as twenty percent of teens were involved in such activities. But one problem is that some of those findings included young adults -- eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds. Dan Rauzi is senior director for technology programs for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. He says another problem is confusion among teenagers about what exactly "sexting" means. For example, he says suggestive images like someone in a bathing suit have sometimes been reported as sexting. Marian Merritt is the Internet safety advocate for the computer security company Norton. She says the New Hampshire researchers considered this confusion. "They segmented the really most egregious or dangerous kinds of images people might be posting and sending from texts that might be more suggestive." Ms. Merritt says very few of the images in this latest study would have been considered illegal. "The kinds of images or videos that might constitute child pornography is very low. It's only one percent. So the good news is it's a very rare phenomenon and most young people are not engaging in these kinds of behaviors." Everyone knows young people are early adapters of technology. Dan Rauzi say their experimentation often raises concern with adults, but also has another effect. "We get a new technology in and teens, they push that envelope and in some ways as a society help us see all of the possibilities with new technologies, as well." The journal Pediatrics published the new study in December. In a second study, the New Hampshire researchers found that very few sexting cases investigated by police led to arrests. Marian Merritt is glad about that. "Over the last several years we've seen law enforcement across the country start to take a more modulated approach

and not going for full enforcement of, you know, a mistake - a momentary lapse in judgment from young people who don't understand the power of the images they may be sharing." For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal.

Bai49
This is the VOA Special English Economics Report In early January, President Obama appointed Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This new government agency says it has already made home loans and credit card agreements easier for Americans to understand. But the Obama administration said the bureau cannot supervise financial products like home loans without a director. The president used a measure known as a recess appointment to fill the position. He nominated Mr. Cordray last July. But the opposition Republican Party blocked a vote in the full Senate. Mr. Obama announced the appointment during a visit to Ohio. It was his first political campaign trip of the year. He told the crowd that the severe economic crisis three years ago did not happen because of too many financial rules. Mr. Obama said: "Does anyone think the reason why we got into such a financial mess, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the worst economic crisis in a generation, that the reason was because of too much oversight of the financial industry? Of course not. We shouldn't be weakening oversight, we shouldn't be weakening accountability, we should be strengthening it! "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized the president's appointment. Many Republicans oppose the new agency, saying its goals are not clear. They also want a group of people to lead the agency instead of a single director. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau resulted from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of twenty ten. Its goal is to make the market for financial products safer. Educating Americans about investment and loan products, enforcing financial laws and studying financial information all are part of its duties.

The agency's budget is expected to be around five hundred million dollars. Richard Cordray served as Ohio's attorney general for two years. He has earned praise for bringing legal action against banks and financial companies accused of harming homeowners and borrowers. Mr. Cordray launched cases against Bank of America and insurer AIG. His recess appointment is effective only until the end of the Senate's current term. For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti. For more business news, go to voaspecialenglish.com, where you can download MP3s and texts of our programs. Read, listen and learn English and much more. Click on The Classroom for learning activities and interactive features. And join us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube at VOA Learning English.

Bai50
This is the VOA Special English Economics Report On January eighteenth, Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, blacked out its English language website for twenty-four hours. The move was part of an organized protest against a proposed United States law to fight illegal copying of intellectual property on the Internet. Jay Walsh is head of communications for the Wikimedia Foundation which operates Wikipedia. He says the legislation "is detrimental to the free and open Web. It's detrimental to Wikipedia. And we want to make sure that we send a message."The blogging site Boing Boing and social news website Reddit also went black. Erik Martin, the general manager of Reddit, said: "This is a really big deal and this is something we're going to fight, and this is something we think threatens the entire tech sector." Both Wikipedia and Reddit urged users to contact their congressional representative. Internet search leader Google also protested, although it continued to provide service. The protest was against two bills -- the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, or PIPA. PIPA is the Senate version; SOPA is the version in the House of Representatives.

Supporters say the law is needed to fight foreign websites that sell pirated copies of American movies and music. Steven Tepp is a lawyer with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He says piracy of books, music, movies and other forms of intellectual property hurt the economy. "These rogue sites are hurting American jobs, stealing American jobs, they're harming American consumers and they have no business being on the Internet. But many online businesses including blogs, news sites and search engines say the law would force them to become censors. David Smith is with the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. He says the proposed law would hurt Wikipedia and other sites that depend on material from users of the sites. He says websites would be required to police all the material they carry. "It creates a legal situation in which a complainant can go before a judge and get an order, and it then makes the various Internet companies, the Internet service providers, responsible for what they're carrying." After the online protests, some lawmakers said they now had doubts about the legislation. The bills appeared unlikely to pass without changes. The Obama administration said it opposes any law that reduces freedom of expression or increases cyber security risk. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal.

Bai51
This is the VOA Special English Economics Report Facebook says it aims to raise five billion dollars through its first public sale of stock. That would be one of the biggest initial public offerings ever. And it would be much bigger than Google's first public stock sale in two thousand four. That IPO raised almost two billion dollars. The world's biggest social media network filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission on February first. The documents are required before the company can launch an initial public offering. A date for the sale was not immediately announced.

Facebook has more than eight hundred million users around the world. It represents the second most visited website after Google. Now, experts say the social media company is in a position to become one of the world's most valuable Internet companies. Stock expert Anupam Palit at Greencrest Capital says that among social media sites, Facebook is in a class by itself. "It's the biggest company in this space and we believe what makes it very unique from every other company that went public last year in this space is that it is very, very profitable." Early estimates value the social network between seventy-five and one hundred billion dollars. That includes earlier investments by other companies. David Kirkpatrick wrote the book "The Facebook Effect." He says Facebook's IPO will be historic: "Will Facebook's IPO be the biggest IPO in American history? Probably not. But it will certainly be by far the biggest Internet or technology IPO we've ever seen. "The stock sale could also make twenty-seven-year-old Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg one of the world's youngest billionaires. Investment companies are likely to be the first to buy the stock. Investment manager Jim O'Shaugnessy points out that the price of some IPO stocks fall not long after they first go on sale. Stock in LinkedIn, Groupon and Zynga dropped as much as twenty-five percent after going public. "Many IPOs come out being very, very overvalued because they get so hyped up and investors are so taken in by the story that they're willing to pay any amount just to be able to get into the stock. That generally translates to being very overvalued. So we generally tell investors that they should wait probably a good full year before they look at buying stock that was recently IPO'd." There were similar questions eight years ago about Google. Today, Google is one of the world's most valuable technology companies. For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti.

Bai52
This is the VOA Special English Technology Report Controlling a device with your mind. Powering your home with the energy of your own activities. These are two of the developments that experts at IBM think will become reality within the next five years. The technology company has released its latest "5 in 5" report. The experts think people will soon be able to control many electronic devices simply by using their minds. Scientists at IBM and other companies are researching ways to do this in a field of science known as bioinformatics. They say people will soon have a way to just think about calling or e-mailing someone in order to make it happen. Bernie Meyerson is IBM's vice president of innovation. He says the idea is for "something with really deep capability so that a person, for instance, a quadriplegic, a paraplegic can actually utilize brainwaves to make things happen and basically run their own lives independently." Another prediction is a way for people to power their homes and offices using energy from activities like walking or running. Still another prediction: passwords could soon become a thing of the past. IBM says developments in biometric technology could soon make passwords unnecessary. Some of the most common biometrics used to identify people are fingerprints, face and voice recognition, and iris scans. The iris is the colored part of the eye. Bernie Meyerson says this technology will soon be more widely used by money machines and other devices. Another prediction from the experts at International Business Machines: better technology to prevent unwanted e-mail. The fifth prediction on IBM's 5 in 5 list is an end to the "digital divide" between those who have technology and those who do not.

Bernie Meyerson says: "We anticipate within five years, better than eighty percent coverage of the world's population by cellular to smartphones. At that point, imagine having, for instance, the ability to speak openly with anybody anywhere, anytime and any language -- real time translation. Literally, the old 'Star Trek' idea of the universal translator coming to be, and how the world would change if there were that kind of communication and openness." And that's the VOA Special English Technology Report. For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti. Bai66
Safe! Off belay! Right, can you get my camera out, please? - Come on. - Don't take a picture. Give us a smile. I'm sure there's a pretty face under that frown somewhere. - Is that the best you got? - Afraid so. - OK, get one of me. - No, I'll take it at the top. Yeah, but I wanna get some of this background in. Pass it over.

Sentence Explanation: 1. They didn't want her to die, otherwise there wouldn't be an air pipe. Trong cu trn: Want sb to do sth: Mun ai lm g. Die: Cht Otherwise: Nu khng th...Do as you're told, otherwise you will be in trouble: Lm nh ngi ta ni i, khng anh s gp rc ri y. Air pipe: ng th, ng thng kh.

=> H khng mun con b cht nu khng h khng ng th . 2. She must have been starving down there all by herself in the dark. Must have PP: t hn, chc phi/ lm g. Starve: i, cht i. By one'self: T ai, t lm g, n c mt mnh. Dark: ti tm, bng ti. => Chc con b phi i r mt mnh trong ci hm ti tm y. 3. Two of us abseil down and run to the village for help, alert the police and get the Highland Rescue to pick up the rest of you. Abseil (down) : Tro xung, tt xung. Pick up: Nht, n. Alert: bo ng, bo nguy him. The rest: th cn li, nhng ngi cn li, phn cn li.

Hai trong chng ta s xung lng tm cu tr, bo cnh st v n c quan cu tr

Bai65
Be cool. Carlos, Merry Christmas. Hello, Harold. You made the drive in record time. Didn't speed, did you? Empanadas? Where's Maria? She's upstairs...getting ready. Can I get you a beer? What the hell is that? She caught your eye, huh? Ha, ha. This is our Christmas tree. Is it fake? It's faux, actually.

Sentence Explanation:

1. I'm just wondering how we're gonna deal with the Christmas party with all these extra guests. Wonder: Phn vn, suy ngh Gonna: = going to. we're gonna= we are going to: chng ta s... Deal with: gii quyt, i mt, x l Extra: thm, ngoi. Extra-class: lp hc thm. Guest: Khch kha => Anh ang lo khng bit ba tic ging sinh phi gii quyt th no vi nhng v khch ngoi d tnh ny. 2. I used to date this black chick Used to: dng ni mt thi quen, mt s vic tng xy ra trong qu kh. There used to be a mango here ( tng c mt cy xoi y). I used to smoke a lot (Ngy trc ti hay ht nhiu thuc) Date: hn h, gp g Chick: ting lng: c gi, n b. Black: mu en, ngi da en => Ti tng hn h vi c gi da en ny. 3. You got a package that came for you at the apartment so I was dropping it off. Package: kin hng, bu phm, gi hng. Apartment: cn h. Drop off: xung, mang n => C mt bu phm chuyn n cho cu ti ch phng t nn t mang n cho cu.

Bai64
Here he comes. What happened? - I don't know, Professor. - What did you do?

- I didn't do nothing. Ssh, I'm talking to the Professor. What's that, Professor? - You broke it! - Quiet! - I understand, sir. Yes. - What did he say? - We go to the back-up plan. - Back-up plan?

Sentence Explanation:

1. He wouldn't have left if I'd told him the truth.. y dng cu iu kin loi 3: mt gi thit qu kh. (khng c tht qu kh) Cu trc: Mnh If, hay cn gi l mnh gi thit: If + Had + PP, mnh chnh: Would have PP Left: l qu kh v qu kh phn t ( ct 2 v 3 trong bng ng t bt quy tc) ca ng t leave. Tng t Told l qk vad qkpt ca ng t tell. Tell the truth: ni tht, ni ra s tht => Nu ti ni s tht th anh y s khng i u. 2. Y'all get out of the pits. Y': dng ting lng ca t 'You' (bn, cc bn) Y'all: tt c cc bn. Get out of: Trnh ra, i ra khi, thot khi ni u. Pit: Sn sn khu => Tt c mi ngi hy trnh xa sn khu i. 3. Stay back! If you get close to me, you're going to get hurt real bad! Stay back: Li li. Get: y c ngha gn ging nh go, get close: tin li gn.

Cu trc ca th tng lai gn: to be going to + V(nguyn th): sp, s. Get hurt: b thng. Bad: ti t, xu. => Li li, nu cu cn tin gn ti na, cu s b tn thng nng y. Bai63
WILL: I don't have time. I don't have time to worry about how it happened. It is what it is. We're genetically engineered to stop aging at 25. The trouble is, we live only one more year unless we can get more time Time is now the currency. We earn it and spend it. The rich can live forever. And the rest of us? I just want to wake up with more time on my hand than hours in the day.

Sentence Explanation:

1. The trouble is, we live only one more year unless we can get more time. Trong cu trn: Trouble:Vn , rc ri, ni phin dc. We: i t nhn xng: Chng ti, chng ta Live: Sng. More: thm, c thm, hn. Only: ch. Thng ng trc t m n nhn mnh.Ty tng v tr khc nhau m n s mang ngha khc nhau. Unless: Nu khng, tr khi: You'll fail in French unless you study harder. (Cu s trt mn ting Php tr khi cu hc chm ch hn) = You'll fail in French if you don't study harder. (Nu cu khng hc chm ch hn cu s trt mn ting Php.) => Nhng vn l, chng ti ch sng thm c mt nm nu chng ti khng kim c thm thi gian.

2. Oh, I was sure I'd have a grandchild by now. Sure: adj: chc chn. Was: dng qu kh n cho ch ng s t ca ng t TOBE. 'd: dng rt gn ca WOULD (qu kh ca Will) Grandchild: chu (ca ng b) ni chung c trai/gi. By: Vo mt thi im (thng l tng lai). Now: hin ti. Thi im ny. => , trc y m c chc chn rng vo thi im ny m c chu ri ch. 3. I just wouldn't know what to do if I lost you. y dng cu iu kin loi 2 (khng c tht hin ti). S+ would+ V, if + S + V (qk) => M khng bit phi lm g nu mt con. Bai62
AGENT 1: Johnny English. AGENT 2: Five years ago, he was our top agent. AGENT 1: Yeah. Took his eye off the ball in Mozambique. Does it have to be him? He's the only one our contact will talk to. AGENT 1: So where is he? WANG: You came here to forget your life of shame. But the path you must tread to new life will be not be easy, English. WANG: Our purpose here is simple. To strengthen what is weak. Make hard what is soft. WANG: This will take time. Mind must be master of the body. Strong mind can separate the body from its suffering.

Sentence Explanation:

1. I'm in touch with a higher power. Trong cu trn:

To be/ keep in touch with: gi lin lc, lin lc vi... Power: Th lc, quyn nng => Ta ang lin lc vi cp trn. 2. You came here to forget your life of shame. But the path you must tread to new life will be not be easy, English. Shame: Ni nhc, xu h, danh Path: con ng, li i (en v bng) Tread: i, tri qua => Con n y qun i s h thn ca lng mnh, nhng con ng mi pha trc con s phi i mt cng khng h d dng u English . 3. Yeah. Took his eye off the ball in Mozambique. Take one's eye off sth: L l, khng mt n ci g Thnh ng : Take one's eye off the ball: Khng mt, khng tp trung vo nhim v, vic g rt quan trng. => Vng. V anh ta lm hng v Mozambique.

Bai61
Nice moves, kid. How long you been out here? Check it out. I just spent the night doing something I think is amazing. Incredibly amazing. If it works, you know? - You know his remote was spotty? - Yeah I killed it. Got rid of it. We don't need it anymore. How did you?

Sentence Explanation:

1. He's not advanced enough to handle Noisy's voice command. Trong cu trn To be + (not ) Adj + enough + to do sth: (khng) nh th no lm g . I'm strong enough to lift this up. (Ti khe nng ci ny ln) Advanced: Tin b, tn tin. Handle: (V) X l, iu khin Command: (v & n) lnh, mnh lnh => N khng tn tin n mc c th x l c m lnh nhn ging ca con Noisy u. 2. Don't make fun of me. Make fun of somebody: Tru chc, ch diu, ly ai lm tr a.. They tried to make fun of him in front of the crowd (Bn h c ch diu anh ta trc mt m ng.) = > ng c ch diu con na. 3. You go freaky-deaky, this whole thing can go south. Freaky-deaky: Khc thng mt cch nguy him, hong s, hoang mang. Go south: bin mt, sp , gim mnh . All the stock market indexes went South today (Tt c cc ch s chng khon hm nay u gim mnh) = > Nu mt bnh tnh, mi vic c th hng ht. Bai60
Breathe. We should never forget how young they were. My father, Stephan Gold, was the youngest unit commander in Mossad. David Perez had his 29th birthday while on the mission.

When my mother crossed through the checkpoint, into Soviet-controlled East Berlin, she was only 25. They'd had the courage to confront an unimaginable evil.

Grammar Explanation:

1. you're welcome: Thng dng sau cu Thank you (cm n): ngha l: Khng c g Ngoi ra cn mt s cch din t khc nh: Not at all (Khng c g), My Pleasure/ It's my pleasure ( l nim vinh hnh cho ti), Any time (Bt c khi no cn ti cng c th gip), No problem (Khng cn u), Happy to help (Ti rt vui khi c gip anh), No worries (Thng dng c), 2. You've cut your hair? y dng cu trc m c th nhiu bn quen v cng c nhc n trong mt vi bi hc trc y: Have something done: c ci g c lm. Thng trong ting vit khng phn bit vic g c lm l do ngi ni t lm hay c ai lm. Nhng ting anh, thng c s phn bit r hn V d: Ting vit: Ti i ct tc. Hay ti i sa xe (Mc d 'Ti' khng trc tip lm vic ). Ting Anh: I've have my hair cut (Ti c mi tc c ct, hay dch theo vn phong ting vit: Ti va mi i ct tc). Nu ni I've cut my hair (Th ngi ta s hiu l mnh t ct tc cho mnh) I had my bike repaired by my father yesterday (hm qua b ti sa chic xe p cho ti)

Bai59
George, Been looking forward to reading your Hardy paper. Today's the day. Sorry, I don't have it. George, this was your final project of the year. After this, there's just exams.

How am I supposed to grade you? I'll have it to you by next week, I promise. That's not gonna be good enough. Hey, pal. I called this meeting because your teachers have reported to me that you continue to refuse to do the course work You have made zero effort to turn your career here at Morgan around. Yes, I did. I mean, I did struggle with it at the beginning, but I just couldn't.

Grammar Explanation:

1. I'm not gonna waste the time defending you now. I'm not gonna = I am not going to (Tng lai gn): ti s khng... Waste (time/money) +V-ing: lng ph (thi gian/ tin bc) lm g. --> By gi ti s khng ph thi gian bo v cho em na. 2. You're right, Jack. It is my mess. I'll handle my mess, you handle yours. You're right: = You are right: (thng dng trong vn ni, din t s ng tnh vi ngi kia): ng vy, bn ni ng. Mess: M, ng, tnh trng hn n, ln xn Handle: gii quyt My: (tnh t s hu): ca ti. Yours: i t s hu: (= tnh t s hu + N): ca bn. 'Yours' trong cu ny chnh l "your mess" --> ng ni ng Jack, ti gy nn rc ri ny. Ti s t gii quyt chuyn ca ti, ng cng gii quyt chuyn ca ng i. 3. Did you get that sorted out, Jack? Get somthing done= have something done: c g c lm

Sort out: Phn loi, g ri, gii quyt, --> ng gii quyt c chuyn cha Jack?

Bai58
I'll get it. - Oh, hi. - (Peter) Who is it? " Say it's carol singers" It's carol singers. Give them a quid and tell them to bugger off. "With any luck by next year- I'll be going out with one of these girls.." 'But for now, let me say- without hope or agenda- just because it's christmas- (And at christmas you tell the truth)' 'To me, you are perfect ' 'And my wasted heart will love you' 'Until you look like this..' 'Merry Christmas'

Grammar Explanation:

1. With any luck by next year- I'll be going out with one of these girls. With any luck: Hy vng, mong i. By: gii t ny ng trc mt mc thi gian trong tng lai Go out with someone: Hn h, i chi vi ai --> Anh hy vng l vo nm ti- anh s ang hn h vi mt trong nhng c gi ny 2. I realised that Christmas is the time to be with the people you love. Realise: Nhn ra, pht hin ra To be with someone: cnh ai, cng ai

--> Ti nhn ra rng Ging sinh l khong thi gian chng ta bn cnh nhng ngi thn yu.