12/18/09

American Life

Facts about USA
pls view this site:
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/about-the-us/

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/american-life/

12/2/09

HỌC BỔNG CHÍNH PHỦ VIỆT NAM 2010

Đây là thông tin tóm tắt từ THÔNG BÁO của Bộ Giáo dục và Đào tạo Việt Nam về việc xét tuyển học bổng năm 2010 cho các đối tượng muốn đi học đại học ở nước ngoài, còn gọi là Đề án 322.

Yêu cầu xét tuyển:

1. Điểm trung bình môn ở phổ thông từ 7.0 trở lên
2. Điểm thi tốt nghiệp phổ thông
3. Điểm thi đại học (tối thiểu 20 không nhân đôi hệ số)
4. Điểm ngoại ngữ (tiếng Anh).
5. Ưu tiên dân tộc, con em gia đình thương binh, liệt sĩ v.v.

Có 7 nhóm đối tượng cần chú ý. Hãy đọc thông báo chi tiết.

Điểm yêu cầu về ngoại ngữ (Tiếng Anh) không cao. IELTS 5.0 hoặc TOEFL 450 (Paper-based, Institutional)

Cần nhớ rằng hàng năm Bộ vẫn có chương trình học bổng này với các đối tượng và yêu cầu xét tuyển về cơ bản giống nhau.

Ngoài ra Bộ còn có chương trình học bổng sau đại học, thực tập sinh cho các công dân Việt Nam có nguyện vọng cống hiến cho nhà nước. Chi tiết xin vào ghé trang thông tin của Bộ Giáo dục và Đào tạo.

Nếu em nào muốn đi du học theo dạng học bổng chính phủ Việt Nam thì nên biết tiêu chí xét tuyển và chuẩn bị cho mình những điều kiện cần thiết, nhất là ngoại ngữ.

Sinh viên nào đã đủ tiêu chuẩn thì nên thi gấp. Để đăng kí thi IELTS quốc tế các em có thể lấy APPLICATION FORMS tại

số 8 ngõ A7 Đại học Hà Nội. Điện thoại: 091 215 4047 hoặc 090 218 2546

Học sinh PTTH muốn du học hãy coi đây là một thông tin tốt để phấn đấu và đặt mục tiêu. Các em hãy tự chuẩn bị về ngoại ngữ ngay từ bây giờ.

Nếu các em cần hướng dẫn thêm về bài thi, hoặc muốn học ngắn hạn, hay dài hạn, hãy liên hệ với Cô Lan để được tư vấn thêm. Hoặc các em có thể liên lạc qua email lantt@hanu.edu.vn

Một số học bổng của nước ngoài yêu cầu ngoại ngữ cao hơn, các em hãy chuẩn bị sẵn sàng cho mình một chứng chỉ tiếng Anh quốc tế, tiện lợi và nhanh nhất là IELTS.

Chúc các em thành công!

Cô Lan

11/22/09

Du hoc sinh My can biet dieu nay

BS Hồ Hải
Theo blog BS Hồ Hải

Nhân câu chuyện du học sinh Hồ Quang Phương bị cảnh sát Mỹ đánh đập dã man và sự việc lên án của báo chí Việt Nam. Cũng như cháu Hồ Quang Phương nhờ luật sư để kiện ra ra tòa 4 cảnh sát Mỹ tham gia vào cuộc đánh. Với vốn hiểu biết nhỏ nhoi của mình tôi xin gửi đến các du sinh, đặc biệt, các du sinh Việt sang Mỹ ở tuổi trưởng thành một số hiểu biết của mình về văn hóa đối xử với cảnh sát Mỹ. Ngõ hầu sự việc đáng tiếc này không còn xảy ra nữa.

Văn hóa Mỹ là văn hóa du mục, duy lý. Khác với văn hóa Việt là văn hóa nông nghiệp, duy tình. Cách sống, quan hệ xã hội và pháp luật ở Mỹ không như ở Việt Nam. Nước Mỹ là nước tự do và dân chủ ai cũng rõ. Họ tự do vì họ là những con người ra đi từ những vùng miền chịu sự đàn áp của lề thói cũ, tụ hội về Mỹ để làm một xã hội mới theo tư tưởng phóng khoáng như tuyên ngôn độc lập mà họ viết ra năm 1776. Một tuyên ngôn độc lập mà có thể xem là hoàn hảo nhất nhân loại, đến nỗi cụ Hồ cũng phải vay mượn nó để viết bài tuyên ngôn độc lập cho nước Việt Nam Dân Chủ Cộng Hòa. Họ tự do vì ở đó giống như con người và mãnh đất miền Nam Việt Nam mà tôi đã viết trong bài 300 năm xây và 30 năm phá. Thậm chí, họ còn có luật dùng súng. Chính vì thế, cảnh sát Mỹ phải chịu nhiều áp lực của những băng cướp có súng lớn, súng nhỏ, thậm chí cả bom. Và luật pháp Mỹ cũng cho cảnh sát có rất nhiều quyền. Họ cũng rất mạnh tay với tội phạm và ai bị tình nghi là tội phạm khi cần thiết. Cho nên bạn cần phải tôn trọng cảnh sát, không nên chống cự và cãi lại họ. Nếu muốn gì bạn có thể chờ khi ra tòa, còn chống và cãi lại họ, nguy hiểm sẽ đến với bạn là chuyện đương nhiên. Một câu nói mà nếu ai đã từng xem phim hình sự Mỹ thường thấy dịch ra: "Bạn có quyền giữ yên lặng. Mọi lời nói của bạn đều là bằng chứng trước tòa án". Chỉ lời nói thôi, không cần hành động sai đều là bằng chứng chống lại bạn trước tòa. Câu nói này thể hiện tất cả những gì tôi đã nói ở trên và sau đây.

Khi bạn đi xe phạm luật bạn nên vui vẻ nhận giấy phạt, không được đôi co hay chống đối. Và lúc nào trên khuôn mặt bạn cũng phải tươi cười với những câu nói: "Yes, Sir" hoặc "No, Sir". Nếu bạn thấy không công bằng thì hãy đợi đến ngày ra tòa. Nếu bạn đi xe bị chặn lại vào ban đêm. Bạn phải giảm tốc độ, bật đèn khẩn cấp. Bật sáng hết toàn bộ đèn trong xe. Báo cho cảnh sát biết là bạn đang chọn chỗ đậu có đèn sáng, hạ cửa kiếng xuống, nhưng không được ra khỏi xe và 2 tay phải để trên tay lái, chờ cảnh sát đến. Không nên rời tay khỏi tay lái trước khi cảnh sát yêu cầu bạn làm bất cứ chuyện gì. Vì ngược lại như thế bạn sẽ bị cảnh sát nghi ngờ rút súng bắn cảnh sát. Bạn nên hỏi cảnh sát trước là họ yêu cầu gì? bằng lái xe, thẻ bảo hiểm xe ... Chỉ được bước ra khỏi xe khi họ yêu cầu. Và phải làm tất cả những gì họ yêu cầu như: đưa 2 tay ra sau gáy, dạng chân thậm chí đưa tay vào còng mà không được phản kháng. Nếu không có vấn đề gì bạn sẽ được thả ra sau đó. Nhưng nếu bạn làm sai những gì tôi đã nói ở trên thì bạn có thể mất mạng. Dĩ nhiên, nếu cảnh sát bắn bạn vô lý, họ sẽ ở tù. Nhưng chờ họ ở tù thì bạn đã mất mạng vì không hiểu luật và văn hóa sống của Mỹ.

Không được uống chất có cồn khi lái xe. Nếu bạn bị tội này thì nếu bạn đã có thẻ xanh chờ vào quốc tịch thì bạn cũng bị trục xuất về Việt Nam. Tội này gọi là tội DWI (Driving while intoxicaed). Không nên cho ai đi nhờ. Dù bạn thấy một người đang hư xe dọc đường họ đón lại. Bạn chỉ có thể giúp họ kêu xe cứu hộ, chứ không nên cho đi hộ, ngoại trừ người quen biết. Nếu không bạn có thể bị cướp. Nếu bạn thấy 1 cô gái xinh đẹp đi trên đường dưới trời mưa hoặc nắng chang chang, bạn cũng không nên cho cô ta đi nhờ. Vì cô ta có thể sẽ tố cáo bạn là quấy rối tình dục.

Không nên quan hệ tình dục với bạn gái dưới 18 tuổi. Ngoại trừ bản thân bạn dưới 18 tuổi thì không sao. Nhưng, nếu bạn lớn hơn 18 tuổi mà quan hệ trẻ gái dưới 18 tuổi, dù bạn gái đó yêu cầu thì bạn cũng có thể mang tội hãm hiếp trẻ vị thành niên. Tội này thì xem như bạn vứt cuộc đời bạn xuống bùn khi bạn còn sống trên đất Mỹ. Dù bạn quan có quan hệ với bạn gái 18 tuổi, nhưng khi bạn gái đó nói "No" sau khi đã lột quần áo, thì bạn cũng phải ngưng ngay. Nếu không bạn sẽ bị tội "date rape". Tội date rape cũng nặng không thua gì bất kỳ tội hãm hiếp nào. Đừng bao giờ có suy nghĩ như ở Việt Nam là cô ta giả bộ, cứ tiến tới sẽ thành công. Nguy hiểm đấy.

Không nên thấy trẻ con Mỹ dễ thương (trẻ con Mỹ thì hầu hết đẹp như thiên thần) mà cho kẹo, bánh khi chưa có sự đồng ý của cha mẹ nó. Dù là con cháu của bạn. Không nên nựng trẻ con kiểu như ở Việt Nam là sờ ti bé. Làm như thế bạn sẽ bị kiện là xâm phạm tình dục trẻ em (child molesting) ở tù rất nặng.

Bạn không được hăm dọa bất kỳ ai bằng lời nói hay hành động, nhất là đối với dân bản xứ. Nói dong dài để rồi cuối cùng quay về vấn đề cháu Hồ Quang Phương. Sở dĩ cháu Phương bị gọi 911 là vì cháu đã dọa giết sinh viên Mỹ bản xứ bằng lời: "Nếu mà còn ở quê nhà tao thì tao đã giết mày rồi." Khi cảnh sát đến, Phương không tuân theo yêu cầu cảnh sát mà cứ đi theo cảnh sát. Nên cảnh sát nghi ngờ Phương sẽ tấn công cảnh sát. Nên cảnh sát phải tự vệ vì điều đó. Chưa hết cảnh sát còn nói là Phương đã chống cự lại cảnh sát.

Câu chuyện không biết ai đúng, ai sai? Còn phải chờ điều tra rõ ràng. Nhưng trước đó, Phương cũng đã bị ăn đòn nhừ tử vì thiếu hiểu biết. Vấn đề còn lại là làm sao để Phương thắng kiện? Một người quen của tôi, sống ở Mỹ trên 30 năm, chưa thấy một luật sư người Việt Nam nào ở Mỹ thắng kiện trong loại vụ việc như thế này. Còn cho rằng muốn tương đương chứ chưa nói đến thắng kiện thì ít nhất Phương phải có 3 điều kiện tối thiểu sau:

1. Bằng chứng video tape đã có.
2. Cộng đồng người Việt Nam ở Mỹ phải hết lòng ủng hộ từ xã hội đến các trường.
3. Phải thuê 1 luật sư giỏi người Mỹ. Còn luật sư người Việt dù có giỏi chưa chắc thành công. Ngay cả thuê những luật sư giỏi của Việt Nam ở Mỹ cũng chưa chắc thắng.

Cuối cùng cũng cầu mong cho cháu Phương được kiện, Nếu không được thắng theo kiểu buộc tội về mặt pháp lý đối với 4 cảnh sát (Criminal case), thì ít ra cũng được bồi thường tiền y tế (Civil case) là tốt lắm. Vì nó là con số có mơ thì cả một đời người cũng khó có thể làm ra. Nó lên đến cả triệu đô la Mỹ kim. Chính vì thế mà ở Mỹ rất dễ bị kiện tụng ra tòa. Đặc biệt, làm nghề y như tớ mà bị kiện, nếu không mua bảo hiểm thì chỉ có nước đi ăn cám. Cỡ như bác sĩ Tỵ giám đốc bệnh viện đa khoa tỉnh Bình Định thì tù mọt gông và bị tước bằng từ lâu chứ không có chuyện lùm xùm và bảo kê của một ai đó để tồn tại đến ngày hôm nay.

Mong rằng bài vết này có thể giúp ích cho các cháu du học sinh Việt Nam trên đất Mỹ. Chúc hạnh phúc.

10/25/09

Khỏa thân trong nhà cũng bị bắt

Eric Williamson. Ảnh: Sky News
Một người đàn ông đang pha cà phê ở nhà trong trạng thái nude vừa bị bắt vì có hành vi không đứng đắn.

Theo Telegraph, Eric Williamson ở Springfield, bang Virginia, Mỹ đang pha cà phê trong bếp và không mặc quần áo, thì một phụ nữ và cậu con trai 7 tuổi đi ngang qua cửa sổ và nhìn thấy.

Người phụ nữ phàn nàn với cảnh sát và Williamson ngay sau đó đã bị bắt vào sáng thứ hai.

Williamson, 29 tuổi, cho rằng mình không làm gì sai, và rằng việc hai người kia nhìn thấy anh phô bày cơ thể là ngẫu nhiên. "Tôi đang ở một mình, trong nhà riêng của tôi và vừa rời khỏi giường. Trời tối và tôi không nghĩ là sẽ có ai nhìn thấy mình".

Cảnh sát nói rằng Williamson bị bắt vì họ tin rằng anh muốn được người khác nhìn thấy khi nude.

Williamson phải đối mặt với 1 năm tù và 2.000 USD tiền phạt nếu bị kết luận phạm tội. Williamson đang kháng án.

Hải Minh

10/11/09

TOEIC tại Việt Nam sẽ có thêm bài thi Nói và Viết

Cập nhật lúc 20h39" , ngày 10/10/2009 -

(VnMedia) - Sáng nay (10/10), đại diện Viện Khảo thí Giáo dục Hoa Kỳ (ETS) tại Việt Nam đã chính thức giới thiệu bài thi TOEIC Speaking (Nói) và Writing (Viết) tại thị trường Việt Nam.

Trước đây ở Việt Nam, bài thi TOEIC Listening (Nghe) và Reading (Đọc) được dùng để đánh giá trực tiếp hai kỹ năng Nghe hiểu và Đọc hiểu của các thí sinh. Thông qua đó sẽ đánh giá gián tiếp hai kỹ năng còn lại là Nói và Viết.

Theo đại diện ETS, việc thiết kế và cho ra đời bài thi kỹ năng Nói và Viết nhằm đáp ứng yêu cầu môi trường giao tiếp và làm việc quốc tế cũng như nhu cầu ngày càng cao của các doanh nghiệp tại Việt Nam trong việc đánh giá toàn diện và đầy đủ các kỹ năng.

Bài thi kỹ năng Nói có 11 câu hỏi với thời gian là 20 phút, còn bài thi Viết có 8 câu hỏi, trong thời gian 60 phút. Cả 2 bài thi được tiến hành theo thể thức iBT (Internet-based Test), trong đó thí sinh sẽ làm bài thi trên máy tính tại các trung tâm khảo thí được chỉ định.

Trong phần Speaking Test, câu trả lời của thí sinh sẽ được ghi âm lại còn ở Writing Test, thí sinh sẽ làm bài trực tiếp trên máy và phần trả lời sẽ được gửi đến ETS ở Hoa Kỳ qua mạng Internet. Phần trả lời của thí sinh sẽ được các chuyên gia của ETS trực tiếp chấm điểm. Thang điểm từ 0-200/mỗi kỹ năng.

Theo dự kiến, bài thi TOEIC Speaking và Writing sẽ được tổ chức lần đầu tiên tại Việt Nam vào ngày 15/11/2009 tại Hà Nội và TP.HCM. Sau đó sẽ được tổ chức định kỳ một tháng một lần tại tất cả các địa điểm thi được uỷ quyền của IIG Việt Nam trên toàn quốc.

Từ năm 2005, Bộ Giáo dục và Đào tạo đã chủ trương sử dụng TOEIC làm tiêu chuẩn tốt nghiệp cho SV khối không chuyên ngữ các trường Đại học và Cao đẳng…



TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) là chương trình kiểm tra và xây dựng tiêu chuẩn Anh ngữ trong môi trường giao tiếp và làm việc quốc tế. Kết quả đánh giá của TOEIC được công nhận rộng rãi trên toàn thế giới.

Chương trình này do Viện khảo thí giáo dục Hoa kỳ- ETS thiết kế năm 1979 theo đơn đặt hàng của bộ Công nghiệp và Ngoại thương Nhật Bản.






Lan Anh

9/27/09

To torture or not to torture?

Torturing 'does not get truth'

The extreme stress of torture harms the memory
Torture techniques used on suspected terrorists by the Bush administration may have failed to get to the truth, researchers say.

Professor Shane O'Mara of Trinity College, Dublin, said the interrogation techniques had a detrimental effect on brain functions related to memory.

He listed 10 methods of what he called torture used by the US, including stress positions and waterboarding.

His review is published in the journal, Trends in Cognitive Science.

'Lack of control'

Professor O'Mara said US Department of Justice memos released in April showed that the Americans believed that prolonged periods of shock, anxiety, disorientation and lack of control were more effective than standard interrogation in extracting the truth.

He said: "This is based on the assumption that subjects will be motivated to reveal truthful information to end interrogation, and that extreme stress, shock and anxiety do not impact on memory.


Techniques used by US
Walling - captive is placed with heels touching the wall and is pulled away and pushed back into it with force
Wall standing - captive stands four to five feet from wall with fingertips supporting all the body weight to induce muscle fatigue
Cramped confinement - captive place in small box in darkness for up to two hours, in a larger box for up to 18 hours
Sleep deprivation - captive is deprived of sleep for up to 11 days
Stress positions - captive sits on floor with legs straight out in front and arms raised above head or is made to kneel on the floor while leaning back at a 45 degree angle
Waterboarding - captive is bound head down on an inclined bench with a cloth over the eyes. Water is applied to the cloth for 20 to 40 seconds at a time inducing fast breathing and perception of drowning
"However this model of the impact of extreme stress on memory and the brain is utterly unsupported by scientific evidence."

He said studies of extreme stress with special forces soldiers had found that their recall of previously learned information was impaired afterwards.

"Waterboarding in particular is an extreme stressor and has the potential to elicit widespread stress-induced changes in the brain."

Professor O'Mara said contemporary neuroscientific models of human memory showed that the hippocampus and prefrontal cortices of the brain were very important.

The stress hormone, cortisol, binds to receptors in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex increasing neuronal excitability which compromises the normal functioning of the brain if it is sustained.

And other stress hormones called catecholamines could lead to an increase in blood pressure and heart rate which could cause long-term damage to the brain and body if they were maintained at a high level for a long time.

Conditioning

Professor O'Mara said a common argument in favour of torture was that it would reliably elicit truthful information from the captive's long-term memory.

But psychological studies had suggested that during extreme stress and anxiety, the captive would be conditioned to associate speaking with periods of safety.

And because torture was stressful for the torturers the fact that the captive was speaking also provided a safety signal to the captor.

"Making the captive talk may become the end - not the truth of what the captive is revealing.

"These techniques cause severe, repeated and prolonged stress, which compromises brain tissue supporting memory and executive function.

"The fact that the detrimental effects of these techniques on the brain are not visible to the naked eye makes them no less real."

Memory disruption

Dr David Harper, a clinical psychologist from the University of East London, said the study appeared to be consistent with previous research on memory and trauma and with evidence of previous torture survivors and those in the intelligence community critical of psychological torture techniques.

"Believers in coercive interrogation tend to believe that people will 'tell the truth' as a result but much evidence suggests that people will, in fact, tell those conducting the torture what they think will make the torture stop.

"This has been noted as a danger by commentators from the Spanish Inquisition, through the Moscow Show Trials of the 1930s to the present day."

Dr Stuart Turner of the Centre for the Study of Emotion and Law said: "There is now very strong evidence that torture and harsh interrogation techniques may disrupt normal memory processes.

"With this in mind, it is also unreasonable to expect torture survivors to be able to give consistent and complete accounts of their experiences.

"This is highly relevant, for example, to the process of decision making for asylum seekers, arriving in the UK seeking refuge and for whom credibility is often a central issue.

"It appears that O'Mara's review paper supports the contention that to expect consistent memories in asylum applicants is unreasonable and therefore that inconsistencies should certainly not automatically be interpreted as evidence of fabrication."

9/22/09

Smoking ban heart gains 'massive'

Passive smoke raises heart risk
Bans on smoking in public places have had a bigger impact on preventing heart attacks than ever expected, data shows.

Smoking bans cut the number of heart attacks in Europe and North America by up to a third, two studies report.

This "heart gain" is far greater than both originally anticipated and the 10% figure recently quoted by England's Department of Health.

The studies appear in two leading journals - Circulation and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Heart attacks in the UK alone affect an estimated 275,000 people and kill 146,000 each year.

Big impact

Earlier this month it was announced that heart attack rates fell by about 10% in England in the year after the ban on smoking in public places was introduced in July 2007 - which is more than originally anticipated.

But the latest work, based on the results of numerous different studies collectively involving millions of people, indicated that smoking bans have reduced heart attack rates by as much as 26% per year.

If you are a smoker, the single biggest thing you can do to avoid a heart attack is to give up, which could also protect the heart health of friends and family

Ellen Mason of the British Heart Foundation
Second-hand smoke is thought to increase the chances of a heart attack by making the blood more prone to clotting, reducing levels of beneficial "good" cholesterol, and raising the risk of dangerous heart rhythms.

Dr James Lightwood, of the University of California at San Francisco, led the Circulation study that pooled together 13 separate analyses.

His team found that heart attack rates across Europe and North America started to drop immediately following implementation of anti-smoking laws, reaching 17% after one year, then continuing to decline over time, with a 36% drop three years after enacting the restrictions.

Dr Lightwood said: "While we obviously won't bring heart attack rates to zero, these findings give us evidence that in the short-to-medium-term, smoking bans will prevent a lot of heart attacks.

"This study adds to the already strong evidence that second-hand smoke causes heart attacks, and that passing 100% smoke-free laws in all workplaces and public places is something we can do to protect the public."

Ellen Mason, of the British Heart Foundation, said: "These studies add to the growing evidence that a ban on smoking in public places seems to have a positive impact on heart attack rates, which is clearly good news for our nation's heart health.

"The statistics also show how quickly the benefits can be felt after a smoking ban is implemented and indicate how dangerous second-hand smoke can be to the heart.

"If you are a smoker, the single biggest thing you can do to avoid a heart attack is to give up, which could also protect the heart health of friends and family."

Latest figures show at least 70,000 lives have been saved by NHS Stop Smoking Services in the 10 years since they were established in England.

9/20/09

How honey is made

Pls view this video clip:
How to make honey

9/19/09

Listening: how it's made - hatchery chicks

Pls view this video clip at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkuohLV2u0k

9/9/09

Unwanted Chicks Ground up Alive

Animals' rights
===================

Video Shows

Pls view English version here: http://www.mercyforanimals.org/hatchery/


rung ron cong nghe ap trung

http://vietnamnet.vn/thegioi/2009/09/867563/

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 3:25 AM



WASHINGTON -- An undercover video shot by an animal rights group at an Iowa egg hatchery shows workers discarding unwanted chicks by sending them alive into a grinder, and other chicks falling through a sorting machine to die on the factory floor.


Chicago-based Mercy for Animals said it shot the video at Hy-Line North America's hatchery in Spencer, Iowa, over a two-week period in May and June. The video was obtained Monday by The Associated Press.


Hy-Line said in a statement it has started an investigation "of the entire situation," adding that it would have helped their investigation "had we been aware of the potential violation immediately after it occurred."


The video, shot with a hidden camera and microphone by a Mercy for Animals employee who got a job at the plant, shows a Hy-Line worker sorting through a conveyor belt of chirping chicks, flipping some of them into a chute like a poker dealer flips cards.


These chicks, which a narrator says are males, are then shown being dropped alive into a grinding machine.


In other parts of the video, a chick is shown dying on the factory floor amid a heap of egg shells after falling through a sorting machine. Another chick, also still alive, is seen lying on the floor after getting scalded by a wash cycle, according to the video narrator.


Hy-Line said the video "appears to show an inappropriate action and violation of our animal welfare policies," referring to chicks on the factory floor.


But the company also noted that "instantaneous euthanasia" _ a reference to killing of male chicks by the grinder _ is a standard practice supported by the animal veterinary and scientific community.


According to Mercy for Animals, male chicks are of no use to the industry because they can't lay eggs and don't grow large or quickly enough to be raised profitably for meat. That results in the killing of 200 million male chicks a year.


The United Egg Producers, a trade group for U.S. egg farmers, confirmed that figure and the practice behind it.


"There is, unfortunately, no way to breed eggs that only produce female hens," said the group's spokesman, Mitch Head. "If someone has a need for 200 million male chicks, we're happy to provide them to anyone who wants them. But we can find no market, no need."


Using a grinder, Head said, "is the most instantaneous way to euthanize chicks."


Hy-Line says on its Web site that its Iowa facility produces 33.4 million chicks. Based on that figure, Mercy for Animals estimates a similar number of male chicks are killed at the facility each year. Hy-Line did not comment on that estimate.


Mercy for Animals says it will call on the nation's 50 largest grocery chains to include labels on their eggs that say, "Warning: Male chicks are ground-up alive by the egg industry."


Head called that proposal "almost a joke," saying the group had no credible authority, and had questionable motives. "This is a group which espouses no egg consumption by anyone _ so that is clearly their motive." The video does in fact end with a call for people to adopt a vegan diet, which eliminates all animal products _ meat, eggs or dairy.


Nathan Runkle, executive director of Mercy for Animals, said most people would be shocked to learn that 200 million chicks are killed a year.


"Is this justifiable just for cheap eggs?" he said.


As to more humane alternatives to disposing of male chicks, Runkle said the whole system is inherently flawed.


"The entire industrial hatchery system subjects these birds to stress, fear and pain from the first day," he said.

© 2009 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Internet and people's life

Nowadays technology changes the way people interact with each other. In what type does it affect people? Is it positive or negative?





50 things that are being killed by the internet
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/6133903/50-things-that-are-being-killed-by-the-internet.html

The internet has wrought huge changes on our lives – both positive and negative – in the fifteen years since its use became widespread.

By Matthew Moore
Published: 7:00AM BST 04 Sep 2009

Comments 224 | Comment on this article

The web is changing the way we work, play and think Photo: REUTTERS
Tasks that once took days can be completed in seconds, while traditions and skills that emerged over centuries have been made all but redundant.

20 most bizarre Craigslist adverts of all time
From The Beatles to the apocalypse, 10 things to look out for on 09/09/09
The internet is no respecter of reputations: innocent people have seen their lives ruined by viral clips distributed on the same World Wide Web used by activists to highlight injustices and bring down oppressive regimes



Related Articles
Mystery of Google's UFO logo Below we have compiled - in no particular order - 50 things that are in the process of being killed off by the web, from products and business models to life experiences and habits. We've also thrown in a few things that have suffered the hands of other modern networking gadgets, specifically mobile phones and GPS systems.

Do you agree with our selections? What other examples can you think of? Please post your comments on the bottom of the story – we hope include the best suggestions in a fuller list.

1) The art of polite disagreement
While the inane spats of YouTube commencers may not be representative, the internet has certainly sharpened the tone of debate. The most raucous sections of the blogworld seem incapable of accepting sincerely held differences of opinion; all opponents must have "agendas".


2) Fear that you are the only person unmoved by a celebrity's death
Twitter has become a clearing-house for jokes about dead famous people. Tasteless, but an antidote to the "fans in mourning" mawkishness that otherwise predominates.


3) Listening to an album all the way through
The single is one of the unlikely beneficiaries of the internet – a development which can be looked at in two ways. There's no longer any need to endure eight tracks of filler for a couple of decent tunes, but will "album albums" like Radiohead's Amnesiac get the widespread hearing they deserve?


4) Sarah Palin
Her train wreck interviews with NBC's Katie Couric were watched and re-watched millions of times on the internet, cementing the Republican vice-presidential candidate's reputation as a politician out of her depth. Palin's uncomfortable relationship with the web continues; she has threatened to sue bloggers who republish rumours about the state of her marriage.


5) Punctuality
Before mobile phones, people actually had to keep their appointments and turn up to the pub on time. Texting friends to warn them of your tardiness five minutes before you are due to meet has become one of throwaway rudenesses of the connected age.


6) Ceefax/Teletext
All sports fans of a certain age can tell you their favourite Ceefax pages (p341 for Test match scores, p312 for football transfer gossip), but the service's clunking graphics and four-paragraph articles have dated badly. ITV announced earlier this year that it was planning to pull Teletext, its version.


7) Adolescent nerves at first porn purchase
The ubiquity of free, hard-core pornography on the web has put an end to one of the most dreaded rights rites of passage for teenage boys – buying dirty magazines. Why tremble in the WHSmiths queue when you can download mountains of filth for free in your bedroom? The trend also threatens the future of "porn in the woods" – the grotty pages of Razzle and Penthouse that scatter the fringes of provincial towns and villages.


8) Telephone directories
You can find Fly Fishing by J R Hartley on Amazon.


9) The myth of cat intelligence
The proudest household pets are now the illiterate butts of caption-based jokes. Icanhasreputashunback?


10) Watches
Scrabbling around in your pocket to dig out a phone may not be as elegant as glancing at a watch, but it saves splashing out on two gadgets.


11) Music stores
In a world where people don't want to pay anything for music, charging them £16.99 for 12 songs in a flimsy plastic case is no business model.


12) Letter writing/pen pals
Email is quicker, cheaper and more convenient; receiving a handwritten letter from a friend has become a rare, even nostalgic, pleasure. As a result, formal valedictions like "Yours faithfully" are being replaced by "Best" and "Thanks".


13) Memory
When almost any fact, no matter how obscure, can be dug up within seconds through Google and Wikipedia, there is less value attached to the "mere" storage and retrieval of knowledge. What becomes important is how you use it – the internet age rewards creativity.


14) Dead time
When was the last time you spent an hour mulling the world out a window, or rereading a favourite book? The internet's draw on our attention is relentless and increasingly difficult to resist.


15) Photo albums and slide shows
Facebook, Flickr and printing sites like Snapfish are how we share our photos. Earlier this year Kodak announced that it was discontinuing its Kodachrome slide film because of lack of demand.


16) Hoaxes and conspiracy theories
The internet is often dismissed as awash with cranks, but it has proved far more potent at debunking conspiracy theories than perpetuating them. The excellent Snopes.com continues to deliver the final, sober, word on urban legends.


17) Watching television together
On-demand television, from the iPlayer in Britain to Hulu in the US, allows relatives and colleagues to watch the same programmes at different times, undermining what had been one of the medium's most attractive cultural appeals – the shared experience. Appointment-to-view television, if it exists at all, seems confined to sport and live reality shows.


18) Authoritative reference works
We still crave reliable information, but generally aren't willing to pay for it.


19) The Innovations catalogue
Preposterous as its household gadgets may have been, the Innovations catalogue was always a diverting read. The magazine ceased printing in 2003, and its web presence is depressingly bland.


20) Order forms in the back pages of books
Amazon's "Customers who bought this item also bought..." service seems the closest web equivalent.


21) Delayed knowledge of sporting results
When was the last time you bought a newspaper to find out who won the match, rather than for comment and analysis? There's no need to fall silent for James Alexander Gordon on the way home from the game when everyone in the car has an iPhone.


22) Enforceable copyright
The record companies, film studios and news agencies are fighting back, but can the floodgates ever be closed?


23) Reading telegrams at weddings
Quoting from a wad of email printouts doesn't have the same magic.


24) Dogging
Websites may have helped spread the word about dogging, but the internet offers a myriad of more convenient ways to organise no-strings sex with strangers. None of these involve spending the evening in lay-by near Aylesbury.


25) Aren't they dead? Aren't they gay?
Wikipedia allows us to confirm or disprove almost any celebrity rumour instantly. Only at festivals with no Wi-Fi signals can the gullible be tricked into believing that David Hasselhoff has passed away.


26) Holiday news ignorance
Glancing at the front pages after landing back at Heathrow used to be a thrilling experience – had anyone died? Was the government still standing? Now it takes a stern soul to resist the temptation to check the headlines at least once while you're away.


27) Knowing telephone numbers off by heart
After typing the digits into your contacts book, you need never look at them again.


28) Respect for doctors and other professionals
The proliferation of health websites has undermined the status of GPs, whose diagnoses are now challenged by patients armed with printouts.


29) The mystery of foreign languages
Sites like Babelfish offer instant, good-enough translations of dozens of languages – but kill their beauty and rhythm.


30) Geographical knowledge
With GPS systems spreading from cars to smartphones, knowing the way from A to B is a less prized skill. Just ask the London taxi drivers who spent years learning The Knowledge but are now undercut by minicabs.


31) Privacy
We may attack governments for the spread of surveillance culture, but users of social media websites make more information about themselves available than Big Brother could ever hoped to obtain by covert means.


32) Chuck Norris's reputation
The absurdly heroic boasts on Chuck Norris Facts may be affectionate, but will anyone take him seriously again?


33) Pencil cricket
An old-fashioned schoolboy diversion swept away by the Stick Cricket behemoth


34) Mainstream media
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Rocky Mountain News in the US have already folded, and the UK's Observer may follow. Free news and the migration of advertising to the web threaten the basic business models of almost all media organisations.


35) Concentration
What with tabbing between Gmail, Twitter, Facebook and Google News, it's a wonder anyone gets their work done. A disturbing trend captured by the wonderful XKCD webcomic.


36) Mr Alifi's dignity
Twenty years ago, if you were a Sudanese man who was forced to marry a goat after having sex with it, you'd take solace that news of your shame would be unlikely to spread beyond the neighbouring villages. Unfortunately for Mr Alifi, his indiscretion came in the digital age – and became one of the first viral news stories.


37) Personal reinvention
How can you forge a new identity at university when your Facebook is plastered with photos of the "old" you?


38) Viktor Yanukovych
The Orange Revolution in Ukraine was organised by a cabal of students and young activists who exploited the power of the web to mobilise resistance against the old regime, and sweep Viktor Yushchenko to power.


39) The insurance ring-round
Their adverts may grate, but insurance comparison websites have killed one of the most tedious annual chores


40) Undiscovered artists
Posting paintings to deviantART and Flickr – or poems to writebuzz – could not be easier. So now the garret-dwellers have no excuses.


41) The usefulness of reference pages at the front of diaries
If anyone still digs out their diaries to check what time zone Lisbon is in, or how many litres there are to a gallon, we don't know them.


42) The nervous thrill of the reunion
You've spent the past five years tracking their weight-gain on Facebook, so meeting up with your first love doesn't pack the emotional punch it once did.


43) Solitaire
The original computer timewaster has been superseded by the more alluring temptations of the web. Ditto Minesweeper.


44) Trust in Nigerian businessmen and princes
Some gift horses should have their mouths very closely inspected.


45) Prostitute calling cards/ kerb crawling
Sex can be marketed more cheaply, safely and efficiently on the web than the street corner.


46) Staggered product/film releases
Companies are becoming increasingly draconian in their anti-piracy measure, but are finally beginning to appreciate that forcing British consumers to wait six months to hand over their money is not a smart business plan.


47) Footnotes
Made superfluous by the link, although Wikipedia is fighting a brave rearguard action.


48) Grand National trips to the bookmaker
Having a little flutter is much more fun when you don't have to wade though a shop of drunks and ne'er-do-wells


49) Fanzines
Blogs and fansites offer greater freedom and community interaction than paper fanzines, and can be read by many more people.


50) Your lunchbreak
Did you leave your desk today? Or snaffle a sandwich while sending a few personal emails and checking the price of a week in Istanbul?

17 thói quen đang bị 'xóa sổ' trong thời đại số
http://vnexpress.net/GL/Vi-tinh/2009/09/3BA133AA/

Ảnh: TopNews.
Internet, điện thoại di động.. đã thay đổi thế giới theo hướng tích cực dù vẫn còn mặt hạn chế như biến cuộc sống của nhiều người thành địa ngục vì những hình ảnh bị phát tán trên mạng.

Báo Telegraph (Anh) đã liệt kê 50 điều đang bị công nghệ kết nối "giết chết", trong đó có nhiều thứ gần gũi với Việt Nam như:

1. Bày tỏ sự không đồng tình một cách nhã nhặn: Thường ai "dũng cảm" hoặc quá nóng giận mới to tiếng, làm ầm ĩ nơi công cộng, còn trên diễn đàn online, cả người điềm tĩnh nhất cũng có thể tuôn ra những lời khó nghe với người/ý kiến mà họ ghét.

2. Thưởng thức trọn vẹn một album: Người ta chỉ chọn và nghe những file nhạc mà họ thích nhất.

3. Đúng giờ: Chỉ cần gọi điện, bạn có thể biết người kia đang đi tới đâu, hoặc báo cho họ biết bạn có thể đến muộn.

4. Sự rụt rè khi lần đầu mua ấn phẩm "dành cho người lớn": Nội dung khiêu dâm lan tràn trên Internet khiến những chàng thanh niên mới lớn không cần hoặc không còn bối rối khi lần đầu ra cửa hàng mua các tờ báo "mát mẻ".

5. Đồng hồ đeo tay: Trừ khi chiếc đồng hồ đó thể hiện sự lịch lãm, sang trọng hay có ý nghĩa nhất định, nếu chỉ để xem giờ, người ta sẽ ngó vào điện thoại, laptop...

6. Thư tay: E-mail nhanh, rẻ, tiện lợi và dễ biên tập hơn với người dùng Internet.

7. Không cần nhớ nhiều: Số điện thoại mới được lưu vào danh bạ, ngày tháng các sự kiện lịch sử đã có Google và Wikipedia trợ giúp, một số học giả cho rằng trẻ em không cần học thuộc lòng nữa.

8. Thời gian chết: Bạn có còn dành hẳn 1-2 giờ ngồi lỳ bên cửa sổ ngắm trời mây? Có lẽ chỉ khi kết nối Internet bị ngắt, điện thoại hết pin mà không tìm thấy sạc còn TV đang hỏng.

10. Xem TV cùng nhau: Qua rồi những buổi tối sau giờ cơm, cả nhà quây quần trước màn hình vô tuyến xem thời sự, phim, văn nghệ... bởi mỗi phòng đã có một TV riêng, hoặc các thành viên còn bận vào mạng, nhắn tin với bạn bè...

11. Kết quả trận đấu muộn: Vài năm trước, nếu nhiều trận đấu bóng diễn ra cùng giờ, khán giả xem truyền hình chỉ biết ngay kết quả một trận, còn lịch chiếu những trận khác sẽ bị lùi lại. Ngày nay, tỷ số được cập nhật từng phút trên nhiều website và qua tin nhắn điện thoại.

11. "Mù" thông tin khi đi nghỉ: Bây giờ, ở đâu người ta cũng có thể biết được tình hình của bạn bè, người thân nhờ điện thoại, chat, mạng xã hội...

12. Thần tượng: Học trò từng coi giáo viên là "kho tri thức sống", bác sĩ là nguồn tham khảo tin cậy về sức khỏe..., nhưng hiện nay, có những người đi khám bệnh về vẫn lên Google để tra xem loại thuốc bác sĩ kê đơn có thực sự an toàn không.

13. Sự bí hiểm của ngoại ngữ: Các công cụ dịch thuật trực tuyến giúp họ hiểu gần hết mọi từ vựng.

14. Tính riêng tư: Thông tin người dùng đăng rải rác trên mạng, chẳng hạn những status, ảnh... ngẫu nhiên trên Facebook tưởng vô hại khi đặt riêng lẻ nhưng lại giúp người khác hiểu rất rõ về họ nếu biết cách kết nối và tổng hợp lại.

15. Sự tập trung: Ai có thể chuyên tâm vào công việc khi mà cứ 3-5 phút lại xuất hiện một thông báo nho nhỏ ở góc màn hình về một e-mail mới trong Gmail, bình luận mới ở Facebook hay một bản tin tại Google News?

16. Niềm vui sướng "vỡ òa" khi gặp nhau: Hội ngộ sau bao ngày xa cách luôn đem lại sự hân hoan. Nhưng mức độ sẽ hoàn toàn khác giữa việc hai người xa 5 năm mà chỉ liên lạc qua thư tay và vài cuộc điện thoại đường dài hiếm hoi với hai người chat với nhau cả ngày, "nói quên ngày tháng" qua Skype, cập nhật ảnh và mọi hoạt động từ việc ngủ dậy lúc mấy giờ đến chuyện vừa bị ngã xe qua Facebook.

17. Ra ngoài ăn trưa: Thói quen này không thể bị "xóa sổ" nhưng ngày càng nhiều người sẵn sàng ngồi lỳ trong văn phòng, vừa gặm bánh mỳ vừa duyệt mạng xã hội, nhất là ở những công ty chỉ cho phép truy cập web vào giờ nghỉ.

8/3/09

Urbanisation: Problems

Essay: It is often said that industrial and urban development is beneficial to any society in today's world.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?

7/13/09

Tom Sawyer_Mark Twain

Would you like to see a film? Here is one I am sure you will enjoy.
Pls watch Tom Sawyer (1938) - Mark Twain

7/12/09

Essay_Discursive vs Argumentative

Here the teacher epxlains to you the difference between the Discussion and Argument essay. Pls click on to the title and it will take you to the lecture.

Enjoy.

6/28/09

Academic Listening_Writing

This is the lecture on how to write academically.

Happy listening.

6/25/09

Reading list

If you want to read in English, this is a good site for you to download.

Enjoy your reading.

6/22/09

THE SCALE OF THE UNIVERSE—THE SOLAR SYSTEM

§ 1

The story of the triumphs of modern science naturally opens with Astronomy. The picture of the Universe which the astronomer offers to us is imperfect; the lines he traces are often faint and uncertain. There are many problems which have been solved, there are just as many about which there is doubt, and notwithstanding our great increase in knowledge, there remain just as many which are entirely unsolved.
The problem of the structure and duration of the universe [said the great astronomer Simon Newcomb] is the most far-reaching with which the mind has to deal. Its solution may be regarded as the ultimate object of stellar astronomy, the possibility of reaching which has occupied the minds of thinkers since the beginning of civilisation. Before our time the problem could be considered only from the imaginative or the speculative point of view. Although we can to-day attack it to a limited extent by scientific methods, it must be admitted that we have scarcely taken more than the first step toward the actual solution.... What is the duration of the universe in time? Is it fitted to last for ever in its present form, or does it contain within itself the seeds of dissolution? Must it, in the course of time, in we know not how many millions of ages, be transformed into something very different from what it now is? This question is intimately associated with the question whether the stars form[Pg 10] a system. If they do, we may suppose that system to be permanent in its general features; if not, we must look further for our conclusions.
The Heavenly Bodies

The heavenly bodies fall into two very distinct classes so far as their relation to our Earth is concerned; the one class, a very small one, comprises a sort of colony of which the Earth is a member. These bodies are called planets, or wanderers. There are eight of them, including the Earth, and they all circle round the sun. Their names, in the order of their distance from the sun, are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and of these Mercury, the nearest to the sun, is rarely seen by the naked eye. Uranus is practically invisible, and Neptune quite so. These eight planets, together with the sun, constitute, as we have said, a sort of little colony; this colony is called the Solar System.
The second class of heavenly bodies are those which lie outside the solar system. Every one of those glittering points we see on a starlit night is at an immensely greater distance from us than is any member of the Solar System. Yet the members of this little colony of ours, judged by terrestrial standards, are at enormous distances from one another. If a shell were shot in a straight line from one side of Neptune's orbit to the other it would take five hundred years to complete its journey. Yet this distance, the greatest in the Solar System as now known (excepting the far swing of some of the comets), is insignificant compared to the distances of the stars. One of the nearest stars to the earth that we know of is Alpha Centauri, estimated to be some twenty-five million millions of miles away. Sirius, the brightest star in the firmament, is double this distance from the earth.

We must imagine the colony of planets to which we belong as a compact little family swimming in an immense void. At distances which would take our shell, not hundreds, but millions[Pg 11] of years to traverse, we reach the stars—or rather, a star, for the distances between stars are as great as the distance between the nearest of them and our Sun. The Earth, the planet on which we live, is a mighty globe bounded by a crust of rock many miles in thickness; the great volumes of water which we call our oceans lie in the deeper hollows of the crust. Above the surface an ocean of invisible gas, the atmosphere, rises to a height of about three hundred miles, getting thinner and thinner as it ascends.

LAPLACE
One of the greatest mathematical astronomers of all time and the originator of the nebular theory.

Photo: Royal Astronomical Society.
PROFESSOR J. C. ADAMS
who, anticipating the great French mathematician, Le Verrier, discovered the planet Neptune by calculations based on the irregularities of the orbit of Uranus. One of the most dramatic discoveries in the history of Science.

Photo: Elliott & Fry, Ltd.
PROFESSOR EDDINGTON
Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge. The most famous of the English disciples of Einstein.

FIG. 1.—DIAGRAMS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
THE COMPARATIVE DISTANCES OF THE PLANETS
(Drawn approximately to scale)

The isolation of the Solar System is very great. On the above scale the nearest star (at a distance of 25 trillions of miles) would be over one half mile away. The hours, days, and years are the measures of time as we use them; that is: Jupiter's "Day" (one rotation of the planet) is made in ten of our hours; Mercury's "Year" (one revolution of the planet around the Sun) is eighty-eight of our days. Mercury's "Day" and "Year" are the same. This planet turns always the same side to the Sun.

THE COMPARATIVE SIZES OF THE SUN AND THE PLANETS
(Drawn approximately to scale)
On this scale the Sun would be 17½ inches in diameter; it is far greater than all the planets put together. Jupiter, in turn, is greater than all the other planets put together.

Except when the winds rise to a high speed, we seem to live in a very tranquil world. At night, when the glare of the sun passes out of our atmosphere, the stars and planets seem to move across the heavens with a stately and solemn slowness. It was one of the first discoveries of modern astronomy that this movement is only apparent. The apparent creeping of the stars across the heavens at night is accounted for by the fact that the earth turns upon its axis once in every twenty-four hours. When we remember the size of the earth we see that this implies a prodigious speed.

In addition to this the earth revolves round the sun at a speed of more than a thousand miles a minute. Its path round the sun, year in year out, measures about 580,000,000 miles. The earth is held closely to this path by the gravitational pull of the sun, which has a mass 333,432 times that of the earth. If at any moment the sun ceased to exert this pull the earth would instantly fly off into space straight in the direction in which it was moving at the time, that is to say, at a tangent. This tendency to fly off at a tangent is continuous. It is the balance between it and the sun's pull which keeps the earth to her almost circular orbit. In the same way the seven other planets are held to their orbits.

Circling round the earth, in the same way as the earth circles round the sun, is our moon. Sometimes the moon passes directly between us and the sun, and cuts off the light from us.[Pg 12] We then have a total or partial eclipse of the sun. At other times the earth passes directly between the sun and the moon, and causes an eclipse of the moon. The great ball of the earth naturally trails a mighty shadow across space, and the moon is "eclipsed" when it passes into this.

The other seven planets, five of which have moons of their own, circle round the sun as the earth does. The sun's mass is immensely larger than that of all the planets put together, and all of them would be drawn into it and perish if they did not travel rapidly round it in gigantic orbits. So the eight planets, spinning round on their axes, follow their fixed paths round the sun. The planets are secondary bodies, but they are most important, because they are the only globes in which there can be life, as we know life.

If we could be transported in some magical way to an immense distance in space above the sun, we should see our Solar System as it is drawn in the accompanying diagram (Fig. 1), except that the planets would be mere specks, faintly visible in the light which they receive from the sun. (This diagram is drawn approximately to scale.) If we moved still farther away, trillions of miles away, the planets would fade entirely out of view, and the sun would shrink into a point of fire, a star. And here you begin to realize the nature of the universe. The sun is a star. The stars are suns. Our sun looks big simply because of its comparative nearness to us. The universe is a stupendous collection of millions of stars or suns, many of which may have planetary families like ours.

6/18/09

Mammoths survived late in Britain

By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News



Mammoths were in Britain 6,000 years longer than had been suspected
Woolly mammoths lived in Britain as recently as 14,000 years ago, according to new radiocarbon dating evidence.

Dr Adrian Lister obtained new dates for mammoth bones unearthed in the English county of Shropshire in 1986.

His study in the Geological Journal shows the great beasts remained part of Britain's wildlife for much longer than had previously been supposed.

Mammoths may finally have died out when forests encroached on the grassland habitats they favoured for grazing.

The radiocarbon results from the adult male and four juvenile mammoths from Condover, Shropshire, reveal that the great beasts were in Britain more than 6,000 years longer than had previously been thought.

It's not the climate - in the main - that affects these animals. The climate affects the vegetation and the vegetation affects them

Dr Adrian Lister, Natural History Museum
Researchers had supposed that mammoths disappeared from North-West Europe between 21,000 and 19,000 years ago, during a climatic freeze known as the last glacial maximum (LGM).

Britain's mammoth populations may indeed have vanished with this big chill.

But according to the new study, they were not gone forever. Instead, they returned when conditions eased and clung on in southern England until 14,000 years ago.

"What this usually means is that (mammoths) die out locally and then re-emigrate from refugia somewhere else," Dr Lister told BBC News.

Purification method

The specimens have been radiocarbon dated before. But the Natural History Museum researcher used a relatively new method of radiocarbon dating to get very accurate ages for the Condover fossils.

"The big issue with all radiocarbon dating is contamination from different sources. You have to be sure the sample you extracted from the fossil is absolutely pure," said Dr Lister.

"There have to be methods for purifying the sample that is extracted from the bone. In the last few years, a new method of purification has been developed at Oxford University called ultra-filtration."

"Various bone specimens that were dated before they developed this new purification method have been shown to be out by a significant amount. Not always, but often. What they do is re-run the sample using the new method and obtain a more accurate date. That's what we did here."

Other large mammals that disappeared as the last Ice Age relented include woolly rhino, bison and giant deer.

At the same time as these species were vanishing from the Earth, human populations were expanding.

Similar die-outs of so-called "megafauna" occurred around the world at similar times, prompting some scientists to ask whether climate or human hunting played the dominant role in their extinction.

Human question

No traces of human occupation were found at the Shropshire site. But it is entirely possible that humans could have been in Britain at the same time as these last mammoths.

Dr Lister said that humans might have finished off some of the last remaining pockets of mammoths in Siberia. But he did not think people were the main cause of megafaunal extinctions at the end of the last Ice Age.

During the Ice Age, grasslands were commonplace in Europe because conditions were too cold for trees.

But as the climate warmed up, forests began to spread north, squeezing out the grassland habitats favoured by the majestic beasts.

"It's driven by climate change, but it's not the climate - in the main - that affects these animals. The climate affects the vegetation and the vegetation affects them," said Dr Lister.

"These were grass-eating animals."

Mammoths first appeared in the Pliocene Epoch, about 4.8 million years ago.

One population lived on in isolation on Russia's remote Wrangel Island until about 5,000 years ago, making them the most recent surviving population known to science.

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

6/15/09

Australia Facts

Aboriginal AustraliaPrint Page Find out how you can connect with the world’s oldest living culture.
Discover it the same way Aboriginal Australians have passed it down for at least 50,000 years - through art, dance, myths, music and the land itself. See Aboriginal art and contemporary dance in the cities. Or head to the outback and listen to Dreamtime myths of creation by the campfire. Bushwalk and snorkel, share bush-tucker or learn to craft spears and catch fish in the traditional way. Let Aboriginal Australians help you understand this ancient land and its spirituality and wonder.


Six special places you can connect to Aboriginal Australia
Uluru1. Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Northern Territory

Visit Uluru and you’ll see why the rock and surrounding land have such huge spiritual significance for the Anangu Aboriginal people. According to their creation myths, ancestral spirits formed Uluru, which lies in Australia's red centre like an enormous, moody heart. Aboriginal guides will share these ancient tales as you walk around the rock’s base. Just 32 kilometres away is another sacred site - Kata Tjuta. You’ll be awestruck by these steep, rounded, russet domes over 3,500 hectares.



Kimberley2. Kimberley, Western Australia

Featuring vast horizons and ancient gorges, the Kimberley region is one of the world’s last great wilderness areas. See Wandjina figures painted in caves and the mysterious Gwion Gwion paintings. Ride a camel on Broome’s breathtaking Cable Beach and 4WD the red-dirt road along the Dampier Peninsula. Learn the legend of the orange and black beehive domes of the Bungle Bungles and fly over vast Lake Argyle in Kununurra.



The Daintree3. The Daintree, Queensland

More than 135 million years old, our stunning Daintree Rainforest is the oldest rainforest in the world. Traverse this canopy of green with traditional owners the Wujal Wujal people. Learn about bush tucker and fish for barramundi. See fresh-water crocodiles sunning themselves on the mangrove-lined river banks and rare tropical birds and animals, many of which are not found anywhere else on earth.

Coorong4. Coorong, South Australia

Become one with nature as you kayak along the lagoons and waterways of the Coorong. Your Ngarrindjeri guide will tell you about bush tucker, traditional medicines and the incredible local birdlife. As night falls, you can listen to stories unfold and smell the mouth-watering aroma of fresh damper (outback bread) as it is pulled from the embers of a campfire.

Gippsland 5. Gippsland, Victoria

Discover a rich Aboriginal history along Gippsland’s rugged coastline. Wander the fern gullies, sandy beaches and eucalypt forests of the sacred land now known as Wilsons Promontory National Park. Trace Aboriginal trading routes up to 18,000 years old. Watch local Aboriginal people make baskets, spears, shields and canoes in the traditional way at Bairnsdale. Or learn where the Dreamtime touched the rugged gorges, rainforest and gullies of Woolshed Creek.

Sydney harbour cruise6. Sydney cultural tours, New South Wales

Get a glimpse into the lives of Sydney’s original inhabitants on a harbour cruise or walking tour. You can learn the Aboriginal names and meanings of significant Sydney landmarks as you cruise the harbour with Aboriginal guides. Visit rock-carvings and old Aboriginal settlements and stop off for a traditional Aboriginal welcome on Clark Island. Off the boat, you can taste bush food and learn about Aboriginal use of plants on a walking tour through Sydney’s lush harbourside Botanical Gardens.

6/11/09

Speaking_Kitaro Matsuri

For over a quarter century, Kitaro has been an internationally recognized icon and globally acclaimed composer and musician. His pioneering fusion of electronic artistry, traditional Japanese forms, and pop-inflected Western idioms created a lush, harmonic, and poetic sound that won the now legendary artist a huge international following.

1980's Volume 1 in the revered Silk Road series is considered an all-time masterpiece, with subsequent volumes only adding to its luster. '87's GRAMMY-nominated The Light Of The Spirit, a collaboration with Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, exceeded sales of two million in the U.S. alone. 1992's Dream, made with Yes' Jon Anderson, elevating Kitaro's presence Stateside to an unprecedented degree.

The following year, Kitaro's ethereal accompaniment to Oliver Stone's film, Heaven & Earth, was honored with the Golden Globe® for Best Original Score. In 2000, Kitaro's "Thinking Of You", which online music bible allmusic.com calls "one of the most beautiful CDs of all time," won a GRAMMY for Best New Age Album.

Most fundamentally, at its heart, Kitaro's music is always about sending a profound message of peace and spiritual development, both personally and globally and coalesces into an elegant and wondrously integrated masterwork, Sacred Journey Of Ku-Kai Volume 3. The first in an important series, it offers a beautifully expressed and richly resonant experience through which to contemplate our changing world.

6/10/09

Life in Australia

If you want to find out about life in Australia, pls watch these series on students' life in Australia from Australia Network (ABC Channel).

Lot of fun.
Enjoy!

Academic Reading

How to read academic materials
Pls listen to the lecture
Part 7.

6/7/09

Speaking_House Swap Holiday

Pls click to the title and listen to the talk

Kate: Hello and welcome to 6 Minute English. I'm Kate Colin and today we’re
talking about home swapping.
Jackie: Hi Kate, yes our topic today is about the growing trend of exchanging your
house or apartment with someone in a different country for a limited period. So
instead of paying for an expensive hotel to go on holiday, you simply swap
your house with someone in a place you want to visit and you can get a lowcost
holiday anywhere in the world.
Kate: What do you think Jackie – would you be willing to swap your house with a
stranger rather stay in a hotel?
Jackie: Answers
Kate: Before we go any further, here's my question for this week. According to a
recent survey which is the most of the most popular destination for UK home
swaps?
a) Australia
b) UK
c) USA
Jackie: Answers

Kate: So how does home swapping work exactly? Well, you just think of a country
you'd like to go to, register with one of the many companies which deal in
home swapping who will list your house on their website, and hopefully you'll
find another family or individual who wants to swap their house for yours.
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009
Page 2 of 5
Kate: Now we're going to listen to someone who has tried it. She says she's a
tremendous fan of home swapping – which means she likes it. Why is she a fan?
Link 1
Well I'm a tremendous fan of home swapping, for all kinds of reasons not least because it's
free. But also it's the most marvellous opportunity to become somebody else because you
inhabit someone else's life when you swap homes with them.
Jackie: She says she's a fan of home swapping because it's free and it's a great opportunity
to live someone else's life. I suppose she means it is a unique chance to see how
other people live around the world, something you wouldn't experience so much if
you stayed in a hotel.
Kate: Now she goes on to talk about the cost. She mentions home swapping being part
of the mainstream.
Jackie: If something is in the mainstream, it means that some is accepted and known by
most people.
Kate: So let's listen to the next extract – what makes home swapping a cheap holiday?
Link 2
It's become part of the mainstream. Usually they include cars as well, so when you think
about it you're not paying for your accommodation or your vehicle. It really makes it a cheap
holiday. Basically all you've got to pay for is the airfares.
Jackie: She said that many home swaps include a car and this means that you get your
accommodation and vehicle for free. All you pay for is your travel and airfare.
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009
Page 3 of 5
Kate: Now, let's look at some words for the different types of homes you could end
up swapping with:
Kate: A flat is the equivalent an apartment, or you could end up with a penthouse,
this is a luxurious apartment at the top of a building. A cottage is a small selfcontained
house which is usually in the countryside. A townhouse is a house
in a town or city, usually a comfortable, expensive one in a fashionable area. A
houseboat is a special boat which people use as their home, often kept in one
place on a river or canal and a holiday home or 2nd home is where people
don’t live full time but visit at the weekends and on holidays.
Let's listen to the next extract – which of these types of accommodation does
she mention?
Clip 3
There's a wide range of options in unexpected locations from a houseboat in Kerala to an
apartment in Fairbanks, Alaska and a friend of mine recently spent Christmas in an apartment
on Bondi Beach.
Jackie: She mentioned a house boat in Kerala, India and an apartment in Alaska and a
friend of hers spending Christmas on Bondi Beach in Australia.
Kate: Now we're going to hear from some members of a family from London who
regularly house swap. What does the first speaker like about it?
Clip 4
I quite like living in other people's houses. You're not living in a hotel so you don't have to
live out of a suitcase. You can unpack and live like you would at home but in somebody else's
house.
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009
Page 4 of 5
Jackie: She said she likes being to unpack and doesn't have to live out of a suitcase. If
you live out of a suitcase you don't unpack your things, you have to keep then
in your bag, so she says she likes this because she can put all her clothes and
things in a cupboard and feel at home. What does her dad think?
Clip5
And I think the other thing I quite like is that because you're living in someone's house you
can kind of pretend you're not a tourist and you're actually nearly a local so you can feel a bit
smug about that.
Jackie: He said that because you're living in someone else's house, you can feel like a
local and not a tourist. That makes him feel smug which means pleased with
himself because he's done something in quite a clever way.
Kate: Yes, I think that's one of the main benefits of home swapping. Often if you
stay in a hotel, you get to see very little of the real culture of the country you're
visiting. What better way of finding out about how people live than living in
someone's house? Before we finish for today, let's have a look at some of the
vocabulary we've come across:
Jackie: We had mainstream which that something that happens often and is known.
Kate: And we had various different types of accommodation:
6 Minute English © bbclearningenglish.com 2009
Page 5 of 5
A flat is an apartment
A penthouse is a luxurious apartment or set of rooms at the top of a hotel or
tall building.
A cottage is a small self-contained house which is usually in the countryside
A townhouse is a house in a town or city, usually a comfortable, expensive
one in a fashionable area: it can also mean it is joined on to another house.
A houseboat is a special boat which people use as their home, often kept in
one place on a river or canal and a holiday home or 2nd home is where people
don’t live full time but visit at the weekends and on holidays.
Jackie: And we had that term to live out of a suitcase which means that you have to
keep all your things packed and you can't take them and put them in a
cupboard. And we also had the term smug which means to feel pleased with
yourself.
Kate: And finally the answer to the question I asked you earlier. According to a
recent survey, which country is the most popular this year for home swapping.
Jackie: I think I said Australia.
Kate: I'm afraid you were wrong - the answer is USA with 15% of respondents
preferring to go there. 12% chose to stay in the UK and 11% chose Australia.
That's all we have time for. Thanks for listening everyone. Goodbye!

6/6/09

Speaking_solar Energy and its future

In a world where energy is a supply that is always in demand, a cheap, clean energy source is hard to come by. Luckily, in recent years solar energy technology has improved greatly, and due to the recent sky-rocking price in oil and coal, solar energy has come back into the spotlight. The new design for these “solar energy catching” devices is called the parabolic solar trough. It focuses all the sunlight into a liquid-filled tube at the bottom of the parabola and all the sunlight is focused on it creating a blistering 750 degree F liquid. This liquid is then used to heat water and cause it to turn into steam, which is used in a steam turbine, just like coal and oil plants. The second design isn’t so new, but has been “reborn” with new materials, lowering the price and making mass production possible. The solar energy companies are using the solar panel design with new semiconductors to catch the electricity caused by the positive charge. This new panel has been used in a new dish design which also focuses the sunlight into one spot, but this time to a temperature of 1450 degrees F. This design also comes with its own Stirling engine which is independent from all the other dishes, so if one fails; it doesn’t cause production to halt to repair the broken dish.

In such an unstable market, and with such an uncertain future in oil, solar energy seems the way to go. It will not only help keep America green, it will also create jobs for Thousands of Americans, and possibly open up a new market for our economy. In deserts where nothing could be done in the first place, solar dishes or troughs could be placed to gather the blistering desert sun and giving us access to a supply in high demand, clean energy. Also, once the dishes or troughs are built, they are virtually cost free (minus a repair or two over long periods of time). So, as an alternative to buying oil and coal all the time, why not go for a slightly larger one-time payment for solar panels and troughs and never have to pay again? Pure profit could come from these dishes, allowing American energy companies to stay competitive with foreign energy companies with less regulation, lower pay for workers, and in some cases, no labor laws. “Power plants are a major source of air pollution, with coal-fired power plants spewing 59% of total U.S. sulfur dioxide pollution and 18% of total nitrogen oxides every year” (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "National Air Quality and Emissions Trends Report." 2003. Appendix A.) With solar power, there are no emissions making for a greener, healthier America.

speaking_ water polution

Water. We won’t live without it. Water is life and pollution is putting that at risk.

Water pollution is a enormous issue globally and is thought to be the leading cause of deaths and disease daily.

I always was under the impression that there are only one type of pollution, but the fact is there is three types of water pollution.

Point source pollution - containments enter a waterway through a discrete transportation such as a pipe or ditch (includes sewage treatment plants, factories or a city storm drain).

Non-Point source pollution - diffuse contamination that doesn’t come from a single source. NPS pollution is a small collective of infectivity from a large area.
Examples of this type of NPS is nutrient runoff in storm water from “sheet flow” over agricultural or a forest. Contaminated storm water washed of parking lots, roads and highways (urban runoff) is also falls under this category.

Groundwater- a spill of chemical contaminate on soil, located from water bodies that may contaminate the aquifers below.
An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock or unconcluded materials (sand, gravel, silt or clay) from which ground water can be removed by a water well.

To keep the point source pollution under regulation the Clean Water Act established in 1972. The law mandates the Untied States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to publish and enforce waste water standards.

6/5/09

How Touch Affects Your Children

The Devastating Effects of Child Abuse and Neglect

Telling your children you love them is not as powerful a reassurance as demonstrating your love for them, and depriving your children of genuine physical affection can have devastating consequences. Years ago many motorists had this sticker affixed to their bumpers: Have you hugged your child today? Many of those stickers have disappeared, along with their message. We become so wrapped up in our own lives that we don't have time to show our children affection anymore. We come home exhausted and we still have to cook for them, bathe them, clean up after them, and shop for them. We use grueling work hours as excuses for not stopping long enough to just hold them and hug them for a few minutes - "Not now - I'm busy." Do we really need to spend more time showing them affection?

In a word: Yes. We can't afford to ignore our children's need for physical affection. Here is why:

While much research has been devoted to the visual, auditory, and olfactory senses, very little research has been conducted on the subject of touch, specifically, its neglect. Volumes have been written on physical and sexual abuse, and many books and articles have been written on the healing properties of touch, but the consequences of its absence can be glimpsed only in sporadic sentences in college psychology texts. More has been written about neglect of touch on monkeys than on human beings, despite the infinitesimally small amount of human research indicating that more needs to be conducted.

Before our eyes see clearly, before we understand what we hear, and long before we identify taste or smell, we feel. Touch is one of the first sensory foundations from which we gain knowledge about life.

We are as affected by touching others as we are by others touching us. If exercised sensitively and wisely, touch in the form of affection and nurturing heals us.

But abusive (physical and/or sexual) touch, if exercised to its fullest expression, may result in our death, either physical or spiritual.

Being deprived of touch can drain us of life, too - physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually.

6/3/09

Earth's Atmosphere

Read this interesting article.

- structure of the earth's atmosphere
- important elements (gases) in the atmosphere.

For Vietnamese terms pls view this page about "Cac tang khi quyen"
http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%E1%BA%A5u_tr%C3%BAc_kh%C3%AD_quy%E1%BB%83n

Scientists imagine earth’s atmosphere as an “ocean” of air hundreds of mile deep


The atmosphere of the earth exerts a lot of pressure, about 14.7 pounds per a square inch. This is normally referred to as atmospheric pressure. The air is composed of a mixture of several gases. Nitrogen is the most abundant followed by oxygen. Next to oxygen we have argon then carbon dioxide. After carbon dioxide is the “other” gases but I wont go into detail about those ones. Mixed in with theses gases is water vapor, which is the gaseous form of water. There are several important ingredients in the atmosphere. First there is oxygen, which is vital to human life, and then there is carbon dioxide, which is important to plants. Also there is water vapor in the air, which gives us precipitation, and also with the help of carbon dioxide it traps the heat of the sun within the atmosphere giving the earth a milder and more stable climate. The atmosphere is divided into to section based on the make-up. The two sections are the lower and the upper atmosphere. The lower atmosphere is referred to as the homosphere because it has a uniform mixture of gases. The upper layer of the atmosphere is referred to as the heterosphere because it has several layers of different gases. The atmosphere can be divided into several specific layers by density and temperature. The lowest layer of the atmosphere is called the troposphere also known as the “weather layer”. Next comes the tropopause, which is the upper boundary of the troposphere. The next layer is the stratosphere also called the jet stream because of its strong’ but steady winds with little or no change of weather. Above the stratosphere is the stratopause. In the stratopause lies the ozone layer, which protects the earth from the suns dangerous UV radiation. There are 3 types of radiation: first there is UVC, which is the most powerful and dangerous yet all of it is absorbed in the ozone layer. Next is UVB this type of radiation causes tanning and sunburn most but not all of it is absorbed by the ozone layer. Last but not least is UVA the least harmful and all it passes through the ozone layer with no trouble at all. Right above the ozone layer is the mesosphere, and above the mesosphere is the mesopause the mesopause is the coldest point in the atmosphere and averages to about negative 101-110 degrees Celsius (negative 150-165 degrees Fahrenheit) After the mesopause the temperature rises very quickly. The next layer in the atmosphere is the thermosphere named for its high temperature. Within the thermosphere and the mesosphere is the ionosphere and it is named that way because it is composed of many ions. Also in this same region the auroras occur they are known as the northern lights in the north and in the south the southern lights. After the thermosphere is the thermopause, which is the outer most boundary of the thermosphere. Last is the exosphere, which is the outermost layer of the atmosphere.

Heat or thermal energy that is absorbed differs from place to place. This so called heat from the sun is solar radiation. The solar radiation that reaches the earth is called insolation meaning incoming solar radiation. Our earth only receives about 47% of the suns solar radiation the rest is either reflected (37%) or absorbed by the atmosphere (18%). There are several factors affecting the earth’s insolation. First is cloudy weather because clouds are very reflective. Second is the length of daytime. Less daytime hours mean less insolation for the earth. Third is the angle of the sun’s rays. The more slanted the rays of the sun the longer it takes to heat up the earth. Last is the earth distance from the sun. When the earth is at perihelion, the closest point to the sun. It receives more insolation, but when it is at aphelion, the farthest point from the sun. The earth receives less insolation. The sun’s energy that enters the earth’s atmosphere is called the energy budget. This “energy” heats the land, water, and air.

So how does the earth contain this thermal energy? It is called the greenhouse effect. The water vapor and the carbon dioxide let the insolation in but they don’t let it escape out like the glass windows of a greenhouse. The thermal energy that the earth and its atmosphere receive from the sun is distributed several ways. One reason is because the land warms much faster then bodies of water and also the land cools faster then the bodies of water. Heat is distributed by radiation, which is heat transferred by electromagnetic waves, conduction which is direct contact between two objects, and also convection, which is the transfer of heat by moving currents of hot air, or fluids also called convection waves. Also winds are formed from convection. When rising air’s temperature heats up it’s compressed but does not have a heat loss this is called adiabatic heating; if there is no heat added and the temperature of the air-cools as it expands this is called adiabatic cooling So when masses of air rise, its temperature drops and as it sinks it heats back over and the process of cooling and heating are started over and over again.

When there is a higher than normal concentration of heat it will produce convection currents of rising air creating a low pressure called a low. If there is lower than normal heat concentration it will produce currents of sinking air creating a high pressure called a high. The way the earth rotates and causes changes in the course of the winds is called the Coriolis effect. It can be explained by two combined factors. First inertia the resistance to change in speed or direction keeps the winds in the same condition of motion. Second objects on earth’s rotating surface travel at different speeds. This causes two types of rotating winds. One is the cyclone this happens when the winds form a circulating spiral around the low. Second is the anticyclone this happens when winds form a wind system around a high. There are several wind zones in the earth. First there is the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) this is where the winds of both the Northern and Southern hemisphere converge and rise. The next wind zone is the doldrums here there is little or periods of no wind and back then in the days of sailing vessels this was bad. Next comes the horse latitudes they are located about 30 degrees at both north and south latitudes. After the horse latitudes come the trade winds these winds blow toward the equator from the high-pressure regions of the horse latitudes.

Next come the polar easterlies these winds blow out of the northeast in the Northern Hemisphere and out of the southeast in the Southern Hemisphere together they make the polar easterlies. Another wind zone is the prevailing westerlies these winds come out of the southwest or the northwest. Last there is the jet stream these are high altitude winds concentrated in narrow, meandering bands of rapidly moving air that come mostly out of the west but it can come from all directions. Winds are normally named from the direction they come. There are also a few local winds. One is the monsoon or monsoon effect, which is when the winds reverse their direction from season to season. There is also the sea and land breeze the sea breeze brings cool air to the land during the day and at night it brings warm air to the land. The land breeze brings warm air farther inland during the day and at night it brings cool air further inland. Last is the mountain and valley breeze. During the day the cool mountain air warms as it travels to the valley and heats it. At night the warm valley air-cools and travels up the mountain and warms it.

Is TV delaying child development?

By Clare Murphy
BBC News health reporter



Does CBeebies have a lot to answer for?

New research suggests having the TV on may impair young children's development by reducing the amount of conversation between infant and adult. So how bad is the box for young minds?

A US team recorded more than 300 children aged between two months and four years on several days every month over two years.

They found that when the TV was audible - either on in the background or being watched - the number of words spoken and sounds made by either adult or child reduced considerably.

It is the latest study to imply that delays in language development may be the fault of TV, a medium blamed for a host of other modern ills, from bullying to obesity. But while it is not without its problems, experts warn that to expunge it from our children's lives completely may be as undesirable as it is unrealistic.

Mixed picture

Certainly there is a body of research building up that finds a correlation between heavy TV viewing at an early age and linguistic problems.

This study is the first to demonstrate that when the television is on, there is reduced speech in the home

Dimitri Christakis
Lead researcher
The exact nature of the relationship is unclear, and the role that family circumstances and other social influences play has not been established. However lack of interaction at a personal level is thought to be a key culprit.

But there is equally evidence that, for those over two at least, monitored levels of age-appropriate programmes can in fact foster language skills and indeed improve attention.
Watching with an adult and discussing the contents after a shared experienced has been found to be particularly beneficial, but not always necessary providing children are watching high-quality, tailored programmes which contain familiar words and scenarios.

Indeed some psychologists argue that given young children cannot read their own books or surf the internet, watching may be an empowering experience that gives them access to other worlds which present useful information in a way their parents may not be able to.

But there are some serious caveats: what appears to be particularly undesirable is the viewing of general audience or adult programmes both alone or in the company of a carer.


National Literacy Trust's TV tips
Limit TV time to one hour for 3-5 year olds
Where possible, watch together
Switch off when finished
Encourage imaginative play based on what was watched
Videos/dvds may be better due to repetition of words
Avoid TV in the bedroom


In addition while some TV may be beneficial for the over twos, the evidence for those younger is more shaky. First words, it is argued, are learnt far more effectively from real people than voices on the TV.

In the US, the American Academy of Paediatrics recommends no exposure to TV and computer screens for those under two, but lack of evidence for such a measure means there is no such policy in the UK.

Constant hum

This latest study into TV's effect on children comes from the University of Washington's Dimitri Christakis, the researcher who made headlines after reporting that infants who watched the Baby Einstein series - a set of programmes billed as educational - learnt fewer new words than those who did not.

His new study did not differentiate between TV being watched or background TV, nor did it examine the kind of programmes that were on. But it did find that overall, adults barely spoke to children when the TV was audible.

Research published last year also in the US also found problems with background TV, concluding that it affected both the quality and quantity of play in young children.

Liz Attenborough, director of Talk to Your Baby at the UK's National Literacy Trust, agrees that the permanent presence of the TV in the background is something parents should try to reduce.

"Even if you think you're not paying attention to it, you probably are - and this may well interfere with how much you speak to your child. The TV shouldn't be on all the time.
"But we are lucky to have some high-quality children's programmes in the UK. They are usually well thought-out, often featuring a clear, single voice, and incite children to make responses," she said.

"Of course we need to be aware of the problems TV can pose, but equally we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater."

'Oldest pottery' found in China

By Jason Palmer
Science and technology reporter, BBC News

Examples of pottery found in a cave at Yuchanyan in China's Hunan province may be the oldest known to science.

By determining the fraction of a type, or isotope, of carbon in bone fragments and charcoal, the specimens were found to be 17,500 to 18,300 years old.

The authors say that the ages are more precise than previous efforts because a series of more than 40 radiocarbon-dated samples support the estimate.

The work is reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Yuchanyan cave was the site where the oldest kernels of rice were found in 2005, and it is viewed as an important link between cave-dwelling hunter-gatherer peoples and the farmers that arose later in the basin of the nearby Yangtze River.

“ Archaeologists before haven't looked at this closely enough to realise what's going on in caves ”
David Cohen Boston University
The previous oldest-known example of pottery was found in Japan, dated to an age between 16,000 and 17,000 years ago, but debate has raged in the archaeological community as to whether pottery was first made in China or Japan.

The most recent dig at Yuchanyan was in 2005 by a team led by Elisabetta Boaretto of the Kimmel Center for Archaeological Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. They believe they have found a more precise way to read the history of human activity written in layers of sediment, or stratigraphy.
'Layer cake'
"The way people move around and mess up caves is very difficult to see archaeologically," David Cohen, an archaeologist at Boston University and a co-author on the research, told BBC News.

"Imagine you have a fire and then people come in again have another fire and another, so you have the ashes of all these fires building up but at the same time people are digging and clearing, pushing things to the side; this messes things up.
"If you have an open-air site, you sometimes get a very clean 'layer cake' stratigraphy. Archaeologists before haven't looked at this closely enough to realise what's going on in caves so they interpret this stratigraphy as a layer cake. But in actuality, it's 'lenses' of stuff that's been mixed up and moved around."

It is comparatively easy to find evidence of human occupation in caves through the dating of charcoal from fires or bones from long-ago dinners, Dr Cohen said. However, because of the unclear layering of sediment it is not easy to correlate well-dated layers with the pottery that may be nearby.
Part of the problem lies in the areas over which previous digs have searched: squares of perhaps five metres on a side.
"It's an issue of association, knowing where everything comes from in space across the cave," Dr Cohen explained. "If you're excavating in a huge unit, you can only say it comes from within this 5m area and this 20cm of sediment, and that's not good enough for understanding human activity."

Instead, the team worked in sub-divisions of just a quarter of a metre square, painstakingly collecting bone and charcoal fragments. The samples were then radiocarbon dated, revealing a clean distribution stretching between 14,000 and 21,000 years ago.
'Fantastic cave'
One fragment of pottery was found in a layer between two radiocarbon-dated fragments that both measured about 18,000 years old, taking the record for oldest pottery.
The team hope that their smaller-scale searching and taking into account the effects of human activity on cave stratigraphy will help with future digs at Yuchanyan, and elsewhere.

"It's a fantastic cave, and we hope that the way these excavations were done would set a precedent for how other caves will be looked at," said Dr Cohen.
Dr Tracey Lu, from an anthropologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who was not an author on the latest study, noted that the dates reported in this paper were slightly older than dates on pottery found in Japan.

However, she said the accuracy of radiocarbon dates in the limestone area has been under debate for many years.
"I agree that pottery was made by foragers in South China," she told the Associated Press news agency.

"But I also think pottery was produced more or less contemporaneously in several places in East Asia... from Russia, Japan to North and South China by foragers living in different environments."

6/2/09

Tourism benefits and drawbacks

In general, tourism has several advantages as a sector for pro-poor economic growth (Ashley et al., 2000):

Ø The consumer comes to the destination, thereby providing opportunities for selling additional goods and services.
Ø Tourism is an important opportunity to diversify local economies. It can develop in poor and marginal areas with few other export and diversification options. Remote areas particularly attract tourists because of their high cultural, wildlife and landscape value.
Ø It offers labour-intensive and small-scale opportunities compared with other non-agricultural activities, employs a high proportion of women and values natural resources and culture, which may feature among the few assets belonging to the poor.
In case tourism is being considered as one of several land use options, an assessment should be carried out of the likelihood of all the benefits and drawbacks, or advantages and limitations. At the same time, they represent the key issues to bear in mind in impact assessments and in strategies to maximise tourism's benefits and minimise negative impacts. Note that especially many of the disadvantages are not unique to tourism, but can be attributed to other economic activities in rural areas as well. The table gives a listing of the main points, as they have emerged from numerous analyses of tourism practice (many interesting cases illustrating these issues and ways to address them can be found in Boo, 1990; Lindberg, 1991; Wight, 1991; Whelan, 1992; Wells & Brandon, 1992; Lindberg et al, 1993 and 1998; McIntyre, 1993; Ceballos-Lascurain, 1996; France, 1997; Goodwin et al., 1998; Ashley et al., 2000; Carey et al., 2000).

Table. Advantages and Limitations of Tourism for Development




Advantages
- the positive scenario




Limitations and disadvantages

- the negative scenario



For local development


Ø Jobs (also for labour force with little formal education)

Ø Community income

Ø Enterprise opportunities

Ø Opportunities for training skills and upward mobility

Ø Diversify livelihoods

Ø Improved infrastructure and community facilities in marginal areas

Ø Institutional development

Ø Renewed cultural pride and self-esteem, appreciation of natural and cultural heritage

Ø Recreational and cultural facilities can also be used by residents


Ø Menial jobs only

Ø A ‘bad deal’ for communities

Ø Limited spin-off, high leakage

Ø Limited investment in training

Ø Inequitable distribution of all the above

Ø Conflict with agriculture and livelihood strategies. Risky investment.

Ø Infrastructure only for tourists, not residents, may result in hostility

Ø Local conflicts exacerbated

Ø Control by outsiders

Ø Disempowerment of residents

Ø Cultural disruption

Ø Conflicts over land rights

Ø Conflicts over resources between locals and migrants attracted by tourism success

Ø Possible competition with tourists for basic commodities makes them too scarce or expensive for locals (water, staple foods)





For economic growth


Ø Growing industry

Ø Steady prices (compared to traditional exports)

Ø Job creation, spin-off enterprises, and multiplier effects

Ø Attracts private investment

Ø Economic diversification

Ø Sustainable utilisation of natural assets

Ø Increased markets for local products




Ø Volatile demand

Ø High leakage out of economy; enclave tourism with few spin-offs

Ø Private control not partnership

Ø Over-dependence

Ø Over-use of natural resources

Ø May divert investments from other sectors or regions of higher local importance to tourism infrastructure elsewhere







For conservation


Ø Improved environmental quality

Ø Increased local benefits from wildlife justify its management as a land use option

Ø Enhanced local appreciation of values of nature

Ø Enhanced environmental awareness among tourists; possibly become private donors to conservation projects

Ø Economic justification for establishing PAs or investing in more effective management

Ø Revenues help to cover costs of conservation




Ø Benefits insufficient, narrowly distributed, and not visibly linked to conservation of the resource base.

Ø Capacity and other prerequisites lacking

Ø Conflicts with wildlife protected as tourist attraction (health risks, crop damage)

Ø Deforestation for infrastructure development or to supply fuel wood to tourists

Ø Pollution due to absent waste or sewage treatment at tourism facilities

Ø Disturbance of wildlife, trampling of sensitive vegetation

Ø Immigration as result of tourism success increases pressure on sensitive ecosystems

Tourist attraction, rising oxymoron

Tourism: attraction and drawbacks


New York's Little Italy not so Italian anymore
By Alvin Powell
Harvard News Office

Tourism changes everything it touches, homogenizing and sanitizing even as it brings in bodies and dollars.

This is tourism's "central paradox," according to Susan Fainstein, a Columbia
Columbia's Susan Fainstein explains that exotic locales marketed for their distinct culture and history become a little less exotic when the streets are teeming with tourists instead of local residents. (Staff photo Justin Ide/Harvard News Office)
University professor and author of the book on tourism "The City Builders." It's the task of local officials and regulators, she said, to keep those homogenizing forces in check even as they promote what can be an important contributor to a region's economy.

Fainstein, who spoke at the John F. Kennedy School of Government's Taubman Building on Thursday afternoon (March 4), outlined tourism's benefits and drawbacks in a presentation before about 40 people in the Taubman's Allison Dining Room. The event was sponsored by the Taubman Center for State and Local Government.

The point of tourism is to escape, even briefly, from life's problems, Fainstein said. So tourist destinations are under pressure to make themselves prettier, to add entertainment and insulate tourist areas from crime, and to hide away evidence of manual labor and poverty.

Exotic locales marketed for their distinct culture and history become a little less exotic when the streets are teeming with tourists instead of local residents. Some locations even change their physical look to meet the expectations of tourists, who in this information age can research even the most remote locations and who arrive with bags packed with expectations as well as garments.

"The old places take on new clothes," Fainstein said. "The real places are scurrying to remake themselves to match the expectations of what people think they should be."

Fainstein described different types of tourist destinations, each with their own characteristics. Tourist cities, such as Cancun and Las Vegas, are created with the tourist in mind. Converted cities, such as Detroit and San Antonio, have more uneven development, and attempt to keep tourists segregated from the rest of the city in special districts.

"In an effort to protect visitors from the city, they are separated," Fainstein said.

Her talk dealt mostly with a third category of city, historic and multicultural cities. Tourism in these cities tends to be much more integrated with the fabric of life.

But in integrating, tourism also changes.

Fainstein offered many examples, describing how tourism changes the experience of a place. Touring a historic European church, she said, is a different experience entirely from worshipping there. Touring a castle, she said, is a different experience from visiting there at the bequest of the king.

Given enough time, she said, tourism becomes part of the fabric of a place. In Venice, for example, glassmakers have been making things for tourists for so long that they're part of the background.

"For 200 years, people have been spinning glass to sell to tourists. That's what people in Venice do," Fainstein said. "The meanings of the places have changed."

Tourism promotes what Fainstein termed "fakery" such as the neighborhood Italian restaurants in New York's Little Italy, where the neighborhood these days is mostly made up of ethnic Asians, rather than Italians.

Though tourism has its drawbacks, it's not purely negative. As a form of economic development, it can be more stable than manufacturing, Fainstein said. Manufacturing jobs can be shipped out of state or overseas, but tourists coming to New York City can't go anywhere else but New York.

Jobs in the tourism industry have been criticized as being low-wage, seasonal, and exploitative. But Fainstein said they're also low-skilled, which makes them accessible to entry-level workers or those laid off from manufacturing jobs.

In addition to bringing dollars to a region, tourism can foster positive change.

Sports teams, conventions, and cultural institutions enrich the life for city residents as well as for visitors, she said.

In Harlem, Fainstein said, tourism has helped revive black culture. Streets are better lit, and jazz clubs and restaurants have opened. Still, Fainstein said, there is resentment among some residents.

"People say, I don't want to be in a 'zoo' walking down the street while a bus full of people seeing 'real life' goes by," Fainstein said.

That highlights the tension that tourism has always brought. The tension is familiar in traditional summer resort areas such as Cape Cod, where the local residents dread the annual onslaught of tourists, even as they rely on them for their livelihood.

"Tourism always inspires ambivalence among the people being visited," Fainstein said. "There is a question whether culture can be maintained, because once you sell it and market it, you change it."