VOASE1129_Economics Report

29 November 2007

The Worldwide Spread of Oil
Persian Gulf countries hold more than half of the world's petroleum reserves, but production has grown in other areas.

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This is the VOA Special English Economics Report.

Pumping oil in Bahrain

When we think of oil, the part of the world that comes to mind first may be the Middle East. But petroleum development takes place worldwide.

Nigeria, for example, is the largest oil producer in Africa and the eleventh largest producer in the world. Russia is the world's second largest exporter of oil and the top exporter of natural gas.

But the country that produces and exports more oil than any other is Saudi Arabia. The Saudis hold one-fourth of the world's proven oil reserves.

Last year, Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries produced about twenty-eight percent of the world's oil supply. The United States Energy Department says they also held fifty-five percent of known reserves.

The other Gulf producers are Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Iran has ten percent of the world's proven oil reserves. Iraq is also estimated to have a large supply of oil, and unexplored areas may hold much more.

In nineteen sixty Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela formed the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Today OPEC has twelve members. The newest is Angola which joined this year.

High oil prices have brought new attention to OPEC. Its members produce about forty percent of the world's oil. But two of the world's top three oil exporters, Russia and Norway, are not OPEC members.

Its influence may have reached a high point during the oil crisis connected to the nineteen seventy-three Arab-Israeli war. Arab oil producers boycotted the United States, western Europe and Japan because of their support for Israel.

Since then, new discoveries and increased production in areas including countries of the former Soviet Union have provided more oil.

National oil companies are estimated to control about eighty percent of the world's oil supply. In recent years, rising oil prices have led more governments to act, either directly or indirectly, to take control of their oil industries.

President Hugo Chavez has moved to nationalize oil operations in Venezuela. And in Russia, a series of actions resulted in state-owned Rosneft gaining control of reserves held by Yukos. Yukos was Russia's largest private company, until the government said it owed billions of dollars in taxes and jailed its founder, Russia's richest man.

And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report, written by Mario Ritter. Our report last week on the history of oil can be found at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Faith Lapidus.

VOASE1129_American Mosaic

29 November 2007

Smith, Say Hi to Garcia: Top 10 US Names Now Have Two Hispanic Ones
Also: Music from a new album by Deborah Harry. And a question from Burundi about the Apple iPod.

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HOST:

Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC, in VOA Special English.

(MUSIC)

I'm Doug Johnson. On our show this week:

We listen to some music from Deborah Harry …

Answer a question about the iPod …

And tell about a recent report listing common names in America.

Census Study of Names

HOST:

The English poet and playwright William Shakespeare asked “What’s in a name?” The United States government has an answer. Faith Lapidus explains.

FAITH LAPIDUS:

The United States Census Bureau has released a report about family names. The information comes from the study of the American population in two thousand.

The report tells the most common last names of Americans and some information linked to them. It says people recognize others by their names, and that people can tell a lot about a person just from knowing his or her name.

Almost two hundred seventy million people provided information to the Census Bureau in two thousand. The researchers found six million different last names among them. One million or more people have one of seven names. The most common is Smith. More than two million people answer to that name.

The next most common names are Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, Miller and Davis. More than one million people are called each of those names. Two hundred sixty-eight other family names are also fairly common. Each of those names is shared by more than one hundred thousand people.

Students in New Mexico perform a traditional Hispanic dance

The study also found that for the first time, two Hispanic names are among the top ten most common names in the country. They are Garcia and Rodriguez. Each name is shared by more than eight hundred thousand people. The report says more than ninety percent of all people with those names are Hispanic.

One newspaper report says it is probably the first time that any non-English sounding name has been listed among the most common. The presence of those names on the list shows that an increasing number of Hispanic people are living in the United States. The number grew by fifty-eight percent in the nineteen nineties to almost thirteen percent of the population.

Other Hispanic names appearing in the top twenty-five most common names are Martinez, Hernandez, Lopez and Gonzalez.

iPods

HOST:

Our listener question this week comes from Burundi. Josephine Uwangabe wants to know about the small iPod device made by the Apple computer company. The iPod is the most popular device made for storing and playing digital music. Because of its size, iPod users can enjoy listening to music while on the go.

In two thousand, Apple realized that digital music players were not selling because they were not well designed. Apple decided to change this. The company worked to develop a device that would have a fast computer connection so songs could go from a computer to the player quickly. The device also had to work well with Apple’s music program called iTunes, which permits users to easily organize thousands of songs. It had to be very easy to use. And it had to be good looking.

Have iPod, must travel ... on a New York subway

An advertising writer on Apple's team came up with the name iPod. He was influenced by the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” He saw the music device as a small “pod” that attached to a main spaceship, or, in this case, a computer. Apple released the first iPod in October, two thousand one.

Since then, Apple has developed several versions of the device. Some iPods are small enough to fit in your hand, while others can play videos, store photographs or connect to the Internet. They come in different colors, prices, and memory storage sizes. In October, Apple announced that it had sold one hundred and twenty million iPods.

Experts say these revolutionary devices are having a big effect on the music industry. Apple has sold over one billion digital songs from its iTunes program. This represents important income for many record companies that have been experiencing reduced album sales. Museums and schools are using iPods to play educational programs for visitors and students.

iPods have changed the way people listen to music. It would be hard to walk down a busy street or college campus in America without seeing several people with iPods and earphone devices. Music lovers can now hold thousands of songs in the palm of their hand.

Deborah Harry

(MUSIC)

HOST:

That was Deborah Harry singing with her band Blondie. The post-punk/new wave group had many hits in the late nineteen seventies and eighties. Shirley Griffith has more about Deborah Harry's new album, "Necessary Evil."

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH:

Deborah Harry's has a new solo album after fourteen years of silence. Here is “Two Times Blue” from “Necessary Evil.” The song made it into the top ten of Billboard Magazine’s Hot Dance Club Plays in the United States.

(MUSIC)

“Necessary Evil” came out last month. Harry started a series of live shows to support the album this month. She began the tour at the Fillmore Theater, in her hometown of New York City. Critics have praised Deborah Harry for staying current in her musical style. “Necessary Evil” is not a re-visiting of Blondie. Harry says she still loves the music of Blondie and many former punk bands. But she says musicians have to keep moving forward. She says being stuck in the past equals death for an artist. Here Deborah Harry sings the romantic song “If I Had You.”

(MUSIC)

Deborah Harry wrote the songs on “Necessary Evil.” She told one reporter that the album is about love and relationships like most pop songs. Harry herself has been married three times. She said she is in love with love --- sometimes. We leave you with Deborah Harry singing “Naked Eye.”

(MUSIC)

HOST:

I'm Doug Johnson. I hope you enjoyed our program today. It was written by Dana Demange, Nancy Steinbach and Caty Weaver, who also was our producer. To read the text of this program and download audio, go to our Web site, voaspecialenglish.com.

Join us again next week for AMERICAN MOSAIC, VOA’s radio magazine in Special English.

VOASE1128_Education Report

28 November 2007

Unscientific Poll: Calculators Subtract From Thinking Skills
We asked for your opinions, and found more critics than supporters of using calculators in school.

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This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

A high school student in Pennsylvania works on a math question

Recently we asked how you feel about calculators in school. We heard from about thirty people in twelve countries, including a large number of Chinese.

Turbo Zhang writes: "My brain is rusting. Why? Because I use calculators everywhere, on my mobile phone, on my computer, etc. New technology makes us use everything except our brain."

Joony Zhu says calculators can provide us with an answer, but we may not understand it completely. And a student at an architectural and engineering college in China, Zhao Jing-tao, calls using a calculator "a kind of laziness."

Critics of using calculators in school, at least until high school or university, outnumbered supporters two to one.

Khaled Hamza in Cairo says "calculators affect badly on the thinking ways of students." Jose Gudino from Mexico City says this is because "you don't need to make an effort to get a result."

Hemin, a math teacher in Kurdistan-Iraq, says good math skills help in life. So he believes in solving problems with a pencil until high school.

Randy Bin Lin, a Ph.D. candidate from China at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, writes: "You should work out problems with some kind of pain without computers. Then you may come to appreciate the power of these sophisticated machines."

Abbas from Iran, now living in Sweden, says it is good to use your brain because calculators are not always available. "Last week I met a university student who could not subtract six from forty and used a calculator," says Abbas.

But He Wenbo from China says calculators reduce careless mistakes. And Yang Linwei, an eleventh grader from China, says: "When I was young we couldn't use calculators. But when I entered high school we have to solve a lot of math problems. We have to use a calculator. It makes my homework easier."

From Burkina Faso, Compaore Tewende Michel writes: "I can say that the handheld calculator has been important in my studies and even in my life."

And Barnabas Nyaaba in Ghana advises that "as we enjoy the use of calculators, let's be careful so that it does not have any bad effects on us."

A Chinese abacus, or suan pan

Finally, Thomas, a student in China, says he likes using electronic calculators in school. But he wanted to tell us about what he called a special calculator which he does not know how to use. He even sent us a picture of this special -- and, in fact, ancient -- calculator. In English we call it an abacus.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember.

VOASE1128_The Making of a Nation

28 November 2007

US History: British Defeat the French in a Struggle for North America
During the 18th century, powerful European nations fought each other all over the world. The battle in North America was called the French and Indian War.

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VOICE ONE:

This is THE MAKING OF A NATION in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Barbara Klein. This week, we tell about the conflicts among the nations in Europe during the eighteenth century and how they affected North America.

VOICE ONE:

During the eighteenth century, Spain, France and Britain controlled land in North America. Spain controlled Florida. France was powerful in the northern and central areas. Britain controlled the east. All three nations knew they could not exist together peacefully in North America. The situation could only be settled by war.

The powerful European nations already were fighting each other for land and money all over the world. These small wars continued for more than one hundred years. They were called King William's War, Queen Anne's War, King George's War and the French and Indian War.

VOICE TWO:

Detail from ''The Death of General Wolfe,'' a 1770 painting by Benjamin West. James Wolfe was a British general killed during the 1759 battle in which his troops won a victory over the French at Quebec, Canada.

The French and Indian War was fought to decide if Britain or France would be the strong power in North America. France and its colonists and Indian allies fought against Britain, its colonists and Indian allies.

The war began with conflicts about land. French explorers had been the first Europeans in the areas around the Great Lakes and the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. France had sent traders and trappers to these territories and had established trading centers there.

Britain claimed the same land. When the king gave land in North America to someone, the land was considered to extend from east coast to west coast, even though no one knew where the west coast was. The land along the east coast had become crowded, and settlers were moving west. White people were destroying the Indians' hunting areas. And Indians became worried that they would lose the use of their land.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

The Indian tribes may have been able to resist the people moving west if they had been united. But their own conflicts kept the Indian groups apart. When Britain and France started fighting each other, some Indians helped the British. Others helped the French.

The French settlers lived mainly in what was called New France. Today it is part of Canada. Life there was different from life in the British colonies to the south. There was no religious freedom, for example. All settlers in French territories had to be French and belong to the Roman Catholic Church. So, many French people who belonged to Protestant churches settled in the British colonies.

France also did not like the fact that the British paid the Indians high prices for animal furs. France was more interested in the fur trade than in settling the land. The British hurt the French traders' business when they bought fur from the Indians.

VOICE TWO:

One of the French trading forts was built in the area where the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is today. The French called it Fort Duquesne. The British claimed it was in Virginia and that the land belonged to them. In seventeen fifty-four, the governor of Virginia sent a twenty-one-year-old colonist named George Washington to tell the French to get out. This was the same George Washington who would later become the first President of the United States.

The French refused to leave Fort Duquesne. So Washington and one hundred fifty men tried to force them out. They attacked a group of Frenchmen and killed ten of them. The French and Indian War had begun.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

The defeat of General Edward Braddock in Virginia in 1755, in a detail from a work by artist John Andrew

British troops under the command of General Edward Braddock joined George Washington at Fort Duquesne. The British general expected to fight the way battles were fought in Europe. There, troops lined up on open fields and fired their weapons as they marched toward each other.

The French and Indians did not fight this way. They hid in the woods. They wore clothes that made them difficult to see. They shot at the British from behind trees. The British had more troops than the other side. But the French and Indians won the battle of Fort Duquesne. General Braddock was killed.

VOICE TWO:

Most of the French and Indian War was fought along two lakes in an area of New York state near the border with Canada. One was Lake George. The other, Lake Champlain north of Lake George. It reaches almost all the way to the city of Montreal in Canada.

These lakes provided the best way to move troops and supplies during the French and Indian war. Few roads existed in North America at that time. The military force, which controlled the lakes and rivers, controlled much of North America.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

The French had military bases in the cities of Quebec and Montreal. The British had military bases along New York's Hudson River. The area between them became the great battleground.

Fighting increased after the British defeated the French near Lake George in the last months of seventeen fifty-five. The French then built a new military base to control Lake Champlain and the surrounding area.

The French military base was at the southern end of Lake Champlain. They built a strong camp, the kind called a fort. They called it Fort Carillon.

The fort would control Lake Champlain and the area needed to reach the northern part of Lake George. The fort was designed to provide a strong defense against attack. The French built two big walls of logs, several meters apart. The area between the walls was filled with dirt. Later, a strong stone front was added. Troops inside the walls were well protected. The British built a similar fort at the southern end of Lake George. They called it Fort William Henry.

VOICE TWO:

France sent one of its best military commanders to take command of its troops in America. His name was the Marquis de Montcalm. General Montcalm attacked several British forts in seventeen fifty-seven. One of these was Fort William Henry on Lake George. The British commander was forced to surrender.

General Montcalm promised that the British troops would be treated fairly if they surrendered. But the Indian allies of the French did not honor the surrender agreement. They began to kill British soldiers and settlers. No one is sure how many people died. It could have been more than one thousand.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

During the French and Indian War and the American Revolution, soldiers often marked their powder horns with maps and other images

In seventeen fifty-eight, a strong British force attacked Fort Carillon on Lake Champlain. General Montcalm was the French commander. Fort Carillon was strong enough that the smaller French force was able to defeat the bigger British force. The British withdrew, but attacked again the next year. This time the British commander was General Jeffery Amherst.

Amherst was successful. The British defeated the French. They changed the name of Fort Carillon to Fort Ticonderoga. It became an important military center in the French and Indian War. Fort Ticonderoga would also become important later, during America's war for independence.

VOICE TWO:

The Battle for Quebec was the turning point in the war. Britain and France signed a treaty to end it in Paris in seventeen sixty-three. The British had won. They took control of the lands that had been claimed by France.

Britain now claimed all the land from the east coast of North America to the Mississippi River. Everything west of that river belonged to Spain. France gave all its western lands to Spain to keep the British out. Indians still controlled most of the western lands, except for some Spanish colonies in Texas and New Mexico.

VOICE ONE:

Today, you can still visit the two forts that were so important in the French and Indian War. Little of the original buildings have survived. However, both have been re-built using the original designs. The area surrounding both forts is very beautiful, including the two lakes, Lake George and Lake Champlain.

Many people spend their holidays in this area enjoying the outdoors. The area includes one of America's national historical parks, Saratoga. It also includes the Lake George Beach State Park. Few people who visit the area stop to remember the terrible fighting that took place there two-hundred fifty years ago.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

This MAKING OF A NATION program was written by Nancy Steinbach and Paul Thompson. I'm Barbara Klein.

VOICE ONE:

And I'm Steve Ember. Read and listen to our programs at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again at this time next week for another program about the history of the United States in Special English on the Voice of America.

VOASE1127_Health Report

27 November 2007

Stored Blood Found to Lose a Life-Saving Gas
The loss of nitric oxide may explain some unexpected deaths in patients after transfusions.

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This is the VOA Special English Health Report.

Scientists have discovered that stored blood loses a life-saving gas. This discovery may explain why a great number of people get sick after receiving stored blood.

In recent years, experts have wondered why patients who should survive sometimes

Stored blood loses a life-saving gas

die after receiving a blood transfusion. The cause of death is often a heart attack or stroke.

Jonathan Stamler is a professor of medicine at Duke University in North Carolina. He and other researchers found that stored blood has very low levels of nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is a gas found in red blood cells. The gas helps to keep blood passages open so that oxygen in the cells can reach the heart and other organs.

Professor Stamler and his team found that nitric oxide in blood begins to break down as soon as the blood is collected. Their findings were reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Another team of Duke University scientists carried out a separate study. Professor Stamler says the second study found that the breakdown of nitric oxide begins within hours of blood collection.

He says the life-saving gas is partly lost after three hours. And about seventy percent of it is lost after just one day. As a result, he says, there is almost no time that stored blood has enough nitric oxide.

The researchers tested their findings on dogs. They found that low levels of nitric oxide reduced the flow of blood in the animals.

However, Professor Stamler says the scientists corrected the situation. They added nitric oxide to the stored blood given to the dogs. He says the extra nitric oxide repaired the ability of red blood cells to expand blood passages.

Professor Stamler says people who are in serious need of a blood transfusion should have one. But he says more studies are needed to show who would receive the most help from stored blood.

And that’s the VOA Special English Health Report, written by SooJee Han. For more health news, along with transcripts and MP3 files of our reports, go to voaspecialenglish.com. And if you have a general question about health, click on the Contact Us link or write to special@voanews.com. We might answer your question in a future report, so please include your name and country. I'm Faith Lapidus.

VOASE1127_Explorations

27 November 2007

American Folklife Center: Preserving the Voices, Songs and Stories of Everyday People
The third part of a series of programs on keeping traditions alive.

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VOICE ONE:

I’m Steve Ember.

VOICE TWO:

And I’m Barbara Klein with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. We continue our series of reports about efforts to keep alive some traditional ways of doing things. Today we tell about preserving stories, experiences and beliefs of everyday people.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

In the largest library in the world is a collection of voices. Voices of people telling the stories about important events in their lives. Singing songs they sang as children. Explaining the ceremonies and celebrations of their families and communities. This unusual collection is in the American Folklife Center, which is part of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

American Indian dancers Corina Drum and Mary Snowball take part in the Grand Entry at the Omaha Indian Powwow in 1983

The Folklife Center was created to collect and preserve the traditional knowledge that is passed on to others by spoken word and custom. The folklife collections include the folklore, cultural activities, traditional arts and personal histories of everyday people from the end of the nineteenth century to the present.

Peggy Bulger is the director of the American Folklife Center. She says the songs people sing, the stories they tell, the things they make are an important part of history. So the Folklife Center contains a historical record of a people told in their own voices, not described by political leaders, professors or writers.

VOICE TWO:

In nineteen seventy-six, the United States Congress passed a law that created the American Folklife Center to preserve and present the history of American folklife. The materials in the Center are available to researchers at the Library of Congress and at the library’s Web site. It also provides recordings, live performances, exhibits and publications. And it trains people to do the collecting.

More than four million objects are now in the collections of the American Folklife Center. Most of them are in the biggest and oldest part of the Center, which is the Archive of Folk Culture. It was established at the Library of Congress almost eighty years ago and was known for years as the Archive of American Folk Song.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Sociologist Lewis Wade Jones, left, of Fisk University recording a group of singers at the Fort Valley State College Folk Festival

In nineteen twenty-eight, the head of the Library of Congress decided that the library should collect American folk songs sung by people as they worked and played. Robert Gordon was chosen to lead this project. He had already decided his goal in life was to collect every American folk song. He traveled around the country, recording people in their homes or communities. The recordings were made on wax cylinders, a device that Thomas Edison invented in eighteen seventy-seven.

When John and Alan Lomax took over the job in nineteen thirty-two, they began collecting more than music and song. They recorded and documented personal histories. These included what people cooked, the crafts they made, and the jokes and stories passed on from generation to generation by word of mouth. This is the kind of information about everyday life that often disappears through the years.

VOICE TWO:

Peggy Bulger says experts in folklore, music, or culture travel around the country and the world to record folklife. They work either as private individuals or for the Library of Congress or other federal and state agencies. Many of them use equipment lent to them by the Library of Congress. In return, the collectors give their sound and video recordings, research notes, papers, and photographs to the library’s collection.

Through the years, the folklife collections have grown to include traditions and culture from every area of the United States. You can find almost anything in the collections, including Native American song and dance music, ancient English story songs and cowboy poetry. You can listen to the memories of ex-slaves, experiences of Italian-American wine makers and memories of boat makers in the state of Maine.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Peggy Bulger says the materials in the Archive of Folk Culture are from almost every place in the world. People who come from other countries to settle in the United States bring their folklore with them. So the folklore and traditions of the immigrants become part of the collections – including those from Sudan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Bosnia and Latin America. Miz Bulger says the collections document the culture of the world as it exists today in the United States.

VOICE TWO:

The Archive of Folk Culture continues to grow. Individuals who have made a career of collecting folklore material want their collections to go to the Library of Congress when they retire. They want the materials to be preserved and made available to researchers in the future. For example, Miz Bulger says that next year a folklorist who documented women’s traditions in Afghanistan in the nineteen sixties is giving his collection to the Folklife Center.

VOICE ONE:

Peggy Bulger is excited about helping native groups record and save their own traditions and folklore. Two members of the Masai tribe of Kenya will spend a week getting training at the Folklife Center. Miz Bulger says the Masai do not want outsiders coming in to document their sacred ceremonies and songs. The Masai want to learn how to record and film themselves so they can be sure their traditions survive for future generations. And they want to have control over the use of the recordings, keeping ceremonial traditions secret, but making other information available to outsiders.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Bob Patrick is head of the Veterans History Project. The idea for the project began when United States Representative Ron Kind of Wisconsin was at a family gathering. His father and his uncle started talking about their experiences in war. Representative Kind decided to make a video recording of them telling their stories to save for his children when they were older. He decided then that the memories of all men and women who served in wars are important to record and preserve.

In the year two thousand, Representative Kind introduced a bill in Congress to establish the Veterans History Project. The bill passed with no opposition and was signed into law. The main purpose of the project is to collect and preserve the remembrances of people who served in all wars.

Bob Patrick says the project now has more than fifty thousand individual stories, including recordings or videos of veterans telling their stories about war. The collections also include photographs, letters, and other personal materials. All the materials are kept in the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress. Some of them are available through the Web site.

VOICE ONE:

Mister Patrick says many organizations and individuals volunteer to make the recordings. Retirement communities, veterans’ organizations, historical societies, libraries, and high school and college students are part of the project. The most important volunteers are family members and friends who talk to the veterans about their lives and record their memories. Mister Patrick says that today’s technology makes that easy to do. The Veterans History project Web site has suggestions to help people who do the recordings.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Most new recordings in the American Folklife Center are in digital form, especially those made for the Veterans History Project and StoryCorps. People being recorded now are asked to give permission for their information to be shared with others through the World Wide Web at www.loc.gov/folklife. Peggy Bulger hopes that in the future more older materials will be available to researchers around the world.

Miz Bulger says efforts by the Library of Congress to record and preserve dances, songs and stories help support traditional cultures. These efforts help young people realize the knowledge of older people is valuable. Every year, she says, more people recognize that folklife is an important part of the historical record.

VOICE ONE:

Peggy Bulger says the recordings in the Archive of Folk Culture prove that voices are very powerful. Listening to someone talk about his or her life gives you so much more information, she says, than just reading about it. The growing collections of voices that are part of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress are a lasting record of social and cultural life. They are a record that is truly of, by and for the people.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

This program was written by Marilyn Rice Christiano and produced by Dana Demange. I’m Barbara Klein.

VOICE ONE:

And I’m Steve Ember. You can find out more about the American Folklife Center at our web site, voaspecialenglish.com. Listen again next month to EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English for another program about keeping traditions alive.

VOASE1126_Agriculture Report

26 November 2007

Not All Carrots Are Orange
Advice about growing one of the world's most popular vegetables.

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This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

An American carrot farmer harvests his crop earlier this year

Carrots are grown on farms and in family gardens throughout the world. Carrots are easy to raise and easy to harvest. They taste good. And they contain a lot of carotene, which the body makes into vitamin A.

When people think of carrots, they usually picture in their mind a vegetable that is long, thin and orange in color. But carrots come in many different sizes and shapes. And not all carrots are orange.

For example, Paris Market carrots are about five centimeters around. Imperator carrots are thin and about twenty-five centimeters long. And Belgian White carrots are, as their name suggests, white.

For the best results, carrots should be grown in sandy soil that does not hold water for a long time. The soil also should have no rocks.

To prepare your carrot garden, dig up the soil, loosen it and turn it over. Then, mix in some plant material or animal fertilizer.

Weather, soil conditions and age will affect the way carrots taste. Experts say warm days, cool nights and a medium soil temperature are the best conditions for growing carrots that taste great.

Carrots need time to develop their full sugar content. This gives them their taste. If they are harvested too early, they will not have enough sugar. But carrots loose their sweetness if you wait too long to pull them from the ground.

The best way to judge if a carrot is ready to be harvested is by its color. Usually, the brighter the color, the better the taste.

Most people do not know that carrots can be grown during the winter months. If the winter is not cold enough to freeze the ground, you can grow and harvest carrots the same way as during the summer months.

If the ground does freeze in your part of the world, simply cover your carrot garden with a thick layer of leaves or straw. This will prevent the ground from freezing. You can remove the ground cover and harvest the carrots as they are needed.

Carrots are prepared and eaten many different ways. They are cut in thin pieces and added to other vegetables. They are cooked by themselves or added to stews. Or, once they are washed, they are eaten just as they come out of the ground.

And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report. For more agricultural advice, along with transcripts and archives of our reports, go to voaspecialenglish.com. And our e-mail address is special@voanews.com. I'm Steve Ember.

VOASE1126_Science In the News

26 November 2007

Six Medical Researchers Who Gave All to Their Work; in Some Cases, Even Their Lives
The stories of Jesse Lazear, Clara Maass, Joseph Goldberger, Matthew Lukwiya, Carlo Urbani and Anita Roberts.

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VOICE ONE :

This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS, in VOA Special English. I'm Bob Doughty.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Faith Lapidus. This week, the stories of some medical heroes.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

At the start of the twentieth century, the United States Army had a Yellow Fever Commission. The Army wanted medical experts to study yellow fever and find a way to stop the disease. One team went to Cuba to test the idea that mosquitoes spread yellow fever. The team was led by Walter Reed, the Army doctor and scientist noted for his work on infectious diseases.

In August of nineteen hundred, the researchers began to raise mosquitoes and infect them with the virus. Nine of the Americans let the infected insects bite them. Nothing happened. Then two more let the mosquitoes bite them. Both men developed yellow fever.

VOICE TWO:

Jesse Lazear

A doctor named Jesse William Lazear recognized that the mosquitoes that bit the last two men had been older than the others. Doctor Lazear proved that mosquitoes did carry yellow fever.

Doctor Lazear himself was also bitten. No one is sure how it happened. He said it happened accidentally as he treated others. But some people said he placed the mosquito on his arm as part of the experiment. Medical historians say he may have reported the bite as an accident so his family would not be denied money from his life insurance policy.

VOICE ONE:

Jesse Lazear died of yellow fever. His death shocked the others on the team in Cuba. But they continued their work.

More people let themselves be bitten by mosquitoes. Others were injected with blood from victims of yellow fever. Some people in this test group developed the disease, but all recovered to full health.

Members of the team praised the work by Jesse Lazear. They called it a sacrifice to research that led the way to one of the greatest medical discoveries of the century.

VOICE TWO:

The research answered the question of how yellow fever was spread. Now the question was how to protect people. The researchers had a theory. They thought that people who were bitten by infected mosquitoes, but recovered, were protected in the future.

To test this idea, the team in Cuba offered one hundred dollars to anyone who would agree to be bitten by infected mosquitoes. Nineteen people agreed. The only American was Clara Maass. She was a nurse who worked with yellow fever patients in Cuba.

Clara Maass was bitten by infected mosquitoes seven times between March and August of nineteen-oh-one. Only one of the nineteen people developed the disease -- until that August. Then seven people got yellow fever. Clara Maass died six days after she was bitten for the seventh time.

VOICE ONE:

The experiment showed that the bite of an infected mosquito was not a safe way to protect people from yellow fever. Medical historians say the death of Clara Maass also created a public protest over the use of humans in yellow fever research. Such experiments ended.

Cuba and the United States both honored Clara Maass on postage stamps. And today a hospital in her home state of New Jersey is known as Clara Maass Medical Center.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Joseph Goldberger

Joseph Goldberger was a doctor for the United States Public Health Service. In nineteen twelve, he began to study a skin disease that was killing thousands of people in the South. The disease was pellagra.

Doctor Goldberger traveled to the state of Mississippi where many people suffered from pellagra. He studied the victims and their families. Most of the people were poor. The doctor came to believe that the disease was not infectious, but instead related to diet.

He received permission from the state governor to test this idea at a prison. Prisoners were offered pardons if they took part. One group of prisoners received their usual foods, mostly corn products. A second group ate meat, fresh vegetables and milk.

Members of the first group developed pellagra. The second group did not.

VOICE ONE:

But some medical researchers refused to accept that a poor diet caused pellagra. For the South, pellagra was more than simply a medical problem. There were other issues involved, including Southern pride.

So Doctor Goldberger had himself injected with blood from a person with pellagra. He also took liquid from the nose and throat of a pellagra patient and put them into his own nose and throat. He even swallowed pills that contained skin from pellagra patients.

An assistant also took part in the experiments. So did Doctor Goldberger's wife. None of them got sick.

Later, the doctor discovered that a small amount of dried brewer's yeast each day could prevent pellagra.

Joseph Goldberger died of cancer in nineteen twenty-nine. He was fifty-five years old. Several years later, researchers discovered the exact cause of pellagra: a lack of the B vitamin known as niacin.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Matthew Lukwiya

was the medical administrator of Saint Mary’s Hospital in the Gulu District of northern Uganda. In two thousand, the hospital was the center of treatment for an outbreak of Ebola. The virus causes severe bleeding. No cure is known. Doctors can only hope that victims are strong enough to survive.

Doctor Lukwiya acted quickly to control the spread of infection. He kept the people with Ebola separate from the other patients. He ordered hospital workers to wear protective clothing and follow other safety measures.

One day he had to deal with a patient who was dying of Ebola. The man had been acting out of control. The doctor knew him well. The patient was a nurse who worked at the hospital. The man was coughing and bleeding. Doctor Lukwiya violated one of his own rules. He wore no protection over his eyes.

Matthew Lukwiya died from the virus in December of two thousand. He was forty-two years old. Ugandans mourned his death. He was an important influence in the community. Experts say his work during the outbreak helped stop the Ebola virus from spreading out of control.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Carlo Urbani

On February twenty-eighth, two thousand three, the Vietnam-France Hospital in Hanoi asked Carlo Urbani for help. The Italian doctor was an expert on communicable diseases. He was based in Vietnam for the World Health Organization.

The hospital asked Doctor Urbani to help identify an unusual infection. He recognized it as a new threat. He made sure other hospitals increased their infection-control measures.

On March eleventh, Doctor Urbani developed signs of severe acute respiratory syndrome. Four days later, the World Health Organization declared it a worldwide health threat.

Carlo Urbani was the first doctor to warn the world of the disease that became known as SARS. He died of it on March twenty-ninth, two thousand three. He was forty-six years old.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Anita Roberts

Our final medical hero is molecular biologist Anita Roberts. She was widely recognized by other researchers for her work with a protein called transforming growth factor-beta. TGF-beta can both heal wounds and make healthy cells cancerous.

In nineteen seventy-six, Anita Roberts joined the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health in the United States. She worked for many years with another researcher, Michael Sporn.

They found that TGF-beta helps to heal wounds and is important in the body’s defense system against disease. At the same time, though, the two scientists found that the protein can also support the growth of cancer in some cells.

VOICE ONE:

Between nineteen eighty-three and two thousand two, Anita Roberts published more than three hundred forty research papers. Many other scientists gave credit to her published work. In fact, the publication Science Watch listed her as the forty-ninth most-cited researcher in the world during that twenty-year period. She was the third most-cited female scientist.

But in two thousand four, after years of studying cancer, Anita Roberts learned that she herself had the disease. She died of gastric cancer in May of two thousand six. She was sixty-four years old.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Our program was written by Nancy Steinbach and George Grow. Brianna Blake was our producer. I'm Faith Lapidus.

VOICE ONE:

And I'm Bob Doughty. Internet users can download transcripts and audio archives of our programs at voaspecialenglish.com. And we hope you join us again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.

VOASE1125_This Is America

25 November 2007

Every Year the Kennedy Center Honors Five Artists for a Lifetime of Excellence
Brian Wilson, Steve Martin, Leon Fleisher, Martin Scorsese and Diana Ross received the Kennedy Center Honors this year.

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VOICE ONE:

Welcome to This Is America in VOA Special English. I’m Steve Ember.

VOICE TWO:

And I’m Barbara Klein. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. is one of the official cultural centers of America. For the past thirty years, the center has presented awards honoring five artists for their lifetime of work.

These artists were chosen this year for the Kennedy Center Honors: The singers Diana Ross and Brian Wilson. The actor and writer Steve Martin. The pianist Leon Fleisher. And the film director Martin Scorsese. They will be honored this Sunday, December second.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Brian Wilson

"Good Vibrations" and the other songs Brian Wilson wrote for The Beach Boys remain as fresh and energizing today as they were forty years ago. Wilson started the band with his two brothers, a cousin and a friend in the early nineteen sixties. The Beach Boys made a new kind of American rock music popular. Their songs express the fun of being young, enjoying girls, driving cars and surfing the ocean in California.

VOICE TWO:

Brian Wilson not only wrote The Beach Boys' songs. He also sang, played the bass guitar and keyboard, and produced the band’s records. Some experts believe that their album “Pet Sounds” was one of the most inventive and important records in rock music history.

The Beach Boys were also one of the most popular bands in America during a time when the British band The Beatles were capturing the attention of the world.

VOICE ONE:

(MUSIC)

Steve Martin

Steve Martin is a popular writer, actor and comedian. He is also a skilled banjo player. Martin first started his career writing for funny television shows like “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” In the nineteen seventies he began performing his funny jokes and acts on the weekly television program “Saturday Night Live.”

(SOUND)

Steve Martin: “You know, a lot of people ask me if Steve Martin is my real name. Have I changed it for show business or anything like that. And, now I am not ashamed to admit it. Because I did have a funny name when I was a kid, and I decided to change it for show business. But I think enough time has gone by and audiences are more sophisticated now that they won’t laugh at my real name. My real name is bybybuhbuh … So my parents had a sense of humor. My sister’s name is hurhurhurhr . And my mother would go out to call us for dinner and she’d go bybybuhbuh! Hrrhrhr bbrbrb! So, we had to move around a lot. But other than that I had a very normal childhood.”

He also won Grammy awards for the records of his live comedy performances, one of which you just heard.

VOICE TWO:

Steve Martin has also made over thirty-five movies, many of which he helped write. These include “The Jerk”, “All of Me”, “Parenthood”, and, more recently, “Shopgirl.”

Martin has written articles, books and successful plays such as “Picasso at the Lapin Agile." He wrote a book about his years of performing as a comedian, “Born Standing Up,” that was released last week. His next movie will be “Pink Panther Deux.”

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Leon Fleisher

That was a recording of the pianist and conductor Leon Fleisher playing part of Schubert’s Sonata in B Flat Major. Fleisher began studying the piano at the age of four. By the time he was sixteen, he was playing with the New York Philharmonic. Leon Fleisher traveled far and wide playing in the finest concert halls in the world and also recording music. In nineteen sixty-five, a neurological disorder called dystonia forced Fleisher to rethink his career. He lost the use of his right hand, but he did not let this stop him.

VOICE TWO:

Leon Fleisher poured his energy into teaching and also conducting groups of musicians. He also began to specialize in performing piano music written for the left hand. In the nineteen nineties, doctors began to treat Fleisher’s damaged hand with Botox injections.

Over time, Leon Fleisher recovered and started playing piano works for both hands once again. He has said that if he could relive his life, he would not change what happened to his hand. He says his experience helped him become a much better musician and teacher.

(SOUND)

VOICE ONE:

Martin Scorsese

That was a scene from the movie “Goodfellas”, directed by Martin Scorsese. Many people consider him one of the greatest living American film directors. Scorsese is best known for his movies about characters linked to crime and violence. Many of his movies are about Italian-American characters. Still, over the years, he has made movies about many subjects. “Kundun” tells the story of the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. “The Aviator” is about the American businessman Howard Hughes. Scorsese also brought to life periods from the American past in movies like “Gangs of New York” and “The Age of Innocence.”

His latest movie, “The Departed,” is about opposing groups of criminals and police officers. It won four Academy Awards last year, including best director and best movie. Martin Scorsese has also made documentary movies about musicians, including Bob Dylan. He will soon release a movie about the Rolling Stones.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Diana Ross

That was the clear, sweet voice of Diana Ross singing “You Can’t Hurry Love” with her back-up singers. The Supremes were from Detroit, Michigan. They became one of the most popular female singing groups of the nineteen sixties. The Supremes mixed the sounds of popular music with the soulful music born in Detroit called Motown. By nineteen seventy, Diana Ross had left the band to sing on her own. She made many best-selling records including “Diana Ross”, “Surrender” and “diana."

VOICE ONE:

Diana Ross also acted in television shows and movies. Her performance as Billie Holiday in the movie “Lady Sings the Blues” earned her an Academy Award nomination.

Over the years, Ross has won many American Music Awards. Billboard magazine named her the “Entertainer of the Century.” The Guinness Book of World Records called Diana Ross the Most Successful Recording Artist of All Time. Her most recent album “I Love You” came out earlier this year.

VOICE TWO:

Brian Wilson, Steve Martin, Leon Fleisher, Martin Scorsese and Diana Ross are remarkable performers. On Sunday, the Kennedy Center will honor them for sharing their artistic gifts with people all over the world.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Our program was written and produced by Dana Demange. I’m Steve Ember.

VOICE TWO:

And I’m Barbara Klein. Our programs are online with transcripts and MP3 files at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English.