One-child Policy to be Relaxed

【Unlocking Word Meanings】

　今日の単語・フレーズ

Read the following words/expressions found in today’s article. 

1. relax [ri-LAKS] (v.) – to make rules less strict

Example: Citizens usually appreciate it when strict policies are relaxed.

2. plenum [PLEE-nuh m, PLEN-uh m] (n.) – an assembly with every member present, usually for making laws

Example: During the plenum, the committee decided to abolish the policy.

3. demographer [dih-MOG-ruh-fer] (n.) – a person who studies human population numbers

Example: The demographer noted the low birth rate in his country.

4. phase [feyz] (n.) –  a stage or step in a process

Example: The first phase after a policy change is usually the tricky one.

5. petty crime [PET-ee krahym] (n.) – minor unlawful acts like shoplifting and traffic violations

Example: Chinese citizens who commit petty crimes are sent to forced labor camps.

【Article】

　ニュース記事

Read the text below.

After years of lobbying by the Chinese, the Communist Party has finally agreed to relax the one-child policy. This decision was announced in a resolution of the plenum that ended last November 12. Explaining the resolution, Communist Party chief Xi Jinping said that reforms were the only way to unify the people and to achieve sustainable economic and social development. According to a demographer named Chen Wei, China relaxed the policy because of low birth rate in the country. Thus, labor force is directly affected. Aside from the problem with few workers, there is also a huge difference in the number of newborn boys and girls. The reform will be carried out in phases. It will probably start in provinces with low birth rates, such as those in the eastern part of the country. As a start, families with a parent who is a single child are now allowed to have a second child. Further relaxation to allow all couples to freely have a second child may occur after 2020. Currently, rural residents whose firstborns are girls are already allowed to have a second child. Urban residents born in the 1980s and 1990s are also allowed to have a second child, given that both parents have no siblings. Therefore, these changes are expected to greatly affect urban residents born in the 1970s, the time when the one-child policy was first implemented. Along with this policy change, the Communist Party also announced the removal of the punishment policy that allows sending prisoners of petty crimes to forced labor.

【Viewpoint Discussion】

　ディスカッションテーマ

Enjoy a discussion with your tutor.  

Discussion A

         Do you agree that the one-child policy in China should be relaxed? Why or why not?

         What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of the one-child policy? Please explain briefly.

Discussion B

         In your opinion, why is a low birth rate bad for a country?

         What do you think can be done to increase a country’s birth rate? Please explain.

この記事が気に入りましたか？

Scientist Traces Little Red Riding Hood's Origin

【Unlocking Word Meanings】

　今日の単語・フレーズ

Read the following words/expressions found in today’s article. 

1. anthropologist [an-thruh-POL-uh-jist] (n.) –  a person who studies human races, their origins, and their cultures

Example:  Many anthropologists believe in the theory that humans evolved from apes and monkeys.

2. folktale [FOHK-teyl] (n.) – a traditional story often considered as an important part of a culture

Example: When we were young, our grandmother often told folktales during bedtime.

3. disguise [dis-GAHYZ] (v.) – to change one’s appearance to hide one’s true identity

Example: The princess disguised herself as a beggar in order to hide from her father, the king.

4. ancestor [AN-ses-ter] (n.) – someone or something in the past from which something else has developed

Example: According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, apes are the ancestors of humans. 

5. vice versa [VAHY-suh VUR-suh] (adv.) – in reversed order

Example:  Humans eventually realized that the Earth goes around the sun, and not vice versa.

【Article】

　ニュース記事

Read the text below.

An anthropologist has recently traced the origins of the folktale “Little Red Riding Hood.” In a study published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, anthropologist Jamie Tehrani of Durham University detailed the evolutionary tree of the popular story. Little Red Riding Hood is about a girl who got eaten by a wolf disguised as her grandmother. Tehrani used a mathematical method called phylogenetics [fahy-luh-juh-NET-iks] in his study. Phylogenetics is a method commonly used by biologists to study the evolution of species. It reconstructs history by looking at what features have been preserved through inheritance. According to phylogenetics, the descendants of a species will resemble their ancestors in certain ways. This means that a species can be traced back to its ancestor by following the trail of inherited characteristics. Based on these principles, Tehrani found that Little Red Riding Hood has a lot in common with another popular folktale from the first century called “The Wolf and the Kids.” That folktale is about a wolf that impersonates a mother goat and eats her kids. “Little Red Riding Hood” came 1,000 years after the said folktale. Tehrani also found that many versions of the story are told in Asia and Africa, including “The Tiger Grandmother,’ a version popular in Japan, Korea, and China. The research also addressed the popular notion that Little Red Riding Hood originated in China. According to Tehrani, his findings indicated that this claim is not true. Based on his data, the Chinese version was actually derived from European stories, and not vice versa.

【Viewpoint Discussion】

　ディスカッションテーマ

Enjoy a discussion with your tutor.  

Discussion A

         What do you think is the importance of knowing the origin of popular stories like Little Red Riding Hood?

         Do you think that folktales are an important part of a culture and therefore should be preserved? Why or why not?

Discussion B

         What do you think makes a story good and exciting? Tell your tutor about it.

         In your opinion, what is the best way of telling a story? Explain.

この記事が気に入りましたか？

How to Build a Wormhole in the SpaceTime Continuum. Really.

Plus, some brilliant folks may have figured out how gravity works. Einstein couldn't.  Niels Bohr couldn't.  It was beyond Mr. Spock.  But these guys?  Yep, just another day at the lab.  Now, here's how to create a wormhole upon demand ~

Any Ph.D. physicist or teen-aged Trekkie can tell you that quantum entanglement is one of the more bizarre theories to come out of the study of quantum mechanics -- so strange, in fact, that Albert Einstein famously referred to it as "spooky action at a distance."

(Credit: Wikimedia commons/Creative
Commons Attribution-Share
Alike 3.0 Unported license)

Left:  A diagram of a wormhole, a hypothetical "shortcut" through the universe, where its two ends are each in separate points in spacetime. 

Essentially, entanglement involves two particles, each occupying multiple states at once -- a condition referred to as superposition. For example, both particles may simultaneously spin clockwise and counterclockwise. But neither has a definite state until one is measured, causing the other particle to instantly assume a corresponding state, i.e., spooky action at a distance. The resulting correlations between the particles are preserved, even if they reside on opposite ends of the universe.

DIY Wormholes?
But what enables particles to communicate instantaneously -- and seemingly faster than the speed of light -- over such vast distances? Earlier this year, physicists proposed an answer in the form of "wormholes," or gravitational tunnels. The group showed that by creating two entangled black holes, then pulling them apart, they formed a wormhole -- essentially a "shortcut" through the universe -- connecting the distant black holes.

Now an MIT physicist has found that, looked at through the lens of string theory, the creation of two entangled quarks -- the building blocks of matter -- simultaneously gives rise to a wormhole connecting the pair.

The Demise of the Theoretical Gravitron Particle
The theoretical results bolster the relatively new and exciting idea that the laws of gravity holding together the universe may not be fundamental, but arise from something else: quantum entanglement.

Julian Sonner, a senior postdoc in MIT's Laboratory for Nuclear Science and Center for Theoretical Physics, has published his results in the journal Physical Review Letters, where it appears together with a related paper by Kristan Jensen of the University of Victoria and Andreas Karch of the University of Washington.

The tangled web that is gravity
Ever since quantum mechanics was first proposed more than a century ago, the main challenge for physicists in the field has been to explain gravity in quantum-mechanical terms. While quantum mechanics works extremely well in describing interactions at a microscopic level, it fails to explain gravity -- a fundamental concept of relativity, a theory proposed by Einstein to describe the macroscopic world. Thus, there appears to be a major barrier to reconciling quantum mechanics and general relativity; for years, physicists have tried to come up with a theory of quantum gravity to marry the two fields.

"There are some hard questions of quantum gravity we still don't understand, and we've been banging our heads against these problems for a long time," Sonner says. "We need to find the right inroads to understanding these questions."

A theory of quantum gravity would suggest that classical gravity is not a fundamental concept, as Einstein first proposed, but rather emerges from a more basic, quantum-based phenomenon. In a macroscopic context, this would mean that the universe is shaped by something more fundamental than the forces of gravity.

This is where quantum entanglement could play a role. It might appear that the concept of entanglement -- one of the most fundamental in quantum mechanics -- is in direct conflict with general relativity: Two entangled particles, "communicating" across vast distances, would have to do so at speeds faster than that of light -- a violation of the laws of physics, according to Einstein. It may therefore come as a surprise that using the concept of entanglement in order to build up space-time may be a major step toward reconciling the laws of quantum mechanics and general relativity.

Tunneling to the fifth dimension
In July, physicists Juan Maldacena of the Institute for Advanced Study and Leonard Susskind of Stanford University proposed a theoretical solution in the form of two entangled black holes. When the black holes were entangled, then pulled apart, the theorists found that what emerged was a wormhole -- a tunnel through space-time that is thought to be held together by gravity. The idea seemed to suggest that, in the case of wormholes, gravity emerges from the more fundamental phenomenon of entangled black holes.

Following up on work by Jensen and Karch, Sonner has sought to tackle this idea at the level of quarks -- subatomic building blocks of matter. To see what emerges from two entangled quarks, he first generated quarks using the Schwinger effect -- a concept in quantum theory that enables one to create particles out of nothing. More precisely, the effect, also called "pair creation," allows two particles to emerge from a vacuum, or soup of transient particles. Under an electric field, one can, as Sonner puts it, "catch a pair of particles" before they disappear back into the vacuum. Once extracted, these particles are considered entangled.

Sonner mapped the entangled quarks onto a four-dimensional space, considered a representation of space-time. In contrast, gravity is thought to exist in the next dimension as, according to Einstein's laws, it acts to "bend" and shape space-time, thereby existing in the fifth dimension.

To see what geometry may emerge in the fifth dimension from entangled quarks in the fourth, Sonner employed holographic duality, a concept in string theory. While a hologram is a two-dimensional object, it contains all the information necessary to represent a three-dimensional view. Essentially, holographic duality is a way to derive a more complex dimension from the next lowest dimension.

Using holographic duality, Sonner derived the entangled quarks, and found that what emerged was a wormhole connecting the two, implying that the creation of quarks simultaneously creates a wormhole. More fundamentally, the results suggest that gravity may, in fact, emerge from entanglement. What's more, the geometry, or bending, of the universe as described by classical gravity, may be a consequence of entanglement, such as that between pairs of particles strung together by tunneling wormholes.

"It's the most basic representation yet that we have where entanglement gives rise to some sort of geometry," Sonner says. "What happens if some of this entanglement is lost, and what happens to the geometry? There are many roads that can be pursued, and in that sense, this work can turn out to be very helpful."

*  *  *  *  *

Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction: How to Create Out-Of-This-World Novels and Short Stories
by Orson Scott Card

Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy
by Michael Knost

Writing Science Fiction & Fantasy
by Gardner Dozois

Story Source:  Materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, written by Jennifer Chu: Julian Sonner. Holographic Schwinger Effect and the Geometry of Entanglement. Physical Review Letters, 2013.

‘Selfie’ is Word of the Year

【Unlocking Word Meanings】

　今日の単語・フレーズ

Read the following words/expressions found in today’s article. 

1. selfie [SEL-fee] (n.) – one’s picture taken by himself/herself, usually with a smartphone and uploaded through social networking sites

Example: Teenagers nowadays usually post selfies in their online profiles.

2. inventiveness [in-VEN-tiv-nes] (n.) – the ability to come up with new and creative things

Example: People’s inventiveness allows them to create new and catchy words.

3. coin [koin] (v.) – to make or invent; usually associated with words

Example: The term ‘selfie’ was coined from the word ‘self.’ 

4. track [trak] (v.) – to follow or keep a record of something

Example: The Oxford Dictionary tracks the words that people frequently use in order to choose the word of the year.  

5. hashtag [HASH-tag] (n.) – a word or phrase with a hash sign (#) before it

Example: The hashtag #YolandaPH was trending in social networking sites last week.

【Article】

　ニュース記事

Read the text below.

The Oxford Dictionaries has recently chosen "selfie" as 2013’s word of the year. The frequency of using the word "selfie" has increased by 17,000% in the past year. It has beaten other short-listed words like "twerk," which is a dance move by pop star Miley Cyrus, and "binge-watch," which means watching too much TV. The Oxford Dictionaries began the word of the year award to recognize the inventiveness of English speakers in coping with the various changes in our society. To qualify for this award, the word does not have to be coined in the past 12 months. However, it should have gained prominence during this period. The dictionary website uses a software program that collects around 150 million English words currently used in the internet every month. This software tracks where and how frequent these words are used. The word "selfie" started in 2002 when a man posted pictures of his facial injuries that he got when he tripped. He explained the lack of right focus in the photo by telling the public that he was not drunk, but because it was a selfie. Selfie has now gained popularity with the help of social media. It was used as a hashtag as early as 2004 in the photo sharing site Flickr, but it only gained widespread use starting the year 2012.  The word was already added to the Oxford Dictionaries Online last August but is yet to be included in the Oxford English Dictionary.

【Viewpoint Discussion】

　ディスカッションテーマ

Enjoy a discussion with your tutor.  

Discussion A

         Do you agree that ‘selfie’ deserves to be the word of the year? Why or why not?

         What do you think is the importance of having a word of the year? Please explain briefly.

Discussion B

         Why do you think people nowadays are fond of taking selfies or pictures of themselves?

         What are the disadvantages of posting your photos online? Please explain briefly.

この記事が気に入りましたか？

The Growing Epidemic of "Valley Girl Speak"

Oh! My! God!

Research shows that Valley Girl Speak' is beginning to be picked up by males of the sub-species SoCalifornicus Humanicus.

Well, if this isn't the end of humankind, it could mean something else.  I don't know what, but fer sure, it can't be good.

Here's the story.  The American English speech variant known as "uptalk", or "Valley Girl speak" -- marked by a rise in pitch at the ends of sentences -- is typically associated with young southern Californian females. New research shows uptalk is expanding to other demographic groups, including males.

The new study is also the first to identify distinct melodic vocal patterns distinguishing an uptalk question from a statement -- a fuzzy area for non-uptalkers that leads to stereotypic parody of uptalkers as insecure, shallow or non-intellectual.

"We believe that uptalk is becoming more prevalent and systematic in its use for the younger generations in Southern California," says researcher Amanda Ritchart, a linguist at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in La Jolla. Ritchart will describe her team's work at the fall meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), held Dec. 2-6, 2013, in San Francisco, Calif.


To investigate the use of uptalk, the researchers recorded the voices of about two dozen native southern Californians (about half male and half female) during several speech tasks, such as giving directions in a map navigation task or recounting what happened after watching a clip from a popular sitcom. The results showed that uptalk is a part of southern California English that transcends gender boundaries, and several other boundaries as well.  (Like good taste or clarity.  Ed.)

"Our sample only included undergraduate students ages 18-22, so we cannot say anything definitive about older southern Californians," Ritchart said. "But we found use of uptalk in all of our speakers, despite their diverse backgrounds in socioeconomic status, ethnicity, bilingualism and gender."

A major confusion for outsiders is whether it is possible to distinguish between "uptalked" statements and normal questions, but Ritchart's work identified a systematic pitch difference between the two: when the rise was used for a simple statement, it began significantly later in the utterance than when the rise was used for asking a question. However, said co-author and professor Amalia Arvaniti, this difference is so subtle that non-uptalkers typically miss it and assume a question is being asked when a statement is being given.

"Our study busts the stereotype associated with uptalk that those who speak uptalk actually ask questions instead of make statements, a tendency that is supposed to be linked to insecurity," Arvaniti said. "But native southern California speakers know the difference based on the exact location of the rise start, and the extent to which pitch changes in the rise."

A goal of the research, the authors said, is to fully understand this dialect development and what it means for global communication -- or miscommunication. "Imagine a teacher from the American Midwest moving to California and hearing students give a presentation using uptalk," Arvaniti said. "To the Midwesterner, the southern California speakers may sound tentative or even ditzy." Conversely, the lack of uptalk from their teacher may seem unfriendly to the students, thus impairing relationships and communication, she said.

The researchers say that as its use expands, greater awareness of the subtleties of uptalk will likely be an important part of achieving clearer global communication in many professions.

*  *  *  *  *

I haven't had this good a laugh in some time.  Ed.  However, research is research.  Perhaps we can talk NWA into starting the Fund to Cure Uptalk, or FuCU.  Well, maybe not.

Fer Shur! How To Be a Valley Girl-totally!
by Mary Corey

Valley Girls Guide To Life
by Mimi Pond

The Valley Girl Turns 40
by Laura Ross

Story Source:  materials provided by Acoustical Society of America (ASA), via Newswise, (2013, December 4). 'Valley girl speak' extending to males. ScienceDaily

Bigger Mannequins Launched In Venezuela and U.K.

【Unlocking Word Meanings】

　今日の単語・フレーズ

Read the following words/expressions found in today’s article. 

1. mannequin [MAN-i-kin] (n.) –  an object shaped like a human figure that stores use to display clothes

Example:  The store assistant put the new sweaters on the mannequins by the window.

2. breast augmentation [brest awg-men-TEY-shuh n] (n. phrase) – a surgical procedure done to make the breasts bigger

Example: The actress denied that she underwent breast augmentation and insisted that her breasts are natural.

3. meanwhile [MEEN-hwahyl] (adv.) – at the same time

Example: Meanwhile, sales of the new jackets increased, helping the company post a profit despite the weak sales of the pants and the dresses.

4. laud [lawd] (v.) – to give honor or approval to someone or something

Example: The activists lauded the designer who stopped using animal fur in his garments. 

5. lithe [lahyth] (adj.) – having a slim and athletic body

Example:  My sister gradually attained her lithe figure through regular dance classes and a strict vegetarian diet.

【Article】

　ニュース記事

Read the text below.

Clothing retailers in Venezuela and the United Kingdom are introducing bigger mannequins in their stores. In Venezuela, local mannequin makers launched new mannequins with bigger breasts and buttocks in an effort to boost sales. Despite the odd proportions of the mannequins, they proved to be a hit among the locals. This success may be caused by the locals’ perception that cosmetic surgeries like breast augmentation are signs of wealth. Meanwhile, in the U.K., department store Debenhams recently started displaying size 16 mannequins in its shop in Oxford Street, London, with plans to eventually do the same at all of their 170 branches. According to company director Ed Watson, they implemented the change in hopes of helping their customers feel more comfortable about their bodies. Many observers laud Debenhams’ decision. Most fashion labels today use size 10 mannequins even though most of their customers are not that lithe. The average British woman, for instance, is a size 16. However, some critics believe that these bigger mannequins also represent fantasies just like mannequins in size 10. While the typical size 10 mannequins represent women’s fantasy of being tall and slim, the new size 16 mannequins represent the fantasy of inclusion, or the state of being part of a group. Critics also say that these mannequins create an illusion of a world where bigger body sizes are seen as normal and attractive. Despite the criticisms, Debenhams hopes that by celebrating fuller body types, they are setting a good example and that other fashion retailers will follow their lead.

【Viewpoint Discussion】

　ディスカッションテーマ

Enjoy a discussion with your tutor.  

Discussion A

         Do you think that the use of plus-size mannequins by Debenhams is a good move? Why or why not?

         Do you agree with the view of some critics that the size 16 mannequins only represent the fantasy of inclusion? Discuss with your tutor.

Discussion B

         Why do you think the fashion industry is fixated on tall and thin body figures?

         In your opinion, what makes one’s body beautiful? Explain to your tutor.

この記事が気に入りましたか？