Let's Get 7 in IELTS

http://www.ngcasia.com/watch/show_video.aspx?id_video=77

Environment correspondent Richard Black joined researchers on board the yacht Song of the Whale as they looked and listened for whales around the Canary Islands. Here, Richard and the research team from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw) answer your questions on beaked whales, which are probably the least understood large mammals on the planet, and what the team discovered during the week at sea.

Japan's cabinet has agreed to provide 1.81 trillion yen ($17bn; £9bn) to stimulate the economy, in what analysts say could be the prelude to elections. The money is intended to help Japan cope with high energy and food prices at a time of global financial turmoil. Prime Minister Taro Aso also promised tax cuts and urged the opposition Democrats to support his plans.

Police investigate the scene where 12 bodies were discovered The authorities in the Mexican border city of Tijuana have found 16 bodies in 24 hours, in what police believe is part of a wave of drug-related murders. Twelve of the bodies were found on a patch of wasteland near a school just before it opened. Most showed signs of having been bound and tortured.

Researchers studying the decline of the bumblebee have trained a dog to sniff out the insects in the wild. Toby, a three-year-old Springer spaniel, can find the bees' nests, hidden in dense

undergrowth or in the ground, using only his nose. 

Toby is the only dog in the world trained to find bumblebees Researchers studying the decline of the bumblebee have trained a dog to sniff out the insects in the wild. Toby, a three-year-old Springer spaniel, can find the bees' nests, hidden in dense undergrowth or in the ground, using only his nose. Experts at the University of Stirling said that studying the threatened bees was made much harder because of the difficulty in tracking them down. The three-year project involving Toby is the first of its kind. Prof Dave Goulson, who will oversee the work of Toby, said that his involvement would give a huge boost to conservation efforts. He said that of the UK's 25 varieties of bumblebee, three had become extinct and several others were in danger of going the same way because researchers knew very little about how they lived and what was destroying them. Nasal talents Prof Goulson said: "The real obstacle to studying bumblebees is that we can't find the nests. "They have only about 50 workers and maybe 100 in the bumblebee nest so there isn't a lot of traffic going in and out. You can imagine that occasionally seeing a bee flying out of a clump of grass is pretty hard to spot." Toby's nasal talents were honed at the army dog-training school at Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire where dogs are trained to sniff out explosives. He was taken to the centre after being found abandoned in Birmingham as a pup. The plan to use Toby was inspired by research which found that badgers hunt bee nests for food using their sense of smell. The project is being funded by a £111,956 grant from the Leverhulme Trust. Toby and handler Steph O'Connor are sponsored by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, a charity set up in 2006 to halt the insect's decline.

The number of women holding senior posts in politics, the law and the media has fallen compared with last year, a report suggests. Research by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) says that in 12 of 25 job categories studied, there were fewer women holding top posts. Women's representation had increased in eight areas, including company directors and the civil service. The EHRC said some women face a concrete ceiling, not a glass one. The commission also wants more flexible working to help women rise to the top.

 

A British couple whose two-month-old daughter was taken into care after a "misguided" suspicion of abuse have been awarded £8,000 in compensation.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled their rights had been infringed because they had no legal redress for the loss of their child.

The girl, from Oldham, was taken into care in 1998 after breaking her leg.

The family was reunited nine months later when another injury revealed that the girl had brittle bone disease.

Doctors had suspected that the injury to her thigh bone was not caused by accident and she had been placed in the care of her aunt.

'Genuine concerns'

The couple - known only as AK and RK - took their case to the European Court after it had been rejected in the House of Lords in 2005.

They complained that their "right to respect for private and family life" and their "right to an effective remedy" were breached.

Human rights judges disagreed with the former claim, ruling that medical and social authorities had a duty to protect children.

I think what motivated them was the very strong feeling that they had been wronged Emma Holt Solicitor

"[They] could not be held liable every time genuine and reasonably-held concerns about the safety of children in their families were proved, retrospectively, to have been misguided," the judges said.

But they ruled unanimously that the couple should have had access to legal redress, something their solicitor Emma Holt said amounted to a "recognition that the system had failed them".

She said the couple had not been driven by a desire for compensation.

"I think what motivated them was the very strong feeling that they had been wronged.

"In cases like this people always say, 'No smoke without fire' and these accusations stick.

"I think the family were on a quest to find someone to uphold that what happened to them was wrong."

Ms Holt said the judgment opened up the possibility that other families in similar situations could bring human rights claims in the future.

As well as ruling that they should receive compensation from the UK government, the couple were awarded £14,000 in costs.

 

 

Car sleepers in California, hard hit by the housing crisis

By Rajesh Mirchandani BBC News, Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara boasts a classic laidback California lifestyle, with uncongested beaches, wholesome cafes and charming Spanish-style architecture.

Of course there's a hefty price tag: nestled between the gentle Santa Ynez mountains and the inviting Pacific Ocean are multi-million dollar homes.

But in this sun-washed haven of wealth, many live far from the American dream.

In a car park across the street from luxury mansions, the evening brings a strange sight.

A few cars arrive and take up spaces in different corners. In each car, a woman, perhaps a few pets, bags of possessions and bedding.

Across the street from homes with bedrooms to spare, these are Santa Barbara's car sleepers.

Homeless within the last year, they are a direct consequence of America's housing market collapse.

4x4 homes

In this woman-only parking lot, Bonnee, who gives only her first name, wears a smart blue dress and has a business-like demeanor.

A year ago, she was making a healthy living as, ironically, a real estate agent. But when people stopped buying houses, her commission-based income dried up, and, like many clients, she too was unable to pay her mortgage.

Soon she found herself with nowhere to live but her 4x4.

Piles of blankets are in the back of the vehicle. Personal documents are stuffed into seat pockets. Books litter the back seat. A make-up bag and gym membership card (she washes at the gym) are in the front. With her constantly, are photos of her former life.

She can't quite believe her situation.

"My God, America's heart is bleeding," she tells me.

Tears fill her eyes.

"I know it'll get better. But it feels sad. I really fought hard."

A medium-sized 4x4 pulls into the parking lot and 66-year-old Barbara Harvey gets out.

She opens the back door and two large Golden Retrievers jump out.

Barbara begins her nightly routine. She moves a few bags from the boot to the front seat and takes out pyjamas and a carton of yoghurt (her dinner). She then arranges blankets in the back of the car.

Barbara used to work in housing finance - this is the double whammy of the housing collapse where many who worked in the sector lost their jobs and their homes.

But since April, she and her dogs, Ranger and Phoebe, have spent every night in her car. It's cramped, but she says if they sleep diagonally they can all fit.

New trend?

The car park lets the car sleepers enter from 7pm, local public toilets close at dusk.

As a result, Barbara says she doesn't drink any liquids after she arrives. In the mornings, she showers at a friend's house.

Dressed in clean, comfortable clothes and wearing sunglasses, she is far removed from the stereotypical image of homelessness.

"I don't think I fit into anybody's image," she says.

"There's going to be lots of homeless individuals who are middle-class, there can't be anything but. We're in an awful mess economically. I don't think we've seen half of what's going to happen in this country."

This new phenomenon of middle-class homelessness is hard to quantify, but New Beginnings, an organisation that runs the car park sleeping scheme in Santa Barbara, says they accommodate some 55 people in a dozen parking lots.

Outreach worker Nancy Kapp, once homeless herself, says there is a waiting list for car park spaces and she is getting more and more calls each day from people about to lose their homes.

She identifies it as a new breed of homeless emerging in America.

'American nightmare'

"Being poor is like this cancer, and now this cancer is filtering up to the middle-class," she says. "I don't care how strong you are, it's a breakdown of the human psyche when you start to lose everything you have."

"These people have worked their whole lives to have a house and now it's crumbling and it's in ashes and how devastating  is that?" she says.

"It's not an American dream, it's an American nightmare."

California house prices fell by 30% in the year to May. Few parts of America have been hit as hard.

But national housing groups say they have seen a rise in homelessness across the US since the foreclosure crisis began last year.

The Miller family feel "cramped" in their small mobile home

In another car park in Santa Barbara, Craig Miller, his wife Paige and their two children say they feel cramped in the small mobile home where they have been living for several months.

"It's hard to keep things clean," says Paige. "It's hard to feel complete and whole."

Originally from Florida, the family used to own a four-bedroom house with a pool. But when Craig's business failed, they lost it.

Undeterred, the family embarked on a dream to drive across America and make a new start in California. But unable to find full-time work, and unable to afford rent, as Craig puts it "we got stuck".

He says it was like a holiday at first but now it is much harder.

"Getting money for food, it's not something we've had to think about before," says Craig.

"We're definitely looking forward to getting out and getting a place. And we're working hard at getting there. This is just the journey, it's not the destination.'

As darkness falls on Santa Barbara, the car sleepers settle in for the night.

They'll have to be up early: they are not allowed to stay in the car parks beyond 7am. Some work, others spend their days driving from one spot to another.

When evening comes around again, they return to their car park homes.

In comparison to other countries, and indeed America's own long-term homeless, they are still fortunate.

But as America's economic crisis deepens, could there soon be more of them?

 

  wholesome a. 健康的;強健的;生氣勃勃的 hefty a. 重的

Just ask this poor pencil

And the $64,000 question is ... does graphite conduct electricity? It certainly does! The video demonstration displays this quite convincingly. Graphite is an interesting material, an allotrope of carbon (as is diamond). It displays properties of both metals, and nonmetals. However, like a metal, graphite is a very good conductor of electricity due to the mobility of the electrons in its outer valence shells. Reviewing some basic principles of electricity we can also see why we fry the pencil. According to Ohm's Law, which is valid for most simple electric circuits, V = IR where V is the voltage applied across the circuit, R is the resistance of the circuit and I is the resulting current. Because the graphite has a low resistance and high conductivity, it is going to draw a large current through the circuit, and this large current will heat up the graphite rapidly due to frictional heating as the charges migrate through the circuit. The result is an exciting display of glowing graphite and flaming pencils. If you've ever connected a copper wire directly to both terminals of a battery, you will have noticed how hot the wire gets. Without something with more resistance in the circuit (for example, a light bulb) to reduce the current, you're going to generate a lot of heat (and you're also going to wear out the battery before its time). This is the case with the circuit in the video. If you added a light bulb into the circuit, the current would go down, the carbon wire wouldn't get that hot, and the demo would not be so dramatic. The demonstration also indirectly illustrates the danger of a "short circuit." These exist when a resistor in a circuit is bypassed by a low-resistance wire. This can happen, for instance, if the insulation surrounding the wires on a household appliance gets frayed. If the wires meet, the current can bypass the appliance, create an extremely low-resistance branch in your household circuitry, and induce rapid "ohmic" heating and thereby the possibility of an electrical fire. It's a good thing we have circuit breakers these days! graphite
n.
1. 【礦】石墨,黑鉛[U] demonstration
n.
1. 論證,證明[U][C][+(that)]
2. 實地示範,實物宣傳[U][C]
3. 示威,示威運動[C]
4. 表示,表露[S] convincingly
ad.
1. 令人信服地;有說服力地 allotrope
n.
1. 【化】同素異形物
circuit
n.[C]
1. 環道;一圈,一周;環行
2. 巡迴審判(傳道,講學等);巡迴區;巡迴路線
3. 【電】電路;回路;線路圖
4. 同業性的聯合組織;輪迴上演(或上映)的若干戲院(或電影院)
5. (運動團,隊等的)同盟,聯合會
vt.
1. 繞...環行
vi.
1. 環行,繞行 fray
vt.
1. 磨損(織物等)的邊緣
2. 使(神經等)緊張
vi.
1. 被磨損邊緣
2. 緊張
n.
1. 磨損處
 

"Mid-February is looking to be a reasonable timeframe to do that," said Preston Burch, the Hubble manager at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center where telescope operations are overseen.
Nasa says the problem is in a box known as the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling (SIC&DH) Unit, and affects the functions carried out by its Science Data Formatter - Side A.
The glitch arose on Saturday and all attempts to correct have proved fruitless. The assessment is that the formatter has totally failed and will not be recoverable.
The anomaly prevents Hubble from formatting the data gathered by its instruments ready for sending to scientists on the ground. The malfunction also stops that data being stored locally on the telescope's solid state recorders for later transmission.
Hubble has a back-up - Side B - and if systems can be switched over, the observatory should return to normal operations. Engineers say it is a complex procedure but they hope to have Hubble functioning at its previous level of performance within a couple of weeks.
In the meantime, a spare SIC&DH Unit on the ground will be prepared for flight, to be included as an additional servicing task on the forthcoming Atlantis mission.
Ed Weiler, Nasa's associate administrator for science, said it was important Hubble had redundancy for Side B going into the future
"If we just go to Side B, we would be left with a system that had several single point failures, and that would be a risk to the [Hubble] mission for the long duration," he explained.
"By going ahead and accepting a delay of perhaps several months, we can get our full-up spare tested and ready to go - and if we could put that in [Hubble] sometime in the winter, we would have an observatory that was again doubly redundant; that is, it would have back-up systems."