This is the VOA Special English Education Report. Some American parents might think their children need better educations to compete with China and other countries. But how much do the parents themselves need to change? A new book called "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua has caused a debate about cultural differences in parenting. Ms. Chua is a professor at the Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut, and the mother of two daughters. She was raised in the American Midwest by immigrant Chinese parents. In the Chinese culture, the tiger represents strength and power. In her book, Ms. Chua writes about how she demanded excellence from her daughters. For example, she threatened to burn her daughter's stuffed animals unless she played a piece of music perfectly. She would insult her daughters if they failed to meet her expectations. Ms. Chua told NBC television that she had a clear list of what her daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were not permitted to do. AMY CHUA: "Attend a sleepover, have a play date, watch TV or play computer games, be in a school play, get any grade less than an A." Many people have criticized Amy Chua. Some say her parenting methods were abusive. She even admits that her husband, who is not Chinese, sometimes objected to her parenting style. But she says that was the way her parents raised her and her three sisters.
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Ms. Chua makes fun of her own extreme style of parenting. She says she eased some of the pressure after her younger daughter rebelled and shouted "I hate my life! I hate you!" Ms. Chua says she decided to retreat when it seemed like there was a risk that she might lose her daughter. But she also says American parents often have low expectations of their children's abilities. AMY CHUA: "One of the biggest differences I see between Western and Chinese parents is that Chinese parents assume strength rather than fragility." Stacy DeBroff has written four books on parenting. STACY DEBROFF: "The stirring of this intense debate has to do with what does it mean to be a successful parent and what does it mean to be a successful child?" Ms. DeBroff says Amy Chua's parenting style is not limited to Chinese families. She says it represents a traditional way of parenting among immigrants seeking a better future for their children. But she also sees a risk. When children have no time to be social or to follow their own interests, they might not develop other skills that they need to succeed in life. Stacey DeBroff advises parents to develop their own style of parenting and not just repeat the way they were raised. And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. What are your thoughts about parenting styles and cultural differences? Tell us at 51voa.com or on Facebook at VOA Learning English. I'm Steve Ember.
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EXPLORATIONS - Leonardo da Vinci: One of the Greatest Thinkers in History STEVE EMBER: I’m Steve Ember. SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: And I’m Shirley Griffith with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. Today, we tell about one of the greatest thinkers in the world, Leonardo da Vinci. He began his career as an artist. But his interest in the world around him drove him to study music, math, science, engineering and building design. Many of his ideas and inventions were centuries ahead of his time. (MUSIC) STEVE EMBER: We start with one of Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous drawings, called “Vitruvian Man.” This work is a good example of his ever questioning mind, and his effort to bring together art, math and science. “Vitruvian Man” is a detailed sketch of a man’s body, which is drawn at the center of a square and circle. The man’s stretched arms and legs are in two positions, showing the range of his motion. His arms and legs touch the edges of the square and circle. SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: With this drawing Leonardo was considering the size of the human body and its relationship to geometry and the writings of the ancient Roman building designer Vitruvius.
Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper"
Leonardo wrote this about how to develop a complete mind: “Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses- especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” 字数239 计时4 STEVE EMBER: Leonardo da Vinci spent his life studying and observing in order to develop a scientific understanding of the world. He wrote down his thoughts and project ideas in a series of small notebooks. He made drawings and explained them with detailed notes. In these notebooks, he would write the words backwards. Some experts say he wrote this way because he wished to be secretive about his findings. But others say he wrote this way because he was left-handed and writing backwards was easier and helped keep the ink from smearing.
Detail from the drawing "Vitruvian Man"
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: The notebooks show many very modern ideas. Leonardo designed weapons, machines, engines, robots, and many other kinds of engineering devices. When disease spread in Milan, Leonardo designed a city that would help resist the spread of infection. He designed devices to help people climb walls, and devices to help people fly. He designed early versions of modern machines such as the tank and helicopter. Few of these designs were built during his lifetime. But they show his extraordinarily forward- thinking mind. The notebooks also contain details about his daily life. These have helped historians learn more about the personal side of this great thinker. (MUSIC) STEVE EMBER: Very little is known about Leonardo’s early life. He was born in fourteen fifty-two in the town of Vinci. His father, Ser Piero da Vinci, was a legal expert. Experts do not know for sure about his mother, Caterina. But they do know that Leonardo’s parents were never married to each other. As a boy, Leonardo showed a great interest in drawing, sculpting and observing nature. 字数273 计时5 However, because Leonardo was born to parents who were not married to each other, he was barred from some studies and professions. He trained as an artist after moving to Florence with his father in the fourteen sixties. SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: It was an exciting time to be in Florence, one of the cultural capitals of Europe. Leonardo trained with one of the city’s very successful artists, Andrea del Verrocchio. He was a painter, sculptor and gold worker. Verrocchio told his students that they needed to understand the body’s bones and muscles when drawing people. Leonardo took his teacher’s advice very seriously. He spent several periods of his life studying the human body by taking apart and examining dead bodies. Experts say his later drawings of the organs and systems of the human body are still unequalled to this day. (MUSIC) STEVE EMBER: While training as an artist, Leonardo also learned about and improved on relatively new painting methods at the time. One was the use of perspective to show depth. A method called “sfumato” helped to create a cloudy effect to suggest distance. “Chiaroscuro” is a method using light and shade as a painterly effect. The artist also used oil paints instead of the traditional tempura paints used in Italy during this period.
Leonardo's first known portrait "Ginevra de’Benci"
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Leonardo’s first known portrait now hangs in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. He made this painting of a young woman named Ginevra de’Benci around fourteen seventy-four. The woman has a pale face with dark hair. In the distance, Leonardo painted the Italian countryside. He soon received attention for his extraordinary artistic skills. Around fourteen seventy-five he was asked to draw an angel in Verrocchio’s painting “Baptism of Christ.” One story says that when Verrocchio saw Leonardo’s addition to the painting, he was so amazed by his student’s skill, that he said he would never paint again. 字数318 自由阅读 (MUSIC) STEVE EMBER: Leonardo once said the following about actively using one’s mental abilities: “Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.” His mind was so active that he did not often finish his many projects. One religious painting he never finished was called “Adoration of the Magi”. He was hired to make the painting for a religious center. The complex drawing he made to prepare for the painting is very special. It shows how carefully he planned his art works. It shows his deep knowledge of geometry, volume and depth. He drew the many people in the painting without clothes so that he could make sure that their bodies would be physically correct once covered. SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Around fourteen eighty-two, Leonardo moved to Milan. There, he worked for the city’s ruler, Ludovico Sforza. This ruler invited Leonardo to Milan not as an artist, but as a musician. Historians say Leonardo was one of the most skillful lyre players in all of Italy. But he also continued his work as a painter. He also designed everything from festivals to weapons and a sculpture for Ludovico Sforza. STEVE EMBER: One famous work from Leonardo’s Milan period is called “Virgin of the Rocks.” It shows Jesus as a baby along with his mother, Mary, and John the Baptist also as a baby. They are sitting outside in an unusual environment. Leonardo used his careful observations of nature to paint many kinds of plants. In the background are a series of severe rock formations. This painting helped Leonardo make it clear to the ruler and people of Milan that he was a very inventive and skillful artist. SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Leonardo later made his famous painting “The Last Supper” for the dining room of a religious center in Milan. He combined his studies in light, math, psychology, geometry and anatomy for this special work. He designed the painting to look like it was part of the room. The painting shows a story from the Bible in which Jesus eats a meal with his followers for the last time. Jesus announces that one of them will betray him. The work received wide praise and many artists tried to copy its beauty. One modern art expert described Leonardo’s “Last Supper” as the foundation of western art. Unfortunately, Leonardo experimented with a new painting method for this work. The paint has suffered extreme damage over the centuries. (MUSIC) STEVE EMBER: In addition to the portrait of Ginevra de’Benci that we talked about earlier, Leonardo also painted several other non-religious paintings of women. One painting of Cecilia Gallerani has come to be known as “Lady with an Ermine” because of the small white animal she is holding. This woman was the lover of Milan’s ruler, Ludovico Sforza. However, Leonardo’s most famous portrait of a woman is called the “Mona Lisa.” It is now in the collection of the Louvre museum in Paris. He painted this image of Lisa Gherardini starting around fifteen-oh-three. She was the wife of a wealthy businessman from Florence named Francesco del Giocondo. It is from him that the painting takes its Italian name, “La Gioconda.” SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Lisa Gherardini is sitting down with her hands crossed in her lap. She looks directly at the painter. She seems to be smiling ever so slightly. A great deal of mystery surrounds the painting. Experts are not sure about how or why Leonardo came to paint the work. But they do know that he never gave it to the Giocondo family. He kept the painting with him for the rest of his life, during his travels through France and Italy. Leonardo da Vinci died in France in fifteen nineteen. A friend who was with him at his death said this of the great man’s life: “May God Almighty grant him eternal peace. Every one laments the loss of a man, whose like Nature cannot produce a second time.” STEVE EMBER: This program was written and produced by Dana Demange. I’m Steve Ember. SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: And I’m Shirley Griffith. You can see some of Leonardo da Vinci’s work at our website voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. 字数712 【越障】 Science after 9/11: How Research Was Changed by the September 11 Terrorist Attacks New work in forensics, biodefense and cyber security blossomed after the attacks on New York City, Washington, D.C., and in the skies over Pennsylvania, but increased regulations have also stymied international collaboration as well as work on some infectious diseases By Eugenie Samuel Reich | September 1, 2011 |4
Two months after al Qaeda terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan on September 11, 2001, analytical chemist John Butler found himself working late nights in his lab, developing DNA assays to identify 911 victims from the tens of thousands of charred human remains recovered at Ground Zero. Thinking back, he still clearly remembers the sense of rising to a national need that was shared by dozens of researchers recruited to the same difficult problem. "eople wanted to step up and help the country," he says. Ten years on, Butler's solitary effort at National Institute of Standards and Technology has grown to a large research group working on the forensics of blended, degraded or soiled DNA, and U.S. expertise developed in the wake of 9/11 has also been exported worldwide, put to use identifying victims of mass atrocities in Africa, Asia, Bosnia and Iraq. It is just one example of how a research direction blossomed as a result of 9/11. Scientists and science policy experts say the federal government's response to terrorist events in 2001, both the September attacks and the anthrax letters in October, have had a profound effect on U.S. research in areas as diverse as forensics, biodefense, infectious diseases, public health, cyber security, geology and infrastructure, energy, and nuclear weapons. Even the social sciences have been affected by the emergence of "terrorism studies" and the new emphasis on the threat in the field of risk analysis. A major conduit for the shifts is the availability of money: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), created by consolidating 22 federal services and agencies in 2002 in direct response to September 11, had a science budget that peaked at $1.3 billion in 2006 before falling again to about $700 million in 2011. Key science-funding agencies including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Energy, also put money into research motivated by security concerns (amounting to a total homeland security (this number does not refer to DHS but to homeland security funding across all agencies) research budget of $7.3 billion in 2011) and a small amount of the U.S. Department of Defense money associated with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq ended up in the hands of researchers as well—for example, by funding work on explosives detection and weaponry. In biodefense, so much money poured into science that Judith Reppy, a science and technology studies expert at Cornell University, even considered whether (adapting the term coined by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1961) a "biomedical-military-industrial complex" has emerged in which scientists, the military and lobbyists conspire to try to keep the funds coming. She rejected that hypothesis, finding that biomedical science in the U.S. remains primarily a civilian endeavor, but says 9/11 has introduced trimmings of "guards, guns and gates," and increased funding research on pathogens that might be used by terrorists. Some of the post-9/11 changes have entailed increased regulation. Jerry Jaax, a veterinarian and infectious disease researcher who oversees research compliance at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kans., says that many biomedical fields have been swamped by such new regulations or increased enforcement of pre-9/11 regulations in a bid to prevent researchers and the materials they handle from becoming security threats. He says federal rules on select agents—pathogens that require special facilities and handling—and on imports and exports of biological samples and materials, have slowed the ability of scientists to do research important to public and agricultural health. "Some say we're regulating away our ability to do this kind of research and I think there's some truth to that," he says And, a major difficulty has been immigration. The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 imposed stringent new visa requirements that restricted scientists and science students from all over the world from entering the U.S. Albert Teich, who has tracked the issue for the American Association for the Advancement of Science where he is director of science and policy programs, says that problem peaked in 2003, but has since improved, especially following lobbying of Congress by scientific societies and advice from the National Academy of Sciences, whose 2009 report "Beyond 'Fortress America'" and 2007 report "Rising above the Gathering Storm" were among those to suggest the rules be eased. But the policies had a lasting impact on the ability of U.S. researchers to collaborate and recruit students, he says. Teich adds that security concerns have cast a shadow over U.S. science in a number of ways, and points to the erection of a steel security barrier around the perimeter of the previously open campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. "To me," he says, "that fence is a very dramatic visual impact of 9/11 on science."作者: kidvii 时间: 2011-9-2 19:31
不好意思。最近KID的生活又开始一团浆糊了。
kid最近还好吧？是不是压力太大了？作者: fox0923 时间: 2011-9-3 22:52
5‘12” Since the terrorism of 9.11 happened in 2001, the researchers have started to study in people who were recovered under the ground, and they found these survivors have been affected by different disease, and this terrorism also brings an impact on science, security and even social science. The budget of these researches has been increased gradually in order to study security defense, etc. Some people argue that such researches will give terrorists opportunities to use these security system, but the scientists try to oppose these people's points. An organization(forgot..) even establish a policy regarding this problem, but it finally eased this program. Still, this is a big impact to the researchers when they recruit new students. ---------forgot....作者: Crystaljoy 时间: 2011-9-3 22:58
刚才做了一个练习，太急躁了，完全不知所看。又扒出来一个打击自己~~~ 1‘04 56’ 55’ 1’13 1‘18
Since 9/11, many new science and tech emerges. For instance, a reasearcher did DNA analysis to help indentify victims. Such a technology would also help people in other circumstance.
That is only one example of the impact of 9/11. Such impact has greatly influenced many aspects, such as ............ One of the direct factor for such change is the availability of money, nation grant more money to science development. Besides, some war funding also goes into science development in order to design explosive weapons. Yet, some inventions may be used by evil guys....
Also, there is negative impact, such as the regulation on migration. Since the Act was enforced, fewer scientists and students can immigrate to US. That would have profound impact on the ability of further research.....作者: balapupu 时间: 2011-9-5 20:20
我来补作业了~~ 1.[55'] 2.[53'] 3.[51'] 4.[57'] 5.[1,00']
eople wanted to step up and help the country," he says.