Eva's Blogger（26）: 2016

2016年12月26日星期一

Week Eight : Pokemon Go

Pokemon Go appears to have done something its predecessors on Game Boy and Nintendo DS could not — attract a diverse fan base to the Pokemon universe.

A survey of 1,000 players of the enormously popular augmented reality game by mobile market research firm MFour shows that minorities and women are getting into Pokemon through the app.

Thirty-four percent of respondents said they had never played a Pokemon game before, but that number is higher among certain groups. For 49% of African-American respondents and 40% of Latino respondents, “Pokemon Go” is their first Pokemon game.

That’s compared with 32% of Caucasian respondents and 31% of Asian respondents.

About one-third of respondents were minorities. In general, race or ethnicity have no effect on who plays video games, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center report.

Thanks to “Pokemon Go,” more women are getting into the franchise as well. Of the 500 female respondents, 47% said they had never played Pokemon before the new mobile game. Among male players, just 21% of respondents were playing Pokemon for the first time.

Pokemon’s move to new demographics could be good news for Nintendo, which owns a 32% stake in Pokemon Co., which licenses the Pokemon franchise.

Pokemon Go draws an overwhelmingly millennial crowd, with 83% of respondents aged 18 to 34.

Those who play the game aren’t breaking the bank for in-app purchases. Only 26% of respondents have spent on extra “Pokemon Go” features, 62% of whom have dropped $10 or less.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tn-pokemon-demographics-20160718-snap-story.html

Structure of the Lead：

WHO - Pokemon Go
WHEN - not given

WHAT - Pokemon Go attracts diverse crowd of gamers
WHY - Pokemon Go appears to have done something its predecessors on Game Boy and Nintendo DS could notWHERE - not given

HOW - people play the augmented reality game

Keywords：

1. predecessor : (n.) 前輩
2. diverse : (adj.) 不同的

3. augmented : (adj.) 增加的，擴增的
4. ethnicity : (n.) 種族
5. franchise : (n.) 公民權
6. demographic : (adj.) 人口統計學的
7. overwhelmingly : (adv.) 壓倒地
8. millennial : (adj.) 美滿的

2016年12月12日星期一

Week Seven : 白頭盔

When a bomb comes crashing down on a building, leaving devastation in its wake, they rush towards the site instead of towards shelters. With their bare hands, they search for people in the rubble. They try to pull out survivors who are shocked and wounded, tormented by fear and, not least, the knowledge that civilians long ago stopped being collateral damage, and are precisely the target in this war. These rescuers are Syria’s White Helmets, a group of 3,000 local volunteers. Once tailors or carpenters or students or engineers, they are now dedicated to saving lives when fighter jets and helicopters drop barrel bombs, cluster explosives, phosphorus bombs and chlorine shells on neighbourhoods or hospitals. As the Nobel committee prepares to announce this year’s peace prize, the White Helmets deserve attention.

In Syria’s maelstrom of horrors, it is hard to find anything that points to respect for basic humanitarian principles or even human dignity. The Assad regime has unleashed untold levels of violence on the Syrian population and is being actively assisted by Russia’s military intervention as well as by Iranian-connected ground forces. Jihadi groups have grown, often filling voids left by less well-armed and well-resourced moderates. Civilians are trapped in the middle. In Aleppo, 300,000 people are exposed to a relentless barrage of airstrikes. The Syrian government and Russia now seem intent on crushing Aleppo, the opposition’s last stronghold, before a new American president takes office. Diplomacy has entirely collapsed, with acrimonious exchanges in the UN replacing attempts at a ceasefire.

This is the backdrop against which the White Helmets operate – a western-funded Syrian search-and-rescue organisation whose members put their lives at great risk to save civilians, receiving only a monthly stipend of $150. Danger is made worse by the fact those who bomb routinely resort to double-tap strikes, with fighter jets dropping ordnance and then returning to target rescue teams.

These volunteers know all too well that great power politics, alongside a tyrant’s brutal policies, have brought Syria to the abyss. They entertain no illusions that genuine measures will be taken swiftly to end massacres on a scale unprecedented in decades. The White Helmets do what they can, locally. It’s the very least the west can do to back them. No one should be surprised that Bashar al-Assad has compared these humanitarian activists to terrorists: that’s what he calls anyone who opposes him.

What the White Helmets accomplish may seem like a drop in the ocean, but what they represent is immense: resilience and bravery in the face of barbarism. They are a constant reminder that those targeted by Russia and the Assad regime’s massive bombing campaign in Aleppo are civilians, not terrorists. And they show that individual acts of courage can go a long way to fight indifference. They also embody a spirit of civic resistance – upholding some of the ideals of the peaceful, popular uprising of 2011 and exemplifying courage and solidarity in the face of state-sponsored terror. The international community has utterly failed Syrians, by failing to protect them from mass atrocities. No Nobel peace prize can erase that. But because symbols can be powerful, the White Helmets should be recognised with this award.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/05/the-guardian-view-on-the-nobel-peace-prize-give-it-to-syrias-white-helmets

Structure of the Lead：
WHO -
WHEN -
WHAT -
WHY -
WHERE -
HOW -

Keywords：
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

10.

2016年12月5日星期一

Week Six : 熊本地震

A more powerful earthquake has rocked the southern Japanese city of Kumamoto in the middle of the night, a day after an earlier tremor killed nine people.

The magnitude-7.3 quake hit at a depth of 10km (six miles) at 01:25 on Saturday (15:25 GMT on Friday) in Kyushu region. At least three people died and hundreds were injured.

A village has been evacuated after a dam collapsed, media reports say.

A tsunami warning was issued, and lifted some 50 minutes later.

Japan is regularly hit by earthquakes but stringent building codes mean that they rarely cause significant damage.

This new earthquake in Kyushu was much bigger and hit a wider area than the one that struck Kumamoto on Thursday night, says the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Tokyo.

In one town near the coast, the city hall has been so badly damaged there are fears it could collapse. A hospital has been evacuated because it is no longer safe.

Thousands of people have fled on to the streets and into parks - where they are huddled under blankets looking dazed and afraid, our correspondent says.

But there are numerous reports of people trapped inside buildings, including at least 60 inside an old people's home.

Public broadcaster NHK says the dam collapsed in the Nishihara village.

Television pictures showed thousands of people filling streets and parks, looking dazed across the region.

NHK had warned of sea waves of up to 1m (3ft).

Japan's nuclear authority said the Sendai nuclear plant was not damaged.

The quake was originally assessed as magnitude 7.1 but revised upwards to 7.3 later.

Gavin Hayes, a research geophysicist with the US Geological Survey (USGS) in Colorado, told the BBC that the latest earthquake would hamper the earlier rescue operation that was already under way.

He said more damage could be expected as the earthquake had been shallower and the fault-line had been much longer.

"The ground surface would have moved in the region of 4-5m. So, you are talking very intense shaking over quite a large area. And that's why we'll probably see a significant impact from this event."

The Associated Press news agency said guests at the Ark Hotel near the Kumamoto Castle, which was damaged, woke up and gathered in the lobby for safety.

Thursday's magnitude-6.2 quake caused shaking at some places as intense as the huge earthquake that hit the country in 2011, Japan's seismology office said.

That quake sparked a huge tsunami and nuclear meltdown at a power plant in Fukushima.

Most of those who died in Thursday's quake were in the town of Mashiki where an apartment building collapsed and many houses were damaged.

More than 1,000 people were injured.

Some 40,000 people had initially fled their homes, with many of those closest to the epicentre spending the night outside, as more than 130 aftershocks had hit the area.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36059487

Structure of the Lead：
WHO -
WHEN -
WHAT -
WHY -
WHERE -
HOW -

Keywords：
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

10.

2016年11月28日星期一

Week Five : 火箭回收

Three weeks after one of its rockets exploded while on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral, SpaceX said Friday that it is narrowing in on the possible cause, pinpointing a "large breach" in a helium system in the rocket's second-stage fuel tank.In a statement, the company said the investigation is still "preliminary" and that "all plausible causes are being tracked in an extensive fault tree and carefully investigated."The investigative team--led by SpaceX and comprised of the Federal Aviation Administration, NASA and the Air Force-- has looked through reams of data and evidence in trying to understand how the rocket suddenly ignited into a massive fireball while being fueled in preparation for an engine test, the company said.On Twitter, Elon Musk, the company's founder, has said the failure was the most difficult and complicated the company has ever faced. And he asked the public to turn over any video or recordings of the event that might help investigators.In the statement Friday, the company said, "the majority of debris from the incident has been recovered, photographed, labeled and cataloged, and is now in a hangar for inspection and use during the investigation...At this stage of the investigation, preliminary review of the data and debris suggests that a large breach in the cryogenic helium system of the second stage liquid oxygen tank took place."It was not clear what caused the breach.Last year, the company lost another Falcon 9 rocket when it blew up a couple minutes into flight. SpaceX said that explosion was also due to a problem with the upper stage. But on Friday it said it has ruled out any connection with that failure.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/09/23/elon-musks-spacex-narrows-in-on-cause-of-rocket-explosion/?utm_term=.426bab7bbabd

Structure of the Lead：
WHO -
WHEN -
WHAT -
WHY -
WHERE -
HOW -

Keywords：

1. pinpoint : (v.) 刺穿

2. helium : (n.) 氦

3. preliminary : (adj.) 初步的，預備的

4. plausible : (adj.) 貌似真實的

5. ignite : (v.) 點燃，使著火

6. debris : (n.) 殘骸

7. catalog : (v.) 將...編入目錄

8. cryogenic : (adj.) 冷凍劑的

Week Four : 巴黎氣候高峰會

President Barack Obama praised a landmark climate change agreement approved Saturday in Paris, saying it could be "a turning point for the world."
"The Paris agreement establishes the enduring framework the world needs to solve the climate crisis," the President said, speaking from the White House. "It creates the mechanism, the architecture, for us to continually tackle this problem in an effective way."
He praised American leadership but noted that all participating nations will have to cooperate.
"I believe this moment can be a turning point for the world," Obama said, calling the agreement "the best chance we have to save the one planet that we've got."
Though the plan was hailed as a milestone in the battle to keep Earth hospitable to human life, critics say it is short on specifics, such as how the plan will be enforced or how improvements will be measured.
The accord achieved one major goal. It limits average global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures and strives for a limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) if possible.

Some major points not addressed
The agreement, put together at the 21st Conference of Parties, or COP21, doesn't mandate exactly how much each country must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
Rather, it sets up a bottom-up system in which each country sets its own goal -- which the agreement calls a "nationally determined contribution" -- and then must explain how it plans to reach that objective.
Those pledges must be increased over time, and starting in 2018 each country will have to submit new plans every five years.
Many countries actually submitted their new plans before climate change conference, known as COP21, started last month -- but those pledges aren't enough to keep warming below the 2-degree target. But the participants' hope is that over time, countries will aim for more ambitious goals and ratchet up their commitments.
Another sticking point has been coming up with a way to punish nations that don't do their part, but observers say that was never really on the table.
Instead, the agreement calls for the creation of a committee of experts to "facilitate implementation" and "promote compliance" with the agreement, but it won't have the power to punish violators.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/12/world/global-climate-change-conference-vote/

Structure of the Lead：
WHO - President Barack Obama
WHEN - 2015
WHAT -
WHY -
WHERE - in Paris
HOW -

Keywords：
1. framework : (n.) 結構
2. tackle : (v.) 與...交涉
3. hospitable : (adj.) 宜人的
4. strive : (v.) 努力，奮鬥
5. mandate : (v.) 把（領土）委託別國管轄
6. pledge : (n.) 保證
7. facilitate : (v.) 使容易
8. implementation : (n.) 履行，完成

2016年11月19日星期六

Week Three : Alpha Go勝棋王

After suffering its first defeat in the Google DeepMind Challenge Match on Sunday, the Go-playing AI AlphaGo has beaten world-class player Lee Se-dol for a fourth time to win the five-game series 4-1 overall. The final game proved to be a close one, with both sides fighting hard and going deep into overtime. AlphaGo is an AI developed by Google-owned British company DeepMind, and had already wrapped up a historic victory on Saturday by becoming the first ever computer program to beat a top-level Go player.

The win came after a "bad mistake" made early in the game, according to DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis, leaving AlphaGo "trying hard to claw it back." By winning the final game despite its blip in the fourth, AlphaGo has demonstrated beyond doubt its superiority over one of the world's best Go players, reaffirming a major milestone for artificial intelligence in the process.

It was "the most mind-blowing game experience we've had so far," said DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis at the post-match press conference, with an "incredibly close and tense finish." Lee said that he felt sorry the match was coming to an end, while expressing how difficult it has been from a psychological perspective.

Week Two : 敘利亞內戰

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has clung to power amid a brutal five-year war, has called on the West to cease supporting rebel fighters if it wants to stop the flow of refugees, and engage with the government in peace talks.

In a rare interview with Australian public broadcaster SBS, Assad spoke about the fractious Syrian ceasefire, described British Brexit leaders as "disconnected from reality" and said he welcomed intervention against ISIS in Syria, as long as it wasn't "window dressing."

At least a quarter of a million people have been killed since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, while almost 5 million Syrians have fled the country, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

A ceasefire was agreed to by all sides in February, with the help of Russia and the United States, although in recent weeks both the government and the rebels have been accused of breaking the truce.

In the interview, Assad said the Syrian refugees wanted to come home and, rather than humanitarian action, the best and "less costly" way for the West to help them was to destroy the rebels.

"Help them go back by helping the stability in Syria, not to give any umbrella or support to the terrorists," he said. "That's what (the refugees) want... Most of them, they didn't leave because they are against the government or with the government; they left because it's very difficult to live in Syria these days."

Saying he was a "very emotional" person, Assad told the journalist he hoped the refugees would come back to Syria one day. "Losing people as refugees is like losing human resources. How can you build a country without human resources?"

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/01/middleeast/assad-interview-syria-refugees/

Structure of the Lead：

WHO - Assad

WHEN - 2016

WHAT - If the West want to stop the flow of refugees

WHY - not given

WHERE - In Syria

HOW - He will engage with the government in peace talks

Keywords：

1. brutal : (adj.) 殘忍的，冷酷的

2. rebel : (vi.) 造反

3. fractious : (adj.) 難以對待的，易怒的

4. humanitarian : (n.) 人道主義者

5. commissioner : (n.) （政府部門的）長官

6. truce : (n.) 停戰

7. intervention : (n.) 介入，干預
8. stability : (n.) 穩定性

Week One : 2015年代表字

That’s right – for the first time ever, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is a pictograph:

, officially called the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ emoji, though you may know it by other names. There were other strong contenders from a range of fields, outlined below, but

was chosen as the ‘word’ that best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015.

Why was this chosen?

Emojis (the plural can be either emoji or emojis) have been around since the late 1990s, but 2015 saw their use, and use of the word emoji, increase hugely.

This year Oxford University Press have partnered with leading mobile technology business SwiftKey to explore frequency and usage statistics for some of the most popular emoji across the world, and

was chosen because it was the most used emoji globally in 2015. SwiftKey identified that

made up 20% of all the emojis used in the UK in 2015, and 17% of those in the US: a sharp rise from 4% and 9% respectively in 2014. The word emoji has seen a similar surge: although it has been found in English since 1997, usage more than tripled in 2015 over the previous year according to data from the Oxford Dictionaries Corpus.

A brief history of emoji

An emoji is ‘a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion in electronic communication’; the term emoji is a loanword from Japanese, and comes from e ‘picture’ + moji ‘letter, character’. The similarity to the English word emoticon has helped its memorability and rise in use, though the resemblance is actually entirely coincidental: emoticon (a facial expression composed of keyboard characters, such as ;), rather than a stylized image) comes from the English words emotion and icon.

Emojis are no longer the preserve of texting teens – instead, they have been embraced as a nuanced form of expression, and one which can cross language barriers. Even Hillary Clinton solicited feedback in the form of emojis, and

has had notable use from celebrities and brands alongside everyone else – and even appeared as the caption to the Vine which apparently kicked off the popularity of the term on fleek, which appears on our WOTY shortlist.

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/11/word-of-the-year-2015-emoji/

Structure of the Lead：

WHO - Emoji

WHEN - 2015

WHAT - word of the year

WHY - it was the most used pictograph globally in 2015

WHERE - not given

HOW - not given

Keywords：

1. preoccupation : (n.) 搶先佔據

2. statistic : (adj.) 統計（上）的

3. loanword : (n.) 外來語

4. resemblance : (n.) 相似點

5. coincidental : (adj.) 巧合的

6. stylized : (vt.) 使格式化的

7. embrace : (vt.) 包括

8. nuance : (n.) 細微差別

9. solicited : (vt.) 請求的

10. kick off : 開始

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2016年12月26日 星期一

2016年12月12日 星期一

2016年12月5日 星期一

2016年11月28日 星期一

2016年11月19日 星期六

Why was this chosen?

A brief history of emoji

2016年12月26日星期一

2016年12月12日星期一

2016年12月5日星期一

2016年11月28日星期一

2016年11月19日星期六