Eva's Blogger（26）: 11月 2016

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11月28日 星期一