The English Blog

Cartoon: DIY Blood Pressure Test

BACKGROUND
A simple twice-a-day do-it-yourself test to monitor high blood pressure at home could save thousands of lives each year. The new self-monitoring system helps patients dramatically improve their condition by allowing them to record and send regular readings directly to medical staff. Doctors and nurses can then access these at the surgery and check the figures, contacting the patient if necessary to discuss their health and medication. Full story >>

THE CARTOON
The cartoon by Paul Thomas from The Daily Express shows a man in his kitchen using the new device to take his blood pressure. His face is red, and steam is coming out of his ears. His wife tells him, "Don't take it [i.e., your blood pressure] while you're reading stories about the E.U. [i.e., European Union]".

EXPLANATION
Steam coming from the ears is a common cartoon device used to show anger, frustration, or exasperation. We are meant to assume that the man is angry because he is reading a story about the latest E.U. disaster or cock-up. This is causing his blood pressure to rise, hence his wife's warning. The Daily Express is famously anti-EU, so this cartoon will appeal to its readers.

VOCABULARY
D.I.Y. is an abbreviation for 'do-it-yourself'. D.I.Y. (or DIY) usually relates to the activity of making or repairing things yourself, especially in your home, but can also be used as an adjective to describe things you do yourself. • Council officials have ordered concerned parents to remove DIY road safety signs near a school. 

IDIOMS
Here are a couple of idioms connecting blood with anger:
• It makes my blood boil to think of the amount of food that gets wasted around here.
• My blood pressure is going to go through the roof if things don't change!

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Cartoon: Cloned Babies Breakthrough

BACKGROUND
This cartoon by Mac from The Daily Mail relates to news that scientists have extracted stem cells from human embryos created in a laboratory. The breakthrough could lead to customised cells to help treat and even cure a range of diseases, from Alzheimer’s to multiple sclerosis. However, it also raises the spectre of babies being cloned in laboratories. Full story >>

THE CARTOON
A man is lying on the sofa reading the newspaper, which has a front page story about the "Cloned Babies Breakthrough". We are meant to deduce that his wife, who is surrounded by dozens of little clones of herself, has just come back from the cloning clinic. She must have just told her husband about the procedure because he replies, without looking at her, "Go on. They took a sliver of your skin and put it in a test tube - then what?"

VOCABULARY
1. A  sliver of something is a small thin piece or amount of it.
2. A breakthrough is an important development or achievement.
3. A clone is an animal or plant that has been produced artificially, for example in a laboratory, from the cells of another animal or plant. A clone is exactly the same as the original animal or plant.

Related articles

Scientists clone human embryos to make stem cells

Cloning scientists create stem cells from skin

Cloning 'Holy Grail': caffeine key to breakthrough

Scientists make breakthrough in human cloning, create first embryos

Scientists clone human embryos to make stem cells

Reuters Video: Millionaire plans to send couple to Mars

Space tourist and multimillionaire entrepreneur Dennis Tito unveils plans to send a couple to Mars in January 2018. Deborah Gembara reports.

TRANSCRIPT
REPORTER: Middle-aged couples in search of adventure may want to pay close attention. Millionaire space tourist Dennis Tito is setting his sites on the red planet, announcing on Wednesday plans to send two people, a male and a female, near Mars in 2018. Tito made history in 2001 as the first person to fund his own trip to the International Space Station.
DENNIS TITO, CHAIRMAN OF INSPIRATION MARS FOUNDATION: "We fly within a hundred miles of Mars. I mean that is essentially being there. Swing by, use the gravitational shift of Mars and come back to earth, just like a boomerang, you don't need to have any propulsive maneuvers."
REPORTER: Because the couple won't actually be landing on the red planet, Tito's team won't have to worry about undocking or redocking or the do-or-die engine burn from the return from Mars. A middle-aged couple, well past their childbearing years would be the ideal crew members to make the trip says Tito because of the limited space inside the capsule. Jayne Poynter is the President of Paragon Space Development.
JANE POYNTER: "It's a really long road trip. You are jammed into an RV that goes the equivalent of 32,000 times around the earth, and you can't get out for about a year and a half."
REPORTER: While Tito is confident in the mission, he says the planets will have to be in perfect alignment. He finally decided on 2018 because it looked better than 2031, the next ideal window.

Related articles

Dennis Tito: A man with a passion for space now has a mission for Mars

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First Space Tourist Sets Sights On A Mars Mission - NPR

Millionaire Dennis Tito will Send Married Couple to Mars in 2018

Reuters Video: Neanderthal cloning possible but ethically in question

Scientists discuss the possibility of cloning Neanderthals and the obstacles that will probably prevent any such attempts. Adam Brauner reports.

TRANSCRIPT
REPORTER: It might soon be possible to clone Neanderthals, our closest extinct relatives. Geneticist George Church says it is more than theoretically possible to make a clone from extracted old DNA. He theorizes that studying cloned Neanderthals can help scientists better understand the human mind, but he does not intend to try. Scientists have already extracted DNA from Neanderthal bones, but the community thinks ethical issues will be the biggest obstacle.
GEORGE CHURCH, PROFESSOR OF GENETICS AT HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: "Maybe we don't have to accept global warming as a truth in the 1850's, but we should be able to detect that nobody is actually working on cloning Neanderthals in 2013."
REPORTER: Dr. Rob Desalle, of the American Museum of Natural History, agrees.
ROB DESALLE, AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, CURATOR, SACKLER INSTITUTE OF COMPARATIVE GENOMICS: "I think the likelihood of seeing a Neanderthal clone is the same as seeing a Tyrannosaurus Rex in Central Park actually. And that's because there are so many ethical issues involved."
REPORTER: Church plans to continue speaking publicy about his research, which focuses on using genes to treat and prevent disease.

Related articles

Is it ethical to clone a Neanderthal?

Want to give birth to a Neanderthal? Apply within!

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Bioethicist: Here's why creating a Neanderthal clone is such a bad idea

Harvard genetics professor denies "Neanderthal clone" project

Words in the News: Reverse

Scientists are a step closer to creating a pill that will reverse ageing, claims the Express. Full story >>

VOCABULARY
If you reverse something, such as a decision, judgment, or process, you change it so that it is the opposite of what it was before. • More changes are required to reverse the trend towards centralised power.

Words in the News: IVF

The Daily Telegraph says Britain could become the first country in the world to legalise the creation of IVF babies with three biological parents. Full story >>

VOCABULARY
IVF is an abbreviation for 'in vitro fertilization', a method of helping a woman to have a baby in which an egg is removed from one of her ovaries, fertilized outside her body, and then replaced in her womb. • Since the successful birth of the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown in 1978 in England, IVF treatments have provided millions of couples struggling to have children the chance to build families of their own.

Higgs Boson Cartoons

Some people, including Stephen Hawking, thought it would never happen. No, I'm not talking about a British player reaching the men's final at Wimbledon, but the discovery of the Higgs boson. To mark this epoch-making event in the history of science, The Cagle Post has put together a nice collection of Higgs boson cartoons. This one is by Bob Englehart from the Hartford Courant. 

EXPLANATION
The cartoonist uses a well-known idiom as the basis for this cartoon. If you say that trying to find something is like looking for a needle in a haystack, it means that it is very difficult, if not impossible to find among everything around it. • Finding parking in downtown Watertown these days is a lot like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack. The image is easy enough to understand: a needle is small, and a haystack is big. So the cartoonist is emphasizing the fact that the chances of scientists finding the Higgs boson were very small indeed. By the way, the implement sticking out of the haystack is a pitchfork.

The Higgs Boson and Its Discovery Explained with Animation

Ever since the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) went online in 2008, physicists have been conducting experiments, hoping to finally prove or disprove the existence of The God Particle, otherwise known as the Higgs Boson. Yesterday, researchers working at CERN (which operates the LHC) announced that they think they’ve finally found it. In this video, Daniel Whiteson, a physics professor at UC Irvine, gives us a fuller explanation of the Higgs Boson and the LHC experiments that were used to confirm it. (via Open Culture)

ALSO SEE
• What Can We Do With the Higgs Boson? (Wired)
• Video: Higgs boson: Science explained using sugar and ping-pong balls (BBC News)
• Video: What is the Higgs boson? (BBC News)

Reuters Video: Particle discovery could force rethink of modern physics

Scientists at the CERN research centre have found a new subatomic particle that could be the Higgs boson, the basic building block of the universe. Sarah Sheffer reports.

TRANSCRIPT
REPORTER: Scientists at Europe's CERN research centre believe they have found one of the basic building blocks of the universe -- a subatomic particle called the Higgs boson. The Director General of CERN told an audience of scientists that the discovery is a milestone in mankind's understanding of nature and has opened up exciting prospects for further revelations in the field. Peter Higgs, the British physicist who proposed the existence of the boson which bears his name in the 1960s, was at CERN to welcome the news. The Higgs theory explains how particles clumped together to form stars, planets and life itself. Without the Higgs particle, the particles that make up the universe would have remained a formless soup, the theory goes. What scientists do not yet know from the latest findings is whether the particle they have discovered is in fact the Higgs boson.
BRITISH SCIENTIST, EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF THEORETICAL PHYSICS AT IMPERIAL COLLEGE, TOM KIBBLE, SAYING: "They have certainly discovered a particle which looks similar to the expected Higgs particle, but there is a lot of work to be done to be sure that it has all the right properties.''
REPORTER: It could also be a variant of the Higgs idea or an entirely new subatomic particle that could force a rethink on the fundamental structure of matter. Sarah Sheffer, Reuters.

ALSO SEE
• "It's a boson:" Higgs quest bears new particle (Reuters)
• Professor Higgs wipes a tear from his eye as fellow scientists find his 'God particle'  (Mail Online)
• Higgs boson (The Guardian) 

Newsy Video: Leap Second Added to Clocks This Weekend

An extra second will be added at 23:59:59 Saturday to keep scientists' clocks in synch with the Earth's rotation. See transcript >>

COMMENT
How will you spend your extra second?

ALSO SEE
• Extra second added to weekend (ABC News)
• So what will you do with your extra second tomorrow night? (The Independent)

Newsy Video: European Commission Launches Controversial Video

The European Commission aims to get young women in science by launching a video and website filled with makeup, lipstick, and bubbles. See transcript >>

COMMENT
You can see the complete toe-curlingly awful video here. And the website isn't much better.

DISCUSSION
What do you think of the campaign? Do you find it offensive, patronising, or sexist?

ALSO SEE
• Science 'girl thing' video branded offensive (The Telegraph)
• 'Girl Thing' video: Not a good thing (msnbc)
• Science it's a girl thing - FAIL? (video reaction from Astronomer Dr Meghan Gray)

Words in the News: Vilify

Christians are being “persecuted” by courts and “driven underground” in the same way that homosexuals once were, a former Archbishop of Canterbury has warned. Full story >>

VOCABULARY
If you are vilified by someone, they say or write very unpleasant things about you, so that people will have a low opinion of you. • Christopher Jefferies, the man wrongly arrested by police in the hunt for the murderer of Joanna Yeates, has given a graphic account of how he was vilified by the press.

Words in the News: Blame

The Telegraph leads with a study which claims red meat is responsible for one in 10 early deaths. Full story >>

VOCABULARY
If you blame a person or thing for something bad, you believe or say that they are responsible for it or that they caused it. • Each side in the Syrian conflict blamed the other for the latest carnage in Homs.

Reuters Video: Robot sings, dances and helps with homework

The upgraded NAO (pronounced: 'Now') robot, created by French company Aldebaran Robotics, can sing, dance, take photographs and communicate in nine languages, making it one of the smartest personal automatons around. The company's business plan is based on the belief that in years to come there will be a robot in every home. Jim Drury reports.

TRANSCRIPT
REPORTER: The new NAO Next Gen robot is an automaton of many talents. It's creators at Aldebaran Robotics say it could be the personal assistant you've been waiting for. It can sing, dance, and take photographs. The robot's vocal-recognition programme, called Nuance, allows it to communicate in nine languages.
NAO ROBOT AND MAN TALKING: Equipped with two 920 pixel cameras, it uses complex algorithms to recognise images and faces. Aldebaran's head of communications Bastien Parent says NAO is designed to be a useful helper and companion.
BASTIEN PARENT: "It can be useful by giving people information, it can give you a weather forecast for example, it can tell you how long it will take you to go to work, it can tell you if your child got home okay. So why not have a robot you can control from your mobile phone or keep it at home while you are on holiday so you can make sure everything is okay."
REPORTER: Named after the Mandarin word for brain, NAO boasts an on-board computer, enabling the robot to follow orders. It recognises colours and voices and is controlled via an internet connection. Parent says NAO could help autistic children, who are said to demonstrate better verbal communication when in the same room as a robot.
BASTIEN PARENT: "Above all, lots of this is geared up to be used in people's spare time and it is meant to be what we call 'edutainment', which means it can teach something at home, something about history, or maths, or it could even be used as an aid for children to help with homework."
REPORTER: But the automatons aren't cheap, with models costing around 16,000 (US) dollars. Batteries will set you back a further 400 (US) dollars. Three years after its first model became commerically available, Aldebaran says it has sold 2,000 robots world-wide. And as the technology improves, the company believes it won't be long before robots like NAO will become less expensive and more accessible to households around the world. Jim Drury, Reuters.

COMMENT
But can it do the dishes?

Reuters Video: Humanoid robot in Valentine's experiment

Flowers, chocolates and romantic greeting cards are flying out the doors of department stores around the world this week, ahead of February 14th - Valentine's Day. Romance is in the air, but for scientists in Japan, Valentine's Day is also providing the ideal opportunity to test the public's love of robots. Rob Muir reports.

TRANSCRIPT
REPORTER: Patiently she sits, waiting for her Prince Charming to call. But her phone isn't ringing and it's not that she isn't attractive. It's that she's a robot. Her name is Geminoid F and she's been sitting in a display case at Tokyo's Takashimaya department store for more than a week. Vice manager Naoto Nomura says Geminoid F gives the store chache.
NAOTO NOMURA: "Department stores used to represent the cutting edge, but people no longer think that. That's why we decided to display this sort of cutting edge Japanese technology here." But Geminoid F's presence serves a scientific purpose as well. Her creators want to observe the inerteraction between her and passing shoppers with an eye to future societies where robots and humans will interact on a daily basis.
MEMBER OF HIROSHI ISHIGURO LABORATORY KOHEI OGAWA: "Valentine's day is the season of the love. When programming this robot we tried to make it so that she would sit and expect someone to come, and keep repeating that cycle. All in all, we worked to make it so that the android would be able to show the romantic charms of a lady."
REPORTER: And it seems to be working. One shopper, Yuta Mori says he might just be the man Geminoid F has been waiting for.
YUTA MORI: "It's looks really human-like, not like a doll at all. Even when I get close to her, I saw how high quality her skin was and how she stared back into my eyes."
REPORTER: The Valentine's experiment is not the first in which Geminoid F has been introduced to the public. In 2010, she was cast as the star of "Sayonara" a futuristic play about an intimate relationship between a dying woman and her android caretaker. The play was well-received. For her creators, Geminoid F's gradual integration with society is all-important to future robotic technologies. If the public can accept Geminoid F on stage and as a department store display, robot scientists say they are more likely to her accept in their homes, offices and department stores in years to come. Rob Muir, Reuters.

COMMENT
Creepy!