2017-06-20 Special English
This is Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing. Here is the news.
A Chinese envoy to the United Nations has called on the international community to adapt to the new trends and features of terrorist groups and enhance cooperation in fighting terrorism.
Recently, multiple terrorist attacks occurred in Egypt, Afghanistan, Britain, France, Iran and other places, causing severe casualties and property losses. Chinese's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations made the remarks at a Security Council meeting which focused on the threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts.
He stressed that terrorism is the common enemy of mankind and its impact goes beyond borders; and no country can address terrorism by itself or keep itself from terrorism.
The Chinese envoy called for measures to reach international consensus, deal with the root causes of terrorism, stem the transnational movement of terrorists, cut off their financing channels and fight against their propaganda.
He said the international community should put solving regional hot-spot issues as a top priority, and work to promote political dialogues to address regional conflicts and maintain regional peace, stability and development, so as to eradicate the root cause of terrorism.
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China is working on reusable launch vehicles and has achieved progress in some key areas.
A carrier rocket official says the processes under development include parachute-landing and propulsion-landing.
Reusable lift-body launchers will be developed in three stages, namely, rocket-engine partial reusable vehicle, rocket-engine full reusable vehicle and combined cycle-engine reusable vehicle.
The official said the Long March carrier rockets still have room for improvement, adding that China is developing a heavy-lift launch vehicle with a payload of 140 tonnes to low Earth orbit and 50 tonnes to lunar transfer orbit.
The heavy-lift carrier rocket is currently called the Long March-9, and it should be sent into space by 2030.
A low-cost commercial medium launch vehicle, the Long March-8, is under development, and based on the Long March-8, a new high-orbit medium launch vehicle should be designed to improve the Long March series and enhance competitiveness.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing.
China's Food and Drug Administration has approved a new-generation of heart valve replacement product, which greatly reduces surgery time and increases survival rate.
The developers announced recently that the J-Valve has passed clinical tests and will be put into use across China.
Traditional solutions require doctors to make a big incision on the patients' chests and open their hearts to put the prosthetic valve inside manually. The process takes about four hours and poses risks of wrong positioning of the valve and loss of blood.
The J-Valve system features minimally invasive surgery. It is easier to implant and provides automatic positioning of the valve. Doctors only watch an electronic screen and operate outside the patients' bodies. The whole procedure lasts about 10 minutes.
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The World Health Organization has started a "smoke-free generation" media campaign in Beijing targeting young people in China.
A World Health Organization representative says China is in the grip of a national tobacco epidemic, and children are most susceptible with cigarettes portrayed as fashionable and alluring in popular culture.
According to World Health Organization, over half of Chinese adult men smoke, two thirds of whom started as young adults. By 2014, 73 percent Chinese students had been exposed to secondhand smoke.
The official says there is nothing cool about smoking, but there is something empowering about choosing to live a healthy, smoke-free life.
Since China ratified the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2005, the country has made a number of tobacco control efforts, including banning tobacco advertisements, increasing tobacco taxes and putting forward regional smoking bans.
As of 2016, 18 cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, had implemented regional smoking bans.
China has set a target to reduce the smoking rate among people aged 15 and older to 20 percent by 2030 from the current 28 percent. That's according to the "Healthy China 2030" blueprint issued by the central authorities last October.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing.
One in 20 pregnant women in the U.S. territories with confirmed Zika virus infection had a baby or fetus with Zika virus-associated birth defects.
Among the women with confirmed Zika infection during the first trimester, eight percent, or nearly one in 12, had a baby or fetus with Zika virus-associated birth defects.
A government report, the first from the U.S. territories, represents the largest number of completed pregnancies with laboratory confirmation of Zika virus infection to date.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says as these latest findings illustrate, Zika virus poses a serious threat to pregnant women and their babies, regardless of when the infection occurs during the pregnancy.
It says women in the U.S. territories and elsewhere who have continued exposure to mosquitoes carrying Zika are at risk of infection. The government must remain vigilant and committed to preventing new Zika infections.
The new analysis reviewed the cases of 2,550 women with possible Zika virus infections who completed their pregnancies, of which 1,508 had confirmed Zika virus infections.
In this report, more than 120 pregnancies resulted in Zika-associated birth defects.
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Researchers at the University of California in San Francisco have found that older people with persistent pain show quicker declines in memory as they age and are more likely to have dementia years later.
Findings from their study, which appears to be the first to make this association, indicate that chronic pain could somehow be related to changes in the brain that contribute to dementia.
The researchers analyzed data from 10,000 participants aged 60 and up over a 12-year period.
The participants who said they were persistently troubled by moderate or severe pain in both years 1998 and 2000 declined 9 percent faster in tests of memory function over the next 10 years than those who said they were not troubled by pain.
Those who complained about persistent pain also had a small but significantly increased likelihood of developing dementia overall.
Researchers say the findings point toward new ways of thinking about how to protect older people from the cognitive insults of aging.
Elderly people need to maintain their cognition to stay independent. Up to one in three older people suffer from chronic pain, so understanding the relationship between pain and cognitive decline is an important first step toward finding ways to help this population.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing. You can access the program by logging on to crienglish.com. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. Now the news continues.
U.S. researchers studying autism say they were now able to use brain scans to detect functional changes in high-risk babies as young as six months of age and then predict who would be diagnosed with the condition at age two.
Autism affects roughly one out of every 68 children in the United States. Siblings of children diagnosed with autism are at higher risk of developing the disorder.
Although early diagnosis and intervention can help improve outcomes for children with autism, there currently is no method to diagnose the disease before children show symptoms.
The current study is conducted by a research team led by investigators at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The study focused on the brain's functional connectivity, or how regions of the brain work together during different tasks and during rest.
Using an imaging technique called functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers have scanned 59 high-risk, six-month-old infants while they slept naturally.
The children were deemed high-risk because they have older siblings with autism. At the age of two, 11 of the 59 infants in this group were diagnosed with autism, and nine of the 11 infants would go on to have autism.
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The Australian State of New South Wales' health department has announced that it will ban sugary soft drinks in all hospitals and care facilities by the end of this year, in order to combat the growing problem of obesity.
The move comes as part of its "Make Healthy Normal" campaign, which aims to achieve a five percent reduction in overweight and obesity rates in adults by 2020.
Chief health officer Kerry Chant said there's no better way to start than right here on our own doorstep. He said it is important that NSW Health provides healthy food and drink choices for all the staff and visitors.
Chant said that by establishing this model, they hope it shows how a workable strategy can be successfully implemented across any organization to assist healthier choices in any staffing environment.
According to the NSW Heart Foundation, a health advocacy and charity group, "one in two adults and more than one in five children in NSW are overweight or obese. It dramatically heightens the risk of a wide range of chronic health conditions including "type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke and some cancers.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Ryan Price in Beijing.
A new study by University of Washington transportation engineers indicates that delivering packages with drones can reduce carbon dioxide emissions in certa