In part four, we look at an example from Oregon of price differences between a state university and a private college. Transcript of radio broadcast: 01 October 2008
This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
Today, in week four of our Foreign Student Series, we discuss differences between public and private in American higher education.
A big difference involves money. Public colleges and universities charge for an education just like private schools. But state schools cost less because they get money from the states that started them to educate local citizens. As a result, out-of-state and international students usually pay more than state residents, at least the first year.
The state with the most residents, almost forty million, is California. Its systems of two-year and four-year colleges and universities are among the largest in the world.
A science building at the University of Oregon
But the example we are going to focus on today is to the north of California, in a much smaller state on the West Coast: Oregon.
The University of Oregon, located in Eugene, is one of the campuses in the Oregon University System. The cost for undergraduates this year is six thousand dollars for state residents. Housing is an additional eight thousand. Nonresidents pay the same for housing — but almost twenty thousand dollars for tuition and fees.
Let’s see how these numbers compare to a private college in Oregon.
Lewis and Clark College in Portland has four thousand students, compared to twenty thousand at the University of Oregon. Housing costs eight hundred dollars more than at the state school. But the big difference is tuition. The published price at Lewis and Clark is almost thirty-four thousand dollars.
Yet Lewis and Clark is one of the few American colleges to offer financial aid for international students. Each year it awards financial aid to twenty students from other countries. And it says the average award last year was nineteen thousand dollars. That would make Lewis and Clark cheaper for international students than the University of Oregon.
But, of course, prices alone do not say anything about the quality of a school or the value of an education.
And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our Foreign Student Series is online at voaspecialenglish.com. If you have a general question about American colleges and universities, we might answer your question in our series. Tell us your name and where you are. Use the Contact Us link at voaspecialenglish.com or write to special@voanews.com.
Governments and groups promise $3 billion for a plan that aims to stop the disease in Africa by 2015. Also, the W.H.O. sharply lowered its estimate of malaria cases worldwide. Transcript of radio broadcast: 01 October 2008
This is the VOA Special English Health Report.Governments, businesses and other groups have promised to add three billion dollars to the fight against malaria. The promises came last week at a meeting at the United Nations in New York.
The money will support a new Global Malaria Action Plan. The plan aims to stop the disease in Africa by two thousand fifteen. Malaria is not limited to Africa, but ninety percent of deaths happen south of the Sahara. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the plan will not only support bed nets, but research, cutting drug costs and expanding health care systems.
Medical workers in Dakar, Senegal, treat a patient with malaria
Governments and international groups spent a billion dollars on malaria programs last year. But the Roll Back Malaria Partnership says the world should spend more than five times that amount. It says doing so could save four million lives by two thousand fifteen. The partnership includes United Nations agencies, the World Bank and leading drug makers.
Earlier this month, the World Health Organization released its World Malaria Report for two thousand eight. The report presented sharply lower estimates of malaria cases than in the past. W.H.O. officials say the corrections were mostly the result of better methods of collecting information.Until now, the agency has said there were as many as five hundred million infections every year, with a million deaths. The new report estimates the number of malaria cases in two thousand six at about two hundred fifty million. And it estimates the number of deaths at eight hundred eighty-one thousand. The great majority who die are young children.
The W.H.O. says the old numbers came from using malaria maps from the nineteen sixties. But changes have taken place, including the movement of people to cities, especially in Asia. The disease is less common in urban areas.
The report says malaria deaths have decreased in several countries, and a few African nations have reduced deaths by half. Yet the malaria drugs needed for what is known as artemisinin-based combination therapy reached only three percent of African children in need. In the last two years, though, there have been greatly increased efforts to provide families with bed nets. These nets are treated with insecticides to kill the mosquitoes that spread malaria. Campaigns for indoor spraying of insecticides in homes have also increased in Africa and elsewhere.And that’s the VOA Special English Health Report, written by Caty Weaver. For more health news, go to voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Jim Tedder.
John Quincy Adams won the presidency, but it required a vote in Congress — a vote that led to charges of a corrupt deal. Transcript of radio broadcast: 01 October 2008
Welcome to the MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.
Four of the first five presidents of the United States came from Virginia. They were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe.
The second president, John Adams, was a New Englander. In the election of eighteen twenty-four, his son, John Quincy Adams, was one of four leading candidates for president. At the same time, the West began to make its presence felt in national politics.
This week in our series, Maurice Joyce and Stewart Spencer discuss the election of eighteen twenty-four.
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John Quincy Adams
VOICE ONE:
General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee got the most electoral votes: ninety-nine. But he needed one hundred thirty-one to win a majority.
The secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, was second with eighty-four votes. Treasury Secretary William Crawford received forty-one. And Henry Clay of Kentucky got thirty-seven.
VOICE TWO:
None of the candidates got a majority of the votes. And the decision went to the House of Representatives. The House voted on only the three top candidates for president.
The most powerful man in Congress — Henry Clay — was not, therefore, a candidate. But Clay’s support would be the greatest help any of the candidates could receive. All three wanted his support.
Treasury Secretary Crawford had suffered a serious illness before the election, and his health was bad. Clay felt he could not support him for that reason.
VOICE ONE:
This left Adams and Jackson. Clay did not agree with all of Adams’s policies. But he did believe Adams had the education and ability to be president.
Clay did not like Jackson, the hero of New Orleans during the War of Eighteen Twelve. He knew Jackson was poorly educated and easy to anger. Clay did not think Jackson would be a good president.
So Clay decided to support Adams for president. He said nothing about this for a time. Several of Clay’s friends visited Adams. They told him that Clay’s supporters in the West would be pleased if Adams, as president, named Clay as secretary of state.
Adams told them that if the votes of the West elected him president, he would put a westerner in his cabinet. But he would not promise that the westerner would be Clay, or that the cabinet job would be that of secretary of state.
Henry Clay
VOICE TWO:
Clay still had not said publicly which candidate he supported. But it became known that his choice was Adams. Late in January, the Philadelphia newspaper Columbian Observer published an unsigned letter. The letter charged that Clay and Adams had made a secret agreement.
Clay, the letter said, would give his support to Adams. In exchange, Adams would name Clay his secretary of state.
Clay was furious. He not only denied the charge, but offered to fight a duel with the letter-writer, should his name be known. Much was made of the charge that Clay had sold his vote to Adams. But no proof was ever given.
Clay demanded an investigation. But the man who accused him in the newspaper letter refused to say anything. Clay was sure Jackson’s supporters were responsible.
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VOICE ONE:
Snow was falling in Washington on the morning of February ninth, the day that Congress would elect the president. At noon, members of the Senate walked into the House of Representatives.
The electoral votes were counted, and it was announced officially that no candidate had won. The senators left, and the House began voting.
Each state had one vote for president. Adams was sure he would get the votes of twelve states. Crawford had the votes of four and Jackson, seven. New York was the question. Seventeen of the New York congressmen were for Adams, and seventeen were opposed to him. Adams needed just one of these opposition votes to get the vote of New York and become president.
Stephen Van Rensselaer
VOICE TWO:
One of those New Yorkers opposed to Adams was a rich old man who represented the Albany area, Stephen Van Rensselaer. Although Van Rensselaer had supported Crawford or Jackson, he really was not sure now whom to support. Henry Clay had taken the old man into his office that morning and talked to him. Daniel Webster also was there.
They both told the New York congressman that the safety of the nation depended on the election of Adams as president. Clay and Webster told the old man that his was the most important vote in the whole Congress. That Stephen Van Rensselaer would decide who would be president.
The old man’s head was not too clear after listening to Clay and Webster. He still did not know what to do.
VOICE ONE:
When the New York congressmen voted, Van Rensselaer still was not sure of his choice. And he put his head down on his desk and asked God to help him make the right choice.
After this short prayer, he opened his eyes and saw on the floor at his feet a piece of paper with Adams’s name on it. Van Rensselaer picked it up and put it in the ballot box as his vote.
This gave Adams the vote of the state of New York and made him president of the United States. A committee of congressmen was sent to Mister Adams’s home to tell him of the vote.
One member of the committee described the secretary of state: “Sweat rolled down his face. He shook from head to foot and was so nervous he could hardly stand to speak.”
(MUSIC)
VOICE TWO:
Later in the evening, Adams had control of himself. President Monroe gave a big party at the White House. Adams was there. So was Jackson, and Clay.
During the party, Adams and Jackson met face to face. Jackson had his arm around a young lady.
“How do you do, Mister Adams,” said Jackson. “I give you my left hand, for the right — as you see — is devoted to the fair. I hope you are well, sir.”
“Very well, sir,” answered Adams, coolly. “I hope General Jackson is well.”
VOICE ONE:
Two days later, Adams told President Monroe that he had decided to offer the job of secretary of state to Clay. He said he was doing so because of the western support he had received.
Clay thought deeply for a week about the offer. He asked a number of friends for advice. Most of them urged him to take the job. They told him that a man of the West was needed in the cabinet. And they said being secretary of state would greatly help his own chances of becoming president some day.
Clay accepted the offer. He said he would serve as Adams’s secretary of state. Until now, General Jackson had refused to believe the charges that Clay had sold his vote to Adams for the top cabinet job. Now he was sure of it. He wrote to a friend: “Was there ever before such bare faced corruption. What is this trade of vote for office, if not bribery?”
Andrew Jackson
VOICE TWO:
Many of Jackson’s supporters did not believe John Quincy Adams had the ability to be political leader of the party. They believed that Clay would seize the party leadership and use this power to help himself become elected the next president.
Jackson, himself a senator, showed his feelings when the Senate was asked to approve Clay as secretary of state. He voted no. And thirteen other senators joined him against the nomination. But they were too few to prevent Clay from getting the job.
The next presidential election was four years away. General Andrew Jackson promised himself this would be one election he would not lose. Before he left Washington to return to Tennessee, Jackson wrote a letter that soon became public.
“I became a soldier for the good of my country,” Jackson wrote. “Difficulties met me at every step. I thank God that it was my duty to overcome them. I am in no way responsible to Henry Clay. There is a purer court to which I will put my case — to the intelligent judgment of our patriotic and honest voters.”
VOICE ONE:
General Jackson returned to Nashville to rest and plan. He was still a senator, and he questioned if it might not be best for him to resign from the Senate. He would be free of Washington politics and able to build his political strength for the election in eighteen twenty-eight. He decided to resign.
(MUSIC)
ANNOUNCER:
Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Maurice Joyce and Stewart Spencer. Transcripts of our programs along with podcasts and archives of MP3s can be found at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us each week for THE MAKING OF A NATION – an American history series in VOA Special English.
Much of today’s science of physics is based on Newton’s discovery of the three laws of motion and his theory of gravity. He said of his work: ”If I saw further than other men, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants.” Transcript of radio broadcast: 01 October 2008
VOICE ONE:
This is Shirley Griffith.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program, Explorations. Today we tell about one of the world’s greatest scientists, Isaac Newton.
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VOICE ONE:
Isaac Newton
Much of today’s science of physics is based on Newton’s discovery of the three laws of motion and his theory of gravity. Newton also developed one of the most powerful tools of mathematics. It is the method we call calculus.
Late in his life, Newton said of his work: “If I saw further than other men, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants. ”
VOICE TWO:
One of those giants was the great Italian scientist, Galileo. Galileo died the same year Newton was born. Another of the giants was the Polish scientist Nicholas Copernicus. He lived a hundred years before Newton.
Copernicus had begun a scientific revolution. It led to a completely new understanding of how the universe worked. Galileo continued and expanded the work of Copernicus.
Isaac Newton built on the ideas of these two scientists and others. He found and proved the answers for which they searched.
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VOICE ONE:
Isaac Newton was born in Woolsthorpe, England, on December twenty-fifth, sixteen forty-two.
He was born early. He was a small baby and very weak. No one expected him to survive. But he surprised everyone. He had one of the most powerful minds in history. And he lived until he was eighty-four.
Newton’s father died before he was born. His mother married again a few years later. She left Isaac with his grandmother.
The boy was not a good student. Yet he liked to make things, such as kites and clocks and simple machines.
VOICE TWO:
Newton also enjoyed finding new ways to answer questions or solve problems. As a boy, for example, he decided to find a way to measure the speed of the wind.
On a windy day, he measured how far he could jump with the wind at his back. Then he measured how far he could jump with the wind in his face. From the difference between the two jumps, he made his own measure of the strength of the wind.
Strangely, Newton became a much better student after a boy kicked him in the stomach.
The boy was one of the best students in the school. Newton decided to get even by getting higher marks than the boy who kicked him. In a short time, Newton became the top student at the school.
VOICE ONE:
Newton left school to help on the family farm.
It soon became clear, however, that the boy was not a good farmer. He spent his time solving mathematical problems, instead of taking care of the crops. He spent hours visiting a bookstore in town, instead of selling his vegetables in the market.
An uncle decided that Newton would do better as a student than as a farmer. So he helped the young man enter Cambridge University to study mathematics.
Newton completed his university studies five years later, in sixteen sixty-five. He was twenty-two years old.
(MUSIC)
VOICE TWO:
At that time, a deadly plague was spreading across England. To escape the disease, Newton returned to the family farm. He did more thinking than farming. In doing so, he found the answers to some of the greatest mysteries of science.
Newton used his great skill in mathematics to form a better understanding of the world and the universe. He used methods he had learned as a boy in making things. He experimented. Then he studied the results and used what he had learned to design new experiments.
Newton’s work led him to create a new method in mathematics for measuring areas curved in shape. He also used it to find how much material was contained in solid objects. The method he created became known as integral calculus.
VOICE ONE:
One day, sitting in the garden, Newton watched an apple fall from a tree. He began to wonder if the same force that pulled the apple down also kept the moon circling the Earth. Newton believed it was. And he believed it could be measured.
He called the force “gravity. ” He began to examine it carefully.
He decided that the strength of the force keeping a planet in orbit around the sun depended on two things. One was the amount of mass in the planet and the sun. The other was how far apart they were.
VOICE TWO:
Newton was able to find the exact relationship between distance and gravity. He multiplied the mass of one space object by the mass of the other. Then he divided that number by the square of their distance apart. The result was the strength of the gravity force that tied them to each other.
Newton proved his idea by measuring how much gravity force would be needed to keep the moon orbiting the Earth. Then he measured the mass of the Earth and the moon, and the distance between them. He found that his measurement of the gravity force produced was not the same as the force needed. But the numbers were close.
Newton did not tell anyone about his discovery. He put it aside to work on other ideas. Later, with correct measurements of the size of the Earth, he found that the numbers were exactly the same.
VOICE ONE:
Newton spent time studying light and colors. He used a three-sided piece of glass called a prism.
He sent a beam of sunlight through the prism. It fell on a white surface. The prism separated the beam of sunlight into the colors of a rainbow. Newton believed that all these colors — mixed together in light — produced the color white. He proved this by letting the beam of rainbow-colored light pass through another prism. This changed the colored light back to white light.
VOICE TWO:
Newton’s telescope used a mirror instead of a lens
Newton’s study of light led him to learn why faraway objects seen through a telescope do not seem sharp and clear. The curved glass lenses at each end of the telescope acted like prisms. They produced a circle of colored light around an object. This created an unclear picture.
A few years later, Newton built a different kind of telescope. It used a curved mirror to make faraway objects seem larger.
Light reflected from the surface of the mirror, instead of passing through a curved glass lens. Newton’s reflecting telescope produced much clearer pictures than the old kind of telescope.
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VOICE ONE:
Years later, the British astronomer Edmund Halley visited Newton. He said he wanted Newton’s help in finding an answer to a problem no one had been able to solve. The question was this: What is the path of a planet going around the sun?
Newton immediately gave Haley the answer: an egg-shaped path called an ellipse.
Halley was surprised. He asked for Newton’s proof. Newton no longer had the papers from his earlier work. He was able to recreate them, however. He showed them to Halley. He also showed Halley all his other scientific work.
VOICE TWO:
Halley said Newton’s scientific discoveries were the greatest ever made. He urged Newton to share them with the world.
Newton began to write a book that explained what he had done. It was published in sixteen eighty-seven. Newton called his book “The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.” The book is considered the greatest scientific work ever written.
VOICE ONE:
In his book, Newton explains the three natural laws of motion. The first law is that an object not moving remains still. And one that is moving continues to move at an unchanging speed, so long as no outside force influences it.
Objects in space continue to move, because nothing exists in space to stop them.
Newton’s second law of motion describes force. It says force equals the mass of an object, multiplied by the change in speed it produces in an object.
His third law says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
VOICE TWO:
From these three laws, Newton was able to show how the universe worked. He proved it with easily understood mathematics. Scientists everywhere accepted Newton’s ideas.
The leading English poet of Newton’s time, Alexander Pope, honored the scientist with these words: “Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night. God said, –’Let Newton be!’ - and all was light. ”
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VOICE ONE:
This Special English program was written by Marilyn Christiano and Frank Beardsley. This is Shirley Griffith.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Steve Ember. Listen again next week for another Explorations program on the Voice of America.
Materials called metamaterials make possible a prism that may someday lead to major disappearing acts. Also, how some people can be both fat and healthy. Transcript of radio broadcast: 29 September 2008
VOICE ONE:
This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I’m Bob Doughty.
VOICE TWO:
And I’m Barbara Klein. This week, we will tell about evidence that some people can be both fat and healthy. We will also tell about brain aneurysms — a rare but deadly disorder. And, we will tell about materials that could help make objects seem to disappear.
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VOICE ONE:
Two studies are suggesting that some overweight people do not always face an increased risk of developing heart disease. Researchers also found that some normal body weight individuals have an increased risk of the disease.
Being overweight does increase your risk of medical problems. But the studies found that not all heavy people are less healthy than thin people.
VOICE TWO:
In one study, American researchers examined medical records from more than five thousand men and women. Each person had taken part in a separate study from nineteen ninety-nine to two thousand four.
The researchers found that about fifty-one percent of the subjects were overweight or obese. About thirty-two percent were obese, but considered metabolically healthy. This means they had no evidence of problems in tests for high blood pressure or other measures linked to heart disease.
However, more than twenty-three percent of people who were at a healthy weight had two or more unhealthy measurements in the tests.
VOICE ONE:
Judith Wylie-Rosett helped supervise the American study. She is a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York. Professor Wylie-Rosett says the findings show that an obese person can still be healthy. She believes that having body fat is not as important to health as where the fat is found on body.
America’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that two-thirds of Americans are considered overweight or obese.
VOICE TWO:
A second study is suggesting that fat in the liver may be important to health risks. Norbert Stefan and his team work at Germany’s University of Tubingen. They closely examined three hundred fourteen people. They measured how much body fat each person had, and where it was on the body. To do this, they used medical imaging tests. They too discovered that obese people could have healthy hearts. Their results suggest that fat in the liver is more dangerous than fat in other areas.
The results of both studies were published recently in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
VOICE ONE:
Professor Wylie-Rosett says the findings do not mean that people should not be concerned about becoming obese. Experts say there are several diseases linked to obesity that make it more dangerous to be fat than thin. They say that people should see their doctor to learn what health risks they may be facing and what behaviors should be changed to improve health.
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VOICE TWO:
We often hear the term brain aneurysm. Joseph Biden had two brain aneurysms twenty years ago. Doctors saved his life. Recently, the senator from Delaware was named the vice presidential choice of the Democratic Party.
Ohio’s first black congresswoman was not so lucky, however. Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones died last month within hours after a brain aneurysm burst. Doctors said she may have had no warning.
VOICE ONE:
A brain aneurysm is a weak or thin area along an artery wall in the brain. It can become so thin that it ruptures and bleeds.
The most common form looks like a small, round berry hanging from the artery. The Mayo Clinic in Minnesota says as many as fifteen million people in the United States, or five percent, have a berry aneurysm. Fewer than thirty thousand will ever suffer a rupture.
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke says forty percent of victims die within twenty-four hours. Another twenty-five percent die within six months.
VOICE TWO:
People may live a long and healthy life and never know they have an aneurysm. But sometimes, if it gets big enough, it can cause pain or other problems that lead to its discovery.
In Senator Biden’s case, his neck hurt for several weeks. Doctors thought he had a pinched nerve and a virus. But in February of nineteen eighty-eight, tests showed a leaking artery at the base of his brain. Doctors operated successfully, and again three months later for an aneurysm in another area.
Experts say most brain aneurysms happen in people born with an abnormality in an artery wall. Other causes can include head injuries, high blood pressure, infections, tobacco use and use of stimulant drugs.
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VOICE ONE:
For years, scientists have dreamed of someday guiding or directing light in unusual ways. If they could, objects might seem to disappear. The objects would be invisible — hidden from sight.
Now, scientists in the United States have produced materials that may help to make invisibility possible. Researchers at the University of California in Berkeley performed the experiments. Their study took steps toward “cloaking”, or appearing to hide, objects.
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory also took part in the experiments. Support for the work came from America’s National Science Foundation and the United States military.
VOICE TWO:
Before now, invisibility experiments succeeded in guiding light around only very thin objects of two dimensions. Such objects had length and width, but no depth. The new study marks the first time experiments have been successfully done in three dimensions using visible light, or light that can be seen.
We normally see objects because light strikes them. Then our eyes receive some of the light from the objects. To make an object seem to disappear, it is necessary to direct the light so it hides the object.
The California researchers successfully did this by using materials called metamaterials. Metamaterials are small almost beyond human imagination. They are made with a process called nanoengineering.
VOICE ONE:
It was thought that directing light with natural materials was not possible. But with nanoengineered materials, the researchers were able to build a special prism. Normally, a prism has many flat surfaces. It divides white light into colors. A nanoengineered prism does the opposite. It creates white light from colors.
Results of the experiment were reported in “Science” magazine. Results with the other metamaterial appeared in the publication “Nature.” University of California Professor Xiang Xhang led the research teams that developed both materials. They contained substances including metals, earthenware and fiber.
VOICE TWO:
The researchers designed one metamaterial like a net used to trap fish. It was made of silver nanowires. Each wire was about ten thousand times thinner than a human hair. The other metamaterial used twenty-one grids of silver and magnesium fluoride. The box-like grids formed lines. They were also unimaginably small.
Two years ago, two other researchers also reported on invisibility experiments. But they used microwaves instead of visible light. The two men were David Smith of Duke University in the United States and John Pendry of Imperial College in London.
Last year, scientists at America’s Purdue University reported success in guiding light around objects placed in a design. The design employs small needles called – you guessed it – nanoneedles. Mister Pendry, Mister Smith and David Schurig developed some of the required mathematics for that research. At the same time, so did Ulf Leonhardt of the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland.
VOICE ONE:
All this recent interest in invisibility is not surprising. People have been talking about making things invisible for thousands of years. In Plato’s “Republic”, there is an invisible ring. In the last century, “The Shadow” was a popular radio program. It told of a man who could become invisible. That meant he could defeat all evil.
More recently, the British secret agent of many films, James Bond, had an invisible car. And Harry Potter, hero of many books and films, sometimes had a magic cloak. He was able to protect himself by wearing it.
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VOICE TWO:
This SCIENCE IN THE NEWS program was written by Jerilyn Watson, Caty Weaver and Brianna Blake, who also was our producer. I’m Barbara Klein.
VOICE ONE:
And I’m Bob Doughty. We would like to hear from you. You can read and listen to our programs at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.
A study shows that when fishermen own a guaranteed percentage of the catch, the rate of collapse is lower than in traditional fisheries. Transcript of radio broadcast: 29 September 2008
This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
Too much fishing has reduced many fishery populations by ninety percent or more from their highest recorded numbers. Some fishing seasons last only a few days because the catch limit is quickly reached.
Two years ago, a Canadian scientist, Boris Worm, predicted the risk of a worldwide fishery collapse by two thousand forty-eight. But a new study says a management system called “catch shares” could offer a solution.
It divides the total permitted catch in a fishery into shares. These are bought and sold like shares of stock in a company. Shareholders in the fishery are each guaranteed a percentage of the catch.
Catch share systems are common in Australia, New Zealand and Iceland. And they have been gaining popularity in the United States and Canada.
Systems differ from place to place. But in general, experts set yearly limits, or quotas, on a fishery. The number of fish that each company or individual may catch is usually based on past averages.
Shares become more valuable as fish populations increase. With more fish in the fishery, catch limits also increase.
Human nature would tell us that shareholders are more likely to think about the long-term health of the fishery. They have a greater interest to protect the supply than in traditional, open access fisheries. But does that really happen?
Researchers looked at more than fifty years of records from eleven thousand fisheries worldwide. They compared open access fisheries with one hundred twenty-one fisheries that use catch share systems.
The study found that almost a third of the traditional fisheries have collapsed. But the number was only half that for the catch share fisheries. The findings appeared this month in the journal Science.
Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Hawaii did the study. The economist who led the research, Christopher Costello at Santa Barbara, called the results very hopeful. He says the system can improve the world’s fishing grounds and rebuild collapsed fisheries.
Still, not everyone likes the idea. Some environmental activists say the catch share system makes a public resource into a private enterprise. Generally speaking, anybody can work a traditional fishery. There is no need to organize into a group or company. Yet if scientists’ warnings are correct, those fisheries may not have many fish left to catch by the middle of the century.
And that’s the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. I’m Bob Doughty.
There are 65 separate steps required to make a dollar bill. But, do not try this at home! Transcript of radio broadcast: 27 September 2008
VOICE ONE:
Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I’m Bob Doughty.
And I’m Barbara Klein. Today on our program, we visit the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, D.C. to learn about how American dollars are made. Last year, the Bureau produced about thirty-eight million bills a day. Printing money requires both artistic and technological skills. The bills are made so that they are interesting to look at but very hard to copy. In total, there are sixty-five separate steps required to make a dollar bill.
(MUSIC: “Give Me Money?”)
VOICE ONE:
Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, D.C.
Guided tours of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington D.C. are a popular activity for visitors. These tours are a good way to learn new and interesting facts about the history of money and its complex production methods. It is also very exciting to stand in a room with millions of dollars flying through machines.
TOUR GUIDE: “All right, Ladies and Gentlemen, once again welcome to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. And this is where the color of money begins. The money making process begins when a yearly order sent by the Federal Reserve Board. That order will then be divided in half. Half will be done here in Washington, D.C. and the other half will be done in Fort Worth, Texas”.
VOICE TWO:
Next, the Bureau orders special paper from the Crane company in the state of Massachusetts. The paper is actually cloth since it is made up of seventy-five percent cotton and twenty-five percent linen. This paper is made so that it can last a long time. And, it is made with details that make it hard to copy. For example, bills contain security threads. These narrow strips of plastic inside the paper run along the width of the bill. This special paper is also made with very small blue and red fibers. Both of these designs make it very hard for counterfeiters to copy. Counterfeiters are criminals who create false money.
VOICE ONE:
The first stage of production is called intaglio printing. This is done on high-speed presses using printing plates onto which images have been cut. Each plate receives a layer of ink, which gathers in the cut areas of the plate. Then, each sheet of paper goes into the press to receive the printing plate. The machine forces about twenty tons of pressure onto the printing plate and paper. One side of a dollar bill is printed in green ink, while the other is printed in black. Each side must dry for about forty-eight hours.
VOICE TWO:
The printing plate used in this process is created from hand-cut engravings called master-dies. Highly skilled artists called engravers draw images into soft steel to make the dies. There are separate dies for the different images on the bill, such as the portrait of the president, the lettering, and other designs.
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Inspecting printed sheets of money
After each master-die is copied, they are fitted together to make a printing plate that has thirty-two copies of the bill being printed. A master-die can last for many years. For example, the master-die with the picture of President Abraham Lincoln was made in the eighteen sixties. It was used again this year to redesign the five-dollar bill.
Next, the large printed sheets are carefully examined to make sure there are no mistakes on any of the bills. This process used to be done by people. Now, computers do the work.
TOUR GUIDE: “OCIS is an acronym for Off-line Currency Inspection System and this is where the money from the last phase will be inspected.
Now that blue box will take a picture to size of the sheets of the money and compare its cut, color and shape with the master image sent by the Federal Reserve Board. It will take that picture and break it down into over one million pixels. Every single last one has to be absolutely correct.”
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In this part of production, the thirty-two bill sheets are cut into sheets of sixteen. In the next step, the bills are printed with a series of identifying numbers and seals.
TOUR GUIDE: “And this is where the money from the last phase will be put to its final state. If you look to the left of the room ladies and gentlemen, there is a tall machine with green ink at the top of it. That is the machine that will print your serial numbers, Federal Reserve seal and Treasury seal onto the money.”
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The serial numbers on the money tell the order that the bills were printed. Other numbers and letters printed on the bill tell when the note was printed, what space on the printing plate the bill occupied and which Reserve bank will issue the bill.
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“Bricks” of five dollar bills
Once the money is printed, guillotine cutters separate the sheets into two notes, then into individual notes. The notes are sorted into “bricks”, each of which contains forty one-hundred-note packages. The bricks then go to one of twelve Federal Reserve Districts, which then give the money to local banks. Ninety-five percent of the money printed each year is used to replace money that is in circulation, or that has already been removed from circulation. The Federal Reserve decides when to release this new money into use.
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You may know that America’s first president, George Washington, is pictured on the one-dollar bill. But do you know whose face is on the two, five, ten, twenty, fifty and one hundred-dollar bills? They are, in order, President Thomas Jefferson, President Abraham Lincoln, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, President Andrew Jackson, President Ulysses Grant and statesman Benjamin Franklin.
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During the tour, visitors can learn many interesting facts about money. For example, the average life span of a one-dollar bill is twenty-one months. But a ten-dollar bill lasts only about eighteen months. The one hundred-dollar bill lasts the longest, eighty-nine months.
One popular question that visitors ask is about the two-dollar bill. This bill is not printed very often. This is because many Americans believe two-dollar bills are lucky, so they keep them. Two-dollar bills do not have to be printed often because they do not become damaged quickly like other bills. People can send their damaged or torn bills to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The Bureau will replace damaged bills with new bills. However, it is illegal to purposely damage United States currency in any way. Anyone found guilty of damaging American money can be fined or jailed.
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The Bureau of Engraving and Printing first began printing money in eighteen sixty-one. It operated in a room of the Treasury building. Two men and four women worked together there to place seals on money that was printed in other places by private companies. Today, The Bureau of Engraving and Printing has over two thousand employees in its two printing centers in Washington and Fort Worth.
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The Treasury Department continually works to change the design of bills to make it difficult for counterfeiters to copy. One method it uses is called microprinting. For example, what looks like a very thin line around the edge of a portrait may actually be the words “The United States of America” printed in very small letters. Also, many bills now have color-shifting ink that looks like metallic paint. In the last five years, the ten, twenty and fifty-dollar bills have been redesigned. All the bills are mostly green. But other colors are added when they are redesigned.
VOICE ONE:
The picture of Abraham Lincoln on the new five dollar bill
The newest design in American currency is the five-dollar bill, which was released earlier this year. This new bill has a second watermark. A watermark is an image that can be seen from both sides of the bill when it is held up to light. The new five-dollar bill also has a security thread that is on the right side of President Lincoln’s picture. On older designs, this thread was on the left side.
The new bill also has an area that is printed in purple ink. The number five is printed very large to help people who do not see well. The next note that will be redesigned is the one hundred-dollar bill. This is the highest value bill now used in the United States.
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American money might soon be legally forced to change its appearance in more extensive ways. In May, a federal appeals court ruled that the design of American money discriminates against blind people. Most other countries make bills in different sizes depending on the value of each note. But American dollars are all the same size. The American Council for the Blind brought the case to court.
The judges decided that the Treasury Department has failed to show that it would be too costly to make American dollars so that blind people could tell their value by touch. The Treasury Department says it would cost over a hundred and seventy million dollars to order new printing presses and as much as fifty million dollars to make new printing plates. Other experts estimate that it would cost over three billion dollars to redesign food and drink machines to accept bills of different sizes.
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It might be a long time before this case is settled in court. Until then, the printing presses at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing will continue to produce the green dollars that are recognizable to people around the world.
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Our program was written and produced by Dana Demange. I’m Barbara Klein.
VOICE ONE:
And I’m Bob Doughty. Our programs are online with transcripts and MP3 files at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English.
