News 10

Only 62.5% of '10 grads offered jobs

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/shukan-st/english_news/news/2009/no20091204/no20091204main.htm?print=noframe

Summery:
The employment rate for students expected to graduate from universities next spring stood at 62.5 percent nationwide as of Oct. 1, down a sharp 7.4 percentage points from a year earlier, a government survey showed. The figure is the third-lowest ever, ahead of a 60.2 percent in 2003, and reflects the economic slowdown, according to the survey conducted by the ministries of education and labor.

Impression:
就職氷河期というのは本当に怖いです。私も内定をもらえるように資格などをとっておこうと思いました。

New words I learned:
grads:大学の卒業生 employment rate:就職内定率 ministries of education and labor:文科省と厚労省 reflect:反射する

News 9

China pledges to cut emissions sharply

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/shukan-st/english_news/news/current/wo20091211/wo20091211main.htm?print=noframe

Summery:
China announced plans Nov. 26 to sharply boost its energy efficiency by slowing the growth of carbon emissions as part of its contribution to the fight against global warming. The State Council announcement ahead of the Copenhagen, Denmark, climate summit pledges that China will cut carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product by 40 percent to 45 percent by 2020, compared with levels in 2005. The State Council said it "is voluntary action taken by the Chinese government based on its own national conditions.

Impression:
今やアメリカだけでなく中国も環境問題の解決において注目を受けていますが、中国がこのような決定を下したのはとても大きな功績だと思いました。目標を掲げるだけでなく、実際に積極的に環境問題に取り組んでくれることを望みます。

New words I learned:
boost:～を高める efficiency:効率 emissions：放出 contribution to:～への貢献

News 8

School violence set record in FY2008

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/shukan-st/english_news/news/current/nm20091211/nm20091211main.htm?print=noframe

summery:
A record 59,618 acts of violent behavior by children were logged by elementary, junior and high schools nationwide in fiscal 2008, marking the third consecutive annual rise, the education ministry said Nov. 30. Reports of violent acts in junior high schools were up by some 6,000 from a year earlier, accounting for 72 percent of overall violence among children, while instances of bullying dropped 16 percent from the year before, the education ministry said. The ministry attributed the increase in violence to a decline in common manners and lack of communications skills among children.
Impression:
少子化少子化と騒がれ続けている中、児童の暴力は日々増え続けているのだと思うと、悲しくなりました。周りの大人の影響もあってそのようになっているのではないかと思いました。
New words I learned:
behavior:行い log：記録する bullying:いじめる attriburted～to～:～は～に起因する lack:欠ける

Homework

The birthrate has fallen in Japan every year. Additionally, the population decreases, too. This might seem to be joyous, however, danger is conceived. It is connected with decreasing also of work that the number of young people will decrease in Japan in the future. The financial strength of Japan weakens, and development cannot be hoped for. Moreover, there is no guarantee to which the elderly persons can surely receive the social security anywhere. Hereafter, Japan should aim at the enhancement of the social security system.

News 7

'Arthritis risk' for middle-aged exercise addicts

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8380783.stm

Summery:

中年男性、もしくは女性による過度のスポーツは関節炎につながる、と研究者が発表しました。45～55歳の男女200人以上が運動した場合の体に受けるダメージとして、膝が最もダメージを受けることもまたわかりました。さらに水泳やサイクリングよりもジョギングや跳ねたりするほうがよりダメージを受けることもわかりました。女性の中ではそれは一般的なことですが、年を追うごとに、また体重が重くなるにつれて危険度が増していきます。私たちは、長年ある強い衝撃スポーツと仕事が骨関節炎、特にひざの増加するリスクに関連しているのを知っていますが、かなりの大多数の人々に関して、運動は軟骨だけに良いとも述べました。

Impression:

どうやら適度に運動するのが一番いいみたいです。大人になったら運動する機会も減るので怖いなあと思いました。年をとっても若々しく生きていたいです。

New words I learned:

regime:政権 Osteoarthritis:骨関節炎 present:現在の、出席している chore:雑用 cartilage:軟骨

News 6

Lions kill rare white tiger at Czech Republic zoo

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8369543.stm

Summery:

ライオンが2匹のホワイトタイガーを殺しました。動物園の従業員は止めるよう手を尽くしましたが、とめられませんでした。ライオンと虎は、普段は空気の入れ替えるドアがついた、同じパビリオンを共有していました。それを境に暮らしていましたが、そのドアは回転するものでした。それによってこのような惨劇が起きてしまったのです。動物園長は、今までこのような事件が起きたことがなかったので、ひどくショックを受けていました。

Impression:

ライオンたちの間に何があったのでしょうか、とても悲しいです。殺されたのが珍しいホワイトタイガーだからってわけではないですが。このようなことが二度とおきないように、管理を徹底して欲しいと思います。

New words I learned:

enclosure:囲い colouration:彩り rotate:回転する

News 5

'Supercharged' heart pumps blood up a giraffe's neck

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8368000/8368915.stm

Summery:

キリンの長い首にどうやって心臓から血液を送るのか、子供も科学者もみなそれを疑問に思っていました。しかしキリンは長い首を伝って脳に血液を送るだけの頑丈な心臓を持っていることが分かりました。キリンは、キリンと同じくらいの動物から想像できる心臓の大きさをはるかに上回っているのです。そしてその分キリンは高血圧だということも分かりました。高血圧だと体に負担がかかるのではないかと思われますが、キリンは長年の進化を経て、それに順応したそうです。

Impression:

実際自分はどうやって血液を送るのかなんてちっとも気にしてませんでした。でもニュースを見てみて納得させられました。キリンに関わらず、生物の進化ってすごいなぁと毎回感心させられます。

New words I learned:

Supercharge:過給 giraffe:キリン Comparative:比較の、かなりの evolve:進化する constraint:威圧、制約 pressure:圧力

News 4

Smoking and alcohol

http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/conditions/heart/prevention_smokingalcohol.shtml

Summery:
心臓病・飲酒は共に心臓病にリンクしています。しかし、適度の飲酒はあなたの心臓を保護するのに一役買ってくれます。ただ50才以下の喫煙者の心臓病による死亡率は、禁煙者の5倍を上回るといえます。タバコは人体に悪影響を及ぼしますが、飲酒は適度なら大丈夫なので自分の限界を知って飲酒してください。ある程度アルコール分の入った飲み物を飲んだら、その後はアルコールの入っていない飲み物を飲んでください。

Impression:

タバコは絶対に吸いたくないです。でも、お酒にはちょっと興味がわいてきました。

New word I learned:

coronary heart disease:冠状動脈性心臓病 obstructive:遮るような motivated:発奮 prescribe:指示する sensibly:気の利く

my ideal school

The school of my ideal is a school that values bonds of the person and the person. So to speak, it is a school that values the class of morality. Because a recent school values the academic background, I think that I make efforts to study very much. However, I don't think that the human nature grows up in it. The academic background might be also important. However, I think that it is important that the human nature is rich any more. Therefore, I hope such a school increases.

News 3

White wines 'bad for the teeth'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8314802.stm

Summery:

頻繁に白ワインを飲んでいると、歯に悪い影響を与える可能性がある、と専門家は言います。それは、ワインのヴィンテージ、起源またはアルコールではなく、歯との接触の持続時間に問題があります。しかし同時にチーズを食べると、チーズはカルシウムが豊かなので、効果が対抗されるかもしれないと言います。酸性食品と飲み物が歯のエナメル質を浸食するというのはよく理解されています、そして、白ワインは赤より侵食性があると認識されています。1杯のワインを飲むなら、食事をした後30分以上の休み時間を設けてください、そして、寝る前に歯を磨いてください。

Impression:

私はお酒を飲まないし、ましてや美味しいとも思っていないので、あまり関係のない話だな、と思いました。ただ家族にワインを飲む人がいるので、このことは教えてあげようと思いました。

New word I learned:

consume:消費する alongside:横 susceptible:影響を受ける saliva:唾液 duration:期間 exposure:露出 further:さらに

HOMEWORK

シュタイナー学園はガーデニングや編み物、楽器の演奏や絵画、外国語学習など様々な教育が為されています。このような教育方法が子供たちの情熱を生み出すといわれている一方、反対している人達もいます。彼らが指摘しているのは読書があまり指導されないことや、読み書きを学ぶことが遅い、などの点です。

日本の代表的なオルタナティブ教育法の例として、eラーニングがあります。eラーニングとは、電子機具を使って勉強することです。eラーニングは、利点と欠点を併せ持っています。 利点は同時間、同一場所に集まる必要がなく自由な時間場所で学習できること、 自分のペースや達成度に応じて学習を進めることができることが挙げられます。 逆に欠点は、学習意欲の持続が難しいこと 、質疑などその場での問題解決ができないこと、教師やほかの学習者との交流がとりにくいことが挙げられます。

News 2

Daily sweets 'linked to violence'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8281147.stm

Summery:

お菓子やチョコレートを毎日食べる子は、大人になった時に暴力的になりやすいと、イギリスの研究者は述べました。ある研究者は、子供に我慢する時間を与えないのが原因だといいますが、別の研究者は、そのような子供たちこそよりお菓子を与えられる傾向にあるとも述べました。研究者は約17500人のデータを見て、42％の非暴力主義者に比べて、34歳の時に乱暴であった者の関係者の69％はほぼ毎日お菓子やチョコレートを子供の頃に食べていたことを発見した。

Impression:

お菓子が大人になって暴力を振るいやすくなるのと何の関係があるんだと思いましたが、研究者の意見を見てみてなるほど、と思いました。よく考えてみたらこれは麻薬みたいなものだと思いました。大人が麻薬なら子供はお菓子。麻薬の危険性は分かりますが、お菓子の危険性があるとは思いもしませんでした。

New word I learned:d

gratification:満足、喜び Delinquents:犯罪者 confectionery:製菓 resources:財源、機略 Stunted:矮小 intrigued:陰謀 favoured:好意を持たれた defer:持ち越す deprived upbringing:不十分な子育て

Alan Turin Quiz

Quiz:

1.He was prosecuted and did he die how many years later?

2.How did he die?

Answer:

1.Two years later

2.Suicide

News 1

Why flamingoes stand on one leg

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8197000/8197932.stm

Summary:

フラミンゴが一本足で立つ理由、それは最も簡単な、しかし、最も不思議な自然の神秘の1つです。同じ質問を動物園訪問者や生物学者が尋ねられますが、まだ誰も決定的な理由を掴めていません。ですが、徹底的な研究を行った2人の科学者が、必ず理由があると信じています。彼等は、フラミンゴが自身の体温を調節するために一本足で立つと考えています。更に、ほとんどのフラミンゴが、頭を右に休ませるのを好みます。頭を左に休ませるのを好むものは、他の鳥との攻撃的な遭遇によりかかわりそうです。それは右利きである、またはこのように正しい頭であることが、フラミンゴの社会的一体性を促進するのを助けるという考えをより強めています。

impression：フラミンゴの何気ない行動には深い訳があるのだと感心しました。どんな生き物でも、厳しい自然環境を生き抜いていくために知恵を働かせているのだと実感しました。フラミンゴの場合、その様が一つの美しい絵画の様だから更に感動しました。

New word I learned: regulate:規制する comparative：比較の、かなりの gregarious：群居する、社交的な investigating：調査する aesthetically：美的に empirical：実証的 lateral：側面の

News 7

8 July 2009





Panda twins among park baby boom
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/south_of_scotland/8138867.stm





Twin red pandas are part of a record number of baby animals born this year at a south of Scotland wildlife centre.
The tiny creatures are among more than 15 newborns at the Galloway Wildlife Conservation Park near Kirkcudbright.
They include wallabies, Asian small-clawed otters and tree porcupine, with more arrivals anticipated later in the summer.
Park owner John Denerley said the red pandas - a male and a female who have yet to be named - were doing well.
He said all of the different babies appeared to be settling into their new surroundings.
"All our newcomers are enjoying the warm weather," said Mr Denerley.
"More babies are expected to be born in the next few weeks."
The new red pandas are a particularly welcome addition to the south west Scotland park's attractions.
Last year a mother panda and her cub escaped from the site.
Police launched an appeal for public help in tracing the animals.
The mother panda was eventually traced more than two months after she went missing but the cub has never been found.

Summary:

The tiny creatures are among more than 15 newborns at the Galloway Wildlife Conservation Park near Kirkcudbright.

The new red pandas are a particularly welcome addition to the south west Scotland park's attractions.

New words/expressions I learn:

anticipate:予想する　claw:爪　porcupine:ヤマアラシ　launch:水面に下ろす　cub:幼獣

News 6

2 January 2009

'Keep off dieting' to avoid flu

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7807848.stm

Dieting at this time of year could impair your body's ability to fight the flu virus, a study warns.
US researchers found mice who were put on a calorie-controlled diet found it harder to tackle the infection than those on a normal diet.
The findings, published in the Journal of Nutrition, suggest that contrary to the old adage "starve a fever", those with a temperature should eat well.
Flu cases in England and Wales are currently approaching a nine-year high.
Killer cells need food
The team at Michigan State University found even though the mice on the lower calorie diet received adequate amounts of vitamins and minerals, their bodies were still not able to produce the number of killer cells needed to fight an infection.

"Now is not the time to be thinking about diets "

Professor John OxfordQueen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry

As well as being more likely to die from the virus, the mice - which were consuming around 40% of the calories given to their counterparts on a normal diet - took longer to recover, lost more weight and displayed other symptoms of poor health.
"Our research shows that having a body ready to fight a virus will lead to a faster recovery and less-severe effects than if it is calorically restricted," said study author Professor Elizabeth Gardner.
Even those who have received the flu vaccine should steer clear of dieting until the warmer months arrive.
"If the strain of flu a person is infected with is different from the strain included in the flu vaccination, then your body sees this as a primary infection and must produce the antibodies to fight it off," Professor Gardner said.
The study, the team added, should not be seen as a carte blanche to avoid dieting all year, but to reserve weight control to the eight months of the year when flu is not so virulent.
The latest flu data from England and Wales has shown cases are up 73% on last year; experts believe the unusually cold weather may have contributed to the surge.
Professor John Oxford, an influenza expert at Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry, said "common sense should prevail at this time of year".
"There are a lot of viruses and while it might have been better to avoid those extra helpings of Christmas pudding in the first place, now is not the time to be thinking about diets."

Summary:

今回の研究で、カロリーを制限した食事を与えられたマウスは通常のカロリーを与えられたグループよりも感染に対する抵抗力が低下する、ということが分かりました。

また、たとえインフルエンザの予防接種を受けたとしても、暖かくなるまではダイエットを避けるべき、とも述べています。「感染した型と接種を受けた型が異なる場合、体は初期感染とみなしてウイルスに対抗するために抗体を作り出す必要があるのです。」

ただし、１年を通してダイエットをするな、と言っているのではなく、インフルエンザが猛威をふるう４ヶ月間は控えるように、ということです、と研究チームは付け加えています。

New words/expressions I learn:

adage:格言、ことわざ starve a fever:絶食で熱を下げる steer clear of ～:～を避ける primary:初期の carte blanche:全権委任、白紙委任 helping:（食べ物の、of）一人前、一杯

News 5

27 January 2009





Cutting calories 'boosts memory'


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7847174.stm

Reducing what you eat by nearly a third may improve memory, according to German researchers.
They introduced the diet to 50 elderly volunteers, then gave them a memory test three months later.
The study, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, found significant improvements.
However, a dietician said the reduction could harm health unless care was taken.

"To our knowledge, the current results provide first experimental evidence in humans that caloric restriction improves memory in the elderly "Munster University researchers.

There is growing interest in the potential benefits of calorie restricted diets, after research in animals suggested they might be able to improve lifespan and delay the onset of age-related disease.
However, it is still not certain whether this would be the case in humans - and the the levels of "caloric restriction" involved are severe.
The precise mechanism which may deliver these benefits is still being investigated, with theories ranging from a reduction in the production of "free radical" chemicals which can cause damage, to a fall in inflammation which can have the same result.
The researchers from the University of Munster carried out the human study after results in rats suggested that memory could be boosted by a diet containing 30% fewer calories than normal.
The study volunteers, who had an average age of 60, were split into three groups - the first had a balanced diet containing the normal number of calories, the second had a similar diet but with a higher proportion of unsaturated fatty acids, such as those found in olive oil and fish.
The final group were given the calorie restricted diet.
After three months, there was no difference in memory scores in the first two groups, but the 50 in the third group performed better.
Diet warning
They also showed other signs of physical improvement, with decreased levels of insulin and fewer signs of inflammation.
The researchers said that these changes could explain the better memory scores, by keeping brain cells in better health.
They wrote: "To our knowledge, the current results provide first experimental evidence in humans that caloric restriction improves memory in the elderly.
"The present findings may help to develop new prevention and treatment strategies for maintaining cognitive health into old age."
However, care was taken to make sure that the volunteers, despite eating a restricted diet in terms of calories, carried on eating the right amount of vitamins and other nutrients.
Dr Leigh Gibson, from Roehampton University, said that the drop in insulin levels were one plausible reason why mental performance might improve.
The hormone was known to act on parts of the brain related to memory, he said, and the higher levels found in people with poorly controlled type II diabetes had been directly linked to worse memory and cognitive function.
A spokesman for the British Dietetic Association said that people, particularly those already at normal or low weight, should be "extremely careful" about attempting such a diet.
She said: "There is other evidence that, far from enhancing memory, dieting or removing meals can interfere with memory and brain function.
"A drop of 30% in calories is a significant one for someone who is not overweight, and should not be undertaken lightly.
"It could even be dangerous if the person is already underweight."

Summary:
摂取カロリーを１/３減らすことで記憶力の向上が望める可能性がある、とする研究結果が発表されました。ただし、標準体型以下の人の無理なカロリー制限は悪影響も大きいようですから注意が必要です。
今回の研究では平均年齢６０歳の被験者を３つのグループに分け、グループ１には通常カロリーのバランス食を、グループ２にはカロリーは通常でもオリーブオイルや魚に多く含まれる不飽和脂肪酸を多く含む食事を、グループ３にはカロリーが通常よりも３０％少ない食事（ただしビタミンなどの栄養成分は必須量を満たすように設計）を３ヶ月間摂ってもらい、記憶テストを実施しました。
その結果、グループ１と２においてはスコアに差が見られなかったものの、グループ３では顕著な向上が確認されました。また、肉体面においても改善が見られたほか、インスリン値や炎症発現の減少も認められました。
一方で、ダイエットや食事制限が記憶力を高めるどころか脳の働きを妨げるという研究結果もあることから、注意を呼びかける専門家もいます。
「３０％のカロリー制限というのは既に標準もしくはそれ以下の体重の人にとっては非常に危険な行為で、安易にやってみるべきものではありません。」

New words/expressions I learn:

caloric:カロリーの→calorie :カロリー　plausible:（説明・陳述など）妥当と思える dietetic:栄養（学）の → dietary: 食事の、ダイエットの interfere:（人・物事が）（～を、with）妨げる

News 4

June 17 2009





The hidden cost of giving away vaccines


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c0bf8350-5b66-11de-be3f-00144feabdc0.html

Giving products away free, from browsers to newspaper articles, is commonplace in the technology and media industries. The trend has now spread to vaccines.
Pharmaceuticals companies, scarred by years of losing the public relations battle to campaigners over the price of HIV/Aids drugs in Africa, are eager not to be caught out by swine flu.
Andrew Witty, chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline, has offered to donate 50m doses of GSK’s planned swine flu vaccine to the World Heath Organisation. He has caught the public mood: Margaret Chan, WHO director-general, has urged “solidarity” with poor countries over the H1N1 flu virus.
Mr Witty and Ms Chan have forced Daniel Vasella, chief executive of Novartis, to defend the profit motive. He told the FT this week that Novartis did not want to follow the GSK example by giving away doses of its planned vaccine because “if you want to make production sustainable, you have to create financial incentives”.
Mr Vasella, who is normally the most public relations-adept of executives, has placed himself in an awkward corner, but he is right. For reasons that go beyond the general value of unfettered markets and the price mechanism, cheap is a better price than free for new vaccines in the developing world.
The debate over swine flu vaccine is a sign of things to come, for vaccines have emerged as one of the drugs companies’ more hopeful areas for innovation. “Vaccines have gone through a renaissance from being a financial backwater to a real source of future profits,” says Mark Pauly, a professor of healthcare management at the Wharton School.
A drought of traditional drugs still bedevils pharmaceutical companies, but they have developed vaccines against chicken pox, rotavirus and cervical cancer. Prevnar, Wyeth’s vaccine for pneumococcal meningitis, a blockbuster with annual revenues of $3bn (£1.8bn, €2.2bn), was a factor in Pfizer’s $68bn acquisition of Wyeth. The vaccine world of the late 20th century was dominated by quasi-public bodies – Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine in 1954 with funding from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. Today’s innovation resulted from price controls being relaxed.
Vaccines now contribute up to 20 per cent of the revenues of companies such as Merck and GSK, estimates Andy Pasternak, a partner of Bain & Co. Pharmaceutical companies also like vaccines because there is little generic competition and high barriers to entry: it is much harder to mimic a vaccine than a traditional pill.
Despite rising vaccine prices – new vaccines can cost between $50 and $100 per treatment – they are good value for healthcare providers. It is cheaper for insurance companies or governments to vaccinate against diseases than to provide medicines and treatment for outbreaks.
Still, if pharmaceutical companies are now making such healthy profits from vaccines in the developed world, why not give them away free in developing countries to save the lives of poor children? It is a seductive idea, but there are two reasons for them to charge.
First, if developing countries do not pay for vaccines, there is a danger that drugs companies will stop producing enough of them. Vaccines have a high marginal cost of production because they have to be cultured in eggs, and stored and distributed carefully.
Although western companies disliked being told to sell HIV/Aids drugs cheaply in Africa, they could cover their marginal costs at a very low price. Making vaccines is more capital-intensive and the losses from donating them mount up faster.
Too much “solidarity” can lead to a lack of production, as it did in the US in the 1980s, when the six main childhood vaccines – including measles and polio – were priced so low that several vaccine producers dropped out of the industry.
Second, while there is a benefit to one-off donations of vaccines against adult pandemics such as swine flu, there is no point in a developing country vaccinating children one year with a donation of free medicines if it cannot afford to carry on with the programme.
Indeed, one-off gifts of childhood vaccines can cause more harm than good. Developing countries obtain far greater benefits from being offered guaranteed low prices for a vaccine over several years, enabling them to plan vaccination properly.
What matters most is not one-off initiatives but the long-run cost of a vaccine. GSK’s offer to donate 50m swine flu vaccines was accompanied by a commitment to supply the vaccine around the world at tiered prices – more cheaply in developing than in developed countries.
This approach is being promoted by the Gavi Alliance, the group that gathers government and private donations to subsidise vaccination in 72 of the world’s poor countries. Gavi has a $1.5bn programme under which companies have made 10-year commitments to supply low-priced pneumococcal vaccines.
Tiered pricing for the new vaccines seems to be working. Latin American countries can buy vaccines against rotavirus, which causes diarrhoea, at $6 per treatment, compared with a US price of $80.
Perhaps drugs companies have seen the light; perhaps they have merely learnt a public relations lesson. Whatever the cause, variable pricing offers the best hope for combining the profit motive with the humanitarian imperative.
Giving vaccines away free sounds like a more generous approach but the hidden cost is too high.

Summary:

モノをただで配るというのは、それがブラウザーでも新聞記事でも、IT業界やマスコミ業界では普通のことだ。その流行が今度は、ワクチンにも拡大しつつある。とは言うものの、製薬会社が先進国でワクチンを売ってそんなに旺盛な利益を上げているというなら、途上国の貧しい子供たちを助けるため、途上国では無料配布したらどうなのか——という考えはあるだろう。魅惑的な発想ではあるが、対価を要求した方がいい理由は2つある。

まず第一に、もし途上国がワクチンの代金を全く払わないのなら、製薬会社が十分な量を生産しなくなる恐れがある。ワクチンの限界生産費は高い。なぜならワクチンというのは鶏卵で培養し、慎重に保管・流通させなくてはならないからだ。

第二に、今回の新型インフルエンザのように、ワクチンを1回だけ無料で提供し、成人の感染拡大を防ぐのは意味のあることだが、その国が予防接種事業を継続できないのなら、途上国の子供たちを一度だけタダで予防接種しても、意味はない。

もしかしたら製薬会社は理解したのかもしれない。あるいはただ単に、アフリカでのHIV/エイズ治療薬をめぐる争いを経て、賢いPRについて学んだのかもしれない。原因はなんであれ、国別・地域別の価格設定こそ、利益追求の動機と人道上の要請を最適な形で組み合わせるものだろうと期待できる。

ワクチンの無料提供は一見、いかにも思いやり深い太っ腹な措置に思える。しかしそこに隠されている代償は、あまりに高すぎるのだ。

New words/expressions I learn:

vaccine:ワクチン　swine:豚　emerge:発生する　renaissance：ルネサンス、復興　drought:干ばつ　pharmaceutical：調合薬　marginal:端の　solidarity:結束

News 3

Date:June 14 2009

School exams fail the office test
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/049a9db2-576b-11de-8c47-00144feabdc0.html

Last week, I promised my daughters that whatever they do in their working lives, nothing will ever be as bad as this. It was 10.45pm and they were sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by notes on exothermic reactions and quotes from Paradise Lost. When all this is over, I assured them, what comes next will seem a doddle. GCSEs, A-levels and finals are a hell that nothing in the office will ever match.
They looked at me contemptuously and I can see why. It seems so unlikely that life’s most traumatic tests should come so early; that paid work, which is serious, should leave us so relatively untouched, whereas academic work, which should be more carefree, can scar for life.
Yet more than 25 years have passed since I sat finals and still I wake at night with my heart thudding, dreaming that I had forgotten to revise, or had had to take physics instead of philosophy. In my other standard nightmare, all my teeth have fallen out, but that dream is a walk in the park compared with that moment of existential despair when you are in the school gym and you turn over the paper to find yourself unable to answer the questions.
There is no job interview, no scary presentation, no terrifying after dinner speech, no bruising negative feedback that can do such lasting psychic damage. Nor is there any work project (unless one is a corporate lawyer or investment banker) that requires such mercilessly hard work.
I mentioned this to a friend who has a senior job in business. She said the raw effort she put into revising The Faerie Queene was a hundred times more intense than what she put into a recent pitch for a multimillion-pound contract.
If you flunk finals you don’t get the chance to do it again. Real life is much more forgiving
It’s tempting to conclude that the exam system is wrong to inflict such pain for so little gain. It is not as if we remember the facts that we stuffed into our heads at the very last minute. On the evening of my finals, I could probably have told you about Wittgenstein’s view on the indeterminacy of translation but now all I can recall is the picture that was a duck one minute and a rabbit the next.
Yet that isn’t why it’s all a waste. Even though I’ve forgotten what I learnt, I am still proud to have once known it. This seems a less shameful state of ignorance than never having known it at all.
The real problem with the exam system is that it teaches lessons about work itself that you need to unlearn pretty smartly if you want to get ahead in business.
First, it teaches you that there is a fairly straightforward relationship between effort and result. In exams, if you work very, very hard in the evenings you are going to do an awful lot better than if you spend your evenings in the pub. In most office life, this is not true. The relationship between effort and reward is much more complicated.
Second, in an exam there is nowhere to hide. If you fail you may try to pin the blame on your teachers or the examiner, but in your heart you know there is no one else to blame but yourself. You either weren’t bright enough, or you didn’t work hard enough.
One of the beauties of office work is that there is no shortage of candidates to blame for one’s failures. Management, the market, the culture, one’s colleagues, the competitors, an IT failure; the options are endless. You can screw something up royally and get away with it indefinitely. Indeed, so long as you are quite senior you can bring the entire banking system down and still get a big bonus.
The third bad lesson from exams is that failure matters. If you flunk finals you don’t get the chance to do it again. Real life is much more forgiving. That presentation went badly? There will be another one along soon enough, which might go a bit better.
More dangerously still, the politics of exams are upside down. You work as hard as humanly possible while trying to unsettle fellow students by claiming to have done nothing at all.
With real work it is the other way round. The secret is to do as little as you can get away with, but make it seem that you are slogging your guts out.
In offices, people go home early and leave their jackets on their chairs and instruct their computers to send out work e-mails at 1am. There is no such thing as being seen to work too hard.
Finally, exams demand clarity of thought and expression and penalise waffle and bullshit. Whereas in business, alas, waffle and bullshit have become the gold standard.
There is, however, one thing that exams do teach you about work that is essential to remember in offices – that boys and girls are different. My daughters weep after exams, because they are girls. They say that they have done horribly badly, because they focus on the bit they got wrong rather than the bit they got right. Boys come swaggering out of exams declaring it to have been a piece of piss.
The difference is confidence. Last week, YouGov published a survey claiming that the average office worker acquires confidence at 37 after an average of 30,000 hours on the job. This is one of the worst statistics I have ever seen. Boys arriving in the workplace will profess themselves confident after the first hour. Most of my female contemporaries, thinking that work is an exam in which the full marks one wants are never quite forthcoming, are still searching for confidence at nearly 50.

Summary:

私は娘たちに先日、大人になってどういう仕事に就いたとしても、こんなにひどい思いをすることはないと約束した。こんなことを言う母親を、娘たちはバカにしきった表情で見据えた。娘たちの気持ちも分かる。人生の最難関がこんなに早くやってくるなんて、変だから。働いてお給料をもらうというのは真面目で真剣なことのはずなのに、その苦しみはそれほど私たちに深い傷を残さない。

学校の試験というのは若者に、明晰な思考と明快な表現を要求し、中身のないダラダラ記述やいい加減な解答を厳しく減点する。それとは対照的にビジネスでは、残念ながら、ダラダラのらりくらりでいい加減な態度こそ、黄金のスタンダードになってしまっている。ただしひとつだけ、学校の試験が教えてくれて職場でも知っておかなくてはならない知識がひとつある。それは、男子と女子は違うということ。

世論調査会社YouGovはこのほど、平均的な会社員は平均3万時間の経験を積んで、37歳ぐらいでようやく自信を獲得するのだという調査結果を発表した。こんなにひどい統計結果はそうそう見たことがない。というのも、新しく職場に新人としてやってくる男の子たちは、最初の1時間がすぎればもう自信満々のようなことを言うからだ。対して、私と同年代の女性たちは未だに、仕事は試験のようなもので、満点をとりたいのはやまやまだがそれはなかなか難しいものだ…と勘違いしていて、だから50近くになった今でも、自信をもてずにいるのだ。

New words/expressions I learn:

hell:地獄　physics:物理学　swagger:威張って歩く　confidence:信用　unsettle:動揺させる　shameful:恥ずべき

News 2

Date:26 June 2009

Web slows after Jackson's death
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8120324.stm

The internet suffered a number of slowdowns as people the world over rushed to verify accounts of Michael Jackson's death.
Search giant Google confirmed to the BBC that when the news first broke it feared it was under attack.
Millions of people who searched for the star's name on Google News were greeted with an error page.
It warned users "your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application".
"It's true that between approximately 2.40PM Pacific and 3.15PM Pacific, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson and saw the error page," said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker.
It was around this time that the singer was officially pronounced dead.
Google's trends page showed that searches for Michael Jackson had reached such a volume that in its so called "hotness" gauge the topic was rated "volcanic".
The BBC news website reported that traffic to the site at the time of Jackson's death was 72% higher than normal.
Fail
Google was not the only company overwhelmed by the public's clamour for information.
The microblogging service Twitter crashed with the sheer volume of people using the service.

Searches for topics related to Michael Jackson peaked at 3PM Pacific
Queries about the star soon rocketed to the top of its updates and searches. But the amount of traffic meant it suffered one of its well-known outages.
Before the company's servers crashed, TweetVolume noted that "Michael Jackson" appeared in more than 66,500 Twitter updates.
According to initial data from Trendrr, a Web service that tracks activity on social media sites, the number of Twitter posts Thursday afternoon containing "Michael Jackson" totaled more than 100,000 per hour.
That put news of Jackson's death at least on par with the Iran protests, as Twitter posts about Iran topped 100,000 per hour on June 16 and eventually climbed to 220,000 per hour.
Early reports of Mr Jackson's death and the confusion surrounding it caused a rash of changes and corrections to be made on his Wikipedia page as editors tried to keep up with events and the number of people trying to update the page.
TMZ, the popular celebrity gossip site that broke the story following a tip-off that a paramedic had visited the singers home also crashed.
There was a domino effect as users then fled to other sites. Hollywood gossip writer Perez Hilton's site was among those to flame out.
Keynote Systems reported that its monitoring showed performance problems for the web sites of AOL, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo.
Beginning at 2.30PM Pacific "the average speed for downloading news sites doubled from less than four seconds to almost nine seconds," said Shawn White, Keynote's director of external operations.
He told Data Center Knowledge that "during the same period, the average availability of sites on the index dropped from almost 100% to 86%".

Summary:

マイケル・ジャクソンの死後、インターネットへのアクセス数が急激に増えアクセスが困難になった。アクセスしてみてもエラーのページが出てくることが多々あったそうだ。加えてウィキペディアではマイケル氏に関する記事が何度も書き加えられていった。午後2時半の始めから、ニュースのサイトのダウンロードの平均速度が2倍になった、とShawn White氏は述べている。

New words/expressions I learn:

automated:自動の　external:外部の　availability:有用性　gossip:うわさ話

:(

When Beijing Olympic was held, fireworks were displayed and an adorable child sang song.
It was very attractive. But, to my surprise, those were said to that it was computer graphic.
In addition, singing girl didn’t sing.
The truth made me discouraged and I became not to have much confidence to China.

News 1

Date:23 April 2009

Strong sales boost for McDonald's
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8012423.stm


McDonald's has announced slightly higher profits in the first three months of the year as people look for value meals during the recession.
Profits at the the US fast-food giant, the world's largest hamburger chain, rose 4% to $979.5m (£676m) from $946.1m in the same period last year.
The company also said that sales so far in April were strong.

Last month, McDonald's warned that the strong dollar and high commodity prices would squeeze first quarter revenues.
Sales up
McDonald's' sales have increased in the economic downturn, helped by its low prices and the ubiquity of its fast-food outlets.
Global sales grew by 4.3%, with those in the US up by 4.7%, those in Europe increasing by 3.2% and those in Asia, the Middle East and Africa climbing by 5.5%.
This improvement was despite there being one less trading day in the period compared with last year, which was a leap year, and Easter falling outside the quarter this year, the company said.
But despite the rise in sales, total revenue fell by 10% from a year earlier, from $5.61bn to $5.08bn.
Without the strengthening dollar, performance would have been stronger, the chain said.
"Our underlying business performance remains strong... despite the economic concerns around the world. Our well-known value proposition and unparalleled convenience continue to resonate with customers," said Jim Skinner, McDonald's chief executive.
"In fact, the momentum has continued with April comparable sales trending at least as strong or better than first quarter sales in every area of the world," he added.
'Meeting expectations'
Analysts said the results were roughly in line with forecasts, unlike many previous quarters when McDonald's exceeded them.
"They're holding the line, they're meeting their expectations," said Matthew DiFrisco, restaurant analyst at investment bank Oppenheimer.
"It was a company, though, that was exceeding expectations through much of the last two years, so it will be interesting to see how the market reacts to an in-line quarter," he added.
McDonald's shares were almost unchanged in early trading in New York.

Summary:

McDonald's has announced slightly higher profits.

McDonald's' sales have increased in the economic downturn, helped by its low prices and the ubiquity of its fast-food outlets.

But despite the rise in sales, total revenue fell by 10% from a year earlier, from $5.61bn to $5.08bn.

McDonald's shares were almost unchanged in early trading in New York.

McDnald's are promising.

New words/expressions I learn:

commodity:商品 squeeze:ぎゅっと絞る ubiquity:偏在　despite：侮辱 strengthening:強くする momentum:勢い investment：投資 unparalleled:並ぶ者のない

start!!

Hello everyone.

My name is mari morimoto.

Please comment on my article.

←This is painted my friend Shiori Yamamoto.

She is very good at painting.

This resemble me!