【专题】慢速英语（英音）2016-07-11

英语环球 NEWSPlus Radio

This is Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.
Installation has been completed on the world's largest radio telescope as the last 4,000 pieces of panels were fitted into the center of the big dish.
Hoisting of the last piece of triangular panel to the reflector lasted around an hour. It was a landmark step for the telescope's planned launch of operations in September.
The telescope is the size of 30 football pitches. Around 300 people, including builders, experts and reporters, witnessed the installation at a karst valley in Pingtang County in the southwestern province of Guizhou.
Renowned science fiction writer Liu Cixin said at the site that the telescope is of great significance for humans to explore the universe and extraterrestrial civilizations. Liu won the Hugo Award for Best Novel last year.
Scientists will begin debugging and trial observation of the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope.
Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who built the telescope said the project has the potential to search for more strange objects to better understand the origin of the universe and boost the global hunt for extraterrestrial life.
The radio telescope will be the global leader for the next 10 to 20 years.
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China will be among a handful of nations that are able to build two types of satellites, both geostationary and orbiting, to monitor the entire globe.
China will put another 14 weather satellites into service by 2025, in addition to the current seven, in a bid to better monitor weather patterns to benefit society.
Since 1988, China has launched 14 satellites in its Fengyun series for meteorological observation and related services. Seven of them are still in operation.
The satellites are expected to provide complete global weather monitoring and put China on the short list of countries that build both types of satellites. The United States and Europe are also able to build both types.
The national meteorological authority said the seven weather satellites in operation scan the entire world every 25 minutes, and certain regions every six minutes.
Currently, more than 2,500 domestic users, including companies and institutes, have received data from the satellites.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
China has released a new draft regulation for adoption, which for the first time allows children who were abducted to be adopted by Chinese citizens; and the adoption is allowed if the police cannot find their biological parents within 12 months.
The police are responsible for locating abducted children's biological parents or other guardians. The draft regulation has been publicized to solicit public opinion.
New provisions in the regulation also involve the adoption of abandoned children, and those who find abandoned children should report it to the police immediately.
If efforts fail to locate the children's biological parents within three months, the police will render the abandoned children eligible for adoption.
Compared with the current regulation, the draft also simplifies some procedures, removing some unnecessary paperwork and certificates.
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The Ministry of Education says there were more than 1,300 vocational colleges for higher education in China last year.
The colleges were attended by 10 million students last year, accounting for 40 percent of all college undergraduates. The vocational institutes also provided on-the-job training to 20 million people last year.
The ministry said vocational colleges offer occupational courses and are important to transforming higher education from an elite area to one for the masses.
By the end of last year, all the provincial regions in China had established financial support systems for vocational colleges. Annual financial subsidies on each student should be no less than 12,000 yuan next year. That's roughly 1,800 U.S. dollars.
A budget of 5 billion yuan from the government is also expected in the next five years, to promote the combination of production and study and build a modern vocational education system.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
A hospital in Shanghai has announced that a healthy baby girl has been born from an embryo frozen 18 years ago.
A 45-year-old woman gave birth to the girl, weighing 3,300 grams. The embryo was implanted into the woman's womb in November at the Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital in Fudan University in Shanghai.
The woman suffered from blocked fallopian tubes and began trying to get pregnant in the Shanghai hospital in 1998 through IVF, or in vitro fertilization. She had three failed implantations, one with a fresh embryo and two with frozen ones.
At the beginning of last year, she went to the hospital again and had the embryo implanted.
Frozen embryos are stored in liquid nitrogen at minus 196 degrees Celsius. Shanghai health department said in 2013 that a medical institution should keep a client' embryos for no more than five years. However hospitals usually have to store the embryos for much longer because most clients do not ask for the service to be halted.
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Four chronic illnesses, namely cancer, cardiovascular, diabetes and chronic respiratory disease, topped the causes for premature deaths in Beijing.
A report released by the Beijing Health and Family Planning Commission said it was the first time a health department has released the premature mortality rate, defined as someone who dies before the age of 70.
An official at the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention said that when a person dies at 40 years old, he or she is considered to have lost 30 potential years of life.
The premature mortality rate is a measurement that gives more weight to the death of younger people; and it could be a guide to the health department to take preventive action.
Of the four causes of premature death, cancer was listed at No 1. It contributed to 27 percent of all deaths in Beijing last year, an increase of 4 percent over 2014.
The report also found that lung cancer, colorectal and liver cancers were the top three that led to death in Beijing last year.
The report said that what calls for special attention is that thyroid cancer has seen a significant growth among women in Beijing. In the past ten years, thyroid cancer among women in Beijing climbed from 2 to 15 per 100,000 people.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. You can access the program by logging on to newsplusradio.cn. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know by e-mailing us at [e-mail]. That's [e-mail]. Now the news continues.
Robots, tiny drones and brainwave sensors exhibited on the sidelines of the Summer Davos in Tianjin have offered a glimpse into the future. The event was held by the World Economic Forum and is also known as the Annual Meeting of the New Champions.
Kevin Chen spent most of the event introducing his "RoboBees" to curious visitors to the Exploration Zone. The tiny and light machines, roughly the shape of a bee, can fly and perch by flapping their wings 120 times per second, faster than using blades, as most unmanned aerial vehicles do.
Chen, a Chinese PhD candidate at Harvard University, used artificial muscles custom-made from carbon-fiber sheets to power the RoboBees. They can be used to spread pollen or search for people buried after disasters.
RoboBees were not the only animalistic drones at Summer Davos. Also on show were robots imitating the movement of snakes and spiders designed to assume search and rescue tasks.
One of the most popular exhibits at the Exploration Zone was a brain-machine interface developed by San Francisco firm Emotiv.
When a user puts on a headset, his or her brainwaves are linked wirelessly to a small white ball and can light it up with different colors. Testers at the zone were able to move the balls with their minds.
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A top scoring student in the national college entrance exam has been rewarded with an apartment by a local property developer in Enping City in Guangdong Province.
The exam results were announced in June in the province and Wu Zhengtao became the top scorer among all the exam takers in the city. He was granted a large apartment measuring 133-square-meter.
Wu said he never expected to win a top scour nor the apartment.
When responding to learning tips, Wu said the outcome was the result of hard study. He said he always squeezes in time to study and make full use of the time after class.
Wu was born into an ordinary family and is his parents' only child. His mother went to Venezuela two years ago and works at a grocery store. His father runs a business in Enping City.
Wu lives in an old 80-square-meter apartment with his grandparents and his father. He said he hopes the new home will improve the living conditions of the family.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
The panda twin cubs born in Macao a couple weeks ago are in good health.
Macao's Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau said in a report that the larger panda cub has grown from 135 grams at birth to 167, and the smaller one from 53 to 78 grams.
Macao has formed a specialized team to take care of the cubs and their mother.
The larger cub is strong and can feed by itself while the smaller one is fed by panda experts who collect milk from the mother.
The bureau said on June 26 that a female panda Xinxin had given birth to a pair of twin male cubs.
Xinxin and a male panda named Kaikai were chosen from Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Southwest China's Sichuan Province as a gift from the central government to Macao.
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