【专题】慢速英语（英音）2016-06-27

英语环球 NEWSPlus Radio

This is Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.
China has issued a guidance to ensure the entire poor population in rural China has access to basic medical care services that is close to the national average level.
The guideline has been released by 15 central government departments. It says the government will mobilize various social resources and take more precise measures to support the development of healthcare services in poor areas.
The healthcare-related poverty alleviation project is part of a national strategy to ensure that all people living below the poverty line in China climb out by 2020.
An estimated 56 million people in China lived in poverty in the rural areas as of last year. Around 44 percent of them became impoverished due to healthcare related expenses.
The poverty line stands at 2,800 yuan, roughly 425 U.S. dollars, per person per year.
A joint investigation will be launched nationwide to look into major factors that are responsible for rural poverty. The investigation will be carried out by health workers at grassroots levels, and will cover all households that fell into poverty due to healthcare expenses.
The investigation will be completed in July, and a record will be created for each family. A report will be filed to the central government, based on the investigation results. The move aims to help the authorities to provide financial aid to the poor accordingly.
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China's new supercomputing system, the Sunway-TaihuLight, has become the world's fastest computer at the International Supercomputing Conference in Germany.
The National Supercomputing Center has also been unveiled in Wuxi in east China's Jiangsu Province. The new-generation supercomputer is installed in a 1,000-square-meter computer room at the center.
With processing capacity of 125 Petaflops per second, it is the first supercomputer to achieve speeds in excess of 100 Petaflops per second. This means that the supercomputer is able to perform quadrillions of calculations per second at peak performance.
The capability of the supercomputer is provided by a China-developed many-core CPU chip, which measures just 25 square centimeters.
Scientists say it would take 7 billion people using electronic calculators 32 years, or 2 million desktop computers working together for one minute, to do the same calculation the supercomputer can solve in just 60 seconds.
The supercomputer is composed of almost 41,000 processors. In addition to its faster speed, the supercomputer is much more energy-efficient than its predecessor, the Tianhe-2. The Tianhe-2 remained the world's fastest supercomputer for the past six years.
Using the new supercomputer, one watt of electricity supports 6 billion calculations, cutting power consumption by two-thirds, compared with that of its predecessor.
Aided by the supercomputer's data storage and processing capabilities, a telescope can detect radio signals from tens of billions of light years away.
The application of supercomputer-based marine wave modeling is aiding the safeguarding of marine shipping by providing high-resolution ocean surface images and ocean forecasts.
In the life science and industrial spheres, supercomputers have greatly accelerated China's pace in developing medicine, new materials and advanced manufacturing.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
Preferences for employment in Chinese college graduates have been changing in recent years as the country undergoes transformations in its economic and industrial structure.
A recent survey found that knowledge-intensive industries including information, education and healthcare are hiring more college graduates, while labor-intensive industries, including architecture and manufacturing, are losing their appeal to job hunters.
The survey, entitled College Graduates' Employment Annual Report, polled more than 250,000 college students who graduated last year.
Experts say that industrial upgrading has resulted in the need for workers with higher education.
For example, information technology is leading the current industrial upgrade in China and has become an engine of economic growth. As a result, the proportion of graduates who chose to work in media, information and telecommunication rose two percentage points last year, compared with 2010.
Experts say the employment preference serves as a barometer, helping decision-makers to differentiate fast-developing emerging industries from those that are declining or facing challenges.
The report also found that small and medium-sized private companies and enterprises, as employers, are gaining increasing favor from college graduates, compared with State-owned enterprises or their transnational counterparts.
It said that the employment rate of college graduates has remained stable despite the slowing economy.
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Like in the United States, knowledge of robots will likely become an integral part of school education in China in the near future, if some forward-thinking technology firms have their way.
Already, STEM, an acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics, is part of an inter-disciplinary approach that marks school education in developed countries.
The United States is the leader in this respect. The US government allocated 240 million US dollars of funds last year to promote STEM-centric education. The total investment in this sector has so far reached 1 billion dollars.
Sui Shaolong is chief operating officer of RoboTerra, an educational robotics company located in Silicon Valley in the US. Sui said that compared with the traditional education model, school education that includes robotics in the curriculum allows students to learn how to analyze and solve problems. Building or assembling a robot strengthens students' skills and sharpens their thinking ability in terms of space and structure.
He said designing and writing the robot's programs helps to develop students' logical thinking ability; and team work enhances their interpersonal communication and the ability to cooperate.
RoboTerra has already provided one-stop solutions for robot-based curricula and STEM-centric education in dozens of schools in Chinese cities including Beijing and Shanghai.
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.
While excavators dismantled the synthetic surface of the playground at the Baiyunlu campus of Beijing No.2 Experimental Primary School, a group of parents carried out checks at the site, despite the noise of machinery, the swirling dust and the stench of plastic debris.
Like the surface of the playground, the parents' trust in the school and local educational authority has been shredded as a result of a recent health scare related to the facility. That's according to one parent, the mother of a fourth-grader at the school, who preferred not to be named.
She is one of dozens of parents who claim their children were poisoned by toxic substances emitted by a synthetic running track built last year. They cited a range of symptoms including nosebleeds, coughs and skin allergies that have affected at least 40 students since April.
She said removing the running surface is easy but she doubts whether the authorities are determined to dig deep enough to uncover the real reasons for the controversy and find those who should be held accountable.
The claims followed a number of incidents in which students were found t obe feeling unwell after exposure to potentially toxic artificial sports fields at schools in at least 15 cities across China.
However, on June 14, the Beijing Municipal Education Commission announced that a follow-up air quality test conducted by the China National Environmental Monitoring Center indicated that the campus facilities adhered to the quality standards for national environmental monitoring and synthetic playgrounds.
Six parents' representatives witnessed the tests, along with a third-party notary agency. However, some parents remained skeptical about the results.
The Beijing Education Commission has ordered an inspection into all synthetic sports fields in Beijing's schools. It has suspended construction of new playgrounds until new guidelines are released.
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A dog meat festival in Southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region has been held as before, but the scale has been greatly reduced, thanks to the local government's pledge to take action against public slaughter of dogs.
Peter Li, a China policy specialist at Humane Society International, has visited the festival in Yulin County for the past three years. He said the atmosphere there this year was more peaceful than previous festival.
Li said he hardly saw any abuse or slaughtering in the street, and it is neither a nightmare nor a festival.
In response to Hong Kong legislator Michael Tien Puk-sun's petition to end the festival, the local government promised to ban dog slaughter in public and to check the health certificates of dogs transported from outside.
Food safety and the problem of stolen pet dogs are the major objections against the annual event.
The festival is held in the county around the summer solstice, a day on the Chinese lunar calendar after which the hottest days of the year are expected. In recent years, the festival has been shrinking in scale due to pressure both domestic and from abroad.
According to Humane Society International, a notorious dog slaughtering peak was seen around 2012 and 2013, when more than 10,000 dogs were killed in three days. The number dropped to 2,000 last year.
Ever since the festival became a lightning rod for criticisms in 2012, the local government has said little beyond reiterating that there is no "organized festival" and it's just a local people's gathering event.
A local publicity official also said that dog meat is a valid food choice in the local area, but not a habit as some activists put it. The official said the local government has made efforts to address public concerns over food security and the safety of pet dogs. However, he said that there is no legal basis to forbid people from eating the animal's meat.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
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