【专题】慢速英语（美音）2016-07-12

英语环球 NEWSPlus Radio

This is Special English. I&`&m Liu Yan in Beijing. Here is the news.
Chinese scientists are expanding the capacity of an underground facility designed to detect elusive dark matter particles.
The scientists are still searching for evidence to prove the existence of the hypothetical dark matter, an invisible substance thought to account for over a quarter of the universe&`&s mass-energy balance.
The Jinping Underground Laboratory started operating in 2010. The laboratory is located 2,400 meters under a mountain in Sichuan Province. It features a store of xenon, one of the few materials that interact with dark matter. There are also cosmic rays which interfere with attempts to observe dark matter that generally cannot penetrate to such a depth underground.
Researchers at the laboratory said they have started a new phase of experiment. The lab now stores 300 kilograms of xenon, an expansion from the 50 kilograms in previous experiment.
In the future, the total amount of xenon stored in the lab will be increased to a number of tons, but it will depend on when the research funding is in place.
The new experiment will last around a year, and will go further on the way to find dark matter signals.
But the researchers said they may need to keep up their current fast pace if China is to win the race in this sector. International competition in the hunt for dark matter is fierce. Many countries are building larger detection equipment with cutting-edge technology.
This is Special English.
The bridge linking Hong Kong, Zhuhai and Macao has moved a step closer to completion as two main bridge structures have been connected.
Macao&`&s legislature has described the connection as a milestone for the world-class project; but said there will still be many challenges before the project is finished.
By early July, 80 percent of a 7-km tunnel has been completed. A full-scale effort can now begin on the bridge deck pavement and traffic engineering.
The 55-km bridge is comprised of the offshore bridge and tunnel, boundary crossing facilities in Hong Kong, Zhuhai and Macao, as well as routes connecting the three cities.
The main structure of the bridge is made up of the underwater tunnel and a bridge spanning 23 kilometers. Artificial islands will be built at both ends of the tunnel.
According to the authority, the amount of iron used in the main structure alone weighs around 400,000 metric tons, enough for around 60 Eiffel Towers in Paris.
The completion of the Hong Kong section of the bridge, built independently by the Hong Kong SAR government, was postponed for a year to the end of 2017, after it was reported that the artificial islands had shifted between six and seven meters in September.
This is Special English.
Earthquake monitoring stations across China are making use of nature to supplement their man-made early warning systems.
Researchers have found that many species of animals and birds behave abnormally in the buildup to a large quake.
Although odd behavioral displays do not necessarily mean a tremor is on the way, they can be a good indicator. That&`&s according to Sun Delei, deputy chief of the quake monitoring and forecasting department at the Earthquake Bureau in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
Sun&`&s bureau designated the Xinjiang Ancient Ecological Garden as an earthquake monitoring station on June 16, bringing the number of such centers in the city to 28.
It was chosen because it is home to a large number of animals, including the Ferghana horse.
Most of China&`&s earthquake monitoring stations keep animals and birds on site, including horses, pigs, dogs and parrots.
Keepers at each center record the animals&`& behavior daily, with any abnormalities reported and studied to find out if they relate to an upcoming quake.
Before the magnitude-4.2 quake in Urumqi on December 24, more than 60 parakeets that had been asleep suddenly jumped down from their perches, and the parrots were squawking for almost 30 minutes.
The development of monitoring stations was stepped up by the China Earthquake Administration in the wake of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan that left more than 69,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands injured.
You&`&re listening to Special English. I&`&m Liu Yan 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 her womb in November at the Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital of 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 to halt the service.
This is Special English.
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 a 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.
This is Special English.
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 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, rather 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 drone at Summer Davos. Also on show were robots imitating the movement of snakes and spiders and 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.
You&`&re listening to Special English. I&`&m Liu Yan 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.
A top scorer student of the national college entrance exam has been rewarded an apartment by a local property developer in Enping City of 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 big 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 is the result of hard study. He said he always squeezes out time to study and make full use of the time after class.
Wu was born into an ordinary family and is the only child of his parents. His mother went to Venezuela two years ago and works at a grocery store. His father runs a business in Enping City.
You&`&re listening to Special English. I&`&m Liu Yan 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 bigger 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 bigger 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 has given birth to a pair of male twin 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 of the central government to Macao.
This is Special English.
（全文见周日微信。）