I’m now concerned whether Nicole has a speech delay problem or she just has a temporary constitutional speech delay and will turns out to be a late bloomer. She is in her twenty-five months and has mastered a vocabulary of around 60 words (mainly Chinese), but no combination of two words together, which shows a little bit delay in the speech development. But this standard, I mean the combination of two words, is according to the statistics study of monolingual babies and toddlers. I don’t think this normal speech development milestone for a monolingual child applies for bilingual children. I can’t find the relevant study of children from bilingual or trilingual environment similar to our case. The advantages of having the bilingual skill are well documented, however, what is not well documented is the language development milestones that lead to bilingualism. Heredity and temperament can make for a linguistic late bloomer, as can a parent's anticipating a child's every need rather than letting her speak for herself. Then how about bilingualism? Whether bilingualism will cause a toddler’s speech delay still remains questionable academically, but it is well known that a poor linguistic environment can result in children’s language delays. And indeed, many bilingual babies and toddlers show certain degrees of delays at the initial phases of language production and become somehow late talkers. This is the thing we never really considered when we moved here (actually she was a fetus then): how would Nicole cope with growing up in a bilingual environment? With hardly a sentence of German between her father and me, let alone any first hand experiences of bilingualism, we just assumed that her language skills would develop as normal – but in two or even three languages. I speak mainly Chinese to her, and sometimes a little bit of simple English words. She started her social life in the local daycare when she was one year old, around ten hours a week, which is a light exposure to the Swiss German. Now she can understand both languages well. She plays well, laughs and makes noises in the playgroup, but no talking at all, either in German or in Chinese, according to her caregiver from the nursery centre. Obviously there is delay in both languages. I don’t care whether she is skillful bilingually. The thing I’m concerned is that she needs to talk. Endless searches on the website revealed all sorts of information that was predominantly based upon a parental-language relationship (i.e. mum speaking one language, dad speaking another). Our special situation – one language at home, another language outside – did not seem to get a look in. So we decided to take medical advice, and the Doctor who knows her well suggested a wait and see strategy because she has been making progress, although not that fast. Recently I found on the NCELA website, there is a phase that bilingual children go through: “First, the child uses the home language. When everyone around the child is speaking a different language, there are only two options-to speak the language they already know, or to stop speaking entirely. Many children, but not all, follow the first option for some period of time (Saville-Troike, 1987). This of course leads to increasing frustration, and eventually children give up trying to make others understand their language.” According to this American study, maybe that’s why Nicole speaks Chinese with us at home, while keeps silent outside. I’m now struggling for helping along her speech. Sing, dance, and play together. Read books aloud. Story telling. Talk a lot to her. Look at family photos and talk about them. Ask her a lot of questions. Answer her every time she speaks. As one mom with a speech delayed child once told me, “It's really not easy for some kids. But then it all came out, at once, in loooong run on sentences. And she hasn't stopped.” This blog was originally posted on 30th July in my chinadaily blog forum. http://blog.chinadaily.com.cn/home.php?mod=spaceuid=309597do=blogview=mefrom=space The reason why I shifted it to sciencenet is I will pobably meet with more people here with similar experiences and common interests, and then we can have more meaningful discussions and dialogues. Thanks ahead for your time.
Thomas Bach’s speech following his election as IOC President 125th IOC Session Buenos Aires, Argentina 10 September 2013 Dear President Jacques Rogge, Dear Friends and Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen, Muchas gracias. Merci beaucoup. Спасибо. 谢谢. شكرا. Danke schn. Thank you very much to all of you, and thank you for this very kind reception. First of all I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart all my dear friends and colleagues who voted for me this morning. This is really an overwhelming sign of trust and confidence. But I would also like to thank my fellow candidates, who I greatly respect, and all those who did not vote for me this time. I will also work for and with you in the coming years and want to win your confidence too. I know about the great responsibility of an IOC President. This makes me humble. I want to lead the IOC according to my motto “unity in diversity.” I want to be a President for all of you. This means I will do my very best to balance well all the different interests of the stakeholders of the Olympic Movement. This is why I want to listen to you and to enter into an on-going dialogue with all of you. You should know that my door, my ears, and my heart are always open for you. Dear Jacques, I would like to thank you personally very much. You are leaving such a great legacy and strong foundation on which we all together can continue to build the future of the IOC. Personally I would like to thank you very much for all the confidence you placed in me during the 12 years of your presidency. And I hope very much that I can count on your good advice also in the years to come. 37 years ago in Montreal I became Olympic champion with my team. Good memories. One year later I came to Buenos Aires for the World Championships 1977. Good memories. It was in a freezing cold winter, but despite the cold weather we were, like now, extremely warmly welcomed by our Argentinian hosts and friends. And this election reminds me somehow of the final in these World Championships in 1977 because after a dramatic competition we won the World Championships. With our competitors from that time, I am still good friends. Now my dear friends and colleagues, let us, this great universal orchestra the IOC, play together in harmony for a bright future of the Olympic Movement under the leadership of the IOC. Tank you very much. Merci beaucoup. 原文见 http://www.olympic.org/Documents/IOC_Executive_Boards_and_Sessions/IOC_Sessions/125_Session_Buenos_Aires_2013/President_election_Thomas_Bach_speech.pdf
Dedication to NUMIFORM'2013, Shenyang China 07 July 2013 Conference Chair: Prof Shi-Hong Zhang Good morning! Dear colleagues, Dear guests, Dear old friends and young friends, ladies and gentlemen, As the Chair of NUMIFORM'2013, I am pleased to anounce that the 11 th International Conferenceon Numerical Methods in Industrial Forming Processes is opened now! Welcome you all to IMR, Shenyang China, please enjoy the conference and the beautiful summer! As the host, the Director of IMR, Prof Rui Yang has been at the conference and he will make a welcome speech after a few minutes. Prof Yiyi Li, the Chairman of IMR Academic Committee has also been attending. As many of you may remember, that three years ago in POHANG, KOREA, Prof F. Barlat anounced that the 11th Numiform Conference would be held in Shenyang in 2013. I had promised to present a beautiful Conference to you this year. We have done our best to prepare for this conference, it seems that everything is ready now, we can start the NUMIFORM today. I remebered that I had promised to welcome all of you to come to Shenyang for NUMIFORM2013. I have found that, many old friends and renown scientists have been sitting here today. I also found many new friends, especially many young scientists are also here. Nearly 100 overseas attendants come from more than 20 countries, from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Portugal, Romainia, Spain, the Neitherlands, Turkey and USA. Some of our friends as Prof K. Saanouni, M. Chiumenti, F. Micari, K. Chung, T. Kuwabara and Dr Z. Cedric Xia from France, Spain, Italy, Korea, Japan and USA will present Plenary lectures at this Conference. I also found that many scientists come from China, including Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. This is a good opportunity for Chinese scientsis to show their exerllent works to the outside world on Numerical Methods and applications, you know, many world well-known scientists are interested in the developments in China, not only in industrial sectors, also in a lot of work by Chinese Scientists, especially the young people, inlcuding work on applications and many novel numerical methods, as you have published many good papers in the leading Journals and Conferences in the world. We are happy that three oudstanding Chinese scientists Prof Pan Zeng from Tsinghua University, Prof Quanlin Jin from China Academy of Machinery Science Technology Beijing, Prof Dianzhong Li from IMR will give Keynote Lectures these days. NUMIFORM CONFERENCE was proposed and started in 1982 by world renown Scientist, Prof. O.C. Zienkiewicz,this conference is taking place every three years at alternating locations around the globe: Swansea (UK, 1982), Gothenburg ( Sweden, 1986), Fort Collins(USA, 1989), Sophia Antipolis (France, 1992), Ithaca (New-York, 1995), Enschede(The Netherlands, 1998), Toyohashi (Japan, 2001), Columbus (Ohio, 2004), Porto (Portugal,2007), and Pohang (Korea, 2010). From 2010 in Korea, NUMIFORM Conference started a Symposium to remember Prof Zienkiewicz for his great achievements to the NUMERICAL Methods during his life. This morning, we will have a session for him with two Plenary Lectures by Prof Saanouni and Micari. NUMEICAL METHODS are very important in the Metal Forming sectors. Prof Jian Cao from Northwerstern University USA and Prof Saanouni from France will organize a Panel meeting “ Advanced modeling in metalforming: achieving material properties through process design” joinned by many world renown scientists such as Prof. F. Chinesta, Ecole Centrale of Nantes, France, Dr R. Ducloux, Transvalor France, Prof. P. Hu, Dalian University of Technology, China; Prof. J.P. Ponthot, University of Liege, Belgium; Prof. D.Y. YANG, KAIST, Korea , Prof Jun Chen from Shanghai JT Uni. I express our sincere thanks for theirefforts, and everyone is welcome to join. We organized toally 6 topics and 6 special symposia, including some special symposia: Prof. Ruan’s 80th birthday celebration symposium Organized by Prof Jun Chen, Guo-Qun Zhao, Jian Cao; Multi-scale modeling and applications Organized by Prof Dirk Helm, Quan-Lin Jin; Process modeling on heavy casting and forging organized by Dian-Zhong Li and Ming-Yue Sun; Design and optimization ofmetal forming processes organized by Prof R. Grandhi, L. Fourment, Guo-Qun ZHAO, and Ying-Qiao Guo; Damage and defects prediction in metal forming organized by Prof K. Saanouni and Prof Cesar de Sa. I am sure that you will be very interested in the above symposia and please enjoy them during your stay. We have 9 plenary lectures, 22 invited talks and 65 oral presentations, 45 posters.The Proceedings have been published in AIP publications, which will all be included in SCI and other data base. All the papers have been carefully peer reviewed. We recieved nearly 250 abstracts and about 200 full papers. 162 papers are selected in the AIP Conferene proceedings. More than 220 attandants have registered until this morning. The Conference secretary and the volunteers have spent a lot of time to make them published. There are also some scientists, who do not like to publish their work on the proceedings, but they will present their work at the Conference orally or by posters. Their work is included in the Conference booklet with abstracts. Our Conference has been supported by Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Chinese Society for Technology of Plasticity (CSTP) and Transvalor S.A. I express our appreciations to their kind supports. We arranged a Conference Banquet tomorrow evening. We also arranged a special dinner at this evening for the Panal Meeting activitists. We also arranged a technical tour and a sightseeing tour after NUMIFORM, you are welcome to join if you have time. Finally, I express my thanks for the support from the Steering Committee, who have continued to help us to organize the conference, Prof Barlat has come to IMR two times and given us a lot of help. I wish you all enjoy the NUMIFORM Conferencea nd have a wonderful time during your stay in Shenyang. Thanks to the beautiful summer, our NUMIFORM time begins! 07 July 2013 at 8:45
'Languagegene'speedslearning ‘ 语言基因 ’ 让你学的更快 Mouse study suggests that mutation to FOXP2 gene may have helped humans learn the muscle movements for speech. 对老鼠的研究表明： FOXP2 基因变异可能会对人们掌握说话时的肌肉运动有帮助。 A mutation t hat appeared more than half a million years ago may have helped humans learn the complex muscle movements that are critical to speech and language. 50 万年前出现的变异可能一直在帮助人们掌握复杂的肌肉运动，这种肌肉运动对说话和语言至关重要。 The claim stems from the finding that mice genetically engineered to produce the human form of the gene, called FOXP2 , learn more quickly than their normal counterparts. 这一说法源自这样的发现：通过基因改良的老鼠产生了人类具有的基因，这种基因叫 FOXP2 ，这些老鼠比他们的同伙（没有基因改良的老鼠）学的更快。 The work was presented by Christiane Schreiweis, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, at the Society for Neuroscience meeting this week in Washington DC this week. 德国莱比锡的马科斯普朗克人类进化研究院 (MPI) 的一位神经学家，叫做克里斯汀 - 施瑞斯，在本周出席在华盛顿召开的神经科学协会会议上提交了上述发现。 Scientists discovered FOXP2 in the 1990s by studying a British family known as 'KE' in which three generations suffered from severe speech and language problems 1 . Those with language problems were found to share an inherited mutation that inactivates one copy of FOXP2 . 科学家发现 FOXP2 基因是上世纪 90 年代的事，当时科学家对英国一家代号为 ‘KE’ 的家庭进行研究，这家三代人都有严重的说话和语言障碍。这三代人都遗传了一个变异，这个变异阻止了 FOXP2 基因的复制。 Most vertebrates have nearly identical versions of the gene, which is involved in the development of brain circuits important for the learning of movement. The human version of FOXP2, the protein encoded by the gene, differs from that of chimpanzees at two amino acids, hinting that changes to the human form may have had a hand in the evolution of language. 多数脊椎动物都有几乎一样的 FOXP2 基因形式，这种基因涉及到对掌握运动至关重要的脑部的发育。人类的 FOXP2 基因（该基因编码的蛋白质）与黑猩猩的相比有两个氨基酸不同，这表明人类的这种基因变化可能对语言的进化发挥了作用。 A team led by Schreiweis’ colleague Svante Pääbo discovered that the gene is identical in modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) and Neanderthals ( Homo neanderthalensis ), suggesting that the mutation appeared before these two human lineages diverged around 500,000 years ago. 施瑞斯的一个同事叫做塞万提 - 帕博，他领导的一个小组发现了现代人（智人）和穴居人（尼安德特人）的 FOXP2 基因是一样的。这表明在 50 万年前这两支人类先祖分道扬镳之前变异就出现了。 Altered squeaks 变了的叫声 A few years ago, researchers at the MPI Leipzig engineered mice to make the human FOXP2 protein. The ‘humanized’ mice were less intrepid explorers and, when separated from their mothers, pups produced altered ultrasonic squeaks compared to pups with the mouse version of FOXP2. 几年前，德国莱比锡的马科斯普朗克人类进化研究院 (MPI) 的研究人员对老鼠进行了基因改造，让老鼠具有人类的 FOXP2 基因蛋白。这种 ‘ 人类化的 ’ 老鼠变成了胆小的探险者，并且当把它们和它们的妈妈分开时，与带有老鼠原版 FOXP2 基因的小老鼠相比，这些基因改良后的小老鼠会发出变化了的超声波叫声。 Their brains, compared with those of normal mice, contained neurons with more and longer dendrites — the tendrils that help neurons communicate with each other. Another difference was that cells in a brain region called the basal ganglia were quicker to become unresponsive after repeated electrical stimulation, a trait called ‘long-term depression’ that is implicated in learning and memory. 改造后老鼠的大脑与正常老鼠的大脑相比较，含有更多的神经元而且神经元的树突更长。神经元树突是一种须状物，可以帮助神经元相互之间进行通讯交流。另外一个不同是，改造后的老鼠大脑底部神经中枢的脑细胞经过反复的电刺激后，更快进入冷漠状态，这一特征叫 ‘ 长期压抑 ’ ，这种 ‘ 长期压抑 ’ 涉及到学习和记忆。 At the neuroscience meeting, Schreiweis reported that mice with the human form of FOXP2 learn more quickly than ordinary mice. She challenged mice to solve a maze that involved turning either left or right to find a water reward. A visual clue, such as a star, along with the texture of the maze's surface, showed the correct direction to turn. 在神经科学大会上，施瑞斯报告说：具有人类 FOXP2 基因的老鼠比普通老鼠学习的更快。他让老鼠走迷宫，左转或者右转，走对了就奖给老鼠水喝。在迷宫里有诸如星状的可视标记，加上通道的表面的质感，可以指明正确的方向。 After eight days of practice, mice with the human form of FOXP2 learnt to follow the clues to the water 70% of the time. Normal mice took an additional four days to reach this level. Schreiweis says that the human form of the gene allowed mice to more quickly integrate the visual and tactile clues when learning to solve the maze. 经过 8 天练习后，带有人类 FOXP2 基因的老鼠在 70% 的情况下可以根据线索找到水喝。普通老鼠需要另外化四天时间练习才能达到这样的水平。施瑞斯说：在老鼠走迷宫时，人类的 FOXP2 基因让老鼠更快的把可视线索和触觉线索联系在一起。 In humans, she says, the mutation to FOXP2 might have helped our species learn the complex muscle movements needed to form basic sounds and then combine these sounds into words and sentences. 对人类而言，他说，向 FOXP2 基因的变异可能帮助了我们这一物种掌握复杂的肌肉运动，要形成基本声音然后把基本声音合成为字然后再合成为句子，复杂的肌肉运动是必须的。 Another MPI team member, Ulrich Bornschein, presented work at the neuroscience meeting showing that the changes to brain circuitry that lead to quicker learning come about with just one of the two amino-acid changes in the human form of FOXP2 . The second mutation may do nothing. 另一个 MPI 小组成员，叫做乌里奇 - 本斯新，在神经科学大会上提出了他的研究结果，他的结果表明：导致学习更快的脑部变化的只是人类 FOXP2 基因里两个变化了氨基酸中的一个，另一个变化了的氨基酸毫无作用。 “That makes sense,” says Genevieve Konopka, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who also studies FOXP2 . Carnivores, including dogs and wolves, independently evolved the other human FOXP2 mutation, with no obvious effect on their brains. 位于达拉斯的得克萨斯大学西南医学中心的一位神经学家，叫做吉纳维夫 - 科诺普柯，也在研究 FOXP2 基因。他说： ‘ 是那样 ’ 。食肉动物，包括狗和狼，独立的进化成了其他的人类 FOXP2 基因变种，对它们的大脑没有明显影响。 Faraneh Vargha-Khadem, a neuroscientist at University College London who has studied the KE family in which FOXP2 is mutated, thinks that the new findings could help explain the gene's role in perfecting the facial movements involved in speech. 法拉尼 - 乌迦 - 科登是伦敦大学分院的神经学家，她研究了 KE 家族 FOXP2 基因变异，她认为新的发现可以帮助我们解释在说话时形成的脸部运动中 FOXP2 基因所起的作用。 But she does not see how changes in basic learning circuitry could explain how FOXP2 helps humans to automatically and effortlessly translate their thoughts into spoken language. “You are not deciding how you are going to move your muscles to form these sounds,” she says. 但是她没有找到如何用（负责学习的）脑部变化来解释 FOXP2 基因是如何帮助人类自觉地而且毫不费力地把想法转换成口头语言的。她说： “ 人们不用刻意去想如何使用你的肌肉来发出声音 ” 。 http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_70f7edbc0100ydq3.html Scientists Identify a Language Gene Bijal P. Trivedi for National Geographic Today October 4, 2001 Researchers in England have identified the first gene to be linked to language and speech, suggesting that our human urge to babble and chat is innate, and that our linguistic abilities are at least partially hardwired. "It is important to realize that this is a gene associated with language, not the gene," said Anthony Monaco of the University of Oxford, England, who led the genetic aspects of the study. The gene is required during early embryonic development for formation of brain regions associated with speech and language. The gene, called FOXP2, was identified through studies of a severe speech and language disorder that affects almost half the members of a large family, identified only as "KE." Individuals with the disorder are unable to select and produce the fine movements with the tongue and lips that are necessary to speak clearly. "The most obvious feature is that they are unintelligible both to naive listeners and to other KE family members without the disorder," said neurologist Faraneh Vargha-Khadem of London's Institute for Child Health, who studied the family. The members of the family also have dyslexic tendencies, difficulty processing sentences, and poor spelling and grammar. FOXP2 is responsible for the rare disorder seen in the KE family that is a unique mixture of motor and language impediments, said Monaco. But, Monaco cautioned, "FOXP2 is unlikely to be the cause of less severe language deficits that affect approximately 4 percent of schoolchildren. FOXP2 will not be the major gene involved in most of these cases." Their findings are published in the October 4 issue of the journal Nature. Using data from the KE family, researchers narrowed the location of the FOXP2 gene to a region of chromosome 7 that contained about 70 genes. Analyzing these genes one by one is a task that could easily have taken more than a year. But Monaco's team made a breakthrough when researcher Jane Hurst of Oxford Radcliffe Hospital identified a British boy, unrelated to the KE family, who had an almost identical language deficit. The boy, known as "CS," had a visible defect in chromosome 7 that specifically affected the FOXP2 gene. "The defect was like a signpost, precisely highlighting the gene responsible for the speech disorder," said Monaco. The FOXP2 gene produces a protein called a transcription factor, which attaches itself to other regions of DNA and switches genes on and off. In the KE family, one of 2,500 units of DNA that make up the FOXP2 gene is mutated. Monaco suggested that this mutation prevents FOXP2 from activating the normal sequence of genes required for early brain development. "It is extraordinary that such a minute change in the gene is sufficient to disrupt a faculty as vital as language," he said. Although humans have two copies of every gene, just one mutated copy of FOXP2—as in the case of both CS and the KE family—can have devastating effects on brain development, said Vargha-Khadem. Brain imaging studies of the KE family revealed that affected members have abnormal basal ganglia—a region in the brain involved with movement—which could explain difficulty in moving the lips and tongue. Regions of the cortex involved in speech and language also appear aberrant. The discovery of FOXP2 offers Monaco and other geneticists a probe to fish for other genes involved in development—specifically those directly controlled by FOXP2. Also in progress is a collaborative project to study the evolution of the human FOXP2 gene by comparing it with versions in chimps and other primates. Monaco speculates that differences between the FOXP2 gene in humans and chimps may reveal a genetic basis for differing abilities to communicate. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/10/1004_TVlanguagegene_2.html
导读： 看，他们把他当人看。 看，他们把他当狗看。 他们把他当人看，他们是谁，他是谁？ 他们把他当狗看，他们是谁，他是谁？ http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/11/22/weekly-address-wishing-american-people-happy-thanksgiving On behalf代表 of the Obama family家庭 – Michelle, Malia, Sasha and Bo – I want to wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving. For us, like so many of you, this is a day full of family and friends; food （有没有FOODBALL)and football. It’s a day to fight the overwhelming urge to take a nap – at least until after dinner. But most of all, it’s a time to give thanks for each other（应该感谢谁？上帝，还是同类）, and for the incredible bounty we enjoy. That’s especially important this year. As a nation, we’ve just emerged from a campaign season that was passionate, noisy, and vital to our democracy. But it also required us to make choices – and sometimes those choices led us to focus on what sets us apart instead of what ties us together; on what candidate候选人 we support instead of what country we belong to.（美国也有党国问题） Thanksgiving is a chance to put it all in perspective – to remember that, despite our differences, we are, and always will be, Americans first and foremost. Today we give thanks for blessings that are all too rare in this world. The ability to spend time with the ones we love; to say what we want; to worship as we please; to know that there are brave men and women defending our freedom around the globe; and to look our children in the eye and tell them that, here in America, no dream is too big if they’re willing to work for it. We’re also grateful that this country has always been home to Americans who see these blessings not simply as gifts to enjoy, but as opportunities to give back. Americans who believe we have a responsibility to look out for those less fortunate – to pull each other up and move forward together. Right now, as we prepare to gather around our dinner tables, there are families in the northeast who don’t have that luxury. Many of them have lost everything to Hurricane Sandy – homes, possessions, even loved ones. And it will be a long time before life goes back to normal. But in the midst of so much tragedy, there are also glimmers of hope. Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen FEMA personnel, National Guard and first responders working around the clock in hard-hit communities. We’ve seen hospital workers using their lunch breaks to distribute supplies. Families offering up extra bedrooms. The fire department advertising free hot showers. Buses full of volunteers coming from hundreds of miles away. Neighbors sharing whatever they have – food, water, electricity – and saying again and again how lucky they are to have a roof over their heads. It would have been easy for these folks人民to do nothing – to worry about themselves and leave the rest to someone else. But that’s not who we are. That’s not what we do. As Americans, we are a bold, generous, big-hearted people. When our brothers and sisters are in need, we roll up our sleeves卷起袖子 and get to work – not for the recognition or the reward名和利, but because it’s the right thing to do. Because there but for the grace of God go I良心. And because here in America, we rise or fall荣辱与共 together, as one nation and one people. That’s something to be grateful for – today and every day. So to all the Americans doing your part to make our world a better place – it is my privilege荣幸 to serve担任 as your President. To all our servicemembers – it is my honor to be your Commander in Chief. And from our family to yours, happy Thanksgiving. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_(dog ) Bo Official White House portrait of the First Dog Other appellation(s) First Dog Charlie (by previous owner) Species Canis lupus familiaris Breed Portuguese Water Dog Sex Male Born Amigo's New Hope ( 2008-10-09 ) October 9, 2008 (age4) Nation from United States Knownfor Pet of the First Family of the United States Training Dawn Sylvia ( Hume, Virginia ) Can sit, present paw/shake, lie down, roll over, get off, wait Predecessor Barney Bush Owner Obama family Parents Dam : Penny (Amigo's Phor What Its Worth) ( Boyd, Texas ) Sire : Watson (Valkyrie's Dr. Watson Is Here) ( Ambridge, Pennsylvania ) Breeder: Julie Parker Appearance tuxedo/black and white Named after Obama girls ' cousins' pet cat and also Bo Diddley Bo (born October 9, 2008) is the pet dog of the Obama family, the First Family of the United States . Bo is a neutered male Portuguese Water Dog . President Barack Obama and his family were given the dog as a gift after months of speculation about the breed and identity of their future pet. The final choice was made in part because Malia Obama 's allergies dictated a need for a hypoallergenic breed. The White House has referred to him as the " First Dog ", a term occasionally used during recent U.S. administrations. Contents 1 Breed background 2 Breeding and original owners 3 Media attention as Obamas select the First Dog 4 Biographical details 5 Disputed rescue heritage 6 Reactions by and in the media 7 See also 8 References 9 External links Breed background Main article: Portuguese Water Dog The Portuguese Water Dog is a fairly rare breed; only 48 Portuguese Water Dogs were entered for Britain's Crufts competition in 2009 and the author of The New Complete Portuguese Water Dog, Kitty Braund, believes there are about 50,000 in North America. Due to its fleecy coat, the Portuguese Water Dog is considered a hypoallergenic dog breed . Breeding and original owners The Obamas with Bo Bred by Julie Parker of Erie County, Pennsylvania , Bo is the son of "Watson" (CH Valkyrie Dr. Watson is Here, Born 22.April.2002, AKC WS00562102) of the Rader family in the Pittsburgh suburb of Ambridge, Pennsylvania and of Penny who belongs to Art and Martha Stern of Boyd, Texas . One of Bo's nine litter mates is Senator Ted Kennedy 's Portie named Cappy (Amigo's Captain Courageous); the litter was named "Hope and Change" in honor of Obama's victory . Bo was purchased by a person unknown to the public, but eventually the new owner returned him to the Stern family; when buying the dog, the original purchaser had signed a contract requiring him to return the dog to the breeder if things did not work out. Bo was enrolled on January 5, 2009, with Kennedy's obedience trainer Dawn Sylvia-Stasiewicz , in Hume, Virginia . Bo has a brother named Rico, that is owned by a couple in Houston, Texas. Media attention as Obamas select the First Dog At his first press conference as President-elect , Obama was questioned by reporters as to which breed the family was looking to acquire; he replied, "Our preference would be to get a shelter dog, but, obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts ." He also noted "Malia is allergic, so it has to be hypoallergenic. There are a number of breeds that are hypoallergenic." George Stephanopolous asked Obama on television in early January what kind of dog they would get, and when, saying that he was passing on a question from Obama's daughters who were sitting in the control room. Obama said, "They seem to have narrowed it down to a labradoodle or a Portuguese water hound ... medium-sized dog, and so, we're now going to start looking at shelters to see when one of those dogs might come up." Much was made by the public and press about the family's search for a dog. On April 12, 2009, it was announced that the Obamas would soon accept a six-month-old Portuguese Water Dog puppy as a gift from Senator Kennedy. The dog was reported to have visited the family some weeks earlier in a secret meeting to gauge compatibility and purportedly referred to by staffers as "The Meeting". However, the gift was not accepted until the dog officially arrived and moved in at the White House on Tuesday, April 14, 2009; Immediately after he arrived, the family staged a photo op with Bo on the property's South Lawn . At the conference, Obama was asked if he would allow Bo inside the Oval Office , to which he responded: "of course." He also gave a nod to President Harry Truman 's quote, "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog." The White House website was later updated to include official pictures and biographical details of Bo. Biographical details Bo wearing a lei upon his White House arrival Listed by the name "Amigo's New Hope" with American Kennel Club 's breed registry and given the name "Charlie" by his original owners, the puppy received his current name from President Obama's two daughters, Malia and Sasha , in part after their cousins' cat and Michelle Obama 's father 's nickname Diddley; the dog is a namesake of deceased singer Bo Diddley . In June 2009, the White House released a baseball card for Bo with his new official portrait on one side and tongue-in-cheek statistics on the other; information included the facts that Bo's favorite food is tomatoes and that he does not yet know how to swim. The card is available by sending a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the White House. According to financial disclosure forms released by President Obama in 2010, Bo has a value of $1,600. In December 2010, Bo was permitted to accompany the Obama family to the guest house Plantation Estate in Hawaii. Hawaii, which is rabies-free, has strict quarantine rules of up to 120 days for dogs from outside the state. However, in accordance with rules modified in 2003, dogs are permitted if they have had two rabies shots (including one in the previous 90 days), pass a rabies blood test, and have a microchip implant . Disputed rescue heritage The Obamas walking with Bo The Obama family originally seemed to emphasize their desire for an adopted shelter dog, but made no firm commitments. In the summer of 2008, Best Friends Animal Society , an animal welfare organization, gathered 50,000 signatures on a petition asking the family to adopt a shelter animal. As Bo is a gift from the Kennedy family, he is not a shelter dog. Some dog experts, such as Cesar Millan , state that Bo could be considered part of a larger group known as rescue dogs, as he was unsuccessful in his first home, when plans for him to provide companionship to an older female dog went awry because he irritated the dog through attempts to suckle . The Obamas have pledged to donate to the District of Columbia Humane Society to show their support for shelter dogs. Some criticism has arisen from animal welfare supporters because Bo was not adopted from a shelter. The Humane Society of the United States released a statement on their website thanking the Obamas "for taking in a second-chance dog," but also encouraged the public to avoid going through breeders. Reactions by and in the media Bo and President Obama running through the east wing of the White House The Washington Post ’s Manuel Roig-Franzia, granted exclusive initial access to Bo for the print media, described the puppy: "Bo's a handsome little guy. Well suited for formal occasions at the White House, he's got tuxedo-black fur, with a white chest, white paws and a rakish white goatee." People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) described the family's choice to accept the gift of a puppy from a family friend as "disquieting" and publicly urged the President to have Bo neutered, though the dog had been neutered before the Obamas received him. Bo in March 2010 In anticipation of increased interest in the breed , the Portuguese Water Dog Club of America issued a statement requesting that members of the public considering obtaining the dogs "ensure that this breed fits their lifestyle," advising that Porties' needs preclude their being left alone for long periods or boarded in kennels . Immediately upon Bo joining the First Family, four children's books and a plush toy depicting him were slated for publication or manufacture. On July 17, 2009, the author Ben Greenman , writing in The New York Times as Bo, reflected on his first hundred days in office. In the final episode of the History Channel 's Life After People , aired March 16, 2010, the producers imagined what life would be like for Bo after the disappearance of humanity. This showed that he would leave the White House, and live off seafood from the Chesapeake Bay. Bo was also shown on Dogs 101 . Bo has appeared in the comic book Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers and on the TV show Late Night with Jimmy Fallon . See also United States presidential pets References ^ a b Dave, By (2009-04-20). "Vigilant press spots Bo, the first dog, out for a walk | csmonitor.com" . The Christian Science Monitor . http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/04/20/vigilant-press-spots-bo-the-first-dog-out-for-a-walk/ . Retrieved 2009-04-26 . ^ a b c d e "The White House – Blog Post – Meet Bo, the First Dog" . Whitehouse.gov . http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/04/12/Meet-Bo-the-First-Dog/ . Retrieved 2009-08-10 . ^ a b Cooper, Helen (April 12, 2009). "One Obama Search Ends With a Puppy Named Bo" . The New York Times . http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/us/politics/13obama.html . Retrieved April 18, 2009 . "Other Web sites, which have been tracking the saga of the selection of the first dog, were in a frenzy over the weekend." ^ Silva, Mark (2009-04-12). "Obamas' dog Bo:'Amigo's New Hope'" . Swamppolitics.com . http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2009/04/obamas_dog_bo_amigos_new_hope.html . Retrieved 2009-10-19 . ^ "Obama Dog Trainer: Bo Already "Sits, Shakes, Rolls Over"" . Us Weekly. 2009-04-15 . http://www.usmagazine.com/news/obama-trainer-bo-already-sits-shakes-rolls-over-2009144 . Retrieved 2009-04-26 . ^ "The Obama Dog Blog: Cappy's Breeder Rejects Obama Dog Connection" . Dreamdogsart.typepad.com. 2009-04-15 . http://dreamdogsart.typepad.com/the_obamas_dog/2009/04/cappys-breeder-rejects-obama-dog-connection.html . Retrieved 2009-04-26 . ^ a b Sostek, Anya (April 14, 2009). "First dog's father from Ambridge" . Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09104/962604-57.stm . Retrieved 2011-06-11 . ^ a b Hess, Amanda (2009-04-13). "PETA Encourages Obamas to Neuter Neutered Dog" . nbcwashington.com . http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/PETA_Encourages_Obamas_to_Neuter_Neutered_Dog.html . Retrieved 2009-04-15 . ^ "World | Obama family 'picks first puppy'" . BBC News. 2009-04-12 . http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7995570.stm . Retrieved 2009-04-26 . ^ "PORTUGUESE WATER DOG" . Crufts . 2009 . http://crufts.fossedata.co.uk/Breed.asp?ShowYear=2009GroupID=WORScheduleID=160 . Retrieved 2009-04-17 . ^ Ryan, Denise (2009-04-15). "U.S. first family puts Portuguese water dog on the map" . .canada.com . http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=eb38a8c3-9ef9-40c2-bda1-3d87c1a6d9adk=17132p=2 . Retrieved 2009-04-26 . ^ Berkowitz, Lana. "Houston pooch has friend in high place" . Houston Chronicle . http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/pets/6372225.html . Retrieved 2009-10-13 . ^ a b Rhee, Foon (2008-11-10). "Chewing over Obama's 'mutt' reference – 2008 Presidential Campaign Blog – Political Intelligence" . Boston Globe . http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/11/chewing_over_ob.html . Retrieved 2009-04-26 . ^ Weiner, Rachel (2009-01-13). "Obama: Finding Puppy "Tougher Than Finding A Commerce Secretary" (VIDEO)" . Huffington Post . http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/11/obama-finding-puppy-tough_n_156914.html . Retrieved 2009-04-26 . ^ Roig-Franzia, Manuel (2009-04-12). "The First Puppy Makes a Big Splash" . The Washington Post . http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/11/AR2009041102484_2.html?sid=ST2009041202878 . Retrieved 2009-04-26 . ^ a b Theimer, Sharon. "PROMISES, PROMISES: Is Obama dog a rescue or not?" . Associated Press . http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D97HQQP00show_article=1 . Retrieved 2009-04-26 . ^ a b c Theimer, Sharon. "First dog Bo makes himself at home" . The Washington Times . http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/15/first-dog-bo-takes-obamas-for-romp-as-he-sniffs-ou/ . Retrieved 2009-04-26 . ^ Saul, Michael (2009-04-12). "First photos of First Dog: Obamas meet Bo, their new Portuguese Water Dog" . Daily News (New York) . http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/04/11/2009-04-11_its_easter_puppy_for_obamas_first_family_getting_portuguese_water_dog_puppy__rep.html . Retrieved 2009-04-13 . ^ St. Clair, Stacy (2009-04-13). "Obamas' dog: Meet Bo, the Portuguese water dog" . Chicago Tribune . http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-talk-obama-puppy-13-apr13,0,2536424.story . Retrieved 2009-04-13 . ^ "The First Puppy Makes a Big Splash" . PopWatch Blog . 2009-04-12 . http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/04/barack-obama-do.html . Retrieved 2009-10-19 . ^ Sobieraj-Westfall, Sandra (April 12, 2009). "The Obamas' Dog Has Arrived – at Last!" . People . http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20271921,00.html . Retrieved October 2, 2010 . ^ Iovino, Jim. "First Dog Bo's Portrait Out as Baseball Card" . NBC Washington . http://www.nbcwashington.com/around_town/the_scene/Bos-Rookie-Card-Sure-to-be-Collectors-Item.html . Retrieved 2009-08-10 . ^ Lee, Jess. "The White House – Blog Post – Bo: The Portrait, the Baseball Card" . Whitehouse.gov . http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Bo-The-Portrait-the-Baseball-Card/ . Retrieved 2009-08-10 . ^ Conolly, Katie. "The Gaggle: Official Portrait of First Dog Bo Released" . Newsweek . http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2009/06/19/official-portrait-of-first-dog-bo-released.aspx . Retrieved 2009-08-10 . ^ Marr, Kendra (May 17, 2010). "Hot dog: $1,600 Bo listed on disclosure forms" . The Politico . http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0510/hot_dog_2a94d94b-62d5-46e8-84c1-da3cae477d9e.html . Retrieved 18 May 2010 . ^ "Uncategorized Bo Obama Faced Possible Quarantine in Hawaii, Asked to Produce Papers" . NwoDaily.com. 2010-12-21 . http://nwodaily.com/2010/12/bo-obama-faced-possible-quarantine-in-hawaii-asked-to-produce-papers/ . Retrieved 2011-06-16 . ^ "Animal Quarantine Information – Hawaii Department of Agriculture" . Hawaii.gov . http://hawaii.gov/hdoa/ai/aqs/info . Retrieved 2011-06-16 . ^ Greene, Nick (2009-04-15). "Obamas criticised for breaking promise of adopting dog from shelter" . London: The Daily Telegraph . http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/5154973/Obamas-criticised-for-breaking-promise-of-adopting-dog-from-shelter.html . Retrieved 2009-04-26 . ^ a b Goldston, Linda (2008-11-05). "Obama family will adopt, rather than buy, a dog" . Current.com . http://current.com/items/89502136_obama-family-will-adopt-rather-than-buy-a-dog.htm . Retrieved 2009-10-19 . ^ Vinzant, Carol (2009-04-16). "5 Things You Don't Know About First Dog Bo – Barack Obama" . People . http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20272856,00.html?xid=rss-topheadlines . Retrieved 2009-04-26 . ^ "Obama puppy: Portuguese water dog Bo is Obama puppy" . The Baltimore Sun. 2009-04-13 . http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.dog13apr13,0,304629.story . Retrieved 2009-04-26 . ^ "The HSUS Congratulates First Family on New White House Dog" . Humane Society of the United States. 2009-04-12 . http://www.humanesociety.org/news/press_releases/2009/04/first_family_dog_sm_041209.html . Retrieved 2012-11-05 . ^ "Obama Dog Bo Diddley Obama Puppy First Dog Photos Video at The Insider" . Theinsider.com . http://www.theinsider.com/news/2003457_Obama_Dog_Bo_Diddley_Obama_Puppy_First_Dog_Photos_Video . Retrieved 2009-08-10 . ^ Bedard, Paul (2009-04-13). "PETA urges Obama to snip Bo the first dog" . USNews.com . http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/2009/4/13/peta-urges-obama-to-snip-bo-the-first-dog.html . Retrieved 2009-10-19 . ^ "Obama Family’s Choice for "First Dog" Prompts PWDCA to Remind Public About Responsible Breeding and Dog Ownership" . The Portuguese Water Dog Club of America, Inc. 2009-04-13 . http://www.akc.org/poll/special/PWDCARelease.pdf . Retrieved 2009-10-19 . ^ Irvine, Chris (2009-04-16). "Bo Obama to star in children's book" . London: The Daily Telegraph . http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/5167659/Bo-Obama-to-star-in-childrens-book.html . Retrieved 2009-04-26 . ^ Kondo, Koji (April 2009). Bo Obama: First Dog of the United States of America . CreateSpace. ISBN 1-4421-5644-9 . ^ Lewis, J. Patrick; Beth Zappitello, Tim Bowers (April 2009). First Dog . Sleeping Bear Press. ISBN 1-58536-467-3 . ^ Greenman, Ben (2009-07-16). "The First Hundred (Dog) Days" . The New York Times . http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/opinion/17greenman.html . Retrieved 2009-10-19 . ^ "Take Me To Your Leader" . History . http://www.history.com/shows/life-after-people/episodes/ . Retrieved 2010-03-25 . "The President's dog must learn the ways of the wild." ^ Bo Obama's anniversary: First year as First Dog , The Washington Post, April 15, 2010 ^ Dogs 101 Ep. 10, All the Presidents' Pets , ^ Dogs 101 ep. 14, Bernese Mountain Dog, Afghan, Portuguese Water Dog, Cairn Terrier, Alaskan Malamute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_pets History of White House dogs In 1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt was running for his fourth term when rumors surfaced that his Scottish Terrier , Fala , had accidentally been left behind when visiting the Aleutian Islands . After allegedly sending back ships to rescue his dog, Roosevelt was ridiculed and accused of spending thousands of taxpayers’ dollars to retrieve his dog. At a speech following this Roosevelt said, "you can criticize me, my wife and my family, but you can't criticize my little dog. He's Scotch and all these allegations about spending all this money have just made his little soul furious." What was later called the ‘ Fala Speech ’ reportedly turned the election around for Roosevelt.
10 月 9 日 郝老师讲教育学的逻辑时提到理论与实践，它们的逻辑就是理论要指导实践，实践需要理论的指导。而现实情况常常是理论很好却指导不了实践，实践需要理论来指导却找不到合适的理论。怎么办呢？实践者有待于理论水平的提高，理论者有待于实践水平的提高。理论的高度要降下来，以便和实践相结合，我立刻预测下一句是实践者是否往上跳一跳，和理论相结合，郝老师没有立刻这么说，后来怎么说的我也记不清了。 郝老师还讲了学科与专业的关系，更应该是学科与行业的关系，学术型与专业型不如说是学术型与“行业型”。学科专业的设置应该按照社会发展的需要来分，专业改造内容要看社会发展中薄弱又重要的东西。教育学很有指导价值，但经常是已经帮了实践还说帮不了，所以理论的教育学就像人脖子上挂一个饼，吃不到饼就要被饿死，那就低一下头嘛。 I made a speech in the oral English class this afternoon. Although my speech draft was on the table and I could see it easily, I spoke very slowly, I never had a glance at the draft until I finished it. In later activities, I played an employer and interviewed a teacher, a doctor, a chef, a lawyer and a policeman with some questions, such as “Why do you want this job?” “Can you tell me your working experience?” “Can you tell me your educational background?” “What’s your future plan?” “What salary do you expect?” etc. I also played an applicant being interviewed to be a teacher and a policewoman. It was very interesting.
副教授生二胎遭解聘事件 续：当事人已重新上 班 http://news.sciencenet.cn/htmlnews/2012/6/265724.shtm I provide the link above, but not my views on the whole incident. What does this mean? Well, it's better to play safe (so that my Blog will not be deleted by the SciNet editors).
With Commencement today, we close our year of commemorating Harvard’s 375th birthday. From an exuberant party for 18,000 in torrential rain and ankle-deep mud here in Tercentenary Theatre last fall to today’s invocation of John Harvard’s spirit still walking the Yard, we have celebrated this special year and this institution’s singular and distinguished history. Founded by an act of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636, Harvard was the first college in the English colonies and is the oldest in what has become the United States. Harvard was already 140 years old when the nation was founded. There are few institutions in this country or even the world that can claim such longevity. But what does such a claim mean? At a time when the buzzword of “innovation” is everywhere, when the allure of the new drives business, politics and society, what do we intend by our celebration of endurance and of history? Why do we see history as an essential part of our identity? Why is Harvard’s past an invaluable resource as we decide how to shape the future? In a quite literal sense, history creates our identity – who we as Harvard actually are – and as a result who we aspire to be. We live in a community made up not just of the students, faculty and staff now here – or even the 300,000 Harvard alumni around the world. We are part of a community that extends across time as well as space. We acknowledge an indelible connection to those who have come before – predecessors both recent and remote, who remind us of what is possible for us by their demonstration of what was possible for them. Harvard’s history instills both expectations and responsibilities as it challenges us to inhabit this legacy. One cannot study philosophy here without sighting the ghosts of John Rawls, Willard Quine, Benjamin Peirce, Ralph Waldo Emerson, or William James. One cannot study law without thinking of the 18 Harvard Law School alumni who have served as Supreme Court justices, including the 6 currently on the bench – not to mention the graduate in the White House and the seven presidents with Harvard degrees who have preceded him. Those who appear on Harvard stages surely imagine themselves as Jack Lemmon or Natalie Portman or Stockard Channing, directed by the equivalents of Peter Sellars, Diane Paulus, or Mira Nair. Or perhaps our aspiring actors see themselves in John Lithgow and Tommy Lee Jones, who returned together for Arts First weekend earlier this month to reminisce about their thespian adventures in Cambridge. And those seeking to change the world through technology are sure to reflect on Zuckerberg, Ballmer, and Gates. In these domains and so many others, we have the privilege of living alongside a remarkable heritage of predecessors. We have certainly not come to work and study here in Cambridge and Boston because of the weather – though this past winter suggests climate change may be altering that. We are drawn here because others before us have set a standard that extends across centuries in its power and its appeal. We think of ourselves in their company; we seek to be worthy of that company, and to share our days with others similarly motivated and inspired. We want to contribute as they have contributed in every imaginable field. We want to know – to understand – societies, governments, eras, organizations, galaxies, works of art and literature, structures, circuits, diseases, cells. We want to make our lives matter. We want to improve the human condition and build a better world. We want Harvard to ask that of us, to expect that of us and to equip us to accomplish it. History shapes our institutional ideals as well as our individual ambitions. Having a history diminishes the grip of the myopic present, helping us to see beyond its bounds, to transcend the immediate in search of the enduring. It challenges us to place our aspirations and responsibilities within the broadest context of understanding. We expect the future to be as long as the past; we must act in ways that are not just about tomorrow – but about decades and even centuries to come. This means that we teach our students with the intention of shaping the whole of their lives as well as readying them for what happens as soon as they leave our gates. This means that in the sciences – and beyond – we support research that is driven by curiosity, by the sheer desire to understand – at the same time that we pursue discoveries that have immediate measurable impact. And it means that we support fields of study – of languages, literatures, cultures – that are intended to locate us within traditions of reflection about the larger purposes of human existence, enabling us to look beyond ourselves and our own experience, to ask where we are going – not just how we get there. Even in our professional Schools, designed to educate students for specific vocations, we seek to instill the perspective that derives from the critical eye and the questioning mind; we charge our students to think about lasting value, not just quarterly returns. These commitments shape our institutional identity – our discussions and decisions about what a university is and must be. As both higher education and the world have been transformed, Harvard has not just weathered the past 375 years. It has changed and flourished – from its origins as a small, local college designed to produce educated ministers and citizens, to its emergence as a research university in the late 19th century, to its transformation into a national institution, and its development after World War II as an engine of scientific discovery and economic growth, as well as a force for significantly broadening social opportunity. We are now in another moment of dramatic shift in higher education: Globalization and technology are prominent among the forces that challenge us once again to examine how we do our work and how we define our aims. This year alone we have launched a new University-wide initiative to think in fresh ways about our methods of learning and teaching, a new University-wide Innovation Lab to help our students bring their ideas to life, and edX, a new partnership with MIT to embrace the promise of online learning for our students while sharing our knowledge more widely with the world. As we reimagine ourselves for the 21st century, we recognize that history teaches us not just about continuity – what is important because it is enduring. History also teaches us about change. Harvard has survived and thrived by considering over and over again how its timeless and unwavering dedication to knowledge and truth must be adapted to the demands of each new age. History encourages us to see contingency and opportunity by offering us the ability to imagine a different world. Think of how Harvard changed as we came to recognize that our commitment to fulfilling human potential required us to open our gates more broadly. The continuity of our deepest values led us to the transformation of our practices – and of the characteristics of the students, faculty and staff who inhabit and embody Harvard. What was once unimaginable came to seem necessary and even inevitable as we extended the circle of inclusion and belonging to welcome minorities and women, and in recent years to so significantly enhance support for students of limited financial means. Our history provides “a compass to steer by” – to borrow a phrase from Massachusetts Bay Governor John Winthrop. It fills us with confidence in our purposes and in our ability to surmount the risks of uncharted seas. With the strength of our past, we welcome these unknowns and the opportunities they offer as we reimagine Harvard for its next 375 years. For nearly four centuries now, Harvard has been inventing the future. History is where the future begins. 原文见 http://www.harvard.edu/president/2012-commencement-speech
***** Source ***** Simon Haykin,Communication Systems,4e,Wiley,2001 Section 6.11 Voiceband Modems ***** Ideas ***** 1. Principles: PSTN networks,block diagram, modulation schemes ***** Problems ****** 2. Need ISP's support, so not suitable for hidden communication such as speech watermark
面对挫折：一个令人捧腹大笑又发人深省的演说（节选） 这几天的一些关于生与死，福与祸，关于理想与现实的距离的博文让我很有点想写些什么的冲动。但时间不够用啊，怎么办？我想起了去年在美国达特茅斯学院的毕业典礼上Conan O'Brien发表的演说。位于东北部的新罕布尔州，成立于1769年的达特茅斯学院 （Dartmouth College）是美国第九所历史最悠久的学院，也是著名的常春藤学校之一。 Conan O'Brien的名字对有些网友可能比较陌生，但在美国他可是个家喻户晓的名字，公认的最诙谐最成功的脱口秀主持人之一。在所谓事业巅峰的时候，Conan成为了”The Tonight Show"的接班人。“The Tonight Show"是 美国 一个特别受欢迎长盛不衰的节目，而且和奥普拉的脱口秀不同，"The Tonight Show"可是在晚上的黄金时间播放的。记得2009年宣布他为下一代接班人时，那可都是报纸媒体头版头条的新闻啊。但好景不长，才半年左右Conan O'Brien就在众人目瞪口呆之中离开了这个皇牌节目也离开了老东家NBC。到底谁炒谁的鱿鱼似乎众说纷纭，但没有疑问的是这位在美国可以被称为最牛最年轻有为人士之一的Conan O'Brien先生，当着全体美国人的面摔了一大跤。。。 然后他爬起来了。 。。 美国的大学对毕业典礼演说极为重视，令人印象深刻的毕业典礼演说也很多，比如乔布斯2005年在斯坦福大学的讲演就很经典，网上流传的他的很多名句就来自 那个演说。但众多演说里可以说没有哪个给我的印象比Conan O'Brien在达特茅斯给的这个（见下面）深刻，虽然在这之前他还在哈佛给过一个呢（他本人就是哈佛的毕业生）。演说稿比较长（作了一些删节以便突出重点），抱歉也没有时间翻译（或者谁来试试？ ）， 但我把其中我觉得最有启发性的句子highlight了，还有一些觉得特逗的我把字体改为了紫色。 希望Conan O'Brien的这个演讲对大家有点启发。 以下为转载内容（有删节, 来自teamcoco.com，内含演说录像): DARTMOUTH COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS Conan O’Brien Hanover, New Hampshire June 12, 2011 Before I begin, I must point out that behind me sits a highly admired President of the United States and decorated war hero while I, a cable television talk show host, has been chosen to stand here and impart wisdom. I pray I never witness a more damning example of what is wrong with America today. Graduates, faculty, parents, relatives, undergraduates, and old people that just come to these things ----Good morning and congratulations to the Dartmouth Class of 2011. Today, you have achieved something special ----- something only 92 percent of Americans your age will ever know: a college diploma. T hat’s right, with your college diploma you now have a crushing advantage over 8 percent of the workforce. I’m talking about dropout losers like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg. Incidentally, speaking of Mr. Zuckerberg, only at Harvard would somebody have to invent a massive social network just to talk with someone in the next room. My first job as your commencement speaker is to illustrate that life is not fair. For example, you have worked tirelessly for four years to earn the diploma you’ll be receiving this weekend, and Dartmouth is giving me the same degree for interviewing the fourth lead in Twilight. Deal with it. Another example that life is not fair: if it does rain, the powerful rich people on stage get the tent. Deal with it. ...... (truncated) But this is a wonderful occasion and it is great to be here in New Hampshire, where I am getting an honorary degree and all the legal fireworks I can fit in the trunk of my car. New Hampshire is such a special place. When I arrived I took a deep breath of this crisp New England air and thought, “Wow, I’m in the state that’s next to the state where Ben and Jerry’s ice cream is made.” B ut don’t get me wrong, I take my task today very seriously. When I got the call 2 months ago to be your speaker, I decided to prepare with the same intensity many of you have devoted to an important term paper. So late last night, I began. I drank two cans of Red Bull, snorted some Adderall, played a few hours of Call of Duty, and then opened my browser. I think Wikipedia put it best when they said “Dartmouth college is a private Ivy League University in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States.” Thank you and good luck. ...... (truncated) Yes, I’ve done my research. This college was named after the Second Earl of Dartmouth, a good friend of the Third Earl of UC Santa Cruz and the Duke of the Barbazon School of Beauty. Y our school motto is “Vox Clamantis in Deserto,” which means “Voice Crying Out in the Wilderness.” This is easily the most pathetic school motto I have ever heard. Apparently, it narrowly beat out “Silently Weeping in Thick Shrub” and “Wimpering in Moist Leaves without Pants.” Your school color is green, and this color was chosen by Frederick Mather in 1867 because, and this is true, “it was the only color that had not been taken already.” I cannot remember hearing anything so sad. Dartmouth, you have an inferiority complex, and you should not. You have graduated more great fictitious Americans than any other college. Meredith Grey of Grey’s Anatomy. Pete Campbell from Mad Men. Michael Corleone from The Godfather. In fact, I look forward to next years’ Valedictory Address by your esteemed classmate, Count Chocula. Of course, your greatest fictitious graduate is Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner. Man, imagine if a real Treasury Secretary made those kinds of decisions. Oh, I know. You’re going to say “We’ve got Dr. Seuss.” Well guess what, we’re all tired of hearing about Dr. Seuss. Face it: The man rhymed fafloozle with saznoozle. In the literary community, that’s called cheating. Your insecurity is so great, Dartmouth, that you don’t even think you deserve a real podium. What the hell is this thing? It looks like you stole it from the set of Survivor: Nova Scotia. Seriously, it looks like something a bear would use at an AA meeting. No, Dartmouth, you must stand tall. Raise your heads high and feel proud. Because if Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are your self-involved, vain, name-dropping older brothers, you are the cool, sexually confident, Lacrosse playing younger sibling who knows how to throw a party and looks good in a down vest. Brown, of course, is your lesbian sister who never leaves her room. And Penn, Columbia, and Cornell …..well, frankly, who gives a shit. ...... (truncated) You are a great school, and you deserve a historic commencement address. That’s right, I want my message today to be forever remembered because it changed the world. To do this, I must suggest groundbreaking policy. Winston Churchill gave his famous “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College in 1946. JFK outlined his nuclear disarmament policy at American University in 1963. And today, I would like to set forth my own policy here at Dartmouth: I call it The Conan Doctrine. Under The Conan Doctrine: All bachelor degrees will be upgraded to masters degrees, all masters degrees will be upgraded to PhD’s, and all MBA students will be immediately transferred to a white collar prison. Winter Carnival will become Winter Carnivale and be moved to Rio. Clothing will be optional and all expenses will be paid by the Alumni Association. Your nickname, the Big Green, will be changed to something more kick-ass like “The Jade Blade,” the “Seafoam Avenger” or simply “Lime-Zilla.” The D-Plan and “quarter system” will finally be updated to “the one sixty-fourth system.” Semesters will last 3 days and students will be encouraged to take 48 semesters off. They must, however, be on campus during their Sophomore 4th of July. I will re-instate Tubestock. And I will punish those who tried to replace it with Fieldstock. Rafting and beer are a much better combination than a field and a beer. I happen to know that in two years, they were going to downgrade Fieldstock to Deskstock --- 7 hours of fun sitting quietly at your desk. Don’t let those bastards do it! And finally, under the Conan doctrine, all commencement speakers who shamelessly pander with cheap, inside references designed to get childish applause, will be forced to apologize…..TO THE GREATEST GRADUATING CLASS IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. DARTMOUTH CLASS OF 2011 RULES!!! Besides policy, another hallmark of great commencement speeches is deep, profound advice like “reach for the stars.” Well today, I am not going to waste your time with empty clichés. Instead, I am going to give you real, practical advice that you will need to know if you are going to survive the next few years. First, adult acne lasts longer than you think. I almost cancelled 2 days ago because I had a zit on my eye. Guys: this is important -- you cannot iron a shirt while wearing it If you live on Ramen Noodles for too long, you lose all feeling in your hands and your stool becomes a white gel. And finally, wearing colorful Converse high-tops beneath your graduation robe is a great way to tell your classmates that this is just the first of many horrible decisions you plan to make with your life. ...... (truncated) Eleven years ago I gave an address to a graduating class at Harvard. I have not spoken at a graduation since because I thought I had nothing left to say. But then 2010 came. And now I’m here, three thousand miles from my home, because I learned a hard but profound lesson last year and I’d like to share it with you. In 2000, I told graduates “Don’t be afraid to fail.” Well now I’m here to tell you that, though you should not fear failure, you should do your very best to avoid it. Nietzsche famously said “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” But what he failed to stress is that IT ALMOST KILLS YOU. Disappointment stings and, for driven, successful people like yourselves it is disorienting. What Nietzsche should have said is “Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you watch a lot of Cartoon Network and drink mid-price Chardonnay at 11 in the morning. ” By definition, Commencement speakers at an Ivy League college are considered successful. But a little over a year ago, I experienced a profound and very public disappointment. I did not get what I wanted, and I left a system that had nurtured and help define me for the better part of seventeen years. I went from being in the center of the grid to not only off the grid, but underneath the coffee table that the grid sits on, lost in the shag carpeting that is underneath the coffee table supporting the grid. It was the making of a career disaster, and a terrible analogy. But then something spectacular happened. Fogbound, with no compass, and adrift, I started trying things. I grew a strange, cinnamon beard. I dove into the world of social media and started tweeting my comedy. I threw together a national tour. I played the guitar, did stand-up, wore a skin-tight blue leather suit, recorded an album, made a documentary, and frightened my friends and family. Ultimately, I abandoned all preconceived perceptions of my career path and stature and took a job on basic cable with a network most famous for showing re-runs, along with sitcoms created by a tall, black man who dresses like an old, black woman. I did a lot of silly, unconventional, spontaneous and seemingly irrational things and guess what ---- with the exception of the blue leather suit, it was the most satisfying and fascinating year of my professional life. To this day I still don’t understand exactly what happened, but I have never had more fun, been more challenged, and this is important ---- had more conviction about what I was doing. How could this be true? It’s simple: there are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized. I went to college with many people who prided themselves on knowing exactly who they were and exactly where they were going. At Harvard, five different guys told me that they would one day be President of the Unites States. Four of them were later killed in motel shoot-outs. The other one briefly hosted “Blues Clues,” before dying senselessly in yet another motel shoot-out. Your path at 22 will not necessarily be your path at 32 or 42. One’s dream is constantly evolving, rising and falling, changing course. This happens in every job, but because I have worked in comedy for twenty five years, I can speak best about my own profession. Way back in the 1940’s there was a very funny man named Jack Benny. He was a giant star and easily one of the greatest comedians of his generation. And a much younger man named Johnny Carson wanted very much to be Jack Benny. In some ways he was, but in many ways he wasn’t. He emulated Jack Benny, but his own quirks and mannerisms, along with a changing medium, pulled him in a different direction. And yet his failure to completely become his hero made him the funniest person of his generation. David Letterman wanted to be Johnny Carson, and was not, and as a result my generation of comedians wanted to be David Letterman. And none of us are --- my peers and I have all missed that mark in a thousand different ways. But the point is this: It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. It’s not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can be a catalyst for profound re-invention. So, at the age of 47, after 25 years of obsessively pursuing my dream, that dream changed. For decades, in show business, the ultimate goal of every comedian was to host The Tonight Show. It was the Holy Grail, and like many people I thought that achieving that goal would define me as successful. But that is not true. No specific job or career goal defines me and it should not define you. In 2000, I told graduates to not be afraid to fail, and I still believe that. But today I tell you that whether you fear it or not, disappointment will come. The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality. Many of you here today are getting your diploma at this Ivy League school because you have committed yourself to a dream and worked hard to achieve it. And there is no greater cliché in a commencement address than “follow your dream.” Well I am here to tell you that whatever you think your dream is now, it will probably change. And that’s okay. Four years ago, many of you had a specific vision of what your college experience was going to be and who you were going to become. And I bet, today, most of you would admit that your time here was very different from what you imagined. Your roommates changed, your major changed, for some of you your sexual orientation changed. I bet some of you have changed your sexual orientation since I began this speech. I know I have. But through the good and especially the bad, the person you are now is someone you could never have conjured in the fall of 2007. I have told you many things today, most of it foolish but some of it true. I’d like to end my address by breaking a taboo and quoting myself from 17 months ago. At the end of my final program with NBC, just before signing off, I said “ Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen. ” Today, receiving this honor and speaking to the Dartmouth Class of 2011 from behind a tree-trunk, I have never believed that more. Thank you very much, and congratulations. 如果大家有兴趣也打得开Youtube，这是他的演说在Youtube的链接之一：http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELC_e2QBQMk （以上图片来自网络仅供参考）
University of California at Berkeley graduation speech 托马斯·萨金特加州大学伯克利分校毕业演讲 I remember how happy I felt when I graduated from Berkeley many years ago. But I thought the graduation speeches were long. I will economize on words. 我现在依然记得许多年前我从伯克利毕业时自己开心的样子。不过我觉得毕业演讲都太过冗长，这次我会言简意赅。 Economics is organized common sense. Here is a short list of valuable lessons that our beautiful subject teaches. 经济学是常识的集合体。下面是这门美丽的学科教会我们的一些珍贵课程： 1. Many things that are desirable are not feasible. 许多事情可遇而不可求。 2. Individuals and communities face trade-offs. 个人和集体会面临权衡取舍。 3. Other people have more information about their abilities, their efforts, and their preferences than you do. 别人对自己的能力、努力和喜好比你了解的要多。 4. Everyone responds to incentives, including people you want to help. That is why social safety nets don’t always end up working as intended. 每个人都会对激励做出反应（ people respond to incentives 曼昆十大经济学原理之四），包括你想帮助的人。这也是为什么社会保障体系最后没能发挥预期的作用。 5. There are tradeoffs between equality and efficiency. 平等和效率之间也面临权衡取舍。 6. In an equilibrium of a game or an economy, people are satisfied with their choices. That is why it is difficult for well meaning outsiders to change things for better or worse. 在游戏或者经济的均衡状态中，人们会满意于自己的选择，所以好心的局外人不管怎样都很难改变事态的发展。 7. In the future, you too will respond to incentives. That is why there are some promises that you’d like to make but can’t. No one will believe those promises because they know that later it will not be in your interest to deliver. The lesson here is this: before you make a promise, think about whether you will want to keep it if and when your circumstances change. This is how you earn a reputation. 在未来你也会对激励做出反应，这也是为什么有些承诺你想遵守可是却没办法做到。没人会相信你的那些承诺，因为人们都了解，以后履行这些承诺不会符合你的利益。我们要学会的是：在承诺别人之前，想想如果自己情况有所转变，还会不会坚持承诺？这是你为自己赢得好名声的办法。 8. Governments and voters respond to incentives too. That is why governments sometimes default on loans and other promises that they have made. 政府和选举人也会对激励做出反应，所以政府有时候会拖欠债务或拖延履行承诺。 9. It is feasible for one generation to shift costs to subsequent ones. That is what national government debts and the U.S. social security system do (but not the social security system of Singapore). 一代人把开支费用转嫁给下一代人，这个办法是可行的，政府债务和美国社会保障体系就是这么做的。（也有例外：新加坡的社会保障体系就非如此。） 10. When a government spends, its citizens eventually pay, either today or tomorrow, either through explicit taxes or implicit ones like inflation. 政府花钱人民买单，现在和将来都是这样，直接征税的方式也好，通货膨胀这样的隐形方式也好，这是不变的惯例。 11. Most people want other people to pay for public goods and government transfers (especially transfers to themselves). 大部分人都想让别人为公共事务或者政府转移性支出买单（特别当这些转移性支出的对象是他们自己时）。 12. Because market prices aggregate traders’ information, it is difficult to forecast stock prices and interest rates and exchange rates. 因为市场价格集合了所有交易者的信息，所以很难预测股价、利率和汇率等。 托马斯·萨金特 ：美国经济学家，擅长于总体经济学、货币经济学、时间序列等领域。 1943 年生于美国加利福尼亚州帕萨迪纳。现为斯坦福大学胡佛研究所资深研究员。萨金特于 1964 年获伯克利加州大学文学学位。 1968 年获哈佛大学哲学博士学位。曾执教于明尼苏达大学、芝加哥大学和哈佛大学， 2003 年任教于纽约大学至今。萨金特是理性预期学派的领袖人物，为新古典宏观经济学体系的建立和发展作出了杰出贡献，对宏观经济模型中预期的作用、动态经济理论与时间序列分析的关系等方面作出了开创性的工作。
Matlab 7.0 添加语音处理工具箱（voicebox） voicebox语音处理matlab工具箱，用于语音编码 语音压缩和语音识别。 VOICEBOX is a speech processing toolbox consists of MATLAB routines that are maintained by and mostly written by Mike Brookes, Department of Electrical Electronic Engineering, Imperial College, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2BT, UK. Several of the routines require MATLAB V6.5 or above and require (normally slight) modification to work with earlier veresions. The routines are available as a zip archive and are made available under the terms of the GNU Public License. The routine VOICEBOX.M contains various installation-dependent parameters which may need to be altered before using the toolbox. In particular it contains a number of default directory paths indicating where temporary files should be created, where speech data normally resides, etc. See the comments in voicebox.m for a fuller description. For reading compressed SPHERE format files, you will need the SHORTEN program written by Tony Robinson and SoftSound Limited www.softsound.com. The path to the shorten executable must be set in voicebox.m. Please send any comments, suggestions, bug reports etc to mike.brookes@ic.ac.uk. 官方主页： http://www.ee.ic.ac.uk/hp/staff/dmb/voicebox/voicebox.html 官方下载： http://www.ee.ic.ac.uk/hp/staff/dmb/voicebox/voicebox.zip 1、解压voicebox.zip，将整个目录voicebox复制到MATLAB的安装目录的TOOLBOX目录下，如D:\MATLAB7\toolbox\ 2、打开Matlab，在MATLAB命令窗口中输入以下命令： cd D:\MATLAB7\toolbox\voicebox addpath(genpathKPM(pwd)) 将TOOLBOX下新加的voicebox工具箱加到MATLAB的搜索路径中去。 添加voicebox工具箱的MATLAB的搜索路径也可采用如下指令 addpath(genpath('D:\MATLAB7\toolbox\voicebox')) 3、为了永久保存上面的路径，以免下次重启MATLAB时重新添加，在MATLAB命令窗口下使用下面的命令： savepath 4、检验是否成功设置的方法： 在命令窗口中输入以下命令：which activlev.m（可以为所加工具箱的任一个M文件名称），如果显示正 确，就说明上面的设置成功。 which activlev.m D:\MATLAB7\toolbox\voicebox\activlev.m
Normal 0 7.8 磅 0 2 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:普通表格; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Metaphor: tenor and vehicle tenor and vehicle, the components of a metaphor, with the tenor referring to the concept, object, or person meant, and the vehicle being the image that carries the weight of the comparison. The words were first used in this sense by the critic I.A. Richards. In the first stanza of Abraham Cowley’s poem “The Wish,” the tenor is the city and the vehicle is a beehive: Well then; I now do plainly see, This busy world and I shall ne’er agree; The very honey of all earthly joy Does of all meats the soonest cloy; And they, methinks, deserve my pity Who for it can endure the stings, The crowd, and buzz, and murmurings Of this great hive, the city. Figure of speech figure of speech, any intentional deviation from literal statement or common usage that emphasizes, clarifies, or embellishes both written and spoken language. Forming an integral part of language, figures of speech are found in primitive oral literatures, as well as in polished poetry and prose and in everyday speech. Greeting-card rhymes, advertising slogans, newspaper headlines, the captions of cartoons, and the mottoes of families and institutions often use figures of speech, generally for humorous, mnemonic, or eye-catching purposes. The argots of sports, jazz, business, politics, or any specialized groups abound in figurative language. Most figures in everyday speech are formed by extending the vocabulary of what is already familiar and better known to what is less well known. Thus metaphors (implied resemblances) derived from human physiology are commonly extended to nature or inanimate objects as in the expressions “the mouth of a river,” “the snout of a glacier,” “the bowels of the earth,” or “the eye of a needle.” Conversely, resemblances to natural phenomena are frequently applied to other areas, as in the expressions “a wave of enthusiasm,” “a ripple of excitement,” or “a storm of abuse.” Use of simile (a comparison, usually indicated by “like” or “as”) is exemplified in “We were packed in the room like sardines.” Personification (speaking of an abstract quality or inanimate object as if it were a person) is exemplified in “Money talks”; metonymy (using the name of one thing for another closely related to it), in “How would the Pentagon react?”; synecdoche (use of a part to imply the whole), in expressions such as “brass” for high-ranking military officers or “hard hats” for construction workers. Other common forms of figurative speech are hyperbole (deliberate exaggeration for the sake of effect), as in “I’m so mad I could chew nails”; the rhetorical question (asked for effect, with no answer expected), as in “How can I express my thanks to you?”; litotes (an emphasis by negation), as in “It’s no fun to be sick”; and onomatopoeia (imitation of natural sounds by words), in such words as “crunch,” “gurgle,” “plunk,” and “splash.” Almost all the figures of speech that appear in everyday speech may also be found in literature. In serious poetry and prose, however, their use is more fully conscious, more artistic, and much more subtle; it thus has a stronger intellectual and emotional impact, is more memorable, and sometimes contributes a range and depth of association and suggestion far beyond the scope of the casual colloquial use of imagery. In European languages figures of speech are generally classified in five major categories: (1) figures of resemblance or relationship (e.g., simile, metaphor, kenning, conceit, parallelism, personification, metonymy, synecdoche, and euphemism); (2) figures of emphasis or understatement (e.g., hyperbole, litotes, rhetorical question, antithesis, climax, bathos, paradox, oxymoron, and irony); (3) figures of sound (e.g., alliteration, repetition, anaphora, and onomatopoeia); (4) verbal games and gymnastics (e.g., pun and anagram); and (5) errors (e.g., malapropism, periphrasis, and spoonerism). Figures involving a change in sense, such as metaphor, simile, and irony, are called tropes. All languages use figures of speech, but differences of language dictate different stylistic criteria. In a culture not influenced by classical Greece and Rome, some figures may be absent; irony is likely to be confined to fairly sophisticated cultures. Japanese poetry is based on delicate structures of implication and an entire vocabulary of aesthetic values almost untranslatable to the West. Arabic literature is rich in simile and metaphor, but the constructions used are so different from those familiar in the West that translation requires much adaptation. This condition is also true of the oral literatures of Africa and of the written literatures deriving from them. MLA Style: " figure of speech ." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition . Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 17 Sep. 2011. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/559055/figure-of-speech . APA Style: figure of speech . (2011). In Encyclopædia Britannica . Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/559055/figure-of-speech
Innovating to zero! Bill Gates I'm going to talk today about energy and climate. And that might seem a bit surprising because my full-time work at the foundation is mostly about vaccines and seeds, about the things that we need to invent and deliver to help the poorest two billion live better lives. But energy and climate are extremely important to these people, in fact, more important than to anyone else on the planet. The climate getting worse, means that many years their crops won't grow. There will be too much rain, not enough rain. Things will change in ways that their fragile environment simply can't support. And that leads to starvation. It leads to uncertainty. It leads to unrest. So, the climate changes will be terrible for them. Also, the price of energy is very important to them. In fact, if you could pick just one thing to lower the price of, to reduce poverty, by far, you would pick energy. Now, the price of energy has come down over time. Really, advanced civilization is based on advances in energy. The coal revolution fueled the industrial revolution, and, even in the 1900's we've seen a very rapid decline in the price of electricity, and that's why we have refrigerators, air-conditioning, we can make modern materials and do so many things. And so, we're in a wonderful situation with electricity in the rich world. But, as we make it cheaper -- and let's go for making it twice as cheap -- we need to meet a new constraint, and that constraint has to do with CO2. CO2 is warming the planet, and the equation on CO2 is actually a very straightforward one. If you sum up the CO2 that gets emitted, that leads to a temperature increase, and that temperature increase leads to some very negative effects. The effects on the weather and, perhaps worse, the indirect effects, in that the natural ecosystems can't adjust to these rapid changes, and so you get ecosystem collapses. Now, the exact amount of how you map from a certain increase of CO2 to what temperature will be and where the positive feedbacks are, there's some uncertainty there, but not very much. And there's certainly uncertainty about how bad those effects will be, but they will be extremely bad. I asked the top scientists on this several times, do we really have to get down to near zero? Can't we just cut it in half or a quarter? And the answer is that, until we get near to zero, the temperature will continue to rise. And so that's a big challenge. It's very different than saying we're a 12 ft high truck trying to get under a 10 ft bridge, and we can just sort of squeeze under. This is something that has to get to zero. Now, we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year, over 26 billion tons. For each American, it's about 20 tons. For people in poor countries, it's less than one ton. It's an average of about five tons for everyone on the planet. And, somehow, we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero. It's been constantly going up. It's only various economic changes that have even flattened it at all, so we have to go from rapidly rising to falling, and falling all the way to zero. This equation has four factors. A little bit of multiplication. So, you've got a thing on the left, CO2, that you want to get to zero, and that's going to be based on the number of people, the services each person's using on average, the energy on average for each service, and the CO2 being put out per unit of energy. So, let's look at each one of these and see how we can get this down to zero. Probably, one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty near to zero. Now that's back from high school algebra, but let's take a look. First we've got population. Now, the world today has 6.8 billion people. That's headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent, but there we see an increase of about 1.3. The second factor is the services we use. This encompasses everything, the food we eat, clothing, TV, heating. These are very good things, and getting rid of poverty means providing these services to almost everyone on the planet. And it's a great thing for this number to go up. In the rich world, perhaps the top one billion, we probably could cut back and use less, but every year, this number, on average, is going to go up, and so, over all, that will more than double the services delivered per person. Here we have a very basic service. Do you have lighting in your house to be able to read your homework, and, in fact, these kids don't, so they're going out and reading their school work under the street lamps. Now, efficiency, E, the energy for each service, here, finally we have some good news. We have something that's not going up. Through various inventions and new ways of doing lighting, through different types of cars, different ways of building buildings. there are a lot of services where you can bring the energy for that service down quite substantially, some individual services even, bring it down by 90 percent. There are other services like how we make fertilizer, or how we do air transport, where the rooms for improvement are far, far less. And so, overall here, if we're optimistic, we may get a reduction of a factor of three to even, perhaps, a factor of six. But for these first three factors now, we've gone from 26 billion to, at best, maybe 13 billion tons, and that just won't cut it. So let's look at this fourth factor -- this is going to be a key one -- and this is the amount of CO2 put out per each unit of energy. And so the question is, can you actually get that to zero? If you burn coal, no. If you burn natural gas, no. Almost every way we make electricity today, except for the emerging renewables and nuclear, puts out CO2. And so, what we're going to have to do at a global scale, is create a new system. And so, we need energy miracles. Now, when I use the term miracle, I don't mean something that's impossible. The microprocessor is a miracle. The personal computer is a miracle. The internet and its services are a miracle. So, the people here have participated in the creation of many miracles. Usually, we don't have a deadline, where you have to get the miracle by a certain date. Usually, you just kind of stand by, and some come along, some don't. This is a case where we actually have to drive full speed and get a miracle in a pretty tight time line. Now, I thought, how could I really capture this? Is there some kind of natural illustration, some demonstration that would grab people's imagination here? I thought back to a year ago when I brought mosquitos, and somehow people enjoyed that. (Laughter) It really got them involved in the idea of, you know, there are people who live with mosquitos. So, with energy, all I could come up with is this. I decided that releasing fireflies would be my contribution to the environment here this year. So here we have some natural fireflies. I'm told they don't bite, in fact, they might not even leave that jar. (Laughter) Now, there's all sorts gimmicky solutions like that one, but they don't really add up to much. We need solutions, either one or several, that have unbelievable scale and unbelievable reliability, and, although there's many directions people are seeking, I really only see five that can achieve the big numbers. I've left out tide, geothermal, fusion, biofuels. Those may make some contribution, and if they can do better than I expect, so much the better, but my key point here is that we're going to have to work on each of these five, and we can't give up any of them because they look daunting, because they all have significant challenges. Let's look first at the burning fossil fuels, either burning coal or burning natural gas. What you need to do there, seems like it might be simple, but it's not, and that's to take all the CO2, after you've burned it, going out the flue, pressurize it, create a liquid, put it somewhere, and hope it stays there. Now we have some pilot things that do this at the 60 to 80 percent level, but getting up to that full percentage, that will be very tricky, and agreeing on where these CO2 quantities should be put will be hard, but the toughest one here is this long term issue. Who's going to be sure? Who's going to guarantee something that is literally billions of times larger than any type of waste you think of in terms of nuclear or other things? This is a lot of volume. So that's a tough one. Next, would be nuclear. It also has three big problems. Cost, particularly in highly regulated countries, is high. The issue of the safety, really feeling good about nothing could go wrong, that, even though you have these human operators, that the fuel doesn't get used for weapons. And then what do you do with the waste? And, although it's not very large, there are a lot of concerns about that. People need to feel good about it. So three very tough problems that might be solvable, and so, should be worked on. The last three of the five, I've grouped together. These are what people often refer to as the renewable sources. And they actually -- although it's great they don't require fuel -- they have some disadvantages. One is that the density of energy gathered in these technologies is dramatically less than a power plant. This is energy farming, so you're talking about many square miles, thousands of time more area than you think of as a normal energy plant. Also, these are intermittent sources. The sun doesn't shine all day, it doesn't shine every day, and, likewise, the wind doesn't blow all the time. And so, if you depend on these sources, you have to have some way of getting the energy during those time periods that it's not available. So, we've got big cost challenges here. We have transmission challenges. For example, say this energy source is outside your country, you not only need the technology, but you have to deal with the risk of the energy coming from elsewhere. And, finally, this storage problem. And, to dimensionalize this, I went through and looked at all the types of batteries that get made, for cars, for computers, for phones, for flashlights, for everything, and compared that to the amount of electrical energy the world uses, and what I found is that all the batteries we make now could store less than 10 minutes of all the energy. And so, in fact, we need a big breakthrough here, something that's going to be a factor of a hundred better than the approaches we have now. It's not impossible, but it's not a very easy thing. Now, this shows up when you try to get the intermittent source to be above, say, 20 to 30 percent of what you're using. If you're counting on it for 100 percent, you need an incredible miracle battery. Now, how we're going to go forward on this: what's the right approach? Is it a Manhattan project? What's the thing that can get us there? Well, we need lots of companies working on this, hundreds. In each of these five paths, we need at least a hundred people. And a lot of them, you'll look at and say they're crazy. That's good. And, I think, here in the TED group, we have many people who are already pursuing this. Bill Gross has several companies, including one called eSolar that has some great solar thermal technologies. Vinod Khosla's investing in dozens of companies that are doing great things and have interesting possibilities, and I'm trying to help back that. Nathan Myhrvold and I actually are backing a company that, perhaps surprisingly, is actually taking the nuclear approach. There are some innovations in nuclear: modular, liquid. And innovation really stopped in this industry quite some ago, so the idea that there's some good ideas laying around is not all that surprising. The idea of Terrapower is that, instead of burning a part of uranium, the one percent, which is the U235, we decided, let's burn the 99 percent, the U238. It is kind of a crazy idea. In fact, people had talked about it for a long time, but they could never simulate properly whether it would work or not, and so it's through the advent of modern supercomputers that now you can simulate and see that, yes, with the right material's approach, this looks like it would work. And, because you're burning that 99 percent, you have greatly improved cost profile. You actually burn up the waste, and you can actually use as fuel all the leftover waste from today's reactors. So, instead of worrying about them, you just take that. It's a great thing. It breathes this uranium as it goes along. So it's kind of like a candle. You can see it's a log there, often referred to as a traveling wave reactor. In terms of fuel, this really solves the problem. I've got a picture here of a place in Kentucky. This is the left over, the 99 percent, where they've taken out the part they burn now, so it's called depleted uranium. That would power the U.S. for hundreds of years. And, simply by filtering sea water in an inexpensive process, you'd have enough fuel for the entire lifetime of the rest of the planet. So, you know, it's got lots of challenges ahead, but it is an example of the many hundreds and hundreds of ideas that we need to move forward. So let's think, how should we measure ourselves? What should our report card look like? Well, let's go out to where we really need to get, and then look at the intermediate. For 2050, you've heard many people talk about this 80 percent reduction. That really is very important, that we get there. And that 20 percent will be used up by things going on in poor countries, still some agriculture. Hopefully, we will have cleaned up forestry, cement. So, to get to that 80 percent, the developed countries, including countries like China, will have had to switch their electricity generation altogether. So, the other grade is, are we deploying this zero-emission technology, have we deployed it in all the developed countries and we're in the process of getting it elsewhere. That's super important. That's a key element of making that report card. So, backing up from there, what should the 2020 report card look like? Well, again, it should have the two elements. We should go through these efficiency measures to start getting reductions. The less we emit, the less that sum will be of CO2, and, therefore, the less the temperature. But in some ways, the grade we get there, doing things that don't get us all the way to the big reductions, is only equally, or maybe even slightly less, important than the other, which is the piece of innovation on these breakthroughs. These breakthroughs, we need to move those at full speed, and we can measure that in terms of companies, pilot projects, regulatory things that have been changed. There's a lot of great books that have been written about this. The Al Gore book, Our Choice and the David McKay book, Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air. They really go through it and create a framework that this can be discussed broadly, because we need broad backing for this. There's a lot that has to come together. So this is a wish. It's a very concrete wish that we invent this technology. If you gave me only one wish for the next 50 years, I could pick who's president, I could pick a vaccine, which is something I love, or I could pick that this thing that's half the cost with no CO2 gets invented, this is the wish I would pick. This is the one with the greatest impact. If we don't get this wish, the division between the people who think short term and long term will be terrible, between the U.S. and China, between poor countries and rich, and most of all the lives of those two billion will be far worse. So, what do we have to do? What am I appealing to you to step forward and drive? We need to go for more research funding. When countries get together in places like Copenhagen, they shouldn't just discuss the CO2. They should discuss this innovation agenda, and you'd be stunned at the ridiculously low levels of spending on these innovative approaches. We do need the market incentives, CO2 tax, cap and trade, something that gets that price signal out there. We need to get the message out. We need to have this dialogue be a more rational, more understandable dialogue, including the steps that the government takes. This is an important wish, but it is one I think we can achieve. Thank you. (Applause) Thank you. Chris Anderson: Thank you. Thank you. (Applause) Thank you. Just so I understand more about Terrapower, right -- I mean, first of all, can you give a sense of what scale of investment this is? Bil Gates: To actually do the software, buy the supercomputer, hire all the great scientists, which we've done, that's only tens of millions, and even once we test our materials out in a Russian reactor to make sure our materials work properly, then you'll only be up in the hundreds of millions. The tough thing is building the pilot reactor, finding the several billion, finding the regulator, the location that will actually build the first one of these. Once you get the first one built, if it works as advertised, then it's just clear as day, because the economics, the energy density, are so different than nuclear as we know it. CA: And so, to understand it right, this involves building deep into the ground almost like a vertical kind of column of nuclear fuel, of this sort of spent uranium, and then the process starts at the top and kind of works down? BG: That's right. Today, you're always refueling the reactor, so you have lots of people and lots of controls that can go wrong, that thing where you're opening it up and moving things in and out. That's not good. So, if you have very cheap fuel that you can put 60 years in -- just think of it as a log -- put it down and not have those same complexities. And it just sits there and burns for the sixty years, and then it's done. CA: It's a nuclear power plant that is its own waste disposal solution. BG: Yeah. Well, what happens with the waste, you can let it sit there -- there's a lot less waste under this approach -- then you can actually take that, and put it into another one and burn that. And we start off actually by taking the waste that exists today, that's sitting in these cooling pools or dry casking by reactor. That's our fuel to begin with. So, the thing that's been a problem from those reactors is actually what gets fed into ours, and you're reducing the volume of the waste quite dramatically as you're going through this process. CA: But in your talking to different people around the world about the possibilities here, where is there most interest in actually doing something with this? BG: Well, we haven't picked a particular place, and there's all these interesting disclosure rules about anything that's called nuclear, so we've got a lot of interest, that people from the company have been in Russia, India, China. I've been back seeing the secretary of energy here, talking about how this fits into the energy agenda. So I'm optimistic. You know the French and Japanese have done some work. This is a variant on something that has been done. It's an important advance, but it's like a fast reactor, and a lot of countries have built them, so anybody who's done a fast reactor, is a candidate to be where the first one gets built. CA: So, in your mind, timescale and likelihood of actually taking something like this live? BG: Well, we need, for one of these high-scale, electro-generation things that's very cheap, we have 20 years to invent and then 20 years to deploy. That's sort of the deadline that the environmental models have shown us that we have to meet. And, you know, Terrapower, if things go well, which is wishing for a lot, could easily meet that. And there are, fortunately now, dozens of companies, we need it to be hundreds, who, likewise, if their science goes well, if the funding for their pilot plants goes well, that they can compete for this. And it's best if multiple succeed, because then you could use a mix of these things. We certainly need one to succeed. CA: In terms of big-scale possible game changes, is this the biggest that you're aware of out there? BG: An energy breakthrough is the most important thing. It would have been, even without the environmental constraint, but the environmental constraint just makes it so much greater. In the nuclear space, there are other innovators. You know, we don't know their work as well as we know this one, but the modular people, that's a different approach. There's a liquid type reactor, which seems a little hard, but maybe they say that about us. And so, there are different ones, but the beauty of this is a molecule of uranium has a million times as much energy as a molecule of, say, coal, and so, if you can deal with the negatives, which are essentially the radiation, the footprint and cost, the potential, in terms of effect on land and various things, is almost in a class of its own. CA: If this doesn't work, then what? Do we have to start taking emergency measures to try and keep the temperature of the earth stable? BG: If you get into that situation, it's like if you've been over-eating, and you're about to have a heart-attack. Then where do you go? You may need heart surgery or something. There is a line of research on what's called geoengineering, which are various techniques that would delay the heating to buy us 20 or 30 years to get our act together. Now, that's just an insurance policy. You hope you don't need to do that. Some people say you shouldn't even work on the insurance policy because it might make you lazy, that you'll keep eating because you know heart surgery will be there to save you. I'm not sure that's wise, given the importance of the problem, but there's now the geoengineering discussion about, should that be in the back pocket in case things happen faster, or this innovation goes a lot slower than we expect. CA: Climate skeptics: if you had a sentence or two to say to them, how might you persuade them that they're wrong? BG: Well, unfortunately, the skeptics come in different camps. The ones who make scientific arguments are very few. Are they saying there's negative feedback effects that have to do with clouds that offset things? There are very, very few things that they can even say there's a chance in a million of those things. The main problem we have here is kind of like AIDS. You make the mistake now, and you pay for it a lot later. And so, when you have all sorts of urgent problems, the idea of taking pain now that has to do with a gain later -- and a somewhat uncertain pain thing. In fact, the IPCC report, that's not necessarily the worst case, and there are people in the rich world who look at IPCC and say, okay, that isn't that big of a deal. The fact is it's that uncertain part that should move us towards this. But my dream here is that, if you can make it economic, and meet the CO2 constraints, then the skeptics say, okay, I don't care that it doesn't put out CO2, I kind of wish it did put out CO2, but I guess I'll accept it because it's cheaper than what's come before. (Applause) CA: And so, that would be your response to the Bjorn Lomborg argument, that basically if you spend all this energy trying to solve the CO2 problem, it's going to take away all your other goals of trying to rid the world of poverty and malaria and so forth, it's a stupid waste of the Earth's resources to put money towards that when there are better things we can do. BG: Well, the actual spending on the RD piece -- say the U.S. should spend 10 billion a year more than it is right now -- it's not that dramatic. It shouldn't take away from other things. The thing you get into big money on, and this, reasonable people can disagree, is when you have something that's non-economic and you're trying to fund that. That, to me, mostly is a waste. Unless you're very close and you're just funding the learning curve and it's going to get very cheap. I believe we should try more things that have a potential to be far less expensive. If the trade-off you get into is, let's make energy super expensive, then the rich can afford that. I mean, all of us here could pay five times as much for our energy and not change our lifestyle. The disaster is for that two billion. And even Lomborg has changed. His shtick now is, why isn't the RD getting discussed more. He's still, because of his earlier stuff, still associated with the skeptic camp, but he's realized that's a pretty lonely camp, and so, he's making the RD point. And so there is a thread of something that I think is appropriate. The RD piece, it's crazy how little it's funded. CA: Well Bill, I suspect I speak on the behalf of most people here to say, I really hope your wish comes true. Thank you so much. BG: Thank you. (Applause)
标签: speech
