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【本期文稿】
This is Special English. I’m Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.
The City of London is the natural Western end to the Belt and Road Initiative, and the city can contribute greatly to the initiative. That’s according to Charles Bowman, Lord Mayor of the City of London.
Bowman made the remarks while addressing a China-UK Economic and Trade Forum held by the China Chamber of Commerce in the UK. Bowman will visit China in March, taking with him a senior business delegation to cities including Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing.
The mayor said they will be discussing London's role in the exciting Belt and Road Initiative, building on the involvement of the City of London Corporation in the Belt and Road Summit in Beijing last May.
He said Britain's commitment to the success of the Belt and Road Initiative was reaffirmed just a few weeks ago at the 9th UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue.
He believed that Chinese businesses in Britain are the "stabilizers" and "boosters" of the bilateral relationship. He emphasized that London is the largest Chinese currency payments centre outside China, and the largest renminbi foreign exchange centre worldwide.
Bowman mentioned the City could offer to Chinese businesses advice on risk management, legal services and green finance.
The City of London Corporation provides local government and policing services for the financial and commercial heart of Britain. The lord mayor of the City of London is a principal ambassador and key spokesperson for the British financial and professional services sector.
The City of London is a historic, financial district, an enclave surrounded by Greater London, with a mayor distinct from that of the rest of London.
This is Special English.
Snowflakes swirled around the Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport as a crowd welcomed a pair of Chinese giant pandas eating bamboo inside two transparent glass boxes.
The boxes were drawn by a vehicle with 60 reporters and photographers documenting the proceedings as they were loaded onto a container truck to be transported 300 kilometers further north to the Ahtari Zoo, where the couple will stay for 15 years.
They are the first pair of giant pandas arriving in the Nordics from China. An expert on giant pandas from the Ahtari Zoo, said the zoo had made special preparations for the newcomers, including an installation that brings more sunshine during the long dark winter time.
The expert said he was relieved when he saw the pandas were in good condition after arriving at the airport. He was optimistic that the pandas will quickly adapt to the zoo. He believed the zoo is the best place for giant pandas to live in the world after their original habitat in China.
Finns have given the pandas Finnish names "Pyry" for the male, and "Lumi" for the female, which mean "heavy snowfall" and "snow".
Heavy snow fell in Scandinavia prior to the arrival of the pandas, which, as the Chinese Ambassador to Finland put it, "is a sign of welcome".
Thanks to the efforts made in China and worldwide, the habitat of the giant pandas in China has expanded to more than 2 million hectares. Around 2,000 giant pandas live in the wild and another 500 are raised in captivity in China.
Negotiations over a giant panda cooperation program between China and Finland started in 2015. Documents about the joint research on giant pandas in the Ahtari Zoo were confirmed in April 2017 when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Finland.
The pandas will meet the public in late February during the Chinese spring festival, the Lunar New Year.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
China has strong brains, resources, economy and wise decision makers, and the country is able to lead the new round of technological revolution and in fact is now playing a leading role. That’s according to Dan Shechtman, the 2011 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, in a recent exclusive interview with China’s Xinhua News Agency.
Artificial intelligence, cyber security, genetic engineering and quantum technologies, among others, are all viewed as main representative high technology in the current new round of technological revolution. Shechtman said China is making great efforts and huge investment on the development of these high technologies.
The Nobel Prize winner attended the World Internet Conference held in east China's Zhejiang Province in early December last year and he was deeply impressed that there were so many industry leaders participating in the conference and held deep talks with Chinese partners.
The scientist said artificial intelligence is being developed as one of several major high technologies in the new round of the technological revolution. It is attracting great attention for development, and there is great progress and machines that now can do very precisely what people tell them to do.
This is Special English.
The China-EU Tourism Year has been launched in Venice, Italy.
Chinese officials said the tourism year will not only promote the tourism industry, but also boost mutual understanding and overall ties between China and Europe.
Europe is the third largest destination for Chinese citizens traveling abroad, while the number of Chinese citizens visiting the EU countries was almost 3.5 million in 2016. That brings almost 12 billion U.S. dollars to Europe. Meanwhile, the number of EU citizens going to China surpassed 3 million, yielding an estimated 14 billion U.S. dollars to China.
The number of Chinese citizens traveling to Europe has been rapidly rising in recent years, increasing by 65 percent in the first half of 2017.
Chinese officials said that the Tourism Year is not only an occasion to promote the industry, but also an opportunity to enhance mutual understanding and cognition between people in China and Europe.
China and the EU are working together to boost people to people exchanges, including tourism.
2018 marks the 15th anniversary of the establishment of a comprehensive strategic partnership between China and the EU.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
An alliance between Chinese and French universities and institutions to promote artificial intelligence has been set up.
Eight education institutions from China and France, including Tsinghua University and the Sorbonne University established the France China AI Consortium in Beijing.
French mathematician and Fields medalist Cedric Villani said the cooperation will be crucial to facing common challenges.
One of the universities in the project, Zhejiang University in east China, said that strengthening international cooperation in artificial intelligence will not only promote interdisciplinary research, but also help build a platform for creative talent.
This is Special English.
Nepal is soon to introduce an aeronautics and astronautics engineering program at its universities for the first time, in cooperation with a Chinese university.
The three-day joint academic workshop was jointly organized by one of Nepal's most prestigious universities TU and China's Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
During the workshop in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, academics said the program will enable students in Nepal to study aeronautics and astronautics engineering.
An official of Nepal said the cooperation will be the first academic work to be introduced within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, which was signed by Nepal in May last year.
The university has signed Memorandum of Understanding with 18 Chinese universities, covering fields including civil engineering, medicine, business and economics.
The university's Institute of Engineering will commence the course on aeronautics and astronautics in bachelor’s level in the near future. The university produces around 4,000 engineers annually.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. You can access the program on our Apple Podcast. Now the news continues.
2017 was the hottest year on record without a warming El Nino event.
Reports published by multiple agencies have revealed a clear signal of continuing, human-caused climate change on earth.
The U.S. space agency NASA found 2017 to be the second warmest since modern recordkeeping began in 1880, while the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which conducted a separate, independent analysis, ranked it as the third warmest.
According to NASA, globally averaged temperatures in 2017 were 0.9 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1951 to 1980 average. That is second only to global temperatures in 2016.
Scientists also found that the average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces during 2017 was 0.8 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average. This was the third highest among all years in the 1880-2017 record, behind the warmest 2016 and the second warmest 2015.
Scientists concluded that the earth is in a long-term warming trend. Overall, the five warmest years on record have all taken place since 2010.
This is Special English.
Cambodia has inaugurated a national cancer center and a new maternity ward in one of its state-run hospitals in the capital city of Phnom Penh.
Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Cambodia’s Prime Minister said the 9-storey center, along with a new maternity facility, had been well-equipped with modern medical equipment.
He said this is a new achievement in the country's health sector, and it will greatly contribute to improving the health of the Cambodian people.
The center has been built in line with the international standard and is equipped with modern medical equipment including a 4-million-U.S.-dollar linear accelerator, as well as bone marrow transplant and stem cell treatment facilities.
Linear accelerators are used to treatment cancer. The one in the hospital will benefit 700 to 1,000 cancer patients a year.
According to the minister, the cancer center consists of 53 beds and the new maternity ward has 85 beds.
The whole project cost 23 million U.S. dollars, with some of the fund donated by France and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.
Researchers from the University of Southern California in the United States have used laser pulses to design a new type of data encryption tool that is more powerful and energy efficient for cyber security.
The researchers have invented a new method to create a frequency comb, a tool that expands laser application potential by converting a single wavelength into multiple wavelengths. The process has effectively produced tens to hundreds of lasers from a single laser.
Their findings were published in the journal Science Advances.
Conventional data transmission by optical fiber travels through thousands of kilometers underneath the world's oceans, and is at great risk of being intercepted.
However, the study has replaced traditional material including silicon that is widely used for data transmission systems with carbon-based materials or organic molecules.
They attached only a single layer of a 25-atom organic molecule to the surface of a laser so as to create a new frequency comb that is merely the size of a hair and more importantly requires 1,000 times less power to operate.
The new method will become an important part of quantum encryption, which will not only protect people's sensitive information in the future, but also be used to improve the detection of cancer biomarkers in the health sector.
This is Special English.
Preschoolers who spend more time watching television, playing video games or using computers get less sleep.
Researchers from the University of Michigan assessed TV, DVD or VCR, video games and computer or internet usage among 300 preschoolers with an average age of four years. Parents and guardians completed an online or paper questionnaire about their child's bedtime behavior, namely the hours of nightly sleep, daily naps, and quantity and times of media usage.
In addition to providing demographic information, parents responded to questions about sneaky media use, a new measure representing the frequency children are caught using media when they should be sleeping.
On average, respondents reported their children got close to 11 hours of sleep per day. Most of the children's media use occurred on weekdays after preschool, in the evening before bedtime and over weekend days.
Around 19 percent of the children surveyed had televisions in their bedroom and 17 percent had two TVs in their room. More than 23 percent had a DVD or VCR and nine percent had one video gaming system.
The researchers say the longer naps by the heavy and sneaky media users can be one seemingly innocent yet impactful health-harming behavior in preschool age children.
This is Special English.
Shedding just five percent of body weight will have a huge impact on one's health.
A study by Washington University found that it's enough to decrease total body fat, visceral fat that hugs one's organs, and liver fat. Moreover, the small weight loss can lower blood pressure and improve insulin sensitivity. All together this can also mean a lower risk of type-2 diabetes.
The study shows that one can get a large "'bang for your buck" with every five percent weight loss. But an additional 10 to 15 percent weight loss continues to cause even more improvements in measures including blood lipids and blood pressure.
The study has been published in the journal Cell Metabolism.
That is the end of this edition of Special English. To freshen up your memory, I'm going to read one of the news items again at normal speed. Please listen carefully.
Shedding just five percent of body weight will have a huge impact on one's health.
A study by Washington University found that it's enough to decrease total body fat, visceral fat that hugs one's organs, and liver fat. Moreover, the small weight loss can lower blood pressure and improve insulin sensitivity. All together this can also mean a lower risk of type-2 diabetes.
The study shows that one can get a large "'bang for your buck" with every five percent weight loss. But an additional 10 to 15 percent weight loss continues to cause even more improvements in measures including blood lipids and blood pressure.
The study has been published in the journal Cell Metabolism.
That is the end of today's program. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing, and I hope you will join us every day, to learn English and learn about the world.
祝大家学习愉快，下期再见！
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