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每日英語跟讀 Ep.809: Voting by Phone? Elections App Sets Off Alarm

For more than a decade, it has been an elusive dream for election officials: a smartphone app that would let swaths of voters cast their ballots from their living rooms. It has also been a nightmare for cyberexperts, who argue that no technology is secure enough to trust with the very basis of American democracy.

十多年來，對選務官員而言，一款能讓大批選民從自家客廳投票的智慧手機應用程式，一直是個難以實現的美夢。而對網路專家來說，這卻也是場噩夢，他們認為沒有任何科技稳妥到足以把美國民主的基礎託付給它。

The debate, long a sideshow at academic conferences and state election offices, is now taking on new urgency. A startup called Voatz says it has developed an app that would allow users to vote securely from anywhere in the world — the electoral version of a moonshot. Thousands are set to use the app in this year’s elections, a small but growing experiment that could pave the way for a wider acceptance of mobile voting.

這一長期為學術會議和州選務辦公室次要過場戲的爭論，如今又有了新的急迫性。一家名為Voatz的新創公司表示已開發一款應用程式，可讓用戶從世界任何地方安全地投票，這是選舉版的登月計畫。成千上萬的人將在今年選舉中使用這款應用程式，是一項小規模卻不斷擴大的實驗，能為手機投票更獲接受做好準備。

But where optimists see a more engaged electorate, critics are warning that the move is dangerously irresponsible. In a new report shared with The New York Times before its publication Thursday, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say the app is so riddled with security issues that no one should be using it.

In response to the report, the Department of Homeland Security organized a series of briefings in recent weeks for state and local officials who are planning to use Voatz’s technology.

樂觀者認為這會提高投票率，批評者卻警告說，此舉危險且不負責。在發表前先跟《紐約時報》分享的一份新報告中，麻省理工學院研究人員稱這個應用程式安全問題一籮筐，任何人都不該使用。針對這份報告，國土安全部近幾周舉辦了一系列會議，向打算使用Voatz技術的州與地方官員做了簡報。

“The choice here is not about turnout,” the report says, “but about an adversary controlling the election result and a loss of voter privacy.”

前述報告中說：「決定我們選擇的不該是投票率，而是不容敵人控制選舉結果、選民喪失隱私。」

With security already a dominant theme of the 2020 elections, the debacle at the Democratic caucuses in Iowa — an app used to report results failed to, well, report results — has raised new questions about the role technology should play in American elections and prompted calls for it to be scaled back.

安全原本已是2020年大選的一大主題，而愛阿華州民主黨黨團會議日前發生意外，一項用來回報選舉結果的應用程式無法進行回報，更使人們對科技在美國大選中所扮演角色產生新的質疑，並引發予以限縮的呼聲。

While a return to the analog days of punch cards and hanging chads is unlikely, there is growing unease about how far state and local governments should go in modernizing election infrastructure — from registration databases and electronic poll books to the voting machines themselves.

雖然已不太可能再回到打孔卡與吊著孔屑的電腦模擬時代，但在從登記資料庫到電子投票簿、再到投票機本身的選舉基礎設施現代化上，人們對於州和地方政府應走多遠憂慮日深。

An initial experiment with wide-scale online voting took place in Washington a decade ago. It was called off after researchers hacked into the system, electing HAL 9000 — the computer from “2001: A Space Odyssey” — as mayor and making the University of Michigan fight song play every time a ballot was cast.

十年前，華盛頓進行了一次大規模網路投票的初步實驗，它在研究人員駭入系統，讓系統選出HAL 9000型電腦（源自電影《2001：太空漫遊》）當市長，並且每有一票投下就播一次密西根大學的戰歌後叫停。

Since then, some states have allowed online voting through web portals, emails or digital faxes, despite the security risks. But they have restricted it to groups of people who cannot make it to the polls, mostly overseas military personnel.

自那時起，儘管存在安全風險，仍有些州允許透過入口網站、電子郵件或數位傳真進行網路投票，但僅限於無法去投票所投票的群體，主要是海外軍事人員。

Source article: https://paper.udn.com/udnpaper/POH0067/350337/web/

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Welcome to 15mins.today the home of English Shadowing. I'm your host Gavin and this is InTense Episode 39. Well guys, we are continuing with our definite article “the” or rather when not to use it, and today we're going to be looking at the following category, which is sports. When we talk about a sport that we play, we do not put “the” in front of it as in, “I like to play baseball. I like to watch cricket.”

Well that's as simple as it is, do not put it there in front of the sport that you watch or play or enjoy or dislike. So let's get started with our examples!

Does Jane enjoy football? Yes, she enjoys football.

Does Jane enjoy football? No, she does not enjoy football. ]

Do you like softball? Yes, I like softball.

Do you like softball? No, I don't like softball.

Do Peter and John enjoy ice hockey? Yes, they enjoy ice hockey.

Do Peter and John enjoy ice hockey? No, they do not enjoy ice hockey.

Does Mary play baseball? Yes, she plays baseball.

Does Mary play baseball? No, she does not play baseball.

Is cricket popular in Taiwan? Yes, cricket is popular in Taiwan.

Is cricket popular in Taiwan? No, cricket is not popular in Taiwan.

Do you like golf? Yes, I like golf.

Do you like golf? No, I do not like golf.

What is the national sport of Taiwan? The national sport of Taiwan is baseball.

Is soccer a great spectator sport? Yes, soccer is a great spectator sport.

Is soccer a great spectator sport? No, soccer is not a great spectator sport.

Is baseball an Olympic sport? Yes, baseball is an Olympic sport.

Is baseball an Olympic sport? No, baseball is not an Olympic sport.

What is your favorite sport? My favorite sport is basketball.

Well there you go guys, keep practicing the questions and remember no “the” in front of a sport, take care, bye!

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Summary:

In 2019, the bushfire in Australia devastated over 5 million hectares of land and killed hundreds of millions of wild animals. The disaster drove some animals almost to extinction. In Australia, bushfires would happen during the season, however, it is unprecedented the amount of bushfires that happened at the same time and over such vast geographic area. Main reason of the bushfire is the lack of moisture and the extreme temperature changes in the world

Vocabulary and Sample Sentences

Severe adj. – very great / intense

• The severe changes in climate is extending the bushfire season in Australia.

Unprecedented adj. – never done or known before

• Bushfires in Taiwan are unprecedented.

Prolong v. – extend the duration

• To prolong your battery life, do not overcharge them.

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每日英語跟讀 Ep.808: Neanderthal genes found for first time in African populations

African populations have been revealed to share Neanderthal ancestry for the first time, in findings that add a new twist to the tale of ancient humans and our closest known relatives.

非洲的人類族群首度被科學家揭露帶有尼安德塔人的血統。這項發現為古代人類和尼安德塔人──與我們血緣最相近的親戚物種──之間的故事，帶來新的轉折。

Previously it was believed that only non-African populations carried Neanderthal genes due to interbreeding that took place after a major human migration out of Africa and across the globe about 60,000 years ago. The latest findings suggest human and Neanderthal lineages are more closely intertwined than once thought and point to far earlier interbreeding events, about 200,000 years ago.

前，學界普遍認為只有非洲以外的族群帶有尼安德塔人的基因，這是因為人類大約在六萬年前發生過一次大型的「源出非洲」遷徙，散播到全球各地，而後與尼安德塔人異種交配。最新的研究結果顯示，人類和尼安德塔人的譜系比科學家先前認為的還要緊密相繫，並且指向更早以前──大約在二十萬年前──就出現過異種交配。

“Our results show this history was much more interesting and there were many waves of dispersal out of Africa, some of which led to admixture between modern humans and Neanderthals that we see in the genomes of all living individuals today,” said Joshua Akey, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University and senior author of the research.

普林斯頓大學的演化生物學家、也是該篇研究的資深作者約書亞‧阿奇表示：「我們研究的結果顯示，這段歷史其實更為有趣。其實歷史上曾經發生過好幾波源出非洲的向外擴散，其中幾次造成現代人類與尼安德塔人混血，也就是我們今日在所有現代人類個體的基因組中所看到的現象。」

The study suggests living Europeans and Asians carry about 1 percent Neanderthal DNA, compared with on average 0.3 percent for those of African ancestry. Akey and colleagues believe that this Neanderthal DNA arrived in Africa with ancient Europeans whose ancestors — over many generations — had left Africa, met and mated with Neanderthals and then returned to Africa and mixed with local populations.

這份研究指出，相較於祖先來自非洲的現代人，身上平均帶有百分之零點三的尼安德塔DNA，現代歐洲人和亞洲人則帶有百分之一的尼安德塔DNA。阿奇和他的同事認為，這個尼安德塔DNA和古老的歐洲人一起抵達非洲，而這些歐洲人的祖先──在好幾個世代以前──從非洲離開，遇到尼安德塔人，並與他們交配，然後回到非洲，再與當地人口混血。

“An important aspect of our study is that it highlights humans, and hominins, were moving in and out of Africa for hundreds of thousands of years and occasionally admixing,” said Akey. “These back-to-Africa migrations, largely from ancestors of contemporary Europeans, carried Neanderthal sequences with them, and through admixture, contributed to the Neanderthal ancestry we detect in African individuals today.”

阿奇指出：「我們的研究其中一項重要的層面在於，它點出人類，以及其他古代人類亞族，在數十萬年間不斷地移入移出非洲，並且偶爾發生混血的情形。」他補充說：「這些回到非洲的移民，主要來自於當代歐洲人的祖先，他們身上帶有尼安德塔人的基因序列，並且經由混血，導致我們今日在非洲人身上探測到的尼安德塔血統。」

The increasingly fine-grained details of our ancestors’ migration patterns and intimate encounters with other types of human are coming into focus thanks to the advent of sophisticated computational genetics techniques. These statistical methods allow scientists to line up the Neanderthal genome side by side with that of ancient modern humans and DNA from different living populations and figure out whether the different lineages have been steadily diverging or whether there are blips where large chunks of DNA were exchanged at certain time points.

多虧了精密電腦計算基因學技術的來臨，關於我們祖先的遷徙模式，以及與其他人種的親密接觸，愈來愈細緻的細節逐漸變得清晰。這些統計學方法讓科學家能夠將尼安德塔人和古現代人的基因組並列，進行對比，也能夠對照今日不同人類族群的DNA，判斷這些相異的譜系是否一直持續產生分歧，又或者是否有跡象顯示某些時間點曾經出現大塊的DNA交換。

The latest comparison highlights previously unnoticed ancient human genes in the Neanderthal genome, apparently acquired from interbreeding events dating to about 200,000 years ago. This suggests an early group of humans travelled from Africa to Europe or Asia, where they encountered Neanderthal populations and left a faint imprint on their genome that could still be detected more than 100,000 years later.

最新的基因組對比，凸顯出先前不曾被注意到的古人類基因存在於尼安德塔人的基因組中，明顯來自於距今約二十萬年的雜交事件。這項發現顯示，曾有早期人類族群從非洲前往歐洲或亞洲，在當地遇到尼安德塔人族群，並在後者基因組中留下淺淺的印記，在超過十萬年後的今天仍然可以探測得到。

The paper also highlights the relative lack of genetics research in African populations, despite modern humans having first emerged on the continent and despite African populations today being more diverse genetically than the inhabitants of the rest of the world combined. “To more fully understand human genomic variation and human evolutionary history, it is imperative to comprehensively sample individuals from all regions of the world, and Africa remains one of the most understudied regions,” said Akey.

該篇論文也點出，儘管現代人類最初發源於非洲大陸，而且今日非洲人類族群的遺傳多樣性遠高於世界其他地區居民的總和，目前學界對於當地族群的基因研究仍顯得相對缺乏。阿奇指出：「如果要更全盤了解人類基因組的變異，以及人類演化的歷史，廣泛對世界各地區的人類個體進行採樣是絕對必要的，而非洲目前仍然是研究最為不足的地區之一。」

It is not known whether all African populations, some of whose roots stretch into the deep past, share this Neanderthal heritage. KhoeSan (bushmen) and Mbuti (central African pygmy) populations, for instance, appear to have split off from other groups more than 100,000 years ago. The findings are published in the journal Cell.

目前仍不清楚是否所有非洲族群──其中有些族群的根源延續自遙遠的過去──共同擁有這項「尼安德塔遺產」。舉例而言，非洲的「科伊桑族」（亦稱布須曼人）以及「姆巴提人」（非洲中部的一支矮黑人），似乎在超過十萬年前就已經和其他人類族群在演化上分道揚鑣了。該篇研究刊登於期刊《細胞》上。

Source article: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/lang/archives/2020/02/16/2003731045/2

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每日英語跟讀 Ep.807: About Nature - Deep Diving Scientists Discover Bubbling CO2 Hotspot

Diving 200 feet under the ocean surface to conduct scientific research can lead to some interesting places. For University of Texas at Austin Professor Bayani Cardenas, it placed him in the middle of a champagne-like environment of bubbling carbon dioxide.

潛到海面下200英尺進行科學研究，能帶領你抵達一些有趣的地點。美國德州大學奧斯汀分校的教授巴亞尼．卡德納斯便因此置身在宛如香檳般、充滿二氧化碳氣泡的環境。

Cardenas discovered the region – which he calls "Soda Springs" – while studying how groundwater from a nearby island could affect the ocean environment of the Verde Island Passage in the Philippines.

卡德納斯發現這個被他稱為「蘇打噴泉」的地點時，正在研究鄰近島嶼的地下水如何影響菲律賓佛得角島通道的海洋環境。

Cardenas said that the high CO2 levels could make Soda Springs an ideal spot for studying how coral reefs may cope with climate change.

卡德納斯說，二氧化碳濃度高的「蘇打噴泉」是研究珊瑚礁如何因應氣候變遷的理想地點。

The scientists measured CO2 concentrations as high as 95,000 parts per million (ppm), more than 200 times the concentration of CO2 found in the atmosphere. The readings range from 60,000 to 95,000 and are potentially the highest ever recorded in nature.

科學家們測得（蘇打噴泉）高達95000ppm（百萬分之一）的二氧化碳濃度，是大氣中二氧化碳濃度的200倍以上。（蘇打噴泉）介於60000至95000（ppm）的讀數，預料是自然界歷來最高的二氧化碳濃度紀錄。

Next Article:

Penguins’ speech patterns are similar to humans, a new study finds 新研究：企鵝語言模式似人類

In most human languages, the most frequently used words are short. It turns out the same thing goes for penguins too.

在大多數人類語言中，最常用的字都很短，原來企鵝也是如此。

A team of researchers based in Italy have found "compelling evidence" that African penguins use the same speech patterns as we do － the first time this has been found in an animal other than a primate.

義大利一個研究團隊發現「令人信服的證據」，證明非洲企鵝與我們使用相同的語言模式 ，這是首度在靈長類以外的動物身上有此發現。

The team recorded 590 breeding calls known as "ecstatic display songs." They were sung by single birds during the mating season, from 28 adult African penguins in three different colonies in Italian zoos.

研究團隊共錄得590段被稱為「狂喜展示聲」的繁殖叫聲，這是義大利動物園3個不同群聚的28隻成年單身非洲企鵝在求偶季節的鳴叫。

The songs’ sounds are similar to the bray of a donkey, according to the paper which published Tuesday, and are responsible for the flightless birds’ less-than-flattering nickname：the jackass penguin.

根據週二刊登的研究報告，這些鳴叫聽來很像驢子叫，這種不會飛的鳥類因此得到「公驢企鵝」（ jackass penguin）這個令人不敢恭維的暱稱。

The study found that the vocal sequences contained three distinct syllables of different length, with the "words" used most often the shortest, while the longest sequences were made up of shorter syllables.

研究發現，（非洲企鵝）聲音序列包括長度各異的3種不同音節，最常用的「字」最短，最長的序列則以較短的音節構成。

The researchers said this showed the flightless birds shared two traits of human speech － that the most frequently used words are shorter, but also the longer the sentence（or for penguins：the call）, the shorter the sounds within it.

研究人員表示，這顯示這種不會飛的鳥擁有兩種與人類一樣的語言特性，也就是最常用的字比較短，以及句子（對企鵝而言是鳴叫聲）越長，其中的音節越短。

Source article: https://features.ltn.com.tw/english/article/paper/1354721 ; https://features.ltn.com.tw/english/article/paper/1355810

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