【Week 5】VR虛擬實境

Samsung's Best Proof that It's Serious About VR? Mark Zuckerberg.

by Andrew Nusca  FEBRUARY 22, 2016, 10:33 AM EST

Zuckerberg has been to Mobile World Congress before, a sign of how serious Facebook is about the mobile device. And to be fair, he was in Barcelona to deliver a conference keynote the following day. But the context of his appearance—to push virtual-reality technology and his company’s partnership with Samsung for its Gear VR headset, which is powered by software made by Oculus VR, the outfit Facebook purchased for $2 billion in 2014—shows how serious Facebook is about its acquisition.

Facebook could have dispatched Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe if it wanted less of a visible connection between Facebook and Samsung. It could have let Zuckerberg discuss the Samsung partnership during his scheduled keynote, without taking to Samsung’s stage. It could have resisted entirely.

But the message was clear. Both companies are dead serious about VR, a market estimated to be worth $70 billion by 2020, according to estimates by market researcher TrendForce. They need each other—one for its global hardware prowess, the other for its worldwide software excellence—to see it through.

On the screen behind Zuckerberg, the projection read: “The next platform.” It wasn’t necessary—his presence was clear enough.

Excerpt from: http://fortune.com/2016/02/22/samsung-facebook-vr/

Structure of the lead:

Who: Mark Zuckerberg

What: push VR technology and his company’s partnership with Samsung

When: February 22, 2016

Where: Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

How: Not given

Why: Not given

Key Words:

proof (n.)證明

mobile device (n.)行動裝置

partnership (n.)合作關係

headset (n.)頭戴式裝置

acquisition (n.)獲得

dispatch (v.)派遣

prowess (n.)實力

see it through (n.)使之順利通過

【Week 4】火星探險

Opportunity Mars Rover set for last missions to find water

By Jose Gregorio Zapata -November 7, 2016

NASA’s Opportunity Mars Rover is ready for the last two years of its mission after it spent the month of October studying the rich and familiar geology at the Wharton Ridge on the western rim of Endeavour Crater. The two-year extended mission that began on October 1 will drive the Opportunity down a gully carved many time ago by a fluid that could have been water. The probe should take samples and photos at the spot and send them back to operation control.

Next, Opportunity will explore the insides of the Endeavour Crater, and it will become the first probe ever to see the interior of Mars’ cavities. The probe should compare the rocks inside the crater to the dominant type of rock it found on the plains it explored before.

The ditch goes west-to-east through the rim about half a mile south of the rover’s current location. Opportunity’s Principal Investigator Steve Squyres of Cornell University believes the fluid that covers the gully was water millions of years ago.

NASA knows about fluid-covered gullies since it began watching Mars from orbit on the 1970s, but this is going to be the first mission to examine the fluid up close on the surface.  The team wants to drive Opportunity down the entire gully and onto the crater floor. The last goal of the extended mission is to compare the rocks inside Endeavour Crater with the rocks on the surface to see if there are traces of water.

The probe’s latest and probably most important expedition will begin in the Bitterroot Valley portion in the western rim of the Endeavour Crater. It is a 14 miles diameter basin that was created by a meteor impact billions of years ago.

The vessel reached the edge of the crater in 2011 after more than seven years investigating a series of smaller holes. In those places, the rover found evidence of ancient acidic water that went to underground layers and could have been on the surface before.

Excerpt from: http://theusbport.com/opportunity-mars-rover-set-for-last-missions-to-find-water/20842

Structure of the Lead:

What: Opportunity
Where: Mars
Why: to find water
When: began on October 1
How: Not given
Who: Not given

Keywords:

geology(n.) 地質學
gully(n.) 溝渠
fluid(n.) 流體
probe(n.) 探測器
crater(n.) 噴火口
orbit(n.) 軌道
trace(n.) 蹤跡
expedition(n.) 考察
basin(n.) 盆地
underground layer(n.) 地下層

【Week 3】AlphaGo

Google's AlphaGo Computer Outplays Board Game Champion

By Marilyn Malara   |   March 12, 2016 at 4:23 PM

        SEOUL, March 12 (UPI) -- Google's AlphaGo supercomputer has successfully beat the world's best Go player, Lee Se-dol(李世乭), in a best of five face-off.

        The computer, developed by Google's DeepMind, outplayed its human opponent Saturday with over eight minutes left on the clock.

        "To be honest, we are a bit stunned," DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said, according to CNN Money. "We came here to challenge Lee Se-dol, as we wanted to learn from him and see what AlphaGo was capable of."

        Se-dol has played the AlphaGo computer in three consecutive matches since Wednesday. Although it has already won three out of five games, the computer and Se-dol will compete in two more matches.

        Developed in ancient China, Go is the oldest board game still played today. The goal of the two-player abstract strategy game is to surround more territory than one's opponent by alternately placing stones, the black and white game pieces, on the intersection points of a 19x19 grid.

        AlphaGo has already beat Fan Hui, the European Go champion, but most agree that Lee Se-dol is far superior to any other Go player on Earth.

        During the third game with Se-dol, Google noted the AlphaGo computer gained a large territory on the board, but Se-dol used "a few innovative tactics" to complicate the game.

        "Today Lee was definitely playing his own game, from his strong opening to the complicated moves in the final kō," said American commentator Michael Redmond. "AlphaGo was ready for everything, including the kō fights, and was able to take the win. I'd like to congratulate the people who actually made this accomplishment possible, because it's a work of art."

Excerpt from:http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2016/03/12/Googles-AlphaGo-computer-outplays-board-game-champion/7721457815287/

Structure of the Lead:

Who: AlphaGo supercomputer

What: Beat the world's best Go player

When: March 12 2016

Where: Seoul

How: Not given

Why: Not given

Keywords:

outplay (v.)擊敗

champion (n.)冠軍

beat (v.)擊敗

face-off (n.)攤牌

opponent (n.)對手

innovative tactics (n.)創新策略

complicate (v.)複雜化

commentator (n.)評論員

congratulate (v.)恭喜

a work of art (n.)藝術品

【Week 2】茲卡病毒

Zika Virus Infection Fast Facts

Updated 1416 GMT (2216 HKT) July 29, 2016

By CNN Library

Facts:

       Zika virus outbreaks occurred in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands prior to 2015.

       Zika is primarily transmitted through the bite of an infected female Aedes aegypti mosquito. It becomes infected from biting an infected human and then transmits the virus to another person. The virus can also be transmitted from a pregnant woman to her fetus, through sexual contact, blood transfusion, or by needle.

       Zika virus outbreaks occurred in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands prior to 2015. In July 2016, the CDC estimated there were at least 50 countries and territories with active Zika virus transmissions.

Vaccines:

       Unlike some of those viruses, there is no vaccine to prevent Zika or a specific medicine to treat the infection.

       In a February 2016, the WHO reported, "Although at least 15 groups are working on Zika vaccines, WHO estimates that it will be at least 18 months before vaccines could be tested in large-scale trials." The FDA approved the first human trial of a Zika vaccine in June 2016.

*FDA:Food and Drug Administration

Zika and Pregnancy:

       Zika is commanding attention because of an alarming connection between the virus and microcephaly(小頭畸形症), a neurological(神經的) disorder that results in babies being born with abnormally small heads. Microcephaly can cause severe developmental issues and sometimes death. 

       It was reported that a pregnant woman infected with the Zika virus during her first trimester of pregnancy has a one to 13% chance that her baby will have microcephaly.

       According to the CDC, there is no evidence that previous infection will affect future pregnancies.

*CDC:Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Excerpt from: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/18/health/zika-virus-infection-fast-facts/index.html

Structure of the Lead:

What: Zika virus

When: From 2015 to 2016

Where: Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands

How: By a bite of infected female Aedes aegypti mosquitos

Why: Not given

Who: Not given

Keywords:

Infection (n.)傳染

outbreak (v.)爆發

transmit (v.)傳遞

fetus (n.)胎兒

vaccine (n.)疫苗

large-scale (a.)大規模的

human trial (n.)人體實驗

pregnancy (n.)懷孕

trimester (n.)三個月

evidence (n.)證據

【Week 1】2015 年代表字

Oxford’s 2015 Word of the Year Is This Emoji

Updated: Nov. 16, 2015 2:08 PM

By Katy Steinmetz

It's a historic moment of recognition for little images that have been gaining popularity since 1999

        Oxford Dictionaries made history on Monday by announcing that their “Word of the Year” would not be one of those old-fashioned, string-of-letters-type words at all. The flag their editors are planting to sum up who we were in 2015 is this pictograph, an acknowledgement of just how popular these pictures have become in our digital daily lives.

        “Although emoji have been a staple of texting teens for some time, emoji culture exploded into the global mainstream over the past year,” the company’s team wrote in a press release. “Emoji have come to embody a core aspect of living in a digital world that is visually driven, emotionally expressive, and obsessively immediate.”

        Caspar Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Dictionaries, explained that their choice reflects the walls-down world that we live in. “Emoji are becoming an increasingly rich form of communication, one that transcends linguistic borders,” he said in a statement. And their choice for the word of the year, he added, embodies the “playfulness and intimacy” that characterizes emoji-using culture.

        Japanese telecommunications planner Shigetaka Kurita is credited with inventing these little images in 1999, taking the emoticons that had been gaining steam on the Internet to an iconic level. Inspired by comics and street signs, the name for the alphanumeric images comes from combining the Japanese words for picture (e-) and character (moji). “It’s easy to write them off as just silly little smiley faces or thumbs-up,” sociolinguist Ben Zimmer told TIME for a story on how emoji fit into humans’ long history of using pictures to communicate. “But there’s an awful lot of people who are very interested in treating them seriously.”

Excerpt from: http://time.com/4114886/oxford-word-of-the-year-2015-emoji/

Structure of the Lead:

Who : Oxford Dictionaries

What : Announce "Word of the Year"

When : Nov.16,2015

Where: Not given

Why: Not given

How: Not given

Keywords:

announce (v.) 宣布

pictograph (n.) 圖形文字

digital (a.) 數位的

staple (n.) 產物

embody (v.) 體現

core aspect (n.) 核心概念

transcends (v.) 超越

linguisitic border (n.) 語言界限

iconic (a.) 標誌性的

sociolinguist (n.) 社會語言學家