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Welcome to Learning English,
a daily 30 minute program
from the Voice of America.
I'm Ashley Thompson.
And I'm Mario Ritter Jr.
This program is designed
for English learners.
So we speak a little slower,
and we use words and phrases
as specially written for people learning
English.
On today's program,
you will hear stories from John Russell
and Jill Robbins.
Later, Bryan Lynn presents
this week's Science Report.
We close the show
with the lesson of the day
from Jill Robbins and Andrew Smith.
But first.
Camille Stephens Roman recently
sat on the ground and measured small trees
to see how much they had
grown in seven months.
She found they had grown 5 to 10cm.
Her team had planted several different
kinds of trees known as evergreens.
Two years ago, in an area
of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado,
which had burned in a fire in 2020,
Stephen Truman and other researchers
want to learn the relationship
between tree
growth and elevation.
Researchers say there are not enough
small trees or seeds from living trees
to replace burned trees,
even if there were enough.
They say the U.S.
does not have the workers
to plant and care for them.
The Forest Service said
the biggest delays
they meet while replanting on public land
are preparing environmental
and cultural studies
and preparing burned areas
so they are safe to plant.
That can take years.
Stephen Truman said
we're in a place of such drastic
climate change that we are not talking
about whether or not some of these places
will be a different kind of forest, but
whether or not they will be forest at all.
In the past, the U.S.
was able to replant burned forests.
But the researchers say larger,
more intense
fires are destroying trees
that normally provide seeds.
They say the fires leave burn scars,
so large trees cannot naturally regrow.
Solomon Dabrowski is a University
of Montana forest management expert.
He said more areas in the West
need replanting after fires,
then can be replanted.
He said at least 1.5 million
hectares need to be replanted,
but officials are unable to do so.
He said that number could triple by 2050.
Matthew Hertel is a forest ecologist
at the University of New Mexico.
He studied the way scarred
forests had been replanted
after a fire in 2011 at Los Conchas.
That fire destroyed
huge areas of ponderosa pine trees.
Her tool found
most of the seedlings,
or very young trees,
had died from earlier replanting
as a result.
He planted seedlings of different species
at several elevations
and on hillsides
facing different directions.
Now he is watching carefully
for changes in the soil and water.
Researchers say seedling survival
is less likely at lower elevations.
It is hotter, drier and more open.
There.
Replanting the same trees in
the same areas is likely to fail.
Jason
Sayegh is acting supervisor of the Arapaho
and Roosevelt National Forest and Pawnee
National Grassland.
He said the Forest Service rules
require planting the same species
at the same elevations as before.
A fire.
But, he said it is clear
the agency will need to be flexible
moving forward.
For now,
that might mean replanting at different
elevations
or collecting seeds from another place
over time.
Researchers
say it could require planting trees
that are not native to the area.
The idea has been debated,
but is gaining support.
I have seen people go from saying,
absolutely,
we cannot move trees around to, well,
maybe let's try it at least
and do a few experiments
to see if this will work.
Said Stevens.
Remind
environmental groups are working on
private land
burned by the Cameron Peak Fire.
They are replanting ponderosa pines
150m higher than where they used to grow,
said Megan Milo, Heath.
Milo Heath is a spokesperson
for the coalition for the powder River
watershed.
So far, 84% of trees
planted there last year are still alive.
The Forest Service is modernizing
how it grows.
Young trees.
It is also studying ways
to grow more or work with private industry
states
and groups
like the New Mexico Reforestation Center.
Experts say
trees might never return to some areas,
but it is important that the U.S.
does as much as possible
in a thoughtful way.
Trees live for hundreds of years,
so we need to be thinking about
what's right as we plant trees
today, Hertel said.
I'm Jill Robbins. For.
In the Japanese town of Kuma.
The main road is named Jin Street.
This street is where people
from around the world come to visit.
The drink machines at the train station
have images of genes on them.
The roads are painted blue
with the lines
at the edges colored pink and white.
The trademark of Kojima jeans seems
with about 40 jeans manufacturers
and stores, including cafes.
The area gets about 100,000 visitors
a year.
The Japan National Tourism
Organization said
Japanese jeans are often costly,
dark and durable,
although a small part of the global jeans
market.
Japanese
gin makers have developed a reputation
for quality and attention to detail.
Kojima is where popular brands like Big
John are made.
The city now supplies international
clothing brands including Gucci.
Emma McLendon of
Saint Johns University in New York,
said that the Japanese industry
has not taken a mass marketing path.
Instead,
the gene industry pays careful attention
to creating quality products
that collectors might like.
In Kojima
jeans, Street is small and uncrowded.
Each company in the area is small,
hiring about 100 people.
What you will find are workers
taking pride
in monosaccharide or making things.
The term suggests
careful attention to detail.
This idea can be found throughout Japan,
from car makers to the local tofu store.
It's more like making a kimono is the way.
Yoshihiro Okamoto,
a dying craftsman at Koji Meyer
based manufacturer
Momo Taro Jeans, puts it.
His hands and nails are colored blue.
From putting threads of cotton
into a big container
of coloring called dye.
He knows by smell
and feel the right state of the indigo
coloring,
which he compares to a living thing.
He says it is a 365 days a year job,
as the dye has to be checked
and mixed every day.
It's not that easy to get this
special color,
Okamoto told The Associated
Press recently.
It's my life.
The dark color is so special.
It has earned the name Japan Blue or Tokyo
No Blue, meaning
especially concentrated blue.
Jeans made in Kojima are costly.
The jeans can cost from $230 per pair
to $1,400 or more.
Tomas Stella Boyer is founder
of Denim Hunters,
an online site for people who like jeans
and the cotton material
they are made out of denim.
He says Japanese brands use raw denim
that ages well and lasts a long time.
He pointed to the jeans
as part of a movement
known as slow clothing.
The idea is to produce fewer
but higher quality pieces of clothing.
The movement came as a reaction to low
cost,
mass produced clothes.
We just make too many clothes,
I think, and we need to slow down,
Boyer said from his home
near Copenhagen, Denmark.
McLendon said the
Japanese industry is shifting
the conversation around jeans
to be about heritage elements,
about educating consumers
on historical details
as a form of quality.
Mamo Taro Jeans, for example,
come with a lifetime guarantee.
Tears and other problems
get fixed at no cost.
Within reason,
Japan Blue Company, which runs Mamo Taro,
a brand that began in 2006, said
yearly sales totaled about $11 million
for the latest year.
About 40% of sales
come from outside Japan.
Masa Taka Suzuki, president and chief
operating officer at Japan Blue, said
the area has a strong industrial history.
In the past, industry centered around
sewing heavy materials,
including military clothes
and OB sashes for kimonos,
as well as the cotton
and indigo dyeing native to the area.
The jeans are for life.
Suzuki said the jeans slowly change
depending on how they are worn
and how the wearer lives.
We want to create a product
that is a testament
to a person's life, he said.
I'm John Russell.
Scientists have discovered
a small asteroid
that recently moved
closer to Earth's orbit.
The object was first observed August 7th
by two astronomers from Spain's
competent university of Madrid.
The asteroid, named 2024
five,
is believed to be about ten meters long.
It usually orbits around the sun,
but Earth's gravitational forces recently
pulled the object closer to our planet.
Scientists sometimes
call such objects mini moons.
This is because they behave similarly
to the permanent moon
orbiting Earth
when they are captured by gravity.
But they are much smaller and
only temporarily stay in Earth's orbit.
The American
space agency NASA said in a statement
that 2020 4.5 is not quite a mini moon,
because it will never be fully captured
by Earth's gravity.
However, it described
the asteroid as an interesting object.
The agency plans to follow or track
with radar equipped telescopes.
NASA noted the traveling asteroid
presented no danger to Earth.
NASA and its international partners
continuously searched the skies for what
scientists call near Earth objects.
Such objects include asteroids and comets
that come within
50,000,000km of Earth's orbit.
The search system, called
Atlas, involves four different telescopes.
Two of the telescopes are based in Hawaii.
Another operates in Chile
and the other sits in South Africa.
NASA explains that Atlas is designed
to search the whole sky several times
each night, looking for a moving object.
2024 PT five was identified
by the Telescope Observing Station
in Sutherland, South Africa.
The discovery was made by two astronomers
from Compliments University of Madrid
Carlos de la Fuente Markus
and Raul de la Fuente Marcos.
They recently described the finding.
The publication Research Notes
of the American Astronomical Society.
The Spanish astronomers said
it appeared 2024 five
is part of a group of Near Earth objects
belonging to the Arjuna asteroid belt.
The objects in this asteroid belt
are believed to be surrounding the path,
followed by the Earth-Moon system.
They wrote.
Such objects are likely more common
than we think, said
Richard Binzel, an astronomer
at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and MIT.
He was not involved
in the latest research,
Binzel told The Associated Press.
This happens with some frequency,
but we rarely see them
because they're very small
and very hard to detect.
But he noted that in recent years,
progress in space observation technologies
had made it possible to identify
more of these moon like objects.
Binzel
added that currently, it is not known
whether the asteroid broke off
from a larger asteroid.
He said the space rock
might even be a piece of our moon
that got blasted out.
NASA said such an asteroid
could have been created by our moon
being struck
by an asteroid a very long time ago.
One of the discovering scientists,
Carlos de la Fuente
Marcos, told the AP in an email
that because of its size and brightness,
2024 PT five
can only be seen from Earth
with special equipment.
NASA said teams at the agency's
center for near-Earth
Object Studies are continually
tracking the movements of 2024, PT five.
The center expects
the asteroid to remain at a distance
about nine times
farther away from Earth than the moon.
Scientists say
it will remain gravitationally
linked to Earth
until November 25th.
NASA plans to use its large
Goldstone Solar
System radar observer
to follow the asteroid.
The object is set to make another close
pass of Earth in January 2025,
when it should stay about five times
the distance between Earth and the moon.
2024 PT five
is then expected to turn away from Earth
as it continues its orbit around the sun.
NASA said after that,
the asteroid is not expected
to pass close by Earth until 2055.
I'm Brian Lynn.
Brian Lynn
joins me now
to talk more about his science report.
Hi, Brian.
Thanks for being here.
Of course, Ashley, glad to be here.
So this week, you reported on an asteroid
that recently moved
closer to Earth's orbit.
And is almost behaving
like a second moon for our planet.
We learned from the report
this object is expected to stay
gravitationally linked to Earth
until late November.
How common is it for these objects
to affect Earth?
So it really has not been that common
for such objects
to interact with Earth's gravity.
Scientists have identified
less than ten of them
during the past ten years
that were considered mini moons,
meaning they were completely captured
by Earth's orbit.
And as was mentioned in the report,
NASA does not consider
the one linked to Earth
currently as a mini moon, which ends up
being temporarily,
fully captured by Earth's orbit.
But the report also states
that many near-Earth objects exist
in our solar system at least 34,000
have already been identified.
And any of these could end up
being gravitationally
linked to Earth or turn into mini moons.
And the other reason
more of these are being identified today
is because of progress
in observational technologies.
All right.
Thanks again for being here, Brian,
and thanks for answering that question.
Sure, Ashley, thank you.
Hello.
My name is Anna Matteo.
My name is Jill Robbins.
And I'm Andrew Smith.
You're listening to The Lesson of the day
on the Learning English podcast.
Welcome to the part of the show
where we help you do more with our series.
Let's learn English.
The series shows Anna Matteo in her work
and life in Washington, D.C..
Anna loves to be outside,
but she is often too busy
at work to enjoy the outdoors.
So in lesson 29 of the series,
she is happy to join her coworker Marcia,
who suggests
they try to do some work outside.
Hello.
In Washington, D.C., there are many places
that bring history to life,
but people
who live here often
do not have time to see them.
They are too busy with work
like me.
Oh. Hi, Marcia.
Hi, Anna.
Have a seat.
Thanks.
This was a good idea.
Working outdoors is nice,
It is.
Oh, I am hired.
Today was a busy day at work,
and I still have work to do.
Oh, that's too bad.
How are you these days?
I'm really busy too, Anna.
Let's get to work.
There are many ways
we can talk about being busy.
Notice how Anna uses the preposition
with after the adjective busy.
They are too busy with work.
We can say we are busy with work,
or busy with our jobs,
or busy with a project.
But when we describe what we are doing,
we simply use the I ng ending on the verb.
So we can say I'm busy with work,
or we can say I'm busy working.
Here are some other examples.
I'm busy writing my report.
I'm busy these days
getting ready for my exam.
These days I'm busy applying for jobs.
And with past participles
that are followed by prepositions
such as tired of or worried about,
we can simply follow them with a noun
or with the ING form of the verb,
which is called a gerund.
That's spelled g e r unde.
And the gerund works just like a noun.
So we can say, I'm tired of work
or I'm tired of working.
We can say I'm worried about the cost,
or I'm worried
about spending that much money.
A bit later, in less than 29,
Anna and Marsha talk about childhood
dreams.
They talk about what?
When they were children, they hoped
to become in the future as adults.
Let's listen.
In fact, I wanted to be.
Don't laugh.
President of the United States.
Stop!
I know it's a silly childhood dream.
I'm sorry.
It's not silly.
Guess what I want it to be. What?
When I was a kid,
I studied the stars and planets.
I wanted to fly into outer space.
You know, Marcia.
Childhood dreams are important.
They are.
And it's good to remember them.
The word dream can be a noun or a verb.
And when it's a verb, it can be followed
by two different prepositions.
We use dream of
to express what we wanted to become
when we were young.
And we use the ING gerund
after the preposition of.
So Ana dreamed of becoming president,
and Marcia
dreamed of becoming an astronaut.
The other preposition
after the verb dream is about.
We use about to express
a particular subject of our dreams.
For example, I can say
last night I dreamed about Jill's dog.
I hope she was a good girl.
In your dream.
She was
when we went to express
dreams for our future.
We tend to use the preposition
about followed by a gerund.
For example, we can say.
Oh, I dream about going to Paris one day.
Oh me too, Andrew.
Or we could say we dream
about finding a new home for our family.
We can also use dreamed about
in the same way as dreamed of
to talk about childhood hopes.
So, Jill, did you dream about becoming
or doing anything in particular
when you were young?
I wanted to be an astronaut to.
I cut out all the stories in the paper
about the space program.
And I watched live
as the first humans walked on the moon.
But then I found out you had to be a man.
And in the military, two things
I didn't think were possible at the time.
Well, some of those things have changed.
Yeah.
And now there are women astronauts
who are not necessarily in the military.
Andrew, how about you?
What were your dreams?
I don't think I had any very specific
dreams of what I wanted to be.
But maybe for a few months,
I dreamed about becoming a professional
tennis player.
But I think I dreamed more
about interesting places to travel.
And now that I think about it,
I did dream of going,
to the highest mountain
in the world to Mount Everest.
But I do agree with Anna when she says.
You know, Marcia,
childhood dreams are important.
And the dreams we have as
adults are important as well.
You can tell us about
what you dreamed of doing
when you were a child,
or about your dreams as an adult.
By writing to us at learning English,
at VOA News.com,
or putting your comments
under this video on YouTube.
And if
you want another way to practice
your English, just do an internet
search of songs
with the word dream in the title.
You will probably find more songs
than you could ever listen to.
That's because most of those songs
are about love.
And that's a topic for another day.
For now, we hope you've enjoyed today's
lesson of the day
on the Learning English podcast.
And you can learn more on our website.
Learning English that VOA newscast comm.
You can also find us on YouTube,
Facebook and Instagram.
Thanks for listening to the lesson of
the day on the Learning English podcast.
I'm Jill Robbins.
And I'm Andrew Smith.
And that's our program for today.
Join us again tomorrow to keep learning
English through stories
from around the world.
I'm Ashley Thompson.
And I'm Mario Ritter, junior.
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