LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Despite the rapid revelations of the scandal, the military writer Tom Ricks remains a defender of General Petraeus.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

He's written much about the general over the years, and he also knows Paula Broadwell, the writer with whom Petraeus had an affair.

How long have you known General Petraeus and Paula Broadwell?

TOM RICKS: I've known General Petraeus, I'd say, about 15 years, since he was a colonel. I think I met him on a trip in Korea. We were sitting outside a meeting at the Korean Defense Ministry, and I just struck up a conversation with him and found him a smart, interesting guy.

INSKEEP: Right. And he turned out to be a rising star, I suppose.

RICKS: Yeah, and an engaging guy who was interested in the world and talking to reporters about what they were up to and politicians and so on, unusual for an Army general. Paula Broadwell, I think I probably known about four or five years ago. You know, you'd be at these conferences on counterinsurgency and run into her. And, in fact, I eventually introduced her to my book editor. Like a lot of people come through and say, hey, Tom, I'm interested in writing a book on such and such, I'd put them in with my book editor, and she was one of them.

INSKEEP: When you heard the news about the two of them, did it surprise you at all?

RICKS: It surprised me enormously about Dave Petraeus. He's a guy who had such ambition all his life, who wanted to be a great captain of the military. It made me wonder just how much stress he's been under. We've put him now through three combat tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. It made me wonder: Geez, you know, really, has this taken more out of him than we thought? It actually really bothers me. He gave so generously to the country of his time, and his family has made such sacrifices, that when it came time for us to be generous to him, we couldn't find it to forgive him and said - we're kind of instead dragging him through the mud nationally.

INSKEEP: You're saying that he should not have resigned, or his resignation should not have been accepted by the president?

RICKS: What I would like to have seen President Obama do is say, you know Dave, you really screwed up this time. You need to go home and make amends to your life, and then your punishment for all that is you're going back to work, because you're too important to just be thrown out.

It does strike me that in World War II, Dwight Eisenhower pretty openly carried on a romance with his beautiful, red-haired British driver, Kay Summersby, yet he was not pulled back and told, you know, Ike, sorry. You can't lead D-Day. We're going to have to find somebody else.

Our standards have changed, I think, in a way that's not for the better. We are very lax about enforcing professional standards and demanding professional competence. Yet somehow, we have become very insistent about judging people's private, consenting relations with other adults.

INSKEEP: This has become an occasion to reappraise the whole reputation of General David Petraeus. He's been attacked in some articles for his military performance, entirely aside from the affair. Has Petraeus actually gotten some extra breaks because he did so aggressively cultivate the media?

RICKS: I think David Petraeus understood that part of the job of a general is to talk to the media. To fault him for doing that is to fault him for actually, I think, one of the better parts of his performance as a general. There is a whole lot of revisionism going on right now. You know, I'm expecting any day to see an article appear, you know, "Tommy Franks: Misunderstood Genius," you know.

INSKEEP: The general who invaded Iraq at the beginning, but there was no plan, apparently, for what to do after the invasion.

RICKS: Yeah. And then finally, David Petraeus comes in, and David Petraeus, through taking some prudent risks, manages to extricate the United States from Iraq. Now, the Iraq War's not over, but David Petraeus got the United States out and should be credited with that. He was a successful general when others were not. And so to have his personal, private affairs somehow detract from that is like saying, well, you know, Eisenhower really didn't win World War II because, look, he was sleeping with his chauffeur. You know, there's just not connection between the two.

INSKEEP: If you were to make a serious criticism of General David Petraeus, what would it be?

RICKS: I remember a friend of his saying to me in Iraq one day: Dave Petraeus is incredibly good. He's better than the other generals you see here. The problem is he's not as good as he thinks he is. And I would think that would be a genuine and substantial criticism, you know, and there may have been some hubris here. And he certainly - he has gone for a national fall that I think he must find excruciating.

INSKEEP: Tom Ricks is a military writer and author most recently of "The Generals." Thanks very much.

RICKS: You're welcome.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

INSKEEP: It's MORNING EDITION, from NPR News.

오디오 듣기:

	Kim Gwang-jun, the senior prosecutor at the Seoul High Prosecutors’ Office who is at the epicenter of a conflict between police and prosecutors, turns up yesterday at the Seoul Western District Prosecutors’ Office to face questioning on charges of taking bribes. By Kim Kyung-bin

The senior prosecutor at the center of a tug-of-war over criminal investigations was named and called in for questioning yesterday.

Kim Gwang-jun, 51, a senior prosecutor at the Seoul High Prosecutors’ Office, is suspected of taking hundreds of millions of won in bribes from Cho Hee-pal, a notorious pyramid scheme con artist, and Eugene Group, a construction company.

Kim was summoned by a team of special prosecutors headed by Kim Chang-soo, 50, to the Seoul Western District Prosecutors’ Office in Mapo District, western Seoul, at 3 p.m. and questioned.

Kim’s case is pitting the police, which started the investigation into his alleged bribe-taking, against the prosecution, which is trying strenuously to take it over. The police don’t like a change in the criminal procedure code from January that gives the prosecution jurisdiction over all police investigations. It can tell the police when to start an investigation - and when to back off.

The police have refused to walk away from the investigation of Kim. Political analysts also see their targeting of a senior prosecutor for a corruption investigation as payback for the prosecution’s investigation of crooked policemen in the Gangnam area of southern Seoul since March.

Yesterday, the two competing probes started getting in the way of each other, and the prime minister tried to intervene.

Kim is suspected of taking 240 million won ($221,000) from con artist Cho and also receiving 600 million won from Eugene Group in 2008 when he was investigating corporate irregularities at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office.

On Monday, Eugene Group CEO Yu Kyung-sun and his younger brother Soon-tae, chairman of EM Media, an affiliate of Eugene, were questioned by the prosecution team.

Last week, the two were summoned by the Intelligence Crime Team of the National Police Agency to appear at its office on Friday. The brothers notified the police through their attorney that they will not obey the summons because they were already questioned by the prosecution.

But the police are refusing to stand down, even though they are required to obey the prosecutors by law.

“Whether a suspect is a police officer or a prosecutor,” Kim Ki-yong, commissioner of the National Police Agency, told reporters during a press conference, “our job is to make a suspect take legal responsibility for a crime. We will continue to investigate Kim within the scope of our authority because the police are the ones who launched the investigation.”

To try to end the stand-off, Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik held a meeting with Minister of Justice Kwon Jae-jin, and Maeng Hyung-kyu, minister of public administration and security, who oversees the police, at the Central Government Complex in Gwanghwamun, central Seoul. He urged the two ministries to start cooperating with each other.

Although being technically under the ministries, both the prosecution and the police have independence.

“The two agencies must handle Kim’s case based on the criminal procedure code that specifies the jurisdiction over criminal investigations,” the prime minister said.

Under the revised criminal procedure code, even if an investigation is started by police, they must hand over related materials or suspects to the prosecution upon request.

The Prime Minister’s Office said it will enact a “special measure” if the tug-of-war doesn’t end soon, but it didn’t specify the measure.

“We think the police and prosecution can resolve the issue,” said Yim Jong-yong, a minister in the Prime Minister’s Office. “But we will provide every possible solution if they can’t.”

The police reacted quickly to the prime minister’s statement.

“We will focus on issues that the prosecutors are not investigating,” a spokesman of the NPA told reporters. “We will not resummon people who have already been questioned by the prosecutors.”

Sources in the police said they have acquired information about more types of corruption allegedly involving Kim.

The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office suggested the police form a joint committee to discuss the investigation system.

“We will try to narrow our differences with the police,” Kim Woo-hyun, a spokesman from the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, said.

By Lee Dong-hyun, Chung Kang-hyun[sakwon80@joongang.co.kr]

 

퍼온글임 : 기사출처

AFP/Getty Images

 

John B. Gurdon (left) and Shinya Yamanaka will share the prize, worth about $1.2 million.

The two scientists who won this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine discovered that cells in our body have the remarkable ability to reinvent themselves. They found that every cell in the human body, from our skin and bones to our heart and brain, can be coaxed into forming any other cell.

The process is called reprogramming, and its potential for new drugs and therapies is vast. If neurons or heart cells are damaged by disease or aging, then cells from the skin or blood potentially could be induced to reprogram themselves and repair the damaged tissue.

The winners — John Gurdon of the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, England, and Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan and the Gladstone Institute in San Francisco — made their discoveries more than 40 years apart.

In 1962, Gurdon proved that a cell from a frog's stomach contained the entire blueprint to make a whole frog. When he took the cell's nucleus and popped it into a frog egg, the egg developed into a normal frog.

This method eventually was used to clone all sorts of animals, including cats, dogs, horses and, most famously, Dolly the sheep — the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. Gurdon, 79, continues to study reprogramming and was working in his lab when he received the call from the Nobel committee.

But a major obstacle stood in the way of further development of these stem cells: Getting the frog's stomach cell to strip away its specialization and turn into one of the 200 or so cell types known to exist in animals always required the use of an egg.

A question hung over the field for decades: Could a specialized cell reprogram itself all on its own?

Mattias Karlen/Courtesy of The Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine

Shinya Yamanaka discovered a simple recipe for converting skin from a patient into many different cell types, including nerve and heart cells.

In 2006, Yamanaka and graduate student Kazutoshi Takahashi found the answer, and it sent shockwaves through biology and medicine. They demonstrated that any cell could be reset and induced to develop into another cell type. And, even more remarkably, that it took little to get the job done.

Yamanaka and Takahashi took some cells from the skin of a mouse and then switched on four specific genes. After a few weeks, the cells stopped looking like skin cells and starting looking more like embryonic stem cells. That meant the cells could then be manipulated to develop into just about any cell Yamanaka wanted. He could even get the cells to form heart muscle that beat inside a Petri dish.

Yamanaka, 50, had essentially unlocked a cellular genie in the bottle. The discovery meant that a cell wasn't necessarily trapped in its fate to be, say, a skin, liver or heart cell. Rather, with the right instructions, a cell had the ability to strip away its specialization and become whatever cell the scientists chose. They called these new cells "induced pluripotent stem cells."

The landmark finding triggered thousands of studies. Researchers quickly wanted to learn how these new stem cells could be used to treat a vast array of diseases, such as Alzheimer's, muscular dystrophy and diabetes.

Although stem cell treatments for these diseases are still quite far away, the induced pluriopotent stem cells are turning out to be invaluable tools for studying hundreds of diseases. They can serve as a platform for screening drugs or for even simply testing how a patient will respond to a particular medicine.

The discoveries by Gurdon and Yamanaka have opened up a new era in personalized medicine, where each person's own cells may one day serve not only as a reservoir for fixing damaged tissue, but also as research tools for deciphering how diseases work inside each person's unique body.

Induced pluripotent stem cells also offer a possible alternative to human embryonic stem cells, which are controversial because they are obtained from embryos.

[NPR 특집/쥐의 줄기세포에서 수정란 생성] Scientists Create Fertile Eggs From Mouse Stem Cells

 

Katsuhiko Hayashi

 

Each of these mouse pups was born from an egg scientists created using embryonic stem cells. It's possible the technology could change future treatment for human infertility.

Scientists in Japan report they have created eggs from stem cells in a mammal for the first time. And the researchers went on to breed healthy offspring from the eggs they created.

While the experiments involved mice, the work is being met with excitement — and questions — about doing the same thing for humans someday.

"Wow. That's my general reaction," said Hank Greely, a bioethicist at Stanford University who studies stem-cell science. "Repairing hearts, repairing brains, repairing kidneys, that's all good and important, and we'd all love to be able to do that. But this involves making the next generation."

Scientists obtain the versatile cells from embryos. Embryonic stem cells are controversial because researchers destroy the embryos to get them.

But because these stem cells can morph into any cell in the body, there's always been the possibility they could do something especially profound. They could offer a way to create eggs from anyone at any age. That could change how humans reproduce.

In this week's issue of the journal Science, Mitinori Saitou and colleagues at Kyoto University in Japan report they finally achieved that elusive goal.

"This is actually the first time to make eggs from embryonic stem cells and then produce eggs [that] become healthy offspring," Saitou said.

Moreover, Saitou's team did something potentially even more astonishing: They bred healthy mice from eggs made from another type of stem cell known as induced pluripotent stem cells.

These are cells that look essentially identical to embryonic stem cells. But instead of coming from embryos, they can be made from adult cells, such as skin or blood cells. So they don't have any of the ethical baggage of embryonic cells.

"They're gotten to what was our Holy Grail, which is making eggs," said George Daly, a leading stem-cell scientist at Harvard. "It's like cellular alchemy. I mean, they can turn lead into gold here. They can turn skin cells or blood cells into eggs."

The big question, of course, is whether anyone could do the same thing for people. No one knows for sure. And it would surely take a ton of work.

But John Gearhart, a stem-cell pioneer at the University of Pennsylvania, says mice are close enough to humans to think it's probably doable. "I think this will be worked out in time. I don't have any doubt about it," Gearhart said.

And if he's right, then, at the very least, it would be a huge advance for women who are infertile for medical reasons or who have postponed having babies too long.

"If we can make eggs from stem cells, then the biological clock isn't ticking so much for women," Stanford's Greely said.

But that could be just the beginning. The same team previously made sperm from stem cells. So, for example, the power to create sperm or eggs for anyone would be big news to many gay men and lesbians.

And Greely goes even further into territory charted by the book Brave New World. Combined with other techniques, eggs from stem cells could some day make it much easier for parents to pick babies with blue eyes or blond hair, or a talent for sports or music.

Speculation about the possibilities get even more sci-fi. "Any skin cell that you can find on the edge of a coffee cup theoretically could be induced back to being an egg, and a baby could be produced," said Ronald Green, a bioethicist at Dartmouth University.

"When you think about the commercial possibilities of people selling to infertile people babies produced from George Clooney or Jennifer Aniston, or whatever, you have to worry about it," Green said.

Now, it's important to remember that this may end up being nothing more than speculation. And even if it does prove possible, choices like these are probably decades away.

Even so, David Prentice of the Family Research Council says such research "cheapens all life in a way, not just embryonic or fetal life, but babies and the rest of us when we starting treating life as a manufacturing proposition."

But just the possibility is already stirring intense debate about where the power to use stem cells to make eggs might take us. "It's like any other technology," said Daniel Sulmasy, a professor of medicine and ethics at the University of Chicago. "Whatever we've done in human kind — whether it's discovering fire or creating the wheel — you can use these things to do lots of good and you can use them immoral ways," he says.

Mitt Romney responds to secret video

Video Shows Romney Dismissing Obama Supporters

This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.

Surveys of likely American voters show President Obama with a small lead over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. The president also has pulled in front of the Republican Party candidate in political campaign donations. Mr. Obama now has almost eighty nine million dollars, compared with the fifty million dollars for his opponent. Less than fifty days remain until the November sixth elections.
 
This week, Mr. Romney’s campaign received widespread criticism when comments he made last May were made public. In a secretly recorded video, he dismissed supporters of Mr. Obama as Americans who depend on the government, and see themselves as “victims.”
 
The video appeared on the website of “Mother Jones” magazine. It shows Mr. Romney speaking to possible campaign donors at a private gathering in Florida.
 
MITT ROMNEY:“There are forty seven percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims…”
 
The Republican candidate said these Americans believe the government has a responsibility to care for them. He said they think they have a right to health care, food and housing. Mr. Romney said he will never get such people to vote for him.
 
After the video was released on Monday, Mr. Romney defended his comments. He said he was attempting to show the differences between himself and Mr. Obama.
 
MITT ROMNEY: “This is really a discussion about the political process of winning the election and, of course, I want to help all Americans. All Americans have a bright and prosperous future, and I’m convinced that the president’s approach has not does that and will not do that.”
 
The president reacted to the comments on a television talk show. He noted that in two thousand eight, forty seven percent of voters did not choose him. But in Mr. Obama’s words, “One of the things I’ve learned as president is you represent the entire country.”
 
After the video’s release, budget experts hurried to identify the forty seven percent of Americans who depend on government support. The Tax Policy Center, an independent group, said just a little more than forty six percent pay no federal individual income taxes.
 
But twenty eight percent of those not paying federal income taxes make payroll tax payments. This money is taken from a worker’s wages. Payroll taxes provide for Medicare, the health plan for the aged, and Social Security, the government assistance program for retired workers.
 
About seventeen percent of homes or families pay no income or payroll taxes. Almost all of those households are identified either as older adults or very needy people.
 
Almost no one in the United States pays no taxes at all. There are taxes on companies, on imports and on inheritance, money or other property passed down by people who have died. There are also state and local taxes, and taxes on property, sales and gifts.
 
The criticism of Mr. Romney left him at first defending his position, then taking to the offense. For example, he criticized comments that President Obama made on Thursday. Mr. Obama stated that, you cannot change Washington from the inside, and can only change it from the outside.
 
The former governor said he can and will change Washington and will get the job done from the inside. In his words, “Republicans and Democrats will come together.”
 
And that’s IN THE NEWS. I’m Steve Ember.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/video-shows-romney-dismissing-obama-supporters/1512750.html

 

Invasive brown tree snakes have gobbled up most of Guam's native forest birds. Without these avian predators to keep their numbers in check, the island's spider population has exploded.

The Pacific Island of Guam is experiencing a population explosion — of spiders.

There are more spiders there now than anyone can remember. To get a sense of how weird the situation is, I started out in Maryland. On my front porch, overlooking the Severn River.

At 6:30 in the morning on a cool fall day, I find two spider webs in a matter of five minutes. But if I were on the island of Guam, I might find 70 or 80 spider webs in five minutes.

Ecologist Haldre Rogers realized something strange was going on as she went roaming through the jungle on Guam and three nearby islands. "While I was doing that," she recalls, "it appeared that there were tons more spiders on Guam than there were on other islands."

Rogers is a researcher from the University of Washington, and she was actually in Guam looking for snakes. The brown tree snake invaded Guam over 60 years ago — they sneaked in aboard boats or in the wheel wells of airplanes. And now they're everywhere: about 2 million of them.

But the spider thing was just too bizarre to pass up. So Rogers started counting spider webs on the islands.

In the dry season, Guam had about 2 1/2 times more spider webs. "And 40 times more webs in the wet season than on the nearby islands," she says.

 

In the wet season, there are 40 times more spiders on Guam than there are on other nearby islands.

Forty?! "Forty times, yes," she assures me.

One that seemed to be everywhere was a great big yellow and black critter called Argiope appena, or the banana spider. "And actually," she says, "what we found was, their webs were much bigger on Guam than on the other islands, they were 50 percent larger on Guam."

More, bigger, better ... if you're a spider.

This all came about because the introduced tree snake multiplied only on Guam and ate almost all the birds. There are literally just a few hundred birds left there.

Since birds eat spiders, this is good news for spiders. In fact, great news, because birds also ate some of the bugs spiders eat, so there's now more food for spiders, too.

For ecologists, Guam is now a big experiment to see what happens when a top predator disappears from an ecosystem. They suspect plants could be affected too; many depend on birds to spread their seeds.

But Rogers wants to remind people that Guam is still a nice place. Says Rogers: "The average person doesn't come across that many spiders, because most people don't go traipsing around in the jungle that much."

If you do plan to do that, just watch where you're going.

One of the primary issues at the heart of the the Chicago teachers' strike is whether student test scores should be used to evaluate teachers and determine their pay. Mayor Rahm Emanuel is pushing that approach, as are other officials around the nation.

But many teachers insist that it's inherently unfair to grade their teaching based on their students' learning.

Just the fact that there's a growing discussion around teacher evaluations is a huge leap for the education industry. Historically, reviews have been haphazard, ranging from nonexistent to an annual classroom visit from the principal — often referred to as the "drive-by."

"Teachers aren't used to being evaluated in an honest way," says Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality. Walsh says teachers have long been getting an automatic pass — one that's not always deserved.

"This is a system where 99 percent of all teachers were being found to be satisfactory," she says. "You know, it's [like], everyone gets a trophy."

These days, even teachers agree that quality should matter. But using test scores to measure quality — and linking quality to pay — is a much more contentious issue.

'A Down And Dirty Fight'

About two dozen states now mandate that some objective data, like standardized test scores, be a factor in teacher evaluations, but actual policies vary. In about half of those states, student scores count for 50 percent of a teacher's grade. The other states give scores less weight, or leave it up to local districts to decide.

And, increasingly, student performance is being tied directly to pay.

Walsh says it's no surprise that in several cases, the issue has landed in court.

"There is no way to avoid this conversation, if you want to put it in polite terms," Walsh says. And if you prefer uglier terms, she says, you can call it a "down and dirty fight."

Either way, Walsh says, getting through the disputes over evaluations "is gonna be rough."

Teachers argue it's unfair to blame them for a student's poor performance, when so many external factors are at play.

And, they say, there's a great deal of nuance in what they do, like inspiring kids or teaching persistence. The formula experts have developed to calculate a teacher's "added value" from test scores simply can't measure that, many argue.

"I mean, it's not ready for prime time," says Richard Iannuzzi, president of the New York State United Teachers union. "So why would we directly connect it to decisions about tenure or salary?

"We don't pay doctors on the number of heart patients who survive heart surgery — that's not how we do business," he says. "Otherwise, we would be chasing delicate patients away from great doctors."

Evaluation Formulas A Work In Progress

Experts concede that teacher evaluation formulas are still a work in progress. But Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Education Data and Research at the University of Washington, Bothell, says algorithms have now become very sophisticated. They measure student improvement, not just scores, and they adjust for everything from socioeconomic factors to class size.

He says how much weight to give test scores is debatable, but they shouldn't be ignored.

"The baseball analogy is probably apt," Goldhaber says. "Batting averages vary from year to year. But I don't think anybody would say that we're not going to use it for anything — that's silly."

Research shows that linking pay to performance doesn't really motivate weaker teachers to suddenly improve. But, Goldhaber says, it does play a big role in improving faculty in general.

"You change the mix by encouraging the right teachers to stay in the profession, and the right teachers to leave," he says. "And/or by creating informal learning; a teacher for instance, goes to talk to another teacher who got a big bonus and says, 'What the heck are you doing to be so productive?' "

But teachers argue that collaboration would actually suffer under performance-based evaluations, as the system would pit them against each other as they compete for better results.

Iannuzzi of New York State United says that kind of competition is anathema to what teachers do. "I mean, it's just a different world in education. It is a world about lifting all boats. It's not a world about my battleship taking out your battleship."

Iannuzzi says schools are rushing into what's being sold as a quick fix. But advocates of performance-based evaluations say the stakes are too high to wait.

Reform advocates concede that some decent teachers may indeed be unfairly penalized. But, they argue, that's better than bad teachers not being penalized, with students paying the price.

Watch News Wrap: Congress Hopes for Budget Plan Before Election on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

The nineteenth International AIDS Conference took place last month in Washington, DC

BARBARA KLEIN: This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS, in VOA Special English. I’m Barbara Klein.
 
MARIO RITTER: And I’m Mario Ritter. The nineteenth International AIDS Conference took place last month in Washington, DC. More than twenty thousand people attended the six-day event. Today, we tell about some of the latest developments in the fight against AIDS and HIV, the virus that causes the disease.
 
(MUSIC)
 
BARBARA KLEIN: More than eight million people around the world are now receiving antiretroviral drug therapy. That is a twenty percent increase over the past year. All those receiving the treatment have the human immunodeficiency virus, known as HIV.
 
The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS released a report before the AIDS conference. The report is called “Together We Will End AIDS.” It says almost one point four million people were added to the number of people receiving treatment in last year alone.
 
More than thirty-four million people are now living with HIV. The report says that is the largest number ever, because of the greater availability of life-saving drugs. But about two-point-five million people were newly-infected with the virus last year.
 
MARIO RITTER: Michel Sidibe is the head of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, also called UNAIDS.
 
MICHEL SIDIBE: “I personally believe that it is a new era -- new era for treatment, new era for prevention. But it is also from my personal reading a beginning of a journey to getting to zero.”
 
Michel Sidibe says the world is now in a time of shared responsibility, mutual accountability and global solidarity. He says those issues will influence the discussion about HIV/AIDS in the coming years.
 
International spending for the fight against HIV reached almost seventeen billion dollars last year. Mr. Sidibe says the money was spent effectively.
 
MICHEL SIDIBE: “We are talking more and more of cost- effectiveness, efficiency, reducing unit costs of producing any results. We are trying to make sure that the framework, investment framework, we are using with the countries becomes smarter.”

BARBARA KLEIN: Many countries have greatly increased their own investment in fighting the disease. Spending by individual countries is now greater than international spending for the first time. For example, South Africa spent two billion dollars last year in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
 
Much of the international aid for treatment, research and prevention comes from PEPFAR -- the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
 
Eric Goosby is the United States’ Global AIDS Coordinator. He also leads PEPFAR.
 
ERIC GOOSBY: “Our resource allocation and prioritization -- shifts that over the last three years we have aggressively tried to institute in our PEPFAR programs -- have begun to show the fruit of that labor. Moving to high risk populations - targeting key populations -- to ensure that they are identified in a safe setting, in a safe space, to allow them to be entered and retained in care over time.”
 
PEPFAR works with national governments to create programs for their people.
 
ERIC GOOSBY: “I think that the numbers that UNAIDS is presenting to the world reassure me that we are positioned to know, monitor and understand the data as it comes in. And we have moved I think over the last few years to be much more nimble in our ability to reposition our programming.”
 
MARIO RITTER: But there is still much work to be done. UNAIDS says billions of dollars more will be needed for the fight against HIV/AIDS. The UN group says one point seven million people died from AIDS-related causes last year. That is twenty-four percent fewer deaths than in two thousand five, when the number of deaths was at its highest.
 
Tuberculosis -- or TB -- is the number one cause of death among people living with HIV. People suffering from HIV/AIDS have weakened natural defenses for fighting disease. That increases their likelihood of getting TB. 
 
BARBARA KLEIN: People between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four are responsible for forty percent of all new adult HIV infections. Most of those infections are among young women. Studies have shown that many young people do not know how to prevent HIV infection.
 
Many of those infected in parts of Asia and Eastern Europe do not have access to treatment. And infections are increasing among sex workers, men who have sex with men and users of intravenous drugs.
 
But UNAIDS says efforts are continuing to have fifteen million people on treatment by twenty-fifteen. We have placed a link to the UN report on our website, voaspecialenglish.com.
 
(MUSIC)
 
MARIO RITTER: The World Health Organization says developing countries need a full plan of action for treating HIV. WHO officials say some groups of people are still unable to get the treatments they need.
 
Studies have shown that antiretroviral drugs extend the lives of people infected with HIV. The drugs can also prevent infection. This means countries may be able to slow the spread of AIDS. But some of those most in need of HIV treatment and prevention are unable to get them because of their social standing.
 
Gottfried Hirnschall is the director of the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS Department.
 
GOTTFRIED HIRNSCHALL: “We’ve seen in many countries that there remains stigma against certain population groups. And in some countries these behaviors of these groups are criminalized. Being a sex worker in many African countries is criminal behavior. Being an MSN in some countries is criminalized and obviously injection drug use is.”
 
The expression MSN means men who have sex with men. These men are one of the groups most at risk of infection.
 
GOTTFRIED HIRNSCHALL: “We see barriers for these individuals to access services. And we obviously see that as a consequence in many places these groups have higher infection rates. They have higher mortality, etcetera.”
 
BARBARA KLEIN: Another part of the fight against HIV/AIDS is the question of when to start treatment. In the early days of antiretrovirals, the drugs were usually given to people when the body’s defenses against disease had collapsed. A person’s health is measured by the CD4 count. That is the number of immune system cells a person has.
 
Dr. Hirnschall says, in recent years, doctors have suggested that people start on treatment much earlier.
 
GOTTFRIED HIRNSCHALL: “If you start as soon as possible -- and that’s what’s happening now in the U.S. with the policy change that just took place -- you may have a benefit to the patient. WHO now recommends initiation of treatment below a CD4 cell count of 350, which means that the immune system has already some signs of weakening, but that the patient is still not very sick yet.”
 
The WHO official says many infections could be avoided by giving treatment earlier.
 
MARIO RITTER: Two recent studies have confirmed the effectiveness of what is being called the “treatment as prevention” plan. One study involved what researchers call discordant couples, where one person has HIV and the other does not. The study found that drugs were ninety-six percent effective in preventing the spread of the virus.
 
The second study showed the effectiveness of giving drugs to people who were not infected.
 
GOTTFRIED HIRNSCHALL: “Even if you give drugs prior to exposure - in other words to HIV-negative persons -- referred to as pre-exposure prophylaxis -- you may also protect this person from becoming infected. So the whole field of the use of anti-retrovirals has become more and more exciting, but at the same time more complex.”
 
Dr. Hirnschall says it would cost more in the short-term to put more people on anti-retrovirals sooner -- probably billions more. But he says, in the long-term, the cost will drop and lives will be saved.
 
GOTTFRIED HIRNSCHALL: “You will have quite impressive reductions of both mortality and new infections. So we estimate over a period until twenty-twenty more than twelve million new infections could be averted and seven point four million deaths could be also averted. So in other words, yes, you need to invest. You need to frontload the resources, but you’re buying something for it.”
 
Dr. Hirnschall says the World Health Organization is writing rules to help developing countries care for and treat those most at risk of infection.
 
(MUSIC)
 
BARBARA KLEIN: Two other studies found that anti-AIDS drugs may protect HIV-negative individuals against the deadly virus.  The studies involved couples in Kenya and Uganda.  One partner was infected with HIV and the other was not.
 
The testing lasted from two thousand eight to two thousand ten. The study showed a sixty-seven to seventy-five percent reduced risk of infection in the non-infected partner.  That was in comparison to those who took a placebo or harmless substance.     
 
However, a third study showed no difference in protection. Those tests involved women in Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
 
(MUSIC)
 
MARIO RITTER: This SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written by VOA reporter Joe De Capua. It was adapted into Special English and produced by Christopher Cruise. I’m Mario Ritter.
 

BARBARA KLEIN: And I’m Barbara Klein. Join us again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.
 
--
 
Contributing: Joe De Capua

Heard on Morning Edition

August 13, 2012 - RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And when it comes to a healthy diet, especially for women, nutritionists and doctors will tell you you need calcium. The question is how much is enough? Here's NPR's Patti Neighmond.

PATTI NEIGHMOND, BYLINE: It's a fact most people know well - calcium helps build bones and keeps them strong, which is why people like 26-year-old Vera Yakovchenko eat lots of calcium-rich foods.

VERA YAKOVCHENKO: I eat yogurt probably excessively, and cheese. I drink almond milk which has fortified calcium.

NEIGHMOND: And people who think they don't get enough calcium in their diet often take supplements, like 62-year-old Marcia Hughes.

MARCIA HUGHES: About 1,500 to 2,000 milligrams a day.

NEIGHMOND: Federal health officials recommend women and men under age of 50 - consume 1,000 milligrams of calcium a day. The recommendation goes up to 1,200 after the age of 70 for men and after menopause for women when a major drop in estrogen causes bone loss.

So if 1,200 milligrams is good is taking more better? No, says Dr. Ethel Siris.

DR. ETHEL C. SIRIS: You need enough. You don't need extra.

NEIGHMOND: Siris directs the Osteoporosis Center at Columbia University Medical Center.

SIRIS: Extra calcium does you no good and there is a small risk that if you take too much you might get a kidney stone.

NEIGHMOND: The body can only handle 600 milligrams at once. And if too much calcium builds up in the bloodstream it's excreted through the kidneys which can cause a kidney stone. That's been known for awhile. But recently, Siris says, there's another concern.

SIRIS: There have been some studies which have suggested that calcium - and perhaps its excess calcium - may calcify the coronary arteries in susceptible people which is not good; it may precipitate heart attacks.

NEIGHMOND: One study showed people who take calcium supplements had a slightly higher risk of having a heart attack.

Endocrinologist Robert Eckel with the American Heart Association.

DR. ROBERT ECKEL: And so this has raised the question about whether there's potentially some danger in over the counter calcium supplements which, of course, go beyond simply our usual dietary intakes of calcium. So, there's at this point in time a bit of a signal in this direction, but still a controversial area and I don't think anyone has stepped forward yet to say that calcium supplements should be abandoned.

NEIGHMOND: Particularly since calcium is so critical for bone health. Even so, the heart studies do raise questions, says Eckel that need to be answered.

But even if it turns out there's only a very small increased risk of heart attack, why take that risk?

Osteoporosis expert Siris says, just don't take excess calcium. How do you do that? Count your calcium. Starting first with the foods you consume every day.

SIRIS: If you're somebody having a glass of milk with your breakfast - that's 300 milligrams of your needed 1,200. A container of yogurt will give you 200 to 300 milligrams and you can read the label. A couple of ounces of cheese will give you about 300 milligrams.

NEIGHMOND: Three servings a day of dairy pretty much meets the calcium requirement for an adult under 50. And if you don't eat dairy, you can find calcium in other foods, as well.

SIRIS: Lots of the foods we eat have little bits of calcium, so even if someone is not consuming any dairy at all, they're probably still getting somewhere between 200 and 400 milligrams a day of calcium from the average American diet.

NEIGHMOND: Vegetables like broccoli, bok choy and turnip greens have lots of calcium. So do oranges, figs, salmon and sardines. Cereals and soy milk often have added calcium, as well as vitamin D, which is needed to help the body absorb calcium.

So, after estimating your daily intake of calcium from food, then you can calculate whether you need to take an extra supplement. You may just need 300 or 600 milligrams extra and maybe not every single day.

Patti Neighmond, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MONTAGNE: You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.

Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884-1962: She Was the Most Influential Wife of Any American President

STEVE EMBER: I’m Steve Ember.

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: And I’m Shirley Griffith with People in America in VOA Special English. Today, we tell about the woman who was the most influential wife of any American president, Eleanor Roosevelt.

(MUSIC)

STEVE EMBER: Eleanor Roosevelt was the wife of America's thirty-second president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She helped her husband in many ways during his long political life. She also became one of the most influential people in America. She fought for equal rights for all people -- workers, women, poor people, black people. And she sought peace among nations.

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born in New York City in eighteen eighty-four. Eleanor's family had great wealth and influence. But Eleanor did not have a happy childhood. Her mother was sick and nervous.  Her father did not work. He drank too much alcohol. He was not like his older brother, Theodore Roosevelt, who was later elected president.  When Eleanor was eight years old, her mother died. Two years later, her father died.  Eleanor's grandmother raised the Roosevelt children. Eleanor remembered that as a child, her greatest happiness came from helping others.

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: In the early nineteen hundreds, many people were concerned about the problems of poor people who came to America in search of a better life. Eleanor Roosevelt could not understand how people lived in such poor conditions while she and others had so much wealth.

After she finished school, Eleanor began teaching children to read in one of the poorest areas of New York City, called "Hell's Kitchen."  She investigated factories where workers were said to be badly treated. She saw little children of four and five years old working until they dropped to the floor. She became involved with other women who shared the same ideas about improving social conditions.

Franklin Roosevelt began visiting Eleanor. Franklin belonged to another part of the Roosevelt family. Franklin and Eleanor were married in nineteen-oh-five. In the next eleven years, they had six children.

STEVE EMBER: Franklin Roosevelt began his life in politics in New York. He was elected to be a state legislator. Later, President Woodrow Wilson appointed him to be assistant secretary of the Navy. The Roosevelts moved to Washington in nineteen thirteen.

It was there, after thirteen years of marriage, that Eleanor
Roosevelt went through one of the hardest periods of her life.
She discovered that her husband had fallen in love with another woman. She wanted to end the marriage. But her husband urged her to remain his wife. She did. Yet her relationship with her husband changed. She decided she would no longer play the part
of a politician's wife. Instead, she began to build a life with interests of her own.

In nineteen twenty-one, Franklin Roosevelt was struck by the terrible disease polio. He would never walk again without help. His political life seemed over, but his wife helped him return to politics. He was elected governor of New York two times.


SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Eleanor Roosevelt learned about politics and became involved in issues and groups that interested her. In nineteen twenty-two, she became part of the Women's Trade Union League. She also joined the debate about ways to stop war. In those years after World War One, she argued that America must be involved in the world to prevent another war.

"Peace is the question of the hour," she once told a group of women. "Women must work for peace to keep from losing their loved ones."

The question of war and peace was forgotten as the United States entered a severe economic depression in nineteen twenty-nine. Prices suddenly dropped on the New York stock market. Banks lost their money. People lost their jobs.

(MUSIC)

STEVE EMBER: Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in nineteen thirty-two. He promised to end the Depression and put Americans back to work.

Mrs. Roosevelt helped her husband by spreading information about his new economic program. It was called the New Deal. She traveled around the country giving speeches and visiting areas that needed economic aid.

Mrs. Roosevelt was different from the wives of earlier presidents. She was the first to become active in political and social issues. While her husband was president, Mrs. Roosevelt held more than three hundred news conferences for female reporters. She wrote a daily newspaper commentary. She wrote for many magazines. These activities helped spread her ideas to all Americans and showed that women had important things to say.

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: One issue Mrs. Roosevelt became involved in was equal rights for black Americans. She met publicly with black leaders to hear their problems. Few American politicians did this during the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties. One incident involving Mrs. Roosevelt became international news. In nineteen thirty-nine, an American singer, Marian Anderson, planned a performance at Constitution Hall in Washington. But a conservative women's group refused to permit her to sing there because she was black.

STEVE EMBER: Mrs. Roosevelt was a member of that organization, the Daughters of the American Revolution. She publicly resigned her membership to protest the action of the group. An opinion study showed that most Americans thought she was right. Eleanor Roosevelt helped the performance to be held outdoors, around the Lincoln Memorial.
More than seventy thousand people heard Marian Anderson sing.
Mrs. Roosevelt was always considered one of the strongest supporters of the civil rights movement.

(MUSIC)

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: The United States was forced to enter World War Two when Japanese forces attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in nineteen forty-one.
Mrs. Roosevelt made many speeches over the radio praising the soldiers she saw on her travels.  She called on people to urge their government to work for peace after the war was over.

Franklin Roosevelt died in nineteen forty-five, soon after he was elected to a fourth term as president. When his wife heard the news she said: "I am more sorry for the people of this country than I am for myself."

STEVE EMBER: Harry Truman became president after Franklin Roosevelt died. World War Two ended a few months later. The leaders of the world recognized the need for peace. So they joined together to form the United Nations. President Truman appointed Mrs. Roosevelt as a delegate to the first meeting of the UN. A newspaper wrote at the time: "Mrs. Roosevelt, better than any other person, can best represent the little people of America, or even the world."

Later, Mrs. Roosevelt was elected chairman of the U.N. Human Rights Commission. She helped write a resolution called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That declaration became an accepted part of international law.

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Mrs. Roosevelt spent the last years of her life visiting foreign countries. She became America's unofficial ambassador. She returned home troubled by what she saw. She recognized that the needs of the developing world were great. She called on Americans to help the people in developing countries.

A few years before she died, Eleanor Roosevelt spoke about what she believed in life. This is what she said:

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: “This life always seems to me to be a continuing process of education and development. What we are preparing for, none of us can be sure. But, that we must do our best while we are here and develop all our capacities is absolutely certain.  We face whatever we have to face in this life. And if we do it bravely and sincerely, we’re probably accomplishing that growth which we were put here to accomplish.”

STEVE EMBER: Eleanor Roosevelt gave the best she had all through her life. People around the world recognized their loss when she died in nineteen sixty-two.

(MUSIC)

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: This program was written by Shelley Gollust. It was produced by Lawan Davis. Our studio engineer was Kevin Fowler. I'm Shirley Griffith.

STEVE EMBER:  And I'm Steve Ember. Join us again next week for People in America in VOA Special English.

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
 
The United States is suffering its worst drought in almost sixty years. Moderate to extreme dry conditions spread to fifty-five percent of the continental United States in June. That was the most since December of nineteen fifty-six.
 
The National Climatic Data Center also says high temperatures in June added to the warmest twelve-month period on record. Recordkeeping began in eighteen ninety-five.
​
​​The drought map showed that conditions improved in the Southeast in June compared to May. But they intensified from the Midwest to the Great Plains and much of the West. Predictions through the end of October suggest that the drought is likely to improve in areas of the Southwest and Southeast. But the drought is expected to continue or intensify in large parts of the country.
 
Last week, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack met with President Obama. Mr. Vilsack says the drought has severely affected corn and soybean crops. The United States is the world's leading producer of maze and soybeans.  
 
TOM VILASK: "Thirty-eight percent of our corn crop as of today is rated as poor to very poor, thirty percent of our soybeans, poor to very poor."
 
Most of the affected states are in the southern half of the country. But officials said farmlands in the north are now drying up as well.
 
The drought has pushed up prices for corn and soybeans. Both are used in food production and for animal feed. Last week the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported a twenty percent jump in maize and wheat prices over the past three weeks.
 
Wheat prices are up as hot, dry weather affects production in the Black Sea region.
 
In the United States, ranchers may quickly reduce the size of their herds of animals rather than pay higher feed prices to keep raising them. That increased supply of meat would reduce meat prices in the short-term. But those prices could increase several months from now.
 
Mr. Vilsack said the overall effect of the drought is hard to predict. Some areas are getting rain, and drought-resistant seeds have helped crops grow well in some areas.
 
President Obama has cut the interest rate on disaster loans for farmers and made it easier for affected areas to receive government financial assistance. At the same time, farmers are waiting to see what Congress does with the farm bill, a major piece of legislation renewed every five years.
 
The Senate has passed a version that would end direct payments to farmers but help pay for crop insurance. The plan would save money. But the House of Representative has passed different legislation, and Congress needs to reach a compromise. The current farm bill ends at the end of September.
 
And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report. I'm Jim Tedder.
 

오디오 듣기

	Kim Jong-un

Pyongyang awarded its second-highest military title, marshal, to new leader Kim Jong-un, accelerating the process of consolidating the young leader’s power.

The North’s official state media - Korean Central Television, the Korean Central News Agency and the Pyongyang Broadcasting Station - yesterday issued an “important announcement” at noon signaled in advance by news alerts.

“A decision was made to award the title of marshal to Kim Jong-un, supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army,” the Korean Central News Agency said in a report.

His promotion came in the middle of a surprise military reshuffle reportedly led by the ruling Workers’ Party and Kim.

Ri Yong-ho, the high-profile chief of the general staff of the North Korean army, suddenly lost all his posts on Sunday. Two days later, a little-known four-star general, Hyon Yong-chol, was promoted to vice marshal, raising speculation that he might replace Ri.

The highest military rank, grand marshal, has been bestowed on only two people: North Korea’s founding leader Kim Il Sung and his son and successor Kim Jong-il.

The former was given the title in 1992, two years before he died. Kim Jong-il was named grand marshal in February, two months after he died.

Aside from members of the Kim dynasty, three other men have been named marshal in the past. Two of them, former Japanese guerrilla fighters with founder Kim Il Sung, have died. Ri Eul-sol, a 91-year-old former guerilla and bodyguard of Kim Il Sung, is alive.

Kim Jong-un’s promotion is reminiscent of his father’s, according to Kim Min-seok, spokesman of the National Defense Ministry of South Korea.

“The late leader Kim Jong-il was awarded the title ‘supreme commander’ in 1991, and a year after, he was given the rank of ‘marshal,’?” Kim said. “Jong-un was promoted to supreme commander in 2011 and became a marshal within a year.”

Jong-un was made a four-star general in September 2010 during a ruling party conference. Technically, in order to become a marshal, he should have been given the rank of vice marshal first, but he skipped that step.

The regime currently has 21 four-star generals and nine vice marshals, including the newly promoted Hyon.

Analysts said Kim is trying to strengthen his grip on the military with his promotion.

“In such a sensitive situation, when the dismissal of Ri Yong-ho could trigger turmoil in the military, the regime is trying to stabilize Kim’s control over the army,” Cheong Seong-cheang, a senior fellow at the Sejong Institute, said. “The rank of marshal that he was awarded yesterday is a bit different from what the others have been given. Pyongyang called it ‘marshal of the DPRK [the acronym for the full name of North Korea]’ not just of the military, which means he is the top military official controlling the whole nation.”

Kim Yeon-chul, a professor at the Department of Korean Unification of Inje University, said that Jong-un is apparently widening the power of the ruling party and curbing that of the military.

“Under former leader Kim Jong-il, the military was strong because of his Songun or ‘military first’ policy,” Kim said. “Ri Yong-ho played a pivotal role in stabilizing the rule of the young leader during the sensitive succession period, but Kim doesn’t need him any more. Kim wants to boost the local economy, and to do that, he needs to rein in the powerful military first.”

The regime’s priority will not be “military first” but “party first,” he added. “Personnel matters will be dealt with by the two political heavyweights, Kim’s uncle Jang Song-thaek and General Political Bureau Chief Choe Ryong-hae.”

By Kim Hee-jin [heejin@joongang.co.kr ]

Source : http://koreajoongangdaily.joinsmsn.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=2956470&cloc=joongangdaily|home|top

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I’m Shirley Griffith.
 
BOB DOUGHTY: And I’m Bob Doughty. Today, we will talk about diet and weight loss. Exercise is important if you want to get in good shape. But experts say exercise alone is not enough if your goal is to lose weight.
 
(MUSIC)

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: It is that time of year again! Warm weather has returned to Earth’s northern hemisphere. Summer is a time when people of all ages feel like getting their swimwear and going to the nearest swimming pool or seashore. But first, there is that troublesome little thing called winter weight gain. Many of us gain weight because of inactivity during the winter.
 
Some people go to extremes to lose that extra weight before going to the beach. In the weight loss industry, there is never a lack of ideas about how to lose weight. Consider the sleeping beauty diet, where you sleep your way to weight loss. You cannot eat if you are sleeping, or so the theory goes. Then there is the tapeworm diet. The tapeworm is said to help people lose weight by eating the food that is stored in their stomach. But first you have to be willing to swallow the little creature. This may be more trouble than many people want.
 
Strange, new diets, treatments and exercise programs arrive on the market every day. Each one promises to help people lose weight and get a beach beautiful body. The weight loss industry takes in billions of dollars each year, and it is growing.

BOB DOUGHTY: One research company says the weight loss business will be worth more than five hundred eighty billion dollars worldwide by the year twenty fourteen. MarketsandMarkets also says the food and drink market represents the largest part of that growth. It is expected to reach more than three hundred fifty five billion dollars by twenty fourteen.
 
There is a seemingly endless supply of ideas about how to lose weight. There are low-carbohydrate diets and low-fat diets, diets that limit calories and ones that let you eat as much as you want. And, there are thousands of different kinds of diet pills and programs. So where does one begin? Which one is best?
 
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Experts say there is no single diet plan that works best for everyone. Many experts agree on one thing: that to lose weight, you must use or burn off more calories than you take in. When you eat more calories than your body needs, it stores that extra energy as fat.
 
Calories are a measure of energy in food. A pound of fat is equal to about four hundred fifty three grams or three thousand five hundred calories. To lose that fat in a week, you have to burn off at least that amount in calories or eat that much less. The best thing to do is to combine both ideas. Eat fewer calories and increase physical activity so that you burn off more.
 
America’s National Institutes of Health has suggested that women limit calories to no less than one thousand two hundred calories a day without medical supervision. It also says men should have no less than one thousand five hundred calories. Debate continues about the best way to fill those calorie requirements.
 
(MUSIC)
 
BOB DOUGHTY: For years, eating a diet low in fat was said to be the best way to lose weight. A low-fat diet is one in which less than thirty percent of a person’s daily calorie intake comes from fat.
 
Dean Ornish developed one of the most popular low fat diets after years of research on ways to control heart disease. His dietary ideas were first published in the medical journal The Lancet in nineteen ninety. The Ornish diet plan became more popular in nineteen ninety-three with the release of his book “Eat More, Weigh Less.”
 
Dr. Ornish studied the effects of carbohydrates – one of the most important sources of energy for the body. He found that carbohydrates were not to blame for making people fat. Instead, he said, fat makes people fat. He noted that a baked potato is not high in fat, but it becomes fatty when people add sour cream and butter to it.
 
Dr. Ornish’s diet plan limits daily calories from fat to less than ten percent, with little to no saturated fat or cholesterol. He also suggested that people get seventy to seventy-five percent of their calories from complex carbohydrates, and fifteen to twenty percent from proteins.
 

The screen on a personal digital assistant displays a calorie counter

​​SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Like other low-fat diets, the Ornish plan suggests that people eat diets high in whole grains, fruits, vegetables, beans and other legumes. The plan advises people to avoid all meat and meat products, and to stay away from oils, nuts and seeds. It does not limit the number of calories people eat. But, eating the foods suggested by the diet plan would reduce the number of calories.
 
The Ornish diet has proved to be effective for many people. However, critics say it lets dieters eat too many carbohydrates while setting restrictions on calories from fat. They also say the changes required in eating habits may be too extreme for many people to follow.
 
(MUSIC)

BOB DOUGHTY: Unlike the Ornish diet, low carbohydrate diets limit foods that are high in carbohydrates. These diets advise people to avoid things like white flour, pasta, rice, potatoes and foods high in sugar. Instead they suggest that people eat foods that are high in proteins and fats. These include foods like meat, fish, chicken, eggs, cheese and nuts.
 
The Atkins diet is one of the most popular of these diets. It suggests that people eat fewer than twenty grams of carbohydrates a day. This amount is slowly increased to forty to between forty and one hundred grams of carbohydrates a day to keep the weight off.

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Both weight loss plans have been carefully studied over the years. But, no one plan has come out as a clear winner. In two thousand eight, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine found low-carb diets to be the best at providing the most weight loss. The study was led by researchers at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and Ben Gurion University in Israel.
 
The researchers studied more than three hundred obese patients who followed one of three diet plans. These included a low-fat diet, a low-carb diet and a Mediterranean diet, which is made up of fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, olive oil and nuts.
 
BOB DOUGHTY: A similar study published a year later looked at more than eight hundred dieters. The study found that low fat diets and high fat diets were equally successful at providing and maintaining weight loss over a two year period. The researchers concluded that the most important thing for any diet is that people stick with it. And you must burn more calories than you take in no matter what you eat.
 
(MUSIC)

​SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Some people are unable to lose weight through diet and exercise, no matter how hard they try. Others are just not willing to put in the effort. Many of these people choose to have surgical operations to reach their weight loss goals.
 
One kind of weight loss surgery reduces the size of the stomach. This is done by separating the stomach into two parts, including a very small section at the top. People who have had this operation are forced to eat smaller amounts of food because their top stomach fills up much faster. Research suggests that most people lose about half of their overweight pounds in the first year after surgery. However, a large number of people regain the weight in three to five years.
 
BOB DOUGHTY: Another report suggests similar results for a different popular weight loss surgery. Liposuction has been widely used since the nineteen seventies to improve the body’s appearance. It improves body shape by removing fat from certain parts of the body. The most common areas are the stomach, waist, hips, thighs, neck and arms. The International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery says liposuction is the most popular form of cosmetic surgery worldwide.

Recently, researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine found that the effects of the surgery may not be long-lasting. They said people who have liposuction usually experience weight gain within one year after the surgery. And the fat that comes back reappears in a new area of the body, most noticeably the shoulders, arms and upper abdomen. The researchers say this is one more reason to try to prevent obesity before it happens.
 
(MUSIC)
 
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: This SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written and produced by June Simms. I’m Shirley Griffith.
 
BOB DOUGHTY: And I’m Bob Doughty. Join us next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.