Retell Lecture

                       Most Repeated Retell Lecture

1. Extinction of language

 A language dies when the last person who speaks it dies. But you know, sometimes people say it dies when the second-last person who speaks it dies, because the last person has nobody to talk to. Well, of course, languages have come and gone throughout history as communities have come and gone. But what's happening now is something really quite extraordinary. Well, there are about 6000 languages in the world at the moment, more or less. Nobody knows the exact number. Of these, about half of them are so seriously in danger, are likely to die out in the course of present century. Now the present century is a hundred years, half is 3000 languages. So, that means one language is dying out somewhere in the world average every two weeks. There are all kinds of reasons why languages die； one is physical reason when people are affected by famine, disease and earthquake. Another is genocide, when some countries deliberately stamp out a small language. The main reason is globalization. That is, some huge languages in the world, like English, Arabic, Spanish and French, and these are like stream rollers crushing the smaller languages they find in their path. A great deal can be done to preserve endangered language. The first thing is that the people themselves must want the language to be preserved. That's very important. The second thing is that the powers- that- be must want the language to be preserved. They must be respect for the minority languages in their care. The third thing has to be there, of course, is cash. It costs quite a lot of money to preserve an endangered language. Think about it, You have to train the teachers, you have to write books for the children. And all sorts of things. It doesn't cost a extraordinary amount money, but it does cost a bit. So without money, endangered languages don't have a positive future.

2. Rice

In 1943, what became known as the Green Revolution began when Mexico, unable to feed its growing population, shouted for help. Within a few years, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations founded the International Rice Research Institute in Asia, and by 1962, a new strain of rice called IR8 was feeding people all over the world. IR8 was the first really big modified crop to make a real impact on world hunger. In 1962 the technology did not yet exist to directly manipulate the genes of plants, and so IR8 was created by carefully crossing existing varieties: selecting the best from each generation, further modifying them, and finally finding the best. Here is the power of modified crops: IR8, with no fertilizer, straight out of the box, produced five times the yield of traditional rice varieties. In optimal conditions with nitrogen, it produced ten times the yield of traditional varieties. By 1980, IR36 resisted pests and grew fast enough to allow two crops a year instead of just one, doubling the yield. And by 1990, using more advanced genetic manipulation techniques, IR72 was outperforming even IR36. The Green Revolution saw worldwide crop yields explode from 1960 through 2000.




3. Brain

The brain is basically built from the bottom up first the brain builds basic circuits that are responsible for basic skills, and then more complex circuits are built on top of those basic circuits as we develop more complex skills. Biologically, the brain is prepared to be shaped by experience. It’s expecting the experiences that a young child has to literally influence the formation of its circuitry it’s built into our biology. The interaction between genetics and experience that shapes brain architecture is embedded in a reciprocal relationship, the relationships that children have with the adults in their lives. And by that we mean what we refer to as the serveand-return nature of children’s interaction with their adults development. And the impact of experience on development is not a one-way street. It’s a back-and-forth interaction. The brain is a highly integrated organ which has multiple sections that specialize in different kind of processes, so we have parts of the brain that are involved more in cognitive function and other parts that are involved in processing of emotion and parts involved in seeing and hearing. So if a child is emotionally kind of…well…put together and socially competent, that will affect more positive and productive learning. And if a child is preoccupied with fears or anxiety or is dealing with considerable stress no matter how intellectually gifted that child might be, his or her learning is going to be impaired by that kind of emotional interference.


4. Rural poverty

The topic is the poverty in rural and urban areas. Firstly, the poverty rates in rural areas are much higher than those in urban areas, because most of the poor live in rural areas. Rural areas also have high infant mortality rate and low education level. It is important to make sure the population in rural areas have access to sanitation and education. The poverty in urban areas is caused by the migration from rural areas.







5. Marshmallow test

Let's take a look at this video of these little kids they were offered the option of having one marshmallow immediately now or two marshmallows 15 minutes later and you've got some very cute video tape of this experiment. So let's take a look okay, what we found is a very simple and direct way of measuring a competence that seems to make an important life difference a researcher tells these preschoolers that she's going to leave the room if they wait for her to come back without eating the marshmallows. They'll get two marshmallows or they can ring the bell and she'll come back right away but then they only get one marshmallow. I would baby though you won't ring the bell. okay, looking at children over time. Dr. Michelle has found that being able to wait longer at four has some pretty powerful implications and what are those powerful implications is that that later in life. They're more discipline and have more self-control is that pretty much it. Well, they are more likely to achieve their life goals. They have better relationships. They did better on their SI is crazy all because they waited 15 minutes for don't wash me, and I think it is crazy. I probably would have eaten all three but yeah me too. But um you know actually yes, the ability to be able to pursue your goals in this case it was stabbed two marshmallows versus one and not going automatic and just grabbed the marshmallow is a very important skill, but I think a main point in mind in the making is that these skills can be caught cut if you' re 14 or 40 or or four it's not ever too late and any child can learn the many adult can teach them and it's never too late.




6. Brain development

3 stages of Brain development- brain development during childhood, there are three stages, starting from the primitive brain (the action brain), limbic brain(feeling brain), and finally to the neocortex (thought brain).Although interrelated, the three had its own function. Primitive brain functions to manage the physical to survive, manage reflex, motor motion control, monitoring body funtions, and process information coming from sensing. Limbic brain functioning as a liaison to process emotions and the brain thinks, and the primitive brain.While the thinking brain, which is the most objective part of the brain, receiving input from the primitive brain and the limbic brain. However, he needed more time to process information from the primitive brain and the limbic brain. The brain thinks the merger is also a place of experience, memory, feeling, and thinking ability to give birth to ideas and actions.Nerve myelination of the brain take place in sequence, starting from the primitive brain, the limbic brains, and brain thought. Neural pathways are more frequently used to make more myelin thicken. Increasingly thicker myelin,the faster the nerve impulses or signals travel alone nerves. Therefore, a growing child is encouraged to receive input from the environment in accordance with its development.

7. Licking and grooming

So the way a mother rat takes care of its pups is by licking and grooming, nipple switching an arch back nursing. So the rats that do a lot of licking and grooming and their last rats that rule very little. But most rats are in between. So that resembles a human human behavious as well, right, you have mothers that are highly mothering and mothers that couldn't care less and most mothers are somewhere in between. So if you look at these rats. So all you do you observe them and put them in separate cages. So you put the high lickers in one cage not the mothers, but the offspring and the low lickers in another cage and then you let them grow and they're adults now, their mothers are long buried and you look in the brain and you see that those who had high licking mothers express a lot of glucocorticoid receptor, gene and though so our lawmakers express know that reflects a number of factors and that results in a different stress response, but this is not the only difference. We found later on there are hundreds of genes that are differently expressed. So if you get in a mutation, you know polymorphism once in a million. Here, just the motherly lauching just hundreds of genes in one shot and it changes them in a very stable way that you can look at the old rat and you can say whether it was licked or not. But you can also save by behavior. So if you walk to the cages to the room the rats that were poorly lit are highly anxious, hard to handle, aggressive, and , and the rats that were very well handled as off as little pups. They are much more relaxed much easier to handle. So you know, like every technician in the lab knows looking at the adult rat how it was licked when it was a little tough any question , of course, mechanism , how does this work?

8. Reconstruction of Paris

Haussmann's renovation of Paris was a vast public works program commissioned by Emperor Napoleon III and directed by his prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugene Haussmann, between 1853 and 1870. It included the demolition of crowded and unhealthy medieval neighborhoods, the building of wide avenues, parks and squares, the annexation of the suburbs surrounding Paris, and the construction of new sewers, fountains and aqueducts. Haussmann's work met with fierce opposition, and he was finally dismissed by Napoleon III in 1870; but work on his projects continued until 1927. The street plan and distinctive appearance of the center of Paris today is largely the result of Haussmann's renovation.In the middle of the nineteenth century, the center of Paris was overcrowded, dark, dangerous, and unhealthy. In 1845 the French social reformer Victor Considerant wrote "Paris is an immense workshop of putrefaction, where misery, pestilence and sickness work in concert, where sunlight and air rarely penetrate. Paris is a terrible place where plants shrivel and perish, and where, of seven small infants, four die during the course of the year." The street plan on the Tie de la Cite and in the neighborhood called the "quartier des Arcis", between the Louvre and the "Hotel de Ville" (City Hall), had changed little since the Middle Ages. The population density in these neighborhoods was extremely high, compared with the rest of Paris；in the neighborhood of the Champs—EIysees, there was one resident for every 186 square meters； in the neighborhoods of Arc is and Saint- Avoye, in the present Third Arrondissement, there was one inhabitant for every three square meters. In 1840, a doctor described one building in the tie de la Cite where a single room five meters squares on the fourth floor was occupied by twenty-three people, both adults and children. In these conditions, disease spread very quickly. Cholera epidemics ravaged the city in 1832 and 1848. In the epidemic of 1848, five percent of the inhabitants of these two neighborhoods died. Traffic circulation was another major problem. The widest streets in these two neighborhoods were only five meters wide； the narrowest were only one or two meters wide. Wagons, carriages and carts could barely move through the streets. The center of the city was also a cradle of discontent and revolution；between 1830 and 1848, seven armed uprisings and revolts had broken out in the centre of Paris, particularly along the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, around the Hotel de Vi Ile, and around Montagne Sainte Genevive on the left bank. The residents of these neighborhoods had taken up paving stones and blocked the narrow streets with barricades, and had to be dislodged by the army.

9. Wage, consumption and debt

According to the speaker, the wage increase is 5%, which is very weak. The consumption is about 15%, which seems decent. The housing debt is about 40%, which is unusual. But can be understandable after the wage and consumption increase.

10. Soot emission

Soot is also called black carbon. Increasing combustion which leads to greenhouse gases emissions is the major cause of global warming and climate change. Soot does not accumulate in the atmosphere like CO2(carbon dioxide). Reduction in soot has immediate but not long-term effects on global warming. If we want to stabilize the climate system, we need to focus on greenhouse gases such as CO2. But soot emission is another bigger threat to humans health which makes people live shorter. It is not to say that we should ignore carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases. It is that soot emission is one quarter more harmful to health than carbon dioxide is. Also, the reduction of soot emission is the quickest and easiest way to tackle global warming in short-term.

11. Frog mutation

60% frog with normal limbs 20% with… The graph shows tree types of frogs in different region, indicating their life habits and their influence on human. The variation of frog has been existing for many years that some have more limbs while some have fewer limbs. The lecture also explains the reason for the gene mutation. Many people are worried that river those frogs live will be polluted by them and affect our health.

12. Dissociation of personality

Morton Prince was an American physician and psychologist, his book “Dissociation of a Personality” was the best-seller at that time. It tells a story of Miss Christine Beauchamp, who was suffering from MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder) . Miss Beauchamp have several personalities, namely B1, B2 and B3. There was hidden memory in these 3 personalities. Miss Beauchamp was B2. B2 knows about B1, B3 knows both B1 & B2, but B1 knows nothing about B2 or B3. The strongest personality account for most of the time and it will take over the others and become the main personality at the end. This case and theory give great help to crime investigation.

13. Western countries child birth rate

The western countries women are becoming more and more reluctant to give birth to babies. However, the male's status in the society remains strong in recent years. The birth rates increased during 20's century but it remain to decrease in the last two decades. In the year 2000, the birth rate remained at around 1%. There are even some negative birth rates in other countries. Birth rate dropped to its lowest point that has never been seen in the history. It also has impacts on male in the society especially the young man, and it might have some connection with unemployment rate as well.

14. Visual description

The comics I show you with lots of people chatting around in a room is a form of description. We use different kinds of methods to describe a situation. Sometimes we have to use visual description, particularly when we do not witness the scenario. I was born during the Second World War and my hometown is X, for example when I asked my mother about the war, I always ask her you have mentioned this or that when you talked to me when asked her about the shelter, I asked her what the shelter looks like and when did you go to the shelter. From her response I could get more visual evidence as I can to write my book.

15. Ageing population
As the world population grow, the ageing population has become more serious. Ageing percentage in the US is now 13% and is expected to be 23% in 2030. The situation is the same in Japan and Germany. There will be more than 20% of the German population aged over 65 years old in 2030. Ageing problem is related to industrialization.

Traditionally, teachers use desks, chairs, paper and pencil to teach children handwriting and reading from paper. The way of teaching has been radically changed. Teachers are using new technology in classrooms. Education in the future will be focusing on developing children's critical thinking skills.

16. Large hadron collider

Protons are finally transferred to the LHC (both in a clockwise and an anticlockwise direction) where they are accelerated for 20 minutes to 6.5 TeV. Beams circulate for many hours inside the LHC beam pipes under normal operating conditions. For each collision, the physicist's goal is to count, track and characterize all the different particles. The charge of the particle, for instance, is obvious since particles with positive electric charge bend one way and those with negative charge bend the opposite way. Also the momentumof the particle can be determined. Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest particle accelerator lies in a tunnel. The LHC is a ring roughly 28km around that accelerates protons almost to the speed of light before colliding them head-on. Protons are particles found in the atomic nucleus, roughly one thousand-million-millionth of a meter in size. The LHC starts with a bottle of hydrogen gas, which is sent through an electric field to strip away the electrons, leaving just the protons Electric and magnetic fields are the key to a particle accelerator.

17. Happiness and social relations

Happiness comes from frequency and quality of social relation. The higher the frequency, the more happiness relations with friends and family and others produce. It is not sure why social relation is correlated with happiness. But there’s evidence that when people feel more satisfied with their social relations, they will feel happier, in turn, when people feel happier, they will get more satisfied with social relations. Happy people tend to be social more with friends and have more interaction between family. Some people wonder if their social activities make them happier or their happy personalities drive them to be social more with their friends and families.

18. Governmental blogging

We normally see blogging as a two-way interaction, in which the blogger/author creates the content and the readers interact or challenge the author. But the case will be much difficult when it comes to government, such as the White House. Because people will become coarser and ride online, especially in the comment area. Hence the governor blog may go wild and chaotic.
 

Most Repeated Retell lecture
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