English Tips Self-Taught

sábado, 2 de abril de 2011

Green Energy, Windpower

Source: www.speakup.com.br

WE HAVE THE (WIND) POWER!

Blessed with strong, consistent breezes that may soon rival the most gusty coasts of Europe and the United States. Brazil is on track to increase its wind energy capacity fivefold by 2013, further establishing the ethanol and hydroelectric giant as Latin America’s green energy leader.

But for foreign world turbine producers looking to enter Brazil, questions remain about the country’s ability to solve transport issues, develop a reliable supply chain and spur public policy that will make windpower more attractive to investors.

Northern Brazil is home to some of the best easterly wind partners in the world, which allow for the use of lighter turbines that cost less than ones used in the U.S. or E.U. Brazil’s wind market more than doubled its installed capacity between 2008 and 2010 by reaching 900 megawatts. The government’s goal of 31.6 gigawatts capacity by 2025 would lead all of Latin America.

Wind energy auctions in Brazil have placed 3.9 GW of new windpower in the energy pipeline for 2012 and 2013, but the questions begin with Brazilian infrastructure, which may be best described as an underdeveloped tangled mess. Most wind farms will be located in a handful of states in the Northeast of deep South, but manufacturing of parts for turbines have, until now, been spread sporadically throughout the country, particularly in the central states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais.

More than 5.000 kilometers of road lie between turbine manufactures in São Paulo and the wind markets of Rio Grande do Norte and Ceará. Transport is costly on Brazilian highways, which are so poorly maintained in the northern part of the country that many have no shoulders, or haven’t been repaved following major floods.

“Coastal navigation has to be better as well, it is a poor in Brail. Most transport has always been done by trucks,” says Pedro Perrelli, executive director of the Brazilian Wind Energy Association, ABEEólica industry groups will push for new industrial parks to be built in Rio Grande do Norte, where turbine suppliers now located in the south of Brazil could relocate to produce more efficiently.

A major port in the northeast city of Natal also hasn’t been able to handle large turbine components being shipped into that region. Newly-elected government leaders will need to find an expansion solution for this port, which ideally would be counted on as a gateway for turbine parts shipped into the Northeast.

Private lines of investment have been available to developers and turbine makers, but they are expensive. The industry’s ideal is to get loans from the Brazilian Development Bank or BNDES.

But so far, many applicants have been stopped from qualifying because of strict loan requirements that call for a majority of a wind turbines parts and labor to come from within Brazil. Cheaper parts are made in other countries, but this requirement by the bank is meant to help boost production in Brazil. “There’s no cheaper money in Brazil than BNDES,” Perrelli says. “We need to discuss (with the bank) a ramp-up schedule o nationalizing the index o materials used.”

A more clear schedule for energy auctions may also be set up to assure investors of long-term demand. A congressional bill now in play would force the federal government to buy 400MW of wind energy per year, but that amount is low and outdated. The bill was meant to encourage alternative energies, but is too generic to help wind power.

Brazil’s existing network of transmission lines is also considered inefficient, increasing cost for investors and consumers. Government has been encourage to map the wind energy potential throughout the county to show investors what areas clearly offer the best windpower opportunities.

Training manpower for construction and post-construction jobs within the industry will also be a challenge in the Northeast, where some of the poorest and least educated Brazilians populate wind energy hot zones. Companies already invested in Rio Grande do Norte have partnered with a public technical college to create courses for engineers and construction workers. In Ceará, similar public-private training courses are being offered, with the state covering the student’s costs for their first six months.

While significant infrastructure hurdles exist. Brazil’s public and private sectors have the chance to meet these challenges head on. If they do, Brazil could be a leader in the world’s wind energy market in the not too distant future.

sexta-feira, 1 de abril de 2011

Clara Barton,1821-1912: A Life of Caring for Others

Credits for VOA Special English www.voanews.com thank you so much for those daily visit English tips, if possible, telling for friends promoting my blog. Have a wonderful day/night all.

I'm Ray Freeman.

And I'm Shirley Griffith with the Special English program, PEOPLE IN AMERICA. Every week we tell about a person who was important in the history of the United States. Today we tell about a woman who spent her life caring for others, Clara Barton.

(MUSIC)

Clara Barton was a small woman. Yet she made a big difference in many lives. Today her work continues to be important to thousands of people in trouble.

Clara Barton was an unusual woman for her time. She was born on Christmas day, December twenty-fifth, eighteen twenty-one. In those days, most women were expected to marry, have children and stay home to take care of them. Barton, however, became deeply involved in the world.

By the time of her death in nineteen twelve, she had begun a revolution that led to the right of women to do responsible work for society. As a nurse, she cared for thousands of Wounded soldiers. She began the American Red Cross. And, she successfully urged the American government to accept the Geneva Convention. That treaty established standards for conditions for soldiers injured or captured during wartime.

Clara Barton really began her life of caring for the sick when she was only eleven years old. She lived with her family on a farm in the northeastern state of Massachusetts. One of her

brothers, David, was seriously injured while helping build a barn. For two years, Clara Barton took care of David until he was healed.

Most eleven-year-old girls would have found the job impossible. But Clara felt a great need to help. And she was very good at it. She also seemed to feel most safe when she was at home with her mother and father, or riding a horse on her family's land.

As a young child, Clara had great difficulty studying and making friends at school. Her four brothers and sisters were much older than she. Several of them were teachers. For most of Clara's early years, she was taught at home. She finished school at age fifteen. Then she went to work in her brother David's clothing factory. The factory soon burned, leaving her without a job.

Clara Barton decided to teach school. In eighteen thirty-six, she passed the teacher's test and began teaching near her home in North Oxford, Massachusetts. She became an extremely popular and respected teacher.

After sixteen years of teaching, she realized she did not know all she wanted to know. She wanted more education. Very few universities accepted women in those days. So Clara went to a special school for girls in Massachusetts. While in that school, she became interested in public education.

After she graduated, a friend suggested she try to establish the first public school in the state of New Jersey. Officials there seemed to think that education was only for children whose parents had enough money to pay for private schools.

The officials did not want Barton to start a school for poor people. But she offered to teach without pay for three months. She told the officials that they could decide after that if she

had been successful. They gave her an old building with poor equipment. And they gave her six very active little boys to teach.

At the end of five weeks, the school was too small for the number of children who wanted to attend. By the end of the year, the town built her a bigger, better school. They had to give her more space. She then had six hundred students in the school.

(MUSIC)

Within a year, Clara Barton had lost her voice. She had to give up teaching. She moved to Washington, D.C. to begin a new job writing documents for the United States government.

Clara Barton started her life as a nurse during the early days of the Civil War in eighteen sixty-one. One day, she went to the train center in Washington to meet a group of soldiers from Massachusetts. Many of them had been her friends. She began taking care of their wounds.

Not long after, she left her office job. She became a full-time nurse for the wounded on their way from the fields of battle to the hospital.

Soon, Barton recognized that many more lives could be saved if the men had medical help immediately after they were hurt. Army rules would not permit anyone except male soldiers to be on the battlefield. But Barton took her plans for helping the wounded to a high army official. He approved her plans.

Barton and a few other women worked in the battle areas around Washington. She heard about the second fierce battle at Bull Run in the nearby state of Virginia. She got into a railroad car and traveled there.

Bull Run must have been a fearful sight. Northern forces were losing a major battle there. Everywhere Barton looked lay wounded and dying men.

Day and night she worked to help the suffering. When the last soldier had been placed on a train, Barton finally left. She was just in time to escape the southern army. She escaped by riding a horse, a skill she gained as a young girl.

(MUSIC)

For four years, Clara Barton was at the front lines of the bloodiest battles in the war between the North and the South. She was there at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Charleston. She

was there at Spotsylvania, Petersburg, and Richmond. She cleaned the wounds of badly injured soldiers. She eased the pain of the dying. And she fed those who survived.

When she returned to Washington, Clara Barton found she was a hero. She had proved that women could work in terrible conditions. She made people understand that women could provide good medical care. She also showed that nursing was an honorable

profession.

After the war ended, Barton's doctor sent her to Europe to rest. Instead of resting, she met with representatives of the International Red Cross. The organization had been established

in eighteen sixty-three to offer better treatment for people wounded or captured during wars. She was told that the United States was the only major nation that refused to join.

Barton began planning a campaign to create an American Red Cross. Before she could go home, though, the war between France and Prussia began in eighteen seventy.

Again, Clara Barton went to the fields of battle to nurse the wounded. After a while her eyes became infected. The woman of action was ordered to remain quiet for months in a dark room, or become blind.

When she returned to the United States she again suffered a serious sickness. She used the time in a hospital to write letters in support of an American Red Cross organization.

(MUSIC)

In eighteen eighty-one, Barton's campaign proved successful. The United States Congress signed the World's Treaty of the International Red Cross. This established the American Chapter of the Red Cross. Clara Barton had reached one of her major goals in life.

The next year she successfully urged Congress to accept the Geneva Convention. This treaty set the international rules for treatment of soldiers wounded or captured in war.

For twenty-five years, Clara Barton continued as the president of the American Red Cross. Under her guidance, the organization helped people in all kinds of trouble. She directed the aid efforts for victims of floods in Johnstown, Pennsylvania and Galveston, Texas. She led Red Cross workers in Florida during an outbreak of the disease yellow fever. And she helped during periods when people were starving in Russia and Armenia.

Clara Barton retired when she was in her middle eighties. For her last home, she chose a huge old building near Washington, D.C. The building had been used for keeping Red Cross equipment and then as her office. It was made with material saved from aid centers built after the flood in Johnstown.

In that house on the Potomac River, Clara Barton lived her remaining days. She died after a life of service to others in April, nineteen twelve, at age ninety.

She often said: "You must never so much as think if you like it or not, if it is bearable or not. You must never think of anything except the need --- and how to meet it."

(MUSIC)

This Special English program was written by Jeri Watson. I'm Ray Freeman.

And I'm Shirley Griffith. Join us again next week for another PEOPLE IN AMERICAprogram on the Voice of America.

From the Movie Where's Dad?

FROM THE MOVIE

WHERE’S DAD?

December marked the 30^th anniversary of a shocking event the murder of John Lennon by a deranged fan, Mark Chapman, outside the Dakota Building in New York. Lennon was 40 years old. Chapman, who was 25 at the time, is still in prison. Lennon had, of course, been a member of The Beatles, but his solo career, which produced such great songs as “imagine,” was also impressive.

Lennon once admitted that the thing that drove him to become a star was the lack of attention that he received as a child. his childhood was certainly complicated and it provided the inspiration for the film, Nowhere Boy.

Lennon was raised by his Aunt Mimi. His mother, Julia, and his father, Alf, had disappeared from his life when John was five. When John was a teenager he discovered that his mother was living in the same part of Liverpool. They got to know each other again and Julia even taught him to play the banjo, but their relationship ended dramatically when she was run over and killed by a car that was driven by a drunk off-duty policeman.

John was 17 when he lost his mother for the second time. This scene from Nowhere Boy takes place a few months before Julia death. It is John‘s 17^th birthday and Julia is hosting a party for him at her house. Julia, who is played by Anne Marie Duff, has gone outside to have a cigarette. John, who is played by Aaron Johnson, decides to join her.

Julia (Liverpool accent): I wonder if someone’s up there, on Mars or something, having a quick cigarette like me.

John (Liverpool accent): Where’s Dad?

They’re called Dads, right? Most I know have got one.

Julia: I don’t think…

John: Oh, don’t you, Mum? Well, I do. Think, think, think: that’s all I do. Where’s Daddy, Mummy? “Alf,” that’s his name, right? Well, where’s fucking Alf, then?

Julia: Please don’t swear, John!

John: Make you feel uncomfortable, does it? Well, try being me for the last 17 years! When everybody asks why your Auntie’s your Mum, now, that’s uncomfortable. (Julia starts crying) Oh, here we go! Who turned the taps on?

Julia: Please don’t be horrible to me, John!

John: No, me being horrible to you?

Oh, I see: horrible John, naughty John, poor Julia! (Julia starts to walk back towards the house) No, no, no walking away. Look, I know you’re good a it but not tonight.

Julia: John!

John: Where is he?

Julia: (She moans) Aaaah! New Zealand, maybe, I don’t know!

John: Not round the corner, like you?

Julia: He was in the Merchant Navy. No letters, no money. He abandoned us!
John: And you abandoned me!

Julia: It was a temporary thing: Mimi agreed!

John: Temporary? I’m still living with her?

Julia: I wanted you back, I always wanted you back!

John: Oh, I believe you, honest!

Julia: She never gave you back!

John: But, surely, I’m not Miami’s to give! You’re my Mum!

Julia: she….she loves you so much!

John: Yeah, more than you.

Ray Kroc, 1902-1984: The Man Who Made McDonald's Popular Around the World

Source: Voice of America Special English

www.manythings.org/voa/people www.voanews.com

I'm Phoebe Zimmermann. And I'm Steve Ember with PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English. Today, we tell about Ray Kroc, the man who helped make the fast food industry famous. He expanded a small business into an international operation called McDonald's.

(MUSIC)

You probably know what fast food is. It is cooked food that is ready almost as soon as you enter a public eating place. It does not cost much. It is popular with most Americans and with many people around the world. Some experts say that at least twenty-five percent of American adults eat fast food every day. Most fast food restaurants offer ground beef sandwiches called hamburgers and potatoes cooked in hot oil called French fries. Other fast food places serve fried chicken, pizza or tacos.

You see fast food restaurants almost everywhere in the United States. The names and the designs of the buildings are easily recognized – Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and of course, McDonald's. Most are chain restaurants. That means each one is part of a huge company.

Each restaurant in the chain has the same large, colorful sign that can be recognized from far away. Each offers its own carefully limited choice of foods. Each kind of hamburger or piece of chicken tastes the same at every restaurant in the chain.

The fast food industry began with two brothers in San Bernardino, California in the nineteen forties. Mac and Dick McDonald owned a small, but very successful restaurant. They sold only a few kinds of simple food, especially hamburgers.

People stood outside the restaurant at a window. They told the workers inside what they wanted to eat. They received and paid for their food very quickly. The food came in containers that could be thrown away. The system was so successful that the McDonald brothers discovered they could sell a lot of food and lower their prices.

Ray Kroc sold restaurant supplies. He recognized the importance of the McDonald brothers' idea. He saw that food sales could be organized for mass production -- almost like a factory. Mr. Kroc paid the McDonald brothers for permission to open several restaurants similar to theirs. He opened the first McDonald's restaurant near Chicago, Illinois, in nineteen fifty-five. Soon, more McDonald's were opening all across the United States. Other people copied the idea and more fast food restaurants followed.

(MUSIC)

Raymond Albert Kroc was a very wealthy businessman when he died in nineteen eighty-four. But he had not always been successful. Ray was born in Illinois in nineteen-oh-two. His parents were not rich. He attended school in Oak Park, near Chicago. Ray never completed high school, however. He left school to become a driver for the Red Cross in World War One. He lied about his age to be accepted. He was only fifteen. The war ended before he could be sent to Europe.

After the war, Ray became a jazz piano player. He played with famous music groups. He got married when he was twenty. Then he began working for the Lily Tulip Cup Company, selling paper cups. He kept trying new things, however. He attempted to sell land in the southern state of Florida. That business failed. Ray Kroc remembered driving to Chicago from Florida after his business failed. He said: "I will never forget that drive as long as I live. The streets were covered with ice, and I did not have winter clothing. When I arrived home I was very cold and had no money."

Ray Kroc went back to being a salesman for the Lily Tulip Cup Company. He was responsible for product sales in the central United States. His life improved when he started a small business that sold restaurant supplies. He sold a machine that could mix five milkshakes at one time.

In nineteen fifty-four, he discovered a small restaurant that was using eight of his machines. He went there and found that the owners of the restaurant had a good business selling only hamburgers, French fries and drinks.

At first, Mr. Kroc saw only the possibility for increasing the sales of his mixers to more restaurants. Then he proposed an agreement with the McDonald brothers to start a number of restaurants. Under the agreement, the McDonald brothers would get a percentage of all sales.

The first McDonald's restaurant opened in Des Plaines, Illinois, in nineteen fifty-five. Ray Kroc was fifty-two years old -- an age when many people start thinking about retirement. He opened two restaurants. Soon he began to understand that the real profits were made in selling hamburgers, not the mixers. He quickly sold the mixer company and invested the money in the growing chain of McDonald's restaurants.

In nineteen-sixty, Mr. Kroc bought the legal rights to the restaurants from the McDonald brothers. By then, the chain had more than two hundred restaurants.

(MUSIC)

Fast food restaurants spread quickly in the United States because of franchising. Franchising means selling the legal right to operate a store in a company's chain to an independent business person. If the company approves, the business person may buy or lease the store for a period of years.

Many people want to own a McDonald's restaurant, but only a few are approved. Each restaurant buys its supplies at a low cost from the parent company. Each restaurant also gives the company about ten percent of the money it earns in sales. Today, about seventy percent of McDonald's restaurants worldwide are owned and operated by independent businessmen and women.

Ray Kroc was good at identifying what the public wanted. He knew that many American families wanted to eat in a restaurant sometimes. He gave people a simple eating place with popular food, low prices, friendly service and no waiting. And all McDonald's restaurants sold the same food in every restaurant across the country.

Ray Kroc established rules for how McDonald's restaurants were to operate. He demanded that every restaurant offer "quality, service and cleanliness." People lucky enough to get a franchise must complete a program at a training center called Hamburger University. They learn how to cook and serve the food, and how to keep the building clean. More than sixty-five thousand people have completed this training.

(MUSIC)

McDonald's began to expand around the world in nineteen sixty-seven. Ray Kroc's business ability made McDonald's the largest restaurant company in the world. There are now more than thirty thousand McDonald's restaurants on six continents.

The company operates in about one hundred twenty countries. Every day, McDonald's restaurants around the world serve about fifty million people.

In later years, Ray Kroc established the Kroc Foundation, a private organization that gives money to help others. He also established a number of centers that offer support to families of children who have cancer. They are called Ronald McDonald houses.

Many people praised Ray Kroc for his company's success and good works. But other people sharply criticized him for the way McDonald's treated young employees. Many of the workers were paid the lowest wage permitted by American law. Health experts still criticize McDonald's food for containing too much fat and salt.

In the nineteen seventies, Ray Kroc turned his energy from hamburgers to sports. He bought a professional baseball team in California, the San Diego Padres. He died in nineteen eighty-four. He was eighty-one years old.

That first McDonald's restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, was torn down. It was replaced by a store and visitors center that attempts to copy what was in the original building. Another museum in nearby Oak Park describes the life of Ray Kroc. Ray Kroc's story remains an important part of McDonald's history. And his way of doing business continues to influence fast food restaurants that feed people around the world.

(MUSIC)

This program was written by George Grow. Lawan Davis was the producer. I'm Steve Ember. And I'm Phoebe Zimmermann. Join us again next week for anotherPEOPLE IN AMERICA program in VOA Special English.