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Summarize Written Text(6 June Update)

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80. Orbiting Junk

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For decades, space experts have worried that a speeding bit of orbital debris might one day
smash a large spacecraft into hundreds of pieces and start a chain reaction, a slow cascade of
collisions that would expand for centuries, spreading chaos through the heavens.
In the last decade or so, as scientists came to agree that the number of objects in orbit had
surpassed a critical mass — or, in their terms, the critical spatial density, the point at which a
chain reaction becomes inevitable — they grew more anxious.
Early this year, after a half-century of growth. The federal list of detectable objects (foal- inches
wide or larger) reached 10,000, including dead satellites, spent rocket stages, a camera, a hand
tool and junkyards of whirling debris left over train chance explosions and destructive tests. So
our billion dollar of satellites are at risk.

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Debris accumulated from a variety of space programmes have reached a critical spatial density,
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which poses risk to satellites as these debris could inevitably kickstart a very long chain event of
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destructive collision.
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81. Dinosaur extinct

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The end of the Cretaceous Period saw one of the most dramatic mass extinctions the Earth has

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ever seen.

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The fossil record shows that throughout their 160 million year existence, dinosaurs took on a
huge variety of forms as the environment changed and new species evolved that were suited to
these new conditions. Others that failed to adapt went extinct.
But then 66 million years ago, over a relatively short time, dinosaurs disappeared completely
(except for birds). Many other animals also died out, including pterosaurs, large marine reptiles,
and other sea creatures such as ammonites.
Although the number of dinosaur species was already declining, this suggests a sudden
catastrophic event sealed their fate, causing unfavorable changes to the environment more
quickly than dinosaurs and other creatures could adapt.
The exact nature of this catastrophic event is still open to scientific debate. The catastrophe
could have been an asteroid impact, volcanic eruptions or the effect of both, together with
more gradual changes in the Earth's climate over millions of years.
Whatever the causes, the huge extinction that ended the age of the dinosaur left gaps in the
ecosystem that were subsequently filled by mammals and birds, allowing them to evolve
rapidly.
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Despite their addictiveness to the ever-harsher changes in the environment, an unexplained

apocalyptic event finally seated the fate of the once dominant dinosaurs, which helped to
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create opportunities for other animals to evolve and prosper.

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82. 3D Print

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Madeline Gannon is a researcher, teacher at the Carnegie Mellon University School of

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Architecture and Ph.D. candidate in Computational Design - but that's not all. She is on a

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mission to open up the infinite design possibilities of 31) printing to the world.

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"Currently you have to have a lot of technical background in order to participate in creating

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things for 3D printers," Gannon says. "There is still a huge knowledge barrier for how we create
digital models."
As the technology has advanced, prices have plummeted, and now anyone can buy 3D printer
fora few hundred dollars, Gannon notes. However, not just anyone can create original designs
for 3D-printed artifacts.
To put true creative power into the hands of any ordinary 3D printer owner, Gannon has
developed an innovative new system called "Tectum."
Tectum is a new type of software that lets users create their own unique designs for 3D printers
by simply touching a projected image.
Using their innate hand gestures, someone using Tatum can poke, rub and otherwise
manipulate the projected image that will become their 3D printed object, and sec it instantly
change shape in response.
In keeping with the goal of democratizing the process, Gannon designed her first series of
Tectum artifacts on a surface that everyone can access freely and manipulate instinctively, that
being the human body.
My goal was to bring the digital out to the physical world and out onto your body, - says
Gannon.
Along with a companion project called Reverb — which translates these user-created designs
into printable meshes - that impulse has resulted in a spectacular diversity of bracelet and
necklace designs, ranging from smooth landscapes, intricate textures and chaotic free forms to
delicate geometries derived from the 19th century net of chorography.

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To lower the entry barrier into 3D printing world for ordinary users, a researcher created a
software called Tectum that provides natural gestures interface to manipulate projected images
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intuitively and produced a human body, and its sister project called Reverb transforms designs
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to printable mash, has spawn many designed on jewelleries.

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83. Coffee

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Coffee is enjoyed by millions of people every day and the 'coffee experience' has become a

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staple of our modern life and culture. While the current body of research related to the effects

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of coffee consumption on human health has been contradictory, a study in the June issue of

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Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, which is published by the Institute of

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Food Technologists (IFI), found that the potential benefits of moderate coffee drinking
outweigh the risks in adult consumers for the majority of major health outcomes considered.

Researchers at Ulster University systematically reviewed 1,277 studies from 1970 to-date on
coffee's effect on human health and found the general scientific consensus is that regular,
moderate coffee drinking (defined as 3-4 cups per day) essentially has a neutral effect on
health, or can be mildly beneficial.

The authors noted causality of risks and benefits cannot be established for either with the
research currently available as they are largely based on observational data, Further research is
needed to quantify the risk-benefit balance for coffee consumption, as well as identify which of
coffee's many active ingredients, or indeed the combination of such, that could be inducing
these health benefits.

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Despite the fact that a recent study shows the potential benefits of moderate coffee
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consumption can be beneficial on health, which also has been proved by historical studies,
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further research is still needed to validate the drawbacks and benefits of coffee drinking as
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beneficial active ingredients within coffee remain to be identified.

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84. Proteins

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About 120,000 types of protein molecule have yielded up their structures to science. That

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sounds a lot, but it isn't. The techniques, such as X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic

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resonance (NMR), which are used to elucidate such structures, do not work on all proteins.

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Some types are hard to produce or purify in the volumes required. Others do not seem to

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crystallize at all--a prerequisite for probing them with X-rays. As a consequence, those
structures that have been determined include representatives of less than a third of the 16,000
known protein families. Researchers can build reasonable computer models for around another
third because the structure of these resemble ones already known. For the remainder,
however, there is nothing to go on.

In addition to this lack of information about protein families, there is a lack of information
about those from the species of most interest to researchers: Homo sapiens. Only a quarter of
known protein, structures are human. A majority of the rest conic from bacteria. This paucity is
a problem, for in proteins form and function are intimately related. A protein is a chain of
smaller molecules, called amino acids, that is often hundreds or thousands of links long. By a
process not well understood, this chain folds up, after it has been made, into a specific and
complex three-dimensional shape. That shape determines what the protein does: acting as a
channel, say, to admit a chemical into a cell; or as an enzyme to accelerate a chemical reaction:
or as a receptor, to receive chemical signals and pass them on to a cell's molecular machinery.
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As the current elucidating technologies don't work on all protein structures, around one third
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of protein structure remain to be unknown and there is a lack of information on those species
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from where most protein structures are derived.

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85. Language decay

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Let at begin by asking why the conviction that our language is decaying is so much more

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widespread than the belief that it is progressing. In an intellectual climate where the notion of

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the survival of the fittest is at least as strong as the belief in inevitable decay, it is strange that

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so many people are convinced of the decline in the quality of English. a language which is now

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spoken by an estimated half billion people - a possible hundredfold increase in the number of
speakers during the past millennium.

One's first reaction is to wonder whether the members of the anti-slovenliness brigade. As we
may call them, arc subconsciously reacting to the fast-moving world we live in. and
consequently resenting change in any area of life. To some extent, this is likely to be tine. A
feeling that 'fings ain't cot they used to be' and an attempt to preserve life unchanged seem to
be natural reactions to insecurity, symptoms of growing old. Every generation inevitably
believes that the clothes, manners and speech of the following one have deteriorated. We
would therefore expect to find a respect for conservative language in every century and every
culture and, in literate societies, a reverence for the language of the 'best authors' of the past.

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Despite the fact that English has been studied and spoken by a significantly increasing number
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of population, people currently disapprove of the language alterations and over exaggerate that
language is decaying, and much of the dislike turns out to be based on social-class prejudice
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which needs to be stripped away.

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86. Small wars

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In such an environment, warfare is no longer purely directed against the military potential of

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adversarial states. It is rather directed at infiltrating all areas of their societies and to threaten

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their existences. The comparatively easy access to weapons of mass distinction, in particular

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relatively low-cost biological agents, is of key concern. Both governmental and non-

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governmental actors prefer to use force in a way that can he characterized as "unconventional"
or also as "small wars". War waged according to conventions is an interstate phenomenon. The
"small war" is the archetype of war, in which the protagonists acknowledge no rules and
permanently try to violate what conventions do exist. The protagonists of the "small war"
observe neither international standards nor arms control agreements. They make use of
territories where they do not have to fear any sanctions because there is no functioning state
to assume charge of such sanctions or because the state it question is too weak to impose such
sanction. This type of war does not provide for any warning time. lt challenges not only the
external security of the nation states and international community, but also their internal
safety.

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Unlike the interstate warfare, small wars permeate all areas of societies and arc featured with
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no rules and violations by protagonists who would violate existing conventions including
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international standards or arms control agreement, which will eventually challenge their own
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security internally and externally.

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87. The Sphinx

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The face, though better preserved than most of the statue, has been battered by centuries of

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weathering and vandalism. In 1402, an Arab historian reported that a Sufi zealot had disfigured

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it "to remedy some religious errors." Yet there are clues to what the face looked like in its

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prime. Archaeological excavations in the early 19th century found pieces of its carved stone

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beard and a royal cobra emblem from its headdress. Residues of red pigment are still visible on
the face, leading researchers to conclude that at some point, the Sphinx's entire visage was
painted red. Traces of blue and yellow paint elsewhere suggest to Lehner that the Sphinx was
once decked out in gaudy comic book colors.

For thousands of years, sand buried the colossus up to its shoulders, creating a vast
disembodied head atop the eastern edge of the Sahara. Then, in 1817, a Genoese adventurer,
Capt. Giovanni Battista Caviglia, led 160 men in the first modern attempt to dig out the Sphinx.
They could not hold back the sand, which poured into their excavation pits nearly as fast as
they could dig it out. The Egyptian archaeologist Selim Hassan finally freed the statue from the
sand in the late 1930s. "The Sphinx has thus emerged into the landscape out of shadows of
what seemed to be an impenetrable oblivion," the New York Times declared.

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The Sphinx is an Ancient Egyptian statue that was sand buried up to its shoulder until 1930
where finally emerged after many years of excavation attempts, and the archaeological
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evidences suggest it was once painted with a red headdress and a mixed color body.
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88. Turning points in Australian history

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Some "moments" seem more important in hindsight than they were at the time. David Day, for

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example, looks at John Curtin's famous "Australia looks to America" statement of December

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1941, a moment remembered as embodying a fundamental shift in Australia's strategic alliance

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away from Britain towards the US. As Day points out, the shift to the US as our primary ally was

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a long, drawn-out process, which occurred over half a century. Curtin's statement is iconic - it
represents and symbolizes the shift - but in and of itself it made almost no difference. Russell
McGregor makes similar arguments with regard to the 1967 referendum, falsely hailed in our
memories as a huge advance in Aboriginal right.

There are many other important events, which our contributors examine - the campaign to
cave the Franklin River: the landings at Gallipoli, the discovery of gold in 1851, the disastrous
Premiers' Plan designed to cope with the Great Depression, to name just a few.

Taken together, our contributors show that narrative approaches to Australian history are not
as simple as might be imagined. There is of course the issue of what should be included and
what should not be - what, after all, makes a moment or an event sufficiently important to be
included in an official narrative? Just as importantly, the moments and events that are included
in narrative histories are open to multiple interpretations.

We hope this collection will provide an important reminder to those wanting to impost, a
universal history curriculum for our schoolchildren, and indeed a lesson to all Australians
wishing to understand their nation's past: History is never simple or straightforward, and it
always resists attempts to make it so.

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There are some of the iconic moments in Australian history including the Great Depression.
John Curtin's turn to America as well as the campaign of saving the Franklin River, all of which
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indicate that history is complicated and call for more structured narrative as fundamental to
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history teaching in Australia.

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89. Phoenician alphabet

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Their trade networks made the Phoenicians rich but also enabled cultural exchange and

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transfer between East and West in an unprecedented way: the most significant was the spread

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of the alphabetic script which was adopted all over the Mediterranean.

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The Phoenician alphabet is a writing system consisting of only 22 signs representing exactly one
sound (phoneme) each. The term "alphabet" derives from the names of the first two signs in
the sequence, aleph ("cattle") and heit ("house"): these names also reflect the letters' shapes,
each derived from the picture of an object whose name starts with the relevant sound.

The alphabetic script is simple enough to learn quickly, without the years of dedicated training
required to master writing systems such as cuneiform or Egyptian hieroglyphs. Specialized
schooling was unnecessary, and literacy was therefore disengaged from the institutional
context of palaces and temples where the traditional scripts continued to be used. The
alphabet suited the needs of long-distance merchants who needed to be able to record their
business affairs on the go and who, for reasons of confidentiality and money, often preferred to
write themselves rather than employ a specialist scribe. As the script could easily be used to
record any language. It was, in the course of the first millennium BC, adapted for Aramaic,
Hebrew, Greek, Phrygian, Lydian, Etruscan and Latin, to name but a few,

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The Phoenician alphabet is a writing system that provides both simplicity and flexibility which
enabled long-distance merchants who, due to the confidential nature of their business, to
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perform on-demand record keeping in their own hands, and it was adopted all over the
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Mediterranean.
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