English News Bulletin No 2 – Minhdz

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Table of Content
1-City crows may have high cholesterol because they eat fast food
2-How to Read 2 Books a Week
3-Hong Kong Officer Fires Shot, and Police Use Water Cannons at Protest
4-Inside China's attempt to boost crop yields with electric fields

1-City crows may have high cholesterol because they eat fast food

Crows may have higher cholesterol because they eat our leftover fast food
Crows living in urban areas have higher blood cholesterol levels than their rural counterparts. That may be due to
humans feeding them, and the fast food we leave behind.
Crows are “experts at raiding human trash cans and dumpsters,” says Andrea Townsend at Hamilton College in
New York. Some of the food they scavenge is fast food, which is often high in cholesterol, but it’s unclear how
this may be affecting the birds’ health.
Townsend and her colleagues measured cholesterol in blood samples taken from 140 crow nestlings in rural,
suburban and urban areas in California. They also measured the birds’ body mass and fat reserves, and tracked
their survival rates. They found that the more urban the surroundings, the higher the blood cholesterol in the crow
nestlings living there.
To see if access to the kinds of foods that raise cholesterol in humans were responsible, the team ran a
“cheeseburger supplementation experiment” where they left McDonald’s cheeseburgers near nests in rural New
York. Elevated cholesterol doesn’t appear to affect all species in the same way, and has actually been linked to
better body conditions in some animals, so Townsend didn’t have reservations about leaving behind burgers for
the nestlings.
The burger-fed crows had higher cholesterol than nearby rural crows that weren’t given fast food. Those that ate
the burgers had cholesterol levels more similar to crows living in cities, being about 5 per cent higher than their
burger-deficient neighbours.
Townsend says these results are consistent with the handful of other studies on cholesterol in animals that live in
near humans, including foxes, sparrows and even sea turtles living near more densely populated Canary Islands.

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“All of these species tend to have higher cholesterol levels in places where they interact with people,” says
Townsend. Previous research has shown that places with higher human population density also have a higher
proportion of processed food waste.
She and her team found that while urban crows had lower survival rates overall, the cholesterol didn’t seem to
hurt the crows, and even boosted the body condition of the nestlings, leaving them a little plumper.
Still, Townsend doesn’t recommend flinging burgers to birds at the park. “We know that excessive cholesterol
causes disease in humans, but we don’t know what level would be ‘excessive’ in a wild bird,” says Townsend.
“It is also possible that, if elevated cholesterol does have negative effects, they would show up later. In humans,
it can take many years for excessive cholesterol to lead to disease.”
Jukka Jokimäki at the University of Lapland in Finland was surprised the fast food didn’t have a bigger negative
influence on the birds’ health. “There are probably some other urban-related factors that are more important for
the crows,” says Jokimäki, adding that other aspects of city life may tax crows’ health, such as car collisions and
disease.
***

2-How to Read 2 Books a Week

Most of my friends know I’m interested in Stoic philosophy. When one of them wants to start learning about the
subject, they’ll ask me something like: “Which one should I read first — Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, or Epictetus?”
My answer: Buy them all. Read them all.
If you’re reading less than you want, you’re not the only one. I love books, but since I graduated from college, I
read fewer books each year. Loving books doesn’t always correspond to actually reading them, it turns out: My
work and life got in the way of reading as much as I wanted. One year I looked at my Goodreads page and noticed
that I had read only five books in the entire year. I was appalled.
I set myself a goal of reading 100 books a year. That’s actually quite reasonable once you break it down: Most
people read 50 pages an hour. If you read 10 hours a week, you’ll read 26,000 pages a year. Let’s say the average
book you read is 250 pages. In this scenario, that adds up to 104 books in a year.
Here’s how to do it.
Buy books in bulk
Reading can be a costly habit. To fully engage with it, you need to think of books as an investment — and the
more books you have in your home, the greater your return will be. Buying books in bulk is a strategy I’ve learned
over the years.
The idea is simple: If you have more books in your house, you’ll have more choices, and this will help you read
more. Here’s why: Most of the books you read are not planned in advance. You don’t sit down in January and
say: “The first week of June I’ll read this book.” You finish a book, look you at your inventory, and decide what
you’re in the mood to read next. Don’t overthink the decision — you’ll end up reading reviews for hours, which
is a waste of time.
Having an inventory of books keeps up the momentum, and it means you never have an excuse not to read. A
book is only a waste of money if you don’t read it.
A(always) B(be) R(reading)

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You might have heard the term “ABC” from David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross: Always Be Closing. Many
salespeople and entrepreneurs live by that motto.
I live by a different motto: Always Be Reading.
To me, that means fitting in at least an hour of reading time on weekdays, and more during the weekend and on
holidays. Find a way to read around your schedule and your life situation, but don’t make excuses or rest on the
notion that you’re too busy.
Everyone has downtime that could be filled with reading:
• Read on the train
• Read while you’re eating
• Read at the doctor’s office
• Read on the toilet
• Read on your work breaks
In general, think of any waiting or idle time as time that could be spent with a book. While everyone else is
scrolling through Twitter or checking Instagram for the 113th time that day, get in a few pages. It’s certainly a
better use of those few minutes.
Don’t force it
I don’t like to call any book bad, even if I thoroughly disliked it, because every book is the result of a significant
amount of writing and editing labor.
But not everyone is going to enjoy every book, and your tastes might run counter to what’s popular. Maybe a
book is a bestseller or a classic, but you can’t stand the writing. Or maybe you’re interested in a book, but you’re
not in the right frame of mind to read it just yet.
In any case: Don’t read out of a sense of duty, or force yourself to read something you don’t want to read. If you
can’t muster any interest when you flip through the pages, don’t waste your time.
Instead, pick up something you’re excited about. If you don’t know what that looks like, start by seeking out
books that are related to your profession, hobbies, or interests, or written by people you admire.
Read multiple books simultaneously
I might read 50 pages of one book in the morning and then read another book in the afternoon. At times, I’m
reading up to five books at once.
Some people prefer to read one book cover to cover before moving on to something new, but there’s no rule that
says things have to be done that way, and you might find yourself reading more if you can tailor the material to
your needs and moods over the course of a day or week. If you’re in the middle of a dense history, for example,
you might want to unwind on a Sunday morning with some lighter fiction.
There are times when I want to tackle, and carefully annotate, a book about investing, but that doesn’t mean I
want to be sitting in bed at night with a highlighter. If I did, I’d be up way too late, my mind buzzing with all the
new things I was learning. Instead, at night, I reach for a book that quiets my thoughts.
Retain what you’ve read

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It’s easy to read fast and then forget everything you’ve taken in just as fast. Reading is an investment of time and
money that only pays off if you can remember what you’ve read.
To retain the knowledge and information you absorb from your books, it helps to have a system. This is how I do
it:
• When you read a book, use a pen to make notes in the margins and highlight important lines. Especially
if you’re reading digitally, be aware of over-highlighting — just because it’s easy, you shouldn’t highlight
everything you find slightly interesting. Limit yourself to “aha” moments only.
• If you read something you want to make sure you remember, fold the top or bottom corner of the page. If
you’re reading digitally, take a picture and store it in a note-taking app.
• When you finish the book, go back to the pages with the folds and skim your notes.
• Write down in your own words what the book is about or, if applicable, what advice the author is giving.
• Copy the quotes that stand out the most to you.
The point is to help you process the information so you can use it later. You read because you want to learn from
other people’s experience.
Otto von Bismarck put it best: “Fools learn from experience. I prefer to learn from the experience of others.”
***

3-Hong Kong Officer Fires Shot, and Police Use Water Cannons at Protest
HONG KONG — Hong Kong police officers on Sunday drew pistols on protesters who were charging them with
sticks, and one fired a warning shot into the air after another officer fell, as a weekend of violent clashes brought
an end to nearly two weeks of restraint.
The police on Sunday fired rounds of tear gas and plastic bullets at protesters who threw bricks and firebombs.
They also used water cannon trucks for the first time since protests began in June. What were initially
demonstrations over an unpopular bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China have since
expanded to include demands for greater democracy in the semiautonomous Chinese region.
The confrontations in the Tsuen Wan area followed a peaceful march by over 10,000 people. But in a pattern that
has been established for months, more aggressive protesters began building barriers on city streets using sidewalk
railings and bamboo poles. Soon, large numbers of police officers in riot gear arrived.
Police used water cannon trucks for the first time since the protests began in June. They also drew guns on
protesters who were charging at them with sticks. The violent weekend followed a period of relatively peaceful
marches.CreditCreditLam Yik Fei for The New York Times
By early evening, the air was swirling with tear gas. The police unleashed water cannons against barriers and in
the general direction of protesters.
“I don’t totally agree with what students do now, such as throwing bricks,” said Celine Wong, 38, a nurse at a
private clinic who joined the march. “However, what they do is eclipsed by the violence performed by the
government now.”

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As the protest appeared to subside at night, a small group of demonstrators smashed up the entryway of a mah-
jongg parlor they said had sheltered men who had attacked them weeks earlier. Then a group clashed with the
police.
Jay Lau, 30, said he saw a small group of officers fighting with protesters wielding bamboo sticks and metal rods.
The protesters were pushing the officers down Sha Tsui Road when, suddenly, Mr. Lau said, he heard a gunshot.
He said he did not see who fired.
Speaking to reporters early Monday, a police spokeswoman said that six officers raised their revolvers, and that
one fired a warning shot into the air after the protesters had put the officers’ lives in danger.
“The escalating illegal and violent acts of radical protesters are not only outrageous, they also push Hong Kong
to the verge of a very dangerous situation,” the police said in a statement.
The episode mirrored a similar encounter in 2016, when a police officer drew his gun and fired into the air after
a colleague was charged by protesters.
Earlier Sunday, people who said they were relatives of the Hong Kong police rallied under pouring rain to criticize
the government for its inability to find a solution to the crisis that has left front-line officers clashing with
protesters for weeks on end.
The protests began in June over a bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China. Since suspending
the legislation that set off the protests, Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, has done little to respond to the protests,
leaving the police force as the most public face of the government.
The protest by police supporters on Sunday was small, with about 200 people attending, and police officials said
it did not represent the views of the whole force. But the organizers’ concerns that respect for the police force is
eroding can be seen in confrontational protests, when officers are often bombarded with abuse from residents and
bystanders.
Ivy Yuen, 40, works for a trading company in Hong Kong and has regularly attended this summer’s protests. But
she came to the police families’ rally on Sunday because, she said, she could sympathize with the difficult position
that officers had found themselves in.
“There are still some good policemen working for Hong Kong,” she said. “Unfortunately, the government chooses
not to do anything.”
“We are all so helpless in this moment,” she continued, “everybody in Hong Kong: those against the protesters,
the protesters themselves, the police, everybody.”
A march on Saturday ended with the police firing tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters who had thrown rocks
and at least one gasoline bomb. That clash ended a nearly two-week period of relative calm that saw some
standoffs, but not the use of tear gas.
It also followed two large, peaceful demonstrations that showed the continued strength and unity of the protest
movement: a march by hundreds of thousands one week ago and the formation of human chains, illuminated by
cellphone lights, across miles of Hong Kong on Friday.
The police said that in Saturday’s protests, they arrested 19 men and 10 women, ages 17 to 52, during dispersal
operations in the Kwun Tong, Wong Tai Sin and Sham Shui Po neighborhoods. A friend of Ventus Lau, the
organizer of the Kwun Tong march, said he had also been arrested.
On Sunday, the police arrested 36 people, ages 12 to 48.

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The rally by supporters of the police, organized under the slogan “We Are Not Enemies,” criticized the
government’s use of the police force to manage a political crisis. Its organizers called for an independent
committee to investigate the cause of the protests and the official response, and said that misbehavior by some
officers was causing the relationship between police officers and the public to “fall into a tragic abyss.”
Police commanders distanced the force from the event. Foo Yat-ting, a senior police superintendent, said, “It does
not represent the police force or the four police associations at all.”
Mrs. Lam said on Saturday that she had met with a group of people, identified in local news reports as former
officials and some prominent politicians, to hear ideas for building “a platform for dialogue.”
“I know that in the current predicament, the grievances of the community are deep,” she wrote on Facebook,
adding that some people were “very unhappy” with the government’s unwillingness to respond to protesters’
demands, including a full withdrawal of the extradition bill.
“I don’t expect conversations to easily untie the knot, stop demonstrations, or provide solutions to problems, but
to continue to struggle is not a way forward,” she added.
Hong Kong’s subway operator said on Sunday that for the second day in a row it was closing stops in an area
where a police-authorized protest was planned. Chinese state news media had been highly critical of the subway
operator, the MTR Corporation, after special service trains were used to disperse protesters from a station in the
satellite town of Yuen Long on Wednesday.
That special train service helped prevent a clash on Wednesday, but the subway operator was denounced by The
People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, as “working hand in glove with rioters.”
The MTR Corporation said on Sunday that it was closing three stations served by two lines in the Tsuen Wan
area because of the protests, after closing four stations in the Kwun Tong area on Saturday. The closings were
criticized not just for preventing participation in authorized protests, but also for inconveniencing other rail users.
Graffiti in the Choi Hung station called the MTR “party rail.”
Adi Lau, the MTR operations director, said in a message posted Saturday on Facebook that the violence and
vandalism in MTR stations in recent months had been “the biggest challenge that MTR had faced in four decades.”
He said the decision to close stations was done in conjunction with the police force and other government
departments, and was made out of safety considerations, including concerns from employees who felt threatened.
The MTR also obtained a court injunction on Friday against anyone interfering with train operations, damaging
property or causing disturbances. Two weeks ago the airport authority also obtained an interim injunction to
restrict access after protests led to canceled flights, chaos and violence in the airport.
***

4-Inside China's attempt to boost crop yields with electric fields

AT FIRST blush, the huge commercial greenhouse on the outskirts of Beijing doesn’t seem unusual. Inside,
lettuces sit in neat rows and light pours in through the glass above. But there is a soft hum and an intense feeling
in the air, almost as if a thunderstorm is on the way. The most obvious sign that this is no ordinary growing space
is the high-voltage electrical wiring strung over the crops.
This place may be different, but it is far from unique. Over the past few years, greenhouses like this have sprouted
up across China, part of a government-backed project to boost the yield of crops by bathing them in the invisible
electric fields that radiate from power cables. From cucumbers to radishes, the results are, apparently, incredible.

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“The overall quality is excellent,” says Liu Binjiang, the lead scientist on the project. “We’re really entering a
golden age for this technology.”
Using electricity to boost plant growth – not by powering heaters or sprinkler systems, but simply by exposing
plants to an electric field – is an old idea. It is also controversial. Electroculture was tested in Europe many decades
ago and found wanting, with the results too inconsistent to be any use. The mechanism was also mysterious: no
one knew how or why electric fields might boost growth. So what exactly is going on in China’s new greenhouses?
Can you really improve agriculture through the power of electric fields – and if so, how?
It was Finnish physicist Karl Selim Lemström who introduced the world to the idea of electroculture in the 1880s.
He was studying the northern lights in Lapland when he noticed that trees grew well there in spite of the short
growing season. He suggested it might be because of the electrical field produced by charged particles rushing
into Earth’s atmosphere to create the aurora. Lemström carried out tests with plants growing under electric wires
and achieved mixed results. In one experiment conducted in a field in Burgundy, France, he saw that “carrots
gave an increase of 125 per cent and peas 75 per cent”.
In 1896, a reporter for the North American Review breathlessly described Lemström’s work and that of rivals in
France and Russia, writing: “Gardens that have been stimulated by the atmospheric electricity… have increased
their growth and products by fifty per cent. Vineyards have been experimented upon, and the grapes produced
have not only been larger in size and quantity, but richer in sugar and alcohol. The flowers have attained a richer
perfume and more brilliant colours.”
Before long the results were replicated in the UK. The botanist J.H. Priestley reported a 17 per cent increased
yield of cucumbers with Lemström’s technique, while physicist Oliver Lodge cultivated a large field of wheat
with wires strung above it and saw a 24 per cent boost in the grain harvest. The words in the North American
Review seemed to ring true: “It is difficult to explain why the electric current so marvellously affects the growth
of plants, but the fact that such stimulation does occur cannot be denied.”
At the end of the first world war in 1918, the UK set up the Electro-Culture Committee, a group of scientists and
farmers, and asked it to find out whether electroculture was worth pursuing. The committee experimented through
the 1920s with wheat, oats, peas and potatoes, but the results were frustratingly inconsistent. This, together with
the cost of electricity, eventually doomed electroculture. “Increases of 20 per cent can hardly be considered
economic even if obtained in most years,” said the committee’s final report in 1936. Nevertheless, the scientists
seemed to think the effect was real, if erratic.
The US Department of Agriculture conducted some experiments at Arlington Experimental Farm, near
Washington DC, but these, too, were difficult to interpret. Many patents were taken out, but the technique never
took off in the US either.
“Plants may take applied electric fields as a signal of impending rainfall”
Research in electroculture slowed to a trickle for some 50 years. Then, in the 1980s, Liu began looking into the
technique as a researcher at the Inner Mongolia Agricultural University in Hohhot, China. He says he had been
fascinated by the effect of lightning on soil nutrients, and began looking into whether electricity boosted the
growth of wheat and barley. Around this time, the Chinese government began giving out grants in agricultural
science, allowing him to expand his study.
Power plants
Liu began developing what he calls the “space electric field” method. There is usually a natural vertical electric
potential gradient in the air of about 100 volts per metre. Liu began setting up experiments in greenhouses where
that was increased to between 700 and 20,000 volts per metre. Electrical wires were strung above the crops and
the field emanated from these. He began seeing impressive improvements in crop yields: increases in lettuce and
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cucumber by up to 40 per cent, and similar improvements for potato, radish and fennel. Liu worked with a
company in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen to develop a commercial generator to power the wires in 2000.
Within a few years, electroculture greenhouses were being set up in Beijing, Dalian and Tianjin.
The motivation wasn’t just to increase yields, though. In China, there is widespread public wariness about food
safety, following several high-profile incidents in which illegal pesticides were found on produce. Fruit and
vegetables are almost never eaten raw or unpeeled out of concern over harmful chemicals. Because of this, there
was interest in electroculture as a possible alternative to pesticides. “There’s a big focus on eco-friendly farming
right now,” says Liu. “We are looking at how to combine physics-based and biological techniques to reduce
pesticide use, while still maintaining crop yield.”
In 2013, Liu, now based at the Dalian City Academy of Agricultural Sciences, introduced a second electroculture
technique called “charged cultivation”. This involves overhead wires again, but this time the current they generate
runs through the plants, says Tong Yuxin at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAS), which is
supporting Liu’s work. Touch the plants, and you would get a mild shock. This effect drives insects away, says
Liu. The electric field also removes microorganisms from the greenhouse air, he says, because when an electric
field is discharged, it produces radicals, chemical species that can kill airborne bacteria. A report from CAS this
year looking at electroculture says the yields of crops are generally increased by 30 per cent.
It isn’t easy to assess the scientific validity of Liu’s work. He and his colleagues haven’t published much of their
research in international journals, though he has published more than 100 papers in China. New Scientist asked
several Chinese-speaking plant scientists to look at these. They found the research unconvincing. “The statistics
were generally weak and replications were not clear,” says plant scientist Yang Aijun at CSIRO, Australia’s
national science agency.
Yet Liu isn’t the only researcher working on electroculture. Erika Bustos at the Centre of Research and
Technological Development in Electrochemistry in Querataro state, Mexico, has been exploring its effects on
Arabidopsis thaliana. This small flowering plant is a member of the same family as cabbages and is often used as
a botanical guinea pig. In a 2016 study, Bustos set up trays of the plants and stuck electrodes in the soil at either
end to create an electrical circuit. It was a small trial and a different method to Liu’s, but the plants did growfaster
and thicker, as long as the current wasn’t cranked up too high. Bustos says she and her colleagues also have
unpublished results showing that electrodes in the soil can increase the yield of wheat and maize by up to 85 per
cent.
Grow with the flow
Let’s assume something is going on. How could this effect work? We know that plants make use of electricity.
Some plant cells build up and release electric charge by moving ions like calcium and magnesium around their
cells. It is thought that this plays a role in signalling throughout the plant, and some people even suggest that
electrical signals could form the basis of plant memories. We have recently also discovered that tomato plants
pass electrical signals to each other through the soil via their roots. This shows the flow of electricity is important
to plants. It is harder to see how an external electric field would boost their growth.
“Lettuce and cucumber yields increased by up to 40 per cent”
There is one good reason why it might, at least according to ideas developed in the 1990s by Andrew Goldsworthy,
a now-retired plant scientist who worked at Imperial College London. His suggestion was that it would be
beneficial for plants to ramp up their growth following a thunderstorm when there is a lot of rain. Rather than the
standard 100 volts per metre electrical field gradient in the atmosphere, a storm can produce a gradient of several
hundred volts per metre or more. Goldsworthy reasoned that plants might have evolved to sense the change in
field. He conducted experiments with tobacco plants in 1991 in which he showed that applying a weak external

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field changed the pattern of calcium ion currents in the plants. He reckoned this might be how they sensed electric
fields.
If he was right, it might explain why the electroculture experiments in the early 20th century were so mixed. The
plants would have taken the applied electric fields as a signal of impending rain, and when it didn’t come, that
might have affected them negatively.
Still, this is all conjecture. Biophysicist Ellard Hunting at the University of Bristol, UK, says there is no detailed
understanding of how growth might be enhanced by electric fields. “The mechanisms that underpin these
observations remain largely elusive,” he says. “But there is definitely a very interesting interaction between plants
and their electrical environment – time will tell how this might actually benefit agriculture.”
Jean Yong at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala takes a more optimistic view. “In a
nutshell, plants do respond to electrical fields,” he says. It is logical, he says, that an electric field could speed up
the flow of crucial nutrient ions like nitrate or calcium. “But there is no concrete or published data to prove the
phenomenon.”
Although economics did for electroculture in the early 20th century, electricity is now far cheaper and less
polluting. Yet even with that stumbling block removed, there are plenty of other ways to boost crop yields, from
adding more fertiliser to increasing the carbon dioxide in greenhouses. How electroculture compares is unclear
for the moment. If it does turn out to be a good option, the evidence might well come from those greenhouses
scattered across China, where the charged air quietly hums above the greenery.