You're listening to special English.
Here's the news. A newly released report shows that Beijing's talent resources have steadily grown in recent years, with the number of professionals in high -end industries reaching 2 .1 million as of 2023, accounting for 26 .2 percent of the city's total talent pool.
That is according to the 2023 Beijing Talent Resource Report, jointly released by the Beijing Municipal Human Resources Research Center and the Beijing Institute of Talent Development Strategy.
The report states that the supply of skilled talent in Beijing's high -tech industries is rapidly growing, with the sectors seeing the highest increases being pharmaceuticals and health, green energy and environmental protection, and smart city.
Jiang Tianyang, director of the Beijing Municipal Human Resources Research Center, noted that the positive interaction between the talent chain and the industrial chain, fostering integrating development is one of the key characteristics of Beijing's talent resources.
In recent years, both the quantity and quality of talent in Beijing have continued to improve.
According to Jiong, the talent dividend is gradually replacing the population dividend as the primary driver of high -quality development in the city, underscoring the strategic importance of talent led growth.
The latest report offers a comprehensive analysis of Beijing's talent resources, highlighting key characteristics of the city's talent landscape through six specific indicators, including total talent resources, the proportion of highly skilled talent, and the percentage of the working age population with higher education.
The statistics encompass a broad category of professionals including government officials, business management professionals, technical specialists, as well as skilled workers, talents in rural areas, and social workers.
This is special English.
China's autonomous driving technology developer, Pony AI, has announced that the firm had been granted permission to initiate expressway testing of unmanned truck platoons, the first such testing in China.
The platoons, led by manned vehicles, start self -driving freight service testing on the Beijing Tianjin Tanggu Expressway.
Pony AI's autonomous trucks, goods, which transport goods daily between Beijing and Tianjin in the north of China, have delivered nearly 500 standard container units of real freight orders, and accumulated over 45 ,000 kilometers of autonomous driving mileage on this route.
By the end of 2024, its autonomous trucks had amassed more than five million kilometers of road testing mileage and transported over 860 million ton kilometers of cargo.
Pony AI now offers paid autonomous shuttle services at Beijing Da Xing International Airport and conducts autonomous driving tests on key high -speed routes linked to Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport.
According to forecasts from global consultancy firm IHS Market, the value of China's self -driving taxi service industry is expected to amount to 1 .3 trillion yuan, about a hundred and eighty billion US dollars, by 2030, accounting for 60 % of the entries ride hailing market at the time.
You're listening to Special English.
A collaborative team of scientists from China and other countries has mapped the most refined chimpanzee brain atlas to date, providing novel insights into the evolution of the human brain.
The study has been published in the journal, The Innovation.
Chimpanzees are one of humans' closest living relatives.
Despite having a brain that is only about 1 third the size of a human's, they share many similarities with humans in neuroanatomy and cognitive functions, making them an important and comparison point for understanding human brain evolution.
Fen -Ling Zhong, corresponding author of the study, said that a major challenge in current cross -species neuroscience research is the absence of standardized brain reference systems with biological significance.
Based on the concept of using brain connectivity information to construct brain atlases, researchers have successfully developed the Chimpanzee brain tome atlas.
Leveraging this new resource they found substantial differences in connectivity patterns between chimpanzees and humans across most association cortices, highlighting more complex and nuanced connectivity changes in brain evolution than previously understood.
Fen, also a researcher at the Institute of Automation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the Atlas would serve as a valuable resource for neuroscience research, and offer new insights into the unique characteristics of the human brain.
Australian and Chinese scientists have made a breakthrough in solving the mystery of how the landscape of Mars evolved over billions of years.
In a study published in Geophysical Research Letters, researchers from the Australian National University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences analyzed seismic activity on Mars, known as The team located a cluster of six marsquakes in the planet's southern highlands which cover about two -thirds of the surface of Mars.
The researchers said that the marsquakes indicate that the differences in the geography between the southern and northern regions of Mars, a phenomenon known as the Mars dichotomy, were likely shaped by the transfer of heat in the planet's inner layers.
According to a co -author of the study from the Australian National International University, the data from these marsquakes, when compared with the well -documented northern hemisphere marsquakes, has revealed how the planets southern hemisphere is significantly hotter compared to its northern hemisphere and understanding whether where convection is taking place, offers clues into how Mars has evolved into its current state over billions of years.
He added that there are two competing hypotheses to explain why the southern hemisphere of Mars has a thicker crust and is 5 -6 km higher in elevation than the northern hemisphere.
The first hypothesis, the endogenic hypothesis, states that the transfer of heat in the interior of Mars billions of years ago formed the dichotomy.
The second, the exogenic hypothesis, believes that events in space shaped the differences.
The co -author said that the new findings are the first observational evidence supporting the endogenic theory.
You're listening to Special English.
Nearly a hundred and twenty Baers poachers, which are critically endangered diving ducks, have been observed wintering in Hongxue Lake National nature reserve in North China's Hebei province.
Images of the wintering ducks were captured by a shutterbug who later provided the footage to the Wetland Ecological Monitoring Division ñ under the Resource Protection Bureau of Heng Shui's lakeside new area.
The Bayeir's poacher is classified as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species.
The Bayer's poacher population at Hengshui Lake was first discovered by research teams back in 2000, while the flock sighted recently is the largest recorded at this lake since 2018.
Zhang Yuguang, head of the Wetland Ecological Monitoring Division, said that the sighting underscores the health of Hengxue Lake's ecosystem, as Beyer's poachards are extremely sensitive to the environment.
Hengshui Lake is a national nature reserve that maintains an intact wetland ecosystem encompassing swamps, water bodies, tidal flats, meadows and forests.
It serves as an important stopover for migratory birds along the East Asian–Astraleasian flyway with 336 bird species recorded at this location to date.
This is Special English.
One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told.
Still remember the nursery rhyme?
It's amazing how magpies could be symbols of happiness and good luck in one culture, yet a sign of bad luck in others.
Despite these differences, many cultures agree on one thing.
Magpies are birds deeply associated with luck.
On a typical early spring morning in Beijing, after a long cold winter, residents happily wake up to the chirping of some birds in the wee hours.
Maybe not everybody, not until they know that one of the merry making noises comes from magpies.
Just imagine outside of the windows.
The sun is shining much closer.
New leaves are budding.
A light but visible shade of green begins to cover trees and lawns.
Magnolia flowers are secretly in bloom.
Days are growing longer.
Temperatures are getting higher.
It's the time of the year to make all sorts of plans.
How would you feel if you were in this place?
Believe it or not, Chinese people enjoy seeing the magpie.
They love the bird even though it's a proud member of the crow family, a fact they are now aware of.
Interestingly, while magpies bring joy and good luck, their crow relatives have long been seen as omens of misfortune.
Chinese magpies, with their elegant appearance and sweet calls, are easy to love.
A simple sighting, a magpie perched in a tree, flying by, or ideally seen in pairs can make one feel incredibly lucky.
But why this affection?
The secret lies in the magpie's Chinese name.
shǐ cui, cui means bird and shǐ means happiness and joy.
That name counts as a first successful step in the development of its personal brand, right?
Now you might ask why this name?
Some believe that the noise or music they make sounds like they're uttering the Chinese words for good things that will happen to your household.
Thus, if you hear one magpie sing, then it foretells happiness and good luck.
There are three types of magpies to be found in Beijing, which is a great place for birdwatching, by the way.
The black build magpie, the azure winged magpie, and the red build blue magpie.
The first two types are the most common.
but no matter which type of magpie, the bird is a symbol of good luck and good fortune.
A Chinese saying goes, when the magpie arrives, good fortune will follow.
It's believed to be lucky if a magpie builds its nest near your home, and if you're planning something important and see a magpie, it's thought to be a sign of encouragement.
Go for it, you'll succeed.
Superstitious? Perhaps.
But the positive energy it brings can feel very real.
Magpies are also celebrated in art.
Their images appear in paper cutouts for window decorations and traditional Chinese paintings.
Often, they're paired with other symbols to create auspicious meanings.
For example, the image of a magpie resting on a plum tree reflects the idiom xi shang mei xiao, which means happiness jumps onto the eyebrows.
The Chinese word for plum in the image and the one for eyebrow in the idiom are both pronounced meh creating a charming pun.
Similarly, two magpies on a tree near a door symbolize shuang -xi -lin -men, suggesting two lucky events happen at the same time.
Now you can understand why magpies are cherished as auspicious birds in Chinese culture.
So the next time you see a magpie or a pair, pause for a moment, you might just be witnessing a little piece of luck in flight.
You're listening to Special English.
That's the end of this edition of Special English.
To recap, I'm going to read one of the news items again at normal speed.
Please listen carefully.
A newly released report shows that Beijing's talent resources have steadily grown in recent years with the number of professionals in high -end industries reaching 2 .1 million as of 2023, accounting for 26 .2 percent of the city's total talent pool.
That's according to the 2023 Beijing Talent Resource Report, jointly released by the Beijing Municipal Human Resources Research Center and the Beijing Institute of Talent Development Strategy.
The report states that the supply of skilled talent in Beijing's high -tech industries is rapidly growing, with the sector seeing the highest increases being pharmaceuticals and health, green energy, and environmental protection, and smart city.
Zhang Tianyang, director of the Beijing Municipal Human Resources Research Center, noted that the positive interaction between the talent chain and the industrial chain, fostering integrated development, is one of the key characteristics of Beijing's talent resources.
In recent years, both the quantity and quality of talent in Beijing have continued to improve.
According to Zhang, the talent dividend is gradually replacing the population dividend as the primary driver of high -quality development in the city, underscoring the strategic importance of talent -led growth.
The latest report offers a comprehensive analysis of Beijing's talent resources, highlighting key characteristics of the city's talent landscape through six specific indicators, including total talent resources, the proportion of highly skilled talent, and the percentage of the working age population with higher education.
The statistics encompass a broad category of professionals, including government officials, business management professionals, technical specialists, as well as skilled workers, talents in rural areas, and social workers.
This is the end of today's program.
I hope you'll join us every day to learn English at a slower pace.
