Vocabulary Learning Strategies

In times of the internet a language student might feel a bit overwhelmed because there are simply too many options for vocabulary learning to choose from. However, as an advanced learner of English, I have managed to develop some effective methods and techniques for expanding my trove of English lexical items. Some of them might be helpful for you too, so keep on reading if you are not quite sure how to improve and expand your vocabulary.

To begin with, I would like to give you an overview of my most effective strategies and tools to…

…look up new words and phrases: I have to admit that for my initial research I usually use the online dictionary of Pons whenever I encounter a word or a phrase I am not familiar with. However, in order to get a deeper understanding of the word or phrase I then turn to the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Out of all the corpora we had a look at with Ursula, COCA is definitely my favorite one. It seems to me that this corpus is very helpful for language learners, because it allows you, for instance, to sort the results in various ways, to look for all kinds of collocations, to compare words and to look for different kinds of language, for example spoken or academic language. What I like most about COCA is the fact that it provides so many example sentences. Currently, the corpus contains 450 million words of text. 

…store new words and phrases: When it comes to storing new words and phrases I might just be a little old-fashioned. I like creating glossaries either on the computer or by hand, which provide the translation of a word or phrase as well as additional information, such as synonyms, antonyms, frequent collocations and example sentences. Although this is quite time-consuming, glossaries are a great way of storing information and the process of creating a glossary allows me to memorize most of the new words and phrases right away.

Besides glossaries, I also frequently use vocabulary.com, which is the quickest and most intelligent way of improving one’s vocabulary I have encountered so far. In a few seconds it basically provides all the information necessary to learn a new word or phrase, from definitions and synonyms to frequent collocations and numerous up-to-date example sentences. What is more, you can create your own vocabulary lists and learn them in varied ways.

…memorize new words and phrases: Again, this might seem a little "old-school", but I memorize new words and phrases best when I have a printed version of a glossary or list containing all the new vocabulary and go through the words one by one. In the first round I usually go through all of the words ticking off the ones I remembered and marking all the ones I did not remember with a cross in pencil. In the second round I exclusively focus on the words with a cross next to them and I basically keep going through them until there are no crosses left, because I have erased them all and chaged them all to ticks. What really helps me to quickly memorize new words and phrases is seeing them in context. So, good example sentences are essential.

The reason I prefer learning new vocabulary from a printed version and not from my laptop is that looking up and storing new words and phrases on the laptop takes so much time that once I have finished, I am really glad I can finally turn off it off. I am also not keen on using apps for studying vocabulary, because I do not want to stare into my phone for hours and hours.

Last but not least, I would say there are five characteristics which define a successful language learner. First of all, he or she is usually an independent and eager learner, who is always keen on improving his language skills and constantly seeking new knowledge. Furthermore, he or she tries to include his or her foreign language(s) in his or her daily activities as much as possible, for example by reading foreign newspapers, watching movies or the news in the original version, listening to podcasts, chatting or skyping with friends from abroad on a regular basis. Thirdly, a good language learner works very hard at improving his or her accent in order to sound more and more like a native speaker. Finally, he or she is preferably a life-long learner, who values the regular written and spoken use of the foreign language(s). The most important characteristic a good language learner should have is a certain passion for languages in general, which will be the driving force behind his language acquisition. I try to always keep these five characteristics in mind in order to improve and expand my English vocabulary on a regular basis and not just when the next exam is getting closer and closer. 

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Space hotels

What will space hotels offer?
Space hotels will offer basically the same as hotels on Earth. That is to say, there will be private rooms, you'll get your meals and there might even be bars and wellness areas. However, despite the incredibly high costs, staying in a space hotel will scarcely be a five-star luxury. For example, the meals space tourists will get will be prepared on Earth and reheated in microwave ovens in space. What is more, showers will be carefully sealed affairs to prevent water from floating around the hotel's interior. Nevertheless, there will be much compensation.
Space tourists will be able to enjoy the stupendous view over the Earth and space, they will profit from new kinds of entertainment, such as specially created space sports adapted to zero gravity or even walking around in space, and - of course - they will profit from the possibility of experiencing zero gravity. Space tourists will experience zero gravity during their whole stay in a space hotel unless artificial gravity is provided which might happen at some point using rotating structures as the basis for space hotels. However, this idea still far from becoming reality. Space tourists will also be able to see 16 sunrises and sunsets a day considering that space hotels are intended to orbit around the Earth and that one orbit around the Earth takes 90 minutes.

What will space hotels look like?
Space hotels will develop over time. In the beginning space hotels will most likely look like lodges and only a few guests will be able to be accommodated. 

However, within time they will probably grow bigger in size and look more and more like the hotels we know from Earth. Thus, more guests will be able to be accommodated. Interestingly, basic accommodation in orbit was already designed in 1973. The 'Skylab' space station looked like this: 

Today various designs of possible space hotels look like this:
 

What I find really interesting is that zero gravity will allow architects to build space hotels in almost any shape, size and direction. So, I guess being an architect in the future will be really fun as architects will be able to take their creativity to the next level. Nonetheless, they will also have to come up with some pretty good ideas about how to build, for example, showers or toilets, in the weightless environment of space hotels. (Galactic Suite planned on building a spa filled with water bubbles drifting through the air instead of traditional showers.)
  
This all sounds really great, but how realistic are space hotels?
In 2007 a company from Barcelona called Galactic Suite Limited announced that they were planning on realizing the first space hotel ever in 2012. Today, two years after the originally announced opening, there is still no space hotel in realistic sight.
In 2011 Russian engineers revealed their plans to put a space hotel into orbit 200 miles above Earth by 2016. The hotel would only consist of four rooms and would house up to seven guests. I guess we will have to wait and see how that goes.  
What's for sure is that a lot of progress has been made over the last few years and that most of the technology needed to realize space hotels is available. Thus, someday someone will most likely bring tourists to space, but it may be farther off than we think. Unfortunately creating space hotels requires a lot of money, expertise and careful testing. All of these factors are significantly setting back the realization of space hotels. 

Will staying in space hotels be affordable for ordinary people?

I am sorry to disappoint you, but unless you are a millionaire or are going to win the lottery you probably won't be able to visit a space hotel any time soon. Rich people will be the privileged ones to travel to space for recreational or leisure purposes until the commercialization of space tourism because staying in space hotels will not exactly come cheaply. 
The Russian engineers who plan on realizing a space hotel by 2016 announced, for example, that space tourists will have to pay 500,000 pounds to travel on a Soyuz rocket to get to the hotel before paying another 100,000 pounds for a five-day stay. In comparison to the Galactic Suite offer which will cost you at least three million euros, the Russian offer is quite cheap.


(http://www.spacefuture.com/tourism/hotels.shtml, http://science.howstuffworks.com/hotel-orbit-earth.htm, http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/aug/27/space-hotel-rich-thrill-world)

The importance of space tourism

Experiencing microgravity, relaxing in a space hotel, looking at the Earth floating in space - travelling to space for recreational or leisure purposes really does sound like a unique adventure. But why would anybody want to create a space tourism industry in the first place and how does society benefit from it?

There are a lot of assumptions about the potential importance of space tourism:

1. Space tourism might become a very lucrative and quickly growing business industry which would generate millions and millions of dollars. 
2. The commercialization of space tourism would significantly decrease the high costs for travelling to space and would not only allow rich, but also ordinary people to travel to space. 
3. Achieving the technological and operational advances required to serve the market of space tourism would allow creating new activities and programs, such as space solar power, space sports, human solar system exploration and settlement.
4. Space tourism is a large industry that would create numerous new job opportunities. 
5. It would give rise to new ideas about what to do in space and how to go about doing them. 
6. Space tourism might be a profitable market to expand life throughout the solar system. With space tourism falling in price and continuous advancements being made in technology, space migration and colonization would become more and more realistic.

To sum up, space tourism is a potentially very lucrative industry that would generate a lot of money. However, money is not the only reason why people are motivated to create this kind of industry. The technolgy necessary for space tourism would also allow creating new activities and programs and may eventually even allow migrating to space permanently. Society would benefit from space tourism in that a lot of new jobs would be created and the human species might be saved from extinction by expanding throughout the solar system.

(http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/space_tourism_its_importance_its_history_and_a_recent_extraordinary_development.shtml)

Abstract CAJ - Space Tourism

Space tourism describes a concept suggesting that ordinary people may sooner or later be able to travel to space and back for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The purpose of this CAJ is to discuss when, how and under which conditions space tourism will come into existence with the focus on the ethical side of space tourism. This is done by discussing existing and planned tourism options of numerous companies and by analysing factors which may delay the realization of space tourism, especially health issues. The information stems from intensive internet research. It has been shown that space tourism will most likely become reality in the course of the next few years assuming that safety, health and legality issues will be resolved. In conclusion, this CAJ demonstrates a possible development of space tourism and shows how it would change people’s lives in the future.

144 words

How does instant photography work?

 

Polaroid film is essentially one big chemical reaction. When you take a picture with a Polaroid camera, the shutter opens and quickly captures the image. It takes in the patterns of light and imprints the image onto plastic film that is covered with silver compound. This is when the photo develops. On the film there are three silver compounds. The top layer is sensitive to blue light, the next layer is sensitive to green light and the bottom layer is sensitive to red light. When you expose the film, the sensitive grains at each layer react to the light of that color, creating a chemical record of the light and color pattern. Each color layer is situated above a developer layer which contains dye couplers. There are four chemicals waiting to react, namely the developer layer, the acid layer, the timing layer and the image layer. The chemicals get set off by a reagent. A reagent is a substance used in chemical reaction to detect, measure, examine or produce other substances. It is a mixture of white pigments, opacifiers and alkali. Opacifiers and alkali are especially important since the opacifier, a chemical that protects a newly ejected image from light and then slowly dissolves away, works as a light blocker and the alkali as an acid neutralizer. The reagent is collected in a blob at the border of the plastic film sheet, away from then light-sensitive material. When you snap a photo, your instant camera automatically ejects the picture in between two metal rollers. As the film exits, these rollers push the reagent on the white plastic borders onto the silver compound, spreading the reagent across the film. This starts a large chain of chemical reactions. First, the reagent causes the four layers (developer, acid, timing and image layer) to react. This then causes the silver compound layer to process, thus producing blue, green and red light patterns which turn into an image. The timing layer protects the film from light exposure until the film is fully developed. This final reaction is what causes the illusion of the image being formed right before your eyes. 

  

355 words

Health requirements and health risks for space tourists

When the first humans travelled into space in the early sixties, these men and women were carefully selected on their resistance to extreme physical and mental strain. So, only very few people which had the manual skills, physical constitution, stress tolerance and health needed for the job were chosen to become astronauts or cosmonauts. Even today NASA astronauts have to pass strict medical exams. The introduction of space tourism will change everything. All of the skills mentioned above will not be required anymore, at least not from the space tourists.  Any human will be able to go to space providing he is physically and mentally healthy enough to go and come back with a minimum risk to be hurt. The question is - what does 'physically and mentally healthy enough' actually mean? 

For the time being there is no answer to this question. Doctors are unsure about how to set medical standards and some argue that standards should not be set at all, as they would disturb the development of the space tourism market.

  
Health requirements:

In terms of age there will probably be no general upper limit, that is to say every person that has sufficient physical fitness will be able to go to space, regardless of his/her age. The limit at the lower end of the age scale will probably be oriented at the ability of persons to follow strict safety rules and to use a certain kind of technology in case of an emergency, for example. 

Physical requirements for human space flight dropped with the advent of the space shuttle and with knowdlege about the reduction of g-loads. Nowadays spaceships can be limited to less than 3g's maximum acceleration. (Fyi: G-force is a measurement of acceleration felt as weight. On Earth 1g is equal to the force of gravity at the Earth's surface, which is 9.8 meters per second per second.) Excessive g-loads can cause serious damage to one's health depending on its duration. Psychological and educational requirements remain on a high level, not to say that they actually increase. This is connected mainly to longer stay times in the orbit and because of the necessity of performing complex tasks on board. 

Although some argue that potential health risks associated with space tourism are not more severe as for comparable tourist activities like diving, potential health risks should not be underestimated.

Health risks:

Inherent health risks in space are associated with vacuum, micro-gravity and high energy radiation:

Spacecrafts, space hotels and space suits will be designed for operation in vacuum. If the structure of any of these happens to be damaged, space tourists will be in acute danger. Damage may come from micro meteorites and space debris. If people are exposed to space without protective clothing and beyond the Earth's atmosphere in a vacuum they can suffer from ebullism (formation of bubbles in body fluids), hypoxia (rapid de-oxygenation of the blood), hypocapnia (reduction of blood carbon dioxide levels) or decompression sickness (gases coming out of solution into bubbles inside the body).    

Exposure to high energy radiation is also a major health risk for space tourists. There are different kinds of radiation in orbit, namely Solar Cosmic Radiation (SCR), Solar Flares and Galactic Cosmic Radiation (GCR), all of which have different biological effects. Whereas space hotels will probably provide protection against normal radiation, protection against radiation events like solar flares may not be guaranteed. Consequently, space tourists might have to be evacuated to Earth. Radiation loads of up to 0.5 Sievert can be tolerated by humans. Any radiation above 0.5 Sievert can cause serious damage to one's health starting with nausea and severe symptoms of radiation sickness, such as loss of appetite, diarrhoea and minor bleedings, and eventually leading to strong symptoms of radiation sickness, such as fever, bleedings, emaciation and even death. 

Micro-gravity imposed risks vary depending on the stay times in orbit. That is to say, space tourists who only stay in space for a very limited period of time are exposed to other risks than, for example, the space hotel personnel which spends longer periods of time in orbit. Generally, tow categories of g-force-imposed problems must be considered - medical and comfort aspects. 

 

Medical aspects include short duration effects, such as the space sickness syndrome (which is similar to seasickness or general travel sickness on Earth) which usually begins shortly after reaching micro gravity. The symptoms include dizziness, increased perspiration and nausea. Luckily they normally disappear after a few hours or a few days and can be treated medically. Long duration effects include loss of bone and muscle mass which is caused by the adaptation of the body to the lack of gravity and the lack of use of bone and muscle mass. These effects are usually accompanied by a decrease of physical and mental performance in orbit, as well as by cardiac arrhythmia. It has been shown that humans loose about 10% (!!!) of bone mass within a year in space under the influence of g-forces. The loss can only partly be avoided by regular training. After staying in space for more than half a year, the loss is not fully reversible. Thus, the space hotel personnel must not stay in orbit longer than six months. Avoiding long duration effects would only be possible by providing artificial gravity. 
This leads us to comfort aspects. Providing artificial gravity in, for instance, a space hotel is essential for passenger comfort, notably in order to enable efficient hygiene. Artifical gravity, however, is only possible in a rotating space station. This rises the question of how the centrifugal acceleration may influence passenger comfort which may, for example, disturb the passenger's sense of orientation and balance.

It has also been shown that astronaut's hearts become spherical in space. This basically means that hearts change their shape during long periods of microgravity. You probably wonder how this is possible. Well, in space the heart does not work as efficiently as on Earth. This is what can cause a loss of muscle mass and consequently change the heart's shape. Luckily the rounder shape is only temporary and the heart returns to its original, normal, elongated shape shortly after the return to Earth. However, the change of shape may lead to cardiac problems later. Yet, the doctors are uncertain about the long-term health effects of this kind of change. They do agree, however, that regular exercise can keep the heart healthy and is crucial to guarantee safety on long missions in space.    

Other health issues to worry about in zero gravity include  anemia, blurry vision and kidney stones. The only good news is that it has been found that thyroid cancer cells become less aggressive in space.

http://www.space.com/6693-move-mars.html

http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/human_factors_and_health_in_space_tourism.shtml

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/astronaut-hearts-become-spherical-space  
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/50274240/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/fit-flight-space-tourism-lacks-any-medical-standards/#.U4Wu9RCnFc4 

Zombie Abstract

This paper shows the first mathematical analysis of various scenarios of a possible outbreak of a zombie infection. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the flexibility of mathematical modelling and to show how modelling can respond to a wide variety of challenges in ‘biology’. That is to say, the paper is instructive to develop mathematical models for an unusual outbreak. Different models are being used which show various scenarios of a possible outbreak of a zombie infection. They are all based on a specific type of zombie which is slow moving, cannibalistic and undead. First of all, within the Basic Model three individuals are considered - Susceptible (S) - humans who have become zombies, Zombie (Z) and Removed (R ) - susceptibles who deceased through a (non-)zombie-related-death. Secondly, the Model with Latent Infection suggests that susceptibles first become infected and only then turn into zombies. The third model is called the Model with Quarantine which assumes that the quarantine of zombies may contain the outbreak. According to another model, the Model with Treatment, a cure might allow zombies to return to their human form again. Lastly, the Model of Impulsive Eradication, shows that the zombie population can be controlled by strategically destroying the zombies. The use of different models led to different results. However, the outbreak of zombies infecting humans is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless extremely aggressive tactics, such as aggressive quarantine or sufficiently frequent attacks with increasing force, are employed against the undead. In conclusion, all of these scenarios demonstrate the flexibility of mathematical modelling and show that the modelling of an outbreak of zombie infection is useful for measuring infectious diseases.