Yumi's Profile

　My name is Yumi.  I am a student.  I am eleven years old.  I am in the fifth grade.  I attend Sakura Elementary School.

 

  My birthday is August 23rd.  I am a Virgo according to the Western zodiac.  
Virgo means 'virgin' in English.

I was born in 1991.  It was the year of the sheep according to the Chinese zodiac.

rat, cow, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake
horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, pig

My blood type is O. My father is also type O.  But my mother is type A.  A person with blood type O is supposed to be outgoing.  But I am not so outgoing.  I am a rather shy girl.

　　I am one meter 45 centimeters tall.  I am not very tall.  My eyesight is not so good.  When I was a first grader, my vision was perfect 20/20. It is getting poorer.  Now it is 20/40.  I wear contact lenses.  Sometimes I wear glasses.  

  I have good teeth.  I don't have any cavities. 

I brush my teeth four times a day; after every meal and before going to bed.

　We are a family of four; my father, my mother, my older brother and I.  I love my family.  We live in an apartment in Fuji City.  Our apartment has five rooms; a living-dining room, three bedrooms and a kitchen.  It is called mansion in Japanese.  It is on the third floor of a big apartment building. The apartment building has ten floors.  There are ten apartments on each floor.

  I like playing sports.  I play volleyball, table tennis, and badminton. Recently more and more girls like playing baseball. I don't play baseball.  I play softball in PE classes at school, though.

  In summer I like swimming.  I can swim the crawl, breaststroke and backstroke. I'm very good at the breaststroke.  I can swim two hundred meters with the breaststroke.  I'm not so good at the crawl or the backstroke.  I hope someday I can participate as a swimmer in the Summer Olympic Games.

  In winter I go skiing with my family.  I am not very good at skiing.  I like snowboarding better than skiing.  My father is a very good skier.  My mother is not so good at skiing.  My brother also likes snowboarding.

  I like watching pro baseball games on TV.  My brother doesn't like watching pro baseball games, but he likes watching the Inter-high school baseball games in Koshien during summer vacation.  My father often watches pro baseball games on TV.  His favorite team is the Orix Bluewave.  My favorite team is the Giants.  

 We girls don't sumo wrestle, but I like watching sumo on TV.  My favorite sumo wrestler is Miyabiyama.  I liked Wakanohana before.  But he retired in March, 2000.

  I like reading storybooks.  I can't read story- books in English.  I'd like to read storybooks in English someday soon.  I don't like reading comics very much, but I like reading Kenshui Natsuko (Intern Natsuko) and Otanko Nurse  (Nonchalant Nurse).  I want to be a doctor or a nurse in the future.  If I become a doctor, I want to be an eye surgeon and study how to cure nearsightedness.

  I can play the violin.  I started learning to play the violin when I was a first grader.  I attend violin lessons once a week on Saturdays.  I can also play the recorder.  I learned how to play the recorder in music class at school.  

  I like listening to music.  I have a good portable stereo.  It is a SONY CD/radio/cassette recorder.  I usually listen to music on CDs.  I seldom buy CDs, but I rent CDs at a CD rental shop in the neighborhood.  I often listen to music while I am doing my homework.  Sometimes I listen to FM radio programs in my bed before going to sleep.  My favorite kind of music is violin music and Japanese pop music.  I often record good FM radio programs with the cassette recorder on my portable stereo.

  I like watching movies on TV.  I seldom go to the movie theater.  My favorite kinds of movies are Disney animated movies.  Next month a new Disney animated movie will be shown in the movie theater in the next town.  I will ask my father to take me to see the movie.  I hope he will take me to the movie with my brother on a Sunday next month.

  I like cooking very much.  I often help my mother cook dinner.  I like every kind of vegetable, especially potatoes and eggplants.  

My favorite dish is croquette.  We can buy croquettes at supermarkets, but my mother never buys croquettes either at supermarkets or meat shops.  She is very good at making potato croquettes.  Everyone in my family likes her croquettes.  



Her curry rice is also very good.  It is not so spicy.  I don't like spicy curry.  But my brother likes spicy curry rice very much.  

  
　My mother often bakes cakes and cookies on weekends.  It's fun to help her bake cakes and cookies.  My brother and I eat cakes and cookies to our heart's content.  However, my father is careful not to eat her cakes or cookies too much. He doesn't want to get fat.  He wants to stay skinny.  

Koji's Profile

  My name is Koji.  I am a student.  I am twelve years old.  I am in the sixth grade.  I attend Sakura Elementary School.

 

  My birthday is July 22nd.  I am a Cancer according to the Western zodiac.  Cancer means crab in English.  That is why I like crabs.

  I was born in 1990.  It was the year of monkey according to the Chinese zodiac.  

  My blood type is AB.  I am the only one who has the blood type AB in my family.  My father's blood type is A.  My mother's blood type is B.

 That is why I have the blood type AB.

  I am one meter 60 centimeters tall.  I am the tallest boy in my class. I have perfect 20/20 vision.  I don't have to wear glasses.  

 We are a family of six; my grandfather, my grandmother, my father, my mother, my younger sister and I.  My grandparents are the parents of my mother.  My grandparents on my father's side live in the next town.  We often visit them.  I love my family.  

  We live in a two-story house in the countryside.

  My room is on the second floor.  I have my own TV set in my room.  I also have a good stereo system.  I watch TV and listen to music in my room.  

  There is also a family TV set in the living room.  My grandparents always watch TV in the  living room.  They like watching Mitokomon and Abarenbo Shogun.  Sometimes I join them and we watch those dramas together.  

  I never miss the telecast of the pro baseball games of the Dragons.  I have never been to the Nagoya Dome to cheer for the Dragons.  I will ask my father to take me to the Nagoya Dome during summer vacation.  

  At school I belong to the baseball club.  I am the pitcher and bat fourth.  Last year, when I was a fifth grader, I played first base and batted sixth.

  I am planning to join the baseball club when I enter junior high school.  Then I want to go to a high school that has a strong baseball team.

  I want to play in the Koshien Stadium.  I want to be a pro baseball player in the future.  

  My mother always tells me that the boys in our generation should be able to cook and share housework.  She always asks me to help her clear the table and do the dishes after dinner.  

　She has also taught me to cook a few dishes.  I can cook spaghetti, ramen and curry rice.  

  I clean my room with a vacuum cleaner.  I do my laundry.

After I play baseball, I wash my baseball uniform and socks.  I also wash my underwear, sweatshirt, sweatpants, and T-shirt.  

 It is very simple.  I just put in the dirty stuff in the washer.  Then I hang my washing out in the backyard.

  I like reading detective stories.  I don't like reading comics very much. On Sundays I often  go to the town library to borrow detective story- books.  Once I start reading detective stories, I can't stop. I often stay up late reading detective stories.  My mother doesn't like that.  When she finds that I am staying up past eleven, she comes up to my room and tells me to go to bed soon.  I don't like that.  However, on Saturday nights she allows me to stay up till twelve.

  I like playing video games.  I have a SONY PlayStation 2.  I don't have many video games.  Sometimes I borrow video games from my friends.  My friends often come to my house and we play video games together.  We can play DVDs on PlayStation 2.  

  We can rent DVDs at video rental shops. Last Sunday I rented a suspense movie and watched it with my friends.

  It was scary, but interesting.  American movies on DVDs have not only Japanese subtitles, but also English subtitles.  I think it is very useful for English learning.  I'd like to see lots of American movies on DVDs.

  We have a dog.  It is a male miniature dachshund.

 He is seven years old.  We bought him at a pet shop.  We named him Sebirth,  because we bought him on my seventh birthday.  'Se' stands for seven and 'birth' stands for birthday.  

  We keep him in the doghouse in the front yard.  There is a fence around the front yard.  He can't go out of the yard.  So he is not kept on leash.  

  When he was young, he was very active. He ran around in the yard.  Now he is getting old.  He sleeps in the doghouse most of the time.  He needs exercise.  It is my duty to take him for short walks around my house.  

When I come back from school, he runs up to me and wags his tail vigorously.

When a mail carrier or newspaper deliverer comes to my house, he barks at him or her.  But he is so tiny.  He is not threatening at all.  

   He is very clever.  When he was young, I trained him to do many things.  He sits down when I say, "Sit."  He lies down when I say,  "Down."  When I say, "Hand," he shakes hand with me.  He can fetch a ball I throw, and give it back to me.  When I give him food, he never eats it if I say, "Stay."  　

I love Sebirth very much. I hope he will live for a long time.

One World Communication I Lesson 1 English as a Global Language

Lesson 1 English as a Global Language
Part 1

I have four English classes a week at school.  How many do you have?  I study English very hard, because I want to be an international actor in the future.
(韓国の Mi-ran さん)

We can study two foreign languages at school.  We can choose from many languages, such as English, German and French.  Many of us take English, because it's very useful in the European Union.
(イタリアの Lucia さん)

We have over 200 languages.  English is very important in our daily lives.  We cannot communicate with our classmates without English.  We study it as a subject.  We also study other subjects in English.
(ナイジェリアの Umaru さん)

Part 2

  About 1,400 years ago, English was a local language in Great Britain.  Only about 150,000 people spoke it.  In the 17th century, some British people moved to America and Canada, and later to Australia.  They started new lives in these countries.  Great Britain also made colonies in Asia an Africa.  As a result, English spread all over the world.

  Today over 1.5 billion people in the world use English.  About three-fourth of them are not native speakers.  English no longer belongs only to native speakers.

Part 3

  Now, English is a global language.  A lot of Japanese use English as a tool for communication in various fields of work overseas.  Movie stars, athletes and musicians speak English at interviews.  Business people speak English at meetings.

  You have many chances to use English even in Japan.  Every year, about 1,800 high school students come to study in Japan from overseas.  You can communicate with many of them in English.

  Don't worry if your English is not perfect.  Just try to express yourself with simple words, phrases and gestures.

How does anesthesia work?

If you've had surgery, you might remember starting to count backwards from ten, nine, eight and then waking up with the surgery already over before you even got to five.
And it might seem like you were asleep, but you weren't.
You were under anesthesia, which is much more complicated.
You were unconscious, but you also couldn't move, form memories, or, hopefully, feel pain.
Without being able to block all those processes at once, many surgeries would be way too traumatic to perform.
Ancient medical texts from Egypt, Asia and the Middle East all describe early anesthetis containing things like opium poppy, mandrake fruit, and alcohol.
Today, anesthesiologists often combine regional, inhalational and intravenous agents to get the right balance for a surgery.
Regional anesthesia blocks pain signals from a specific part of the body from getting to the brain.
Pain and other messages travel through the nervous system as electrical impulses.
Regional anesthetics work by setting up an electrical barricade.
They bind to the proteins in neuron's cell membranes that let charged particles in and out, and lock out positively charged particles.
One compound that does this is cocaine, whose painkilling effects were discovered by accident when an ophthalmology intern got some on his tongue.
It's still occasionally used as an anesthetic, but many of the more common regional anesthetics have a similar chemical structure and work the same way.
But for major surgeries where you need to be unconscious, you'll want something that acts on the entire nervous system, including the brain.
That's what inhalational anesthetics do.
In Western medicine, diethyl ether was the first common one.
It was best known as a recreational drug until doctors started to realize that people sometimes didn't notice injuries they received under the influence.
In the 1840s, they started sedating patients with ether during dental extractions and surgeries.
Nitrous oxide became popular in the decades that followed and is still used today, although ether derivatives, like sevoflurane, are more common.
Inhalational anesthesia is usually supplemented with intravenous anesthesia, which was developed in the 1870s.
Common intravenous agents include sedatives, like propofol, which induce unconsciousness, and opioids, like fentanyl, which reduce pain.
These general anesthetics also seem to work by affecting electrical signals in the nervous system.
Normally, the brain's electrical signals are a chaotic chorus as different parts of the brain communicate with each other.
That connectivity keeps you awake and aware.
But as someone becomes anesthetize, those signals become calmer and more organized, suggesting that different parts of the brain aren't talking to each other anymore.
There's a lot we still don't know about exactly how this happens.
Several common anesthetics bind to the GABA-A receptor in the brain's neurons.
They hold the gateway open, letting negatively charged particles flow into the cell.
Negative charge builds up and acts like a log jam, keeping the neuron from transmitting electrical signals.
The nervous system has lots of these gated channels, controlling pathways for movement, memory, and consciousness.
Most anesthetics probably act on more than one, and they don't act on just the nervous system.
Many anesthetics also affect the heart, lungs, and other vital organs.
Just like early anesthetics, which included familiar poisons like hemlock and aconite, modern drugs can have serious side effects.
So an anesthesiologist has to mix just the right balance of drugs to create all the features of anesthesia, while carefully monitoring the patient's vital signs, and adjusting the drug mixture as needed.
Anesthesia is complicated, but figuring out how to use it allowed for the development of new and better surgical techniques.
Surgeons could learn how to routinely and safely perform C-sections, reopen blocked arteries, replace damaged livers and kidneys, and many other life savings operations.
And each year, new anesthesia techniques are developed that will ensure more and more patients survive the trauma of surgery.

Why do blood types matter?

It's often said that despite humanity's many conflicts, we all bleed the same blood.
It's a nice thought but not quite accurate.
In fact, our blood comes in a few different varieties.
Our red blood cells contain a protein called hemoglobin that binds to oxygen, allowing the cells to transport it throughout the body.
But they also have another kind of complex protein on the outside of the cell membrane.
These proteins, known as antigens, communicate with white blood cells, immune cells that protect against infection.
Antigens serve as identifying markers, allowing the immune system to recognize your body's own cells without attacking them as foreign bodies.
The two main kinds of antigens, A and B, determine your blood type.
But how do we get four blood types from only two antigens?
Well, the antigens are coded for by three different alleles, varieties of a particular gene.
While the A and B alleles code for A and B antigens, the O allele codes for neither, and because we inherit one copy of each gene from each parent, every individual has two alleles determining blood type.
When these happen to be different, one overrides the other depending on their relative dominance.
For blood types, the A and B alleles are both dominant, while O is recessive.
So A and A gives you type A blood, while B and B gives you type B.
If you inherit one of each, the resulting codominance will produce both A and B antigens, which is type AB.
The O allele is recessive, so either of the other will override it when they're paired, resulting in either type A or type B.
But if you happen to inherit two Os, instructions will be expressed that make blood cells without the A or B antigen.
Because of these interactions, knowing both parents' blood types lets us predict the relative probability of their children's blood types.
Why do blood types matter?
For blood transfusions, finding the correct one is a matter of life and death.
If someone with type A blood is given type B blood, or vice versa, their antibodies will reject the foreign antigens and attack them, potentially causing the transfused blood to clot.
But because people with type AB blood produce both A and B antigens, they don't make antibodies against them, so they will recognize either as safe, making them universal recipients.
On the other hand, people with blood type O do not produce either antigen, which makes them universal donors, but will cause their immune system to make antibodies that reject any other blood type.
Unfortunately, matching donors and recipients is a bit more complicated due to additional antigen systems, particular the Rh factor, named after the Rhesus monkeys in which it was first isolated.
Rh+ or Rhｰ refers to the presence or absence of the D antigen of the Rh blood group system.
And in addition to impeding some blood transfusions, it can cause severe complications in pregnancy.
If an Rhｰ mother is carrying an Rh+ child, her body will produce Rh antibodies that may cross the placenta and attack the fetus, a condition known as hemolytic disease of the newborn.
Some cultures believe blood type to be associated with personality, though this is not supported by science.
And though the proportions of different blood types vary between human populations, scientists aren't sure why they evolved; perhaps as protection against blood born diseases, or due to random genetic drift.
Finally, different species have different sets of antigens.
In fact, the four main blood types shared by us apes seem paltry in comparison to the thirteen types found in dogs.

How does cancer spread through the body?

The onset of cancer usually begins as a solitary tumor in a specific area of the body.
If the tumor is not removed, cancer has the ability to spread to nearby organs, as well as places far away from the origin, such as the brain.
So how does cancer move to new areas, and why are some organs more likely to get infected than others?
The process of cancer spreading across the body is known as metastasis.
It begins when cancer cells from an initial tumor invade nearby normal tissue.
As the cells proliferate, they spread via one of the three common routes of metastasis: transcoelomic, lymphatic, or hematogenous spread.
In transcoelomic spread, malignant cells penetrate the covering surfaces of cavities in our body.
These surfaces are known as peritoneum and serve as walls to segment the body cavity.
Malignant cells in ovarian cancer, for example, spread through peritoneum, which connects the ovary to the liver,  resulting in metastasis on the liver surface.
Next, cancerous cells invaded blood vessels when they undergo hematogenous spread.
As there are blood vessels almost everywhere in the body, malignant cells utilize this to reach more distant parts of the body.
Finally, lymphatic spread occurs when the cancer invades the lymph nodes, and travels to other parts of the body via the lymphatic system.
As this system drains many parts of the body, it also provides a large network for the cancer.
In addition, the lymphatic vessels empty into the blood circulation, allowing the malignant cells to undergo hematogenous spread.
Once at a new site, the cells once again undergo proliferation, and form small tumors known as micrometastases.
These small tumors then grow into full-fledged tumors, and complete the metastatic process.
Different cancers have been known to have specific sites of metastasis.
For example, prostate cancer commonly metastasizes to the bone, while colon cancer metastasizes to the liver.
Various theories have been proposed to explain the migration pattern of malignant cells.
Of particular interest are two conflicting theories.
Stephen Paget, an English surgeon, came up with the seed and soil theory of metastasis.
The seed and soil theory stated that cancer cells die easily in the wrong micro environment, hence they only metastasize to a location with similar characteristics.
However, James Ewing, the first professor of pathology at Cornell University, challenged the seed and soil theory, and proposed that the site of metastasis was determined by the location of the vascular and lymphatic channels which drain the primary tumor.
Patients with primary tumors that were drained by vessels leading to the lung would eventually develop lung metastases.
Today, we know that both theories contain valuable truths.
Yet the full stories of metastasis is much more complicated than either of the two proposed theories.
Factors like the cancer cell's properties, and the effectiveness of the immune system in eliminating the cancer cells, also play a role in determining the success of metastasis.
Unfortunately, many questions about metastasis remain unanswered until today.
Understanding the exact mechanism holds an important key to finding a cure for advanced stage cancers.
By studying both the genetic and environmental factors, which contribute to successful metastasis, we can pinpoint ways to shut down the process.
The war against cancer is a constant struggle, and scientists are hard at work developing new methods against metastasis.
Of recent interest is immunotherapy, a modality which involves harnessing the power of immune system to destroy the migrating cells.
This can be done in different ways, such as training immune cells to recognize cancerous cells via vaccines.
The growth and activity of the immune cells can also be stimulated by injecting man-made interleukins, chemicals which are usually secreted by the immune cells of the body.
These two treatments are only the tip of the iceberg.
With the collaborated research efforts of governments, companies and scientists, perhaps the process of metastasis will be stopped for good.

How does anesthesia work?

If you've had surgery, you might remember starting to count backwards from ten, nine, eight and then waking up with the surgery already over before you even got to five.
And it might seem like you were asleep, but you weren't.
You were under anesthesia, which is much more complicated.
You were unconscious, but you also couldn't move, form memories, or, hopefully, feel pain.
Without being able to block all those processes at once, many surgeries would be way too traumatic to perform.
Ancient medical texts from Egypt, Asia and the Middle East all describe early anesthetis containing things like opium poppy, mandrake fruit, and alcohol.
Today, anesthesiologists often combine regional, inhalational and intravenous agents to get the right balance for a surgery.
Regional anesthesia blocks pain signals from a specific part of the body from getting to the brain.
Pain and other messages travel through the nervous system as electrical impulses.
Regional anesthetics work by setting up an electrical barricade.
They bind to the proteins in neuron's cell membranes that let charged particles in and out, and lock out positively charged particles.
One compound that does this is cocaine, whose painkilling effects were discovered by accident when an ophthalmology intern got some on his tongue.
It's still occasionally used as an anesthetic, but many of the more common regional anesthetics have a similar chemical structure and work the same way.
But for major surgeries where you need to be unconscious, you'll want something that acts on the entire nervous system, including the brain.
That's what inhalational anesthetics do.
In Western medicine, diethyl ether was the first common one.
It was best known as a recreational drug until doctors started to realize that people sometimes didn't notice injuries they received under the influence.
In the 1840s, they started sedating patients with ether during dental extractions and surgeries.
Nitrous oxide became popular in the decades that followed and is still used today, although ether derivatives, like sevoflurane, are more common.
Inhalational anesthesia is usually supplemented with intravenous anesthesia, which was developed in the 1870s.
Common intravenous agents include sedatives, like propofol, which induce unconsciousness, and opioids, like fentanyl, which reduce pain.
These general anesthetics also seem to work by affecting electrical signals in the nervous system.
Normally, the brain's electrical signals are a chaotic chorus as different parts of the brain communicate with each other.
That connectivity keeps you awake and aware.
But as someone becomes anesthetize, those signals become calmer and more organized, suggesting that different parts of the brain aren't talking to each other anymore.
There's a lot we still don't know about exactly how this happens.
Several common anesthetics bind to the GABA-A receptor in the brain's neurons.
They hold the gateway open, letting negatively charged particles flow into the cell.
Negative charge builds up and acts like a log jam, keeping the neuron from transmitting electrical signals.
The nervous system has lots of these gated channels, controlling pathways for movement, memory, and consciousness.
Most anesthetics probably act on more than one, and they don't act on just the nervous system.
Many anesthetics also affect the heart, lungs, and other vital organs.
Just like early anesthetics, which included familiar poisons like hemlock and aconite, modern drugs can have serious side effects.
So an anesthesiologist has to mix just the right balance of drugs to create all the features of anesthesia, while carefully monitoring the patient's vital signs, and adjusting the drug mixture as needed.
Anesthesia is complicated, but figuring out how to use it allowed for the development of new and better surgical techniques.
Surgeons could learn how to routinely and safely perform C-sections, reopen blocked arteries, replace damaged livers and kidneys, and many other life savings operations.
And each year, new anesthesia techniques are developed that will ensure more and more patients survive the trauma of surgery.