 Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the Voice of America. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak. This program is designed for English learners. So we speak a little slower, and we use words and phrases, especially written for people learning English. On today's program, Dan Friedel reports on much of the world's record heat. Gina Bennett has a story on Guinness's investigation into its world's oldest dog record. Gregory Stockle reports on business leaders that fear their companies will not survive the next 10 years. Mario Ritter Jr. has a story on new research that shows why some people are more at risk of multiple sclerosis. Later, Faith Perlow brings us the everyday grammar lesson on mental health, but first... Many parts of the world have experienced record high temperatures in recent days, but much of the United States is dealing with extremely cold weather, thanks to what is known as a polar vortex. A map showing world temperatures over the last several days had a dark red color in the Arctic, Asia, the Middle East, South America, and parts of Africa. The dark red means the temperatures are 7 degrees Celsius warmer than the average from just over 20 years ago. The United States is one of the only places on the map that is dark blue, meaning very cold. In the state of North Dakota, wind chills reached minus 56 degrees Celsius last week in the state of Missouri. A professional American football game took place as temperatures dropped to minus 20 degrees Celsius. On the other side of the world, the world's top tennis players are playing in unusually warm weather in Melbourne, Australia. The Australian Open is taking place as the city records temperatures nearly 7 degrees warmer than average. The African nation of Oman is in the northern hemisphere where it is winter. It recently set a record for the warmest January night at 26.4 Celsius. Parts of the southern hemisphere are experiencing warmer than usual weather too. Argentina set a record for warmest January night at 27.3 degrees Celsius. Climate scientists say these extreme temperatures are due to warming in the Arctic. They say warming temperatures in the Arctic affect the weather all around the world. The pattern called a polar vortex is not unusual in the Arctic. However, experts say as temperatures in the North warm, the polar vortex widens and affects Canada and the United States. Jennifer Francis is with the Woodwell Research Center in Massachusetts. She is a leading researcher in the theory of Arctic amplification, which links the periods of cold weather to climate change. She said, when the Arctic is off the charts warm like now, we are more likely to see frigid cold invade places like Texas that are ill-equipped to deal with it, she said. Francis added, rapid Arctic warming is one of the clearest symptoms of human-caused climate change. Judah Cohen works for Atmospheric Environmental Research, a commercial weather company near Boston, Massachusetts. He compared the polar vortex to an ice skater doing a spin. When a skater spins very quickly, the vortex winds stay close to the skater, but if the skater slows down, the winds lose their tight circle. All the cold air then gets released away from the center of the polar vortex, Cohen said. When that happens in January, the target of the cold air is the United States. Cohen said the current polar vortex is stronger and longer lasting than usual. Marshall Shepard is a meteorology professor at the University of Georgia. He said that right now there is a complex interaction within our climate system. Winter will always bring us cold weather, but like the warm season, it may be changing in ways that we understand and in ways that we are still learning about, Shepard said. The weather expert said the extreme cold in the U.S. will change to unusually warm weather in several days, but another polar vortex is expected to hit at the end of January. I'm Dan Friedel. Guinness World Records said on Tuesday that it has suspended and was re-examining its world's oldest dog, record. The publishing company had given the record to a Portuguese dog named Bobi, which died in October of last year. The move follows criticism from veterinarians who raised doubts about the dog's age. Bobi was a kind of dog called a Hafero do Alentejo. He spent his life in a village in Portugal. Guinness World Records said the animal lived for 32 years and 165 days. It broke a record held since 1939 by an Australian cattle dog that died at 29 years and 5 months. Bobi was declared the world's oldest dog in February. Hafero do Alentejo are traditionally used to watch sheep. They have a normal life expectancy of 12 to 14 years. Guinness World Records, or GWR, said the review into Bobi's record was ongoing. The company added that it would re-examine evidence, seek new evidence, and reach out to experts and those linked to the application. While our review is ongoing, we have decided to temporarily pause applications on both the record titles for oldest dog living and oldest dog ever until all of our findings are in place and have been communicated, the spokesperson said. Bobi's owner, Lionel Costa, said in a statement on Tuesday that after his dog's death, an elite within the veterinary world, tried to give people the idea that Bobi's life story was not true. Costa said some veterinarians were unhappy because he said Bobi's long life came from the dog eating human food, which he said was often suggested by those in the field. Everything would be different if we had said he, Bobi, ate pet food, Costa said, adding that all requirements requested by the GWR were met. Costa said GWR has not reached out to him. No action has yet been taken about any record holders, the publisher said. It added that any action would be decided by the review's outcome. Before his death, Bobi still loved walks but had become calmer, Costa told Reuters. His hair or fur was thinning, his eyesight had worsened, and he needed to rest more than in earlier years. I'm Gina Bennett. A growing number of business leaders say they fear their companies will not survive the next 10 years because of pressure from climate change and new technology. That information comes from a new opinion by the consulting company, PWC. PWC questioned over 4,700 chief executive officers, or CEOs, from 105 countries and territories. It released the survey results on January 15th. The survey's release came as business leaders, political leaders, and activists gathered for the World Economic Forum's yearly meeting in Davos, Switzerland. 38% of the CEOs said they were optimistic about the strength of the worldwide economy. That is up from 18% last year, when the world was dealing with high inflation, rising interest rates, and more. Even with more positive opinions on the economy, the CEOs say they are increasingly worried about their company's ability to deal with major future changes. The survey found 45% of the CEOs had concerns that their businesses would not survive the next 10 years. The business leaders say they are trying to make changes, but they must deal with difficult government rules, a lack of skills among workers, and more. Artificial intelligence, the survey found, is seen as a way to make business operations faster. But AI is also seen as a weakness. Nearly 75% of the CEOs said AI will significantly change the way their company creates, delivers, and captures value in the next three years, PWC said. More than half the CEOs said AI will make their products or services better. But 69% noted that their workers needed training to gain skills to use the developing technology. The CEOs also said they were concerned about how AI would increase online security risks and misinformation. Organizers of the Davos meeting warned last week that the threat created by AI-powered misinformation is the world's greatest short-term threat. The PWC survey shows that climate change is both an opportunity and a risk. Nearly 33% of the CEOs said climate change is expected to change how they do things over the next three years. More than 75% of the executives said they have begun or completed changes to increase energy efficiency. But only 45% noted that they have made progress on taking climate risks into consideration in financial planning. I'm Gregory Stockle. Genetic researchers at the University of Cambridge in Britain say ancient DNA shows why northern Europeans have a higher risk of getting a nerve disease than other Europeans. The disease is called multiple sclerosis or MS. The researchers said the risk lies in genes from horse-riding cattle herders who entered northern Europe about 5,000 years ago. The findings come from a huge project to compare modern DNA with ancient genetic material taken from human remains including teeth and bones. A study released last year said it identified the earliest evidence of horse-riding in people called the Yumnaya. The scientists say they lived 4,500 to 5,000 years ago during the Bronze Age period of human history. The Yumnaya moved from the grasslands of what is now Ukraine and Russia into northwestern Europe. However, the researchers say those people carry gene versions that today are known to increase a person's risk of multiple sclerosis. The researchers added that they believe the same genes protected those herders from infections from their cattle and sheep. The research was published in Nature, a scientific publication. William Berry is a genetic researcher at Cambridge. He helped write the study. He said everyone involved was surprised. These variants were giving these people an advantage of some kind, he said. The finding was made possible by a gene bank with thousands of examples of early humans in Europe and western Asia. That project is led by Esca Willerslev of Cambridge and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. While MS can strike any population, it is most common among white descendants of northern Europeans. Scientists have been unable to explain why. The cause of the disease is not known. However, one theory is that infections could cause it in people who have certain genetic qualities. Scientists say they have found 230 genetic variants that might increase the risk of MS. The researchers studied DNA from about 1,600 ancient Eurasians. They used the information to develop a map of population movements in northern Europe. They said farmers from the Middle East began pushing out hunter-gatherers about 5,000 years ago. Then the Yamnaya moved in. They traveled with horses and wagons and herded cattle and sheep. The research team compared the ancient DNA to the genetic information of 400,000 modern-day people stored in UK Biobank in Britain. They wanted to see if MS linked genetic variations persisted in the north. That is the part of Europe where the Yamnaya moved rather than southern Europe. In what is now Denmark, the Yamnaya replaced ancient farmers, making them the closest ancestors of modern Danes, Willerslave said. Rates of MS are especially high in the northern part of Europe known as Scandinavia. The findings raise additional questions and suggest a need for more research. One of the writers of the study, Astrid Iverson, of Oxford University, questioned why a gene variant that seems to have strengthened immunity later plays a part in causing what is believed to be an autoimmune disease. Differences in how modern humans are exposed to animal germs might push the immune system out of balance, she said. I'm Mario Ritter Jr. In recent years, more and more people have been talking about mental health. The pandemic made many people feel isolated or alone. The isolation caused some people to struggle more with their mental health. Different countries and cultures have different ideas about mental health. In the United States, conversations about mental health and mental illness are changing. Many well-known people have come forward and shared their mental health journeys through books and social media. As ideas about mental health change, so does the language we use to talk about the issue. In today's everyday grammar, we will talk about the language of mental health. Let's start with the question, what is mental health? Mental health contains the adjective mental and the noun health. Together, the words become a compound noun, meaning the conditions around one's mental and emotional well-being. If someone has good mental health, they are in good emotional and mental condition. Now let's look at mental illness. Mental illness is a compound noun with the same adjective mental, but with the noun illness. If someone has a mental illness, they have a medical condition that affects their mind, personality or emotions. The illness harms their mental functioning and can affect their thinking, feelings and behaviors. Examples of mental illnesses include depression and anxiety. The word disorder may also be used with some mental illnesses. For example, you may know someone who has an anxiety disorder. When we talk about someone's mental health, it is important to use the right words. We want to be respectful of the person and understanding of their situation. We can use language that is centered on the person rather than their mental health issues. One way to do this is to say a person is living with their condition. The structure for this is subject plus verb live plus preposition with plus noun form of illness. Kurt lives with anxiety. Another acceptable and simple way to describe Kurt would be to say Kurt has anxiety. The structure for that is subject plus verb have plus noun form of illness. We can use this instead of using an adjective form of their mental health condition. As in, Kurt is an anxious person. It is also important to avoid certain words in some settings. For example, words like psycho and crazy may seem informal and acceptable to use, but they can cause harm. The word psycho when used informally means an unstable and aggressive person. For example, her ex-boyfriend is such a psycho. Psycho is related to psychosis, a mental disorder in which a person has a disconnection from reality. Experts say using such words outside of a mental health discussion can lead to stigma. Stigma is a set of negative beliefs that a culture has about something. Stigma can prevent people from seeking help with their own mental illnesses. In today's everyday grammar, we talk about the best words and language to use when talking about mental health. We learned how to use person-centered language to talk about someone with a mental illness. And we learned that some words should be avoided to help end the stigma around mental illness. Time, Faith Perlow. You just heard Faith Perlow present this week's everyday grammar. Welcome back to the show, Faith. It's great to be here with you, Dan. This week, you wrote about the language we use when we talk about mental health. I really wanted to share this information with our listeners, because it is an important subject to talk about. And in many areas of the world, it can be difficult to talk about subjects such as mental health. And until recently in the US, subjects like mental health and mental illness were not really talked about publicly. I think our conversations around mental health had to change. Slowly over the years, with TV shows like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend dealing with mental health and substance abuse, and even celebrities like Selena Gomez coming out with their own struggles with mental illness has helped people to not only talk about mental health more openly, but more importantly, these things have allowed people to seek help and support. And according to the National Alliance on Mental Health, one in five Americans will experience a mental illness and one in 25 people live with a serious mental illness. That's right, Dan. So this is why it is so important to avoid negative language, such as generalizations and stereotypes surrounding mental health. These words can lead to stigma and prevent people from seeking help and support. Well, Faith, thanks for sharing a little bit more about mental health and language with us today. It was great to share these things with you, Dan, and with our listeners. Thanks. And that's our program for today. Join us again tomorrow to keep learning English through stories from around the world. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak.