 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, Mario Ritter Jr. and Katie Weaver have a report on South America's Polypheum Triangle. Jill Robbins teaches us how to talk about hopes and dreams in a new everyday grammar lesson. But first, Dan Novak has this report. The American college basketball tournaments known as March Madness begin this week. College basketball or National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA basketball, is very popular in the United States. In parts of the country, it is even more popular than professional basketball. And many people like to guess who will win the many games played over the next few weeks of competition. 67 games will be held for both men and women. A chart that shows the sequence of games is called a bracket. Thousands of fans in the U.S. compete with each other to correctly predict the most outcomes of each game. Today, more people are using artificial intelligence, or AI, to help them fill their brackets. Using AI for bracketing in the tournament is not so new. Even so, the yearly bracket competitions still provide many surprises for computer science experts who have spent years creating their models using past tournament results. The researchers have found that machine learning alone cannot quite solve for the limited data and unpredictable human elements of the tournament. A normal fan may spend a few days this week deciding which team might win a few games in the tournament, but computer experts are going after even more detailed information. They are using complex math to find the best model for predicting success in the tournament. Some are using AI to perfect their codes or decide which qualities of the team can best predict their competitive future. The chances of creating a perfect bracket are extremely low for any competitor, however advanced their tools may be. An informed fan making choices based on past results has a 1 in 2 billion chance at perfection, says Ezra Miller. He is a mathematics professor at Duke University. Artificial intelligence is likely very good at determining the probability that a team wins, Miller said. But even with the models, he added that the random choice of who's going to win a game that's evenly matched is still a random choice. For the 10th straight year, the data science community Kaggle is hosting machine learning madness. In traditional brackets competitions, people simply write each team they think will win. But machine learning madness requires users to enter a percentage representing their level of confidence that a team will advance. Kaggle provides a large data set from past results for people to develop their algorithms. That includes information on a team's free throw percentage, turnovers, and assists. Users can then turn that information over to an algorithm to find the statistics most predictive of tournament success. It's a fair fight. There's people who know a lot about basketball and can use what they know, said Jeff Sonos. He is a statistical chess analyst who helped start the competition. It is also possible for someone who doesn't know a lot about basketball but is good at learning how to use data to make predictions. No method will include every element at play on the court. There is a balance between modeling and intuition, said Tim Chartier, a Davidson University bracket expert. Chartier has studied brackets since 2009. He developed a method that largely depends on team success on home court and away, performance in the second half of the season, and difficulty of schedule. But he said the NCAA tournament's historical results provide an unpredictable and small sample size. That is a difficulty for machine learning models which use large sample sizes. Chartier's goal is never for his students to reach perfection in their brackets. His own model still cannot account for Davidson's 2008 unexpected admission into the elite 8th level of the tournament. In that mystery, Chartier finds a useful reminder from March Madness. The beauty of sports and the beauty of life itself is the randomness that we can't predict. I'm Dan Novak. Stretching across Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile forms what is called the lithium triangle. The earth there is rich in lithium, a necessary metal in creating batteries for electric cars and other products. The international effort to develop technologies that do not use oil, gas, or coal requires huge amounts of lithium. But small native communities in the lithium triangle are worried. They fear their way of life will disappear as industry pushes for new lithium mines. The mining takes place in low dry areas known as salt flats. Erané Leonor Flores de Cajata is 68 years old. She lives in a desert area of Argentina where she keeps llamas and sheep. The life includes searching for fresh water on a usual basis. Her town is one of 38 that surround salt flats called the Guayatoyoc Lagoon and Salinas Grandes. People in the area earn some money from vacationing visitors and salt harvesting. They are a native people known as the cola. Flores de Cajata worries that if the mining expands in her area there will be no water. She said, what will we do if we don't have water? If the mines come, we'll lose our culture. We won't be left with anything. Between 2021 and 2023 the price for one ton of lithium almost tripled in the US reaching $46,000. In China, a main buyer of lithium reportedly paid $76,000 for one ton of the metal last year. Some call the metal white gold. Mining companies around the world are turning their attention to the lithium triangle. World leaders are also pushing for lithium production. In the United States, President Joe Biden said he aimed to have electric vehicles make up half of all sales in America by 2030. That would amount to about 8 million electric vehicles. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said Argentina is poised to play a critical role in building supply chains for critical minerals that will drive the economy of the 21st century particularly things like lithium. Although prices have recently dropped because of oversupply experts say worldwide demand is likely to rise in the future. Two lithium mining companies operate in Chile which borders Argentina to the west. SQM is a Chilean business and Albemarle is an American one. Valentín Barrera, a spokesman for SQM said lithium is an answer to the problem of climate change. We want to grow understanding that it's needed to mitigate climate change. In Chile, SQM pumps thousands of liters of salt water out of the ground and then lets the water dry out in pools. The solids in the salty water contain lithium. The pools evaporate leaving a solid substance that is collected and purified. Environmentalists, however, are concerned that the mining in the area will harm animals like flamingos and other life. As in Argentina, mining has brought criticism and legal cases. Local people want influence in decisions about the land. In 2016, an investigation of SQM found that the company had used more water in their mining process than the law permitted. Later, the company was ordered to pay $51 million to mitigate damage caused by six incidents including the polluting of freshwater wells. Barrera said the court actions and criticism come from disinformation. He blamed the state-run copper mines which also use a lot of water. An Albert Marl spokesperson said the underground salt water is not water because it is not drinkable. The Associated Press, AP, spoke to a number of scientists. They said it is hard to believe that industrial water use does not affect the environment. They said water pumping can pollute fresh water with salty water and dry out the surrounding area. Ingrid Garces studies water at Chili's University of Antofagasta. She said the salt flats are important for different kinds of animal and plant life. She said the water in the salt flats is not drinkable but is connected to other water sources and is important to natives. A 2020 report from the United Nations said that mining has used up 65% of the water in Chili's Atacama salt flat causing pollution and environmental damage, causing natives to leave ancestral settlements. In April of 2023, Chilean President Gabriel Boric announced a plan to increase government control of lithium mines. The government told the AP the plan would help control water use and spread wealth to more people. The move had the effect of pushing mining companies to invest in neighboring Argentina. Miguel Soler is Secretary of Mining in Northern Argentina. He said in Argentina that Chile's decision is an opportunity. More than 30 companies are officially seeking permission to mine in the Guayatoyo Lagoon and Salinas Grandes areas in Argentina. Local people are opposing the business effort. The llama herder Flores de Cajata and her native cola people have fought against mining and brought long legal battles to halt projects in the past also. We are guardians of the highlands, said Flores de Cajata. We defend our land. Last summer, the local government changed laws to limit the ability of groups to protest against the expansion of mining. Alicia Chalabe, an environmental lawyer representing the communities, said the change to local law violates international law. She said there is a lot of pressure to exploit lithium for electric vehicles. But she added, while lithium is important worldwide, so is the resistance of these communities. They're not alone. Flores de Cajata lives in the small town of Tusakichas, next to the wide salt flats where mining might take place in the future. She has a small group of farm animals and lives in a home with dried mud walls that she and her husband built. She wonders what will be left in twenty years. If the mines come, we'll have money for a time. But then our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, they're the ones who will suffer, she said. Jenner family herded goats near a town close to Chili's Atacama salt flats. But when companies started mining lithium in the early 1980s, Torres took a job as a miner and started saving money. Today he uses his wireless phone as he sits next to his small home. He bought the house and his device with his earnings from mining. There is development, but there's also the water issue, and they contradict each other, Torres said. Because everyone needs money, everyone also needs the basics, like health care and education. I'm Mario Ritter Jr. And I'm Katie Weaver. The new course aims to teach children American English through asking and answering questions and experiencing fun situations. For more information, visit our website, learningenglish.boanews.com. In an earlier everyday grammar, we talked about fast car, a song about young people that dreams of making their lives better. Then we asked our readers and listeners to tell us about their own dreams. In today's lesson, we will review two answers we received, both from people in their middle years of life, and we give some grammar advice. First, we want to thank Hiro, a middle-aged man who wrote to us. He said, Today, everyday grammar topic is about dreams. How can I describe my dream? This is an interesting topic overall for people who already has certain age, like me. As well, the time is not longer for following an eternal dream. Hiro used an interesting expression to tell us about his age. He said, People who already has certain age. You might have heard this expression in sentences like, A person of a certain age needs to be concerned about retirement funds. Note that the verb has is not used, but the preposition of is used before a certain age. As you can guess, this is a polite way to describe someone in their 40s, 50s, or 60s. It is often used to talk about women's age without saying how old they are. Sometimes it comes before criticism, so take care in using it. Hiro said, The time is not longer for following an eternal dream. We suggest using the time is growing shorter or there is little time left. Hiro could say, The time for me to follow my dream is growing shorter. Hiro continues to tell us about what is now important to meeting his life goals. For that reason, I need to be focused on important things. Indeed, buy a house, save money for my daughter's scholarship, save money for taking a vacations or save money to be prepared for my retirement time. In this statement, Hiro uses be before an infinitive verb form two times. Be focused and be prepared. We suggest using the adjective form in both. We need to be focused on important things. I need to save money to be prepared for my retirement. Next, we review a message from Kaori, who is a middle-aged woman in Japan. She begins by saying what she dreamed as a young person using the expression we heard in the song, fast car, to be someone. When I was young, I strongly believed I would be someone in the future. I wanted to be the first female prime minister in Japan or an executive of the big famous company. Kaori did earn a job at a company, but then marriage and children and culture forced her to quit working. She says, However, I didn't become anyone. I stopped my job and gave up my career. Do I regret my decision and my life? No, not at all. From the remaining part of Kaori's message, we find she was a success at being a mother, her two daughters are in college, and she gained a part-time job that helped to pay their school costs when they were younger. The corrections to her message that we suggest are the spelling of career and how to say you have quit a job. We can say I stopped working or I quit working, but Kaori could also say I changed jobs because being a homemaker and mother, although unpaid, is a full-time job. Kaori did all that while holding a part-time job. Thinking of how her dream changed over time, Kaori writes, My past dreams were only thinking, not real. I can say my own dreams have changed every time. In the future, even if I become old, I hope to find new and enjoyable dreams at any time. Two words in this part cause grammatical issues, every time and anytime. Every time should be written as two separate words, but a better way to say this would be, I can say my own dreams have changed over the years. Any time is an adverb, so it should not appear after the preposition at. Instead, Kaori could say, I hope to find new and enjoyable dreams any time. Or she could use a different expression. I hope to find new and enjoyable dreams my whole life long. Thank you Kaori and Haido for writing to us and helping everyone to learn more about how we talk about our dreams. You both showed us that dreams can change over time, as our lives become connected with those of others. And that's Everyday Grammar. I'm Jill Robbins. Jill Robbins is here now to talk more about the Everyday Grammar lesson. Thanks for joining me Jill. Can you first tell us more about your readers' answers to your Everyday Grammar story? Sure, thanks for having me on your podcast. When I decided to write about Fast Car, the Tracy Chapman song, I was thinking that it told the story of young people who had been denied the American dream because of poverty. But that's not the whole story. Did the readers help you to understand it in another way? Yes, they helped me see that the song was also about how our dreams change from when we are young to when we are older. I think they become a little more realistic. Exactly, we become a bit more realistic in what we think is a good life. Haido, the man who wrote to us, said he's now focused on helping his daughter get through school and saving for family vacations. How about Kaori, the woman who wrote to us? She became more realistic too, but I had some advice for her. We had talked about the expression to be someone from the song. Kaori said she had not become anyone, but I could see she had become a great mother and homemaker. Right, an unpaid position, as you say in the story. Yes, so I told her she had done valuable work, raising two daughters who are now in college. I think since it's National Women's History Month, we should acknowledge the tough job that mothers do. We should. Here is a shout out to all the moms around the world. Thanks for being on today's program, Jill, and thanks for that lesson. Thanks for asking me, Ashley. 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.