 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. Coming up on the program, Gregory Stockle and Gina Bennett have a story on the history of promises made at UN climate talks. Brian Lin has the science report on the creation of a biocomputer made with lab-grown brain tissue. Later, Jill Robbins and Andrew Smith present the lesson of the day. But first... United Nations delegates from nearly 200 countries recently held a climate meeting in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The delegates agreed that the world must move away from fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal. The UN meeting on climate change is called COP28 this year. Recently, the Associated Press gave details about some of the main results of notable climate talks over almost 30 years. The Kyoto Protocol was the third high-level UN climate meeting. It took place in Kyoto, Japan in 1997. The agreement asked 41 countries that produced a lot of carbon gases to cut their emissions by about 5% compared to their emission levels in 1990. Countries agreed to some of the terms in the Kyoto Protocol by 2005. The United States and China, however, did not approve the agreement. Those countries have the world's two largest economies and produce the largest amount of carbon gases. The Kyoto Protocol was not successful by some measures. Emissions have greatly increased since then. But it is the first time so many UN members agreed that carbon gases were a problem. The 2009 climate meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark is widely seen as a failure. Developing and developed countries disagreed on cutting emissions and whether poor nations could use oil, natural gas and coal to grow their economies. However, wealthy countries promised to send $100 billion a year to developing countries. The money was to be used for green technology by 2020. Green technology often describes energy technology that does not produce pollution when it is used. But wealthy nations did not reach their goal of $100 billion by the start of the 2020s that led to criticism from developing countries and environmentalists. In 2022, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, an international economic group, said wealthy countries probably reached their $100 billion goal. But the British nonprofit group Oxfam said 70% of the money was in the form of loans. It said the loans increased debt problems in developing countries. Also, an increasing number of weather-related disasters are blamed on climate change. Experts say the money promised is not enough. British economist Nicholas Stern said that developing countries likely need $2 trillion every year by 2030 for climate projects and recovery. The Paris Agreement is widely considered the single biggest UN agreement on climate change. In 2015, about 196 nations agreed to keep atmospheric warming well below 2 degrees Celsius since what the agreement calls pre-industrial times. Later, the goal became limiting warming no higher than 1.5 degrees Celsius. The UN says the Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty, meaning that it has the force of law in countries that approve it. But there do not appear to be punishments for countries that do not follow its rules. Today, the goal of limiting the rise of the atmosphere's temperature to 1.5 degrees is still central to climate discussions. UN experts say the world's temperature has not passed the limit set in the Paris Agreement. The UN says it has warmed from 1.1 to 1.2 degrees Celsius since the early 1800s. But it says the atmosphere will reach the 1.5 degree limit soon unless large cuts and emissions are made quickly. Six years after the Paris Agreement, climate officials wanted another agreement to strengthen the levels agreed upon in 2015. The meeting in Glasgow, Scotland was put off until 2021. It was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting included protests led by teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg. She helped lead a worldwide movement of youth activists demanding more action from leaders. In Glasgow, countries agreed to phase down coal use. That is different from saying phase out. India and China, two of the world's biggest coal users, pressed for the change. So far, most countries have failed to meet the promises they made at the Glasgow deal. Emissions from coal have increased and most major coal-using countries have yet to slow use of the fuel. Last year, climate talks took place in the Egyptian Vacation Town of Sharma El Sheikh. There, countries agreed to create a fund for poor nations for the first time. Delegates agreed to a loss and damage fund. Its aim was to provide money to countries that suffered damage from severe weather events. Delegates at the COP 27 meeting called for the fund to be created after a flood in Pakistan killed an estimated 2,000 people and caused billions of dollars in losses. The fund was officially created on the first day of this year's talks in Dubai. Over $700 million has been promised. Giving to the fund is voluntary. UN climate experts say billions of dollars are needed because of weather-related events like cyclones, rising sea levels, floods, and droughts. The experts blame the extreme events on increasing temperatures in Earth's atmosphere. I'm Gina Bennett. And I'm Gregory Stockle. American researchers have combined lab-grown human brain tissue with computer hardware to create a working biocomputer. Scientists say brain cells used in the experiment were able to recognize speech and complete simple math problems. The team made brain-like tissue that took the form of what they called a brain organoid. Harvard University's stem cell institute explains that an organoid is a collection of individualized, complex cells that can be grown from stem cells in a lab. Under the right laboratory conditions, organoids can be made to look and even work similarly to real human tissue and organs. In this process stem cells can follow their own genetic instructions to self-organize, the stem cell institute says. So far scientists have been able to produce organoids that look like or resemble some organs. These organs include the brain, kidney, lung, stomach, and liver. Such lab-created organoids are generally used to study how organs work without needing to experiment on actual organs. In the biocomputer experiment the team said stem cells were able to form neurons similar to those found in the human brain. Neurons are electrically charged cells that transport signals to the brain and other parts of the body. Feng Guo led the experiment. He is a bioengineer and professor of intelligent system engineering at Indiana University, Bloomington. His team recently published their research results in a study in nature electronics. The researchers attached the brain organoid to a set of traditional electronic computing circuits. The researchers call this system brain aware. The system was used to establish communication between the organoid and electronic circuits. An artificial intelligence, AI tool was used to help read the neural activity of the organoid. The scientists aim to build a bridge between AI and organoids, Guo explained to Nature. Guo believes that combining organoids and computer circuits could provide additional speed and energy to improve the performance of AI computing systems. The study notes that adding human brain power might be able to help machines with the things they do not do as well as people. For example, the researchers said humans generally have a faster learning ability and use less energy thinking than computers do. During one part of the experiment, the team tested the brain aware systems voice recognition ability. The team trained the system on 240 recordings of 8 different voices. The researchers said the organoid produced different neural signals in reaction to the different voices. The accuracy level of the system reached 78%, Guo said. This is the first demonstration of using brain organoids for computing, Guo told MIT Technology Review. He added, it's exciting to see the possibilities of organoids for biocomputing in the future. Guo said these results persuaded his team that a brain computer system can work to improve computing performance, especially for some AI jobs. But he noted the best accuracy rates recorded by the brain aware system were still below the accuracy rates of traditional AI networks. Guo said this is one of the things his team plans to try to improve. Linus Mernova is a developmental neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. She told Nature that more research will be needed to improve such systems. But she said the study confirms some key theoretical ideas that could eventually make a biological computer possible. Mernova noted that in earlier experiments researchers have used other kinds of neuron cells to perform similar computational activities. But the latest study, she said, was the first to demonstrate this kind of performance in a brain organoid. I'm Brian Lin. Brian Lin is back in the studio to talk more about his science report. Thanks for being here, Brian. Of course, Dan. Thanks for having me. This week you've explored an experiment scientists say resulted in the creation of a biocomputer, a combination of computer chips and human cells. Did the researchers suggest what first led them to carry out this unusual experiment? Yes, one thing the scientists noted was that attempts had been made in the past to create computer chips that work similarly to the human brain. Because the human brain can do things, of course, machines cannot. But those attempts didn't really produce the desired results. So these researchers decided to combine cells grown to work like a human brain with actual computer circuitry. To see how their so-called brain-aware system would perform. And the scientists said the experiment clearly showed the system was able to perform in ways similar to a human brain. But they also noted the overall accuracy rate was lower than what they hoped for, correct? Yes, that's true. For example, the team said their system was still performing at a rate below traditional AI networks for comparable tasks. But the researchers pointed out this was a first proof of concept experiment for this kind of system. And they say they're confident that with further experimentation and system improvements, they can raise that level. Possibly even to one that outperforms traditional machine learning systems. Alright, thanks as always, Brian. You're welcome. Thank you, Dan. My name is Anna Matteo. My name is Andrew Smith. And I'm Jill Robbins. You're listening to The Lesson of the Day on the Learning English podcast. Welcome to the part of the show where we help you do more with our video series, Let's Learn English. This series shows Anna Matteo in her work and life in Washington, D.C. Today, we're going to look at the language in Lesson 48 of the series. In this lesson, Anna meets a tourist visiting Washington and helps her find some places to visit. Hello. I have lived in Washington, D.C. for a long time now. And I have done a lot. I feel that I know this city pretty well. Wait, that's the wrong way. Where is it again? Excuse me. Can I help you? Have we met before? I don't think so. I've just flown in from Boston. My name is Jean. Hi, Jean. I'm Anna. I really feel like we've met before. Anyway, how can I help? I want to see an interesting museum, but I don't know which one. I can help with that. I've lived in Washington, D.C. a long time. I think I've seen all the museums. Wow. Thanks. So tell me, which museums are good? Well, they are all good, but they're all different. There are science museums and history museums and art and culture museums. I want to see an unusual museum. I like the sculpture garden. Have you ever seen sculptures in a garden? It is really artistic. I have never seen a garden of sculptures. I'll write that on my list. I noticed in this part that both Anna and Jean are using the present perfect tense to talk about their experiences. It's common to hear that in this kind of situation. That's right. We use the present perfect tense to talk about an action in the past that is important in the present. For example, we heard Anna say, I have lived in Washington, D.C. for a long time now. The present perfect may be confusing for learners because we use it to talk about a past action. It is called present perfect because speakers use it to stress the importance of a past event in the present. You know, we hear another example a little later when Jean says, I've just flown in from Boston. The sentence, I've just flown in from Boston, stresses the present effect of a past event, the travel from Boston. The exact time of the travel is not important. To form the present perfect, we use two verbs, a main verb and an auxiliary verb. The auxiliary verb is have or has, and the main verb is in something we call the past participle form. For regular verbs, that just means you add D or E-D to the base form of the verb. Yeah, like live and lived. Let's give another example. Have you ever lived in another country? I have lived in another country. I've lived in France for a little while. And I've also been lucky because I've visited many different countries. So those verbs visited, lived, they follow the rule and just add D or E-D to the base form. But for irregular verbs, you might find different forms for the past participle. For example, the past participle of fly is flown, just like the past participle of see is seen. For example, we can say, I've seen that movie. Another way you can hear the present perfect in this conversation is with the adverbs ever and never. Listen again to this part. I like the sculpture garden. Have you ever seen sculptures in a garden? It is really artistic. I have never seen a garden of sculptures. I'll write that on my list. The sculpture garden is a beautiful place just a few blocks away from our office. I notice there that Jean used the negative adverb never, which of course means she hasn't had the experience of visiting that place. I sometimes hear English learners saying, I have ever, when they want to say they have had an experience, but that's not correct, is it, Jill? No, I've heard that too. I think the way to understand this is to remember we usually only use ever in a question formed with the present perfect, not in a statement or an answer to a question. You know, Andrew, something else stands out for me in what Jean said here. What's that, Jill? She says she'll add the sculpture garden to her list. In each of these lessons, we have included a different learning strategy to guide people to be more effective language learners. In this particular lesson, the strategy is focus attention. By making a list, Jean is helping herself remember the places she wants to go. And she can prioritize her time too. By seeing that she has five places to visit in one day, she can decide how much time to spend at each one. Prioritize means to decide which things are more important than others. But, Jill, our listeners might want to know why Anna said Jean looks familiar to her. Oh, that's easy. The same member of our staff played a genie in another episode of Let's Learn English. She magically changed Anna's costume for Halloween. Ah, yes, that's right. I remember. So this is what we might call an inside joke because the creators of Let's Learn English know that the same person was playing the same role. Now, let's find out what other places in D.C. Anna recommends. Have you been to the Museum of the American Indian? I visited that museum many times. It is very peaceful. I have always liked American Indian culture. I'll put that on my list. Do you have any other suggestions? Well, if you like plants, you can visit the US Botanic Gardens. It's very organic. I have always loved plants. I'll write that on my list too. Wow, you know so much about D.C.'s museums. Well, I have lived here for over a year. You're so lucky to live in such a beautiful city filled with so many museums and a zoo. What? D.C. has a zoo? Yes, and it's beautiful. You've lived here for so long and you haven't been to the zoo? I've never been to D.C.'s zoo. I've never been to any zoos. You have never seen zoo animals? I grew up on a farm, Jean. I've known farm animals my whole life. But the zoo has lions, and elephants, and zebras. If you have never seen a real-life elephant, you must. They are so majestic. I will. I will. There. I've written my own must-see zoo animal list. Have fun at the zoo. And thanks, Anna. Have fun at the museums, Jean. And thank you. We heard about two more unique places on the National Mall. The Museum of the American Indian and the Botanic Gardens. And I noticed that Anna is making her own list of places to see now. Jill, what is your favorite museum in Washington, D.C.? Oh, that's a tough question. I love the American Indian Museum. And they have a great cafeteria. But the Spy Museum is a lot of fun, too. Well, it's funny you should mention that, because we're going there in our next lesson of the day. Operation Spy. Great. I can't wait. In the meantime, you can write to us with your answer to our questions. Have you ever visited a museum, a zoo, or a public garden? Where was it? What did you see there? What would you tell a tourist to see in your hometown? You can email us at learningenglishatvoanews.com or put your comments on our YouTube video for this podcast. And it'll be great if you share the lesson of the day with your friends and family. Remember that you can also find us on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Thanks for listening. I'm Andrew Smith. And I'm Jill Robbins. 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.