(MUSIC) ANNOUNCER: Now, the VOA Special English program, EXPLORATIONS. Today Shirley Griffith and Steve Ember tell about Igor Sikorsky. He was a leader in designing and building new kinds of aircraft. (MUSIC) VOICE ONE: Igor Sikorsky was born in the city of Kiev, Russia, on May twenty-fifth, eighteen eighty-nine. His mother was a doctor. His father was a professor of psychology. Igor became interested in science when he was very young. He was especially interested in the possibilities of human flight. As a ten-year-old boy, he started building toy flying machines out of paper and bamboo. One was a helicopter. Igor turned the blades and held them in place with a thin piece of rubber. When he let go of the rubber, the blades turned in the opposite direction. And the little helicopter flew around the room. VOICE TWO: Igor dreamed of building a real helicopter. But he had little hope. Later he said: "I had read with great interest the stories of French writer Jules Verne. In some of the stories, Verne described a helicopter. Many intelligent people, however, said such a machine would never fly. So I decided my dream would remain just that." Sikorsky entered the naval college in St. Petersburg. Then he studied engineering at the Polytechnic Institute in Kiev. He did not know that,a few years earlier, Americans Orville and Wilbur Wright had succeeded in flying. VOICE ONE: In nineteen-oh-eight, Sikorsky traveled to Germany with his father. He saw a picture in a newspaper of Orville Wright and his airplane. "Within twenty-four hours," he said, "I decided to change my life's work. I would study aviation." The next year, Sikorsky went to Paris. At that time, Paris was the center of aviation in Europe. Sikorsky met several French pilots, including Louis Bleriot, the first person to fly across the English Channel. The pilots gave him advice about building successful airplanes. (MUSIC) VOICE TWO: Sikorsky returned home to Kiev after learning all he could in Paris. He decided to build a helicopter, even though many experts said it was not possible. He tested his first helicopter in nineteen-oh-nine. It weighed too much and had too little power. It could not get off the ground. He tested his second helicopter a year later. That one could lift itself off the ground. But it was not powerful enough to lift a pilot, too. After these failures, Sikorsky decided to work on airplanes, instead. VOICE ONE: His technique was unusual. First, he drew pictures of a plane. Then he built it. Finally, he trained himself to fly it. In this way, he quickly discovered any problems in the design and was able to correct them. The first plane Sikorsky designed and built was called the S-Two. He tested it in the summer of Nineteen-Ten. Just two years later, another Sikorsky plane -- the S-Six -- won the highest prize at an aviation show in Moscow. VOICE TWO: Sikorsky's success helped win him a job as head of the airplane division of the Russian Baltic Railroad Car Works. That is where he developed his first major new airplane design. Planes at that time had only one engine. Sometimes, a plane's propeller pulled masses of flying insects into the engine. The engine stopped, and the plane crashed. Sikorsky thought planes would be safer if they had more than one engine. So he designed a plane with four engines. He called it "The Grand." VOICE ONE: Sikorsky's plane was revolutionary. It was the first to have more than one engine. It was the first to have a closed area for the pilot and passengers. And it was the first to have a toilet. After designing "The Grand," Sikorsky designed an even bigger airplane. He called it the "Ilia Mourometz," the name of a famous Russian who lived in the tenth century. He made a military version of this plane. It became the most successful bomber used in World War One. (MUSIC) VOICE TWO: Igor Sikorsky left Russia at the start of the revolution in nineteen seventeen. He stayed for a while in Britain and France. Then he went to the United States. He arrived with little money and no real chances for work. America's aviation industry was new and very small. There were no jobs. In nineteen twenty-three, however, he got help from a group of Russian exiles in the United States. They gave him enough money to start his own aviation company, Sikorsky Aero Engineering. It was on Long Island, east of New York City. VOICE ONE: Sikorsky's greatest success during this period was designing seaplanes. These planes could land on ground or on water. They could fly long distances. The Pan American airline company used them to fly from North America to Central and South America. In nineteen twenty-nine, the Sikorsky company became part of the United Aircraft Corporation. The re-organized company produced a series of large planes known as flying boats. These planes were big enough and powerful enough to fly across oceans. They made it possible to move people and goods quickly from the United States to Europe and Asia. Passengers on flying boats rested in soft seats. They ate hot meals. Air travel had become fun, as well as safe. (MUSIC) VOICE TWO: By nineteen thirty-eight, Igor Sikorsky decided to experiment with helicopters again. It had been thirty years since his first unsuccessful attempts. Through those years, he had written down ideas for possible new designs. The first helicopter Sikorsky built in America was the V-S-Three-Hundred. It was a skeleton of steel tubes. In its first test flight, it rose about a meter off the ground. Sikorsky then tested nineteen more designs. VOICE ONE: The final design had one main rotator, or rotor. The rotor was connected to three long blades on top. These blades turned around like an album on a record player. They lifted the helicopter into the air. A smaller rotor, with shorter blades, was at the back end. Those blades turned around like the wheel of a car. They kept the body of the helicopter pointed forward. This remained the basic design of all Sikorsky helicopters. VOICE TWO: By nineteen forty-one, the V-S-Three-Hundred had set all world records for helicopter flight. Military versions were made and some were used in the last years of World War Two. Most people, however, still did not accept the new flying machine. They said the helicopter had to prove its worth. It did that during the war in Korea in the early nineteen fifties. Helicopters take off straight into the air. They can land just about anywhere. They do not need long airport runways like planes. During the Korean War, helicopters flew into battle areas to rescue wounded soldiers. They flew the men quickly to medical centers set up away from the fighting. This greatly improved the men's chances of survival. VOICE ONE: Igor Sikorsky, the man most responsible for successfully designing and building helicopters, thought helicopters would be a common form of transportation. People, he said, would use them instead of automobiles. They would fly into a city, land on top of a building, go to work, then fly home again. This has not happened. Privately-owned helicopters are not common. Yet helicopters have proved their value in other ways. Companies use them to transport heavy equipment to hard-to-reach places. Farmers use them to put insect poisons on their crops. And emergency teams use them to rescue people from fires and floods. VOICE TWO: Igor Sikorsky continued as an engineering adviser to his aircraft company until he died in Nineteen-Seventy-Two. He was one of the best-known and most respected leaders in international aviation. He received more than ninety major awards and honors from many countries and organizations. He always said, however, that his greatest satisfaction did not come from receiving honors. It did not come from being the first person to design new kinds of aircraft. Igor Sikorsky said his greatest satisfaction came from knowing that his helicopters were responsible for saving lives. (MUSIC) ANNOUNCER: This Special English program was written by Marilyn Rice Christiano. Your narrators were Shirley Griffith and Steve Ember. I'm Ray Freeman. Join us again next week for another EXPLORATIONS program on the VOICE OF AMERICA.

by John Kuti As I write this, I have half an eye on an old James Bond film that is showing on my computer. But this is a story about how I stopped watching TV and began reading again for pleasure, after ten years in which I hardly turned a page. I suppose I was an avid reader of "literature" between the ages of nine and fourteen. I had enough time to be White Fang, Robinson Crusoe, and Bilbo Baggins and Jeeves. Of course there was room in the schoolboy's imagination for some real historical figures: Scott of the Antarctic, all of the Vikings, and Benjamin Franklin were good friends of mine. Then, in adolescence, I began a long search for strange and radical ideas. I wanted to challenge my elders and betters, and stir up my peers with amazing points of view. Of course, the only place to look was in books. I hunted out the longest titles and the authors with the funniest names, I scoured the library for completely unread books. Then I found one which became my bible for the whole of 1982, it had a title composed of eleven long words and an author whose name I didn't know how to pronounce. It was really thick and looked dead serious. Even better, it put forward a whole world-view that would take days to explain. Perfect. I took it out of the library three times, proud to see the date-stamps lined up on the empty library insert. Later, I went to university. Expecting to spend long evenings in learned discussion with clever people, I started reading philosophy. For some reason I never found the deep-thinking intellectuals I hoped to meet. Anyway, I was ready to impress with my profound knowledge of post-structuralism, existentialism and situationism. These things are usually explained in rather short books, but they take a long time to get through. They were the end of my youthful reading. Working life was hard to get used to after so much theory. It was the end of books for me. There didn't seem to be much in books that would actually get things done. To do things you had to answer the telephone and work a computer. You had to travel about and speak to people who weren't at all interested in philosophy. I didn't stop reading, you can't avoid that. I read all day. But no books came my way, only manuals and pamphlets and contracts and documents. Maybe most people satisfy their need for stories and ideas with TV and, to tell the truth, it was all I needed for ten years. In those days I only had a book "on the go" for the duration of aeroplane flights. At first I would come home and watch TV over dinner. Then, I moved the TV so I could watch it from bed. I even rigged up a switch so I could turn it off without getting out of bed. Then, one fateful day, my TV broke and my landlady took it away. My new TV is an extra circuit board inside my computer. It's on a desk in front of a working chair and I can't see it from the bed. I still use it for the weather forecasts and it's nice to have it on while I'm typing this� but what to do last thing at night? Well, have another go with books. Now, I just like books. I have a pile of nice ones by my bed and I'm reading about six simultaneously. I don't want to BE any of the characters. I don't care if a thousand people have already read them. I don't have to search through libraries. There are books everywhere and all of them have something to read in them. I have the strange feeling that they've been there all along, waiting for me to pick them up.

This is the VOA Special English Economics Report. Many children first learn the value of money by receiving an allowance. The purpose is to let children learn from experience at an age when financial mistakes are not very costly. The amount of money that parents give to their children to spend as they wish differs from family to family. Timing is another consideration. Some children get a weekly allowance. Others get a monthly allowance. In any case, parents should make clear what, if anything, the child is expected to pay for with the money. At first, young children may spend all of their allowance soon after they receive it. If they do this, they will learn the hard way that spending must be done within a budget. Parents are usually advised not to offer more money until the next allowance. The object is to show young people that a budget demands choices between spending and saving. Older children may be responsible enough to save money for larger costs, like clothing or electronics. Many people who have written on the subject of allowances say it is not a good idea to pay your child for work around the home. These jobs are a normal part of family life. Paying children to do extra work around the house, however, can be useful. It can even provide an understanding of how a business works. Allowances give children a chance to experience the three things they can do with money. They can share it in the form of gifts or giving to a good cause. They can spend it by buying things they want. Or they can save it. Saving helps children understand that costly goals require sacrifice: you have to cut costs and plan for the future. Requiring children to save part of their allowance can also open the door to future saving and investing. Many banks offer services to help children and teenagers learn about personal finance. A savings account is an excellent way to learn about the power of compound interest. Compounding works by paying interest on interest. So, for example, one dollar invested at two percent interest for two years will earn two cents in the first year. The second year, the money will earn two percent of one dollar and two cents, and so on. That may not seem like a lot. But over time it adds up. And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report, written by Mario Ritter. You can learn more about economics, and download MP3 files and transcripts of our weekly reports, at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Bob Doughty.

This is Bob Doughty. And this is Doug Johnson with the VOA Special English program EXPLORATIONS. Today we tell about some of the important space news of the past year. We begin with the first permanent human home in space. Last year was the first full year that humans lived in a permanent place in space. On November First, Two-Thousand, an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts took their places as the first crew of the International Space Station. The commander of the first crew was American Bill Shepherd. The other members were Russian Cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev. The three were launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodome in Kazakhstan. Now, the fourth crew of the International Space Station is in orbit. They arrived at the International Space Station December Seventh on the American Space Shuttle Endeavour. The crew commander is Russian Cosmonaut Yury Onufrienko. American Astronauts Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz are the flight engineers. During the past year, the four crews of the International Space Station have been a mix of American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts. One American woman, Susan Helms, was a member of the second crew to live in the space station. NASA says future crews of the space station will be a mix of astronauts from the United States, Russia, the European Space Agency and Japan. The International Space Station is a cooperative effort by sixteen nations. When it is completed it will provide more room for space research than any spacecraft ever built. In the past year, the space station�s ability to perform useful work has been greatly expanded. During Two-Thousand-One, six space shuttle flights arrived at the International Space Station. The Russian Soyuz rocket also flew to the space station. The Space Shuttle Atlantis carried the huge United States science laboratory named �Destiny� that will be used for experiments in space. Since the International Space Station was first placed in orbit, seventy-nine people have visited or worked there as crew members. These men and women have built the space station into a one-hundred-fifty ton powerful device. In the past year, the International Space Station has become an extremely important research center. Experiments are being done there that could not be repeated on Earth. This is because of the extreme lack of gravity in space. Future research plans include experiments in biology, chemistry, physics, ecology and medicine. The International Space Station is one of the brightest objects in the night sky. Sunlight shines off huge structures that look like wings. They were added to the space station to gather energy from the Sun. They are the largest and heaviest structures to be carried into space. The sun shines on these wing-like devices making it very easy for people on Earth to see where people are living in space. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration�s Mars Odyssey spacecraft successfully entered an orbit around the planet Mars in October. It left Earth on April Seventh, Two-Thousand-One. It flew four-hundred-sixty million kilometers to reach Mars. NASA officials said it reached its planned orbit with no problems. In November, the American space agency received the first pictures of Mars taken by the Odyssey. The pictures were taken from about twenty-two thousand kilometers above the South Pole of the planet. They showed areas of carbon dioxide ice at the southern end of Mars. Beginning in February, Odyssey will start a two and one-half year science project. The Odyssey spacecraft has several important tasks. Odyssey does not carry instruments that can search for life on Mars. Yet, the spacecraft�s instruments can search for information that will help researchers understand if the environment of Mars can support life now. Or it will help them discover if Mars ever could have supported life. Evidence of water is extremely important for deciding if life could exist on Mars. Mars is too cold to permit liquid water to remain on the surface. Yet, researchers say water on Mars may be trapped under the surface. It may be ice, or possibly a liquid. Instruments on Odyssey will let scientists measure any amount of permanent ice and how it changes with the seasons. Odyssey�s instruments will also let NASA scientists search Mars for chemical elements. These elements include carbon, silicon, and iron. Odyssey will seek evidence of radiation on Mars. It will look for possible areas that may be dangerous to future astronaut crews. This information will help NASA know how to plan for a visit to Mars by human explorers. The Hubble Space Telescope continues to be an extremely valuable tool for learning about space. In the past year it continued to send back to Earth pictures and other information from the far areas of the universe. One of Hubble�s most interesting tasks this year was making the first direct examinations and chemical tests of the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system. The lead researcher for the project is David Charbonneau of the California Institute of Technology and the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Mister Charbonneau says his team used the Hubble Space Telescope to find sodium in the planet�s atmosphere. He says the research team found much less sodium in the atmosphere than expected. The work done by Hubble shows that it is possible for the space telescope and other telescopes to measure the chemicals in a planet�s atmosphere. The planet that the space telescope examined is about two-hundred-twenty times the size of Earth. It orbits a yellow Sun-like star called H-D two zero nine four five eight. The star is about one-hundred-fifty light years away in the constellation Pegasus. NASA says almost anyone can find the star by using a small telescope. NASA scientists also heard from an old friend last year. In May, NASA scientists sent and received radio messages from the Pioneer Ten Spacecraft. Pioneer Ten was launched more than twenty nine years ago on March Second, Nineteen Seventy Two. It is now more than eleven-thousand-million kilometers from Earth. Pioneer Ten was the first spacecraft to pass through a huge area of space rocks called the asteroid belt. It was also the first to take close pictures of the planet Jupiter. In Nineteen Eighty Three, Pioneer Ten became the first human-made object to leave our solar system. It did this when it passed beyond the orbit of the planet Pluto. Larry Lasher is the Pioneer Ten Project Manager for NASA�s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California. Mister Lasher said NASA engineers decided the only way to get a signal from the spacecraft was to send a message and wait for an answer. He said Pioneer received the message and answered with a very weak signal. Radio messages to the spacecraft were sent from a special radio telescope in Madrid, Spain. Pioneer Ten is so far away that radio signals traveling at the speed of light still took almost twenty-four hours to reach the spacecraft and return. NASA scientists who built Pioneer Ten knew it would pass out of our solar system and into the far reaches of space. They placed pictures of a man and a woman on the spacecraft. They also placed information about Earth and recordings of human voices and the sounds of animals. Pioneer Ten is traveling toward the star group Taurus, at almost forty-five thousand kilometers an hour. It will pass the nearest star in the constellation in about two-million years. This Special English program was written by Paul Thompson and produced by Cynthia Kirk. Our studio engineer was Dwayne Collins. This is Doug Johnson. And this is Bob Doughty. Join us again next week for another EXPLORATIONS program on the Voice of America.

This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS, in VOA Special English. I'm Barbara Klein. And I'm Bob Doughty. On our program this week: a new effort against the disease polio and an ancient group of little people. But first, rising temperatures in the northernmost part of our planet. A new report says the Arctic is experiencing some of the most severe climate change on Earth. The report says average winter temperatures there have risen at almost two times the rate of that in other areas in the past fifty years. It also says computer programs estimate an additional increase of four to seven degrees Celsius during the next century. About three-hundred scientists prepared the report after a four-year study. The scientists say human activities are responsible for increasing amounts of heat-trapping gases in Earth�s atmosphere. Other studies have linked recent climate changes to such activities. The report was presented to an organization called the Arctic Council. Its members include the United States and the seven other countries with territory in the Arctic. Six groups representing native peoples also are members. The Council considered the report last week during a meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland. Robert Correll of the American Meteorological Society led the committee that wrote the report. He says climate changes will have a major effect on the Arctic. Polar bears and some kinds of seals may disappear. As a result, native peoples who hunt for these animals will experience food shortages and economic problems. The report also warns of possible health risks to people. As new kinds of wildlife move into the Arctic, animal diseases that can infect people may spread. And, northern freshwater fisheries that supply the native people with food could suffer. The report says melting ice would add more freshwater to the Arctic Ocean. This could cause sea levels to rise around the world. As the frozen ground warms, many existing buildings in the Arctic, roads and industrial areas could be damaged. The report notes some possible improvements as a result of rising temperatures. For example, the melting ice will increase the ability of fish and other sea creatures to use Arctic resources. The melting is likely to permit increased exploration for oil and gas. And, reduced ice is likely to extend the period when ships can travel in the area. This week, health workers in West and Central Africa are starting a new effort against the disease polio. The effort is aimed at young boys and girls in more than twenty countries. The workers plan to give polio vaccines to the children. Vaccines help the body�s natural defense system recognize and fight disease. Last month, one million people spread out over twenty-five African countries to vaccinate boys and girls against polio. The goal of the effort is to protect eighty-million children against the disease. Organizers called it the single largest public health campaign in history. A virus causes polio. The virus is spread through body fluids and also water or food touched by an infected person. People who get the disease often lose their ability to move their arms or legs. Some die from polio. There is no cure. However, polio can be prevented. To work best, the vaccine is given to children several times during the first years of life. World health officials have set a goal of defeating polio by two-thousand-five. Polio began to spread in Africa last year after Islamic religious leaders in northern Nigeria said the vaccine was harmful. Kano State and other areas halted an effort to vaccinate children. Since then, polio has spread to four countries where it had been completely removed. Now the leaders in Kano State say there is a safe vaccine. They supported the vaccination campaign in October. Yet there were protests in other parts of Nigeria. Leaders across Africa have been organizing support for the vaccination campaign. Last month, religious and traditional leaders from several African countries met in Dakar, Senegal. They agreed to use their organizations and influence to support vaccination efforts and other programs to keep children healthy. Esseldin El Sawy of Al-Azhar University in Egypt attended the Senegal meeting. Doctor El Sawy noted that the average vaccination rate in Muslim communities in Africa is lower than the rate worldwide. He says Islam supports the protection of every human being, including children. Debate continues about the remains of small human-like creatures discovered in Indonesia. A team of Australian and Indonesian scientists reported the discovery last month in Nature magazine. The first of the bones were uncovered last year in Liang Bua, a large cave on the island of Flores. The scientists believe the bones came from an adult who stood only about one meter tall. Their study found that such individuals lived as recently as twelve-thousand years ago. The scientists also say the bones appear to be different from those of any known group, or species. So, they consider these human-like creatures to be part of a new species. The scientists have named it Homo floresiensis, or man of Flores. The bones of several other human-like individuals have been found in Liang Bua. At first, the scientists thought the remains came from children. But, closer study of the teeth and bones confirmed that they belonged to adults. The discovery has caused excitement in the field of archaeology, the study of material remains of past human life and activities. This is partly because the bones represent a new species. But, scientists are even more interested in learning how Flores Man developed. The scientists described the remains of an individual believed to have been a woman. Tests showed the woman was about thirty years old when she died about eighteen-thousand years ago. Her brain was only about one-third the size of a human brain. The scientists also discovered what they believe are stone tools near the bones. They say there are signs that Flores Man knew how to use fire and hunted as part of a group. This suggests a higher level of mental development than thought possible for a small brain. Human development theories are based in part on the idea that as the size of the brain grew, so did intelligence. The scientists also found the remains of an ancient species of elephant called a Stegodon. Unlike modern elephants, Stegodons were about the size of the human-like beings. The remains of large meat-eating lizards also were uncovered. These creatures were similar to reptiles still living today on the nearby island of Komodo. They are called Komodo Dragons. Australian archaeologist Mike Morwood directed the dig on Flores. He believes that Flores Man developed from the group of early humans called Homo erectus. That group was the same size as modern human beings. However, Homo erectus lived between two hundred thousand and more than one million years ago. Mister Morwood�s earlier research has shown that Homo erectus arrived in the area more than eight hundred thousand years ago. The bones from the recent Flores finds extend from about twelve thousand to ninety five thousand years ago. Mister Morwood argues that Homo erectus became smaller Mister Morwood argues that Homo erectus became smaller over the years in Flores as a result of the island�s environment. This theory has been shown in the development of some island animals. It can happen when an animal group shares a small land area with a limited food supplies and no natural enemies. The scientists say Flores man probably died about twelve-thousand years ago after a volcanic explosion on the island. Yet people living on Flores today still tell stories of the island's little people. They say the little people lived in caves until the first Dutch traders arrived about five-hundred years ago. Nature magazine published a commentary by Marta Mirazon Lahr and Robert Foley of the University of Cambridge in England. They described the new findings as one of the most important discoveries in the past half-century. This program was written by Jill Moss, Karen Leggett and Caty Weaver. Cynthia Kirk was our producer. And, our engineer was Dwayne Collins. I�m Barbara Klein. And I�m Bob Doughty. We would like to hear from you. Write to us at Special English, Voice of America, Washington, D.C., two-zero-two-thirty-seven, U.S.A. Or send electronic messages to special@voanews.com. Join us again next week for Science in the News in VOA Special English.

At around one year of age, most babies utter their first word. A short time later, a second word is spoken. Bob McMurray is a professor of psychology at the University of Iowa. "And it would be very tempting to say, 'Wow, look at the rate of acquisition has sped up,' right? 'It took them a year to learn mommy but only a month to learn daddy.' But in actuality that child was probably working on that word daddy all along. They really spend a year and a month to learning the word daddy". McMurray says once toddlers begin speaking their first words, it is only a matter of time before they seem to learn words at a faster rate. According to the psychologist, the first word spurt usually occurs around 18 months of age. When the burst of language occurs, McMurray says, the conventional theory among psychologists is that toddlers are rapidly developing specialized learning tools, such as the ability to recognize that objects have names. But according to a computer model McMurray created, toddlers have "word spurts" after they have gathered enough easy, similar sounding words -like mama, dada, dog and cat. Once they have mastered these words, by repeating them over and over again, they then tackle more difficult words. McMurray says the exposure to more difficult words is a key factor in the word spurt. "The critical factor is actually how many words are hard and how many words are easy. So, as long as you have, and this is what we were able to prove mathematically, more difficult words than easy words, you're always going to get some kind of acceleration in word learning". McMurray believes his model demonstrates that the word spurt of toddlers is the result of their understanding of more complex words. "Kids are keeping track of lots and lots of words at the same time. They may not be using all of the words they've learned, but as they are hearing language, they are soaking them up. They are not waiting until they are done learning one word before moving on to the next." The study on toddlers' word development is in the journal Science.