Week five - unmanned aerial vehicle

  AeroVironment Launches Quantix Commercial Drone System

Unmanned aircraft systems manufacturer AeroVironment kicked off this year’s Drone World Expo in San Jose, California, by unveiling its new commercial Quantix drone and Decision Support System (DSS). The package includes the Quantix drone—a vertical takeoff and landing multirotor, multi-sensor system—with the company's DSS cloud-based analytics platform.

  Quantix is targeting the agricultural, energy and transportation markets, and AeroVironment is offering the system to customers in versions that include hardware only, hardware plus DSS or flight services that the company can provide for customers who don’t want to operate their own drones.

    “We believe this is the first practical, fully integrated solution for the commercial market,” said Wahid Nawabi, AeroVironment's president and CEO. “Customers don’t want to be experts at UAV operations and data analysis,” he added, noting that the Quantix drone is designed for long life, reliability and ease of operation. AeroVironment has manufactured tens of thousands of drones operating globally in harsh environments, he said, and has a track record of 45 years in this industry.

  The Quantix drone is equipped with four rotors, two on the ends of a single wing. A central fuselage is fitted with two cameras, one an RGB color camera for photographic image capture and a multispectral sensor with normalized difference vegetation index (NVDI) capabilities. All data is stored on SD cards, which can be removed post flight for local analysis or uploaded to AeroVironment’s DSS.

  Operation of Quantix is automatic. Users interface with the drone via a customized tablet computer, by drawing the flight parameters on the screen. “It’s one-touch planning,” said Quantix product line manager Tom Stone. “If you can draw a box on a screen and push a button, you can fly Quantix. You don’t have to learn how to fly it, how to land it, and it’ll take off automatically, plan the mission automatically, fly that mission automatically, come back and land, and you can take the data card and put it in this tablet and you can look at the results immediately.”

  Quantix is designed to operate from small spaces, thanks to its vertical takeoff and landing capability. The drone’s four rotors pull it straight up into the air, then it transitions to horizontal flight for mapping operations. Elevons on the wing trailing edge are used to control pitch when in horizontal flight mode. Yaw is controlled by varying the speed of the rotors. Endurance is about one hour, and 45-minute flights are typical. For landing, Quantix reverts to vertical mode and touches down on rugged fixtures built into the aft fuselage and wingtips. When power drops, Quantix will automatically return to the departure spot. If power is lost completely, it can glide and land with minimal damage.

  The DSS is a cloud-based, secure, open-architecture analytics toolbox accessible via the Web, according to Nazlin Kanji, AeroVironment's program director of unmanned aircraft systems. “It supports the needs of multiple customers in multiple industries. Technology changes very quickly, and [DSS] allows us to incorporate new technology quickly and make it available to our customers.”

  AeroVironment is not yet releasing pricing information on Quantix, and this will depend on how the buyer chooses to use the system, either by purchasing the hardware and operating the drone or by selecting AeroVironmnet to operate Quantix. DSS analytics packages are available in various forms, either by annual subscription or smaller chunks. AeroVironment also expects that some buyers will use Quantix drones to provide mapping/sensin business services. Quantix will begin shipping in spring 2017.

URL：http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/aerospace/2016-11-15/aerovironment-launches-quantix-commercial-drone-system

Structure of the Lead：
ＷＨＯ：Unmanned aerial vehicle
ＷＨＥＮ：November 15,2016
ＷＨＡＴ：Unmanned aircraft systems manufacturer AeroVironment kicked off this year’s
ＷＨＹ：It can use on everywhere that we original need to use people to do.
ＷＨＥＲＥ： California
ＨＯＷ：It will begin shipping in the spring of 2017.

Week four - COP 21

Paris Climate Change Conference

 John Kerry says he will try and sign up to Paris climate treaty before Donald Trump takes office

  The US Secretary of State John Kerry says he will continue his efforts to implement the Paris Agreement on global warming, until the day President Barack Obama leaves office.

  Speaking in New Zealand following a trip to Antarctica, Kerry said his administration would continue to do everything possible to meet its responsibility to future generations. Kerry has long championed climate action but now his legacy is under threat.

  President-elect Donald Trump has called climate change a hoax and said he would "cancel" US involvement in the landmark Paris deal. Under the deal, which came into force this month, countries have agreed to limit global warming to 2C above pre-industrial levels. Achieving the goal will require a major shift away from fossil fuels.

  Kerry said it would be up to the Trump administration to define itself on climate change. He said that sometimes there is a divide between what is said on the campaign trail and what is done in governance.

  But Kerry appeared to take a swipe at Trump when he listed some of the ways in which global warming could already be seen. He said that globally, there were more fires, floods and damaging storms, and sea levels were rising.

  "The evidence is mounting in ways that people in public life should not dare to avoid accepting as a mandate for action," Kerry said.

  He also made a point of crediting a previous Republican president, George H W Bush, with first joining the global effort to address climate change in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

  "Now the world's scientific community has concluded that climate change is happening beyond any doubt. And the evidence is there for everybody to see," Kerry said. "So we will wait to see how the next administration addresses this."

  He said he thinks his administration is on the right track because the majority of Americans believe climate change is happening and want action.

  Kerry plans to fly this week to a global climate conference in Morocco, where he will give a major speech. Officials there have begun working on a "rulebook" to implement the Paris deal.

URL：http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/donald-trump-paris-climate-deal-john-kerry-sign-up-cancel-a7414521.html

Structure of the Lead：
ＷＨＯ：John Kerry
ＷＨＥＮ：Before Donald Trump takes office.
ＷＨＡＴ：Sign up to Paris climate treaty.
ＷＨＹ：John Kerry said he thinks his administration is on the right track because the majority of Americans believe climate change is happening and want action.
ＷＨＥＲＥ： Not given
ＨＯＷ：Not given

Weel three - Paris magazine attack

  Why does France keep getting attacked?

  Undoubtedly, the role France has historically assumed as standard bearer of western secular liberalism has also put the nation in the spotlight. Islamic extremists may see the US as a source of moral decadence and economic exploitation, but France is seen as an atheist power which is both defending western ideals such as human rights, free speech and democracy and, in the eyes of jihadis, trying to impose them on the Islamic world.

  The first big militant attack in France in recent years came earlier , in 2012, and targeted soldiers and the Jewish community. The next major attack was against the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine which had published controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, deemed insulting by many Muslims. Then came November’s Isis-organised strike against a concert hall, bars and a football stadium – all representative of French life. Finally there is an attack on Bastille Day, with all the history and values it represents.

  Successive governments in Paris have also taken a hard – and much publicised – line on issues such as the wearing of full-body coverings and the veil in public, which has been well noted by Islamic militants. So has the increasingly prominent French military role overseas. French forces have made a series of interventions in the Islamic world in recent years – in Libya, in Mali, where its troops rolled back one of the most successful Islamic militant offensives outside Syria or Iraq for many years, and of course in the coalition against Isis.

  Other reasons for the violence are rooted in grave problems within France itself which have made the nation vulnerable.

  Some of these are failings of the fragmented, bureaucratic and still under-resourced security services. A French parliamentary investigation into last year’s terrorist attacks on Paris highlighted a “global failure” of French intelligence and called for the creation of a single, US-style national counterterrorism agency.

  All the extremists involved in the attacks had been previously flagged to authorities, the investigation found. Some had past convictions, or were under judicial surveillance in France or in Belgium when they struck Paris.

  Isis thus seeks to terrorise its enemies and mobilise its supporters but above all polarise those communities, which might then turn against one another. In its literature it has specifically pointed to France as a place where “the grey zone” of tolerance and moderation can be usefully targeted and destroyed.

  Some observers in France have said the nation has been brought closer together by the recent violence. Not all agree. Patrick Calvar, head of the French Direction Générale de la Sécurité Interieure, recently warned that his country was “on the brink of a civil war between rightwing and Islamist extremists”.

  “Extremisms are rising everywhere and … this confrontation, I think it will happen. One or two more attacks, and we will see it,” Calvar said last month.

URL：https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/15/why-does-france-keep-getting-attacked

WHO：France

WHEN：2016

WHAT：France keep getting attacked

WHY：The violence are rooted in grave problems within France itself which have made the nation vulnerable.

WHERE：France
HOW：Not given

Week two - Syrian civil war

  Life and death in Syria

The war in Syria has raged for five years and claimed the lives of more than a quarter of a million people. Millions have fled the conflict, but nearly 18 million people still live in the war-torn country.

  The United Nations estimates that 17.9 million people still live in Syria — down from 24.5 million before the war broke out. More than 6 million of them are classed as internally displaced after being forced to flee their homes to look for somewhere safer to live.

  Most provinces have seen a sharp decline in population and many of those that remain have fled the cities to seek shelter in the countryside.

  Life goes on as normal in many parts of the capital, Damascus, but elsewhere millions struggle to get by. The UN says 13.5 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, with 4.5 million of those in hard-to-reach and besieged areas like Deir al-Zour.have killed many civilians.

  Five years of war has all but destroyed Syria's economy,  Syrian families face a daily struggle to make ends meet. Nearly 70% of the population are living in extreme poverty, unable to secure basic food and non-food items.

  That struggle is made worse by the state of the farming industry in Syria. Once one of the country's biggest sectors, its production and distribution have been badly affected by the conflict and many regions now have high levels of food insecurity.

  Food has increasingly been used as a weapon, with aid often diverted onto black markets or into government-approved areas. Reports of people starving to death have emerged from besieged areas like Eastern Ghouta, a rebel stronghold on the outskirts of Damascus.  With food production limited and food aid unreliable, getting hold of the essentials can be both difficult and extremely expensive in many areas of the country.

Bread, for example, is a key staple across the Arab world. Before the war, Syria's government subsidised it and other essential food items as part of the country's welfare system in return, it hoped, for the support of its people. But after losing control of vast areas that produce wheat, those subsidies were reduced by the government and the price of bread has rocketed.

Even for those that have survived, the outlook remains bleak. As families have fled Syria for safer shores, the number of school-age children in the country has dwindled — there are a million fewer now than there were in 2010. And of those that are still there, more than 40% are no longer going to school.

Syria's education system has been shattered by the war, with one in four schools having been damaged or destroyed, used as a shelter, or converted into a military building. Even if the schools were intact, many would be unable to open, with almost one quarter of the country's teaching personnel — some 52,500 teachers — no longer in their posts.

URL：http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-841ebc3a-1be9-493b-8800-2c04890e8fc9


Structure of the Lead：
ＷＨＯ：Analysis population, food and educating in Syria.
ＷＨＥＮ：2011 until now.
ＷＨＡＴ：Syrian civil war continued struggle.
ＷＨＹ：Not given.
ＷＨＥＲＥ：Syria
ＨＯＷ：Most of them wrestle with death every day.

Week one - emoji

  Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2015 is emoji 

  For the first time ever, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is a pictograph: emjio, officially called the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ emoji, though you may know it by other names. There were other strong contenders from a range of fields, outlined below, but emoji was chosen as the ‘word’ that best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015.

  Emojis (the plural can be either emoji or emojis) have been around since the late 1990s, but 2015 saw their use, and use of the word emoji, increase hugely. This year Oxford University Press have partnered with leading mobile technology business SwiftKey to explore frequency and usage statistics for some of the most popular emoji across the world, and emoji was chosen because it was the most used emoji globally in 2015.
  An emoji is ‘a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion in electronic communication’; the term emoji is a loanword from Japanese, and comes from e ‘picture’ + moji ‘letter, character’. The similarity to the English word emoticon has helped its memorability and rise in use, though the resemblance is actually entirely coincidental: emoticon (a facial expression composed of keyboard characters, such as ;), rather than a stylized image) comes from the English words emotion and icon.
  Emojis are no longer the preserve of texting teens – instead, they have been embraced as a nuanced form of expression, and one which can cross language barriers. Even Hillary Clinton solicited feedback in the form of emojis, and emoji has had notable use from celebrities and brands alongside everyone else – and even appeared as the caption to the Vine which apparently kicked off the popularity of the term on fleek, which appears on our WOTY shortlist.
  Now that we’re all used to emojis being a shorthand method of communicating our thoughts, emotions, and responses.

URL：http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/11/word-of-the-year-2015-emoji/

Structure of the Lead：
ＷＨＯ：The new Oxford Dictionaries Word of 2015
ＷＨＥＮ：2015
ＷＨＡＴ：It's the first time ever, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is a pictograph.
ＷＨＹ：Emojis have been embraced as a nuanced form of expression, and one which can cross language barriers.
ＷＨＥＲＥ：Not given
ＨＯＷ：Most of celebrity use it common.