What If You’re Not Good at English?

Researchers whose first language is not English can spend around twice as long reading an English scientific journal article as native speakers. For a PhD student, that can mean     1     (spend) up to 19 additional working days per year just reading papers.

These statistics,     2     (publish) today in PLOS Biology, might not be shocking, researchers say, but it’s important to measure the effects of language barriers on the careers of academics       3     are not fluent in English. “It is the first step for the scientific community       4     (make) more efforts to solve this problem”, says Tatsuya Amano, a biodiversity researcher at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and a co-author of the study.

The team found that among scientists who had published only one paper in English, scientists from countries       5     English is generally poor spent 29.8 percent more time writing papers than native English speakers;     6     from countries with moderate English proficiency (能力) spent 50.6% more time. Similarly, the researchers found that people from countries with low English proficiency spent an average of 90.8 percent more time reading scientific articles       7     native English speakers.

At conferences, even those who overcome obstacles face difficulties in presenting their work in English. Germana Barata, a researcher who     8     (specialize) in science communication at the State University of Campinas in Brazil, says that despite being fluent in English, she still feels uncomfortable at times. “We       9     (give) the same amount of time to present, but all that we can say in 10 minutes is different from       10     a native speaker can say,” she points out.

3 . A Day in My Wheel Chair

Alex Johnson was born with a rare disorder and got his first wheelchair when he was 7 years old. When he was 11, he arranged to get a bunch of borrowed wheelchairs and then invited his teachers and fellow students to spend a day in them.

Dozens of volunteers quickly learned how complicated it was for Alex to get around the school. Balancing a lunch tray while also rolling down the cafeteria line? Super tricky. Those who participated also learned about the aches and pains Alex struggles with daily. There’s also the arduous, if not impossible, task of rolling a manual wheelchair up and down slopes.

Doors are the worst, they said, because they’re heavy and difficult to pull open from a rolling chair. And although the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) specifies that doorways need to be wide enough to allow a wheelchair and the person’s hands to pass through safely, but many doors in older buildings are just too narrow.

But making the world more accessible for wheelchair users is a public policy issue controlled by government officials, so Alex recently challenged the Tennessee House of Representatives to spend a day in wheelchairs. And 10 men and women took him up on it! For a full day, they worked at their desks and attended all their regular meetings in wheelchairs. The lawmakers had the same eye-opening experiences that Alex’s school pals had.

State Representative Clark Boyd said, “I expected it to be difficult, but I had no idea how frustrating it could be to just simply get around.”

Thanks to comparable wheelchair challenges around the world, more lawmakers are getting the opportunity to learn more about what it’s like for the millions of people living with a mobility disability. “My hope is that through my challenge we can make the world more accessible,” Alex said. “Together, we can change the world, one challenge at a time.”

4 . Like many schools worldwide, the pandemic forced Safe Passage to address an issue it’s been debating for years: how to best integrate (使……完整，使……整体) online or remote learning into its education plans.     1     But the area’s lack of internet access, as well as security concerns like theft, make distributing technology for students to learn at home a daunting (令人怯步的) task.

Holland says students will be at a disadvantage in today’s workplace if they don’t have access to digital tools.     2    

“Blended learning is a combination between technology and face-to-face classroom learning,” says Holland. “It’s not a bolt-on solution. If you see technology as this cool thing you just bolt on to an existing curriculum, you are in big trouble.”

Jean-Francois agrees.

“A lot of grants will include purchasing laptops or tablets. But education is a lot more complex,” she says. “    3     We can’t just assume that if we give them a tablet and instructions, they are going to know how to use it, and we shouldn’t expect they are going to know how to effectively teach children with it.”

    4     But Johnson, the Rotarian who helps clubs design education grants, cautions against moving too quickly to “reinvent education.”

“We need to figure it out, but figure it out one step at a time,” says Johnson. “You have to know what people are able to accept and use — cognitively, socially, and emotionally. Determine that, then move forward.”

5 . A few years ago, Charles Barkley got into a lot of trouble for making the observation that sports figures didn't need to be role models. Thousands of fans and professional journalists were cross at this attack on the fundamental principle that the person who jumps highest must aim highest and the person who handles the running back must also be able to deal with life's problems with grace as well.

The problem is not that we look to these people for perfection when they take off their uniforms. It's that we expect anyone to be our representatives for perfection. That's stupid and it makes the rest of us down here lazy.

I get the importance of having heroes, the people who inspire us to cultivate the best potential within us and nurture our better angels. I personally have many heroes, from my mother, Lucy, to my favorite law professor, Howard. But these are personal contacts, people who have-actually touched my hand and my heart, and who occupy a pedestal（基座）built of my own experiences and aspirations. To look at an athlete or an actress with high salary and demand that he or she match our dreams is not only a waste of time, but it's dangerous. The danger comes in how this type of hero worship dehumanizes both the object of affection and the person who blindly adores. That was Barkley's point, not that we should give public figures a pass for being faulty but that we shouldn't abandon our own moral compasses and look to them for true north.

Recently on a television program I participated in, the discussion turned to Kathleen Kane. Someone suggested that the fact that the first female attorney general（首席检察官）in Pennsylvania was really messing things up could have unfortunate consequences for women seeking elected office. I offered the opinion that Kane was unquestionably criticized and that it was not hatred towards woman but incompetence at the root of the attacks. After the show aired, I had people emailing to tell me that I was either a traitor（叛徒）for publicly attacking a fellow female when we need to stand together behind this "role model", or a fool for not going a step further to say that this incompetent lawyer had made it harder for all women to move to the next level.

How depressing! Why should the inferior performance of one woman lead to such diverse but passionate views in people? The answer is obvious: Kane has stopped being an attorney general but has instead become The First Female Attorney General. She can't just make a mistake and pay the normal consequences.

If we stopped trying to live our lives through the accomplishments of public figures, many of whom look and sound like us, we'd learn how to recognize the heroic character of those we might actually know, and the heroic potential within ourselves. Or, perhaps, the honesty to accept our ordinary humanity.

6 . AI In the Future Workplace

Artificial Intelligence is making its way into business. As our special report this week explains, firms of all types are exploiting AI to forecast demand, hire workers and deal with customers. In 2017 companies spent around $22 billion on AI-related mergers and acquisitions, about 26 times more than in 2015. The McKinsey Global Institute, a think-tank within a consultancy, claims that just applying AI to marketing, sales and supply chains could create economic value, including profits and efficiencies, of $2.7 billion over the next 20 years.     1    .

Such forecasts fuel anxiety as well as hope. Start with the benefits. AI ought to improve productivity. Humanyze collects data from employees' calendars and e-mails to work out, say, whether office layouts favor teamwork.     2     Employees will gain, too. Thanks to the progress in computer vision. AI can check that workers are wearing safety equipment and that no one has been harmed on the factory floor. Some will appreciate more feedback on their work and welcome a sense of how to do better.

Yet AI's benefits will come with many potential drawbacks. Algorithms (计算程序) may not be free of the prejudices of their programmers.     3     The length of a commute (通勤) may predict whether an employee will quit a job, but this focus may harm poorer applicants. Older staff might work more slowly than younger ones and could risk losing their positions if all AI looks for is efficiency.

    4     If your skills are in demand, you are more likely to be able to resist than if you are easy to replace. Paid-by-the-hour workers in low-wage industries such as retailing will be especially subject to harm. That could fuel protest of labor unions seeking to represent employees' interests and to set regulations. Even then, the choice in some jobs will be between being replaced by a robot or being treated like one.

American College of Physicians 'stepped out of its lane" by placing gun control in medical education. Stanley Gold-farb, formerly the associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, argued that teaching social justice issues and population health comes "at the expense of strict training in medical science" at a time when sub-specialists are in short supply. But many physicians, ourselves included, think social issues should be at the heart of medical education.

Formal medical school typically takes four years, followed by several years of residency（住院医生实习期）and often a fellowship（研究员职位）, and during that short time students have a wide range of competing requirements. They must learn complex biological and chemical pathways that explain diseases and health. They must be educated on how to read the the scientific literature and apply it to their patients. They must master many therapies and know how to adapt them to patients' varied diseases states. On top of all this, they must learn to communicate effectively and compassionately with patients and colleagues.

Being a good doctor also demands that we understand the reasons behind poor health. Our mission is not simply to diagnose, manage and treat. Physicians should act to prevent the root causes of illness and improve well-being. Physicians are trained to tackle problems at their root. System and structural-level social issues are also drivers of poor health, and it is our duty to address them. Medical training must evolve to produce doctors who are able to not only treat the individual but also understand the larger influencers of health -- of which gun violence is most emphatically one. As medical professors, we would fail our students -- and our patients - if we expected any less.

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