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How to grow food in space

 

Hello and welcome to CNN 10. I'm Coy Wire, happy Friday Eve.

It's Thursday, May 1st. Feels like just yesterday it was April, This year is flying by.

It is also feeling like a Thinker Thursday, so put your thinking caps on.

What starts with a P and ends with an E and has thousands of letters?

No, it's not the longest English word in the dictionary.

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, the lung disease.

 

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis 火山矽肺病

 

Because that ends with an S and only has 45 letters. Answer is post office.

All right, got those mental muscles working. Now let's get you your news.

We start today with the US economy.

The Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis just released its advanced estimate for gross domestic product or GDP for the first quarter.

Or first three months of the year. Think of it like the country's financial health report.

GDP measures all the goods and services produced in the economy.

So how did the US economy score? On the not so positive side, the economy shrank by .3% for the first time in three years.

US stocks dropped as a result.

Some of the likely reasons there have been government cutbacks in spending and imports.

Items purchased from other countries skyrocketed from minus 1.9% to 41.3% in the first quarter.

Likely because businesses are stocking up before new tariffs kick in.

You know tariffs as in those taxes imposed by a government on imported goods.

Here's the CEO of Ford Motor Company.

It's tough to tell right now.

Um, the reason is because we're seeing double digit sales increases since March and April.

But we ran this employee pricing. I don't know if that's unique to us.

 

employee pricing (event): during this exciting event, anyone can pay what a Ford of Canada employee pays on most new Ford vehicles – for a limited time

 

There may be a lot of customers going out and buying cars.

You know before what they fear is the imports increasing prices.

That may be a dynamic we're certainly seeing. Our inventories are shrinking at the dealership.

On the flip side it wasn't all doom and gloom.

 

doom and gloom 前景暗淡，無望

 

While consumer spending slowed sharply in the first quarter, businesses actually stepped up their spending.

Gross private domestic investment soared to its highest rate since 2021.

And there was also an increase in US exports, things other countries buy from the US.

All of these are typically good signs and not what firms and businesses do when they're concerned about the economic outlook.

Now to some severe weather that it's affecting so many of you in the Midwestern US.

Rounds of heavy rain, floods, and violent winds have threatened more than a dozen states this week.

The storm systems so widespread that a tornado watch was in effect for nearly 2 million people on Wednesday.

In parts of Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.

And more than 10 million people were under flood watches across five states.

Wind gusts as high as 90 miles per hour tore across the Midwest bringing massive hail and tornadoes.

Some cities and communities sustained major damage.

 

sustain [səˋsten] v. 承受，承擔

 

For our future meteorologists out there, let's catch up with our Derek VanDam to teach us about derechos and a phenomenon known as training.

 

derecho [dəˋretʃo] n. 超强对流风暴

 

Hi Derek. Yeah, that's right Coy. So many people associate damage with thunderstorms to a tornado.

But that's not what took place on Tuesday. In fact what is known as aderecho took place.

That is a straight line wind event. And in order for this to be classified as a derecho.

We need this destructive line of thunderstorms to move over several hundred miles.

And it produces winds over 58 mph, and that's exactly what it did.

You can basically follow this thing uh stretching from the Ozarks right through the interior of New England and the Ohio River Valley.

And it really knocked out power for so many people.

You can see this radar loop just the destructive storms that pressed through this region.

That is by the way hurricane force wind gusts that were reported with this line of storms.

And it knocked out power to over a half a million customers in and around the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania region.

Uh so we have also seen a line of storms that have moved over the same locations.

And it's produced significant very heavy rainfall. This is called training of storms.

 

training [ˋtrenɪŋ] n. 在同一地方经过或停滞几个小时导致的局部强降水; dangerous weather pattern involving persistent rainfall over the same area

 

Look at them move over Oklahoma City one after another after another.

Producing record-breaking rainfall for the month of April.

It added to the totals that they've got over the past several weeks.

And just yesterday uh we saw an incredible amount of rainfall from the sky producing scenes like this.

This is coming out of Norman, Oklahoma look at this parking lot and this uh road turned into a river.

You can see the lightning, flashing in the background as well. Incredible.

This system is going to advance eastward. And then we have the potential for more severe weather.

So we'll keep an eye to the sky from Cleveland to Indianapolis, Nashville, Little Rock, all the way to Austin today.

Back to you Coy.

 

Now to an update of a story we told you about on Monday.

The NFL has decided to fine the Atlanta Falcons and their defensive coordinator.

Over the leak of an NFL draft prospect's phone number.

The football coach's son orchestrated a prank phone call to the newly named Cleveland Browns Shadur Sanders during the NFL draft.

And it went viral for all the wrong reasons.

Now that single phone call is costing his father a fine of $100,000.

And the entire Falcons organization a quarter of a million bucks.

A true testament to the phrase "Your actions have consequences."

 

Pop quiz hot shot.

 

What planet in our solar system has a hexagonal cloud pattern located on its north pole?

 

hexagonal [hɛkˋsægən!] adj. 六角形的

 

Jupiter, Saturn, Earth, or Neptune?

 

Ring ring, this is Saturn calling.

And if you picked me, you are correct.

Scientists discovered a six-sided cloud pattern during the Voyager missions in the 1980s.

And believe it's the result of a hurricane that creates a six-sided jet stream.

Now to some space news about our solar system's shining star, the sun.

We're getting a newly released close-up image of the sun's surface with details we've never been able to see until now.

It's the first shot taken by the US National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope.

Which has a new visible tunable filter or VTF.

 

tunable [ˋtjunəb! ]adj. 可调(音)的

 

The filter can build a three-dimensional view of activity on the sun's surface with a closer view than any other instrument.

It just revealed a cluster of continent-sized dark sunspots near the center of the sun's inner atmosphere.

 

sunspot [ˋsʌn͵spɑt] n. 太阳黑子

 

Just one pixel of this image covers 6.2 miles of the sun's surface.

But the detailed image isn't just cool to look at.

It's a groundbreaking tool for scientists to learn about and predict potentially dangerous solar weather.

Like certain events that can cause geomagnetic storms here on Earth,

which can cause all kinds of electronics and infrastructure to go awry.

 

awry [əˋraɪ] adj. 離開預期方向（的）；出錯（的）  

 

Want to become a farmer in space and grow some crops among the stars?

Well, you may soon be in luck with missions to the Moon and Mars in planning stages for the next decade.

Scientists are racing to figure out how to lighten the loads aboard spacecrafts.

Their most recent mission testing whether astronauts can grow their own food in space.

Our Nick Valencia shows us the technology behind it all.

Europe's first returnable commercial spacecraft Phoenix 1 launched on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket last week.

One purpose of the mission to test whether astronauts could grow all of their own food in space.

As the momentum for space exploration grows, the attention now turns to the astronauts.

With Mars on the horizon for sometime in the 2030s, a roundtrip mission will last about 18 months.

This project is about how we can produce the food we need if we want to travel in space.

If we want to colonize all the planets, uh it's really difficult to bring everything we need from Earth.

Just think that an astronaut consumes between half a kilo and 1.5 kg of food per day.

And every kilogram we ship to space can be 20,000 US dollars.

So imagine every meal can be something like $10,000.

NASA, the European Space Agency, and other partner countries have long been working aboard the space stationto learn how to live in space and growing some food now.

The Imperial College with the help of the Bazos Earth Fund are investigating how to create food.

That both astronauts and people on Earth can produce sustainably using biofoundries with cells acting as mini factories.

 

biofoundry 生物铸造厂

 

The plan is to use microbes and microorganisms such as bacteria or yeast.

 

microbe [ˋmaɪkrob] n. 微生物；（尤指引起疾病的）细菌

 

Enabling space crews to grow their own food, fuel, and even medicine.

If we bring a tiny little cell out in space, that cells can then grow and produce everything we need.

The team hopes the mission will reveal whether the cells can produce the variety of products they seek.

From vitamins to dairy products to biodiesel. And that's just the start.

But down the line when we have the moon base, we need this kind of bioreactors.

 

bioreactor 生物反应器

 

To be able to really sustain permanent settlement of human civilization in this environment.

The team hopes to provide space crews with the taste of home while out in space.

And maybe make some space pizzas.

 

Today's story getting a 10 out of 10 is a military salute 80 years overdue.

 

overdue [ˋovɚˋdju] adj. 迟来的

 

This week, the only female unit to serve overseas in World War II was honored with a Congressional Gold Medal.

The highest civilian award bestowed by the United States Congress.

 

bestow [bɪˋsto] v. 授予; 给予

 

The 6,888th Central Postal Directory Battalion known as the 6triple eight,

 

directory [dəˋrɛktərɪ] n. 姓名住址簿；工商名录

battalion [bəˋtæljən] n.【军】营，大队[C][G]；协同作战的部队；军队

 

was a unit of black women who tackled a massive US military mail crisis in England during the war.

They cleared a backlog of around 17 million pieces of unsent mail in three months.

When they were given six months to do so.

We gather today to salute these mighty veterans.

We salute the ingenuity with which they sprang into battle.

We salute the barriers that they broke in a system designed to push them aside.

We salute their trailblazing spirit and the road that they paved for others.

For their distinguished service, I am proud our nation is finally giving the women of the 6888the recognition they've long deserved.

Today is our way of saying, in no uncertain terms, that their story will never be forgotten.

Their story so powerful Hollywood took note.

The movie, the six triple eight starring Kerry Washington was released last year.

All right superstars from the Golden State to the Lone Star State.

We have two shoutouts today. This one goes to Ms. Olsen and all of our bolts at Thornton Middle School in Fremont, California.

Rise up. And we're sending a whole bunch of love to Mrs. Harpeland all of our friends at Creeside Park Junior High in Tomball,Texas.

I see you Kylie, go out and making it awesome day everyone.

We'll do it again tomorrow for the last day of the week. I'm Coy Wire, we are

CNN 10.