Growing plants in space

    Hello, everyone! Today, I'll talk about food made in space. I listened to a pod cast 'Food made in space.' As you know, plants require natural light and nutrition to grow up, but these days, NASA and other corporations have been trying to grow up plants using LED light instead of natural light. 

    In this pod cast, the woman said that LED light is enough light to grow up plants. Also, researchers experiment that what effects appear on plants by changing wavelength of LED light. So far, they found that plants' feature would be changed depending on wavelength. They also success in growing plants which can absorb all range of wavelength, and the plants look black because they do not reflect all lights. Such plants are very efficient because they can use all light they receive for photosynthesis. 



    However, to grow plants in space is more difficult than to do without natural light because of microgravity.  Plants' roots grow down using gravity on Earth, but in space, they cannot take advantage of gravity. Recently, researchers have focused on the feature that plants' plasticity is amazing; they adopt to almost all environment changing their DNA structure. Thus, if researchers can make food in space, plants will be more stronger than that on Earth. They helps people to grow up plants on sterile. 

    Today, that's it! I think that this is very good news for everyone. We are now suffering from shortage of food in some areas on Earth. I really hope that the research will success. Thank you for reading!

<reference>

BBC Learning English - 6 Minute English / Food made in space

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History of Otoshidama

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     Hello, everyone! Did you enjoy the last winter vacation? I do hope that you had a good time during the New Year. Today, I will write about the origin of Otoshidama  (お年玉).    　Why Japanese adults give their money to children on the New Year's Day? It is said that this custom had been related to "Year God(Toshigami-sama,歳神さま in Japanese)," who had been worshiped in each family during the New Years holidays. People worshiped Toshigami-sama because they believed that the God brought abundant grains to people. Also, people thought that they could be health and make a lot of grains during the year if they gave rice cakes, which were made for the God, to their family or servants.      Japanese people thought that the rice cakes were sacred things. Therefore, it is said that people called the rice cakes "rice cakes like gems( 玉( Tama ) のような餅)." Also, some people called "the soul of Year God (歳( Toshi )神様の魂( Tama shii))," so the rice cakes became to be ca
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Could humans live in underwater city?

     Hello, everyone! Today, I'll introduce a podcast which I watched. The title is 'Could humans live in underwater city?'     In this podcast, whether we human try to live in the sea and what problems are of living in underwater are explained. First of all, there is a project to live under the sea, and Japanese team is leading it. One of the member of the project team said that it is our purpose to solve environmental problems like lack of natural resources. At seabed, there are a lot of resources, for example, oil and shale gas. He insist that if we can use the resources, we will not have to suffer from shortage of it on the ground.      However, there is mainly one big physiological problems when we live in underwater city. First problem is that we have to worry about the bends, a disease caused by the differences of atmospheric pressure between on the ground and under the sea. Because of the bends, even ex-military person could live in underwater only about 70 days. Di
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Melting ice sheet: Is it too late?

     Today, I listened to "Melting ice sheet: Is it too late?" In this pod cast, the man and the woman talked about melting ice sheet of Green land and the Arctic and whether it's too late for human beings to strive to stop global warming.       Michalea King, a glaciologist, explained that usually, the amount of melting ice sheet and the amount of newly frozen ice was in balance, so we do not have to worry about melting ice sheet. In other words, "the amount of ice being drained from the glaciers was equal to what we are gaining on the surface via snow every year."(This is a citation from her words.)       However, recently, the glaciers have been melting faster than ever, and the balance was destroyed. She said that the situation which we are now facing is the tipping point. In fact, 500 gigatons of ice are now melting into the ocean every year, and the amount of newly frozen ice is less than that. Gigatons stands for a billion tons.          Michalea also sai
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