This is the VOA Special English Economics Report.

Business is the most popular subject for international students in the United States. At last count, twenty-one
percent of foreign students at American colleges and universities were studying business and management.
The Institute of International Education in New York says engineering is the second most popular field, in
case you were wondering.
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Thomas Coss is a professor of marketing and business at the University of Richmond in Virginia. He says
international students who want to study business need to have good English skills -- and not just to study at
his school.
English is a common language for business, but communication is not just about language
THOMAS COSS: "At least among business schools, more and more worldwide are requiring that their
students take English, and they are teaching more in English."
But the world has more non-native speakers of English than native speakers. As a result, Americans working
with foreign companies may need to learn some new English skills themselves.
At the University of Richmond, teams of graduate students work with companies seeking to enter the
American market. The students learn about writing market entry studies. The reports are written in English.
But Professor Coss tells his students to consider who will read them.
THOMAS COSS: "My students have to write the report in such a way that it can be understood by
someone who is an English speaker but not a native English speaker."
For example, he tells his students to avoid jargon and other specialized terms that people might not know in
their own language. This can be good advice even when writing for other native speakers.
But effective communication involves more than just words. Kay Westerfield is director of the international
business communication program at the University of Oregon.
KAY WESTERFIELD: "If you just have the language awareness or the skills without culture, you can easily
be a fluent fool."
Cultural intelligence means the need to consider local behaviors in everything from simple handshakes to
speaking to large groups.
Still, Kay Westerfield says the ability of local workers to speak English is becoming more important to
companies looking to move operations to other countries. Or, as she puts it, to "off-source."
KAY WESTERFIELD: "While cost remains a major factor in decisions about where to off-source, the
quality of the labor pool is gaining importance, and this includes English language skills."
Also, she says English skills often provide a competitive edge for business students when they seek jobs.
KAY WESTERFIELD: "As one business student in West Africa put it, 'English is a lifeline.'"

And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report, written by Mario Ritter. You can read and listen to
our programs and find activities for English learners at voaspecialenglish.com. We're also on Facebook,
Twitter and YouTube at VOA Learning English. Im June Simms.
Words and Their Stories: All About Names
A persons name is very important. Some names also have special meanings in popular American
expressions. To better understand what I mean, sit back and listen. You might even want to get a cup of Joe,
I mean, a cup of coffee.
One day, an average Joe was walking down the street. An average Joe is a common person either male or
female. This average Joe was lost. He did not know Jack about where he was going. By this, I mean he did
not know anything about where to find things in the city.
So average Joe asked John Q. Public for directions to the nearest bank. John Q. Public is also a common
person male or female.
Jeez Louise, said John Q. Public. This is an expression of surprise. Jeez Louise, dont you know that all
banks are closed today? It is Saturday.
For Petes sake, said average Joe. This is also an expression used to show a feeling like surprise or
disappointment.
For Petes sake. I do not believe you, said average Joe. He was being a doubting Thomas, someone who
does not believe anything he is told.
At that moment, Joe Blow was walking down the street with a woman. Joe Blow is also an expression for a
common man. Now this Joe Blow was NOT walking next to a plain Jane. A plain Jane is a woman who is
neither ugly nor pretty. She is simply plain. No, the woman with Joe Blow was a real Sheila a beautiful
woman.
Average Joe asked the woman if all banks were closed on Saturday. No way, Jose, she answered. This is a
way of saying no. No way, Jose. Many banks are open on Saturdays.
Average Joe did not know either of these two people from Adam. That is, he did not know them at all.
But he followed their directions to the nearest bank.
When he arrived, he walked to the desk of the chief bank employee. Now this man was a true Jack of all
trades. He knew how to do everything.
I am here to withdraw some money so I can pay my taxes to Uncle Sam, said average Joe. Uncle Sam
represents the United States government. The banker produced some papers and told average Joe to sign his
John Hancock at the bottom. A John Hancock is a persons signed name a signature. Historically, John
Hancock was one of the signers of the United States Declaration of Independence. Hancock had a beautiful
signature and signed his name larger than all the others.
As average Joe left the bank he began to sing. But sadly, average Joe was not a good singer. He was a
Johnny One Note. He could only sing one note.
(MUSIC)
This VOA Special English program, WORDS AND THEIR STORIES, was written by Jill Moss. Im Faith
Lapidus.

Looking at the 'Dark Side' of Creativity

This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
Not all cheaters are creative. But apparently enough creative people cheat to interest researchers like
Francesca Gino. Professor Gino is a behavioral economist at the Harvard Business School in Massachusetts.
Behavioral economists use ideas from psychology to study how people make economic choices.
FRANCESCA GINO: "Interestingly, there are actually a lot of examples in the literature, novels, movies,
comic books about this idea of the evil genius, but really no empirical evidence for this relationship."
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BATMAN (ADAM WEST): "He's terrorized Gotham City, he's baffled the police department and he's held
us up to public ridicule."
Fans of old TV shows might recognize Batman and Robin, struggling to catch one of those evil geniuses -the Joker.
BATMAN: "Gloating on his own success, he may be planning some super crime and stumble on his own
pride."
ROBIN (BURT WARD): "And how do we go about stopping him?"
BATMAN: "Just go about our normal routine and let the venomous viper trap himself."
ROBIN: "And when he does."
BATMAN: "Snap!"
ROBIN: "Caught in a bat trap!"
BATMAN: "Right."
Professor Gino was less interested in catching cheaters than understanding them. She tested volunteers to
see how creative they were. Then she tested them in situations involving small amounts of money, where
they could earn extra by cheating.
For example, they took a test and had to copy their answers onto another paper. But on that other paper the
correct answers were already lightly marked, supposedly by mistake. The test-takers knew they would earn
more for correct answers. They were led to believe they could cheat without getting caught.
The results showed that the more creative people were more likely to cheat. By comparison, people who
were more intelligent but less creative were not more likely to cheat. Professor Gino says creative people are
better at creating excuses to justify their actions to themselves.
FRANCESCA GINO: "What we find is that that creativity leads people to be more morally flexible, so they
are much more able to come up with justification for the behavior that they're about to engage in and as a
result, they are more likely to cheat."

She says workplaces that value creativity also create openings for that moral flexibility. Original thinkers
may be less likely to follow all the rules.
FRANCESCA GINO: "We think that creativity really helps people resolve this conflict between something
that is more longer term --which is the idea of being good and moral -- and then something that is more
short term, and is the idea of advancing your own self-interest. And that does not necessarily mean getting
money out of cheating, but it could also be getting other types of pleasures or utilities."
The study shows the "dark side" of creativity, she says.
FRANCESCA GINO: "So it's not that we are trying to say that people shouldn't be creative, we are trying to
say that they should be creative but they should be thinking about the fact that their creativity can be used
for the wrong reasons."
Her research with Dan Ariely at Duke University appears in the Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology.
And that's the VOA Special English Health Report. I'm Christopher Cruise.

Teens, Sexting and 'Cyberbaiting'

How common is teen sexting? Last week we reported on a new study of more than fifteen hundred Internet
users age ten to seventeen. It found that only two and a half percent of them had sexted in the past year. It
also found that only one percent of the images might violate child pornography laws.
That study came from the University of New Hampshire. But another new report suggests much higher
rates. Both studies defined "sexting" only to mean sending or receiving naked pictures.
Psychologist Jeff Temple is an assistant professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
JEFF TEMPLE: "We found actually about twenty eight percent of teens had sexted."
Mr. Temple says reports from medical offices and school officials support that finding.
JEFF TEMPLE: "One of the authors that will be on our paper with our data is a pediatrician. And he
certainly sees this in his office. And from talking to school personnel and teens themselves, it certainly
seems like its happening quite a bit more frequent than the one percent reported in the New Hampshire
study, and more in line with what we found in terms of about one in four kids have sent a sext."
And he says the behavior was the same for boys and girls.
JEFF TEMPLE: "We found that about a third of girls had sent a naked picture of themselves to another teen
and about a third of boys had sent a naked picture of themselves to another teen."
Sexting is not the only issue involving teens and technology. A recent "Online Family Report" from
computer security company Norton called attention to "cyberbaiting" in classrooms. Marian Merritt is the
company's Internet safety advocate.
MARIAN MERRITT: "Kids may engage in purposely taunting, or teasing, or harassing the teacher, in order
to get the teacher to have some kind of reaction or response that they then hope to capture on a cellphone
camera, a video, and post online where people can view it. Now this can be incredibly embarrassing and
humiliating and damaging to the reputation of a teacher."

Ms. Merritt says Norton surveyed more than two thousand three hundred teachers in twenty-four countries.
MARIAN MERRITT: "What we were surprised to learn is that one in five teachers globally knows
somebody that it's happened to or has had it happen to themselves."
She also did a little research of her own.
MARIAN MERRITT: "Just typing in phrases like 'teacher loses it' and that sort of thing, because the term
'cyberbait' is still relatively unknown. But I was surprised to find there are lots of these videos out there."
The online survey also found that seventy percent of young people reported having had a negative
experience online. Forty percent rated the experience as serious, including cyberbullying, cybercrime or
being contacted by strangers.
And thats the VOA Special English Technology Report, written by June Simms. Tell us if you or someone
you know has experienced cyberbaiting. Share your comments at voaspecialenglish.com, where you can
also find part one of this report. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our reports are also available on our
website. Im Steve Ember.
Looking Inside the Brains of 'Lucid Dreamers'
BOB DOUGHTY: And Im Bob Doughty. Today, we tell how warmer weather in the Arctic could speed up
climate change around the world. We offer two possible explanations for a magnetic field on the moon. And
we tell about a new study of dreams.
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(MUSIC)
FAITH LAPIDUS: As Earth warms, the higher temperatures are melting ice in places like the North Pole.
But ice is not all that is changing. The increased warmth is also melting permafrost -- frozen ground that
stays at or below zero degrees Celsius for an extended period.
A new American report says melting permafrost can free microbes that produce methane gas. Methane is
considered more threatening to the environment than carbon dioxide.
Janet Jansson of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California led the study. She worked with
researchers from the United States Department of Energy, the Joint Genome Institute and the Earth Sciences
Division within the Berkeley lab.
BOB DOUGHTY: Her team studied microbes in soil from a forest of black spruce trees in the state of
Alaska. A report describing the study was published last month in the journal Nature.
The researchers say one gram of the soil could contain thousands of different kinds of microbes and billions
of cells. They say these organisms had never before been cultured in a laboratory.
JANET JANSSON: So more than ninety percent of those bacteria and other microorganisms in
permafrost, we had no idea what they were.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Janet Jansson says it was hard to study the microbes without laboratory examination. To
deal with that problem, the researchers removed the DNA from pieces of the permafrost. DNA is the genetic
material of which all living things are formed.

Professor Jansson says the DNA provided information about the identities of the microorganisms. It also
showed all the biological and chemical reactions that the microbes experienced in the permafrost. That was
true both before and after the permafrost melted.
The researchers found single-celled organisms that produce methane and eat organic material in the soil.
Ms. Jansson says they also found microbes that eat methane in thawed permafrost.
JANET JANSSON: Some of the methane was being consumed by other microorganisms in the samples,
and they in turn would release CO2, carbon dioxide.
BOB DOUGHTY: The researchers inspected soil samples from the upper permafrost layer. This level melts
and refreezes with the seasons. The scientists also studied permanently frozen permafrost. In the
permanently frozen material, some of the microbes had been trapped for thousands of years.
Janet Jansson says the two soils were very different at first. But she says those differences decreased after
they melted.
(MUSIC)
BOB DOUGHTY: In the nineteen sixties, American astronauts began returning to Earth with rocks they had
collected from the moon. Scientists who examined the rocks were surprised to discover that some of them
were magnetic. And they were surprised by how the rocks had been magnetized. It appeared they had cooled
over time near a magnetic field.
FAITH LAPIDUS: The idea of a magnetic field on the moon has puzzled scientists ever since. On Earth, a
magnetic field is produced by the great heat from the planets inner core. The heat makes the liquid iron
outer core move around creating the magnetic field.
But scientists know the moon is too small to create and continue this kind of heat and force.
BOB DOUGHTY: Now, two researchers are offering possible explanations for how the moon got a
magnetic field.
Christina Dwyer is a graduate student in Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa
Cruz. She thinks the magnetic field developed when the moon and Earth were thousands of kilometers
closer to each other.
She says the Earths gravity at that distance created a stronger tidal force. It pulled the hard rock part of the
moon, its mantle, around its liquid iron center, or core. This movement stirred the liquid iron core strongly
enough to create a magnetic field.
Ms. Dwyers research suggests that the magnetic field existed for about a billion years. During that time, the
Earth moved further from the moon. The moons core and rock layer began to rotate more smoothly
together. As a result, the magnetic field disappeared. The scientists say that happened at least 2.7 billion
years ago, if not longer.
FAITH LAPIDUS: Another possible explanation comes from Michael Le Bars at the Research Institute for
Out-of-Equilibrium Phenomena in France. His theory also suggests the moons mantle may have been
involved in the stirring of the liquid core. But, he says huge space objects were also involved.
Mr. Le Bars research suggests that a number of meteors, asteroids and other objects hit the moon almost
four billion years ago. He says each strike shook the moon enough to cause a ten-thousand-year-long
magnetic field.

Either theory could be correct. And, the two theories could also work together as an explanation of the
magnetic rocks from the moon. But as Christina Dwyer has noted, additional higher level tests are needed to
see if either theory really works.
(MUSIC)

Reuters

Artist Vasily Slonov lies on his installation artwork called "The Terrible Chinese Dream: Death of Mao" in
the Russian city of Krasnoyarsk last year
JIM TEDDER: I think there is an elephant in my room. What is it doing here? Ill ask that lady sitting next
to me. She is my grandmother. She died forty years ago. She smiles at me and I hear her say, Lets eat.
Suddenly hundreds of bowls of rice appear on a table. But I cannot eat because I have to fly in an airplane. I
am high up in the sky, looking down on my house. Im too close to the door. Please dont let me fall. Why is
this happening to me? How can this be happening to me? Then I hear the words that calm my fears. A voice
says, Wake up. Wake up! Youre dreaming.
BOB DOUGHTY: Why do we dream? Why are dreams so strange? What happens to our brains while we
are dreaming? Those questions have been a mystery to psychologists, medical doctors and scientists for
years. Now, a new study may provide a few answers. The results were published on the Current Biology
website.
Martin Dresler works at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany. He and his team
searched for people who are called lucid dreamers. These are people who know when they are dreaming.
They also can control their dreams as if they are awake. Scientists think that many people are lucid
dreamers, at least part of the time. But there are fewer people who can control their dreams, from one day to
the next.
FAITH LAPIDUS: People have been writing about lucid dreams for nearly sixteen hundred years. In
nineteen sixty-eight, British psychologist Celia Green wrote a major book on the subject. She thought that
lucid dreams happened most during rapid-eye-movement, or REM, sleep.
During REM sleep, our bodies become stiff, and our muscles do not move. Our eyelids move or flutter
rapidly as the eyeball seems to be looking in many different directions.

Researchers are not sure why most people have REM sleep for an hour or so each night. Some believe that
this activity helps our memory. Others think that REM sleep helps to keep our brain chemicals healthy. For
most people, this deep REM sleep is a necessary part of life. People who are repeatedly awakened during
the night usually do not get enough REM sleep, and do not feel they have enough energy the next day.
BOB DOUGHTY: The researchers at the Max Planck Institute asked six lucid dreamers to try falling asleep
inside a functional magnetic-resonance imaging machine. This device enabled the researchers to see on a
computer screen what was happening to the brains of these individuals while they slept.
The sleepers were told to begin the test by quickly moving their eyes from left to right two times as a sign
that they knew they were asleep. Then the subjects were asked to dream that they were squeezing their
hands into a fist. First they dreamed of doing this with their left hand, and then the right. They did this ten
times for each hand. Then they were told to again move their eyes quickly to show that they had finished
with the test.
The researchers found that the human brain acts the same when dreaming as it does when a person is awake.
In other words, the computer screen showed that the same areas of the brain light up and become active in
either situation. When a man dreams that he is moving his hand, his brain looks the same on the computer as
when he is actually making the motion. And this, the researchers think, is an important discovery.
(MUSIC)
FAITH LAPIDUS: This SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written by Brianna Blake, Jim Tedder and Jerilyn
Watson. Our producer was June Simms. Im Faith Lapidus.
BOB DOUGHTY: And Im Bob Doughty. Join us again next week for more news about science in Special
English on the Voice of America.
In the Garden: Growing Blueberries
Blueberries are generally grown in northern climates with cool winters and mild summers. But some newer
varieties do well in very cool or very warm climates.
The major kinds of blueberry plants are highbush, half-high, lowbush and rabbiteye. Highbush plants can
grow almost two meters tall.
Rabbiteye plants like warmer temperatures. Some of these bushes grow three meters tall.
Blueberry plants do best in soil that is acidic.
Plant expert Steve Renquist at Oregon State University says blueberry plants can grow well in containers.
He says dwarf varieties are a good choice. These plants are often less than half a meter tall.
STEVE RENQUIST: "Blueberry plants have a pretty shallow root system. It is not particularly vigorous.
And so that is why they do well in pots, because of the light soil mixture. But they also require, then, fairly
frequent watering because they are going to dry out a little faster. With any plant, a pot dries out faster, the
pot does, than any plant that is in the soil.
If you consider growing blueberries at home, you might think about placing some shorter plants in pots.
Steve Renquist says potted blueberries should be watered almost every day if temperatures are twenty-one
degrees Celsius and above. He says potted blueberry plants should also be given fertilizer.

Blueberry plants do not need a lot of pruning. Instead, just a little thinning is needed, or as Steve Renquist
puts it, "a stem here and a stem there."
STEVE RENQUIST: Weve had a number of them growing in our master gardener locations both in the
ground and in pots. And we notice that we need to reinvigorate and repot them about every four or five
years.
Blueberries are sold fresh, frozen and processed, and used in baked goods and other foods. Major
production states include Maine, New Jersey, North Carolina and Florida on the East Coast; Michigan in the
Midwest; and Oregon, Washington and California on the West Coast.
Maine produces wild blueberries, but most commercial growers in other states use cultivated highbush
plants. The North American harvest runs from the middle of April through early October.
The US Highbush Blueberry Council points out that the blueberry is one of the few fruits native to North
America. The United States and Canada are the world's largest producers and consumers of blueberries. But
South America, Australia, New Zealand and Europe have also developed highbush blueberry industries. And
demand is growing in other markets as well, especially Japan.
And thats the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. For more gardening
advice, go to voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Karen Leggett.