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Differences Between Board, on Board, Aboard And now, Words and Their Stories from VOA Learning English.
Today, we discuss the word board.
As a noun, board has a couple of meanings.
It can be a long thick piece of wood or other strong material – like a diving board. A board can also be a group of people who make decisions for an organization. An example is a board of directors.
As a verb, board means several things.
Board can mean providing food for someone regularly. For example, a college student’s costs include housing and food, called room and board.
Board can also mean closing off parts of a building with pieces of wood. Sometimes in scary movies, people board up the doors and windows to keep monsters from entering.
Board, on board, aboard
Board, on board, and aboard are all used differently.
At a train station, we sometimes hear a conductor say, “All aboard,” as the train is getting ready to leave. And the captain of a ship might say, “Welcome aboard,” as you climb on the boat.
However, we say you board a plane, train, or boat when you get on it. And we say you are on board once you get on.
If you agree with an idea or a process, we also say that you are on board with it. But we never say you are aboard with it. And if you are very excited about an idea or process, you do not just get on board, you jump on board!
We also use the term onboarding to describe the process of starting a new job. This is the process in which new workers learn about a company, work rules, and things related to the job.
Across the board
At VOA Learning English and many other organizations, all workers are required to attend onboarding and other training. So, we say the training requirement affects everyone across the board.
We use the expression across the board when something affects every part or every individual within a larger group. For example, when the government raises taxes on all income levels, it affects everyone across the board.
Experts say, across the board comes from a horse-racing bet. It means the same amount is bet for a horse to come in first, second, and third in a race.
And that’s all the time we have for this Words and Their Stories.
We hope you are on board with the expressions and use them in your next English conversation!
Until next time ... I’m Anna Matteo.View -
Meta Launches Threads to Compete with Twitter People who are unhappy with the way businessman Elon Musk has been running Twitter now have a new social media service to consider.
Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, launched an app called Threads late Wednesday.
The app is being called a text version of Instagram, a service mainly for sharing photos and videos. Meta said it will be a place for “real-time updates and public conversations.”
Some users say it looks similar to Twitter. It is mostly text but permits users to link to their Instagram accounts and to post photos and short videos. Messages can be 500 characters, which is nearly two times longer than Twitter’s 280.
People who already have an account with Instagram will be able to import the people they follow into the Threads app. Meta’s leader, Mark Zuckerberg, said 10 million people signed up in the first seven hours.
Meta says it wants Threads to be “more focused on text and dialogue,” than photos and videos.
The app is available in 100 countries, including the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan. The European Union has not approved it yet. People in Britain, India and Lebanon said they had problems seeing some of Zuckerberg’s early messages.
Some of the first users were Gordon Ramsay, a well-known chef and television star from Britain; Shakira, a famous singer from Colombia; and the American actor Jack Black. Businesses also signed up, including Airbnb, Guinness World Records, Netflix and Vogue magazine.
Zuckerberg said he wants to make Threads “a friendly place” which he said would be important to its success. Many Twitter users recently said they were unhappy with some of Musk’s changes, including asking for money for verification and the use of the app called Tweetdeck. He also reduced the number of tweets a user can see in one day.
Musk, the head of the electric car company Tesla and the space exploration company Space-X, purchased Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion.
Some internet experts expressed concern that Meta and Zuckerberg were taking on too much responsibility by launching Threads. The company is already spending money to build its “metaverse” and laid off thousands of people in the past year because of decreasing profits.
Others, including Musk and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, said there could be privacy problems with Threads if users permit the app to collect too much information.
The app’s privacy statement says it could collect personal data including health, financial, contacts, browsing and search history, as well as other kinds of “sensitive information.”
I’m Dan Friedell.View -
In Japan, ‘Job-leaving Agents’ Help People Quit Their Jobs Japan is a nation known for its workers’ loyalty to their companies and lifetime employment. People who change jobs are often considered quitters, and that is seen as dishonorable.
But a number of “taishoku daiko,” or “job-leaving agents,” have started in the past several years. Their aim is to help people who want to leave their jobs.
Yoshihito Hasegawa heads Tokyo-based TRK, whose Guardian service last year advised 13,000 people on how to leave their jobs with the fewest problems possible.
He said many people often stay in their jobs even when they are unhappy. They feel like they are sacrificing part of their lives for the greater good.
“It’s the way things are done, the same way younger people are taught to honor older people,” he said. “Quitting would be a betrayal.”
The company Guardian is a taishoku daiko service founded in 2020. It has helped many people, mostly young people in their 20s and 30s, escape less painfully from jobs they want to quit. It includes people who have worked anywhere from a law firm to a restaurant.
Nearly half of Guardian’s users are women. Some work for a day or two and then discover promises of pay or work hours were false.
Guardian charges $208 for its service. The cost includes a three-month membership in a union that will represent an employee in what can be a difficult negotiation process in Japan.
Most of Guardian’s users have worked for the small and medium-sized businesses that employ most Japanese. Sometimes people working for major companies seek help.
In many cases, bosses have a lot of influence over how things are run. Sometimes they will not agree to let a worker leave. Businesses face worker shortages in Japan and do not want to lose them.
Japanese law guarantees people the right to quit. But some employers are used to old employment methods and cannot accept that someone they have trained would want to walk away.
Agreeing with Japan’s work culture can be painfully heavy to some workers. They do not want to be seen as troublemakers and do not like to question supervisors or are afraid to speak up. They also might fear harassment after they quit. Some worry about the opinions of their families or friends.
Although most of Guardian’s users do not like to make their name public, a young man who goes by the online name of Twichan used the service. He sought help after he was criticized for his sales performance and became so depressed, he thought about harming himself. With Guardian’s help, he was able to quit in 45 minutes.
Lawyer Akiko Ozawa is with a legal office that advises people on leaving their jobs. But the office usually represents the companies. She has written a book on taishoku daiko. She said it might be hard to believe people cannot just pick up and leave.
Ozawa said that changing jobs is a major difficulty in Japan that requires a lot of bravery. Since there is a shortage of workers in Japan, finding and training replacements is difficult and bosses sometimes explode in anger when someone quits.
“As long as this Japanese mindset exists, the need for my job isn’t going away,” said Ozawa, who charges $450 for her service. “If you are so unhappy that you’re starting to feel ill, then you should make that choice to take control over your own life.”
I’m Gregory Stachel.View -
A New Way to Look at the Milky Way For many years, humans have looked up at the collection of stars and planets shining in the night sky that make up the Milky Way. However, the Milky Way is now being observed for the first time in a new way.
Scientists said recently that they have produced an image of the Milky Way not based on light. Instead, the image is based on subatomic particles called neutrinos.
Scientists discovered the high-energy neutrinos in ice deep below Antarctica's surface. They then traced their source back to locations in the Milky Way. It is the first time these particles have been observed arising from our galaxy.
This observation of the galaxy is different from what can be seen with our own eyes, or even instruments that measure other electromagnetic sources like radio waves, microwaves, or X-rays.
The image does not contain stars or planets or other things observable because of their light. Rather they are observable because of the neutrinos originating in the galaxy. The neutrinos may be from explosive star deaths called supernovas.
The neutrinos were discovered over a period of 10 years at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. It is part of a U.S. scientific research station at the South Pole. The researchers used more than 5,000 sensors covering an area the size of a small mountain.
"This observation is groundbreaking. It established the galaxy as a neutrino source. Every future work will refer to this observation," said Georgia Tech physicist Ignacio Taboada. He is the spokesperson for the IceCube research.
Neutrinos are electrically neutral. They are not affected by even the strongest magnetic field and rarely interact with matter. That is why they are also called the "ghost particle." As neutrinos travel through space, they pass clear through matter like stars, planets, and even people.
"Just as light goes without stopping through glass, neutrinos can go through everything, including the whole planet Earth," Taboada said.
Naoko Kurahashi Neilson is a physicist at Drexel University in Philadelphia. She is a member of the research team that published its findings in the publication Science. Neilson said neutrinos are elementary particles, meaning they are not made up of anything smaller.
“They are not the building blocks of stuff, like electrons and quarks are, but they are created in nuclear processes,” she said.
Many parts of the universe are impossible to observe using light alone. The ability to use particles like neutrinos in astronomy makes for a more complete examination.
Neutrinos are produced by the same sources as cosmic rays, the highest-energy particles ever observed. But cosmic rays, as electrically charged particles, cannot be traced directly back to their source. Strong magnetic fields in space change their path. But the direction from which neutrinos arrive points directly to their original source.
The researchers used machine learning to help determine which neutrinos originated in our galaxy and which originated elsewhere.
How the neutrinos originated is up for debate.
"This is now the key question,” said IceCube lead scientist Francis Halzen. “Neutrinos only originate in sources where cosmic rays are produced …The key question is where these cosmic rays originate," Halzen said.
"The most likely source of neutrinos and cosmic rays in our galaxy, are the remains of past supernova explosions,” Taboada added. “But this is unproven so far."
I’m Dan Novak.View -
World Experiences Hottest-ever Days This Week Two groups that follow the world’s temperatures said July 3 and 4 were likely the hottest days since satellite records started in 1979.
Scientists at the University of Maine run a group called the Climate Reanalyzer. It uses computer models and satellite data to predict global temperatures. The model does not use real temperatures recorded in places around the world.
The U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NECP) are part of the National Weather Service. The group works to produce weather predictions and set quality levels for scientific measurement and research.
Both groups said the world’s average temperature on July 3 surpassed 17 degrees Celsius. An earlier high came in August 2016 when the temperature was 16.92 degrees Celsius. The Climate Reanalyzer said July 4 would have been hotter based on its computer prediction. The group said July 5 was almost as hot.
It showed temperatures in Antarctica, where it is winter, are 4.5 degrees Celsius higher than the average from 1979 to 2000, in some places.
Places in northern Canada, such as Quebec, and South America, including Peru, also reached new highs on July 3 and 4 compared to average temperatures.
American cities from the northwest to the southeast have been close to all-time highs in recent days compared to average temperatures, too. In Beijing, weather watchers report nine straight days recently where temperatures were over 35 degrees Celsius.
Stefan Rahmstorf is a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research in Germany. He said the temperature increase linked to the burning of fossil fuels was predicted over 100 years ago. He then said: “It is dangerous for us humans and the ecosystems we depend on. We need to stop it fast.”
Jason Furtado is a weather professor at the University of Oklahoma. He called temperature information from 2023 “truly unreal.”
The Climate Reanalyzer project does not use the same climate data as the U.S. government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (known as NOAA). The recent number of higher-than-average temperatures for single days does not make an official record. However, it supports some scientists’ ideas about temperature change. The Climate Reanalyzer information goes back to about 1979. That is when satellites first started to track daily temperatures.
NOAA’s records from on-the-ground measurements go back to 1880.
Deke Arndt is director of NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information. He said NOAA will consider Climate Reanalyzer’s information when it decides on official records.
He said the observation of a single day does not carry the same weight as a month or a year. However, he called 2023 “a warm piece of what will likely be a very warm era.” He called the current warming event, known as El Nino, “robust.” He said human-caused warming only makes the El Nino event stronger.
The Reanalyzer team said the Earth’s average temperature on July 4 was 17.18 degrees Celsius. That was about one degree Celsius warmer than the average from 1979 to 2000.
Chris Field is a climate scientist at Stanford University. He called the news “another piece of evidence…that global warming is pushing us into a hotter future.”
People in the southern U.S., North Africa and China are currently experiencing heat waves, or several days with higher-than-average temperatures. A Ukrainian research base on an island near Antarctica reported a July record temperature with a reading of 8.7 degrees Celsius.
People often like to celebrate records. But Friederike Otto at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment in London said, “this is not a milestone we should be celebrating.”
I’m Dan Friedell.View