Taming That Overwhelming Urge to Smoke

AbcNews

October, 14, 2008

By MARTIN DOWNS

If you smoke, no one needs to tell you how bad it is. So why have not you quit?

Because smoking feels good. It stimulates and focuses the mind at the same time that it soothes and satisfies. The concentrated dose of nicotine triggers immediate flood neurochemicals that wash over the brain’s pleasure centers. Inhaling tobacco smoker is the quickest, most efficient way to get nicotine to the brain.

«I completely understand why you wouldn’t want to give it up » said Dr. David Abrams. an addiction researcher at the National Institutes of Health. «It is more difficult to get off nicotine than heroin or cocaine. »

Smoking «hijacks» the reward systems in the brain that drive you to seek food, water, Dr. Abrams explained, driving you to seek nicotine with the same urgency. «Your brain thinks that this has to do with survival of the species, » he said.

Nicotine isn’t equally addictive for everyone. A lot of people do not smoke because they never liked it to begin with. Then there are «chippers, » who smoke occasionally. But most people who smoke will eventually do it all day, every day.

New discoveries in genetics may explain why certain people take to smoking with such gusto and end up so addicted. Some people, for instance, produce a gene-encoded enzyme that clears nicotine from their blood rapidly, so they tend to smoke more and develop stronger addictions. Others possess special receptors in the brain that makes it harder to quit.

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Exercise 1. Read and translate the article with the help of a dictionary:

Robots Dance and Play at World Robot Expo

AP Business

Writer June 9, 2008

By YURI KAGEYAMA

NAGAKUTE, Japan - They could hit fastballs, draw portraits and be seen breathing. Not bad for robots. Even so, these droids of all shapes and sizes — more than 60 on display at the World Expo on Thursday — still need some work.

Their developers say it will be several years before robots that are designed to be part of everyday lives — rather than serve as simple novelties — take their place helping the sick, rescuing disaster victims and entertaining families.

Lined up in a row of booths, the robots were on display in the sprawling expo in central Japan to showcase Japan's leadership in robotics. With the nation's economy still sluggish, corporations, researchers and government officials are hoping the sector can provide new growth opportunities.

The Japan Robot Association, a trade group, expects the Japanese market for next-generation robots — those being developed now as opposed to industrial robots currently in use — to reach $14 billion by 2010 and more than $37 billion by 2025.

But all the robots on display were test models, and several had obvious glitches.

Cooper, a mechanical portrait artist developed by a candy maker, was drawing the faces of visitors on large cookies with a laser pen. It has a program that translates images from a digital camera into line-drawing instructions, but sometimes the robot delivered only a mishmash of scribbles.

Another model, the Batting Robot, has a vision system that handles 1,000 images a second, more than 30 times the human eye, allowing it to accurately hit pitches up to 100 mph. At the expo, however, it was using a plastic bat to hit rubber balls at far slower speeds.

Hiroshima University Associate Professor Idaku Ishii believes the robot can help train professional baseball players. However, its ability to process information at lightning speeds might more practically be put to, say, detect cracks in walls caused by earthquakes.

Many of the robots were designed to help communication. One worked as a fancy videophone, replicating the moves of a distant caller with its mechanical arms and projecting a three-dimensional image of the caller on its face.

A model called InterAnimal is a 4-foot-tall teddy bear that moves its arms and nods in synch to the sound of a human voice. Developers claim it can help children who have problems talking with adults.

The robot that looks most like a human being is the Repliee Q I expo, which is covered with a skin-like substance and moves its mouth and shifts its torso as though it's breathing. It also appears to react to approaching people.

But Repliee sometimes goes into what seems like spasms when its program has a bug.

Still, it may be a precursor of the day when robots will be helping with tasks such as guiding the elderly around the streets or selling tickets, developers say.

"When a robot looks too much like the real thing, it's creepy," Osaka University professor Hiroshi Ishiguro said. "But if they resemble human beings, it also makes communication easier."

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Exercise 1. Read and translate the article with the help of a dictionary: