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This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, from voaspecialenglish.com | http Companion planting is the idea that some kinds of plants can help each other grow. Plants that are compatible together generally have similar needs in terms of nutrients, soil and moisture levels. Advice about which plants are compatible is sometimes based more on tradition than proof. But experts say there is evidence to support certain combinations. These can improve harvests, reduce disease and help with pest control by attracting helpful insects. For example, some kinds of soil bacteria take nitrogen from the air and make it into a form that plants can use. The plants hold the nitrogen in their roots. Legumes are especially good at this nitrogen-fixing. Then any crops that share the same space as the legumes can get the nitrogen as the roots decompose. Beans and potatoes can also share territory well because their roots reach different levels in the soil. Deep-rooted vegetables get nutrients and moisture from lower down in the soil, so they do not compete with plants with shallower roots. But some plants placed together may harm each other’s development. For example, tomatoes do not like wet soil but watercress does, so you would probably want to keep them separated. Some kinds of produce should be kept apart even after being harvested. This is because of ethylene gas. Ethylene is a plant hormone that can cause some foods to ripen too quickly. Apples release ethylene gas. Apricots …

This is the VOA Special English Education Report, from voaspecialenglish.com | http Imagine that you have lost your job. You could start a sewing business at home if you had a better sewing machine and a little money to advertise. But you cannot get a loan from a bank. In recent times, many people in similar situations have received loans from student microfinance groups. Such groups make small loans for business or personal use. Twelve of the organizations are part of a national network called the Campus Microfinance Alliance. The alliance provides financial aid, technical advice and training programs for its member groups. Each group has between ten and seventy volunteers, many of them college students. They have enabled hundreds of people across the United States to launch small businesses. Vanessa Carter is director of the alliance. She says bad economic times have sped the growth of the college microfinance movement. “This really got started because students were walking off campus, it was the height of the economic recession, and they were seeing boarded up businesses and the effects of high unemployment first hand.”In Iowa, a student microfinance group at Grinnell College helps people both locally and internationally. The group started in two thousand seven. At that time, Grinnell student Jeff Raderstrong and some friends raised more than six hundred dollars from other students. The Saturday-night Grinnell tradition of missing a meal to help others enabled the …

This is the VOA Special English Technology Report, from voaspecialenglish.com | http A labor group has begun investigating working conditions at the Chinese factories where many Apple products are made. Apple officials ordered the investigation after the New York Times described poor working conditions at the factories. The Foxconn Technology Group owns the manufacturing plants in Shenzhen, Chengdu and Zhengzhou. Angela Cornell is a professor at the Cornell Law School in Ithaca, New York. She says many issues were raised last year after a number of suicides at the Foxconn factories. One issue is the number of hours that employees are required to work. Other concerns involve pay, living conditions and even reports of violence against workers. The New York Times reported that employees sometimes worked seven days a week. The newspaper said some stood so long that they had trouble walking. Widespread criticism of Apple followed publication of those reports. Mark Shields organized a campaign calling for better working conditions. “Workers lives are really hard and really severe, and there’s terrible stories about people losing the use of their hands because of horrible repetitive motion injuries, and suicide rates that are so high that they have got to hang nets off the sides of the buildings to prevent workers from killing themselves.” Professor Cornell says the conditions at the Foxconn factories had to have been really bad. “Just imagine how dire the working conditions …