Hey there and welcome!

My name is Lisa, I am a UN worker and the founder of @open_eng. In the meanwhile, I am into all kinds of scientific stuff that I read and forget in a second, but the purpose of that is the pleasure of reading and discovering. Here I will be sharing articles in English that I find interesting for weekly reading, and, if people here are interested, we might have speaking clubs or something to discuss.

Warning: stuff here is strongly related to my personal interests: IT, environment, green transition, space, engineering. I am basically planning on using this channel to save things I want to read or watch so it might be hectic here. Warning number two: I am not related to science in any way, so if you want to oppose anything here, please go ahead. I am just a curious person who loves to read random stuff and (thanks god) I am not using this random knowledge to do the job I am doing as a professional.

Thanks for understanding and enjoy (if possible).

🌿 Today's Article:
Jones, N. - The new car batteries that could power the electric vehicle revolution. Nature

Some update: here is what we're going to do about all this stuff. I will be sharing articles or videos twice a week. Everyone's task is to read/watch. Once in two weeks I will be sharing the vocabulary from the articles + HW tasks that will help us all improve our speaking, vocab, and, the most important, our ability to discuss complex topics. Once in two or three weeks we wil have a speaking club to look through the vocab and discuss the articles. The clubs will be paid, the rest here is free. Good luck to us all (mostly me).

✅ Interesting constructions used:

There’s a revolution brewing in batteries.

...Which it reckons will mean that the price of electric cars will break – pay attention to how the sentence is built and how “it reckons” fits inside

A battery type that swaps liquid components for solids

Alternative designs to the conventional lithium-ion batteries

We’re going to see the market diversify NOT We’re going to see how… this is an example of the reduced relative clause, the verb "do" is used as a bare infinitive without an explicit subject.

A dozen nations NOT a dozen of

Father vs Further - always good to review

700 Wh kg^-1 reads 700 watt-hours per kilogram

Since we are here, this is how you read 10^-1: ten to the power of minus/negative one

✅ Vocabulary

batteries based on cheap sodium — one of the most abundant elements in Earth’s crust
to pack enough energy to power aeroplanes = contain
in large part because the market is skyrocketing
a stiff list of requirements
to withstand 1,000 full recharging cycles
researchers are pursuing a plethora of options
can come with some trade-offs on price and performance
It’s hard to pin down where things stand.
proprietary claims can be impossible to check until batteries have been tested for years in real-world cars
finally coming to fruition
tantalizing possibilities
Everyone is tripping over themselves to do it
Lithium-ion is a formidable competitor
And with further scope for improvement, ...
There is scope for more tweaks to the cathode
structural strain on the battery
there is no waiting for lithium ions to slot in between any layers
hotspots that form tendrils called dendrites
which can short-circuit the battery
Sulfur reacts with lithium to make soluble products
With such troubles plaguing batteries with better electrodes, many say the most enticing solution is to replace the liquid electrolyte with a solid.

✅ Pronounciation:
Lithium ion; Cathode; Anode; Electrolyte; Manganese; Cobalt; Nickel; Sulfur

Just to keep you all updated, it took me an hour to go through the first half of the article to select these words/structures, to check them up and to look for some examples. Which was quite fast bearing in mind that similar tasks used to take me up to 4-5 hours back in uni.

The thing is: this is how you advance your language when you are already kind of advanced. Apps don't work, videos don't either, the only thing you can do is to read, spend a ton of time on exploring the reading in terms of the vocab and structures, and then spend even more time on trying to work with it.

It is hard, it can be fun though, and it's the only effective way to advance your language further.

It is super important to reflect on the emotions you experience while learning: is it hard for you? Are there many words/expressions you don't know? Does it stop you from understanding the main idea of the text?

Here is what I reflected on:
- It is hard for me to read aloud which is quite strange, my speaking is fluent. But when you have to say something apart from daily stuff, you might face problems. Solutions? - Read over again.
- There were a few words I didn't know and the meaning of which was super easy to get from the context. Good job I guess?
- I don't remember how to read powers. Which is pretty sad since back to my America time I used to take Advanced Calculus so I definitely could read that once in my life. Which is just another gentle reminder that any skill is lost if not used.

What to do with the text? Next steps:
- Read aloud. I promise it's not easy.
- Try to retell the text by sentences. You can peek, you can't read. This is the most effective way to remember things and build fluency.
- Try to retell the texts by paragraphs: each one should be turned into one sentence using the vocab and the grammar structures you find challenging.

PS.: I do not reread whatever I write so there might be mistakes/types. Watch out.

Should have added an option "partly". Send a reaction to this message if you have read through the half and got disappointed in life 🤷‍♀️

Here is the plan:
1. Read the article, look up the words and expressions that are unfamiliar, or just interesting to you
2. I will post one more article this week, it will be shorter, read it as well
3. We will have a speaking session next week to discuss the articles if we have a quorum ☝️

Got nothing to do? I got you some new reading. Enjoy.

Bloom, P. The Pleasures of Pain and the Pains of Pleasure

Sht I forgot to post the vocabulary. Will do soon, but I hope you read both articles, so here are a couple of random surveys:

Here comes the vocab for this one.

Btw, please make sure that you prepare similar lists when you do the reading. I do these ones for myself while reading, and sharing here to help you out if needed, but if you do want to advance your reading, make sure that you don't read on the go, sit down and highlight the grammar and the vocabulary you want to practice, otherwise it will just be some reading for pure pleasure 🤷‍♀️

Vocabulary:
shriek
It was a loaner from the hotel, an ugly thing with metal prongs
tear up
sniffled along with
depict = show
scowling
ambiguous
nibble on
gnaw on
gobble up
through gritted teeth
to outweigh
blissful contentment

Grammar:
Along these lines, laboratory studies find that after experiencing pain, such as by having one of their hands immersed in freezing water, people report that subsequent experiences, like the taste of chocolate, are more pleasurable

PS: this one was boring af