TPO41听力文本
TPO 41 听力文本
Conversation 1
Listen to a conversation between a student and a professor
P: I have some good news for you, one of the students who was signed up for the summer term at the field station next year won’t be attending after all. Your name’s first on the waiting list. So if you still want to do it, the space is available.
S: Oh, That’s terrific.
P: You’re also interested in doing an independent research project next summer right? S: Yeah, uh salt marsh restoration. But I was before when I thought I wasn’t get into the field station.
P: Well, you can still do it if you want. I looked over your application for the independent research project and it looks strong. I approved it. And you’d even have more resource there at the field station. So…
S: The field station and the independent study. But the summer term is a few weeks shorter than the regular term.
P: Oh, it’s up to you. You’d have to work hard but I think you can do very well. Professor Garfield’s one of the professors over the field station.
S: Yeah, I’ve heard of them.
P: Yes, well, Professor Garfield’s been doing research on salt marshes for years, assessing human impact in methods of salt marsh restoration.
He’s willing to oversee your project.
S: Wow, that’s too good an opportunity to pass up.
P: I thought you’d say that. When I spoke with Doctor Garfield, he suggested you take a particular course he’ll be teaching here in the spring. It’s called ‘advanced topics in salt marsh management’. The course looks like salt marsh cytology in depth, and it also focuses on factors that stress salt marsh systems, and how do we assess and monitor the level of stress.
S: And that background information all fit right into my project on salt marsh restoration. This is so great.
P: Oh, one more thing, do you know John Arnold?
S: Not really, but he lives in my dorm. Why?
P: John’s another ecology student who will be at the field station next summer. I approved an independent research project for him too. Initially he had the same concern as you. But anyway his topic will be similar to yours. He’ll be researching how bridges and covers that have been installed to allow tidal waters to move underneath roads between the sea and the salt marshes. Well, they are often too small.
S: I guess that’d result in not enough tidal water flowing into the marshes to maintain the natural vegetation right?
P: Exactly, and he’ll be looking at how to determine the right size. So I was thinking he might be a good choice for a summer roommate for you.
Conversation 2
Listen to a conversation between two students
W: Hi, can I help you?
M: Yes, um I’d like to get help with the ahh… you know payment for my classes, some sort of financial aid? The problem is, I don’t know much about it so I don’t really know where to begin. I saw this poster about work study programs? Can you tell something about that?
W: Well, I think you are talking about the government sponsored work-study program. It works like this, you work on campus and get paid in hourly wage just like a regular job. However, instead of getting a pay check, the money goes directly to your bill for your courses. But almost all the work study jobs pay minimal wage which is usually pretty low. The truth is, you might do better getting a job off campus since you can do whatever you want with the money, like paying your rent or buying textbooks.
M: Thanks, that’s very useful. So how do I find out what’s out there?
W: Let me show you our catalog of various programs as well as scholarships offered here. That’s your best bet really if you can find a good scholarship, because you don’t have to pay the money back. You may qualify if your grades are good enough or if you have the right background.
M: Yeah, that sounds like something I should try for.
W: Now this is my desk copy of the catalog. But I can give you your own copy if you want. Oh yeah, be sure to visit the university library too. There’s a whole section on financial aid, including application forms.
M: Why isn’t all the information listed in the catalog? It’d be so much easier.
W: Oh, if we did that the catalog would be too heavy to pick up. Civic clubs, foundation, organizations from all over the country offer scholarships or other financial assistance to college students. And all kinds of companies have programs to help their employee’s children go to the college. If either of your parents works for a large corporation, have them check to see if their companies do that.
M: Ok, good idea. Hey, my dad works for a big accounting firm, and he is a member of a professional accounting organization. Do you think they’d offer financial aid?
W: Yes, that’s fairly common. Especially if you are planning to go into accounting. What are you studying? What do you plan to do after you graduate?
M: I want to become a dentist. I’m enrolled in a pre-med program for dentistry.
W: Okay, so I’d suggest looking in the library for information on organizations that have to do with dentistry. Any number of them might offer scholarships to student planning to join their profession.
M: I’ll definitely investigate that one.
W: Great, but be sure to talk to one of our librarians too. They get the same questions over and over so they can save you a great deal of time.
Lecture 1
Many organisms have developed the ability to survive in harsh environmental conditions: extreme heat or cold or very dry conditions, like plants in the desert. Your textbook doesn’t have much about the specifics on desert plants. But I think the desert
plants are great examples of specialized adaptations to extreme environmental conditions. So with desert plants, there are basically three different adaptive strategies, and I should point out that these strategies are not specific to any particular species. Many different species have developed each of the adaptations. So first of, there are succulent plants. There are many different species of succulent plants. But they all can absorb and store a lot of water. Obviously, opportunities to get water in the desert are few and far between.
Generally, rains are light and short so the rain doesn’t seem too far down into the soil. And there is a limited window of time for any plant to get the water before it vaporizes. But succulent plants have a spread out and shallow root system that can quickly pull in water from the top inch of soil, though the soil has to be saturated. Since succulents aren’t good at absorbing water from the soil that’s only a little moist. Succulent plants also are well suited to retaining water, important in the environment where rainy days are rare. Succulent plants can store water in their leaves, in their stems or in their roots, and to keep that moisture from evaporating in the hot desert sun. Most succulent plants have a waxy outer layer that makes them almost waterproof when their store mates are closed. They also preserve water by minimizing their surface area. The more of the plant is out in the sun, the more potential there is to lose stored up water, and that means that most succulent plants have few, if any, leaves.
Now, besides succulent plants, there are also drought tolerant plants. Drought tolerant plants are like bears in a way. You know how bears mostly sleep through the winter? They can survive without eating because their metabolism slows down. Well, drought tolerant plants also go into a dormant state when resources, in their case water, run short.
A drought tolerant plant can actually dry out without dying. I said before that most desert rains are light and brief, but occasionally there’s a heavy one. Drought tolerant plants revive after one of these significant rainfalls and they are able to absorb a good bit of the rainfall due to their deep roots. Actually, the root system for drought tolerant plants is more extensive than the root system of many plants that live in wetter climates. Drought tolerant plants can even absorb water from relatively dry soil because of their deep roots, in contrast to succulent plants.
The third adaptive strategy is to avoid the drought conditions all together. Yes-- there are plants that do this—annual plants. An annual plant will mature and produce seeds in a single season that will become the next generation of annual plants. In desert conditions, annual plants grow in the fall or spring to avoid the heat of summer and the cold of winter. Of course, these plants could face a serious problem if a particular fall or spring happen to be very dry. They would have difficulty growing and could die before producing seeds but they have a mechanism to prevent one year of low rainfall from wiping them out. Not all seeds and annual plant puts out or grow the following year. Some seeds remain dormant in the ground for several years. It’s a type of insurance that protects the annual plants from the season of poor growing conditions of unfavorable weather.
Lecture 2
P: It’s interesting how much we can learn about culture in the United States by looking at how Christopher Columbus has been portrayed throughout United States history. So let’s start at the beginning. Columbus’s ship first landed… landed in the Caribbean. Oh, there is some debate about which island he landed in 1492. But it wasn’t until 300 years later in 1792 that its landing was first commemorated. And this was the bring child of John Pintard. Pintard was a wealthy New Yorker, the founder of the New York historical society and he decided to use his influence and wealth to find a great hero, a patron for the young country and he chose Columbus. And in New York in 1792 the anniversary of Columbus’s landing was commemorated for the first time. Now, other cities, Philadelphia then Baltimore followed. And…
S: But why Columbus and why then?
P: Well, to Pintard, it was a way to build patriotism in the young, politically fractured country. We remember the United State had only declared its independence from Britain sixteen years earlier and had yet to form a national identity. Pintard also had a hand in helping to create an independent state in July 4th as a national holiday so you see that he was very involved in creating sort of a national story for Americans. And Columbus, he felt Columbus could be become a story that Americans could tell each other about their national origins that was outside of the British colonial context. The United States was in search of a national identity and its people wanted heroes.
S: But why not some of leaders of the revolution? You know like George Washington. P: The leaders of the revolution were the natural candidates to be heroes. But many were still alive and didn’t want the job. To them, being raised to heroes’ status was undemocratic. So Columbus became the hero. And the link between Columbus and the United States took hold.
S: And so what was that link？
P: Well, Columbus was portrayed as entrepreneurial, someone who took chances, who took risks and he was cast as somebody who was opposed to the rule of kings and queens. Perhaps most of all Columbus was portrayed as someone who was destined to accomplish things. Just as America in those early years was coming to see itself as having a great destiny.
S: But Columbus was supported by the king and queen of Spain. He wasn’t against them.
P:True, to be historically accurate the way Pintard thought about Columbus doesn’t
match up with the fact of his life at all. And I really have to stress this, the fact that Columbus became the hero of a young country had little to do with Columbus. Anything he did had a lot to do with what was happening in United States 300 years later. Columbus was extraordinary adaptable to the purposes of America’s nation builders. People like John Pintard in the early part of the 19th century and since not a lot of facts were known about Columbus, his writing were available in North America until 1816, that might’ve actually helped the process of adapting him to American purposes.
S: Since no one knew about the real Columbus, it was easy to invent a mythical one? P: Exactly, and this mythical Columbus, he became a reflection of the society which chose him. So in the early history of the United States, Columbus represented an escape from the political institutions of Europe. He was the solitary individual who challenged to the unknown. And now there was this new democracy, this new country in a world without kings. Columbus became sort of the mythical founder of the country. So as historians, we wouldn’t want to study these myths about Columbus and mistaken them for facts about Columbus. But if we are trying to understand American culture, then we can learn much by studying how America adapts Columbus for its own purposes. Evaluations of Columbus then will reflect what Americans think of themselves. Oh, there is a quote. Something like a society’s re-constructor passed rather than faithfully recorded. And how that reconstruction takes place and what it tells us. That’s something we are going to be paying a lot of attention to.
Lecture 3
P: Ok, as art historians, one of our fundamental tasks is to assign authorship to works of art, right? We are presented with a work of art and we are to figure out who made it. But this task becomes particularly difficult when we dealing with works produced in Italy during the Renaissance. The sixteenth, seventeenth centuries. Now, why is this the case? Anyone? Emily?
Emily: umm, is it because artists didn’t sign their work? I mean, didn’t whole concept of the artists as individual developed later, in like the 19th century?
P: Well, you are sort of on the right track. The concept of the individual artist, especially the concept of the artists that has artistic genius, struggling alone with the vision as opposed to say a mere artisan. Well the idea of the artists as alone genius didn’t develop until later. But artists, individual artists did sign their work during the Renaissance, that you could say that’s part of the problem. Paintings were signed by the artists and that used to be understood to be a mark of Renaissance individualism. If a piece had Raphael signature on it, we assume this was done by great artist himself, Raphael in singular. But you see, art in Renaissance Italy was very much a collaborative business. Painters
and sculptors worked in a workshop. It was almost like a small business run by a master artist. You see, to deal with the wide varieties of commissions they received, orders, basically, for specific types of art, specific projects. To handle this, master artists often employ assistants as apprentices and, this was especially so if they work on a large scale, huge paintings of sculptures, or if they were much in demand like Raphael, for instance. He worked on some large paintings, he painted fresco for the V odacom. He also received a great many commissions. There is no way he could complete every part of every project all by himself.
Now these assistances might work for the master artists on a temporary or permanent basis, and they may also specialize. For example, in Raphael’s workshop, which may be called Raphael incorporative, one of the assistants specialize in animals. He actually painted good number of the animals in Raphael’s art. It may be that the master assigning the work with simply make a declaration that the work met the standards of the shop; and it wasn’t just painters, sculptors also work together. In fact, the systems were even more necessary if you are a master sculptor because status take longer to make than paintings. The master had to arrange from marble to the quarry, things like that. Perhaps the most collaborative of all was architecture. There we see a real division of labor, with carpenters, masons, unskilled labor just carry materials to and fro and so on. Thus of course your skilled artisans who carried out the master architects design. Think of it like umm a ballet, you know. All the dancers worked together. T
here is division of labor, people who have different roles, and in order for the things to come together everyone needs to be aware what others are doing, and coordinate the work and have good timing. So, for architecture, it’s almost impossible to know who was responsible for any given detail. Was it the master architect? The mason? The assistant mason? Maybe it was even the patron. The client who was paying for the art. Remember, it wasn’t yet customary for architects to give their assistants measure drawings to work from. Instructions were given orally, not in writing.
So we don’t have those documents to tell us what exactly the master’s architect plans were. The only time we have written records is when the architect wasn’t actually there. Perhaps the architect was away on business and had to write out instructions and sent them into shop. And another thing to think about, what affect do you suppose this approach would have had on innovation? I mean, since the hired artisans had been trained by other artisans, they tended to trained to use traditional styles and technics. So if you were a master architect, and you’ve developed your own style. Say your calling for certain detail in the building you design, right? And see this detail different, purposely different from established tradition, the established style. Well, most likely when the hired artisans would execute the design rather than follow the intended design. They stick with the more traditional styles that they were familiar with. Workers would have to be supervised very closely to prevent this from happening. Otherwise, as often happened, there goes to designers’ style and creativity.
Lecture 4
P: Ok, we’ve been discussing the planets in our solar system and how some of the ones farthest from sun were discovered. Well today, I’d like to turn to what are called exoplanets and how researchers detect them. Meriam
.
M: Exoplanets are planets that orbit around a star other than our sun right? They’re not in our solar system.
P: Right, they have different, what are called, host stars. And the study of exoplanets has been getting more and more exciting, hundreds of them have been discovered so far. This is quite remarkable, in view the fact of the discovery of the first exoplanet was confirmed only in the mid-1990s. Now we are finding new ones every few weeks or so.
M: So, uhh, exactly why are we interested in these exoplanets anyway? Is it to see if there’s life on them? Because it seems to me like the only exoplanets we ever hear about are gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn that couldn’t possibly support carbon-based life.
P: Ok, well, let’s take about that. First, as for discovering life, well, I think that sort of discovery is pretty far in the future but it is an eventual goal. For now, the focus is on locating planets within the host stars’ so called habitable zone. A zone that’s a certain distance from its star. Because only planets within this zone could conceivably support carbon-based life. So, what would such a planet need?
M: Water?
P: Yes, it need to be the right temperature to sustain liquid water.
S: And it would need to be a rocky planet. I mean as opposed to a gas giant.
P: Ok, good, and earth-like planet. Now, as to that, there are some recently detected exoplanets that might actually be earth-like. For example, there is a red dwarf star, that’s what most stars are. Umm, that called Gliese 581. Gliese 581 is, well, it’s a lot more interesting than that name makes it seem. This host star is considered a near neighbor of our solar system because it’s only about 20 lightyears away. That’s pretty close, right? Astronomical standards. And being a right dwarf star, it’s small and relatively cool, at least compared with the sun. And researchers have discovered planets orbiting Gliese 581.These exoplanets have been named, ready? Gliese 581-BCDE, in alphabetical order of their discovery. Gliese 581-D and E are the planets I want to focus on now. See, in 2009, a group of researchers made an announcement. These two exoplanets Gliese 581-D and E do have some earth-like qualities.
Gliese 581-D had actually been discovered a couple of years earlier. And when its orbit was originally calculated, it was thought to be too far away from its host star to be warm
enough to support a liquid ocean, let along carbon-based life. But then its orbit is re-calculated. And now we see that Gliese 581-D is within its host’s habitable zone.
S: So, it might have an ocean?
P: Well, conceivably, see, Gliese 581-D weighs seven times what earth weighs. And it’s unlikely that it’s made entirely of rocks because it’s so massive. The researchers studying it said it could have a rocky core an ice-layer, a large deep ocean and an atmosphere. Ok, and there was another announcement along with the recalculated orbit of Gliese 581-D. That was the discovery of another planet in the system, Gliese 581-E. Compared with other exoplanets its mass is quiet small, only about twice about that of earth.
S: So, is Gliese 581-E a more earth-like planet?
P: Well, we have to consider its orbit. Gliese 581-E orbits its host star in a much shorter period of time than the other planets in the system. Meaning it’s very close to the star. And, therefore, too hot for water, for an ocean. However, the fact that it’s relatively close to the size of the earth, small in astronomical terms, that was pretty exciting. It’s impressive that we have a technology to detect it and it bolds well for future research. Who knows what we will find the more we search.