Q的听写作业

名字是个词儿UID: 2707493

TPO9-5

Listen to part of a lecture in a geologyclass.

So, continuing our discussion of desertlakes, now I want to focus on what’s known as the Empty Quarter. The Empty Quarteris a huge area of sand that covers about a quarter of the Aribian[Arabian] Panisular[Peninsula半岛]. Today it’s pretty deserlet[desolate 荒芜的], barren, and extremely hot, but there’ve been times in the past when monthon[monsoon季雨] rains soped[soaked 渗透] the empty quarter, andturned it from a desert into grass land that was dotted with lakes and homed[home to] various of animals(6. 主旨题). There were actually two periods ofrain in lake formation, the first one began about 37000 years ago, and thesecond one dates from about 10000 years ago.

Excuse me, professor, but I’m confused, whywould lakes form in a desert? It’s just sand, after all.

Good question, we know from modern date[day] desert lakes, like Lake Arian[Eyre], south Australia, that under the rightconditions, lakes do form in the desert. But the Empty Quarter lakesdisappeared thousands of years ago, they left behind their bed or basins aslimestone formations that we can still see today. They look like low-line[low-lying], white or grey builts[builds], long narrow hills or flat tops, barely ameter high, a recent study of some ofthe formations presents some new theories about the area’s past. Keep in mind,though, that this study only looked at 19 formations, and about a thousand hadbeen documented, so there’s a lot more work to be done（7. 细节陈述）. Accordingto this study, two factors were importantfor lake formation（8. 题干定位） inthe Empty Quarter. First, the rain that fell there were terancial[torrential 奔流的，猛烈的], so it would have been impossible for all the water to soak intothe ground. Second, as you know, sanddunes contain other types of particles 颗粒 besides sand including clay and silt 淤泥.（8. 正确选项改写） Now, when the rain fell,water ran down the sides of the dunes 沙丘, carrying clay and silt particles with it, and wherever theseparticles settled, they formed a pan, a layer that water couldn’t penetrate 渗入. Once this pan formed, further run-off collected and formed a lake.

Now, the older lakes, about half theformations, the ones that started forming 37000 years ago, the limestone 石灰石 formations we see, they’re up to a kilometer long, but only a fewmeters wide, and they’re scattered 分散 along the desert’s floor in valleys between the dunes, so thetheory is the lake’s form there, on the desert floor, in these long narrowvalleies[valleys]. And we know because of whatwe know about similar ancient desert lakes, we know that the lakes didn’t lastvery long, from a few months to a few years on average. As for the more recentlakes, the ones from 10000 years ago, well, they seem to have been smaller, andso may have dried out more quickly. Anotherdifference very important today for distinguishing between older lake beds andnewer ones is the location of the limestone formations（9. 列举）. Themore recent beds are high up on the dunes. Why these differences? Well, there’resome ideas about that, and they have to do with the shapes of the sand duneswhen the lakes were formed. 37000 years ago, the dunes were probably nicely roundedat the top, so the water just ran right down their sides to the desert floor.But there were thousands of years of wind between the two rainy periods,reshaping the dunes, so during the second rainy period, the dunes were kind of chopped upat the top, full of hollows 洼地 and reges[ridges], and thesehollows would have captured the rain right there on the top.

Now, in a grass land of lake ecosystem, we’dexpect to find fossils from a variouty[variety]of animals, and nonmoon’s[numerous] fossilshave been found, at least at these particular sites. But where did theseanimals come from? Well, the theory that’s been suggested is that they migratedin form nearby habitats, where they were already living, then as the lakesdryed[dried] up, they died out. The study makesa couple of interesting points about the fossils, which I hope will be lookedat in future studies. At older lakesites, their fossil remains form hypopotemyses[hippopotamuses],water bufflo[buffalo],（9. 列举） animals that spend much oftheir lives standing in water, and also fossils of cattle. However, at the sites of the more recent lakes, there’s only cattlefossils（9. 列举）,additional evidence for geologists that these lakes were probably smaller,shallower, because cattle only use waterfor drinking, so they survive on much less（10. 细节。 对比）. Interestingly, there are plantments[clams and], nailshells[snailshells], but no fossils of fish, we are not sure why. Maybe there was a problem with the water,may it was too salty（11. 细节。逻辑因果）, that’s certainly true with other desert lakes.

8题错，听原文时没有记下clay and silt，也没听出来sand dune，只记下了sand。所以没辨认出正确选项B。并且原文的逻辑关系没记好，所以不清楚选项D是否属于定位处。

名字是个词儿UID: 2707493

TPO 10-3
Listen to part of a lecture in a European historyclass.
Sowould it surprise you to learn that many of the foods that wetoday consider traditionalEuropean dishes, that their key ingredientswere not even known in Europe untilquite recently, until the Europeansstarted trading with the native peoples inNorth and South America?(12. 主旨题) Imean, well, you are probably aware that the America’s provided Europe, andAsia, with foods like squash 美国南瓜, beans, turkey, peanuts, but what about all those Italian tomatosauses[sauces], humgariengurush, or my favorite,French fries, those yummy fried potatos[potatoes]?

Wait, I mean I knew potatoes were from…where,South America？

South America, yeah, the Andis[Andes] Mountains.

But you’re saying tomatoes, too? I just assumedsince they are used in so many Italian dishes.

No, like potatoes, tomatoes grew wild inthe Andes, although unlikepotatoes, they weren’t originally cultivated there.That seems to haveoccurred first in Central America. And even then, the tomatodoesn’tappear to have been very important as a food plant, until theEuropeanscame on the scene. They took it back to Europe with themaround 1550, and Italywas indeed the first place where it was widelygrown as a food crop. So in ascence[sense],it really is more Italian thanAmerican. And another thing and this istrue of both the potato and the tomato.Both of these plants are membersof the night shade family.

Thenight shade family is the category of plants which also includes many that youwouldn’t want to eat, like…mandrac[mandrake],baladana[belladonna], and even tobacco. So itno wonder that people once considered tomatoes and potatoes to be ineatable[inedible] too, even poisonise[poisonous].（13. 细节，对象特征） Andinfact, the leaves of the potato plant are quite toxic, so it took bothplantsquite a while to catch on in Europe, and even longer before theymade theirreturn trip to North America, and became popular food itemshere.

Yeah, you know, I remember my grandmother tellingme that when hermother was a little girl, a lot of people still thought thattomatoeswere poisonous.

Oh, sure. People didn’t really start eatingthem here until the mid 1800s.

But…it seems like I heard, didn’t Tomas Jeffersongrow them or something?

Uh, well, that’s true, but then Jeffersonwas known not only as the thirdpresident of the United States, but alsoas a scholar who was way ahead of histime, in many ways. He didn’t letthe conventional thinking of his day restrainhis ideas.（14. 细节，某人对某事的看法）

Now potatoes went through a similar sort ofa rejection process,especially when they were first introduced into Europe.You know howpotatoes can turn green if they are left in the light too long,and thatgreenish scan can make the potato taste bitter, even make you ill,sothat was enough to put people off for over 200 years. Yes, Bill?

I’m sorry, Professor Johns, but…I mean,yeah, OK, American crops haveprobably contributed a lot to European cookingover the years, but…

Buthave they really played any kind of important role in European history?（17. 重听） Well, as a matter of fact,yes, I was just coming to that. Let’s start with North American corn, or maize 玉米, as it’s often called. Now before the Europeans made contact withthe Americans, they subsistedmainlyon grains, grains that often suffered from crop failures, andit’s largely forthis reason that political power in Europe was centeredfor centuries in thesouth, around the Medetrainian[Mediterranean 地中海] sea, which was ready[where they] couldgrow these grains with more reliability, but when corn came to Europe from Mexico, well now they had a much hardier 耐寒的 crop that couldbe grown easily in more northerly 北方的 climates, and the center of powerbegan to shift accordingly.（15. 情节发展逻辑顺序）And then, well, as I said potatoesweren’treally popular at first, but when they finally did catch onwhich they didfirst in Ireland around 1780, well, why do you suppose ithappened? Becausepotatoes had the ability to provide in abundant andextremely nutriashus[nutritious] food crop,（16. 逻辑关系，因果） no other crop growingin northern Europe at the time had anything like the number of vitaminscontained in potatoes. Plus, potatoes growing on a single acer[acre] of land could feed many more people than, say,wheat, growing on that same land. Potatoessoon spread to France and other European countries, and as a result, the nutrition 营养 of the general populationimproved tremendously, and population soured[soared]in the early 1800s, and so the shift of power from southern to northern Europecontinued.（15. 情节发展逻辑顺序）

12题错，被后边男生的问题误导了，以为整个都是关于influence的，也是做太快的缘故。

名字是个词儿UID: 2707493

TPO 10-2
Listen topart of a lecture in a marine biology class.

We knowwhales are mammals, and that they evolved from land creatures.So the mysteryis figuring out how they became ocean dwellers, becauseuntil recently therewas no fossil record of what we call the missinglink, that is evidenceofspecies that show the transition between land dwelling mammals andtoday’swhales. Fortunately, some recent fossil discoveries have madethe picture alittle bit clear[clearer]. For example, a fewyears back in Pakesta[Pakistan], they found askul[skull]of a wolf-like creature, it wasabout fifteen million years old.Scientists had seen this wolf-like creaturebefore, but this skull wasdifferent, the ear area of this skull hadcharacteristics seen only in aquaticmammals, specifically whales. Uh, well,then also in Pakistan, theyfound a fossil of another creature, which we callambulusitus Nattan[Ambulocetus natans]. That[That’s] a mouthful, aey? The name Ambulocetus Natanscomes form Latin, of course, and means “walking whale that swims”. It clearly had four limbs 肢that could have been used for walking, it also had a long thintale,typical of mammals, something we don’t see in today’s whales. Butit also had along skeletal 骨骼的 structure, and that long skeletal structure suggests that it wasaquatic.(7. 列举) And very recently in Egypt, theyfound a skeleton骨骼 of basila sourts[Basilosaurus].Balilosaurus was a creature that we had already known about for over a hundredyears, and it has been linked to modernwhale because of its long whale-likebody, but this new fossil findshowed a full set of leg bones, something wedidn’t have before, thelegs were too small to be useful, they weren’t evenconnected to itspulvus[pelvis] and couldn’thave supported itsweight. But it clearly shows Basilosaurus’s evolution fromlandcreatures, so that’s a giant step in the right direction. Even better,itestablishes Ambulocetus as a clear link between thewolf-like creature and Basilosaurus. Now, these discoveries don’t completelysolve the mystery. I mean Ambulocetus isa mammal that shows a sort of bridge between walking on land and swimming,（8. 对象物质）but it also…it’s[is] very different from the whales we know today. Soreally we are working with just a few pieces of a big puzzle.

Um, arelated debate involves some recent DNA studies, remember, DNA isthe geneticcode for any organism, and when the DNA from two differentspecies is similar,it suggests that those two species are related. Andwhen we compare[compared] some whale DNA with DNA from otherspecies, we got quite a surprise, theDNA suggests that whales are decendance[descendants]of the hippopolimus[hippopotamus 河马].（9. 例子与观点的对应）Yes, the hippopotamus, well, that came as abit of ashock. I mean that a four leggedland and river dweller could be theevolutionary source of a completely aquaticcreature up to 25 times itssize? Unfortunately, this revolation[revelation 被揭示的真相]about the hippopotamus apparently contradicts the fossil recordwhichsuggests that the hippopotamus is only a very distant relative ofthe whale,not an ancestor.（10. 陈述观点）And of course as I mentioned, that whales aredescendant not form hippos but from that distant wolf-like creature. So we havecontradictory 相矛盾的 evidence, and more research might just rise morequestions and create more contraversies[controversies 辩论]. At any rate, we have a choice, we canbelieve the molecular分子的 data, the DNA, or we can believe theskeleton trail小路, but unfortunately, probably not both.

Um, andthere have been some other interesting findings from DNA research, for a longtime, we assume[assumed] that all whales thathave teeth, including spurm[sperm]whales andkiller whales, are closely related to one another, and thesame for thetoothless whales, like the blue whale and other blin[baleen]whales. We assumed that they’d be closely related. But recent DNA studies suggest that that’s not thecase at all.（11. 例子作用）The sperm whale is actually closely relatedto the baleenwhale, and it’s only distantly related to the toothed whales. Sothatwas a real surprise to all of us.

7题错，做题太急了，选了CDE。查查笔记就知道，E的ear是属于wolf-like creature的，所以E肯定错。而A在笔记能找到skeletal structure，排除了E的情况下，应该能猜出来的。

名字是个词儿UID: 2707493

TPO 12-5
臭名昭著的opera
Listen to part of a lecture in a musichistory class. The professor has been discussing opera.

The word “opera” means work, actually itmeans works. It’s the plural 复数 of the word poers[opus 作品] from the Latin. And in Italian it refers in general to works ofart. Opera lyrica[lyric] or lyric opera refersto what we think of as opera, the musical drama. Opera was commonplace 寻常的事物 in Italy for almost 1000 years before it became commercial aseventure[a venture 风险投资], and during thoseyears, several things happen, primarily linguistic or thymatic[thematic 主题的],(6. 主旨题) and both involve in secularization 世俗化. Musical drama started in the churches, it was an educational tool,it was used primarily as a vehical[vehicle]forteaching religion, and was generally presented in Latin, thelanguage of the Christianchurch, which had considerable influence inItaly at that time. But thelanguage of everyday life was evolved[evolving]in Europe, and at a certain point in the middle ages, it was really only merchants 商人, suristicrats[aristocrats 贵族] and clergy神职人员 who could deal with Latin. The vast 大量的 majority of the population used their own reagional[regional 当地的] vernacular地方语 in all aspects of their lives,and so, in what is now Italy, operasquit being presented in Latin, and started being presented in Italian.(7. 细节，逻辑顺序，题干定位) Andonce that happened, the themes ofthe opera presentations also startedto change. And musical drama moved fromthe church to the plaza rightoutside the church. And the themes, again, thethemes changed, and opera was no longerabout teaching religion（7. 细节，逻辑顺序， 正确选项改写） as it was about sataya[satire 讽刺] and about expressing the ideas of society or government withoutcommiting[committing] yourself to writing andrisking in prison and[imprisonment]or prosecution[persecution 迫害], or what have you.

Opera, as we think of it, is of course areserected[rather restive 不安静的] form. It is the melonious[melodious 悦耳的] drama of ancient Greek theater,the term melodious drama being shorten eventually to melodrama 音乐戏剧,becauseoperas frequently are melodramatic, not to say I’m realistic.And the groupthat put the first operas together that we have today thenwere,（8. 细节的逻辑作用） well, it was a group ofmen that included Galolao’s[Galileo’s] father,Venchenzo[Vincenzo]. And they met in Florence,he and a group of friends of the count of Bardy[Countof Bardi], and they formed what is called the Camarata Diabardi[Camerata de’ Bardy]. And they took classicaltheater, and reproduced it in the Reloson’s[Renaissance’s文艺复兴] time. This producedsome of the operas that we have today.

Now, what happened in the following century[centuries] is very simple, opera originated inItaly, but was not confined in[to]Italy anymore than Italians were. And so, as Italians migrated acrossEurope, theycarried theater with them, and opera specifically becauseit was an Italianform.

What happened is that the major divide of[in] opera that endures 持续 today took place. The French said opera auto-reflect[aught to reflect] the rhythem[rhythm 节奏，韵律] and cadens[cadence 抑扬，节奏，韵律] of dramatic戏剧的 literature, bearing in mind thatwe are talking about the golden age in French literature, andso the music was secondary, if you will, to the dramatic cadenceoflanguage, to the way the rhythm of language was used to expressfeeling and usedto add drama,（9. 细节，对象特征） andof course, as a result, in stead of arias 咏叹调 or solos独唱 which would come to dominateItalian opera, the French relied on what the Italians called Regitatival or Resatative[Recitative] in English, the lyrics were spokenfrequently to the accompaniment ever[of a] hardsequard[harpsichord 键琴].

The French said, you really can’t talkabout real people who lived in opera, and they relied on methology[mythology 神话] to give them their characters and their plauds[plots 故事情节], mythology, the pasril[past old] traditions, the novels of chivalry 骑士精神 or the apicts[epics 史诗]of chivalry out of the middle ages. The Italians said, No, this isagreat historical tool, and what better way to educate the public abouttheneural[neo 新的，现代的] or atilo[Attalla] or any number ofpeople then[than] to put them into a play theycan see and listen to.

The English appropriated opera after theFrench. Opera came late toEngland because all theaters, public theaters wereclosed, of course,during their civil war, and it wasn’t until the restoration 修复 in 1660 that public theaters again opened and opera took off. The English made a major adjustment to opera,and exboarded[exported 出口] what they have done toopera back to Italy,（10. 重听，演讲者意图） sothatyou have this circle of musical influences: the Italian inventedopera,the French adapted it, the English adopted it, the Italians tookit back.

It came to America late, and was consideredto illegas[elites 精英] for the general public, but Broadway musicals fulfilled the similarfunction for a great long while. John J.Chapen[Champon] wrote about opera, “If an extra terrestrial 地球外的
bingore to[being or two]appearbefore us and say, what is your society like, what is this earththing allabout, you could do worse than take that creature to opera.”Because operadoes, after all, begin with a man and a woman, andemotion.(11. 重听，演讲者态度)


8题错，听的时候没理解上下文关系。笔记自然记不清。并且C有生词，不敢选。印象中很早很早就在Italy有opera，所以猜的A。
生词：precursor 先驱

小狒狒UID: 2739243

快考试了加油啊

gaofei323UID: 2588256

什么时候考试呢？

名字是个词儿UID: 2707493

回楼上，16号考的，感觉不太妙，所以继续学习着。
T14的音频出来了，诸葛太忙，我就靠自己了，先发到自己地盘上。
TPO14-2
Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in a psychologyclass.

We’ve said that the term Cognition refersto mental states like knowing and believing, and to mental processes that weuse to arrive at those states. So, for example, reasoning is a cognitive process,so is perception. We use information that we perceive through our senses tohelp us make decisions to arrive at beliefs and so on, and then there arememory and imagination, which relate to the knowledge of things that happenedin the past or may happen in the future. So perceiving, remembering, imaginingare all internal mental processes that lead to knowing or believing. Yet eachof these processes has limitations, and can lead us to hold mistaken beliefs ormake false predictions. Take memory for example, maybe you’ve heard of studiesin which people hear a list of related words, um, let’s say a list of differentkinds of fruit, after hearing this list, there presented was several additionalwords. In this case, we’ll say the additional words were blanket and cherry,neither of these words was on the original list, and while people will claimcorrectly that blanket was not on the original list, they’ll also claimincorrectly that the word cherry was on the list, most people are convincedthey heard the word cherry on the original list. Why did they make such asimple mistake? Well, we think because the words on the list were so closelyrelated, the brain stored only the gist of what it heard, for example, that allthe items on the list were types of fruit, when we tap our memory, our brainsoften fill in details, and quite often these details are actually false. Wealso see this fill in phenomenon with perception.

Perception is the faculty that allows us toprocess information in the present as we take it in via our senses. Again,studies have shown that people will fill in information that they thought they perceivedeven when they didn’t. For example, experiments have been done where a personhears a sentence, but it’s missing the word that logically completes it, they’llclaim to hear that word even though it was never said. So if I were to say, ah,the sun rises in the…and then fail to complete the sentence, people will oftenclaim to have heard the word east. In cognitive psychology, we have a phrase forthis kind of inaccurate filling in of details; it’s called a blind spot. Theterm originally referred to the place in our eyes where the optic nerveconnects the back of the eye to the brain. There are no photo receptors in thearea where the nerve connects to the eye, so that particular area of the eye isincapable of detecting images. It produces a blind spot in our field of vision,we aren’t aware of it, because the brain fills in what it thinks belongs in theimage, so the picture always appears complete to us. But the term blind spothas also taken on a more general meaning, it refers to people being unaware ofa bias that may affect their judgment about a subject, and the same blind spotphenomenon that affects memory and perception also affects imagination.

Imagination is a faculty that some peopleuse to anticipate future events in their lives, but the ease with which weimagine details can lead to unrealistic expectations and can bias ourdecisions. So, um, Peter, suppose I ask you to imagine a lunch salad, noproblem, right? But I bet you imagine specific ingredients; did yours have tomatoes,onion, lettuce? Mine did. Our brains fill in all sorts of details that mightnot be part of other people’s image of a salad, which could lead to disappointmentfor us, if the next time we order a salad in a restaurant, we have our imaginesalad in mind that’s not necessarily what we’ll get on our plate. The problemis not that we imagine things, but that we assume what we’ve imagined isaccurate. We should be aware that our imagination has this built-in feature,the blind spot, which makes our predictions fall short of reality.

名字是个词儿UID: 2707493

TPO 14-1
Narrator
Listen to a conversation between a studentand a library employee.
Student
Hi, I’m looking for this book, the AmericanJudicial System, and I can’t seem to find it anywhere. I need to read a chapterfor my political science class.
Librarian
Let me check in the computer. Um, doesn’tseem to be checked out, and it’s not on reserve. You’ve checked the shelves, Iassume.
Student
Yeah, I even checked other shelves andtables next to where the book should be.
Librarian
Well, it’s still here in the library, sopeople must be using it. You know, this seems to be a very popular book tonight,we show six copies, none are checked out, and yet you didn’t even find one copyon the shelves. Is it a big class?
Student
Maybe about 75.
Librarian
Well, you should ask your professor to putsome of the copies on reserve. You know about the reserve system, right?
Student
I know that you have to read reservebooks in the library, and that you have time limits, but I didn’t know that Icould ask a professor to put a book on reserve, I mean I thought the professorsmake that kind of decision at the beginning of the semester.
Librarian
Oh, they can put books on reserve at anytime during the semester.
Student
You know, reserving books seems a bitunfair, what if someone who is not in the class wants to use the book?
Librarian
That’s why I said SOME copies.
Student
Ah. Well, I’ll certainly talk to myprofessor about it tomorrow, but what am I gonna do tonight?
Librarian
I guess you could walk around the policysection and look at the books waiting to be re-shelved.
Student
There do seem to be more than normal.
Librarian
We are a little short staff right now,someone quit recently, so things aren’t getting re-shelved as quickly as usual,I don’t think they’ve hired a replacement yet, so, yeah, the un-shelved bookscan get a bit out of hand.
Student
This may sound a bit weird, but I’ve beenthinking about getting a job. Um, I’ve never worked in a library before, but…
Librarian
Well, that’s not a requirement. The jobmight still be open. At the beginning of the semester, we were swamped with applications,but I guess everyone who wants a job has one by now.
Student
What can you tell me about the job?
Librarian
Well, we work between 6 and 10 hours aweek, so it’s a reasonable amount, usually we can pick the hours we want towork, but since you’d be starting so late in the semester, I’m not sure howthat would work for you. And…oh, we get paid the normal university rates forstudent employees.
Student
So, who do I talk to?
Librarian
I guess you’d talk to Dr. Jenkins, the headlibrarian, she does the hiring.

名字是个词儿UID: 2707493

TPO 14-3


Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in a biologyclass.

Professor
Almost all animals have some way ofregulating their body temperature; otherwise they wouldn’t survive extreme hotor cold conditions. Sweating, panting, swimming to cooler or warmer water,ducking into somewhere cool like a burrow or a hole under a rock, these arejust a few. And that spot is colder or warmer than the surrounding environmentbecause it’s a microclimate. A microclimate is a group of climate conditionsthat affect a localized area, weather features like temperature, wind, moisterand so on. And when I say localized, I mean really localized, becausemicroclimates can be, as the name suggests, pretty small, even less than asquare meter. And microclimates are affected by a huge number of othervariables, obvious, weather conditions in the surrounding area are a factor,but other aspects of the location, like, um, the elevation of the land, theplant life nearby and so on have a substantial affect on microclimates, and ofcourse the human development in the area, um, a rod will affect a nearbymicroclimate.

It’s also interesting to know thatmicroclimates that are near each other can have very different conditions. Inthe forest, for example, there can be a number of very different microclimatesclose to each other, because of all the variables I just mentioned.

Student
So how does a hole in the ground, a burrow,stay cool in a hot climate?

Professor
Well, since cold air sinks, and these spotsare shaded, they are usually much cooler than the surrounding area. And thesespots are so important, because many animals rely on microclimates to regulatetheir body temperature. Um, for instance, there is a species of squirrel in thewestern part of the United States
thatcan get really hot when they are out foraging for food, so they need a way tocool down. So what’d they do? They go back to their own burrow. Once they getthere, their body temperatures decrease very, very quickly, the trip to theburrow prevents the squirrel form getting too hot.

Student
But squirrels are mammals, right? I thoughtmammals regulated their temperature internally.

Professor
Mammals do have the ability to regulatetheir body temperature, but not all can do it to the same degree, or even thesame way, like when you walk outside on a hot day, you perspire, and your bodycools itself down, a classic example of how mammals regulate its own bodytemperature, but one challenge the squirrels face, well, many small mammals do,is that because of their size, sweating would make them lose too much moister,they dehydrate. But on the other hand, their small size allows them to fit intovery tiny spaces. So for small mammals, microclimates can make a bigdifference, they rely on microclimates for survival.

Student
So cold blooded animals, like reptile, theycan’t control their own body temperate, so I can imagine the effectmicroclimate would have on them.

Professor
Yes. Many reptiles and insects rely onmicroclimates to control their body temperature. A lot of reptiles use burrowsor stay under rocks to cool down, of course with reptiles, it’s a balancingact. Staying in the heat for too long can lead to problems, but staying in thecold can do the same. So reptiles have to be really precise about where theyspend their time, even how they position their bodies. And when I say they’reprecise, I mean it. Some snakes will search out a place under rocks for specificthickness, because too thin a rock doesn’t keep them cool enough, and too thicka rock will cause them to get too cold. That level of precision is critical tothe snake for maintaining its body temperature. And even microscopic organismsrely on microclimates for survival. Think about this, decomposing leaves createheat that warms the soil; the warm soil in turn affects the growth, theconditions of organisms there. And those organisms then affect the rate of decompositionof the leaves. So a microclimate can be something so small and so easilydisturbed that even a tiny change can have a big impact. If someone on a hikeknocks a couple of rocks over, they could be unwillingly destroying amicroclimate that an animal or organism relies on.

名字是个词儿UID: 2707493

TPO 14-4

Narrator
Listen to a conversation between a studentand his faculty advisor.
Professor
Hi, Steve, I scheduled this appointmentcause it’s been a while since we touched base.
Student
I know, I’ve been really busy, a friend ofmine works on the school paper, he asked me if I’d like to try reporting, so Idid, and I really love it.
Professor
Hey, that sounds great.
Student
Yeah, the first article I wrote, it was aprofile of the chemistry professor, the one who is named Teacher of The Year,my article ran on the front page, when I saw my name, I mean my byline inprint, I was hooked. Now I know this is what I want to do, be a reporter.
Professor
Isn’t it great to discover something thatyou really enjoy? And I read the article too, it was very good.
Student
To be honest, the article got lots ofediting, in fact, I barely recognized a couple of paragraphs. But the editorexplained why the changed were made, I learned a lot. And my second articledidn’t need nearly as many changes.
Professor
Oh, sounds like you got a real knack forthis.
Student
Yeah, anyway, I’m glad you scheduled thismeeting, cause I want to change my major to journalism now.
Professor
Um, the university doesn’t offer a major injournalism.
Student
Oh, no!
Professor
But…
Student
I mean, should I transfer to anotherschool, or major in English?
Professor
Wait a minute. Let me explain why the majorisn’t offered. Editors of newspapers, editors…I mean, when you apply for areporting job, editors look at two things, they want to see clips, you know, someof your published articles, they’ll also want you to try out. They’ll give youan assignment, like, um, covering a press conference or some other event, thensee if you can craft a story about it, accurately, on deadline.
Student
So they don’t even look at my major?
Professor
Well, it’s not that they don’t look at it,it’s…well, having a degree in something other than journalism should actuallywork to your advantage.
Student
How?
Professor
Most journalists specialized these days,they only write about science, or business, or technology, for example. Isthere a type of reporting you think you might like to specialize in?
Student
Well, I think it’d be really cool to coverthe supreme court, I mean, their decisions affect so many people.
Professor
Well, that’s really a goal worth strivingfor. So why not continue majoring in political science? And electives, youcould take some pre-law classes, like constitutional law, and as for your workon the student newspaper, maybe they’d like you cover some local court cases.Ones that students and professors here would want to read about.
Student
Do you know of any?
Professor
Well, I do, actually. There is a caseinvolving this computer software program that one of our professors wrote, thedistrict court’s deciding of the university is entitled to any of the professor’sprofits.
Student
Wow, I’ll definitely follow up on that.

名字是个词儿UID: 2707493

TPO 14-5

Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in an astronomyclass.

Professor
OK, last time we talked about ancientagricultural civilizations that observed the stars and then used thoseobservations to keep track of the seasons. But today I want to talk about theimportance of stars for early seafarers, about how the fixed patterns of starswere used as navigational aids.

OK, you’ve all heard about the Vikings andtheir impressive navigation skills, but the seafaring peoples of the pacificislands, the Polynesians and the Micronesians, were quite possibly the world’sgreatest navigators. Long before the development of, uh, advanced navigationaltools in Europe, pacific islanders were travelling from New Zealand to Hawaiiand back again, using nothing but the stars as their navigational instruments.

Um, the key to the pacific islanders’success was probably their location near the equator. What that meant was thatthe sky could be partitioned, divided up, much more symmetrically than it couldfarther away from the equator. Unlike the Vikings, early observers of the starsin Polynesia or really anywhere along the equator would feel that they were atthe very center of things, with the skies to the north and the skies to thesouth behaving identically, they could see stars going straight up in the eastand straight down in the west. So it was easier to discern the order in the skythan farther north or farther south, where everything would seem more chaotic.Take the case of the Gilbert Islands, they are part of Polynesia, and lie veryclose to the equator. And the people there were able to divide the sky into symmetricalboxes, according to the main directions, north, east, south and west. And theycould precisely describe the location of a star by indicating its position inone of those imaginary boxes. And they realized that you had to know the starsin order to navigate. In fact there was only one word for both in the GilbertIslands, when you wanted the star expert, you ask for a navigator.

Um, islanders from all over the pacificlearned to use the stars for navigation, and they passed this knowledge downfrom generation to generation. Some of them utilized stone structures calledstone canoes, ah, and these canoes were on land, of course, and you can stillsee them on some islands today. They were positioned as if they were heading inthe direction of the points on the sea horizon where certain stars would appearand disappear during the night, and, um, young would-be navigators sat by thestones at night and turned in different directions to memorize theconstellations they saw, so they could recognize them and navigate by themlater on when they went out to sea.

One important way the Polynesians had for orientingthemselves was by using zenith stars. A zenith was a really bright star thatwould pass directly overhead at a particular latitude…at a particular distancefrom the equator, often at a latitude associate with some particular pacificisland. So the Polynesians could estimate their latitude just by looking straightup. By observing whether a certain zenith star passed directly overhead atnight, they’d know if they have reached the same latitude as a particularisland they were trying to get to. Um, another technique used by thePolynesians was to look for a star pair, that’s two stars that rise at the sametime, or set at the same time, and navigators could use these pairs of stars asreference points, because they rise or set together only at specific latitudes.So navigators might sea one star pair setting together
and, uh…would know how far north or south of the equator theywere. And if they kept on going, and the next night they saw the pairs of starssetting separately, then they would know that they were at a different degreeof latitude. So looking at rising and setting star pairs is a good technique,um, actually it makes more sense with setting stars, they can be watchedinstead of trying to guess when they’ll rise.

Uh, OK, I think all this shows thatnavigating doesn’t really require fancy navigational instruments, the peoplesof the pacific islands had such expert knowledge of astronomy as well asnavigation that they were able to navigate over vast stretches of open ocean,uh, it's even possible that Polynesian navigators had already sailed to theAmericas, centuries before Columbus.

名字是个词儿UID: 2707493

TPO 14-6


Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in anarcheology class.

Professor
When we think of large monumentalstructures built byearly societies, an Egyptian pyramid probably comesto mind, but there are someeven earlier structures in the British ialse[aisle]also worth discussing, and besides the well known circle of massive stones ofstone henge[Stonehenge],which, don’t get mewrong, is remarkable enough, well, other impressiveNeolithic structures arefound there too. Oh yes, we are talking aboutthe Neolithic period here, alsocall the new stone age, which was thetime before stone tools began to bereplaced by tools made of bronze andother metals. It was about five thousandyears ago, even before thefirst Egyptian pyramid, that some amazing Neolithic monuments,tombs,were erected at various sites around Ireland, Great Britain, andcoastalislands nearby. I’m referring in particular to structures thatin some caseslook like ordinary natural hills, but were definitelybuilt by humans, wellorganized communities of humans, to enclose a chamber,or room with stonewalls, and sometimes with a high, cleverly designedceiling of overlappingstones. These structures are called passagegraves, because the inner-chamber,sometimes several chambers in fact,could only be entered from the outsidethrough a narrow passage way.

Student
Excuseme, professor, but you said passagegraves, were these just monuments tohonor the dead buried there, or were theydesigned to be used somehow bythe living?

Professor
Ah, yes, good question, Michael.Besidesbeing built as tombs, some of these passage graves weredefinitely what memight call astronomical calendars, with chambers thatwere flooded withsunlight on certain special days of the year, whichmust have seem oracularand inspired a good deal of religious wonder.But research indicates that notjust light, but also the physics ofsound helped enhance these religiousexperiences.

Student
How so?

Professor
Well,first the echoes. When the religiousleader started chanting with echoesbouncing off these stone walls over andover again, it must have seemlike a whole chores[chorus]of other voices, spirits of Gods, maybe, joining in. But even more intriguingiswhat physicists call standing waves. Basically, the phenomenon ofstandingwaves occurs when sound waves of the same frequency reflect offthe walls andmeet from opposite direction. So the volume seems toalternate between veryloud and very soft. You can stand quite near aman singing in a loud voice andhardly hear him, yet step a littlefurther away and his voice is almost deafening.As you move around thechamber, the volume of the sound goes way up and waydown, depending onwhere you are in these standing waves.

And often the acousticsmake it hard to identifywhere sounds are coming from, it’s as ifpowerful voices are speaking to you,or chanting from inside your ownhead. This had to engender a powerful sense of allin Neolithic worshipers.

And another bit of physics at play here issomething called resonates.I’mno physicist, but, well, I imagine you’ve all blown air over the top ofanempty bottle and hear the sound it makes, and you’ve probably noticedthatdepending on its size, each empty bottle plays one particularmusical note, oras a physicist might put it, each bottle resonates at aparticular frequency.Well, that’s true of these chambers too, if youmake a constant noise insidethe chamber, maybe by steadily beating adrum at a certain rate, a particularfrequency of sound or resonate willring out intensely, depending on the sizeof the chamber. In some of thelarger chambers, though, this intensify soundmay be too deep for us tohear. We can feel it, we are mysteriously agitated by it, but it’s not asound our ears can hear. The psychological affects of all these extraordinarysoundscan be profound, especially when they seem so disconnected fromthehuman doing drumming or chanting. And there can be observablephysical affectson people too. In fact, the sounds can cause headaches,feelings of dizziness,increase heart rate, that sort of thing, you see.Anyway, what was experiencedinside one of these passage graves clearlycould be far more intense than theeveryday reality outside, which madethem very special places. But back youyour question, Michael, as towhether these graves were designed to be used bythe living, well,certainly with regard to astronomical or chemical function,that seemspretty obvious, and I want to go into more detail on that now.