TPO 26
Conversation1
Narrator
Listen to a conversation between a student and a university print shop employee.
Student
Hi. I saw your ad in the campus news paper.
Employee
Oh. We don’t have any job opening right now.
Student
Oh, no. I meant the other ad, about the services you provide for students. You see, I have been working at the campus tutoring center as a math tutor. But things have changed, including my schedule. And now I want to start doing tutoring work independently. But in order to, basically, start my own business, I need to get the work out.
Employee
Ok.
Student
I was thinking I should get something printed up that I can hand out to people.
Employee
Ah. Well, actually, I just printed up some great-looking flyers for someone doing the same thing.
Student
Flyers. Yeah, that’s an idea. I guess then I could post them around the campus.
Employee
Yeah. And you can hand them out too. But, oh, you know what? I did something really neat for someone last week. She didn’t want to go the traditional route, you know, business cards, flyers, so we customized pencils for her.
Student
Pencils?
Employee
Yeah. You know, a little message printed on the pencil.
Student
Oh, that’s cool.
Employee
Yeah. But you should know, it’s not our cheapest option. Oh, and you know those little sticky notes?
Student
You do those too?
Employee
Well, we did once. I think those bright pieces of paper would be real attention getters. You know, student use them all the time, so they should be good for business. I don’t know why we haven’t done more.
Student
Wow.
Employee
So you’ve got some options.
Student
Right. Well, what about business cards? My friend has these business cards. She does tutoring too. And she got them at this place in town, but they were kind of expensive.
Employee
For business card? Well, I don’t know what your friend paid. But we could do something real simple and it wouldn’t be much. Like for a batch of 250 for one of our standard designs, 20 dollars maybe.
Student
20 dollars sounds okay.
Employee
Now, there are some other choices that’ll affect the cost. You know, like different background patters, using color ink, that sort of thing. And it also depends on how many words you want to include.
Student
Ok. Well, I know what I want them to say. But I am just thinking, I kind of like that pencil idea.
Employee
Yeah. I thought it was neat. Now, of course you can only fit your name and phone number, and like, in your case, math tutoring on it.
Student
Right. Well, I could custom design the business cards through, right? That’s what my friend did. She said she designed them at the computer right there at the print shop.
Employee
Well, you can do that here too. But a custom design would be a bigger investment for your business than one of our standard designs.
Student
Well, I don’t know. I am interested in business cards, so can I look at the standard designs?
Lecture1- Advertising(Green Marketing)
Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in an advertising class.
Professor
Last class someone asked about green marketing. Green marketing refers to companies promoting the products as environmentally friendly. Companies often turn to advertising experts to help them do this.
Green marketing seems recent, but advertising professionals grew interest in it several decades ago. The seeds for green marketing were probably planted in 1970, when the first Earth Day took place. Rallies all over the United States were organized to protest environmental degradation. Some 20 million demonstrators participated in that first Earth Day. And it helped spark dozens of environmental laws. The biggest was the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which protects imperiled animal species from extinction. There was also passage of the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act was strengthened.
Earth Day, Environmental Laws, Environmental Issues in the news, Being Green was entering the mainstream. And business started saying, hey, we can get involved in this. So in 1975, a major advertising trade group held its first workshop on ecological marketing. A few years later, we began seeing ads tapping into people’s environmental concerns.
But some green marketers learned the hard way, green marketing must still involve all the same principles of a traditional marketing campaign. You ad must attract attention, stimulate consumers’ interest, create a desire for your product, and motivate people to take action to buy your product.
So let me tell you about one green marketing campaign that failed at first and explain why. It was a compact fluorescent light bulb. We’ll call it the eco-light. It was first introduced, I believe, in the late 90s. It cost far more than a regular incandescent bulb. The advertising message was, basically, “use this eco-light and save the planet”. But that message wasn’t effective. Research shows that consumers don’t want to let go off any traditional product attributes, like convenience, price and quality. Even though surveys indicate that almost everybody cares about the environment.
So the company reintroduced the eco-light with a new message, one that emphasized cost savings, that the eco-light lowers electric bills and lasts for years. So it’s good for earth, cost-effective and convenient because it doesn’t have to be changed every few months. This ad campaign worked like a charm.
Something else, uh, the company that makes the co-light, researchers would consider it an ‘extreme green company’, not only because its product are energy-efficient, but because the company tries to reduce its environmental impact in other ways too.Like in addition to selling Earth— friendly products, its offices and factories are designed to conserve energy and use all sorts of recycled materials.A company that only recycles office paper, researchers would classify as a ‘ lean green company’.And there are other degrees of greenness in between.
So if your green marketing strategy’s gonna work, your message should be valid on all dimensions.When a company as a whole is credited for reducing its environmental impact, this can lead to brand loyalty.People will come back and buy your product more and more.However, let’s say you’re fine for violating the Clean Water Act while manufacturing products from recycled materials. The public would eventually find out.You can’t just make the claim that a product is environmentally friendly and not follow through on.
Lecture2-Biology(Carbon Cycling)
Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in a biology class
Professor
OK.Just before the end of the last class, we started talking about trace metals, metals found in living organisms in very small quantities that serve an important biological, important nutritive function in those organisms.And one trace metal that serves a nutritive function is zinc.
Zinc assists in a number of processes in humans, but we are going to focus on just one, one that applies to a number of organisms, not just humans.See, zinc plays a major role in carbon cycling, the conversion of various kinds of molecules with carbon, Iike carbon dioxide, into other kinds of molecules with carbon that organisms can use.So, take respiration.Our bodies, our cells produce carbon dioxide when they
break down sugars.We need to get the CO2 out of our bodies, so the CO2 is converted into carbonic acid, which the blood is able to carry to the lungs.Once the carbonic acid reaches the lungs, it’s converted back into carbon dioxide so that we can breathe it out.
Now, this whole conversion process relies on a particular enzyme.Uh, who remembers what an enzyme is? Bob?
Student
Uh, it’s a protein, a specific kind of protein, one that speeds up chemical reactions.
Professor
Exactly.Different enzymes assist in different chemical reactions.Now, the one that speeds up the conversion of carbon dioxide has zinc in it.So this zinc enzyme is critical for getting CO2 out of our bodies through the lungs.And it’s also extremely important for plants.Bob, can you tell us why?
Student
For making food, for photosynthesis?
Professor
Exactly.For photosynthesis.Plants also convert carbon dioxide into different forms of carbon-containing molecules and the conversion process used relies on the very same enzyme that works in humans.So zinc is also important for plants.
OK.But zinc is scarce in certain environments.And it’s particularly scarce in waters near the surface of rivers and lakes and shallower parts of oceans, which might make us wonder how plants could live there at all.In fact, there are a lot of marine plants that survive, that grow and reproduce in surface waters.In particular, there are a lot of diatoms.
Diatoms are microscopic, photosynthetic organisms and they are a major source of food for other organisms in the ocean.There are a number of different types of diatoms, and, well, diatoms play a very important role in the carbon cycling process, because they help make carbon available to other organisms in deeper parts of the ocean.The carbon that these diatoms use in photosynthesis is transferred to other parts of the ocean when the diatoms are eaten, say, by a fish that absorbs the carbon and then swims to another part of the ocean, or when diatoms die and fall to the ocean floor.
So how did diatoms survive if zinc is so scarce? Well, recently researchers discovered that a specific type of diatom makes a different enzyme that serves the same purpose.But this enzyme doesn’t contain zinc.Instead this new enzyme incorporates another trace metal, cadmium.Kelly, you’ve got a question?
Student
Yeah.I thought cadmium was toxic.Didn’t you say that?
Professor
It is poisonous to humans.Uh. actually, we used to think that it was toxic to all biological life, that it didn’t serve any biological purpose.But new study suggests that cadmium can actually substitute for zinc, that organisms can use it instead of zinc when there isn’t enough zinc in their environment.
Now, the discovery of this cadmium—based enzyme is really important for a number of reasons.It’s actually the first enzyme we have discovered that uses cadmium.So it’s possible that other not so typical trace metals may be used in chemical processes, that marine organisms might make enzymes from other trace metals when the essential one is scarce.And there may be other types of diatoms that use cadmium
to cycle carbon.
But there’s something else to think about.What is one of the most common greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, one of the major culprits in global warming.Carbon dioxide, right?
Now, if all these diatoms are taking carbon dioxide from the surface, converting it and transporting it to the bottom of the ocean, well, maybe there’s more to that whole process, that cycle, something that we’ve overlooked.So further research might tell us more about these warming cycles too.
Conversation2
Narrator
Listen to a conversation between a student and her biology professor.
Professor
Hi, Jean.How was the…uh, the conference, right? the conference on volunteerism? That’s where you were last week.
Student
Yeah. It was great. I met a lot of people from some really amazing organizations that are working in the area.Now it would be a lot easier to get students to volunteer in the community.Plus, I’ve never been to any of the beaches here before.Being at the beach was definitely a plus.
Professor
Well, I hope you had time to look over the notes from the class you missed.You did get the notes, right?
Student
Yup.I’II look them over before tomorrow’s class.
Professor
Good.And let me know if you have any questions.
Student
Well, there is something that I wanted to ask you now.It’s about something I noticed at the beach.
Professor
Oh, what’s that?
Student
Well, see, there are a lot of jellyfish there, floating in the water.
Professor
That couldn’t have been pleasant.
Student
Not for swimming. But it was interesting. I mean, the jelleyfish were glowing.I swear they were.And I am wondering what that’s about.
Professor
Ah, glowing jellyfish.That is interesting. Uh, it’s called bioluminescence.And actually we are going to talk about it later in the semester.Basically, bioluminescence is light that’s produced by a chemical reaction.
Student
Really? Inside the jellyfish?
Professor
Well, not all jellyfish, about half of them.Actually, a lot of marine organisms have this ability, especially in deeper parts of the ocean.
Student
Oh? I get it. Like the darker it gets, the more the fish needs light, right?
Professor
Well.bioluminescence serves a number of functions.Most aquatic organisms use it for communication and for attracting prey.But jellyfish usually use it as a defense against predators.Some jellyfish produce bright flashes of light that confuse predators, to, uh, to startle them.But jellyfish closer to the surface, probably like the jellyfish you saw, they use bioluminescence to hide.The light they produce matches the color of the dim sunlight, so they blend in, and, uh, and predators can’t see them.
Student
Wow, really? Well, I am looking for a topic for my term paper ,so maybe I could do it on these glowing jellyfish.That’s why I wanted to ask you about them, you know, to find out if there was really something to write about.
Professor
It’s a great topic.But you’II have to make sure the topic is manageable.Like I said, about half of all jellyfish are bioluminescent, so you may want to look at a particular type of jellyfish or several types that benefit from bioluminescence in the same way, or you could investigate current research on bioluminescence, on, on the chemical process, or…Here’s an idea.You seem to be very involved in local issues.See if you
can identify the jellyfish you observed on the beach and how they fit into the local ecosystem.
Student
Yeah, you know, some of the environmental groups I met last week might even be able to help me.
Lecture3-Astronomy (Comets)
Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in an astronomy class.
Professor
0K.We have been looking at some of the smaller members of our solar system, comets.You already know about the structure of comets.Let’s continue our discussion now by talking about orbits, especially those of the so-called periodic-orbit comets.These are the comets that circle around the Sun pretty regularly.They return again and again, predictably, after a certain period of time.That’s why we say their orbits are periodic.Probably the most famous and brightest of these is Halley’s comet.
Halley’s comet comes from far out in the solar system, goes in close to the Sun, and then out again.At its closest approach to the Sun, Halley’s comet is about twice as close to the Sun as Earth is.And at its farthest.It's about thirty-five times farther from the Sun than we are, which puts it out beyond Neptune. Basically, the idea here is that a periodic comet, with its very elongated orbit, just keeps coming back around again and again.With Halley’s comet, well, it returns every 75 years, roughly.
But where is Halley’s comet during most of this time? Well, like all orbiting bodies, a comet moves faster when it’s closer to the Sun.So it only spends about a year or two in our neighborhood, inside the orbit of Jupiter.Most of its time is spent way out beyond Jupiter’s orbit, poking along near the farther reaches of it own orbit.Because of this, we can only see Halley’s for a few months every 75 years, first on its way in toward the Sun, and then on its way out again.
Now, you remember from our previous discussion that a comet’s nucleus ,its core, is made up of ice and dust, like a frozen snowball.And as it approaches the Sun, it starts to heat up.And some of the ice vaporizes into gas and spreads out from the nucleus.The gases that vaporize from the comet, the comet never collects them back again, so on every orbit, the comet leaves part of itself behind.
OK.How old is this solar system ?Four and a half billion years.remember ?And Halley’s is going around the Sun once every 75 years and losing stuff each time.So the comet should be long gone by now, right? I mean, how come Halley’s is still there? After four and a half billion years.How could it be? Well, the answer is that this comet hasn’t always been in such a short periodic orbit, since once a comet gets into
an orbit that keeps it coming in close to the Sun quite frequently.Well, that comet’s probably not going to be around too much longer. So this kind of periodic orbit is only a phase in a comet’s life.A phase that just precedes its final breakup.We’ve seen comets do that, going toward the Sun and then come back around ,torn into pieces.
But lots of comets aren’t like that.They come in, pass behind the Sun, and then travel back out.But with an orbit so large, and its farthest place so far away from the Sun that we just don’t know how far out it goes.We just can’t determine that very accurately from the close-in part of the orbit that we do see.So these are often called parabolic-orbit comets.Parabolic means the orbit is open at the far end.Actually the orbit probably does close and return the comet to the vicinity of the Sun eventually, but the period might be tens of thousands of years.And basically, we can’t determine it.So we just, we refer to them as open-ended parabolic-orbit comets.
So, what can change a comet with one of these long orbits where they only come by the Sun occasionally into a much more frequent periodic visitor? Well, gravitational interaction with planets, right? lf a comet on one of these long period orbits at some point comes close to Jupiter or Saturn or one of the other planets, then the pull of that planet’s gravity might alter the orbit, maybe make it much shorter.So this comet, if it happens to pass by a planet just the right way, it can be drawn into a new orbit, one that’ll capture it and keep it coming back around the Sun much more often.
Lecture4-Art Conservation (Archimedes Palimpsest)
Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in an art conservation class.
Professor
So far we have been talking all semester about restoring and preserving pieces of art，like ancient frescos，early oil paintings，etc.But although our field is called art conservation，it also involves…what?
Student
Um...preserving other types of cultural materials too
Professor
Very good.Not just art.Old artifacts are very valuable when they represent early technologies, all contain important historical information.In fact，let me give you an example.You’ve heard about the Greek scholar Archimedes，who lived more than 2，000 years ago，I am sure.Archimedes was a great mathematician.For example，he discovered the formula for the volume of a sphere.Not much of his work has Survived，but what has Survived is brilliant.And then in 1906，a Palimpsest of Archimedes’ writing was discovered.
Now, a palimpsest is a type of manuscript that contains writing that’s hidden because something else was written over it later.I’ll explain in a minute.This Archimedes palimpsest, as it’s now called，is by far the most important palimpsest anyone has ever seen.Because it contains the only known existing copy of Archimedes’treatise, called Method.Archimedes shows in it how maths can be applied to physics and physical reasoning back to maths problems, which is how he calculated the volume of the sphere，for example.This maybe commonplace today, but was revolutionary in his time.A few years ago, the palimpsest was sold at an auction for 2 million dollars.It could have ended up tucked away in a private collection，but fortunately, the collector who bought it has agreed to have experts restore every single word Archimedes wrote，so the contents can be shared with the world and studied.
But there are two main problems.What do you think the first one might be?
Jennifer?
Student
Um…well，it sounds like it’s extremely old.So probably some pages are at the point of crumbling into dust?
Professor
True.And some are moldy, and some were eaten away at by bookworms.This thing’s really decayed.But on top of that，there’s another issue.And this is the reason why it’s a palimpsest.You see，the text apparently sat around in a library in Constantinople until 1229 A.D.But then a scribe erased，scraped away the writing as clean as he could in order to use the pages to write his own book on.Why would he
do that? Take a guess.
Student
Must have been a paper shortage?
Professor
Well? they used parchment to write on, but yes, there was a parchment shortage.
Student
So you are saying the parchment was basically recycled?
Professor
Correct.Then，even later on，in the twentieth century, a forger painted
ancient—looking pictures on several of the pages in order to make the book seem older and increase its value.So unfortunately, that’s quite a history.
Student
But professor Wilkens，if the scribe scraped away Archimedes’words and if these paintings covered the pages，how can the original work be recovered?
Professor
Ah, that’s why I am telling you the story.That’s our task as conservationists, isn’t it? To find a way.There were still faint traces of Archimedes’words on the pages.First，we tried to make the Archimedes’words stand out with a variety of technologies，using ultraviolet light.But that didn’t work on every page.But then，there was this new idea that came from a scientist studying spinach.
Student
Spinach?
Professor
Yes.Spinach.This physicist，Uwe Bergman，does research that involves studying iron in spinach.He was reading an article about problems with the palimpsest and it said that there is iron in the original Archimedes’ ink.So he came up with an idea to use the same method of looking at iron in spinach to view the iron on the palimpsest pages.And his idea worked.Bergman’s technique allows X—rays to pass through the forged paintings, pass through the scribe’s writing to hit the iron traces from the ink of the original Archimedes’ text and create an image just of the iron on the pages.The iron—based letters seem to just pop off the page.The original text and diagrams emerged，line by line.diagram after diagram. And that’s kind of typical of our field.There’s a lot of interdisciplinary work.People from several different fields might be
involved in working with a single art.