TPO 30
Section1
Conversation1
Narrator
Listen to a conversation between a student and an employee at the student activity center.
Student
This is the administrative office, right?
Employee
Uh-huh. How can I help you?
Student
Well, I am stopping by to reserve a place for my school club that meet and work, pretty much on a regular basis. Ideally, our preference would be to have our own office.
Employee
Hmm…well, we are out of private offices. But we do have some semi-private options still available.
Student
What do you mean?
Employee
Well, it’s a setup where you’ll have a larger workspace shared by two other clubs. In other words, each club would have its own work area within that one room.
Student
Oh. Are there any divider, walls or anything?
Employee
Oh, yes. There will be a couple of dividers, so there’s some privacy.
Student
Um. We’ll work with that then. I wouldn’t want to be without an office.
Employee
OK. Here are the two forms you have to fill out. Why don’t you do it now while I set that up through out computer system.
Student
OK.
Employee
So what’s your club’s name? And the last name of the club president.
Student
Oh, it’s the photography club. And it’s Williams. That’s me. John Williams.
Employee
Hmm…that’s not pulling up anything on my screen. Um…let me try something else. Uh, how about your faculty advisor’s name?
Student
Sarah Baker. She is in the Arts Department.
Employee
Hmm…No. Strange. You know your club is just not showing up in my online records. Is this an established club?
Student
No. Actually it’s a brand-new one.
Employee
Hmm…have you completed the registration process?
Student
Yeah, last week. That was my very first step.
Employee
Right. Well, for my purposes, a club definitely has to be registered before I can proceed further. At the moment, however, it appears that there’s no record of your club’s registration.
Student
Really? I thought everything was finalized last week.
Employee
Well, it is surprising. Usually there’s a 24-hour turnaround in our computer database. So then do you have the registration approval letter from the review committee? That would give me the verification I need.
Student
Yeah. I do. I mean, well, I don’t have it with me. But … I… I, uh, can get it from my dorm room, bring it back with me and submit it with those forms you need from me.
Employee
Great! That’ll work. And just so you are aware, there’re lots of benefits to being registered.
Student
Oh, yeah. I think the university will give us permission to set up a website, right? I want to get students sharing their ideas on the website, you know, establish a photography blog.
Employee
Yes. You’ll be able to do that. And…um…actually there’s more. You’ll be allowed the use of audiovisual equipment at no cost. You’ll receive a club mailbox and a club email address. You’ll be allowed to post your flyers and posters around the campus for publicity. And you could be eligible for funding for club events.
Student
Well, we are definitely interested in hiring a professional speaker at one of our campus events at some point in the semester. And speakers almost always charge a fee. So I’ll definitely follow up on that.
Lecture1
Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in a psychology class.
Professor
We’ve been talking about animal cognition—the study of animal intelligence. Now, much of the research in this area is motivated by the search for animal analogues, or parallels to human cognitive processes. And one of the processes we’ve been investigating is metacognition.
What is metacognition? Well, it’s being aware of what one knows or feels, uh, um… having an awareness of one’s state of mind. And making decisions about behavior based on what one knows. Researchers have long been interested in whether animals possess this capability, but…but couldn’t test it because animals aren’t able to report their feelings.
But recently one group of researchers found a way to solve this problem. They did studies with…with monkeys and dolphins that provide evidence that these animals have the ability to feel uncertainty, to feel unsure about something and…and…well, to know that they are uncertain.
So how could these researchers figure out if an animal feels uncertainty. Well, it began with a study one of them did on a dolphin, who had been trained to recognize a particular high-pitched tone. The dolphin was taught to press one of two paddles depending on whether it heard the high tone or one that was lower. Food was a reward for a correct response. But if the wrong paddle was pressed, the dolphin had to wait several seconds before it could try again. The task varied in difficulty according to the pitch of the second tone. The closer it came in pitch to the first one, the hard it became for the dolphin to correctly identify it as low. And the researcher noted that the dolphin is quite eager to press the paddle when it was sure of the answer, but exhibited hesitation during difficult trials.
Next the researcher introduced a third option, a third paddle that would initiate a new trial, giving the dolphin the choice of passing on difficult trials. Once the dolphin figured out the result of pressing this new paddle, it did choose it frequently when the trial was difficult. The researcher took that as an indication that the animal wanted to pass because it didn’t know the answer and knew it didn’t know.
But there was a problem. Other researchers protested that the… the opt-out response was simply a learned or conditioned response. You remember intro to psychology, right? In other words, by pressing the pass paddle, the dolphin avoided having to wait and hasten the possibility of a full reward by moving directly to the next trial. So the experiment didn’t necessarily indicate that the dolphin had knowledge of its own uncertainty, just that it wanted to avoid negative consequences.
So more recently, our researcher and his colleagues devised a new study, this time using monkeys. In this experiment, the monkeys had to identify certain patterns displayed on a computer screen. These patterns were analogous to the tones used in the dolphin study. One type of pattern was of a specific density and was to be classified as dense, while the second type of pattern could vary in density, but was always less dense than the first one. And the monkeys’ task was to identify this second type as sparse. So the denser the second type of pattern was, the more difficult the task became.
And as in a previous study, the monkeys were given a third choice that would allow them to pass on to a new trial. But unlike in the dolphin experiment, the monkeys had to complete four trials before they got any feedback. They didn’t know if they responded correctly or incorrectly after each trial because there was no reward or punishment. At the end of four trials, feedback was given. The monkeys received a full reward for each correct response. And a time-out during which a buzzer was sounded for each incorrect response. But the monkeys had no way to tell which reward or punishment was associated with which response. And they didn’t get either reward or punishment for choosing the pass option, the…um…the uncertainty response. But nevertheless they still chose this option in the appropriate circumstances when the trial was particularly difficult. And this is evidence that it wasn’t a conditioned response, because that response didn’t guarantee a faster reward.
So what does all this tell us about animal consciousness or animals’ awareness of themselves and their state of mind? Can we really know what’s going on in the minds of animals? No. Of course not. But exploring the metacognitive capacity of animals could become an important criterion in highlighting the similarities and differences between human and animal minds.
Lecture2-Paleontology
Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in a paleontology class.
Professor
As we’ve discussed, birds are apparently descendants of dinosaurs and shared many commonalities with some dinosaur species, like…um…feathers and maybe even flight and of course egg laid. OK.
So, many paleontologists, myself included, have wondered about other similarities between dinosaurs and birds. Since adult dinosaur fossils have sometimes been discovered near or on top of nests, we’ve been looking at the dinosaur parenting behavior.
Student
Parenting behavior, well, that sounds so gentle and caring. But dinosaurs were ferocious reptiles and reptiles don’t take care of their young, do they?
Professor
Well, some reptiles incubate their eggs, crocodiles do. And as for popular attitudes towards dinosaurs…well, take the Oviraptor for instance.
In the 1920s, a paleontologist discovered the fossil remains of a small dinosaur near a nest containing eggs. He assumed the dinosaur was stealing the eggs, so he named it Oviraptor that means egg thief in Latin, which fueled the generally negative public image of such dinosaurs.
But by the 1990s, other experts had convincingly made the case that instead of robbing the nest; the Oviraptor was probably taking care of the eggs. You see, dinosaurs’ closest living relatives – birds and crocodiles – display nesting behavior. And dinosaur fossils have been found in postures that we now believe to indicate brooding behavior, that is, sitting on the eggs until they hatch.
So we are curious about the type of care dinosaurs gave to their young. And we’d like to figure out which dinosaur parent, the male or the female gave the care.
Student
Shouldn’t the behavior of crocodiles and birds give us some clues then?
Professor
Well, with crocodiles, it is the female who guards the nest, and with birds, it depends on the species, it can be the male or the female that takes care the eggs, or both. In over 90 percent of all bird species, both parents take care of the eggs and the young birds.
Student
But sometimes it’s just the male?
Professor
Well, exclusive care by the male parent is much less common, but it does occur. Now, for animals other than birds, the care of young by both parents is pretty unusual in the animal kingdom. Males contribute to parental care in fewer than five percent of all mammalian species. It’s even less frequent among reptiles. And exclusive care by the male is very rare. So researchers have wondered about the evolution of male parenting behavior in birds for quite some time. And now there’s research showing that for some of the birds’ dinosaur relatives, it’s likely that the male parent was also in charge of taking care of the eggs.
Student
How did they figure that out?
Professor
Well, first they looked at clutch volume, that’s the number of eggs in the nest of crocodiles, birds and three types of dinosaurs, including Oviraptors that are thought to be closely related to the dinosaur ancestors of birds.
So when researchers examined fossilized remains of nests, they found that the dinosaurs had larger clutch volumes, more eggs in the nests that is, than most of the crocodiles and birds that were studied. But, and this is important, their clutch volumes matched those of birds that have only male parental care. You see, bird species in which only the males take care of the nest tend to have the largest clutches of eggs.
Student
So what’s the connection between bird and dinosaur behavior?
Professor
Well, researchers now believe, because of this study, that the male parenting behavior of these birds might have its origins in the behavior of dinosaurs.
Student
Based only on evidence of clutch volume size, the number of eggs?
Professor
No, there’s more. They also examined the fossilized bones of those three types of dinosaurs that were found on or near nests to determine their sex. You see, adult female birds during egg production produce a layer of spongy bone tissue inside certain long bones. And so did female dinosaurs of the kinds that were investigated. This spongy tissue serves as a source of calcium for eggshell formation. But when the dinosaur fossils were examined, there were no spongy bone deposits.
Student
Meaning that those dinosaurs on the nests were probably adult males who wouldn’t have needed calcium for making eggshells.
Professor
Exactly. And then there’s this: birds like the kiwi, the ostrich and the emu; they share certain physical characteristics with these dinosaurs. And interestingly, they also show a consistent pattern of nest care by the male.
Section2
Conversation2
Narrator
Listen to a conversation between a student and his art history professor.
Professor
How was the museum?
Student
Great. I hadn’t been there for a few years.
Professor
Did you enjoy the Van Gogh painting?
Student
That’s the thing. Looks like I have to change my topic.
Professor
Hmm… we are getting close to the deadline. You were writing about the theme of night in the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh.
It’s a wonderful topic.
Student
I know. People don’t usually think of Van Gogh as an artist of nocturnal themes. They think of brightness, sunshine, all that yellow and orange.
Professor
You are right of course about the intense light associated with his daytime paintings. But his night paintings don’t exactly lack brightness.
Student
That’s the paradox that I really like, the paradox of painting a nighttime scene using so much color and light. So I was planning to focus mostly on his painting Starry Night.
Professor
But?
Student
When I went to the museum to look at the actual painting, like you told me to. It wasn’t there.
Professor
Really? Isn’t it part of the permanent collection?
Student
Yes. But it’s on loan right now to a museum in Europe.
Professor
Ah, I see. Well, I am strict about having students write about paintings they can observe firsthand.
Student
Well, I found another painting I could study instead.
Professor
OK.
Student
I read that there are two paintings called Starry Night. The first one was done by the French realist painter Millet. It may have been the inspiration for Van Gogh’s painting. Millet’s painting is located near my family’s house in Connecticut. And I am going there this weekend and could study it then. I made sure it’s not out on loan.
Professor
That definitely would work then. Van Gogh copied many of Millet’s compositions. We know that he really admired Millet’s work. And a lot of us think Van Gogh saw this particular painting by Millet in Paris in the late 1700s.
Student
Yeah. Although Millet was a realist painter, and Van Gogh a post-impressionist, the two paintings still share lots of features, not just the name. The most striking shared feature has got to be the amazing light effects. I am excited to go see it. But one other thing …
Professor
Uh-huh.
Student
I was thinking about getting a head start on my next assignment while I am at the gallery in Connecticut, the assignment on miniatures. They have a lot of miniature portraits of children as part of their permanent collection.
Professor
American miniatures?
Student
Yeah. So I figured I could also get started on that essay, study a few while I am there. I’d focus on the meaning of the objects that some of the children are holding, some are holding flowers, one child has a rattle, another a toy violin…
Professor
That would be fine. Uh, those objects…we call them attributes. The attributes chosen to be included in a particular miniature was often meant to communicate parents’ hopes and dreams for their child. So I think you’ll learn a lot about how people viewed children at the time the miniature paintings were done.
Lecture3-Astronomy
Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in an astronomy class.
Professor
There’s been a lot of talk recently about life on Mars, at the level of microorganisms anyway, mainly because of a few important discoveries and inventions.
For example, one major discovery was that at one point water was present on Mars. How do we know? Well, in 2004, an exploration robot discovered jarosite there.
Jarosite is a yellowish brown mineral with a crystalline structure that’s also found on Earth. It contains iron, potassium and hydroxide. The interesting thing is that on Earth at least it needs highly acidic water to form. So we’ve got water or had it at one point. And since most planetary scientists believe that water is essential to life, the presence of jarosite means that one prerequisite for life was once present on Mars.
But there’s another thing about jarosite. One step in its formation on Earth involves microorganisms; they actually speed up the formation of jarosite dramatically. Now, theoretically it is possible for jarosite to form without the help of biological life forms. But we don’t really know for sure if this happens ‘cause… well, because every corner of Earth has some form of biological life.
But jarosite on Earth incorporates all kinds of microorganisms into its crystalline structure. So it’s possible that if the jarosite on Mars was also formed with the help of microorganisms, we might be able to detect remnants of them in the samples we find. And we have instruments now that will enable us to try to do this. For example, there’s a new instrument called the microfabricated organic analyzer, or M.O.A.
The organic analyzer is an amazing tool. It will be able to collect soil samples and analyze them right there on Mars, pure, untouched samples. It will let us eliminate the risk we would take of contaminating the samples if they were brought back to Earth. And what they’ll look for specifically in the soil is amino acids.
Amino acids, as you may know, are the building blocks of proteins. In fact, there are twenty standard amino acids involved in making proteins and lots more that aren’t.
And here’s the important thing. Amino acids are what we call handed. They can exist in two forms, which are mirror images of each other like hands. Right and left hands have the same number of fingers in the same order plus one thumb. But right and left hands are not the same; they are mirror images. Well, like hands, amino acids can be right or left-handed. And the twenty that make up the proteins on Earth are all left-handed.
Now, one reason the M.O.A., the organic analyzer is so impressive is that it tests not just for the presence of amino acids but also for the handedness of amino acids. If amino acids are found, it would be especially interesting if they show a prevalence of one type of handedness, either left, like amino acids on Earth, or right.
See, other physical processes in space, processes that don’t involve living organisms, can create amino acids. But the ones synthesized through abiotic processes, which is to say not involving microorganisms, occur in equal numbers of right- and left-handed.
So, a prevalence of left-handed amino acids would indicate they were biological in origin, which would be amazing! A prevalence of right-handed ones…well, that would be really amazing!! Because the organisms that created them would be unlike anything we have on Earth, which produce only left-handed ones.
Lecture4-Music History
Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in a music history class. The professor has been discussing music of the twentieth century.
Professor
And what instrument comes to mind when you think of rock ‘n’ roll?
Student
The electric Guitar?
Professor
Exactly. I think it’s fair to say that the sound of the electric guitar typifies the rock ‘n’ roll genre, which became popular in the 1950s. But really the instrument we know today was the result of a continuing development that started for our practical purposes in the 1920s.
But long before that even, people were experimenting with ways to modify traditional acoustic guitars. The first guitars were wooden. This is the Spanish guitar and the strings were made from animal products. Then came steel strings. And that led to the lap guitar, which is also called the steel guitar because the player slides a steel rod up and down the neck. And those are all acoustic guitars. OK?
But then eventually we have electric guitars. Over the years, many inventors and musicians contributed to the design of these instruments. And each design was intended to alter the sound in some way, at first at least with the electric guitar, to make it louder.
So let’s get back to when the steel guitar was first introduced in the United States. It was right after the Spanish-American war in the late 1890s. US sailors who were stationed in Hawaii—then a US territory—were very enamored with the music they heard there. Uh, Hawaiian music was based on the steel guitar I just described. Some sailors learned how to play the steel guitar and brought it home to the States. Before long, Hawaiian steel guitar music was all the rage in the mainland US. It actually had a strong influence on the development of several musical genres, rock ‘n’ roll most notably, but also jazz and blues.
Anyway, by the 1920s, with the advent of the public dance movement, people were gathering in large groups to listen to steel guitar music. But they had trouble hearing it, especially in large public settings. As I mentioned, the instrument was played horizontally, on the lap. Since the strings faced upward, the sound was projected toward the ceiling rather than outward toward the audience. Something had to be done, because the music venues and the audience kept getting larger and larger. So what would you do?
Student
Find a way to amplify the sound?
Professor
Yes. And to do that, inventors started attaching electronic devices, electrical coils to the acoustic guitars. And the electronics worked! But attaching electronics didn’t just affect how loudly you could play. It also changed the quality of the sound. These early electric guitars were hollow and these early amplifiers caused vibrations in the bodies of the instruments. So as the sound got louder, it became more distorted, fuzzy-sounding. And what musicians at the time wanted was a pure, clean sound.
Student
So where does Les Paul fit in? Wasn’t he the first to electrify acoustic guitars?
Professor
Uh…no. Electrified guitars already existed by the time Les Paul came into the picture around 1940. What Paul did was experiment with ways of removing the distortions and he succeeded. He designed a guitar with a solid body that relied solely on electronics. Paul’s solid body eliminated the vibrations, and thus the distortions.
Student
Excuse me. But when I think of electric guitar music, I think of Jimi Hendrix.
Professor
Jimi Hendrix, one of my favorites.
Student
But Hendrix’s style really was all about distortion, that’s what’s so great about his music, all those special effects. I think a lot of rock ‘n’ roll fans prefer that to a pure sound.
Professor
Yeah. You are getting ahead of me here. But good, because the point I was going to make is that the sound of rock ‘n’ roll changed over the years. And the designs and technology of electric guitars made those changes possible.
So whereas Les Paul’s goal was to remove the distortion, later musicians wanted to produce it. And by the time Jimi Hendrix came around. Well, essentially, Hendrix reinvented the electric guitar, in the sense that he created amazing effects and vibrations that changed the sound of rock ‘n’ roll completely. So eventually, people tried to improve on Les Paul’s model, well, to modify it I should say.